Guillaume Verdon

I think we've done polls of people's alignment within IAC. I think it's pretty balanced. So it's a new fundamental issue of our time. It's not just centralization versus decentralization. It's kind of do we go, it's like tech progressivism versus techno-conservativism, right?

Right. I think people trying to do good from first principles is good.

Right. I think people trying to do good from first principles is good.

Right. I think people trying to do good from first principles is good.

We're both trying to do good to some extent, and we're arguing for which loss function we should use, right? Their loss function is sort of hedons, right? Units of hedonism, like how good do you feel and for how much time? right? And so, suffering would be negative hedons and they're trying to minimize that. But to us, that seems like that loss function has sort of spurious minima, right?

We're both trying to do good to some extent, and we're arguing for which loss function we should use, right? Their loss function is sort of hedons, right? Units of hedonism, like how good do you feel and for how much time? right? And so, suffering would be negative hedons and they're trying to minimize that. But to us, that seems like that loss function has sort of spurious minima, right?

We're both trying to do good to some extent, and we're arguing for which loss function we should use, right? Their loss function is sort of hedons, right? Units of hedonism, like how good do you feel and for how much time? right? And so, suffering would be negative hedons and they're trying to minimize that. But to us, that seems like that loss function has sort of spurious minima, right?

You can start minimizing shrimp farm pain, right? Which seems not that productive to me. Or you can end up with wireheading where you just either install a neural link or you scroll TikTok forever and you feel good on a short-term timescale because you're in neurochemistry, but on a long-term timescale, it causes decay and death because you're not being productive.

You can start minimizing shrimp farm pain, right? Which seems not that productive to me. Or you can end up with wireheading where you just either install a neural link or you scroll TikTok forever and you feel good on a short-term timescale because you're in neurochemistry, but on a long-term timescale, it causes decay and death because you're not being productive.

You can start minimizing shrimp farm pain, right? Which seems not that productive to me. Or you can end up with wireheading where you just either install a neural link or you scroll TikTok forever and you feel good on a short-term timescale because you're in neurochemistry, but on a long-term timescale, it causes decay and death because you're not being productive.

Whereas EAC measuring progress of civilization, not in terms of a subjective loss function like hedonism, but rather an objective measure, a quantity that cannot be gamed that is physical energy, it's very objective. And there's not many ways to game it. If you did it in terms of GDP or a currency, that's pinned to a certain value that's moving, right?

Whereas EAC measuring progress of civilization, not in terms of a subjective loss function like hedonism, but rather an objective measure, a quantity that cannot be gamed that is physical energy, it's very objective. And there's not many ways to game it. If you did it in terms of GDP or a currency, that's pinned to a certain value that's moving, right?

Whereas EAC measuring progress of civilization, not in terms of a subjective loss function like hedonism, but rather an objective measure, a quantity that cannot be gamed that is physical energy, it's very objective. And there's not many ways to game it. If you did it in terms of GDP or a currency, that's pinned to a certain value that's moving, right?

And so that's not a good way to measure our progress. But the thing is, we're both trying to make progress and ensure humanity flourishes and gets to grow. We just have different loss functions and different ways of going about doing it.

And so that's not a good way to measure our progress. But the thing is, we're both trying to make progress and ensure humanity flourishes and gets to grow. We just have different loss functions and different ways of going about doing it.

And so that's not a good way to measure our progress. But the thing is, we're both trying to make progress and ensure humanity flourishes and gets to grow. We just have different loss functions and different ways of going about doing it.

Yeah, so this particular loss function, it's not stiff. It's kind of an average of averages, right? It's like distributions of states in the future are going to follow a certain distribution. So it's not deterministic. We're not on stiff rails, right? It's just a statistical statement about the future. But at the end of the day, you can...

Yeah, so this particular loss function, it's not stiff. It's kind of an average of averages, right? It's like distributions of states in the future are going to follow a certain distribution. So it's not deterministic. We're not on stiff rails, right? It's just a statistical statement about the future. But at the end of the day, you can...

Yeah, so this particular loss function, it's not stiff. It's kind of an average of averages, right? It's like distributions of states in the future are going to follow a certain distribution. So it's not deterministic. We're not on stiff rails, right? It's just a statistical statement about the future. But at the end of the day, you can...

believe in gravity or not, you know, but it's not necessarily an option to obey it, right? And some people try to test that and that goes not so well. So similarly, you know, I think thermodynamics is there whether we like it or not, and we're just trying to point out