51–60 of 60 posts
I think this is a kind of strong statement to take as a given, especially as an opening. This is taking social darwinism as law, and could use more scrutiny.
The AI can minimize loss / maximize fitness by either moving to look for additional resources, or fire a laser. Turns out that when resources are scarce, the optimal move is to knock the opponent away. I think this tells us more about the problem space than the AI itself; it's just optimizing for the specific problem.
> I think this tells us more about the problem space than the AI itself; it's just optimizing for the specific problem. My reading is that the point of this research is to find out what problem spaces are conducive to cooperation, not to find out details of how these particular agents work.
[0] http://www.sciencealert.com/google-s-new-ai-has-learned-to-b...
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I cant help but notice you and someone else are here both promoting this "Moloch" stuff and that particular website slatestarcodex https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13636150&goto=threads%... why? Frankly i don't feel it's productive or rational to attach the name of a biblical villain to new technology.
It's not specifically new technology that's being deliniated by "Moloch". The article is long but explains clearly the (not entirely new) association: Moloch represents the sacrifice of human values on the altar of competitiveness, and is best staved off through coordination.
That reply, while informative, continues with the weighted religious terminology. It may find better reception here couched differently.
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I think we must be looking at different scales, and I'm probably mixing up terms and not making myself very clear. Evolution defaults to aggression as that is how it squeezes out fitness, and cooperative behavior is continually at odds with that and only seems to survive on one level up every so often, where evolution just starts treating it as giant agents anyway and the cycle starts again at a higher level. Similar…
I don't know what you mean when you say "evolution". Certainly, the evolution of mammals shows cooperation as a common, viable strategy - just look at all the species operating in packs/flocks/herds. The little I know of simple organism evolution also seems to suggest cooperation(symbiosis) is an important part in evolving into a complex organism. But the best part about evolution is that we don't need to replicate b…
If you don't want ethical issues, don't create something that needs a code of ethics. We haven't even figured out how to properly define "acceptable to our ethics" (aka laws and other social structures) for humans.
also, you may enjoy "27" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLRLYPiaAoA
Not entirely spawned by this article, but the whole genre and some other comments on HN by other users: I wonder if part of the "mystery" of cooperation in these simulations is that these people keep investigating the question of cooperation using simulations too simplistic to model any form of trade. A fundamental of economics 101 is that valuations for things differ for different agents. Trade ceases to exist in a…
In iterated prisoners dilemma and other similar games, the "API" with which agents interact with the world is extremely simple. The statement of the problem is also very simple. The agent itself can be any computable algorithm for deciding to cooperate or defect based on the past history of game rounds. I find it interesting to see agents learn recognizable behaviours like "communication" or "trade" when they aren't explicitly programmed to do those things.
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I'm assuming you're referring to something like this: https://egtheory.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/ipd/ I think we shouldn't confuse efficient strategies with the chosen strategies. What causes Moloch is the inability to see the big picture, to see outside of the self in the collective (maybe Buddhism has a point). An efficient strategy may very well be something we'd prefer, such as tit-for-tat. But is that the strateg…
In the long run, we've built massively complex human societies that develop intricate technologies. Technologies whose production requires supply chains many thousands of people, and so complex that nobody involved understands all the technologies involves. All so some people can contend that humanity isn't able to see the collective beyond the self. I would say we have a demonstrated ability of seeing the big pictur…
alternative explanation, given for the sake of argument:
we have a terrible ability to see the big picture, but have come up with some ingenious constructions where the small picture of each component in the system is correctly calibrated so the big picture outcome is successful. as you yourself pointed out, the supply chains are so complex that nobody involved understands all of it.
now, how would we go about distinguishing between which of these possible interpretations is correct?
thought experiment goes like this: suppose the big picture requires that some actors in the system do not receive satisfactory treatment in their local context, and that the only benefits those actors receive will be indirect, as benefits accrued to other actors in the system, but not to adjacent actors. will those actors still agree to participate or not?
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I cant help but notice you and someone else are here both promoting this "Moloch" stuff and that particular website slatestarcodex https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13636150&goto=threads%... why? Frankly i don't feel it's productive or rational to attach the name of a biblical villain to new technology.
