Developments around relationships and dating have a relatively small speed premium, so I figured I would wait until I had a full post worth of them.

Indeed I now present such a post, in which I present several theories as to why so many of you might still be single.

While I am my usual opinionated self, I am not going to be offering a section of my list of related Good Advice. That would be its own project, which may or may not happen at some time in the future. There is still much in the way of practical implications or implied advice throughout.

You’re Single Because You’re Not Even Trying

A 2022 sample of singles is out, and charts are available, so that seems like a good place to start. None of this is properly representative or anything. It’s still good data.

It [...]

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Outline:

(00:36) You’re Single Because You’re Not Even Trying

(04:43) You’re Single Because You Are The Fourth Child and Do Not Know How to Ask

(17:44) You’re Single Because Dating Apps Suck

(32:02) You’re Single Because You Didn’t Make a Date Me Doc

(37:42) You’re Single Because the Dating Market Is Not In Equilibrium

(41:59) You’re Single Because You’re Asking the Wrong Questions

(44:55) You’re Single Because You’re Trying Weird Stuff

(47:38) You’re Single Because You Suck at Relationships

(48:36) You’re Single Because You Decided You Were Poly

(50:52) You’re Single Because You Didn’t Take Their Good Advice

(01:03:27) What About My Good Advice?

(01:04:57) Ask and You Might Receive

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Previous post: How Escape From Immoral Mazes

Sequence begins here: Moloch Hasn’t Won

The previous posts mostly took mazes as given.

As an individual, one’s ability to fight any large system is limited.

That does not mean our individual decisions do not matter. They do matter. They add up.

Mostly our choice is a basic one. Lend our strength to that which we wish to be free from. Or not do so.

Even that is difficult. The methods of doing so are unclear. Mazes are ubiquitous. Not lending our strength to mazes, together with the goal of keeping one’s metaphorical soul intact and still putting food on the table, is already an ambitious set of goals for an individual in a world of mazes.

We now shift perspective from the individual to the system as a whole. We [...]

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George Hotz and Eliezer Yudkowsky debated on YouTube for 90 minutes, with some small assists from moderator Dwarkesh Patel. It seemed worthwhile to post my notes on this on their own.

I thought this went quite well for the first half or so, then things went increasingly off the rails in the second half, and Hotz gets into questions where he didn’t have a chance to reflect and prepare, especially around cooperation and the prisoner’s dilemma.

First, some general notes, then specific notes I took while watching.

1. Hotz was allowed to drive discussion. In debate terms, he was the con side, raising challenges, while Yudkowsky was the pro side defending a fixed position.
2. These discussions often end up doing what this one did, which is meandering around a series of 10-20 metaphors and anchors and talking points, mostly repeating the same motions with variations, in ways that are worth [...]

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Inflection.ai is the latest AI lab whose CEO is advocating for regulation of AI. I discuss that under the Quest for Sane Regulation. Amazon and Apple are incrementally stepping up their AI game. Hotz and Yudkowsky debate whether AI is existentially risky, cover all the usual bases with mixed results but do so in good faith. We have more discussion about whether GPT-4 is creative, and whether it can reason. Mostly we get the exact opposite of the title, more of the same.

Note: My posts get made into audio form via AI, for now you can listen to them at this link. This post will likely be available there later in the day on Thursday, or perhaps Friday.

Table of Contents

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Outline:

(00:47) Table of Contents

(02:34) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility

(07:27) Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility

(09:48) GPT-4 Real This Time

(18:57) Go Team Yeah

(22:22) Fun with Image Generation

(23:22) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

(24:45) They Took Our Jobs

(28:54) Get Involved

(29:11) Introducing

(31:50) In Other AI News

(36:14) Quiet Speculations

(42:24) The Quest for Sane Regulations

(53:36) The Week in Audio

(54:37) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(59:35) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone

(01:05:26) The Lighter Side

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George Holtz and Eliezer Yudkowsky debated on YouTube for 90 minutes, with some small assists from moderator Dwarkesh Patel. It seemed worthwhile to post my notes on this on their own.

