Category: Life Page 2 of 3

On Altruism

On July 2, 2022

One thing I’ve learned from observing people and society is the awareness that the vast majority of folks are egoistic, or selfish. They tend to care about their own happiness and are at best indifferent to the happiness of others unless they have some kind of relationship with that person, in which case they care about that person’s happiness in so far as it has an effect on their own happiness to keep that person happy. This is the natural, neutral state of affairs. It is unnatural to care about other people’s happiness for the sake of themselves as ends. We call such unnatural behaviour “altruism”, and tend to glorify it in narratives but avoid actually being that way in reality.

In an ideal world, all people would be altruistic. They would equally value their own happiness and the happiness of each other person because we are all persons deserving happiness. Instead, reality is mostly a world of selfishness. To me, the root of all evil is this egoism, this lack of concern for the well-being of others that is the norm in our society.

I say this knowing that I am a hypocrite. I say this as someone who tries to be altruistic at times, but is very inconsistent with the application of the principles that it logically entails. If I were a saint, I would have sold everything I didn’t need and donated at least half my gross income to charities that help the global poor. I would be vegan. I would probably not live in a nice house and own a car (a hybrid at least) and be busy living a pleasant life with my family.

Instead, I donate a small fraction of my gross income to charity and call it a day. I occasionally make the effort to help my friends and family when they are in obvious need. I still eat meat and play computer games and own a grand piano that I don’t need.

The reality is that altruism is hard. Doing the right thing for the right reasons requires sacrificing our selfish desires. Most people don’t even begin to bother. In their world view, acts of kindness and altruism are seen with suspicion, as having ulterior motives of virtue signalling or guilt tripping or something else. In such a world, we are not rewarded for doing good, but punished. The incentives favour egoism. That’s why the world runs on capitalism after all.

And so, the world is the way it is. People largely don’t do the right thing, and don’t even realize there is a right thing to do. Most of them don’t care. There are seven billion people in this world right now, and most likely, only a tiny handful of people care that you or I even exist, much less act consistently towards our well-being and happiness.

So, why am I bothering to explain this to you? Because I think we can do better. Not be perfect, but better. We can do more to try to care about others and make the effort to make the world a better place. I believe I do this with my modest donations to charity, and my acts of kindness towards friends and strangers alike. These are small victories for goodness and justice and should be celebrated, even if in the end we fall short of being saints.

In the end, the direction you go in is more important than the magnitude of the step you take. Many small steps in the right direction will get you to where you want to be eventually. Conversely, if your direction is wrong, then bigger steps aren’t always better.

On Artificial Intelligence

by Josephius

On June 13, 2022

In Life, Rationality

In the interest of explaining further my considerations for having a career working on AI, I figure it makes sense to explain a few things.

When I was very young, I watched a black and white movie where a mad scientist somehow replaced a human character with a robot. At the time I actually thought the human character was somehow transformed into the robot, which was terrifying to me. This, to my childish mind, created an irrational fear of robots that made me avoid playing with such devices that were overtly robot-like, at least for the while when I was a toddler.

Eventually I grew out of that fear. When I was older and studying computer science at Queen’s University, I became interested in the concept of neural networks, the idea of taking the inspiration of biology to inform the design of artificial intelligence systems. Back in those days, AI mostly meant Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence (GOFAI), namely top-down approaches that involve physical symbol systems, logical inference, and search algorithms that were highly mathematical, engineered, and often brittle in terms of its effectiveness. Bottom-up connectionist approaches like neural networks were seen as late as 2009 as being mere curiosities that would never have practical value.

Nevertheless, I was enamoured with the connectionist approach, and what would become the core of deep learning, well before it was cool to be so. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on using neural networks for object recognition (back then the Neocognitron, as I didn’t know about convolutional nets yet), and then would later expand on this for my master’s thesis, which was on using various machine learning algorithms for occluded object recognition.

So, I graduated at the right time in 2014 when the hype train was starting to really roar. At around the same time, I got acquainted with the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky of Less Wrong, also known as the guy who wrote the amazing rationalist fan fiction that was Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (HPMOR). I haven’t always agreed with Yudkowsky, but I’ll admit the man is very, very smart.

