Podcast appearances and mentions of andy mckenzie

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: Refactoring cryonics as structural brain preservation, published by Andy McKenzie on September 11, 2024 on LessWrong. I first learned about cryonics when I read Eliezer and Robin's posts about it on Overcoming Bias years ago. I got cryopilled. Somewhat amazingly to me, I'm now a researcher in this field. So I thought this community might be interested to know that I was one of several co-authors on a paper just published in Frontiers in Medical Technology, titled "Structural brain preservation: a potential bridge to future medical technologies". In this paper, we propose reframing cryonics as a type of structural brain preservation, focusing on maintaining the brain's physical structure that encodes memories and personality, rather than making the focus about low-temperature storage per se. We explore what brain structures likely need to be preserved to retain long-term memories and other valued aspects of personal identity. We then review different methods of brain preservation, including cryopreservation, aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation, fluid preservation, and fixation followed by polymer embedding. The paper also discusses the two most commonly discussed potential future revival technologies, i.e. molecular nanotechnology and whole brain emulation. We argue that this structural preservation framing may be more technically grounded and agreeable to mainstream researchers than some of the traditional ways that cryonics has been discussed. As a personal reflection here, I want to briefly discuss the idea of fluid preservation, which is one topic discussed in our review paper. I remember first reading about this idea in approximately 2017 on a cryonics mailing list. Even though I was already sold on the idea of aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation -- using fixation as a short-term bridge to cryoprotection and cryopreservation, I remember thinking that the idea of simply leaving the brain in fixative solution for the long-term was bizarre and outlandish. Around 2020-2022, I spent a good amount of time researching different options for higher temperature (and thus lower cost) brain preservation. Mostly I was looking into different methods for embedding fixed brain tissue in polymers, such as paraffin, epoxy, acrylates, or silicon. I also studied the options of dehydrated preservation and preserving the fixed brain in the fluid state, which I was mostly doing for the sake of completeness. To be clear, I certainly don't want to make it seem like this was a lone wolf effort or anything. I was talking about the ideas with friends and it was also in the zeitgeist. For example, John Smart wrote a blog post in 2020 about this, titled "Do we need a noncryogenic brain preservation prize?" (There still is no such prize.) In 2022, I was reading various papers on brain preservation (as one does), when I came across Rosoklija 2013. If I recall correctly, I had already seen this paper but was re-reading it with a different eye. They studied human and monkey brain tissue that had been preserved in formalin for periods ranging from 15 months to 55 years, using the Golgi-Kopsch silver staining method to visualize neuronal structures. They reported that even after 50 years of formalin fixation at room temperature, the method yielded excellent results. In particular, they had this figure: That's a picture showing well-impregnated neurons with preserved dendritic spines. Looking at this picture was a viewquake for me. I thought, if fluid preservation can preserve the structure of the 1-5% of cells that are stained by the Golgi-Kopsch method, why not other cells? And if it can work in this one part of the brain, why not the whole brain? And if it can do it for 50 years, why not 100 or 150? Chemically, it is not clear why there would be differences across the tissue. Aldehydes crosslin...

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Refactoring cryonics as structural brain preservation, published by Andy McKenzie on September 11, 2024 on LessWrong. I first learned about cryonics when I read Eliezer and Robin's posts about it on Overcoming Bias years ago. I got cryopilled. Somewhat amazingly to me, I'm now a researcher in this field. So I thought this community might be interested to know that I was one of several co-authors on a paper just published in Frontiers in Medical Technology, titled "Structural brain preservation: a potential bridge to future medical technologies". In this paper, we propose reframing cryonics as a type of structural brain preservation, focusing on maintaining the brain's physical structure that encodes memories and personality, rather than making the focus about low-temperature storage per se. We explore what brain structures likely need to be preserved to retain long-term memories and other valued aspects of personal identity. We then review different methods of brain preservation, including cryopreservation, aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation, fluid preservation, and fixation followed by polymer embedding. The paper also discusses the two most commonly discussed potential future revival technologies, i.e. molecular nanotechnology and whole brain emulation. We argue that this structural preservation framing may be more technically grounded and agreeable to mainstream researchers than some of the traditional ways that cryonics has been discussed. As a personal reflection here, I want to briefly discuss the idea of fluid preservation, which is one topic discussed in our review paper. I remember first reading about this idea in approximately 2017 on a cryonics mailing list. Even though I was already sold on the idea of aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation -- using fixation as a short-term bridge to cryoprotection and cryopreservation, I remember thinking that the idea of simply leaving the brain in fixative solution for the long-term was bizarre and outlandish. Around 2020-2022, I spent a good amount of time researching different options for higher temperature (and thus lower cost) brain preservation. Mostly I was looking into different methods for embedding fixed brain tissue in polymers, such as paraffin, epoxy, acrylates, or silicon. I also studied the options of dehydrated preservation and preserving the fixed brain in the fluid state, which I was mostly doing for the sake of completeness. To be clear, I certainly don't want to make it seem like this was a lone wolf effort or anything. I was talking about the ideas with friends and it was also in the zeitgeist. For example, John Smart wrote a blog post in 2020 about this, titled "Do we need a noncryogenic brain preservation prize?" (There still is no such prize.) In 2022, I was reading various papers on brain preservation (as one does), when I came across Rosoklija 2013. If I recall correctly, I had already seen this paper but was re-reading it with a different eye. They studied human and monkey brain tissue that had been preserved in formalin for periods ranging from 15 months to 55 years, using the Golgi-Kopsch silver staining method to visualize neuronal structures. They reported that even after 50 years of formalin fixation at room temperature, the method yielded excellent results. In particular, they had this figure: That's a picture showing well-impregnated neurons with preserved dendritic spines. Looking at this picture was a viewquake for me. I thought, if fluid preservation can preserve the structure of the 1-5% of cells that are stained by the Golgi-Kopsch method, why not other cells? And if it can work in this one part of the brain, why not the whole brain? And if it can do it for 50 years, why not 100 or 150? Chemically, it is not clear why there would be differences across the tissue. Aldehydes crosslin...

