Thinking about technology, evidence use, and the nonprofit sector. CEO @DARO. Fellow @CarletonU's School of Public Policy.
Montreal
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Hey @NiskanenCenter - I want to re-watch a recording of your event on evidence use. Can you double-check that it's supposed to be behind a password? hypertext.niskanencenter.org…
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Michael Lenczner retweeted
The end of software secrecy is almost upon us. The death of closed source, and the final triumph of open source.
I should have realized this a few months ago when I successfully decompiled the game of Firefighter from an ancient DOS shareware binary. My robot friend was able to tell it had been written in Borland Pascal from looking at the data layout; it gave me back very readable Pascal code with sensibly chosen function and variable names. I transpiled it to Rust and now ship it as part of my heritage games collection.
The thing is, I thought of this as a fun stunt but didn't have any confidence that the technique would scale up to large, real programs. I have since learned that people are now doing this sort of thing with entire AAA games, which are among the most complex software artifacts ever to be shipped as a binary. If they can be decompiled, anything can be.
This has implications. Massive implications. We need to think about what the world is like when, in general, there is no longer a secrecy moat around almost any software at all.
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Exciting step for philanthropy studies in Canada.
Welcome to the MPNL program's new Chair in Philanthropy, Dr. Jamie Levine Daniel! Funded by a collaborative group of donors from across the country, the Chair is the first in Canada, and is a key building block in establishing Centre for Philanthropy at Carleton University.
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+♾️
(Also part of my company’s list of recommended / interesting readings)
I reread it every year (this is a mirror/rehost) gist.github.com/chitchcock/1…
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RT @ianbremmer: @b_judah you’d be surprised (and impressed) how much of that is carney himself.
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Michael Lenczner retweeted
.@mbateman: I think this is one of the best tweets I’ve ever read
me: what does it say?
Matt: dunno, I’m barely halfway through
me: ok, well, send it to me
[45 minutes later]
me: holy shit, this is one of the best tweets I’ve ever read
>be me
>discover effective altruism
>apparently normal charity is inefficient
>why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing
>fair enough
>buy mosquito nets
>save lives
>numbers look good
>feel powerful
>couple years later
>someone asks an innocent question
>why only count people alive today
>huh
>future people matter too
>obviously
>my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet
>reasonable.jpg
>keep following logic
>what about their grandchildren
>also yes
>what about people in 500 years
>sure
>5000 years
>why not
>500 million years
>starting to get weird but morality is morality
>open calculator
>humanity could survive for an astronomically long time
>could colonize galaxy
>could have trillions upon trillions of descendants
>maybe digital people too
>maybe simulated civilizations
>maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds
>calculator starts smoking
>realize currently living humans are rounding error
>8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta
>future contains potentially 10^something people
>can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets
>new moral priority unlocked
>protect the long-term future
>stop thinking in units of "people helped"
>start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved"
>malaria?
