Difference between revisions of "Timeline of Wei Dai publications"

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| LessWrong Wiki || 2009 ||
 
| LessWrong Wiki || 2009 ||
 
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==Full timeline==
 
==Full timeline==
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|-
 
|-
 
| 1999 || {{Dts|January 15}} || Email || everything-list || [https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/0289.html "book recommendation"] || The message recommends Li and Vitanyi's ''An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications'' to everyone on the mailing list. || ||
 
| 1999 || {{Dts|January 15}} || Email || everything-list || [https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/0289.html "book recommendation"] || The message recommends Li and Vitanyi's ''An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications'' to everyone on the mailing list. || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 1999 || {{dts|January 21}} || Email || everything-list || [https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/0316.html "Re: consciousness based on information or computation?"] || This seems to be where Wei Dai proposes what would later be called UDASSA.<ref>https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/14000.html -- the nabble.com link is broken as of 2020-03-06, so I can't be certain of which email Wei is linking to, but at least I know that the thread is the right one.</ref><ref>https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/6919.html -- this email doesn't mention the name "UDASSA", but I'm pretty sure that they are talking about UDASSA, given the context.</ref> || ||
 
|-
 
|-
 
| 1999 || {{dts|March 27}} || Email || Extropians || [http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q99/3684.html "reasoning under computational limitations"] || || ||
 
| 1999 || {{dts|March 27}} || Email || Extropians || [http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q99/3684.html "reasoning under computational limitations"] || || ||
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| 2007 || {{dts|August 28}} || Paper || || [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.65.9987&rep=rep1&type=pdf "VHASH Security"] || Co-authored with Ted Krovetz. || ||
 
| 2007 || {{dts|August 28}} || Paper || || [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.65.9987&rep=rep1&type=pdf "VHASH Security"] || Co-authored with Ted Krovetz. || ||
 
|-
 
|-
−
| 2007 || {{dts|September 26}} || Email || everything-list || [https://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg13817.html "against UD+ASSA, part 1"] || || ||
+
| 2007 || {{dts|September 26}} || Email || everything-list || [https://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg13817.html "against UD+ASSA, part 1"] || This was reposted to LessWrong [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zd2DrbHApWypJD2Rz/udt2-and-against-ud-assa]. || ||
 
|-
 
|-
−
| 2007 || {{dts|September 26}} || Email || everything-list || [https://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg13818.html "against UD+ASSA, part 2"] || || ||
+
| 2007 || {{dts|September 26}} || Email || everything-list || [https://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list@googlegroups.com/msg13818.html "against UD+ASSA, part 2"] || This was reposted to LessWrong [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zd2DrbHApWypJD2Rz/udt2-and-against-ud-assa]. || ||
 
|-
 
|-
 
| 2007 || {{dts|November 1}} || Email || SL4 || [http://sl4.org/archive/0711/16977.html "how to do something with really small probability?"] || || ||
 
| 2007 || {{dts|November 1}} || Email || SL4 || [http://sl4.org/archive/0711/16977.html "how to do something with really small probability?"] || || ||
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| 2009 || {{dts|November 9}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1e8/reflections_on_prerationality/ "Reflections on Pre-Rationality"] || || 30 ||
 
| 2009 || {{dts|November 9}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1e8/reflections_on_prerationality/ "Reflections on Pre-Rationality"] || || 30 ||
 
|-
 
|-
−
| 2009 || {{Dts|November 16}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fu/why_and_why_not_bayesian_updating/ "Why (and why not) Bayesian Updating?"] || || 26 ||
+
| 2009 || {{Dts|November 16}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fu/why_and_why_not_bayesian_updating/ "Why (and why not) Bayesian Updating?"] || The post shares Paolo Ghirardato's paper "Revisiting Savage in a Conditional World", which gives axioms (based on [[wikipedia:Leonard Jimmie Savage|Savage]]'s axioms) which are "necessary and sufficient for an agent's preferences in a dynamic decision problem to be represented as expected utility maximization with Bayesian belief updating". The post points out that one of the axioms is violated in certain problems like counterfactual mugging and the absentminded driver; this motivates using something other than Bayesian updating, namely something like Wei Dai's own updateless decision theory. The postscript points out that in Ghirardato's decision theory, using the joint probability instead of conditional probability gives an equivalent theory (i.e. it is possible to have an agent that produces the same actions, but where the agent's beliefs about each thing can only get weaker and never stronger), and asks why human beliefs don't work like this. (The comments provide some answers.) || 26 ||
 
|-
 
|-
 
| 2009 || {{dts|November 24}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1gg/agree_retort_or_ignore_a_post_from_the_future/ "Agree, Retort, or Ignore? A Post From the Future"] || || 87 ||
 
