Category: Philosophy

Claude 3 Opus and AGI

As many MR readers will know, I don’t think the concept of AGI is especially well-defined.  Can the thing dribble a basketball “with smarts”?  Probably not.  Then its intelligence isn’t general.  You might think that kind of intelligence “doesn’t matter,” and maybe I agree, but that is begging the question.  It is easier and cleaner to just push the notion of “general” out of the center of the argument.  God aside, if such a being exists, intelligence never is general.

In the structure of current debates, the concept of “AGI” plays a counterproductive role.  You might think the world truly changes once we reach such a thing.  That means the doomsters will be reluctant to admit AGI has arrived, because imminent doom is not evident.  The Gary Marcus-like skeptics also will be reluctant to admit AGI has arrived, because they have been crapping on the capabilities for years.  In both cases, the stances on AGI tell you more about the temperaments of the commentators than about any capabilities of the beast itself.

I would say this: there is yet another definition of AGI, a historical one.  Five years ago, if people had seen Claude 3 Opus, would they have thought we had AGI?  Just as a descriptive matter, I think the answer to that question is yes, and better yet someone on Twitter suggested more or less the same.  In that sense we have AGI right now.

Carry on, people!  Enjoy your 2019-dated AGI.  Canada has to wait.

Concluding remarks: Forget that historical relativism!  True AGI never will be built, and that holds for OpenAI as well.  Humans in 2019 were unimaginative, super-non-critical morons, impressed by any piddling AI that can explain a joke or understand a non-literal sentence.  Licensing can continue and Elon is wrong.

GPT as ethical advisor

This study investigates the efficacy of an AI-based ethical advisor using the GPT-4 model. Drawing from a pool of ethical dilemmas published in the New York Times column “The Ethicist”, we compared the ethical advice given by the human expert and author of the column, Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah, with AI-generated advice. The comparison is done by evaluating the perceived usefulness of the ethical advice across three distinct groups: random subjects recruited from an online platform, Wharton MBA students, and a panel of ethical decision-making experts comprising academics and clergy. Our findings revealed no significant difference in the perceived value of the advice between human generated ethical advice and AI-generated ethical advice. When forced to choose between the two sources of advice, the random subjects recruited online displayed a slight but significant preference for the AI-generated advice, selecting it 60% of the time, while MBA students and the expert panel showed no significant preference.

That is a 2023 piece by Christian Terwiesch and Lennart Meincke, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.  And here is my earlier 2019 CWT with Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah.

What should I ask Michael Nielsen?

I will be doing a Conversation with him.  No description of Michael quite does him justice, but here is Wikipedia:

Michael Aaron Nielsen (born January 4, 1974) is a quantum physicist, science writer, and computer programming researcher living in San Francisco.

In 1998, Nielsen received his PhD in physics from the University of New Mexico. In 2004, he was recognized as Australia’s “youngest academic” and was awarded a Federation Fellowship at the University of Queensland. During this fellowship, he worked at the Los Alamos National LaboratoryCaltech, and at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Alongside Isaac Chuang, Nielsen co-authored a popular textbook on quantum computing, which has been cited more than 52,000 times as of July 2023.

In 2007, Nielsen shifted his focus from quantum information and computation to “the development of new tools for scientific collaboration and publication”, including the Polymath project with Timothy Gowers, which aims to facilitate “massively collaborative mathematics.” Besides writing books and essays, he has also given talks about open science. He was a member of the Working Group on Open Data in Science at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Nielsen is a strong advocate for open science and has written extensively on the subject, including in his book Reinventing Discovery, which was favorably reviewed in Nature and named one of the Financial Times’ best books of 2011.

In 2015 Nielsen published the online textbook Neural Networks and Deep Learning, and joined the Recurse Center as a Research Fellow. He has also been a Research Fellow at Y Combinator Research since 2017.

In 2019, Nielsen collaborated with Andy Matuschak to develop Quantum Computing for the Very Curious, a series of interactive essays explaining quantum computing and quantum mechanics. With Patrick Collison, he researched whether scientific progress is slowing down.

