Joe Edelman
@edelwax
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wise AI; moral graphs; mechanism & game design; big data virtue ethics; meaning metrics; values-based choice theory @meaningaligned
Berlin
Joined July 2006
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Pinned Tweet
“What are human values, and how do we align to them?”
Very excited to release our new paper on values alignment, co-authored with
@ryan_t_lowe
and funded by
@openai
.
📝:
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There are ~20 pendulums like this that, if we learned them in school, would defang most ideologies and startup ideas.
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I'd like to rephrase this:
It's hugely dangerous when designers of humans systems are naive about human systems.
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I'm pleased to release the talk “Rebuilding Society on Meaning: Practical Techniques to Align Markets, Recommenders, Social Networks, and Organizations with Togetherness and Meaning”.
This 80m talk is my life's work!
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The five most powerful technologies of isolation—smartphones, cars, suburbs, TV, and single family homes—arose just in the last century.
The built environment shapes how we form and maintain friendships, and it's useful to remember that common living patterns today have "shallow roots"
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We're starting something called the Social Design Club—a place where social designers can present what they are working on and get feedback—as part of
@peternlimberg
's The Stoa.
Have a social design you want feedback on? DM me or
@utotranslucence
!
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Could Facebook ever be Time Well Spent?
➡️ NEW ESSAYS: "Dear Zuck" and "How to Design Social Systems (Without Causing Depression and War)"
(1)
(2)
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Many (
@fortelabs
,
@Conaw
,
@andy_matuschak
) think we need a 𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙙 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣. In this research demo, I ask: What if we had a 𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙙 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩, instead?
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NEW TALK: Is Anything Worth Maximizing? On Metrics, Society, and Selves.
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I'm upgrading Kegan/Kohlberg to 9 stages, 2 dimensions, and cute animals.
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I just published “Nothing To Be Done”
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Are you designing for people’s power and status drives? Their curiosities and appreciations? Their personal goals? Or something new?
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I just published “On the dangers of ‘mindful’ and ‘well-being-based’ design”
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The transcript to my metrics talk is now available, with footnotes: (talk still at )
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Founders! I want to try shifting how you think about your product. If you're making a tool or toolkit, can we get together and try reframing it as an environment or playground?
If you're up for this thought experiment, grab a free slot:
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Utopian architects have inspired city planners for centuries. Where are our utopian interface designers?
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This has quickly become my most popular design suggestion, and now it's a 6 minute video (). It's about splitting your project into funnels, tubes, and spaces.
Why's it popular? It’s easy to grasp, and makes a big difference in what you make.
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I had a nightmare that bitcoin miners built a dyson sphere and Earth went dark
As we lay freezing to death, I though: *that* explains the fermi paradox
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In his new TED talk,
@tristanharris
calls for a design renaissance and a new vision of human nature. I'm working on it. Who else is?
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Curious if this works for people
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Request for Scientific Subfield
𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. Covers database, knowledge graph, & AI-driven ways to help users formulate their values, goals, mental models, surface trauma, false beliefs, etc.
⟨a subfield of⟩ HCI, HITL ML, and phenomenology.
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All this underscores one thing: no one has a good vision of how to integrate powerful AI in society.
The "time to build" folks are for technocapitalism-as-usual. That won't work for AGI.
The "go slower" people are driven by fear, not by an alternate, positive vision.
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Holding apps accountable for our time is the first step. Next we must hold them accountable for affecting the quality of our relationships, our projects, and so on.
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This is something I'm working on. If it seems like something you'd like to work on, get in touch.
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My life's work is now browsable. Big ups to
@worrydream
for the encouragement.
http://t.co/9J08bMr90M
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Say you make a social product. You’re a bit worried: you might make something dystopian, by accident. What should you avoid? 👇
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A nice set of Time Well Spent mock-ups for iOS 15 by
@welfvh
/cc
@tristanharris
Time Well Spent features like rating recent app sessions and App Store charts based on what apps users really enjoy.
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For many reasons, utilitarian consequentialism is lousy for self-understanding. Here’s one: asking “Am I helpful or harmful?” is soul-crushing compared to “Am I an agent of beauty/truth/love/etc?”
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Fast converging on a world where everyone is in 100+ “communities” but no one to bring them soup when sick or watch the kids.