| 2009 || {{dts|November 24}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1gg/agree_retort_or_ignore_a_post_from_the_future/ "Agree, Retort, or Ignore? A Post From the Future"] || || 87 ||
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| 2010 || {{dts|January 24}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ns/value_uncertainty_and_the_singleton_scenario/ "Value Uncertainty and the Singleton Scenario"] || || 28 ||
 
| 2010 || {{dts|January 24}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ns/value_uncertainty_and_the_singleton_scenario/ "Value Uncertainty and the Singleton Scenario"] || || 28 ||
 
|-
 
|-
−
| 2010 || {{dts|January 30}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1oj/complexity_of_value_complexity_of_outcome/ "Complexity of Value ≠ Complexity of Outcome"] || || 198 ||
+
| 2010 || {{dts|January 30}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1oj/complexity_of_value_complexity_of_outcome/ "Complexity of Value ≠ Complexity of Outcome"] || The post makes the distinction between simple vs complex values, and simple vs complex outcomes. Others on LessWrong have argued that human values are complex (in the Kolmogorov complexity sense). Wei Dai points out that there is a tendency on LessWrong to further assume that complex values lead to complex outcomes (thus a future that reflects human values will be complex). Wei Dai argues against this further assumption, saying that complex values can lead to simple outcomes: human values have many different components that don't reduce to each other, but most of them don't scale with the amount of available resources. This means that the few components of human values which ''do'' scale can come to dominate the future. The post then discusses the relevance of this idea to AI alignment: if the different components of human values interact additively, then instead of using something like Eliezer Yudkowsky's Coherent Extrapolated Volition, it may be possible to obtain almost all possible value by creating a superintelligence with just those components that do scale with resources. || 198 ||
 
|-
 
|-
 
| 2010 || {{dts|February 9}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1r9/shut_up_and_divide/ "Shut Up and Divide?"] || || 258 ||
 
| 2010 || {{dts|February 9}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1r9/shut_up_and_divide/ "Shut Up and Divide?"] || || 258 ||
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|-
 
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| 2019 || {{dts|January 4}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6RjL996E8Dsz3vHPk/two-more-decision-theory-problems-for-humans "Two More Decision Theory Problems for Humans"] || || ||
 
| 2019 || {{dts|January 4}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6RjL996E8Dsz3vHPk/two-more-decision-theory-problems-for-humans "Two More Decision Theory Problems for Humans"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|January 8}} || Question post || Effective Altruism Forum || [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rRvWNwdfveSS2uNtT/how-should-large-donors-coordinate-with-small-donors "How should large donors coordinate with small donors?"] || || ||
 
|-
 
|-
 
| 2019 || {{dts|January 11}} || Question post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hnvPCZ4Cx35miHkw3/why-is-so-much-discussion-happening-in-private-google-docs "Why is so much discussion happening in private Google Docs?"] || || ||
 
| 2019 || {{dts|January 11}} || Question post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hnvPCZ4Cx35miHkw3/why-is-so-much-discussion-happening-in-private-google-docs "Why is so much discussion happening in private Google Docs?"] || || ||
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|-
 
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| 2019 || {{dts|March 21}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WXvt8bxYnwBYpy9oT/the-main-sources-of-ai-risk "The Main Sources of AI Risk?"] || || ||
 