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: Being against involuntary death and being open to change are compatible, published by Andy McKenzie on May 28, 2024 on LessWrong. In a new post, Nostalgebraist argues that "AI doomerism has its roots in anti-deathist transhumanism", representing a break from the normal human expectation of mortality and generational change. They argue that traditionally, each generation has accepted that they will die but that the human race as a whole will continue evolving in ways they cannot fully imagine or control. Nostalgebraist argues that the "anti-deathist" view, however, anticipates a future where "we are all gonna die" is no longer true -- a future where the current generation doesn't have to die or cede control of the future to their descendants. Nostalgebraist sees this desire to "strangle posterity" and "freeze time in place" by making one's own generation immortal as contrary to human values, which have always involved an ongoing process of change and progress from generation to generation. This argument reminds me of Elon Musk's common refrain on the topic: "The problem is when people get old, they don't change their minds, they just die. So, if you want to have progress in society, you got to make sure that, you know, people need to die, because they get old, they don't change their mind." Musk's argument is certainly different and I don't want to equate the two. I'm just bringing this up because I wouldn't bother responding to Nostalgebraist unless this was a common type of argument. In this post, I'm going to dig into Nostalgebraist's anti-anti-deathism argument a little bit more. I believe it is simply empirically mistaken. Key inaccuracies include: 1: The idea that people in past "generations" universally expected to die is wrong. Nope. Belief in life after death or even physical immortality has been common across many cultures and time periods. Quantitatively, large percentages of the world today believe in life after death: In many regions, this belief was also much more common in the past, when religiosity was higher. Ancient Egypt, historical Christendom, etc. 2: The notion that future humans would be so radically different from us that replacing humans with any form of AIs would be equivalent is ridiculous. This is just not close to my experience when I read historical texts. Many authors seem to have extremely relatable views and perspectives. To take the topical example of anti-deathism, among secular authors, read, for example, Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, or John Hunter. I am very skeptical that everyone from the past would feel so inalienably out of place in our society today, once they had time (and they would have plenty of time) to get acquainted with new norms and technologies. We still have basically the same DNA, gametes, and in utero environments. 3: It is not the case that death is required for cultural evolution. People change their minds all the time. Cultural evolution happens all the time within people's lifespans. Cf: views on gay marriage, the civil rights movement, environmentalism, climate change mitigation, etc. This is especially the case because in the future we will likely develop treatments for the decline in neuroplasticity that can (but does not necessarily always) occur in a subset of older people. Adjusting for (a) the statistical decline of neuroplasticity in aging and (b) contingent aspects of the structure of our societies (which are very much up for change, e.g. the traditional education/career timeline), one might even call death and cultural evolution "orthogonal". 4: No, our children are not AIs. Our children are human beings. Every generation dies, and bequeaths the world to posterity. To its children, biological or otherwise. To its students, its protégés. ... In which one will never have to make peace with the tho...