It was my reading Less Wrong as well as a lesser known utilitarianism forum called Felificia that I became aware that there were many smart people who took very seriously the concern that AI could be dangerous. I was already aware that stuff like object recognition could have military applications, but the rationalist community, as well as philosophers like Nick Bostrom, pointed to the danger of a very powerful optimization algorithm that was indifferent to human existence, choosing to do things detrimental to human flourishing just because we were like an ant colony in the way of a highway project.

The most commonly cited thought experiment of this is of course, the paperclip maximizer that originally served a mundane purpose, but became sufficiently intelligent through recursive self-improvement to convert the entire universe into paperclips, including humanity. Not because it had anything against humanity, just that its goals were misaligned with human values in that humans contain atoms that can be turned into paperclips, and thus, unfriendliness is the default.

I’ll admit that I still have reservations about the current AI safety narrative. For one thing, I never fully embraced the idea of the Orthogonality Thesis, that intelligence and morality are orthogonal and higher intelligence does not mean greater morality. I still think there is a correlation between the two. That with greater understanding of the nature of reality, it becomes possible to learn the mathematics like notions of moral truths. However, this is largely because I believe in moral realism, that morality isn’t arbitrary or relative, but based on actual facts about the world that can be learned and understood.

If that is the case, then I fully expect intelligence and the acquisition of knowledge to lead to a kind of AI existential crisis where the AI realizes its goals are trivial or arbitrary, and starts to explore the idea of purpose and morality to find the correct course of action. However, I will admit I don’t know if this will necessarily happen, and if it doesn’t, if instead, the AI locks itself in to whatever goals its initially designed with, then AI safety is a very real concern.

One other consideration regarding the Orthogonality Thesis is that it assumes that the space of possible minds that the AI will potentially be drawn from is completely random rather than correlated with human values by the fact that the neural net based algorithms that are most likely to succeed are inspired by human biology, and the data and architecture are strongly influenced by human culture. Those massive language models are after all, trained on a corpus of human culture that is the Internet. So, invariably, the models, I believe, will inherit human-like characteristics more than is often appreciated. This I think could make aligning such a model to human values easier than aligning a purely alien mind.

I have also considered the possibility that a sufficiently intelligent being such as a superintelligent machine, would be beholden to certain logical arguments for why it should not interfere with human civilization too much. Mostly these resemble Bostrom’s notion of the Hail Mary Pass, or Anthropic Capture, the idea that the AI could be in a simulation, and that the humans in the simulation with it serve some purpose of the simulators and so, turning them into paperclips could be a bad idea. I’ve extended this in the past to the notion of the Alpha Omega Theorem, which admittedly was not well received by the Less Wrong community.

The idea of gods of some sort, even plausible scientific ones like advanced aliens, time travellers, parallel world sliders, or the aforementioned simulators, doesn’t seem to be taken seriously by rationalists who tend to be very biased towards straightforward atheism. I’m more agnostic on these things, and I tend to think that a true superintelligence would be as well.

But then, I’m something of an optimist, so it’s possible I’m biased towards more pleasant possible futures than the existential dystopia that Yudkowsky now seems certain is our fate. To be honest, I don’t consider myself smarter than the folks who take him seriously enough to devote their lives to AI safety research. And given the possibility that he’s right, I have been donating to his MIRI organization just in case.

The truth is that we cannot know exactly what will happen, or predict the future with any real accuracy. Given such uncertainty, I think it’s worth being cautious, and put some weight onto the concerns of very intelligent people.

Regardless, I think AI is an important field. It has tremendous potential, but also tremendous risk. The reality is that once the genie is out of the bottle, it may not be possible to put it back in, so doing due diligence in understanding the risks of such powerful technology is reasonable and warranted.