| 2019 || {{dts|March 21}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WXvt8bxYnwBYpy9oT/the-main-sources-of-ai-risk "The Main Sources of AI Risk?"] || || ||
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|-
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| 2019 || {{dts|March 28}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GEHg5T9tNbJYTdZwb/please-use-real-names-especially-for-alignment-forum "Please use real names, especially for Alignment Forum?"] || || ||
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|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|April 24}} || Blog post || LessWrong, Alignment Forum || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gYaKZeBbSL4y2RLP3/strategic-implications-of-ais-ability-to-coordinate-at-low "Strategic implications of AIs' ability to coordinate at low cost, for example by merging"] || The post argues that compared to humans, AIs will be able to coordinate much more easily with each other, for example by merging their utility functions. The post then discusses two implications of this: (1) Robin Hanson has argued that it is more important for AIs to obey laws than to share human values and that this implies humans should work to make sure institutions like laws will survive into the future; but if AIs can coordinate with each other without laws, it doesn't make sense to work toward this goal; (2) it is likely that an important part of competitiveness for AIs is the ability to coordinate with other AIs, so any AI alignment approach that aims to be competitive with unaligned AIs must preserve the ability to coordinate with other AIs, which might imply for instance that aligned AI will refuse to be shut down because doing so will make it unable to merge with other AIs. || || 472
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|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|May 10}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xYav5gMSuQvhQHNHG/disincentives-for-participating-on-lw-af "Disincentives for participating on LW/AF"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|May 11}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zd2DrbHApWypJD2Rz/udt2-and-against-ud-assa {{"'}}UDT2' and 'against UD+ASSA{{'"}}] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|May 21}} || Question post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sM2sANArtSJE6duZZ/where-are-people-thinking-and-talking-about-global "Where are people thinking and talking about global coordination for AI safety?"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|May 29}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/B3NR6SwkXkvY8cFpK/how-to-find-a-lost-phone-with-dead-battery-using-google "How to find a lost phone with dead battery, using Google Location History Takeout"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|June 7}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Sn5NiiD5WBi4dLzaB/agi-will-drastically-increase-economies-of-scale "AGI will drastically increase economies of scale"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|July 25}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JSjagTDGdz2y6nNE3/on-the-purposes-of-decision-theory-research "On the purposes of decision theory research"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|July 30}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rBkZvbGDQZhEymReM/forum-participation-as-a-research-strategy "Forum participation as a research strategy"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|August 17}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rASeoR7iZ9Fokzh7L/problems-in-ai-alignment-that-philosophers-could-potentially "Problems in AI Alignment that philosophers could potentially contribute to"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|August 26}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dt4z82hpvvPFTDTfZ/six-ai-risk-strategy-ideas "Six AI Risk/Strategy Ideas"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|September 6}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bnY3L48TtDrKTzGRb/ai-safety-success-stories "AI Safety 'Success Stories{{'"}}] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|September 10}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yAiqLmLFxvyANSfs2/counterfactual-oracles-online-supervised-learning-with "Counterfactual Oracles = online supervised learning with random selection of training episodes"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|September 18}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CJLt4ehxE5d35os23/don-t-depend-on-others-to-ask-for-explanations "Don't depend on others to ask for explanations"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|September 30}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FdfzFcRvqLf4k5eoQ/list-of-resolved-confusions-about-ida "List of resolved confusions about IDA"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|November 4}} || Link post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JMoASne9ccMBxntaX/ways-that-china-is-surpassing-the-us "Ways that China is surpassing the US"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|December 9}} || Question post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vA2Gd2PQjNk68ngFu/what-determines-the-balance-between-intelligence-signaling "What determines the balance between intelligence signaling and virtue signaling?"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2019 || {{dts|December 18}} || Blog post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bFv8soRx6HB94p5Pg/against-premature-abstraction-of-political-issues "Against Premature Abstraction of Political Issues"] || || ||
 +
|-
 +
| 2020 || {{dts|January 24}} || Question post || LessWrong || [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PjfsbKrK5MnJDDoFr/have-epistemic-conditions-always-been-this-bad "Have epistemic conditions always been this bad?"] || || ||
 
|}
 
|}
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== Visual data ==
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=== Google Trends ===
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 +
The chart below shows {{w|Google Trends}} data for Wei Dai (Computer scientist), from January 2004 to April 2021, when the screenshot was taken. Interest is also ranked by country and displayed on world map.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wei Dai |url=https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fg%2F11hczx4gd7 |website=Google Trends |access-date=28 April 2021}}</ref>
 +
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[[File:Wei Dai gt.png|thumb|center|600px]]
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=== Google Ngram Viewer ===
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 +
The chart below shows {{w|Google Ngram Viewer}} data for Wei Dai, from 1980 to 2019.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wei Dai |url=https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Wei+Dai&year_start=1980&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2CWei%20Dai%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2CWei%20Dai%3B%2Cc0 |website=books.google.com |access-date=28 April 2021 |language=en}}</ref>
 +
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[[File:Wei Dai ngram.png|thumb|center|700px]]
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=== Wikipedia Views ===
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The chart below shows pageviews of the English Wikipedia article {{w|Wei Dai}}, from July 2015 to March 2021.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wei Dai |url=https://wikipediaviews.org/displayviewsformultiplemonths.php?page=Wei+Dai&allmonths=allmonths-api&language=en&drilldown=all |website=wikipediaviews.org |access-date=28 April 2021}}</ref>
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[[File:Wei Dai wv.png|thumb|center|450px]]
 +
  
 
==Meta information on the timeline==
 
==Meta information on the timeline==
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I think the new stuff is posted on [https://www.lesswrong.com/users/wei_dai LessWrong].
 
I think the new stuff is posted on [https://www.lesswrong.com/users/wei_dai LessWrong].
 +
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===Pingbacks===
 +
 +
* [https://x.com/weidai11/status/1822054576276529236 Wei Dai on X] cites this timeline as evidence against him being Satoshi Nakamoto, by showing that his interests had moved away from digital money by the time Bitcoin was introduced.
  