Here is Michael’s Notebook, well worth a browse and also a deeper read.  Here is Michael on Twitter.  So what should I ask him?  (I’m going to ask him about Olaf Stapledon in any case, so no need to mention that.)

What should I ask Coleman Hughes?

I will be doing a Conversation with him, based in part around his new book The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.  On Coleman more generally, here is Wikipedia:

Coleman Cruz Hughes (born February 25, 1996) is an American writer and podcast host. He was a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a fellow and contributing editor at their City Journal, and he is the host of the podcast Conversations with Coleman.

Also from Wikipedia:

Hughes began studying violin at age three. He is a hobbyist rapper—in 2021 and 2022, he released several rap singles on YouTube and Spotify, using the moniker COLDXMAN, including a music video for a track titled “Blasphemy”, which appeared in January 2022. Hughes also plays jazz trombone with a Charles Mingus tribute band that plays regularly at the Jazz Standard in New York City.

I saw Coleman perform quite recently, and I can vouch for his musical excellence, including as a singer.  So what should I ask Coleman?

John Stuart Mill on women, as explained by TC

It’s interesting to think of Mill’s argument as it relates to Hayek. So Mill is arguing you can see more than just the local information. So keep in mind, when Mill wrote, every society that he knew of, at least treated women very poorly, oppressed women. Women, because they were physically weaker, were at a big disadvantage. If you think there are some matrilineal exceptions, Mill didn’t know about them, so it appeared universal. And Mill’s chief argument is to say, you’re making a big mistake if you overly aggregate information from this one observation, that behind it is a lot of structure, and a lot of the structure is contingent, and that if I, Mill, unpack the contingency for you, you will see behind the signals. So Mill is much more rationalist than Hayek. It’s one reason why Hayek hated Mill. But clearly, on the issue of women, Mill was completely correct that women can do much better, will do much better. It’s not clear what the end of this process will be. It will just continue for a long time. Women achieving in excellent ways. And it’s Mill’s greatest work. I think it’s one of the greatest pieces of social science, and it is anti-Hayekian. It’s anti-small c conservatism.

That is from my podcast with Dwarkesh.

Zvi Mowshowitz covers my podcast with Dwarkesh Patel

It is very long, very detailed, and very good.  Interesting throughout!  Excerpt:

Dealing with the third conversation is harder. There is place where I feel Tyler is misinterpreting a few statements, in ways I find extremely frustrating and that I do not see him do in other contexts, and I pause to set the record straight in detail. I definitely see hope in finding common ground and perhaps working together. But so far I have been unable to find the road in.

Here is the whole thing.

From the beginning, “neoliberalism” was an obnoxious term

It was meant as an insult, implying that Mises – a marginalist – was trying to salvage 19th century liberal economics from the collectivist attacks of the Marxist left and the Nazi right, hence the “neo” moniker being attached.

One of the main promoters of this use was Othmar Spann, a rival of Mises on the University of Vienna faculty. Spann was a prominent proto-Nazi intellectual. In 1924 he added a disparaging chapter on “neoliberalism” to the new edition of his economics textbook.

By the time Mises arrived in Paris in 1938 for the CWL gathering, he had endured a decade and a half of simultaneous disparagement as a “neoliberal” by Nazis and Marxists. It should be no surprise that he was not keen to adopt the label himself.

Here is the full Phil Magness tweet storm.

What happened in 17th century England (a lot)

East India Company founded — 1600

Shakespeare – Hamlet published 1603

England starting to settle America – 1607 in Virginia, assorted, you could add Harvard here as well

King James Bible – 1611

The beginnings of steady economic growth – 1620 (Greg Clark, JPE)

Rule of law ideas, common law ideas, Sir Edward Coke – 1628-1648, Institutes of the Laws of England, four volumes

Beginnings of libertarian thought – Levellers 1640s

Printing becomes much cheaper, and the rise of pamphlet culture

John Milton, Aeropagitica, defense of free speech, 1644

King Charles I executed – 1649 (leads to a period of “Britain without a King,” ending 1660)

Birth of economic reasoning – second half of 17th century

Royal African Company and a larger slave trade – 1660

General growth of the joint stock corporation

Final subjugation of Ireland, beginnings of British colonialism and empire (throughout, mostly second half of the century)

Discovery of the calculus, Isaac Newton 1665-1666

Great Plague of London, 1665-1666, killed ¼ of city?