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Being against involuntary death and being open to change are compatible, published by Andy McKenzie on May 28, 2024 on LessWrong. In a new post, Nostalgebraist argues that "AI doomerism has its roots in anti-deathist transhumanism", representing a break from the normal human expectation of mortality and generational change. They argue that traditionally, each generation has accepted that they will die but that the human race as a whole will continue evolving in ways they cannot fully imagine or control. Nostalgebraist argues that the "anti-deathist" view, however, anticipates a future where "we are all gonna die" is no longer true -- a future where the current generation doesn't have to die or cede control of the future to their descendants. Nostalgebraist sees this desire to "strangle posterity" and "freeze time in place" by making one's own generation immortal as contrary to human values, which have always involved an ongoing process of change and progress from generation to generation. This argument reminds me of Elon Musk's common refrain on the topic: "The problem is when people get old, they don't change their minds, they just die. So, if you want to have progress in society, you got to make sure that, you know, people need to die, because they get old, they don't change their mind." Musk's argument is certainly different and I don't want to equate the two. I'm just bringing this up because I wouldn't bother responding to Nostalgebraist unless this was a common type of argument. In this post, I'm going to dig into Nostalgebraist's anti-anti-deathism argument a little bit more. I believe it is simply empirically mistaken. Key inaccuracies include: 1: The idea that people in past "generations" universally expected to die is wrong. Nope. Belief in life after death or even physical immortality has been common across many cultures and time periods. Quantitatively, large percentages of the world today believe in life after death: In many regions, this belief was also much more common in the past, when religiosity was higher. Ancient Egypt, historical Christendom, etc. 2: The notion that future humans would be so radically different from us that replacing humans with any form of AIs would be equivalent is ridiculous. This is just not close to my experience when I read historical texts. Many authors seem to have extremely relatable views and perspectives. To take the topical example of anti-deathism, among secular authors, read, for example, Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, or John Hunter. I am very skeptical that everyone from the past would feel so inalienably out of place in our society today, once they had time (and they would have plenty of time) to get acquainted with new norms and technologies. We still have basically the same DNA, gametes, and in utero environments. 3: It is not the case that death is required for cultural evolution. People change their minds all the time. Cultural evolution happens all the time within people's lifespans. Cf: views on gay marriage, the civil rights movement, environmentalism, climate change mitigation, etc. This is especially the case because in the future we will likely develop treatments for the decline in neuroplasticity that can (but does not necessarily always) occur in a subset of older people. Adjusting for (a) the statistical decline of neuroplasticity in aging and (b) contingent aspects of the structure of our societies (which are very much up for change, e.g. the traditional education/career timeline), one might even call death and cultural evolution "orthogonal". 4: No, our children are not AIs. Our children are human beings. Every generation dies, and bequeaths the world to posterity. To its children, biological or otherwise. To its students, its protégés. ... In which one will never have to make peace with the tho...

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: Why wasn't preservation with the goal of potential future revival started earlier in history?, published by Andy McKenzie on January 17, 2024 on LessWrong. Cross-posted from my blog, Neurobiology Notes. John Hunter (1728-1793) did not have an especially promising start to his academic life. He was born the youngest of 10 children to a family living in the countryside near Glasgow. They lived in a two bedroom cottage and the children slept in box beds that were pulled out of the walls every night. He was stubborn, hated school, did not like to be taught reading or writing, would skip classes whenever he could, and quit formal education altogether at 13, the same year his father died. He said that he "totally rejected books," instead preferring to gain practical knowledge first hand. He spent his time helping with the family farm. When he was 20, he made the fateful decision to join his brother William Hunter's anatomy school in London as an assistant. maternal and fetal circulations are separate, invent the technique of proximal ligation to treat aneurysms, either inoculate himself or someone else with venereal disease purely in the name of science, coordinate the first documented artificial insemination, propose the gradual formation of new species due to random variations 70 years before Darwin, create a school providing lectures in physiology, make enemies with all of the other surgeons at his hospital, almost die when he was attacked by one of his many exotic animals, amass a huge collection of specimens that he spent nearly all his money on and that remains in London today, and become the person widely considered the founder of modern scientific surgery. a photo from the Hunterian museum in London I learned this all from Wendy Moore's excellent biography of John Hunter, The Knife Man: The Knife Man by Wendy Moore Although I'm a closet Anglophile, the main reason I picked this book up is because Hunter also seems to have been one of the first people, if not the first person, to seriously research suspended animation. Suspended animation is a hypothetical procedure in which a person or other animal could be preserved for a long period of time in a way that the procedure is known to be reversible, allowing for reanimation at the time of one's choosing. Suspended animation is not the same as cryonics, because in cryonics, it is not known whether the preservation will ever be reversible, so a cryonics procedure relies on the possibility of bootstrapped advances in future technology that might allow reversibility. Hunter was interested in suspended animation for a number of reasons, including because he was interested in the dividing line between life and death, and because he thought it might make him rich. He also thought that it might be practically useful: Till this time I had imagined that it might be possible to prolong life to any period by freezing a person in the frigid zone, as I thought all action and waste would cease until the body was thawed. I thought that if a man would give up the last ten years of his life to this kind of alternate oblivion and action, it might be prolonged to a thousand years; and by getting himself thawed every hundred years, he might learn what had happened during his frozen condition. In 1766, Hunter performed an experiment to test this. He placed two carp in a glass vessel with water. He then kept adding cold snow to the vessel. At first the snow repeatedly melted, but eventually the water around the fish froze. He thawed them slowly, but found they did "not recover action, so that they were really dead." Benjamin Franklin had similar ideas. In the cryonics community, Franklin's remarkable letter to a friend in 1773 is kind of famous: I have seen an instance of common flies preserved in a manner somewhat similar. They had been ...