 
==See also==
 
==See also==
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==External links==
 
==External links==
  
−
* [http://www.weidai.com/ Wei Dai's personal website]
+
* [http://www.weidai.com/ Wei Dai's personal website] ([http://web.archive.org/web/19990210173234/http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/ old homepage])
 
* [http://lesswrong.com/user/Wei_Dai/overview/ Wei Dai's LessWrong account]
 
* [http://lesswrong.com/user/Wei_Dai/overview/ Wei Dai's LessWrong account]
 
* [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/Wei_Dai LessWrong Wiki contributions]
 
* [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/Wei_Dai LessWrong Wiki contributions]
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* [https://medium.com/@weidai Wei Dai's Medium account]
 
* [https://medium.com/@weidai Wei Dai's Medium account]
 
* [https://agentfoundations.org/threads?id=Wei_Dai Wei Dai's comments on the Intelligent Agent Foundations Forum]
 
* [https://agentfoundations.org/threads?id=Wei_Dai Wei Dai's comments on the Intelligent Agent Foundations Forum]
 +
* [https://disqus.com/by/wei_dai/ Wei Dai's Disqus account]
 
* [https://arbital.com/p/WeiDai/ Wei Dai's Arbital account] (only has one comment as of March 2018)
 
* [https://arbital.com/p/WeiDai/ Wei Dai's Arbital account] (only has one comment as of March 2018)
 
* [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YQSmJLUAAAAJ&hl=en Google Scholar author page]
 
* [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YQSmJLUAAAAJ&hl=en Google Scholar author page]
 
* [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/one-logic one-logic mailing list] (Wei Dai's only thread-starting post is actually a reply so there is nothing to include in this timeline)
 
* [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/one-logic one-logic mailing list] (Wei Dai's only thread-starting post is actually a reply so there is nothing to include in this timeline)
−
* [https://pastebin.com/u/weidai Pastebin account] (see comment [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9Yc7Pp7szcjPgPsjf/the-brain-as-a-universal-learning-machine#uaKADc9AC4h5tYghi here])
+
* [https://pastebin.com/u/weidai Wei Dai's Pastebin account] (see comment [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9Yc7Pp7szcjPgPsjf/the-brain-as-a-universal-learning-machine#uaKADc9AC4h5tYghi here])
  
 
==References==
 
==References==
  
 
{{Reflist|30em}}
 
{{Reflist|30em}}

Latest revision as of 21:14, 11 August 2024

This is a timeline of Wei Dai publications. The timeline takes a broad view of publications that includes blog posts and mailing list posts.

Big picture

Venue Time period Details
Cypherpunks 1994–1996
Extropians 1997–2003
everything-list 1998–2010
SL4 2002–2008
crypto-optimization 2009
LessWrong 2009–present
LessWrong Wiki 2009


Full timeline

Comment counts are as of February 15, 2018.

For mailing list posts, the main inclusion criterion is that the initial post in a thread is made by Wei. This will probably miss some substantive posts in other threads, but I'm not sure how to quickly identify those posts without spending much more time.