Great Fire of London, 1666

John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667

Social contract theories – John Locke 1689

Bill of Rights (rights of Parliament) — 1689

Birth of modern physics – Newton’s Principia 1687

Bank of England — 1694

Scientific Revolution – throughout the 17th century, places empiricism and measurement at the core of science

The establishment of Protestantism as the religion of Britain, both formal and otherwise, throughout the century, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

London – becomes the largest city in Europe by 1700 at around 585,000 people.

England moves from being a weak nation to perhaps the strongest in Europe and with the strongest navy.

Addendum: Adam Ozimek adds:

…first bank to print banknotes in Europe, 1661

Discovery of the telescope 1608

First patent for a modern steam engine 1602

What should I ask Marilynne Robinson?

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  Here is from Wikipedia:

Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.

Robinson is best known for her novels Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead (2004). Her novels are noted for their thematic depiction of faith and rural life. The subjects of her essays span numerous topics, including the relationship between religion and scienceUS historynuclear pollutionJohn Calvin, and contemporary American politics.

Her next book is Reading Genesis, on the Book of Genesis.  So what should I ask her?

Social improvements that don’t create countervailing negative forces

Let us say you favor policy X, and take steps to see that policy X comes about.

Under many conditions, people who favor non-X will take additional countervailing steps to oppose X.  And in that case your actions in favor of X, on average, will lead to nothing.  In the meantime, you and also your opponents will have wasted material resources fighting over X.

This argument is hardly new, but most people do not like to consider it much.  They instead prefer to mood affiliate in favor of X, or perhaps against X.  They prefer to be “fighting for the right things.”

Perhaps visible political organizing is most likely to set this dynamic in motion.  Everyone can see what you are doing, and perhaps they can use their actions to fundraise for their own side.

That is one reason why I am not so thrilled with much of that organizing, even if I agree with it.  Of course there are other scenarios here.  Your involvement on behalf of X might just be flat-out decisive.  Or perhaps the group against X is too resource-constrained to respond to your greater advocacy.  That said, those descriptors (and others) might apply as well to either side of the dispute, your side included.  Scaling up the fight over X might cause you to be the one who simply flat out loses the struggle.

It is worth thinking which kinds of “small steps toward a much better world” do not produce such countervailing effects.

How about “being positive and constructive”?  Does it generate an equal and offsetting amount of negativity?

How about “trying to get people to be more reasonable, yet without offering a substantive political commitment bundled with that”?  Does that in turn motivate the crazies to work harder at making everyone go insane?  I am not sure.

What else might be effective, once these strategies are considered?

Does “refuting people” fit into this category?  Yes or no?

Which activities should you be abandoning altogether?  Or perhaps trying to do in secret, rather than publicly?

Settembrini and the continuing relevance of classical liberalism

Adrian Wooldridge has an excellent Bloomberg column on this topic, promoting the relevance of Thomas Mann, and here is one excerpt:

In the book [Magic Mountain], Castorp falls in with two intellectuals who live in the village of Davos below his sanitorium: an Italian humanist called Lodovico Settembrini and a Jewish-born cosmopolitan called Leo Naphta who is drawn to the Communist revolution and traditional Catholicism. The two men carry on a bitter argument about the relative merits of liberalism and illiberalism that touches on every question that mattered in prewar Europe: nationalism, individualism, fairness, tradition, war, peace, terrorism and so on.

Settembrini mechanically repeats the central tenets of liberalism but doesn’t seem to realize that the world is a very different place from what it was in 1850…Settembrini is like the bulk of today’s liberals — well-meaning but incapable of recognizing that the world of their youth has changed beyond recognition.

