Homunculus, Jr.

@nhomu.com

114 Followers 248 Following

Here are the rules: 1. Post the title of your favorite textbook on a given subject. 2. You must have read at least two other textbooks on that same subject. 3. You must briefly name the other books you've read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them. Rules #2 and #3 are to protect against recommending a bad book that only seems impressive because it's the only book you've read on the subject. Once, a popular author on Less Wrong recommended Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy to me, but when I noted that it was more polemical and inaccurate than the other major histories of philosophy, he admitted he hadn't really done much other reading in the field, and only liked the book because it was exciting.
Callum Williams on X: "No, there was a unusual spike in tourists a year ago so the year on year comparison is unfavourable."
Scott Alexander: Enter Samotsvety Forecasts. This is a team of some of the best superforecasters in the world. They won the CSET-Foretell forecasting competition by an absolutely obscene margin, “around twice as good as the next-best team in terms of the relative Brier score”. If the point of forecasting tournaments is to figure out who you can trust, the science has spoken, and the answer is “these guys”.
Dan Hendrycks on Twitter: We’ve found as AIs get smarter, they develop their own coherent value systems. For example they value lives in Pakistan > India > China > US These are not just random biases, but internally consistent values that shape their behavior, with many implications for AI alignment. 🧵
EA survey 2022, politics: • 39.8% center-left • 36.8% left • 8.1% center • 6.9% other • 5.6% libertarian • 2.2% center-right • 0.7% right
unintimidating cartoon fawn trying to growl
Some dude with glasses and messy bed hair