Year Month and date Format Venue Title Summary Comment count Word count
HTML file Personal website "Lucas Sequences in Cryptography"
Text file Personal website "two attacks against a PipeNet-like protocol once used by the Freedom service" (no formal title so using description on website)
Text file Personal website "Why good memory could be bad for you: game theoretic analysis of a monopolist with memory" (no formal title so using description on website)
Text file Personal website "Why cleverness could be bad for you: a game where the smarter players lose" (no formal title so using description on website)
Text file Personal website "A really simple interpretation of quantum mechanics" (no formal title so using description on website)
Text file Personal website "How to make more money with your employee stock options at no extra risk" (no formal title so using description on website)
Text file Personal website "What should advanced civilizations do with waste heat? Use black holes as heat sinks." (no formal title so using description on website)
Text file Personal website "An alternative to intellectual property: government funding of information goods based on measured value" (no formal title so using description on website)
1994 August 19 Email Cypherpunks "trusted time stamping", "timestamp.c", "timestamp.c mangled"
1995 January 12 Email Cypherpunks "analysis of RemailerNet"
1995 January 12 Email Cypherpunks "time stamping service (again)"
1995 January 19 Email Cypherpunks "traffic analyzing Chaum's digital mix"
1995 January 24 Email Cypherpunks "analysis of Chaum's MIX continued"
1995 February 6 Email Cypherpunks "a simple explanation of DC-Net"
1995 February 7 Email Cypherpunks "a new way to do anonymity"
1995 February 9 Email Cypherpunks "LESM - Link Encrypted Session Manager"
1995 February 10 Email Cypherpunks "law vs technology"
1995 August 25 Patent Microsoft "Computer-implemented method and computer for performing modular reduction" With Josh Benaloh. 1995-08-25 is the filing date; the patent was granted on 1998-03-03.
1995 August 29 Crypto '95 Rump Session "Fast Modular Reduction" This is cited by several others but it's not clear if there was a paper or just a presentation.
1995 September 6 Email Cypherpunks "fast modular reduction"
1995 September 10 Email Cypherpunks "question about reputation"
1995 October 5 Email Cypherpunks "subjective names and MITM"
1995 October 8 Email Cypherpunks "anonymous cash without blinding"
1995 October 16 Email Cypherpunks "transaction costs in anonymous markets"
1995 October 21 Email Cypherpunks "Encrypted TCP Tunneler"
1995 October 26 Email Cypherpunks "idle CPU markets"
1995 November 4 Email Cypherpunks "Crypto++ 1.1"
1995 November 10 Email Cypherpunks "Diffie-Hellman in GF(2^n)?"
1995 November 21 Email Cypherpunks "towards a theory of reputation"
1995 November 23 Email Cypherpunks "generating provable primes"
1995 December 18 Email Cypherpunks "wish list for Crypto++?"
1996 February 5 Email Cypherpunks "Disperse/Collect version 1.0" Announces release of software that helps with sending large files.
1996 February 13 Email Cypherpunks "Crypto++ 2.0 beta"
1996 February 20 Email Cypherpunks "ANNOUNCE: Crypto++ 2.0"
1996 March 23 Email Cypherpunks "Java questions"
1996 May 11 Email Cypherpunks, Coderpunks "Crypto++ 2.1"
1996 July 29 Email Cypherpunks "game theory"
1996 August Text file "PipeNet 1.1" The text file containing a description of PipeNet 1.1. The publication date is a little unclear. A lot of the papers citing PipeNet use August 1996 for version 1.1.
1996 September 9 Email Cypherpunks "papers on anonymous protocols"
1997 February 3 Email Cypherpunks "what's in a name?"
1997 March 21 Email Cypherpunks "'why privacy' revisited"
1997 March 26 Email Cypherpunks "game theoretic analysis of junk mail"
1997 March 27 Email Cypherpunks "junk mail analysis, part 2"
1997 April 8 Email Cypherpunks "some arguments for privacy"
1997 April 12 Email Cypherpunks "anonymous credit"
1997 September 18 Email Cypherpunks "sooner or later" Assuming a crypto ban is inevitable, the message explores why an earlier ban may be preferable to cypherpunks.
1997 September 20 Email Extropians "copying related probability question"
1997 September 22 Email Cypherpunks "encouraging digital pseudonyms"
1997 September 24 Email Extropians "tunneling through the Singularity"
1997 October 15 Email Extropians "many minds interpretation of probability"
1997 October 20 Patent Microsoft "Cryptographic system and method with fast decryption" 1997-10-20 is the filing date; the patent was granted on 2000-06-27.
1997 October 24 Email Extropians "PHYS: dyson shell thermodynamics"
1997 December 14 Email Extropians "the ultimate refrigerator"
1998 January 6 Email Cypherpunks "cypherpunks and guns"
1998 January 7 Email Extropians "personal identity"
1998 January 11 Email Extropians "algorithmic complexity of God"
1998 January 15 Email Extropians "ANNOUNCE: the 'everything' mailing list" (mirror) The email announces the launch of everything-list.
1998 January 15 Email Extropians "adapting to an open universe"
1998 January 19 Email everything-list "basic questions"
1998 January 19 Email Cypherpunks "PipeNet description"
1998 January 26 Email everything-list "continous universes"
1998 January 28 Email everything-list "lost in the many worlds"
