Ben Mann Monthly August 2022
Ben Mann Monthly August 2022
DEFCON, baby prep, text2im, 80000 hours podcasts
Purpose
An index for my memory
A menu of topics for my next conversation with you
A faster way to share what I’m excited about without the barrier of writing a complete blog entry on it
A skimmable way to spread content I found valuable
Experiments and experiences
DEFCON30
I hadn't planned to go to DEFCON, but due to my involvement in Anthropic's security work, I met many people who highly recommended it. The final straw was at EAG where I met some security folks who said they were going and thought I'd get a lot out of it. My usual conference strategy is to follow folks I know around, meet their friends, and repeat recursively. Starting with the folks who suggested I go and a couple of SF friends I happened to bump into, I ended up having a great experience! I went to almost no talks. The few I went to made me glad I prioritized meeting and talking instead.
I first learned to solder in 2005 when I interned in an optical engineering lab, and then got much better at it when I captained a robotics team. Since becoming a software engineer, I've hardly touched it, but it came back quickly. I ended up teaching the five folks around me how to do it too.
A few days before the conference, I read that Starlink's terminals have been hacked. At the time, it didn't seem that interesting. So you hacked your user terminal. What now? The satellites are still up there in space. Probably can't sniff others' traffic. I was invited by a recruiter to a secret SpaceX party at some bar. I showed up and started talking to random people since I didn't know anyone there. One of them happened to be Lennert Wouters! As we were chatting, the head of Starlink's hardware team approached and the two of them began talking shop. I followed the dialogue reasonably well, but had nothing to contribute. Alas, an amusing experience. I won't write the details of the conversation here, but I was impressed by Starlink's commitment to supporting Lennert's further research.
I missed many parties that started around 10pm, instead choosing to be an old man and go to bed early. I stayed about 2 miles away from the main venue to save money, but I didn't regret it.
In the physical security village, I learned about tamper evident devices, which, among other things, allow users to detect when a lock might have been breached and then returned to its original position. I spent a few hours with some friends trying to defeat even the simplest of them, and had no luck. My friends did better, but still couldn't pull off a flawless victory.
I was most excited for the social engineering competition I'd heard described in Darknet Diaries: Alethe, but I missed the main sessions. I did listen to some amateur attempts, some of which were successful! They used tactics like pretending to be a student, an employee from another branch, and an admin from HQ. Lower status worked better.
I'd never been to Las Vegas before. It was roughly what I expected: a distributed shrine to American consumerism and hedonism, at every turn attempting to hack our reward systems. By the time I left, I just wanted a salad and the cool, forgiving San Francisco sunlight. See Big Red Son for a better rendition of Vegas than I can muster.
The very first thing I saw when I got to the convention and checked in was people injecting RFIDs and magnets into their hands. The magnets could be useful for allowing the host to sense ambient magnetic fields. The RFIDs could provide ambient rickrolling for any sniffers nearby. Unfortunately, using them for payments, unlocking houses or cars, or even a business card presents too much security risk. This is why we can't have nice things.
I met one of my internet heroes, after whose newsletter this one is modeled! Had a nice shop talk with him. Also met a whole bunch of others, especially two former 8200 folks who I got to debate one another on some security topics and then sat back and watched the sparks fly. They'd make an excellent podcast!
Back on running
I got very out of shape (at least by my standards). I could make a bunch of excuses, but the reality is that I got out of the habit and didn't prioritize getting back into it. Time to reboot!
Kaiser classes: childbirth and breastfeeding
We couldn't help but feel the whole process is horribly barbaric and medieval. On the other end of the spectrum, we Youtube binged industrial ice cream manufacturing videos. From injecting all sorts of hormones and analgesics into the mother to force the desired actions, to using giant tongs on the baby's head to pull it out, to cutting her open with a month of recovery time, it all seemed like we should have better ways. Despite the risk for 24h labor, we'll hope for natural birth to minimize the recovery time. October 10 is the due date, so expect a gory, creamy update soon!
The age of easy image generation has begun. See this Astral Codex Ten post for some excellent samples pushing the limits of the current generation of technology. A thousand derivative research flowers are now blooming, including text to video from Meta. I can't decide whether to be happy or sad that this stuff is distracting folks from the more direct path to transformative AI, but I'm probably happy on net. The folks making this stuff tend to think safety isn't an issue, and I don't see any X-risk from working on it, even if it does lead to harmful or offensive content occasionally being produced.