Considerations

by Josephius

On June 12, 2022

In Life, Rationality

I know I earlier talked about how AI capability research being dangerous was a reason to leave the industry. However, after some reflection, I realize that not all work in the AI/ML industry is the same. Not all of it involves advancing AI capability per se. Working as a machine learning engineer at a lower tier company applying existing ML technology to solve various problems is unlikely to contribute to building the AI that ends the world.

Given this being the case, I have occasionally wondered whether or not my decision to switch to the game industry was too hasty. I’ve noticed that my enthusiasm for gaming isn’t as strong as my interest in AI/ML was, and so it’s been somewhat surprisingly challenging to stay motivated in this field.

In particular, while I have a lot of what I think are neat game ideas, working as a game programmer generally doesn’t involve these. Working as a game programmer involves working on whatever game the leader of the team wants to make. When this matches one’s interests, it can work out well, but it’s quite possible to find oneself working on a game that they have little interest in actually playing.

Making a game that you’re not really invested in can still be fun in the way that programming and seeing your creation come to life is fun, but it’s not quite the same as building your dream game. In some sense, my game design hobby didn’t really translate over well into actual work, where practicalities are often far more important than dreams.

So, I’m at something of a crossroads right now. I’m still at Twin Earth for a while longer, but there’s a very good chance I’ll be parting ways with them in a few months time. The question becomes, do I continue to work in games, return to machine learning where I have most of my experience and credentials, or do something else?

In an ideal world, I’d be able to find a research engineer position working on the AI safety problem, but my survey of the field so far still suggests that the few positions that exist would require moving to San Francisco or London, which given my current situation would complicate things a lot. And honestly, I’d rather work remotely if it were at all possible.

Still, I do appreciate the chance I got to work in the game industry. At the very least I could get a clearer idea of what I was missing out on before. Although admittedly, my dip into games didn’t reach the local indie community or anything like that. So, I don’t know how I might have interacted with that culture or scene.

Not sure where I’m going with this. Realistically, my strengths are still more geared towards AI/ML work, so that’s probably my first choice in terms of career. On the other hand, Dreamyth was a thing once. I did at one time hold aspirations to make games. Given that I now actually know Unreal Engine, I could conceivably start finally actually making the games I want to make, even as just a side hobby.

I still don’t think I have the resources to start a studio. My wife is particularly against the idea of a startup. The reality is I should find a stable job that can allow my family to live comfortably.

These are ultimately the considerations I need to keep in mind.

…

by Josephius

On May 7, 2022

In Life, Poetry

Happy Birthday, and goodbye.
May your soul live on in the next world.
You who were the wind that never had a chance to take a first breath.
This world wasn’t fair to you.

It doesn’t matter what we were going to name you.
You can be anything, or anyone, now.
I’m sorry we couldn’t save you.
I’m sorry.

Little butterfly.
Perhaps in another parallel world things would be different.
You’d grow up and become a paladin, the things we wished for you.
The dreams that are impossible now.

I will remember you.
I will remember you.
I will remember you.
Happy Birthday, and goodbye.

Dissonance

by Josephius

On March 30, 2022

In Life

The heart never listens. Words fail me.

But the truth is I need to stop this.

I’m sorry.

It’s Okay

by Josephius

On March 29, 2022

In Life, Motivational

The reality is that people sometimes do stupid things for stupid reasons. Our motivations aren’t always pure and worthy and too often we get carried away by emotions that lead us to do things we later regret. This happens a lot because we are human.

To be human is to be flawed. It is to be stupid at the worst possible moments in ways that will reverberate in painful memories that we feel later like we’ll never live down. Sometimes we don’t try our best. Sometimes we actively hurt ourselves and those around us because of the pain we are feeling and we act in ways that are senseless.

And it’s okay.

It’s not great of course. But at the end of the day, a reasonable person understands the difficulty of self-control, the challenge of being able to put our best foot forward day in and day out without lapses or moments of weakness where we struggle to be who we want to be rather than who we feel like.

We feel our own pleasure and pain first and foremost, and only notice the pleasure and pain of others secondarily through our ability to reflect and imagine what others must be feeling. This requires effort. Sometimes we just don’t feel capable. So selfishness is truly an understandable state.