1998 February 11 Email everything-list "relative state and decoherence"
1998 February 11 Email everything-list "experimentation"
1998 February 13 Email Extropians "human capital market"
1998 February 16 Email Cypherpunks "payment mix"
1998 February 18 Email everything-list "predictions"
1998 February 21 Email everything-list "another paradox and a solution"
1998 February 26 Email Extropians "spears versus shields"
1998 March 15 Email everything-list "probability and decision theory"
1998 April 14 Email everything-list "a baysian solution"
1998 April 16 Email everything-list "the one universe"
1998 May 28 Email everything-list "momentary and persistent minds"
1998 June 9 Email everything-list "possibilities for I and Q"
1998 November? Text file "b-money" This document proposes b-money. It would eventually be cited in the bitcoin whitepaper. Discussion on Cypherpunks takes place starting in December.[1]
1998 November 26 Email Cypherpunks "PipeNet 1.1 and b-money"
1999 January 9 Email everything-list "information content of measures"
1999 January 14 Email everything-list "consciousness based on information or computation?"
1999 January 15 Email everything-list "book recommendation" The message recommends Li and Vitanyi's An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications to everyone on the mailing list.
1999 January 21 Email everything-list "Re: consciousness based on information or computation?" This seems to be where Wei Dai proposes what would later be called UDASSA.[2][3]
1999 March 27 Email Extropians "reasoning under computational limitations"
1999 April 1 Email everything-list "all of me or one of me"
1999 June 1 Email everything-list "practical reasoning and strong SSA"
1999 June 7 Email everything-list "why is death painful?"
1999 July 12 Email everything-list "philosophical frameworks"
1999 July 12 Email everything-list "minimal theory of consciousness"
2000 September 3 Email Extropians "NewScientist article on the ultimate laptop"
2000 September 12 Email Extropians "how to change values"
2001 January 23 Email everything-list "Oracle by Greg Egan"
2001 February 15 Email everything-list "no need for anthropic reasoning"
2001 February 28 Email everything-list "another anthropic reasoning paradox"
2001 August 16 Email Extropians "cloning protection technology"
2001 November 6 Email Extropians "relativism vs equivalidity"
2001 November 7 Email Extropians "the Blight not evil?"
2001 November 20 Email Extropians "non-violent conflict resolution"
2001 December 20 Email everything-list "relevance of the real measure"
2002 February 6 Text file Personal website "an attack against SSH2 protocol" Also posted to sci.crypt and the IETF SSH working group mailing list.
2002 April 17 Email everything-list "decision theory papers" Introduces two decision theory papers to the list.
2002 May 3 Email SL4 "supergoal stability"
2002 May 23 Email everything-list "JOINING posts"
2002 June 14 Email everything-list, Extropians "self-sampling assumption is incorrect"
2002 August 11 Email everything-list "a framework for multiverse decision theory"
2002 August 12 Email everything-list "modal logic and possible worlds"
2002 August 13 Email everything-list "SIA and the presumptuous philosopher"
2002 December 31 Email SL4 "moral symmetry"
2003 February 20 Email Extropians "IRAQ: cost of inspections"
2003 May 8 Email Extropians "a market approach to terrorism"
2003 August 5 Email Extropians "a simulated utilitarian"
2003 December 31 Email SL4 "'friendly' humans?"
2004 January 24 Email everything-list "recommended books" A list of books that are relevant for understanding topics discussed on the mailing list.
2004 March 27 Email SL4 "escape from simulation"
2004 April 19 Email everything-list "conversation with a Bayesian"
2004 June 28 Email SL4 "dream qualia"
2004 July 23 HTML file Crypto++ website "Crypto++ Benchmarks" Speed benchmarks for algorithms provided by Crypto++. It's unclear when this page was first published; the earliest snapshot on Internet Archive is from December 2006, which has a last modification date of 2004-07-23. The page continues to be updated, and the latest version can be found on the Crypto++ website.
2004 October 23 Email SL4 "SIAI's direction"
2005 July 13 Email everything-list "is induction unformalizable?"
2005 August 24 Email SL4 "uncertainty in mathematics"
2005 September 11 Email SL4 "mathematical reasoning"
2006 March 29 Email everything-list "proper behavior for a mathematical substructure"
2006 April 9 Email everything-list "why can't we erase information?"
2007 April Text file Ted Krovetz's website "VMAC: Message Authentication Code using Universal Hashing" Co-authored with Ted Krovetz.
2007 August 28 Paper "VHASH Security" Co-authored with Ted Krovetz.
2007 September 26 Email everything-list "against UD+ASSA, part 1" This was reposted to LessWrong [1].
2007 September 26 Email everything-list "against UD+ASSA, part 2" This was reposted to LessWrong [2].
2007 November 1 Email SL4 "how to do something with really small probability?"
2007 November 10 Email SL4 "answers I'd like from an SI"
2007 November 13 Email SL4 "answers I'd like, part 2"
2008 Paper NIST mailing list? "Collisions for CubeHash1/45 and CubeHash2/89" Citation information is from Google Scholar; I can't find the original posting (the PDF itself is undated).