I thought this went quite well for the first half or so, then things went increasingly off the rails in the second half, and Holtz gets into questions where he didn’t have a chance to reflect and prepare, especially around cooperation and the prisoner’s dilemma.

First, some general notes, then specific notes I took while watching.

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In addition to all the written developments, this was a banner week for podcasts.

I would highlight four to consider listening to.

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What a month. So much to cover.

What this post does not cover beyond this introduction is the biggest news story of the month, a potential room temperature superconductor.

If this discovery is real, it could be transformative. Think of the potential. We could be so back. Chances are that instead it is over, but even a small chance of something this big is huge. Even if it ends up being all over, it was amazing to see people around the world come together and do science to this to try and actually figure out something physical and real. Even in failure, we are so back.

What I am not going to do is pivot to suddenly becoming an expert on physics or get into the weeds myself. There is no need for that, I work fast and it would be fun but there are limits [...]

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Outline:

(01:40) Bad News

(06:26) Tech No Longer or Not Yet Calling Itself Artificial Intelligence

(13:01) Government Working

(28:07) Money Stuff

(33:19) Sadly, FTX

(34:04) Good News, Everyone

(42:57) While I Cannot Condone This

(43:47) In Medical and Health News

(53:05) Lying About the Lab Leak Hypothesis

(58:26) Doing Science To It: Marinara Edition

(01:03:13) While I Cannot Condone This

(01:13:32) Sports Go Sports

(01:24:49) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game

(01:35:49) The Lighter Side

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After several jam-packed weeks, things slowed down to allow everyone to focus on the potential room temperature superconductor, check Polymarket to see how likely it is we are so back and bet real money, or Manifold for chats and better graphs and easier but much smaller trading.

The main thing I would highlight this week are an excellent paper laying out many of the fundamental difficulties with RLHF, and a systematic new exploit of current LLMs that seems to reliably defeat RLHF.

I’d also note that GPT-4 fine tuning is confirmed to be coming. That should be fun.

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SPOILER WARNING: This post, after a brief spoiler-free review section, will contain full spoilers for Oppenheimer, Barbie and Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, and some for Across the Spiderverse.

Movies are so back. While they are having their Barbieheimer moment, it seems worthwhile to gather thoughts of myself and others on both movies, and also mention two other recent pictures.

First, I’ll offer various levels of spoiler-free review of all four movies, then get into the weeds.

Spoiler-Free Reviews

Full Spoiler-Free (1-bit reviews, only yes or no):

See all four movies.

Almost Fully Spoiler-Free (several-bit reviews):

You should definitely see Spiderverse, Barbie and Oppenheimer. Mission Impossible is good, but optional.

Pro tip, as it turns out: Do not see Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day.

Ranked by how pure quality: Across the Spiderverse, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.

Ranked [...]

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Outline:

(00:34) Spoiler-Free Reviews

(00:38) Full Spoiler-Free (1-bit reviews, only yes or no):

(00:47) Almost Fully Spoiler-Free (several-bit reviews):

(01:31) Traditional-Level Spoiler-Free Review: Oppenheimer

(03:02) Traditional-Level Spoiler-Free Review: Barbie

(03:57) Traditional-Level Spoiler-Free Review: Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning

(05:35) Traditional-Level Spoiler-Free Review: Across the Spiderverse

(06:14) Note on Ticket Pricing

(08:50) From Here On In, There Be Spoilers After the White Space

(09:33) Thoughts About Movie Length and Editing

(10:19) Barbie is the Correct Length and Very Well Edited

(10:28) Mission Impossible is Too Long

(13:17) Across the Spiderverse is Expansive For a Good Reason

(15:16) Oppenheimer Understandably Tried to Do Too Much

(20:52) Takeaways and Reactions

(20:56) Oppenheimer Reactions

(31:36) Oppenheimer Takeaways

(38:39) Barbie

(55:26) Mission Impossible Takeaways

(01:02:48) Across the Spiderverse Takeaways

(01:03:44) Movies Generally

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