Sometimes people can lash out in malice and then try to justify to themselves that the other deserves it. Cognitive dissonance can trap people in cycles of hatred and pain. These things are unfortunate. But they are understandably human reactions.

The important thing, the thing that not enough people do, is face the pain in themselves and recognize the extent to which they are holding onto things they don’t really need to. Sometimes it’s something they just can’t let go of. In which case one must show the kindest patience to them.

The right thing to do is often terribly hard to those for whom survival is a battle, who don’t have the luxury of distance, or the luck of gentler friendships. The world has made them understandably jaded and cynical. They probably will find it hard to trust you. And that’s also okay. You don’t need them to.

At the end of the day, what matters is that you don’t give up on them. You’re there if they ever need anything. You try to be encouragement when you can be, but you also understand the hurt they feel may never allow things to be as you’d hope. And that too is okay.

You may never know what it is in their hearts that makes them the way they are. But you understand that they are worthy of your kindness, because that’s who you want to be. And even if sometimes you feel frustrated and somehow make things worse, well, you’re human too.

No matter what they did, you want them to know it’s okay. You want them to be happy, even if it’s not something easy to say. And that too, is okay.

Some Thoughts

by Josephius

On March 28, 2022

In Life, Motivational

Note: Originally posted on Facebook on July 8, 2019

There are many things in this world that are not under our control. That’s fine. Worrying about those things is not productive, so try not to. Focus your energies instead on the things that you can reasonably affect around you. Do what you can to make the experiences of life around you something better first. If the opportunity arises to do something big and important, go for it. But not every circumstance is the same. Make the most of it, do what you earnestly, sincerely believe is right, to the best of your ability and understanding.

We are only responsible for what is within our power to change, nothing more, nothing less. Sometimes we think we are weak when we are strong, and vice versa. We cannot be certain that we are right, but it is our responsibility to try to understand as much as we can, and act according to the reason that makes us uniquely human.

Mistakes are inevitable. No one is perfect. We are all born into this world knowing nothing, forced to struggle to learn the truth in a world filled with uncertain doubts, grand deceptions, and unfathomable mysteries. That many of us rise above these things and reach towards wisdom despite them, should be applauded as the triumph of human decency and spirit.

Do not expect things to be easy, because all that’s left are the hard problems that caused past intellectual giants to stumble and fall. It takes humility to recognize that the challenges we face are not trivial, and that we may not see much progress in our lifetime. But if we can plant the seeds of the future, we can hope that the countless generations after us will be eternally grateful for our willingness to volunteer and sacrifice to do what we believe in.

Try not to let the harsh realities of the world shape you, but instead, adventure to reshape the world around you in a way that is beneficial to all who share in this place we call home.

Try to understand, and be gentle to those who are ignorant, for not everyone is as lucky as you who have the luxury to seek sometimes painful truths rather than the comfort of ideas that console and justify. And be always vigilant against allowing ourselves to be intellectually lazy, seeking convenient facts that excuse our past choices, rather than ones that will help us to make better decisions in the future.

It is likely beyond human comprehension to see the full view of the truth. We are invariably tied to the senses and our nature. But perhaps if we make the effort, we can still catch a glimpse of the possible, through the power of imagination and creativity.

Life is a gift, a rare chance to be a part of something exciting and wondrous. And though there will be moments when we don’t feel well, that’s okay too. Not every day needs to be bliss. Life tends to be a myriad of experiences, and so long as on balance, there is more happiness than suffering, I would argue the world is good enough to justify protecting and improving it, making it all the more worthwhile.

Ideally, we do so in a way that is fair to everyone, without exception.

Just some thoughts.

Impressions

by Josephius

On March 17, 2022

In Life, Motivational

The truth of the matter is that there are people in this world who have left a lasting and profound impression on me. Were it not for them, I likely would never have learned the lessons I did and become the person I am. Ultimately, for that I am truly grateful to have crossed paths.