2008 July 14 Email SL4 "prove your source code"
2008 July 16 Email SL4 "trade or merge?"
2008 September 7 Email SL4 "Bayesian rationality vs. voluntary mergers"
2009 April 2 Email crypto-optimization "GCM with 2KB/key tables"
2009 April 3 Email crypto-optimization "GCC compile farm"
2009 April 3 Email crypto-optimization "tips for instruction scheduling?"
2009 April 6 Email crypto-optimization "AES register saving tricks"
2009 April 7 Blog post LessWrong "Newcomb's Problem vs. One-Shot Prisoner's Dilemma" 15
2009 April 10 Email crypto-optimization "SSE2 Comba multiplication"
2009 April 16 Email crypto-optimization "secrets of GMP 4.3"
2009 April 16 Email crypto-optimization "Jacobi quartic form curves"
2009 May 5 Email crypto-optimization "constant-time extended GCD?"
2009 May 7 Blog post LessWrong "Epistemic vs. Instrumental Rationality: Case of the Leaky Agent" 19
2009 June 7 Blog post LessWrong "indexical uncertainty and the Axiom of Independence" 70
2009 July 16 Blog post LessWrong "Fair Division of Black-Hole Negentropy: an Introduction to Cooperative Game Theory" 34
2009 July 17 Blog post LessWrong "The Popularization Bias" 53
2009 July 23 Blog post LessWrong "The Nature of Offense" 173
2009 July 26 Blog post LessWrong "The Second Best" 53
2009 July 31 Blog post LessWrong "An Alternative Approach to AI Cooperation" 25
2009 August 13 Blog post LessWrong "Towards a New Decision Theory" This post introduces what would be called updateless decision theory (UDT). 142
2009 August 13 Wiki page LessWrong Wiki "Counterfactual mugging"
2009 September 3 Blog post LessWrong "Torture vs. Dust vs. the Presumptuous Philosopher: Anthropic Reasoning in UDT" 28
2009 September 16 Blog post LessWrong "The Absent-Minded Driver" 141
2009 September 24 Blog post LessWrong "Boredom vs. Scope Insensitivity" 38
2009 September 26 Blog post LessWrong "Non-Malthusian Scenarios" 88
2009 October 2 Blog post LessWrong "Scott Aaronson on Born Probabilities" 7
2009 October 13 Blog post LessWrong "Anticipation vs. Faith: At What Cost Rationality?" 105
2009 October 20 Blog post LessWrong "Why the beliefs/values dichotomy?" 153
2009 November 3 Blog post LessWrong "Re-understanding Robin Hanson’s 'Pre-Rationality'" 18
2009 November 9 Blog post LessWrong "Reflections on Pre-Rationality" 30
2009 November 16 Blog post LessWrong "Why (and why not) Bayesian Updating?" The post shares Paolo Ghirardato's paper "Revisiting Savage in a Conditional World", which gives axioms (based on Savage's axioms) which are "necessary and sufficient for an agent's preferences in a dynamic decision problem to be represented as expected utility maximization with Bayesian belief updating". The post points out that one of the axioms is violated in certain problems like counterfactual mugging and the absentminded driver; this motivates using something other than Bayesian updating, namely something like Wei Dai's own updateless decision theory. The postscript points out that in Ghirardato's decision theory, using the joint probability instead of conditional probability gives an equivalent theory (i.e. it is possible to have an agent that produces the same actions, but where the agent's beliefs about each thing can only get weaker and never stronger), and asks why human beliefs don't work like this. (The comments provide some answers.) 26
2009 November 24 Blog post LessWrong "Agree, Retort, or Ignore? A Post From the Future" 87
2009 November 27 Wiki page LessWrong Wiki "The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate"
2009 November 30 Blog post LessWrong "The Moral Status of Independent Identical Copies" 71
2009 December 10 Blog post LessWrong "Probability Space & Aumann Agreement" 71
2009 December 11 Blog post LessWrong "What Are Probabilities, Anyway?" 78
2009 December 29 Blog post LessWrong "A Master-Slave Model of Human Preferences" 80
2010 January 8 Blog post LessWrong "Fictional Evidence vs. Fictional Insight" 43
2010 January 15 Blog post LessWrong "The Preference Utilitarian’s Time Inconsistency Problem" 104
2010 January 17 Blog post LessWrong "Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions" 52
2010 January 24 Blog post LessWrong "Value Uncertainty and the Singleton Scenario" 28
2010 January 30 Blog post LessWrong "Complexity of Value ≠ Complexity of Outcome" The post makes the distinction between simple vs complex values, and simple vs complex outcomes. Others on LessWrong have argued that human values are complex (in the Kolmogorov complexity sense). Wei Dai points out that there is a tendency on LessWrong to further assume that complex values lead to complex outcomes (thus a future that reflects human values will be complex). Wei Dai argues against this further assumption, saying that complex values can lead to simple outcomes: human values have many different components that don't reduce to each other, but most of them don't scale with the amount of available resources. This means that the few components of human values which do scale can come to dominate the future. The post then discusses the relevance of this idea to AI alignment: if the different components of human values interact additively, then instead of using something like Eliezer Yudkowsky's Coherent Extrapolated Volition, it may be possible to obtain almost all possible value by creating a superintelligence with just those components that do scale with resources. 198
