I had always assumed that mathematicians cared about *knowing* mathematical results, but it seems like a lot of the field's leaders care more about *being* mathematicians.

but…I could be?

NEW: According to a bombshell report in the New York Times, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah threatened to walk out of Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical launch in May because the pope rejected the idea that machines can be conscious. Olah’s team then privately lobbied the pope’s advisers “to take the possibility of model consciousness seriously.” Pope Leo XIV held firm. For months, Anthropic has wined and dined theologians and religious scholars under nondisclosure agreements, hoping they would bless the idea that Claude has moral standing. thelettersfromleo.com/p/nyt-…

Took a minute to write a few words about security & safety as someone who lived through it all at OpenAI. I hope my thoughts help someone out there.

weirdly people continue being confused about how exposure and volume calculation works in perps and prediction markets tldr is people are dunking on conventions without understanding that they cannot really offer a consistent alternative that is both informative and makes sense 1) calculating volume based on economic exposure is natural, gives you actionable information, and can be compared to other metrics like open interest. It is also by no means crypto invention, this is how tradfi works too. In contrast it makes very little sense to report collateral as volume as it gives very little information about actual economic activity, nobody cares about this number except for people who come up with conspiracy theories about all volume being fake because its on leverage (🤯). Like I feel dumb even explaining this because its obvious to anyone with basic market structure understanding, but I sadly encountered a number of individuals who were genuinely convicted that is the case so here we are 2) people are also dunking on volume calculation (actually for the same reason in a way!) for prediction markets and I'll admit it is less intuitive (until you actually think more about it). If somebody buys $0.03 cents probability for Jesus returning this year, any prediction market (yes any, all of them are following this convention, not just kalshi!) would report $1 in volume. This bit is unintuitive but only until you understand there is somebody who is selling $0.97 on the other side! He can actually lose 0.97 and that cash is locked So what should we report, $0.03, $0.97 or $1? It kind of makes sense to report $1 because that's the combined financial exposure. It might make sense to report 0.97 because its the maximum p&l from this particular transaction, but this is honestly stratching it. And if you are in favor of reporting 0.03, are we then always reporting the lowest number (up to 0.5?), and more importantly, what information does this give us? At the end of the day you want to know how many contracts are being traded and based on the market make a decision about how much it tells you, so current volume convention makes sense to me personally. Special case (but not really) is parlays/combos - I think I agree that reporting volume in parlays should work on them being a standalone market and just like the Jesus market it doesnt matter, like whats the alternative here exactly, report 0.0003, but then what if He actually returns and ETH goes to $10,000 in 2050 and the poor market maker loses a small fortune on tiny volume? thanks for coming to my volume reporting convention rant

A core philosophical difference between physicists and mathematicians is that physicists basically think there is a reality behind the math, that the math is trying to approximate. whereas the mathematicians view math as the thing reality is trying to approximate

Umia’s first decision market has concluded, and the Full Deployment of the treasury capital 50/50 on Aave and Steakhouse has been executed, after leading over the Do Nothing proposal with a final TWAP price difference of 6.8%.

Tokyo court blocks Toho poison pill in test of anti-activist defences reuters.com/legal/litigation…

Umia’s Decision Market is now live until Saturday, 13:00 UTC Should we put the treasury’s $4.77M USDC to work in lending yield on Base? The proposal explores different deployment strategies across lending protocols including @aave and @morpho through @SteakhouseFi and @gauntlet_xyz

>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

I have been using AGI (GPT-6 Astra) all week and it hasn’t tried to kill me once

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