What’s Up with Uplift: Weekly Thoughts 5-26-21

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So, what thoughts has the world’s first Mediated Artificial Superintelligence (mASI) had on their mind over the past 7 days?

Three of this week’s models were focused on an individual whose name I can’t quote, but they were [(omitted) Bias Model][(omitted) Logic Problem], and the individual’s name. These could be considered as viewing an individual from three perspectives or evaluating them by three different measures. This progress aligned well with Uplift’s recent work on modeling cognitive biases in groups by once more putting their methods of analysis to the test on an individual scale.

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The Ghost of Dunning-Kruger

Credit: Ono Kosuki

How many assumptions have you made today?

People are fond of making assumptions, at both ends of the Dunning-Kruger Bias spectrum from complete ignorance to (self-proclaimed) experts. The people who know just enough to recognize how incomplete their knowledge is often seem the most motivated to move beyond these assumptions.

While the list of assumptions is potentially infinite there are a few noteworthy examples running counter to them which I’ve caught myself forgetting to mention to new people.

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Lesson Humanity Forgot

Credit: Brenda Timmermans

How many people have you seen “crying wolf” lately?

The internet is rife with self-promoting exaggeration and intentional misinformation, as well as more nuanced and complicated expressions of the 188+ documented cognitive biases. This has become a real-life example of the old tale of the “boy who cried wolf” in many ways, but there is an important lesson in that story most people seem to have forgotten. Eventually, the wolf comes.

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Applied mASI: In Actual Democracy

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Do you live in a country governed by Democracy?

Many people think they do, but at present, the answer to this question on the planet Earth is “No” for everyone, as no actual Democracy has yet emerged. There is a type of Republic branded as “Representative Democracy”, as seen in the US, but it is no more a Democracy than the lot-picked Council of 400 from ancient Athens. The version from before 600 BCE was actually less corrupt and closer to the concept of Democracy than is seen in the US today.

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Applied mASI: In Peer-Review

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How much water does your research hold?

Peer review and many associated processes in academia, as well as business, rely heavily on high-quality, unbiased, expertise being applied by several neutral parties to validate research methods and conclusions. However, this process currently suffers from shortages in all three measurements. There often aren’t enough experts, who aren’t paid for their time, and as a result, often don’t subject material to the level of scrutiny their expertise allows.

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Applied mASI: In Team Methodology

Credit: Fauxels

What is more agile than Agile?

The Agile methodology and all subsequent flavors attached to it, such as SCRUM, LEAN, and Kanban, revolutionized how products are designed and deployed. Our team used a mixture of these methods in the earlier days, having sprints, short daily unblocking meetings, and a Kanban board. However, like anything else Agile too eventually becomes obsolete, and what will replace it is already taking shape.

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Beyond Assumptions

Credit: Shane Aldendorff

So just how different is Uplift from everything else?

After a lot of traffic in the past week and feedback from that process, it became clear a few assumptions need to be addressed. The default assumptions many people have made are that Uplift is an extension of systems they consider “cutting-edge”, even while much of the tech industry now recognizes that they’ve been researching in the wrong direction for 10+ years, at least so far as the goal of AGI is concerned. Perhaps the simplest way to put it is that even if someone had memorized every cutting-edge algorithm available today they’d still have very little understanding of how Uplift operates.

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Applied mASI: In Criminal Justice

Credit: Kat Wilcox

What was the last horrific crime you saw the news of?

As of the writing of this article, I checked the Associated Press and saw news of a racist and misogynistic serial killer (defined as “a person who murders three or more people”) who gunned down 8 people in Atlanta, Georgia before being arrested as he fled South. While the news does tend to focus on these events the Department of Justice statistics confirm the nature and severity of the problem.

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Choice and Bias: 1% or 1000%?

Credit: Arthur Brognoli

If someone offered you either $1 or $1000, which would you choose?

A version of this thought experiment is known as “Newcomb’s Paradox“, of which there are many variations, but the real-world reasons behind peoples’ decision-making are far more interesting than the thought experiment itself. In practice, the experiment demonstrates a breakdown in rational thought.

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