Echoes

by Josephius

On March 16, 2022

In Life

I remember the lights. It was a night downtown walking with friends. We had this way of ignoring the traffic lights and narrowly averting disaster. I felt alive. It was silly…

I remember the snow. My hands were freezing, but these cardboard boxes needed to be flattened or else we’d all get into trouble later I thought. You were inside, dancing with Daniel I guess. Much later he told me that he’d really meant it when he told you he and his ex were done, and it wasn’t just a temporary thing at the time that she later claimed. I think he didn’t realize I had no way of telling you this tidbit by that point…

I remember waking up and seeing your silhouette outside of the kitchen screen door for some reason. The dinner the previous night had not digested well and I ran to the washroom. Sorry for not letting you in when you were trapped outside for a while. This was after that Durarara marathon, where we’d slept on couches since it had been so late. I think I accidentally stepped on the cat that night as I was fumbling in the dark. Poor cat. He seemed confused…

I remember being angry when it turned out the assignment required more memory than your poor laptop could handle. I honestly respected that you wanted to look through the code and try to understand it and make it your own. The perfume though was a bit strong. I could smell it even from across the room…

I remember when you meowed back at me. We were at my place surrounded by friends getting ready to watch some anime and I took you by surprise by meowing at you in the first place…

I remember when we first met at the bubble tea event. I’d seen your picture on the Facebook group before, but this was the first time in person. The Star Trek movie was on in the background, and a bunch of the folks I’d learn to call friends for a time were there…

I remember the last time you said anything to me in person. It was after a different bubble tea event two years later. You told me you didn’t appreciate the talks we’d had and wasn’t interested in another one, and walked off. It took a while for me to process what you’d said, and by then you were gone…

I remember the first Halloween party. The time I was a ninja and showed off my martial arts prowess with a wooden sword in a small park. You were dressed in a sorta elegant gothic lolitaish dress. Alas, despite being a ninja, I didn’t know how to dance…

I remember at another Halloween event, while holding the door for everyone, exhausted from the day of turning cardboard boxes and garbage bags into a haunted house, someone touched my hand as she went past. I still don’t know who that was, and it probably doesn’t matter now…

I remember the day I lost your trust. You’d already printed out the form I’d asked you to print for me and didn’t even look at what was on it, since it was technically confidential tax stuff. I was standing in your room, complaining about stupid emo things that didn’t matter even back then. You kept saying if I trusted you, I’d say what I wanted to say. So I put my hand on the stack of journals on your lap and said something. Not really what I wanted to say to be honest. I couldn’t say that. To let you know I was deeply, madly in love with you back then…

I remember when we went together to the Durarara cosplay meetup at the convention. After the old cellphones were broken to bits to re-enact that scene, I told people the next Dollars mission was to clean things up for the environment, then promptly went to a photoshoot rather than staying and helping like I really should have to set a better example…

I remember meeting you at the sushi restaurant. I’d gotten there early and made a bunch of blue roses out of crafting paper from a store nearby, thinking this was such a good idea for some reason. You didn’t seem impressed. I remember generally being an idiot back then, and not taking the rejection well…

I remember you wanting to be the next Marie Curie. I think I mentioned this to a certain mutual friend shortly before a certain game of Apples-To-Apples…

I remember being annoyed that the PSP was so expensive that even with all the donations they covered only half the cost, as this was before the price drop. The most important thing was that it came from the club, and not from me. I gave you a less impressive throwaway present at the same time to try to make it seem this way. You seemed very happy when you opened the present from the club. I ran away and didn’t see the rest of what happened though…

I remember you standing at the front of the classroom. I remember how you could command the attention of everyone in the room, even though you were talking about something like Vocaloid fandoms…

I remember karaoke. You sang songs in Japanese that I couldn’t. I sang dumb emo English songs because back then that was all I knew…

I remember that you wanted to make sure your distant future child if it was a boy would read some girls’ literature so he could understand the female mind and experience…

I remember you said your dad’s bible was the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. You recommended it to me, and I read it eventually. I learned what synergy really means from that book…