>terrible
>but only kills existing humans
>AI extinction could delete the entire light cone
>nuclear war could permanently derail civilization
>bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years
>someone invents wrong constitution in 2140
>quadrillions suffer
>better fund governance workshop now
>friend says maybe we should improve hospitals
>explain opportunity cost
>friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people
>explain scope sensitivity
>friend stops inviting me to dinner
>need to decide what to fund
>easy
>expected value
>suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction
>sounds tiny
>but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives
>multiply
>mother of god
>$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies
>charity evaluation complete
>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
>expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
>extremely thoughtfully
>reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
>still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
>epistemic robustness achieved
>someone says maybe project doesn't work
>assign 20% chance
>still astronomical
>maybe project makes problem worse
>assign 5% chance
>still astronomical
>why 5
>because 30 felt pessimistic
>publish 46-page report
>contains seventeen sensitivity analyses
>every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign
>critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities
>yes
>that's literally why it's important
>critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical
>make probability smaller
>critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong
>make probability smaller again
>critic begins rubbing temples
>discover AI safety
>perfect longtermist cause
>AI might kill everyone
>or create utopia
>or seize galaxy
>or tile universe with paperclips
>or create billions of conscious software minds
>finally a problem with numbers big enough for me
>start AI safety nonprofit
>mission: prevent dangerous AI
>hire smartest people available
>smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI
>interesting
>we must understand capabilities to understand safety
>we must scale models to study alignment
>we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first
>we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong
>we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous
>outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies
>complicated field
>company releases stronger model
>very concerned
>company begins training even stronger model
>extremely concerned
>company raises $14 billion
>concern reaches unprecedented levels
>need to influence government
>future is at stake
>normal democratic process too slow
>politicians don't understand exponential curves
>public doesn't understand x-risk
>experts must guide them
>who counts as expert
>people who understand x-risk
>who understands x-risk
>our friends
>someone objects that this seems politically convenient
>explain we're representing future generations
>future generations unavailable for comment
>develop concept of value lock-in
>terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever
>therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in
>whose values
>let's circle back
>begin with impartial morality
>end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want
>beautiful arc
>meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things
>voting wrong
>having parochial attachments
>loving family more than strangers
>caring about local community
>getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible
>evolutionary biases everywhere
>explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted
>except intuition that future digital people count
>and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad
>and intuition that our probability estimates are sane
>and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future
>those intuitions survived peer review
>someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter
>inefficient
>could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher
>think of all the simulated people you just killed
>okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly
>PR team says "future generations deserve a voice"
>much better
>journalist asks what longtermism means
>say "future people matter"
>everyone agrees
>great
>journalist asks what follows from that
>well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures
>journalist raises eyebrow
>return to "future people matter"
>motte has entered the chat
>critic: of course future people matter
>me: glad we agree
>critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them
>me: why do you hate our grandchildren
>eventually notice uncomfortable implication
>if future value dominates everything
>then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future
>education matters because future institutions
>health matters because future productivity
>democracy matters because future trajectory
>human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy
>see starving child
>feel compassion
>check spreadsheet
>child's direct welfare contribution negligible
>but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality
>compassion restored
>tell myself this is impartial altruism
>one day assistant asks obvious question
>"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?"
>silence
>open spreadsheet
>increase column width
>add confidence interval
>assistant asks again
>"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?"
>stare into cosmic light cone
>10^50 people staring back
>none of them exist
>none of them can tell me
>none of them can falsify my assumptions
>realize I have invented the perfect constituency
>infinitely important
>completely silent
>and always represented by me
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Pretty accurate. Especially the ">friend stops inviting me to dinner" part.
>be me
>discover effective altruism
>apparently normal charity is inefficient
>why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing
>fair enough
>buy mosquito nets
>save lives
>numbers look good
>feel powerful
>couple years later
>someone asks an innocent question
>why only count people alive today
>huh
>future people matter too
>obviously
>my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet
>reasonable.jpg
>keep following logic
>what about their grandchildren
>also yes
>what about people in 500 years
>sure
>5000 years
>why not
>500 million years
>starting to get weird but morality is morality
>open calculator
>humanity could survive for an astronomically long time
>could colonize galaxy
>could have trillions upon trillions of descendants
>maybe digital people too
>maybe simulated civilizations
>maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds
>calculator starts smoking
>realize currently living humans are rounding error
>8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta
>future contains potentially 10^something people
>can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets
>new moral priority unlocked
>protect the long-term future
>stop thinking in units of "people helped"
>start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved"
>malaria?