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Why wasn't preservation with the goal of potential future revival started earlier in history?, published by Andy McKenzie on January 17, 2024 on LessWrong. Cross-posted from my blog, Neurobiology Notes. John Hunter (1728-1793) did not have an especially promising start to his academic life. He was born the youngest of 10 children to a family living in the countryside near Glasgow. They lived in a two bedroom cottage and the children slept in box beds that were pulled out of the walls every night. He was stubborn, hated school, did not like to be taught reading or writing, would skip classes whenever he could, and quit formal education altogether at 13, the same year his father died. He said that he "totally rejected books," instead preferring to gain practical knowledge first hand. He spent his time helping with the family farm. When he was 20, he made the fateful decision to join his brother William Hunter's anatomy school in London as an assistant. maternal and fetal circulations are separate, invent the technique of proximal ligation to treat aneurysms, either inoculate himself or someone else with venereal disease purely in the name of science, coordinate the first documented artificial insemination, propose the gradual formation of new species due to random variations 70 years before Darwin, create a school providing lectures in physiology, make enemies with all of the other surgeons at his hospital, almost die when he was attacked by one of his many exotic animals, amass a huge collection of specimens that he spent nearly all his money on and that remains in London today, and become the person widely considered the founder of modern scientific surgery. a photo from the Hunterian museum in London I learned this all from Wendy Moore's excellent biography of John Hunter, The Knife Man: The Knife Man by Wendy Moore Although I'm a closet Anglophile, the main reason I picked this book up is because Hunter also seems to have been one of the first people, if not the first person, to seriously research suspended animation. Suspended animation is a hypothetical procedure in which a person or other animal could be preserved for a long period of time in a way that the procedure is known to be reversible, allowing for reanimation at the time of one's choosing. Suspended animation is not the same as cryonics, because in cryonics, it is not known whether the preservation will ever be reversible, so a cryonics procedure relies on the possibility of bootstrapped advances in future technology that might allow reversibility. Hunter was interested in suspended animation for a number of reasons, including because he was interested in the dividing line between life and death, and because he thought it might make him rich. He also thought that it might be practically useful: Till this time I had imagined that it might be possible to prolong life to any period by freezing a person in the frigid zone, as I thought all action and waste would cease until the body was thawed. I thought that if a man would give up the last ten years of his life to this kind of alternate oblivion and action, it might be prolonged to a thousand years; and by getting himself thawed every hundred years, he might learn what had happened during his frozen condition. In 1766, Hunter performed an experiment to test this. He placed two carp in a glass vessel with water. He then kept adding cold snow to the vessel. At first the snow repeatedly melted, but eventually the water around the fish froze. He thawed them slowly, but found they did "not recover action, so that they were really dead." Benjamin Franklin had similar ideas. In the cryonics community, Franklin's remarkable letter to a friend in 1773 is kind of famous: I have seen an instance of common flies preserved in a manner somewhat similar. They had been ...

Jason Wheeler and Roger Gattis discuss their thoughts with Andy McKenzie on farmer marketing strategies.

This podcast features Andy McKenzie aka IronMacFitness, a fellow Glaswegian, strength and performance coach and bodyweight enthusiastAndy shares his story about growing up in Glasgow, How Bruce Lee inspired his journey and his approach to bodyweight training and performance You can find Andy's YouTube Channel at…https://youtube.com/@IronMacFitness?feature=sharecHis Instagramhttps://instagram.com/ironmacfitness?igshid=Y2IzZGU1MTFhOQ==

John Anderson and Andy McKenzie talk about information in government reports that change market expectations and drive futures prices. Andy discusses some of his most recent research on the topic, which investigates if large export sales of US grains to China impact futures prices. 

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: Transcript of Sam Altman's interview touching on AI safety, published by Andy McKenzie on January 20, 2023 on LessWrong. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was interviewed by Connie Loizos last week and the video was posted two days ago. Here are some AI safety-relevant parts of the discussion, with light editing by me for clarity, based on this automated transcript: [starting in part two of the interview, which is where the discussion about AI safety is] Connie: So moving on to AI which is where you've obviously spent the bulk of your time since I saw you when we sat here three years ago. You were telling us what was coming and we all thought you were being sort of hyperbolic and you were dead serious. Why do you think that ChatGPT and DALL-E so surprised people? Sam: I genuinely don't know. I've reflected on it a lot. We had the model for ChatGPT in the API for I don't know 10 months or something before we made ChatGPT. And I sort of thought someone was going to just build it or whatever and that enough people had played around with it. Definitely, if you make a really good user experience on top of something. One thing that I very deeply believed was the way people wanted to interact with these models was via dialogue. We kept telling people this we kept trying to get people to build it and people wouldn't quite do it. So we finally said all right we're just going to do it, but yeah I think the pieces were there for a while. One of the reasons I think DALL-E surprised people is if you asked five or seven years ago, the kind of ironclad wisdom on AI was that first, it comes for physical labor, truck driving, working in the factory, then this sort of less demanding cognitive labor, then the really demanding cognitive labor like computer programming, and then very last of all or maybe never because maybe it's like some deep human special sauce was creativity. And of course, we can look now and say it really looks like it's going to go exactly the opposite direction. But I think that is not super intuitive and so I can see why DALL-E surprised people. But I genuinely felt somewhat confused about why ChatGPT did. One of the things we really believe is that the most responsible way to put this out in society is very gradually and to get people, institutions, policy makers, get them familiar with it, thinking about the implications, feeling the technology, and getting a sense for what it can do and can't do very early. Rather than drop a super powerful AGI in the world all at once. And so we put GPT3 out almost three years ago and then we put it into an API like two and a half years ago. And the incremental update from that to ChatGPT I felt should have been predictable and I want to do more introspection on why I was sort of miscalibrated on that. Connie: So you know you had talked when you were here about releasing things in a responsible way. What gave you the confidence to release what you have released already? I mean do you think we're ready for it? Are there enough guardrails in place? Sam: We do have an internal process where we try to break things in and study impacts. We use external auditors, we have external red teamers, we work with other labs, and have safety organizations look at stuff. Societal changes that ChatGPT is going to cause or is causing. There's a big one going now about the impact of this on education, academic integrity, all of that. But starting these now where the stakes are still relatively low, rather than just putting out what the whole industry will have in a few years with no time for society to update, I think would be bad. Covid did show us for better or for worse that society can update to massive changes sort of faster than I would have thought in many ways. But I still think given the magnitude of the economic impact we expect here more gr...