SSC, while fairly controversial (and I strongly disagree with a LOT of what's on there), is mostly known to HN. At the moment, it has the best summary of the concept that I'm aware of. > Frankly i don't feel it's productive or rational to attach the name of a biblical villain to new technology. Well, frankly, I disagree. Humans have an inherent blind spot when it comes to complex systemic forces. We tend to imagine t…
And, by the way, I had not considered the Moloch article as a direct re-framing of a problem until you put it as such. I must say thinking about it in that light I find humanizing `complex systemic forces` a rather novel transformation and quite useful. Even having read the article a few times, I hadn't thought to describe it as such. But morphing a problem from one fairly inscrutable set of phenomena to be a villain allows us to use a different set of mental tools to tackle understanding the problem.
Typically I had though more restrictively about such transformations, for example, viewing a sound's waveform graphically can be illuminating in a certain sense (transforming audio-temporal, to visual-spatial). The biggest issue with the toMoloch transform is that the conversion process is obviously going to be significantly more noisy and provide the author the ability copious amounts of wiggle-room to steer the reader towards their own conclusions. But just expressing the facets of the problem and making its existence more well known has a lot of value. Anyhow thanks for helping me see an article I have gotten quite a bit of insight out of in another way.
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SSC, while fairly controversial (and I strongly disagree with a LOT of what's on there), is mostly known to HN. At the moment, it has the best summary of the concept that I'm aware of. > Frankly i don't feel it's productive or rational to attach the name of a biblical villain to new technology. Well, frankly, I disagree. Humans have an inherent blind spot when it comes to complex systemic forces. We tend to imagine t…
Not to totally sidetrack the discussion, but what are some of the things that you strongly disagree with on SSC? (The Moloch article is one of the most fascinating ones I have read.) And, by the way, I had not considered the Moloch article as a direct re-framing of a problem until you put it as such. I must say thinking about it in that light I find humanizing `complex systemic forces` a rather novel transformation a…
Most things I disagree with SSC on seem to be general rationalist beliefs and may also be found on places like LessWrong. These views are usually expressed less directly, and sometimes in comments.
For example, SSC and rationalists in general attribute very high value to IQ. SSC has some posts relating to ability, genetics, and growth mindset that I find very good:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tale...
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around-growt...
But, while I mostly agree with both of those series, the continual claim that IQ is the best thing since sliced bread, that it's everything, correlates with everything, and is necessary for someone to reach certain heights, is a something that I find to be more dogmatic than rational. I think the IQ-is-everything model is too simplistic, and rather self-fulfilling, and if you have a lot of patience, you can extract my position on ability development from this old post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12617007
> And, by the way, I had not considered the Moloch article as a direct re-framing of a problem until you put it as such.
To be fair, I'm not sure if Scott Alexander meant it that way. There was a related post on the Goddess of Cancer, where I think the reframing part was mentioned. But I already believe that Moloch is a manifestation of a wider process, so the issue of explaining to someone how a blind process can have so much power is not new.
> The biggest issue with the toMoloch transform is that the conversion process is obviously going to be significantly more noisy and provide the author the ability copious amounts of wiggle-room to steer the reader towards their own conclusions.
I don't know that it really introduces any more significant noise than anything else. We're already surrounded by so much noise, and I would argue much of it is from the aforementioned process itself, that better means are needed than hoping that a given transformation was accurate anyway. I.e., can we make predictions from the concept of Moloch? It looks to me that we can.
Generally, information needs to be routed to the right subsystems. Humans have a few subsystems that are really good at identifying an adversary or assigning blame. But they don't have any good subsystems to examine the situation itself unless they're already above it, nor can they assign blame to the situation, as they perceive it as neutral and inert. I would say the extreme informational loss from the inability to process effects of systems and situations is so much larger than the added noise that the transformation absolutely needs to be done.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not specifically new technology that's being deliniated by "Moloch". The article is long but explains clearly the (not entirely new) association: Moloch represents the sacrifice of human values on the altar of competitiveness, and is best staved off through coordination.
> Moloch represents the sacrifice of human values on the altar of competitiveness, and is best staved off through coordination. That reply, while informative, continues with the weighted religious terminology. It may find better reception here couched differently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what you mean when you say "evolution". Certainly, the evolution of mammals shows cooperation as a common, viable strategy - just look at all the species operating in packs/flocks/herds. The little I know of simple organism evolution also seems to suggest cooperation(symbiosis) is an important part in evolving into a complex organism. But the best part about evolution is that we don't need to replicate b…
> And the best part about AI is that we have no ethical issues simulating millions of evolutionary iterations of "bloodshed" until we arrive at an AI that is acceptable to our ethics. Are we sure this is the case? Once we start attempting to create an AI that follows our modern ethics, we have to start asking questions about AI personhood. And I for one feel there are deep ethical questions regarding forced iteration…
I guess... Maybe they do, if the story is told vividly enough.