The Power Cord and the Air Conditioner

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The air conditioner is connected to the outside world specifically it's connected by the power cord. The thing I love about this question was it feels super basic in that I think that I would have if someone asked me this question I wouldn't have been in the well maybe I don't know what's going on here a mode. It seems like we should be seeking out these like most basic questions in the hope of finding holes in the foundations of our knowledge because it seems really valuable to me if you want to understand things well to have the foundations really really solid.

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How hard is it to arrive at true beliefs about the world? How can you find enjoyment in being wrong? When presenting claims that will be scrutinized by others, is it better to hedge and pad the claims in lots of caveats and uncertainty, or to strive for a tone that matches (or perhaps even exaggerates) the intensity with which you hold your beliefs? Why should you maybe focus on drilling small skills when learning a new skill set? What counts as a "simple" question? How can you tell when you actually understand something and when you don't? What is "cargo culting"? Which features of AI are likely in the future to become existential threats? What are the hardest parts of AI research? What skills will we probably really wish we had on the eve of deploying superintelligent AIs?

Buck Shlegeris is the CTO of Redwood Research, an independent AI alignment research organization. He currently leads their interpretability research. He previously worked on research and outreach at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. His website is shlegeris.com.

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