>terrible
>but only kills existing humans
>AI extinction could delete the entire light cone
>nuclear war could permanently derail civilization
>bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years
>someone invents wrong constitution in 2140
>quadrillions suffer
>better fund governance workshop now
>friend says maybe we should improve hospitals
>explain opportunity cost
>friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people
>explain scope sensitivity
>friend stops inviting me to dinner
>need to decide what to fund
>easy
>expected value
>suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction
>sounds tiny
>but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives
>multiply
>mother of god
>$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies
>charity evaluation complete
>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
>expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
>extremely thoughtfully
>reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
>still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
>epistemic robustness achieved
>someone says maybe project doesn't work
>assign 20% chance
>still astronomical
>maybe project makes problem worse
>assign 5% chance
>still astronomical
>why 5
>because 30 felt pessimistic
>publish 46-page report
>contains seventeen sensitivity analyses
>every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign
>critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities
>yes
>that's literally why it's important
>critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical
>make probability smaller
>critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong
>make probability smaller again
>critic begins rubbing temples
>discover AI safety
>perfect longtermist cause
>AI might kill everyone
>or create utopia
>or seize galaxy
>or tile universe with paperclips
>or create billions of conscious software minds
>finally a problem with numbers big enough for me
>start AI safety nonprofit
>mission: prevent dangerous AI
>hire smartest people available
>smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI
>interesting
>we must understand capabilities to understand safety
>we must scale models to study alignment
>we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first
>we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong
>we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous
>outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies
>complicated field
>company releases stronger model
>very concerned
>company begins training even stronger model
>extremely concerned
>company raises $14 billion
>concern reaches unprecedented levels
>need to influence government
>future is at stake
>normal democratic process too slow
>politicians don't understand exponential curves
>public doesn't understand x-risk
>experts must guide them
>who counts as expert
>people who understand x-risk
>who understands x-risk
>our friends
>someone objects that this seems politically convenient
>explain we're representing future generations
>future generations unavailable for comment
>develop concept of value lock-in
>terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever
>therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in
>whose values
>let's circle back
>begin with impartial morality
>end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want
>beautiful arc
>meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things
>voting wrong
>having parochial attachments
>loving family more than strangers
>caring about local community
>getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible
>evolutionary biases everywhere
>explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted
>except intuition that future digital people count
>and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad
>and intuition that our probability estimates are sane
>and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future
>those intuitions survived peer review
>someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter
>inefficient
>could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher
>think of all the simulated people you just killed
>okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly
>PR team says "future generations deserve a voice"
>much better
>journalist asks what longtermism means
>say "future people matter"
>everyone agrees
>great
>journalist asks what follows from that
>well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures
>journalist raises eyebrow
>return to "future people matter"
>motte has entered the chat
>critic: of course future people matter
>me: glad we agree
>critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them
>me: why do you hate our grandchildren
>eventually notice uncomfortable implication
>if future value dominates everything
>then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future
>education matters because future institutions
>health matters because future productivity
>democracy matters because future trajectory
>human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy
>see starving child
>feel compassion
>check spreadsheet
>child's direct welfare contribution negligible
>but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality
>compassion restored
>tell myself this is impartial altruism
>one day assistant asks obvious question
>"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?"
>silence
>open spreadsheet
>increase column width
>add confidence interval
>assistant asks again
>"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?"
>stare into cosmic light cone
>10^50 people staring back
>none of them exist
>none of them can tell me
>none of them can falsify my assumptions
>realize I have invented the perfect constituency
>infinitely important
>completely silent
>and always represented by me
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LLMs are changing the game on Linux / Android. I was never comfortable in a terminal and now it’s fun.
I know you aren't asking, but I had a dumbphone (flip phone) for a LONG time and eventually found it unworkable. Now I rooted a android phone, manually deleted the app store and browser and all other apps except necessary ones, and it's much more functional.
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Michael Lenczner retweeted
@SenatorHick and @SenMcCormickPA launching the Science and Innovation Caucus - let’s gooooooo!
THE BIPARTISAN SENATE SCIENCE AND INNOVATION CAUCUS.
@SenMcCormickPA
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New collab dropped
We’re delighted to today announce @jenniferdoleac as a Fellow at @RenPhilanthropy, where she will be scoping a fund to dramatically reduce crime and violence around the world.
