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Notes -
Neural Networks Are Already Clean
Nick Cammarata (Goodfire AI; formerly of OpenAI) claims to have discovered that earlier foundational research on the semantic structure of neural networks (especially "superposition") were wrong, and they actually (and necessarily!) work pretty much the naive way everybody used to expect them to: particular neurons mean particular, ultimately interpretable things.
If it holds up strongly, my (admittedly jumpy and currently highly-sperged) gut instinct is that this could be epochal, and a candidate for one of the more significant and re-foundational public discoveries since AIAYN if not beyond.
Yudkowsky is not impressed though:
https://x.com/alltheyud/status/2110853001749594363?s=46
Best to go one quote posts to see his replies to Anthropic researchers
Even if something does lower Yud's p(doom) you shouldn't expect him to be honest about that. I think he's being outwardly honest, though, you can see the rationalizations churning in his head - starting with "well Roon you just don't understand how my super special theory is different and unfalsifiable", giving the most uncharitable reading of the paper possible to minimize it, and then finally groping for an analogy. But Yud has a book to talk now, and human beings are very good at convincing themselves to talk their book.
I'm not really surprised by rationalists being like this. First off, it was a movement which explicitly selected for people who struggled with naturally, what's the phrase, "overcoming bias" (non-rationalists who do this naturally do it in very fuzzy ways, the classic intelligence/wisdom thing). Secondly, as TLP likes to say, knowledge is a defense against change.
Maybe I’ve just been swayed by the Rationalists’ PR campaign, but I’d wager that the average Rationalist is better at overcoming bias than the average human (which is not to say that they’re immune to it, far from it); or at the very least, people who are naturally better at overcoming bias are more likely to be drawn to Rationalism as a hobby or social group.
The average human is very bad at overcoming bias, and the Rationalists are perhaps not much better, but I’d still be inclined to put them on the upper end of the bell curve. The average person just does not think about this stuff at all, so they’re usually just going to unreflectively reify whatever biases they walk in with.
Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're better at recognizing their own limitations at overcoming bias. There could certainly be a type of overcoming-bias Dunning-Kreuger effect, where people who are better at overcoming bias are also more likely to overestimate their true ability to do so.
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