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Transcript of Sam Altman's interview touching on AI safety, published by Andy McKenzie on January 20, 2023 on LessWrong. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was interviewed by Connie Loizos last week and the video was posted two days ago. Here are some AI safety-relevant parts of the discussion, with light editing by me for clarity, based on this automated transcript: [starting in part two of the interview, which is where the discussion about AI safety is] Connie: So moving on to AI which is where you've obviously spent the bulk of your time since I saw you when we sat here three years ago. You were telling us what was coming and we all thought you were being sort of hyperbolic and you were dead serious. Why do you think that ChatGPT and DALL-E so surprised people? Sam: I genuinely don't know. I've reflected on it a lot. We had the model for ChatGPT in the API for I don't know 10 months or something before we made ChatGPT. And I sort of thought someone was going to just build it or whatever and that enough people had played around with it. Definitely, if you make a really good user experience on top of something. One thing that I very deeply believed was the way people wanted to interact with these models was via dialogue. We kept telling people this we kept trying to get people to build it and people wouldn't quite do it. So we finally said all right we're just going to do it, but yeah I think the pieces were there for a while. One of the reasons I think DALL-E surprised people is if you asked five or seven years ago, the kind of ironclad wisdom on AI was that first, it comes for physical labor, truck driving, working in the factory, then this sort of less demanding cognitive labor, then the really demanding cognitive labor like computer programming, and then very last of all or maybe never because maybe it's like some deep human special sauce was creativity. And of course, we can look now and say it really looks like it's going to go exactly the opposite direction. But I think that is not super intuitive and so I can see why DALL-E surprised people. But I genuinely felt somewhat confused about why ChatGPT did. One of the things we really believe is that the most responsible way to put this out in society is very gradually and to get people, institutions, policy makers, get them familiar with it, thinking about the implications, feeling the technology, and getting a sense for what it can do and can't do very early. Rather than drop a super powerful AGI in the world all at once. And so we put GPT3 out almost three years ago and then we put it into an API like two and a half years ago. And the incremental update from that to ChatGPT I felt should have been predictable and I want to do more introspection on why I was sort of miscalibrated on that. Connie: So you know you had talked when you were here about releasing things in a responsible way. What gave you the confidence to release what you have released already? I mean do you think we're ready for it? Are there enough guardrails in place? Sam: We do have an internal process where we try to break things in and study impacts. We use external auditors, we have external red teamers, we work with other labs, and have safety organizations look at stuff. Societal changes that ChatGPT is going to cause or is causing. There's a big one going now about the impact of this on education, academic integrity, all of that. But starting these now where the stakes are still relatively low, rather than just putting out what the whole industry will have in a few years with no time for society to update, I think would be bad. Covid did show us for better or for worse that society can update to massive changes sort of faster than I would have thought in many ways. But I still think given the magnitude of the economic impact we expect here more gr...

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Transcript of Sam Altman's interview touching on AI safety, published by Andy McKenzie on January 20, 2023 on LessWrong. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was interviewed by Connie Loizos last week and the video was posted two days ago. Here are some AI safety-relevant parts of the discussion, with light editing by me for clarity, based on this automated transcript: [starting in part two of the interview, which is where the discussion about AI safety is] Connie: So moving on to AI which is where you've obviously spent the bulk of your time since I saw you when we sat here three years ago. You were telling us what was coming and we all thought you were being sort of hyperbolic and you were dead serious. Why do you think that ChatGPT and DALL-E so surprised people? Sam: I genuinely don't know. I've reflected on it a lot. We had the model for ChatGPT in the API for I don't know 10 months or something before we made ChatGPT. And I sort of thought someone was going to just build it or whatever and that enough people had played around with it. Definitely, if you make a really good user experience on top of something. One thing that I very deeply believed was the way people wanted to interact with these models was via dialogue. We kept telling people this we kept trying to get people to build it and people wouldn't quite do it. So we finally said all right we're just going to do it, but yeah I think the pieces were there for a while. One of the reasons I think DALL-E surprised people is if you asked five or seven years ago, the kind of ironclad wisdom on AI was that first, it comes for physical labor, truck driving, working in the factory, then this sort of less demanding cognitive labor, then the really demanding cognitive labor like computer programming, and then very last of all or maybe never because maybe it's like some deep human special sauce was creativity. And of course, we can look now and say it really looks like it's going to go exactly the opposite direction. But I think that is not super intuitive and so I can see why DALL-E surprised people. But I genuinely felt somewhat confused about why ChatGPT did. One of the things we really believe is that the most responsible way to put this out in society is very gradually and to get people, institutions, policy makers, get them familiar with it, thinking about the implications, feeling the technology, and getting a sense for what it can do and can't do very early. Rather than drop a super powerful AGI in the world all at once. And so we put GPT3 out almost three years ago and then we put it into an API like two and a half years ago. And the incremental update from that to ChatGPT I felt should have been predictable and I want to do more introspection on why I was sort of miscalibrated on that. Connie: So you know you had talked when you were here about releasing things in a responsible way. What gave you the confidence to release what you have released already? I mean do you think we're ready for it? Are there enough guardrails in place? Sam: We do have an internal process where we try to break things in and study impacts. We use external auditors, we have external red teamers, we work with other labs, and have safety organizations look at stuff. Societal changes that ChatGPT is going to cause or is causing. There's a big one going now about the impact of this on education, academic integrity, all of that. But starting these now where the stakes are still relatively low, rather than just putting out what the whole industry will have in a few years with no time for society to update, I think would be bad. Covid did show us for better or for worse that society can update to massive changes sort of faster than I would have thought in many ways. But I still think given the magnitude of the economic impact we expect here more gr...