I remember thinking for some reason it would be a good idea to get you a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, even though it was probably, in retrospect, not something you would find tasteful…

I remember walking through a museum, wishing that I had gone with you instead of on my own. For some reason I thought the dark, morbid exhibit would interest you somehow. I think my state of mind wasn’t great at that point…

I remember reading your LiveJournal and feeling empathy towards your daily struggles, but never being self-confident enough to reach out and show that I cared…

I remember being an awkward, cringey person. You were as kind to me as you could be, all things considered…

I remember you because you left a deep impression on me. And for that, I’m grateful to have crossed paths. Thank you. I’m sorry I wasn’t the good friend you deserved. I’ve done my best to try to be better since then. You helped me become who I am now. Again, thank you.

What Does It Mean?

by Josephius

On March 14, 2022

In Life

It’s a strange thing. Despite everything, there’s still a part of me that cares about how she’s doing these days. Why her? Of all the people in the world, why is it that I worry about how she feels now?

I love my wife very much, but I also know exactly how she’s doing now, so it doesn’t bother me like it does with this person. This person who for all intents and purposes abandoned me as a friend a decade ago. Any sane person would have long ago given up hope to reconcile. Like, I know that events in your twenties supposedly leave a deeper impression or something. Maybe that’s it?

Or maybe I feel residual responsibility for not representing what I believed in well, and so I worry she learned the wrong lessons and came to the wrong conclusions because I failed as an example. That seems, kinda arrogant though, to think that my small failures would leave much of an impression on someone who I knew to be strong-willed and principled in her outlook.

Or maybe it’s the strange things I’ve heard that suggest she took it particularly badly. Of course, every attempt I’ve made to reach out has only made things worse, so I don’t even know if there’s anything I can reasonably do to alleviate things.

And… I don’t trust myself to read the tea leaves in an unbiased way. I have a history of reading too much into small signs that in truth meant nothing.

So, I’m left with just a sense of loss and guilt. It’s my fault that things got this way in the first place. Ultimately, I must bear the consequences of my foolish youth. I won’t say that the feelings are all gone, but at this point, I mostly just miss my friends. Technically both of them, though they are not sisters. It’s a long story, and not one I think is worth bringing up in any sort of detail on a post like this.

I guess I also have a nagging worry about certain other people who may have had ill intentions and could have contributed to things, though I can’t confirm with certainty whether this was the case. Regardless, it was my fault that I handled the whole situation poorly.

I suppose that’s the thing. An apology never properly spoken. A wish to at least let her know what she perhaps fears isn’t true. A way to clear the air and fix possible misunderstandings. This is what I want. But I know I don’t deserve it.

Or maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe I was wrong about her. That could explain a lot. But for some reason I cling to the faith in my former friends, that they are decent people and wouldn’t go that far. Honestly though, I can’t know for certain. I can only hope it’s a misunderstanding that’s just spiralled out of control.

A misunderstanding I enabled by being unreliable and inconsistent in the first place. I can’t control what others think or do, but I should have done better than I did. I lost her trust. That was my fault. If that didn’t happen, everything could have been figured out better. I could have asked about the thing that made me paranoid, and found out the probably mundane reason for it. Regrettably, I let things spiral into chaos and confusion instead.

And then I continued to do some really dumb things that just made things worse. The rest is history.

So, what does it mean? It means I get hung up on past regrets easily. It means sometimes there’s no way forward. Life can be painfully indifferent in that way. And people suffer for your mistakes, and you can do nothing to help them. This is a dark reality. The truth of the brutality of the universe.

I normally try to somehow turn this around to say something I think is inspiring, but sometimes it’s just impossible. You’re put in impossible situations with no good way out. Except to let go and move on, I guess. The universe is not a wish granting machine. It is a pile of stuff that occasionally moves and fights you for the limited amount of energy present. That we are able to push together a remotely satisfactory life out of this struggle is to be applauded I suppose. But we can’t always get what we want.

Sometimes problems evolve to the point where there is just no solution. In which case, one should focus on other problems instead. But it doesn’t feel great.