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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Understanding Conjecture: Notes from Connor Leahy interview, published by Akash on September 15, 2022 on LessWrong. I recently listened to Michaël Trazzi interview Connor Leahy (co-founder & CEO of Conjecture)'s on a podcast called The Inside View (Youtube video here; full video & transcript here). The interview helped me better understand Connor’s worldview and Conjecture’s theory of change. I’m sharing my notes below. The “highlights” section includes the information I found most interesting/useful. The "full notes" section includes all of my notes. Disclaimer #1: I didn’t take notes on the entire podcast. I selectively emphasized the stuff I found most interesting. Note also that these notes were mostly for my understanding, and I did not set out to perfectly or precisely capture Connor’s views. Disclaimer #2: I’m always summarizing Connor (even when I write with “I” or “we”— the “I” refers to Connor). I do not necessarily endorse or agree with any of these views. Highlights Timelines 20-30% in the next 5 years. 50% by 2030. 99% by 2100. 1% we already have it (but don’t know this yet). Higher uncertainty than Eliezer but generally buys the same arguments. Is mostly like “Eliezer’s arguments seem right but how can anyone be so confident about things?” Thoughts on MIRI Dialogues & Eliezer’s style An antimeme is something that by its very nature resists being known. Most antimemes are just boring—things you forget about. If you tell someone an antimeme, it bounces off them. So they need to be communicated in a special way. Moral intuitions. Truths about yourself. A psychologist doesn’t just tell you “yo, you’re fucked up bro.” That doesn’t work. A lot of Eliezer’s value as a thinker is that he notices & comprehends antimemes. And he figures out how to communicate them. What happened in the MIRI dialogues is that Eliezer was telling Paul “hey, I’m trying to communicate an antimeme to you, but I’m failing because it’s really really hard.” Thoughts on Death with Dignity & optimizing for “dignity points” rather than utility The Death with Dignity post is a perfect example of an antimeme. A great way to convey antimemes is through jokes and things outside the Overton Window. The antimeme is that utilitarianism is hard, and no, it’s not actually a good idea to advocate for really stupid “pivotal acts” that sound ridiculous. Consequentialism is really hard. I have to reason about all of my possible choices and all of their possible consequences. If you have an infinitely big brain, this works. If not, it doesn’t. It’s too computationally hard to be a perfect consequentialist. And being an imperfect consequentialist is really really bad. If you do one step of reasoning, you might be like “yeaaa let’s get rid of GPUs!” But you don’t realize how that would be super bad for the world, would make cooperation extremely difficult, would make everything become super secretive, etc. The antimeme is that most people shouldn’t be thinking like consequentialists. Instead of thinking about how to maximize utility, they should be thinking about how to maximize dignity. This is easier. This is computationally tractable. This heuristic will make you do better. I see so many people come into this arena with the anime protagonist “I’m going to save the world” complex, and then they burnout after 3 months and go do DMT. I know two humans who can maybe reason better under the consequentialist frame. But for everyone else, if you’re going to do 5 years of soul-crushing difficult research without much support from the outside world, you should think under the dignity frame. Thoughts on the importance of playing with large models One mistake I see people make is that they underestimate the importance of getting actual hands-on experience with the thing you are studying. I think it’s important to ...