John Anderson, Andy McKenzie, James Mitchell, and Hunter Biram review the major events and issues affecting markets for Arkansas commodities in 2022 and look ahead to prospects for 2023.

John Anderson and Andy McKenzie are joined by Rachel Barry, risk management specialist with Dairy Farmers of America and alumnae of the agricultural economics and agribusiness department, to discuss risk management tools and challenges in the dairy sector.

John Anderson and Andy McKenzie discuss current research on a variety of commodity and risk management topics with Joe Janzen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois.

John Anderson, Andy McKenzie, and Hunter Biram discuss the impact of reduced Mississippi River barge traffic on Arkansas grain markets.

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: Brain preservation to prevent involuntary death: a possible cause area, published by Andy McKenzie on March 22, 2022 on LessWrong. (Cross-posted at the Effective Altruism Forum) Previous EA discussions of this topic: here, here, here, and here. Note that these primarily focus on cryonics, although I prefer the term brain preservation because it is also compatible with non-cryogenic methods and anchors the discussion around the preservation quality of the brain. See here for more discussion of terminology. This post is split up into two sections: (a) Technical aspects, which discusses why I think preserving brains with methods available today may allow for revival in the future with long-term memories and personality traits intact. (b) Ethical aspects, which discusses why I think the field may be among the most cost-effective ways to convert money into long-term QALYs, given certain beliefs and values. In this post, I'm not discussing whether individuals should sign themselves up for brain preservation, but rather whether it is a good use of altruistic resources to preserve people and perform research about brain preservation. Technical aspects of brain preservation 1. What is the idea behind brain preservation? a. Brain preservation is the process of carefully preserving and protecting the information in someone's brain for an indefinite length of time, with the goal of reviving them if technologic and civilizational capacity ever progresses to the point where it is feasible and humane to do so. b. Our society's definition of death has shifted over time. It depends upon the available medical technology, such as CPR and artificial respiration. In the future, the definition of death will almost certainly be different than it is today. One possible improved definition of death would be when the information in the person's brain that they value is irreversibly lost, which is known as information-theoretic death. c. Pausing life without causing information-theoretic death could be done with a long-term preservation method that is not yet known to be reversible today, but which has the goal of preserving enough information in the brain so that it could potentially become reversible in the future with improvements in technology. This is brain preservation. d. With current methods, we can potentially preserve enough structure in the brain over the long term to retain the information for valued cognitive functions like long-term memories. There are multiple possible methods to attempt to accomplish this, each with upsides and downsides. e. Plausible methods for the revival of people following brain preservation include whole brain emulation or off-board molecular nanotechnology-based repair. 2. What in the brain is necessary to try to preserve? a. It is already possible to stop electrochemical neuronal activity (in humans) and biological time (in other animals) without loss of long-term memories. The cognitive functions that most people care about seem to be encoded by static structures in the brain. More on this here. b. Adequately preserving the brain alone would be enough to retain the information for long-term memories and core personality traits, because it is the only part of the body that is known to be irreplaceable without massive effects on this information. More on this here. c. Despite currently lacking complete models, we can use existing knowledge in neuroscience to evaluate the hypothetical process by which structural information for valued cognitive functions could be mapped in the future. More on this here. d. A wealth of evidence suggests engrams are encoded in neural structures distributed across the brain. More specifically, it seems to be the distributed activity of neuronal ensembles communicating through the biomolecule-annotated connectome that instant...