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Design theory *should* be the same discipline as political theory. Same core question ❓what ideas about human nature (preferences, goals, feelings) and relations (contracts, solidarity, family) best guide the development of institutions/policies/systems?❓
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Is there anything like a startup accelerator but for new ideologies?
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I've had it with tech optimists *and* tech critics. We need considerate inventors, to repair or replace our broken systems.
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🧵 A very common problem in entrepreneurship 👇
Your values and vision lead you to make X.
X, once made, doesn't serve those values or visions at all.
Here's my story, how I think about the problem, and what we can do about it.
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"Nothing to be Done" has been read by 1000 people and reshared by lots. Wish we could all hang out together!
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The next big HCI lab will be explicitly political. The time for PARC-like labs is gone. The internet / software environment has come to dominate society, so those building alt software must have a political vision, and it must be explicit and up for debate.
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There's danger to decentralizing the web before we can make it accountable to social harms.
- machine-enforced contracts involving child exploitation
- AI driven profit maximizer bots
- clickbait incentives baked into P2P code
Worse than monopolies
3.
#Decentralisation
is ultimately a question of
#democracy
. As digital technology penetrates society ever more deeply & the two become ever more intertwined, the rules of the former will increasingly govern the latter"
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A common cause of procrastination:
“I wish I had a buddy for task X. I’m also disconnected from my feelings about it. So instead of feeling lonely, I distract myself.”
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Yes, humans are malleable.
But beware anyone who talks of reinventing people or culture as a step *before* reinventing social systems.
They’re likely justifying their own work (neo-monasteries, leadership trainings, personal growth, …) & hiding a lack of institutional ideas.
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Life Don't Make Sense, But Can Have Meaning
Do not seek narrative coherence nor unified purpose in life. You'll get all frustrated and boring.
But purpose and meaning can everywhere be found!
How? In moments of choice and attention, when you grapple with your values.
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Founders, I'll talk with you about your product for free. These four cards show some product reframes we can try together, maybe they'll give you new ideas. Click for more info, and a scheduling link.
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I wrote something very embarrassing and personal and full of admissions and apologies that have been overdue for a long time.
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I have a bold prediction. It might seem crazy.
→ Four years from now, the overall outlook will be radically different. Much more positive.
Today, tech just keeps getting more dystopian; politics seems irrevocably broken; everything's fake.
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To change someone's perspective (i.e., their attention policies) give them either:
(1) situations that require new modes of attention; or
(2) help feeling through feelings, to shift values.
@peternlimberg
@buster
@Conaw
@juliagalef
etc
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This by
@slatestarcodex
is a good tour of what in
@humsys
we call the "structural features" that make a value like "open-minded debate" easier.
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I used to find conversation impossible with some people: those who relentlessly reframe things, who attack, blame, close up, change the subject.
I wish I'd known earlier: if I'm loving, attentive, and let their pattern run its course.. afterwards, they get curious and open!
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We reconcile value conflicts by asking which values participants think are wiser than others within a context.
This lets us build an alignment target we call a "moral graph".
It surfaces the wisest values of a large population, without relying on an ultimate moral theory.
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Explore vs exploit payoffs is likely the most powerful mental model I know.
Predicts:
- innovators dilemma
- ideal city layouts
- why some people can be present with one another and others can’t
- psychedelic big thoughts
- why research is stifled in big companies
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Is “Assisted Introspection” a subfield of AI/HCI yet?
Seems like this covers a great deal of interesting research.
@MuseAppHQ
@andy_matuschak
@Conaw
@buster
@peternlimberg
@pwang
@metaviv
@jonathanstray
@shancarter
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Could Facebook ever be Time Well Spent?
➡️ NEW ESSAYS: "Dear Zuck" and "How to Design Social Systems (Without Causing Depression and War)"
0
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Philosophical errors have real consequences
i think im antiea radicalized now
my friends treat their body like a playground (experiments with drugs, meditations, new exercises etc), cycle through dangerous sports, startups, and various ideologies. as a group nothing has hurt their wellbeing as much as ea as
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San Francisco: thousands seek authenticity and community in ayahuasca and soulcycle, because it's impossible to see friends and there's nowhere to sit in the sun
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Our approach, MGE, outperforms alternatives like CCAI by
@anthropic
on legitimacy in a case study, and offers robustness against ideological rhetoric.
