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Interview with gwern

dwarkeshpatel.com

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Re: Interview with gwern

#51

Post by dewey »

mbustamanter wrote: post #42
Quinzel wrote: post #9

I don’t believe Gwern lives as frugally as he’s described in this (if this even actually is the real Gwern). I’m 100% sure that he has a persona he likes to portray and being perceived as frugal is a part of that persona. When it comes to answering the question “who is gwern?” I reckon Gwern’s a plant a seed in people’s mind type of guy, and let them come up with the rest of the story. Still, I like a lot of his writ…

There is a comment on the r/slatestarcodex subreddit with supposedly true information about him (which I found googling 'who is gwern'), but it left me with even more questions. EDIT: grammar

There's some articles on his site about these attempts and they claim that they are all wrong. If it would be that "easily found" I'd guess we wouldn't be having these discussions: https://gwern.net/blackmail#pseudonymity-bounty

Re: Interview with gwern

#52

Post by gizmo »

resiros wrote: post #12

>Wait if you’re doing $900-1000/month and you’re sustaining yourself on that, that must mean you’re sustaining yourself on less than $12,000 a year. What is your lifestyle like at $12K?" >I live in the middle of nowhere. I don't travel much, or eat out, or have health insurance, or anything like that. I cook my own food. I use a free gym. There was this time when the floor of my bedroom began collapsing. It was so ol…

Gwern lives this way because he wants to. He has chosen this ascetic lifestyle. He could easily raise money if he ever needs it (he doesn't need it right now). He could easily do tech work in SF and set himself up for life. He also has many friends who got rich off crypto.

A room is only a prison cell when you're not allowed to leave.

Re: Interview with gwern

#53

Post by tectec »

mbustamanter wrote: post #42
Quinzel wrote: post #9

I don’t believe Gwern lives as frugally as he’s described in this (if this even actually is the real Gwern). I’m 100% sure that he has a persona he likes to portray and being perceived as frugal is a part of that persona. When it comes to answering the question “who is gwern?” I reckon Gwern’s a plant a seed in people’s mind type of guy, and let them come up with the rest of the story. Still, I like a lot of his writ…

There is a comment on the r/slatestarcodex subreddit with supposedly true information about him (which I found googling 'who is gwern'), but it left me with even more questions. EDIT: grammar

Can you link the comment here?

Re: Interview with gwern

#54

Post by Vecr »

throw05678931 wrote: post #22

Lots of the claims about Gwern in the intro are exaggerated. Gwern is an effective altruist and his influence is largely limited to that community. It would be an exaggeration to claim that he influenced the mainstream of AI and ML researchers -- certainly Hinton, LeCun, Ng, Bengio didn't need him to do their work. He influences the AI safety crowd, who have ironically been trying to build AGI to test their AI safety…

"Wordcel" is roon terminology, right? I highly doubt Aschenbrenner is an EA, and if he's a "wordcel" he somehow managed to do mathematical economics without too much problem.

Gwern's probably not a "wordcel" either, he can program, right? I've never seen any of his publications though.

It's called Situational Awareness too, not "Situation Report", and Yudkowsky said he didn't like it. Not that Yudkowsky is an EA either.

I think the situation is more complex than you think it is, or at least more complex than you're pretending.

Edit: oh, you're saying Gwern is an EA too? Do you have a source for that?

Re: Interview with gwern

#56

Post by keiferski »

By writing, you are voting on the future of the Shoggoth using one of the few currencies it acknowledges: tokens it has to predict. If you aren't writing, you are abdicating the future or your role in it. If you think it's enough to just be a good citizen, to vote for your favorite politician, to pick up litter and recycle, the future doesn't care about you.

These AI predictions never, ever seem to factor in how actual humans will determine what AI-generated media is successful in replacing human-ones, or if it will even be successful at all. It is all very theoretical and to me, shows a fundamental flaw in this style of "sit in a room reading papers/books and make supposedly rational conclusions about the future of the world."

A good example is: today, right now, it is a negative thing for your project to be known as AI-generated. The window of time when it was trendy and cool has largely passed. Having an obviously AI-generated header image on your blog post was cool two years ago, but now it is passé and marks you as behind the trends.

And so for the prediction that everything get swept up by an ultra-intelligent AI that subsequently replaces human-made creations, essays, writings, videos, etc., I am doubtful. Just because it will have the ability to do so doesn't mean that it will be done, or that anyone is going to care.

It seems vastly more likely to me that we'll end up with a solid way of verifying humanity – and thus an economy of attention still focused on real people – and a graveyard of AI-generated junk that no one interacts with at all.

Re: Interview with gwern

#57

Post by jeffreygoesto »

whiplash451 wrote: post #16
camillomiller wrote: post #13

I really don’t understand why we give credit to this pile of wishful thinking about the AI corporation with just one visionary at the top. First: actual visionary CEOs are a niche of a niche. Second: that is not how most companies work. The existence of the workforce is as important as what the company produces Third: who will buy or rent those services or products in a society where the most common economy driver (s…

Someone probably said the exact same thing when the first cars appeared. Where is the data showing that more jobs get destroyed than created by technological disruption?

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/08/robots_crush_career_l...

Re: Interview with gwern

#58

Post by Tenoke »

mola wrote: post #44

Everything I read from gwern has this misanthropic undertones. It's hard to put a finger on it exactly, but it grits me when I try reading him. It is also kinda scary that so many people are attracted to this. It rhymes with how I feel about Ayn Rand. Her individualism always seems so misanthropic, her adherants scare me

Everything? He also writes things like this: "A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers."

https://gwern.net/improvement

Re: Interview with gwern

#59

Post by jnsaff2 »

resiros wrote: post #12

>Wait if you’re doing $900-1000/month and you’re sustaining yourself on that, that must mean you’re sustaining yourself on less than $12,000 a year. What is your lifestyle like at $12K?" >I live in the middle of nowhere. I don't travel much, or eat out, or have health insurance, or anything like that. I cook my own food. I use a free gym. There was this time when the floor of my bedroom began collapsing. It was so ol…

> Dwarkesh Patel

> How do you sustain yourself while writing full time?

> Gwern

> Patreon and savings. I have a Patreon which does around $900-$1000/month, and then I cover the rest with my savings. I got lucky with having some early Bitcoins and made enough to write for a long time, but not forever. So I try to spend as little as possible to make it last.

Then Dwarkesh just gets stuck on this $1k/month thing when Gwern right out of gate said that savings are being used.

Who knows how much of the savings are being used or how big of a profit he got from BTC.

Re: Interview with gwern

#60

Post by keiferski »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #10

www.gwern.net Something I've noticed in spending time online is that there's a "core group" of a few dozen people who seem to turn up everywhere there are interesting discussions. Gwern (who also posts here) is probably at the top of that list.

This also might just mean that you're interested in X thing, and the writing you find interesting is by people in the same subculture.
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