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Brain preservation to prevent involuntary death: a possible cause area, published by Andy McKenzie on March 22, 2022 on LessWrong. (Cross-posted at the Effective Altruism Forum) Previous EA discussions of this topic: here, here, here, and here. Note that these primarily focus on cryonics, although I prefer the term brain preservation because it is also compatible with non-cryogenic methods and anchors the discussion around the preservation quality of the brain. See here for more discussion of terminology. This post is split up into two sections: (a) Technical aspects, which discusses why I think preserving brains with methods available today may allow for revival in the future with long-term memories and personality traits intact. (b) Ethical aspects, which discusses why I think the field may be among the most cost-effective ways to convert money into long-term QALYs, given certain beliefs and values. In this post, I'm not discussing whether individuals should sign themselves up for brain preservation, but rather whether it is a good use of altruistic resources to preserve people and perform research about brain preservation. Technical aspects of brain preservation 1. What is the idea behind brain preservation? a. Brain preservation is the process of carefully preserving and protecting the information in someone's brain for an indefinite length of time, with the goal of reviving them if technologic and civilizational capacity ever progresses to the point where it is feasible and humane to do so. b. Our society's definition of death has shifted over time. It depends upon the available medical technology, such as CPR and artificial respiration. In the future, the definition of death will almost certainly be different than it is today. One possible improved definition of death would be when the information in the person's brain that they value is irreversibly lost, which is known as information-theoretic death. c. Pausing life without causing information-theoretic death could be done with a long-term preservation method that is not yet known to be reversible today, but which has the goal of preserving enough information in the brain so that it could potentially become reversible in the future with improvements in technology. This is brain preservation. d. With current methods, we can potentially preserve enough structure in the brain over the long term to retain the information for valued cognitive functions like long-term memories. There are multiple possible methods to attempt to accomplish this, each with upsides and downsides. e. Plausible methods for the revival of people following brain preservation include whole brain emulation or off-board molecular nanotechnology-based repair. 2. What in the brain is necessary to try to preserve? a. It is already possible to stop electrochemical neuronal activity (in humans) and biological time (in other animals) without loss of long-term memories. The cognitive functions that most people care about seem to be encoded by static structures in the brain. More on this here. b. Adequately preserving the brain alone would be enough to retain the information for long-term memories and core personality traits, because it is the only part of the body that is known to be irreplaceable without massive effects on this information. More on this here. c. Despite currently lacking complete models, we can use existing knowledge in neuroscience to evaluate the hypothetical process by which structural information for valued cognitive functions could be mapped in the future. More on this here. d. A wealth of evidence suggests engrams are encoded in neural structures distributed across the brain. More specifically, it seems to be the distributed activity of neuronal ensembles communicating through the biomolecule-annotated connectome that instant...

John Anderson, Andy McKenzie, Alvaro Durand-Morat and James Mitchell with the Agricultural Economics & Agribusiness department explore potential agricultural market implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The following materials and/or data sources were referenced in this Relevant Risk episode:The Story of Rising Fertilizer Prices by Aaron Smith (UC-Davis), https://asmith.ucdavis.edu/news/story-rising-fertilizer-pricesDepartment of Energy, Energy Information Administration,  https://www.eia.gov/USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Arkansas Daily Grain Bids, https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/ams_2960.pdfCME Group Grain and Oilseed futures quotes, https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/agriculture.html#products

John Anderson and Andy McKenzie with the Fryar Price Risk Management Center talk with Ed Fryar, founder of the Center, about his experience with risk assessment and risk management over the course of his career in the poultry industry.

In this episode, I chat to Strength Coach and all-round legend Andy McKenzie and discuss a range of interesting topics How the pandemic will see a rise in INCREDIBLE coaches How to juggle business and family life The best way to train without a gym --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/trainermind/message

Want to re-listen to our live show with Andy McKenzie, NOV's Engineering Director of Robotics and New Product Development? It's available now! We discussed an innovative and novel approach to operational efficiency and safety on the rig floor using robotics. You don't want to miss out on this great conversation. For more info, visit nov.com #NOVLiveInternational

This episode we are luck yto be joined by Andy Mckenzie and Mark Laws. We have some great conversations about; Programming Assessments Bench marking and scaling for you clients Online delivery, and much more.

In this episode I chat with my good friend Andy Mckenzie and discuss the things we wish we knew 10 years ago. Enjoy this longer than usual episode full of knowledge bombs Want to train with me? Check out TRAIN WITH JAY

Can you get stronger by not lifting heavy weights? Yes, but how? I feel the strongest I have ever felt, and all my 1RM lifts have gone up in the gym, yet I'm not doing any traditional rep ranges in terms of my strength training, why is this? A short show with Andy McKenzie in support to quickly explore this topic on getting strong! 

What do you do in the gym, and why? What should you do as a warm up, cool down, and the bulk of the session? What can we learn from crossfit and other systems of training? In this episode we explore Andy's WRAPS system of training and explore the essential components of a workout with purpose. We also discuss the character traits that leads to a confident trainee, along with many other ramblings and musings.  Check out Combined Strength: http://combinedstrength.com 