My reading of the world, however, is slightly different.  I think the Settembrini example, from 1924, shows classical liberalism is still relevant.  In 1924, classical liberalism seemed out of touch because the rest of the world was too fascistic, too communist, and too negative, among other problems.  Yet at the time the classical liberals were essentially correct, even though Settembrini sounds out of touch.

Because classical liberals continued to carry the torch, we later had another highly successful classical liberal period, something like 1980-2000, though of course you can argue the exact dates.

Perhaps the underlying model is this: classical liberals often seem out of touch, because the world is too negative to respond to their concerns.  Most of the time classical liberals are shouting into the well, so to speak.  But they need to keep at it.  Every now and then a window for liberal change opens, and then the classical liberals have to be ready, which in turn entails many years in the intellectual and ideological wilderness.

When the chaos surrounds, the liberals are no less relevant.  The Settembrini character, from 1924, illustrates exactly that.  Because he did eventually have his day, though many years later.

Tyler Cowen on Undertone podcast

Dan Schulz is a very good interviewer.

Are chatbots better than we are?

Maybe so:

We administer a Turing Test to AI Chatbots. We examine how Chatbots behave in a suite of classic behavioral games that are designed to elicit characteristics such as trust, fairness, risk-aversion, cooperation, \textit{etc.}, as well as how they respond to a traditional Big-5 psychological survey that measures personality traits. ChatGPT-4 exhibits behavioral and personality traits that are statistically indistinguishable from a random human from tens of thousands of human subjects from more than 50 countries. Chatbots also modify their behavior based on previous experience and contexts “as if” they were learning from the interactions, and change their behavior in response to different framings of the same strategic situation. Their behaviors are often distinct from average and modal human behaviors, in which case they tend to behave on the more altruistic and cooperative end of the distribution. We estimate that they act as if they are maximizing an average of their own and partner’s payoffs.

That is from a recent paper by Qiaozhu Mei, Yutong Xie, Walter Yuan, and Matthew O. Jackson.  Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

*Molly*

That is the new book by Blake Butler, a memoir.  It is no spoiler to tell you that his wife Molly takes her own life at a young age.  I don’t know of any better argument for social conservatism than this book.  And perhaps suicide should be regarded as a sin, not something to get sentimental about on Twitter.  There is so much depravity in this book, at so many different levels.  There is the decline of a whole civilization in this book.  Here is a good New Yorker review by Alexandra Schwarz.

2023 CWT retrospective episode

Here is the link, here is the episode summary:

On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes look back on the past year in the show and more, including the most popular and underrated episodes, the origins of the show as an occasional event series, the most difficult guests to prep for, the story behind EconGOAT.AI, Tyler’s favorite podcast appearance of the year, and his evolving LLM-powered production function. They also answer listener questions and conclude with an assessment of Tyler’s top pop culture recommendations from 2013 across movies, music, and books.

And one excerpt:

COWEN: That’s a unique experience. You have a chance to do Chomsky. Maybe you don’t even want to do it, but you feel, “If I don’t do it, I’ll regret not having done it.” Just like we didn’t get to chat with Charlie Munger in time, though he’s far more, I would say, closer to truth than Chomsky is.

I thought half of Chomsky was quite good, and the other half was beyond terrible, but that’s okay. People, I think, wanted to gawk at it in some manner. They had this picture — what’s it like, Tyler talking with Chomsky? Then they get to see it and maybe recoil, but that’s what they came for, like a horror movie.

HOLMES: The engagement on the Chomsky episode was very good. Some people on MR were saying, “I turned it off. I couldn’t listen to it.” But actually, most people listened to it. It did, actually, probably better than average in terms of engagement, in terms of how much of the episode, on average, people listen to.

COWEN: How can you turn it off? What does that say about you? Were you surprised? You thought that Chomsky had become George Stigler or something? No.

Fun and interesting throughout.  If you are wondering, the most popular episode of the year, by far, was with Paul Graham.