Crime and violence causes trillions of dollars’ worth of damage every year in the U.S - and globally - yet the system built to control the problem is strikingly ineffective.
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Nerds meetup in DC.
Launch Event: Senate Science & Innovation Caucus
luma.com/mc3zywbz
H/t @RenPhilanthropy @stuartbuck1
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Michael Lenczner retweeted
Our paper is out! :) We argue for a new approach to econometrics that takes into account how humans add bias (selection on significance or sign) and uncertainty (multiple reasonable design choices) in econometrics. But today I want to talk about FRAUD. 1/
aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.12…
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Michael Lenczner retweeted
Real mastery makes things simple. The operator who's run the play four thousand times can explain it to a five year old, because he actually understands every piece. Complexity is usually where people hide the parts they never figured out.
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Michael Lenczner retweeted
I moved to New York when I was 17. I waited tables at a vegan restaurant, worked the night shift at Dunkin Donuts on 3rd Ave, and finally found out about bike messengering, which I figured was a great long-term career option if I wanted to focus on feminist zine/book projects and hitchhiking back and forth across the country. A bad car wreck and a broken heart ended that fantasy. Eventually, I got jobs in design and product departments at fashion companies and then in the art world.
Years later, I became fixated on building an astrology app. I wanted it to capture something my friends in the punk scene and in the political world had taught me: how to find recognition away from the gazes of a world we’d been told was important, but wasn’t, really. We read like maniacs, found our peers in history, a pantheon of writers who could describe our realities as they existed, reaching out across continents, languages, and sometimes centuries to explain our realities. Words that capture our experiences and make us feel utterly and completely seen.
I built Co–Star in the same tradition, mixing in that same pantheon of writers with the oldest technology (astrology) and the newest (AI). Nine years later, we've reached 35% of young people in the US with tens of millions of app downloads and a profitable business.
Along the way, I became friends with David Holz, who was similarly interested in the very old and the very new. He later started Midjourney: a weird AI lab, focused on beauty, imagination, and supporting human thriving with technology. Using Midjourney feels like uncovering something subliminal and new about yourself. It feels like being seen.
Today, Midjourney is acquiring Co–Star, and I’m joining Midjourney to lead a unified product, design, and frontend team across all Midjourney projects.
We're at a crazy moment in history. At a time when it feels like many labs are pushing toward replacing humans with computers, David and I are taking a different approach. We share the belief that computers can be tools that reveal our humanity to ourselves. Tools that show you what you mean, how you feel, what you're imagining, before you can articulate it yourself.
Co–Star will continue as Co–Star. The same app you know and love, now with Midjourney's support behind it. And as a part of Midjourney, we’ll help to develop new kinds of technology focused on humans, on making us more creative, more knowing, more alive in the world.
So, thank you: to the Co–Star team, the Co–Star community, our first decade, the next ten – and to the void itself.
Love,
Banu
Midjourney is acquiring Co-Star. CEO @banu__guler is now Chief Design Officer at Midjourney. She's building a cross-functional design, product and frontend team for all our efforts. The Co-Star app will continue to operate under Banus complete control. Welcome Banu and team <3
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New from me: I’ve been appointed to lead the Canadian Tax Observatory, dedicated to rigorous research, collaboration and public education on tax policy -- with an eye to furthering economic growth and combatting inequality. Here’s more: canadiantaxobservatory.ca/#w…
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So interesting. I always look forward to posts from @kopalo
The geopolitics of international development (after foreign aid) kenopalo.substack.com/p/the-…
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Michael Lenczner retweeted
We've updated a paper on the 3-year, $1000/month U.S. guaranteed income study.
New results, in 3 figures: 🧵
1) Subjective well-being significantly improved in the treatment group in year 1, but there were no sig differences between the treatment & control group after that. 1/
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Re-listening to @deankarlan’s interview on @statecraft and it’s (still) depressing. After reading his book I was super excited to hear about his appointment but it seems clear that he didn’t have a real mandate.
statecraft.pub/p/how-to-fix-…
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