Andy "IronMac" McKenzie is a top international strength & conditioning coach with an impressive military background. He's trained numerous high level athletes and has competed at a high level many times, himself.     In this episode we discuss: His background in the military & lessons learned [3:58]. His morning & nighttime routine [8:42]. His transition from military to civilian life [11:40]. The beginning of his career and challenges [13:49-18:36]. His advice on getting started in the fitness industry [18:47-22:47]. His training philosophy [25:16]. His training techniques for the elite athlete vs the average person [27:25-49:07]. The one thing you should do every day to improve shoulder health [31:39]. His unique training system [49:08]. How training changes after 40 [51:20]. How to activate your lats properly [1:04:01]. How to relieve tight hips and hamstrings [1:06:09]. How to maintain your diet and workouts while on the road [1:08:53]. How to gain size and strength using only bodyweight [1:11:09]. His favorite training books and sources for designing programs [1:16:02]. His workshops and it's breakdown [1:18:10]. Best pre workout warm ups [1:18:50]. This episode is brought to you by Organifi, an organic, superfood supplement line that makes quality trusted nutrition convenient and accessible. Their most popular product, GREEN JUICE, solves the problem of juicing greens ON THE GO! Just add to water, drink and let your body soak up the benefits. Use code ‘Renegade’ at checkout for 20% off your order! With Organifi you can get all your healthy superfoods in one drink… With no shopping, no juicing, no blending and no clean up. In just 30 seconds a day you can supercharge your life, restore glowing good health, and feel decades younger. Save time. Increase mental clarity. Improve health. Reduce stress. Detoxify your body. Rejuvenate your skin. Boost immunity. Click HERE to get 20% off your order by using the coupon code “renegade” at checkout. https://jasonferruggia.com/organifi Selected Links From The Episode Royal Arm Physical Training Corp The Combined Strength Group Instagram: @IronMacFitness  AMI: Assess move and improve (past event) Book Mentions A Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The Anabolic Diet by Mauro DiPasquale is out of print, but check out his book Anabolic Solution for Bodybuilders. Underground Body Opus: Militant Weight Loss & Recomposition by Dan Duchaine (The Body Opus). Overcoming Gravity by Steven Low. Essential of Strength Conditioning by NSCA- National Strength & Conditioning Association. If you have questions, shoot them my way on Twitter (@JasonFerruggia) or email podcast@JasonFerruggia.com Thank you for tuning in, subscribing, and listening. I appreciate every one of you that takes the time to listen.

Bodyweight training is a fantastic, versatile and cost effective way to get stronger, improve flexibility and increase your mobility. On this episode of the podcast, Scott is joined by fellow Scotsman Andy McKenzie who is a leading strength coach and mobility expert. Andy shares some fantastic drills that you can use to test your strength, he explains his favourite methods for improving press-ups and pullups, how to do handstands, his take on core training, how to improve conditioning and grip strength and how to effectively structure your workout. FFF 071: Ultimate Bodyweight Training Mastery - with Andy 'IronMac' McKenzie is a post from: Food For Fitness    

In this podcast Mark interviews well respected strength and conditioning coach Andy McKenzie from IronMac Fitness. In 1 hour and 10 minutes of content Andy delves deep into his own story about his time in the military and talks about a severe back injury he endured in his early 20s which lead to a seriously long road to recovery and a re-evaulation of his own training. Andy gets in depth about his current training regime, his nutrition philosophy, his day to day principles for enjoying life and gives an insight into his 2 weeks spent in Russia at Dimitry Klokov's weightlifting school. Andy is as honest as they come and there are plenty of expletives! If you love your training then you are gonna really enjoy this - his passion for being fit and strong is infectious. Sit back and enjoy, just like I did! www.30plusmensfitness.com www.30plusmensfitnessplan.com www.30plusbootcamp.com

Episode 17 sees me having a great chat with strength & conditioning coach and owner of the Training Lab, Andy 'Iron Mac' McKenzie. Andy puts some great information out there and after booking on to his core training workshop I had to get him on. We discuss everything from his background in the military to his thoughts on body weight and core training. Andy also gives a great insight into running an S&C facility which he has done very successfully over the last few years. This is a great episode for all those that are thinking about setting up there own facility & those wondering whether working with the general public is a viable option....which after listening you will hear that it is! If you want to subscribe to the podcast, shoot over to iTunes and press 'subscribe'. You can also listen online at paceyperformance.co.uk & if you like the episodes so far, please share the love on Twitter and Facebook. Enjoy PP

This week I have yet another special interview podcast. It’s with one of the UK leading strength and conditioning coaches, Andy Mckenzie. Andy’s expertise is founded on his impressive military background, his broad experience as an elite S&C coach, and his outstanding performance as an athlete. ​He lives and trains by his I AM philosophy. In 2012, Andy brought together all of his skills and knowledge to create The Training Lab – one of the most ambitious gym projects in the UK. And now, you can experience IronMac’s methods for yourself: In this podcast we chat: {+} why chasing performance is a key factor to changing your physique {+} the importance of mobility in your training routine ​{+} the negative consequences of ‘transformation’ diets and protocols {+} Andy’s core values when training his clients {+} Andy’s exact coaching process to eating right {+} the importance of coaching and its responsibilities

Today I talk to special guest Andy McKenzie, aka Iron Mac Fitness. Pre warning, this is an explicit show. Andy is a strength coach that I highly respect and love his take and perspective on training and life. We talk about training variables, the importance of developing a base from body weight training, earning the right to progress, ideal program structure, have a piss and a moan about issues in the fitness industry, and look at his personal road back from a major back injury.