204 – Simulacra Levels with Zvi (and more)

We speak with Zvi Mowshowitz about his work and recent history, what happened at OpenAI, and then really dig into Simulacra Levels – a way to categorize the different types of things people are attempting to do when they say words to other people. OTHER LINKS Zvi’s Simulacra Levels Summary Less Wrong Simulacra Page Zvi on the Clearer Thinking podcast re Simulacra Zvi on OpenAI’s Battle of the Board On Bounded Distrust Zvi’s Substack Zvi’s Twitter You Get About Five Words More Dakka 0:00:23 – Zvi’s many exploits with rationalism 0:26:13 – What happened at OpenAI? 0:41:49 – Simulacra Level 1 0:45:43 – Simulacra Level 2 1:02:38 – Simulacra Level 3 1:11:02 – Why these terms? 1:18:19 – 1-3 Recap 1:22:15 – Simulacra Level 4 1:42:56 – Less Wrong Posts 1:59:17 – Guild of the Rose Update 2:00:33 – Thank the Patron We now partner with The Guild of the Rose, check them out. Hey look, we have a discord! What could possibly go wrong? Our Patreon page–your support is most rational, and totally effective. (also merch) Rationality: From AI to Zombies, The Podcast LessWrong Sequence Posts Discussed in this Episode: Searching for Bayes-Structure Conditional Independence, and Naive Bayes Next Sequence Posts: Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles Variable Question Fallacies