89% even agree the winning values were fair, even if their own value didn't win!
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🆕 "One Weird Trick for Understanding Social Issues" — about Information Flow, Social Change, and the Last 400 Years.
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I've been working on a wiki-like site to collect **group practices** (and people's experiences inside them). Putting together a team of "librarians of group practices" to test and improve it. Want in?
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"Four Ideas for Better Human Systems", a new summary of my work (it's really five ideas)
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Folks, we invented an org structure and it’s pretty rad
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I disagree with both
@Conaw
and
@fortelabs
on issues of networked research and "second brain". I hope I get to fight the winner—which will be
@Conaw
.
Going toe to toe with
@fortelabs
on knowledge management this Thursday in front of a live audience.
10am PST on Zoom
Call in sick, Work from Home, tell your assistant to cancel your meetings and phone calls.
When I demo
@RoamResearch
, he's going down like this.
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This is true more generally—keeping bridges from collapsing isn't called ethics and it's just someone's job. But we're in the stage before we know how to make it someone's job.
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Are you an entrepreneur? You're probably a "same-preneur": you want to get many people doing the same thing: clicking a button, buying a product, downloading an app. You want to drive transactions and build funnels.
I hope to convince you to do something else.
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When I was 17, I wanted to help return magic to the world. I wrote this poem.
I gradually discovered what it meant.
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An xmas present for those listening
A work of political philosophy on
- what it is to help someone
- what a good technocracy'd be like
- measuring social benefit/harm
- etc
Ch1 of my book (draft epub + gdoc for feedback)
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Sources of Pride
(and how they keep people locked in worldviews)
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Some questions from members of
@KERNEL0x
, about my talk.
[4m30] my 16y research project
[12m55] becoming a peer to my heroes
[18m20] transaction costs of collaboration
[24m10] meaning-aligned allocators
[26m10] status dynamics elevate the wrong people
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We can use the moral graph to create a wise model, which can navigate tricky moral situations that RLHF or CAI would struggle with.
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I have a new video! Private showings coming up in Austin, SF, and online. Wanne come?
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@Conaw
@DavidSHolz
@fortelabs
@andy_matuschak
@tracyplaces
@rjnestor
@beauhaan
I'll add more in the feeling direction! Specifically: the emotions to values process we teach.
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Great, accessible summary from
@CaseyNewton
. He's right: we must battle for these terms. Definitions of 'well spent' and 'meaningful' are of great social consequence, just like definitions of 'free', 'equal', and 'just'.
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A good social designer searches a very large space of imagined designs, detecting problems with them, vectoring towards better designs.
Which kinds of imagining are you good at?
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🆕 Alternative Institutions Rising
— How the Virus is Helping Us Find a Better Social Stack
Thanks to
@aaronzlewis
@AnneSelke
@ntnsndr
@fullydavid
@elibcx
@Ben_Reinhardt
@borismus
!
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I've started making "bipartite checklists". First item is a to-do; second is some kind of "energy I expect back from the universe" if I do the first item, w/o which I refuse to do the third. /cc
@Malcolm_Ocean
@andy_matuschak
@Conaw
@peternlimberg
@utotranslucence
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I was asked for 3 books for all young software engineers to read.
1. Technopoly, Neal Postman (1992)
2. The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord (1967)
3. The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander (1979)
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We are heading to a future where powerful models fine-tuned on individual preferences & operator intent exacerbate societal issues like polarization and atomization.
In order to avoid this, we need to align AI to shared human values. But how do we do that, concretely?
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We have a radical approach to online learning that's working well in the new
@humsys
training, the School for Social Design. I bet it could work well for other topics.
It combines these components: a textbook, a mission database, an alumni database, paid experts, and guides. 👇
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🆕 POST --> "Recent work in philosophy suggests a better direction for technology and politics"
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Tomorrow I'm publishing two new essays, in response to Facebook trying to go Time Well Spent.
* Dear Zuck
* How to Design Social Systems (Without Causing Depression and War)
Watch this space. Tomorrow at 10a PST!
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Grokking this chart requires a few minutes, but it captures much about designing for values & what's learned playing Out of Character.
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