Life updates
📚 Started reading Friendship is Optimal
🍼 Acquiring more newborn equipment
🚴 Hawk hill ride
😴 Late publishing this newsletter by a month due to sleep apnea, will explain in next month's!
Content
5 point Likert ratings for “I would recommend this content to a friend”, sorted
I'd heard Matt's name many times, but I'd never read any of his stuff. I found this podcast to be a fascinating window into a pundit who highly values his calibration and reach. He seems to be relentlessly practical on every issue he has an opinion on, and has a firm understanding of how political change does and doesn't work.
Seemed like he totally demolished Bryan Caplan's argument that formal education doesn't matter.
His voice has a distractingly broad pitch range.
Lots of other takes I would've liked to take notes on, but I've since forgotten. The sands of time flow quickly!
Sandman S1 3/5
I haven't read the graphic novel, but this was a fun fantasy romp about what dreams mean to different people, what happens when dreams are disrupted, and a slew of eclectic and strange characters.
It looks like you're trying to take over the world 3/5
The key mistake that let the AI out of the box was allowing it an unrestricted action space when interacting with the open web. Let's not do that, shall we?
I felt Friendship is Optimal was both more fun to read and more likely than this story arc.
Darknet episodes 3/5
Continues to be some of the best security content out there! Didn't take notes 😭. Likely Voulnet and Ed.
Nomadland 3/5
A depressing look at what happens when you're displaced from your tight knit community when the company keeping the town afloat goes under.
Excellent performance by Frances McDormand
Reminded me of a few friends who've tried the van life, but with much more capital backing them. They all eventually went back to more traditional modes. It's tough to live on the road, and lonely.
Effective altruism in the garden of ends 3/5
If you take any mission too seriously, you're going to make yourself suffer. Effective altruists are particularly prone to this because they forget about or downplay their own needs until they have no legs left to stand on.
I've met the author of the piece, as well as many other EAs who've burned out. It's really sad. If anyone is EA and burning out, ping me or a friend. It doesn't have to be this way. The most helpful resource I know of on this subject is Nate Soares' Replacing Guilt.
Will MacAskill on what we owe the future 3/5
Will's done an incredible job promoting his new book. He tries to make things like population ethics and the repugnant conclusion accessible to the average reader.
Some nice historical details about Will's journey, his struggle with living up to his own moral standards, some fun digressions on potatoes and megafauna, etc.
I preferred Astral Codex Ten's review, which posits that philosophers are really good at mugging people, but ultimately you're allowed to just say no. "Do I have positive wishes for the long-term future anyway? That depends. Is it an honest question? Then yes, I hope we have a long and glorious future, free from suffering and full of happiness. Or is it some kind of trick where five steps later you will prove that I should let seagulls peck out my eyes? Then no, I’ll stick to doing things because I don’t want x-risks to kill me and everyone I know, sorry."
I listened to this episode mainly because I'd read an article about Tegmark's many worlds hypothesis and was interested enough that I went to Penn to hear him talk about it in 2003. While it was a fun sci-fi-ish talk, I can't say it made me want to study physics or otherwise affect my life.
Max sounds pretty Bostrom-pilled. I don't think he's kept up with the latest in AI safety or language models. I wonder if I should reach out to chat.
He's building a site called Improve the News, which seeks to pop filter bubbles by presenting ideas from both sides of the isle. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a real market for such a service. ~Filter bubbles exist because they increase engagement.~ I tried to back this up with a study and actually it seems the latest research on it is divided (Wiki page, Recommender systems and the amplification of extremist content and Algorithmic Extremism: Examining YouTube's Rabbit Hole of Radicalization)
The Worst Person in the World 2/5
Despite its 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 90% on Metacritic, I couldn't quite get over the main character's narcissism. This New Yorker review is a bit overly harsh, but then being a critic often requires committing to your stance.
Anyway, a young woman dates an older man who says it won't work out because their life stages are too different. He ends up being right, but they go through a lot of pain, each in their own way, to figure that out, including a pretty scary mushroom trip.
Excellent cinematography and performances.