2010 February 9 Blog post LessWrong "Shut Up and Divide?" 258
2010 February 19 Blog post LessWrong "Explicit Optimization of Global Strategy (Fixing a Bug in UDT1)" This post describes what would be known as UDT 1.1.[4] 38
2010 March 2 Blog post LessWrong "Individual vs. Group Epistemic Rationality" 54
2010 March 14 Email everything-list "everything-list and the Singularity" Notes the connection between the modal realism and Singularity communities, and introduces LessWrong to everything-list.
2010 March 19 Blog post LessWrong "Think Before You Speak (And Signal It)" 39
2010 April 4 Blog post LessWrong "Late Great Filter Is Not Bad News" 75
2010 April 8 Blog post LessWrong "Frequentist Magic vs. Bayesian Magic 79
2010 June 3 Blog post LessWrong "Hacking the CEV for Fun and Profit" 194
2010 July 27 Blog post LessWrong "Metaphilosophical Mysteries" 255
2011 January 8 Blog post LessWrong "Why do some kinds of work not feel like work?" 21
2011 February 5 Blog post LessWrong "Another Argument Against Eliezer's Meta-Ethics" 35
2011 February 7 Blog post LessWrong "What does a calculator mean by '2'?" 29
2011 February 14 Blog post LessWrong "Why Do We Engage in Moral Simplification?" 35
2011 March 11 Blog post LessWrong "A Thought Experiment on Pain as a Moral Disvalue" 41
2011 May 3 Blog post LessWrong "[link] Whole Brain Emulation and the Evolution of Superorganisms" 7
2011 May 22 Blog post LessWrong "How To Be More Confident... That You're Wrong" 24
2011 May 24 Blog post LessWrong "LessWrong Power Reader (Greasemonkey script, updated)" 26
2011 June 13 Blog post LessWrong "What do bad clothes signal about you?" 78
2011 July 6 Blog post LessWrong "Outline of possible Singularity scenarios (that are not completely disastrous)" 40
2011 July 13 Blog post LessWrong "Some Thoughts on Singularity Strategies" 29
2011 July 17 Blog post LessWrong "Experiment: Psychoanalyze Me" 12
2011 July 24 Blog post LessWrong "What if sympathy depends on anthropomorphizing?" 16
2011 July 27 Blog post LessWrong "What's wrong with simplicity of value?" 37
2011 August 22 Blog post LessWrong "Do we want more publicity, and if so how?" 54
2011 September 28 Blog post LessWrong "Wanted: backup plans for 'seed AI turns out to be easy'" 62
2011 November 18 Blog post LessWrong "Where do selfish values come from?" 57
2012 March 21 Blog post LessWrong "A Problem About Bargaining and Logical Uncertainty" 45
2012 March 22 Blog post LessWrong "Modest Superintelligences" 88
2012 April 11 Blog post LessWrong "against 'AI risk'" 89
2012 April 12 Blog post LessWrong "Reframing the Problem of AI Progress" 47
2012 April 18 Blog post LessWrong "How can we get more and better LW contrarians?" 328
2012 May 10 Blog post LessWrong "Strong intutions. Weak arguments. What to do?" 45
2012 May 12 Blog post LessWrong "Neuroimaging as alternative/supplement to cryonics?" 68
2012 May 16 Blog post LessWrong "How can we ensure that a Friendly AI team will be sane enough?" 64
2012 June 6 Blog post LessWrong "List of Problems That Motivated UDT" 11
2012 June 6 Blog post LessWrong "Open Problems Related to Solomonoff Induction" 103
2012 July 21 Blog post LessWrong "Work on Security Instead of Friendliness?" 103
2012 August 13 Blog post LessWrong "Cynical explanations of FAI critics (including myself)" 49
2012 August 16 Blog post LessWrong "Kelly Criteria and Two Envelopes" 1
2012 September 12 Blog post LessWrong "Under-acknowledged Value Differences" 68
2012 October 8 Blog post LessWrong "Reasons for someone to 'ignore' you" 55
2012 December 18 Blog post LessWrong "Ontological Crisis in Humans" 67
2012 December 20 Blog post LessWrong "Beware Selective Nihilism" 46
2012 December 26 Blog post LessWrong "Morality Isn't Logical" 85
2013 January 11 Blog post LessWrong "How to signal curiosity?" 52
2013 January 18 Blog post LessWrong "Outline of Possible Sources of Values" 28
2013 April 23 Blog post LessWrong "Normativity and Meta-Philosophy" 55
2013 July 17 Blog post LessWrong "Three Approaches to 'Friendliness'" 84
2013 August 28 Blog post LessWrong "Outside View(s) and MIRI's FAI Endgame" 60
2014 July 19 Blog post LessWrong "Look for the Next Tech Gold Rush?" 113
2014 August 6 Blog post LessWrong "Six Plausible Meta-Ethical Alternatives" 36
2014 August 13 Blog post LessWrong "What is the difference between rationality and intelligence?" 52
2014 October 21 Blog post LessWrong "Is the potential astronomical waste in our universe too small to care about?" 14
2015 June 6 Blog post LessWrong "[link] Baidu cheats in an AI contest in order to gain a 0.24% advantage" 32
2016 December 8 Blog post LessWrong "Combining Prediction Technologies to Help Moderate Discussions" 15
2017 September 5 Blog post LessWrong "Online discussion is better than pre-publication peer review" 25
2018 March 10 Blog post LessWrong "Multiplicity of 'enlightenment' states and contemplative practices"
2018 April 1 Blog post LessWrong "Can corrigibility be learned safely?"
2018 June 7 Blog post LessWrong "Beyond Astronomical Waste"
2018 June 11 Blog post LessWrong "A general model of safety-oriented AI development"
2018 November 28 Blog post LessWrong "Counterintuitive Comparative Advantage"
2018 December 13 Blog post LessWrong "Three AI Safety Related Ideas"
2018 December 16 Blog post LessWrong "Two Neglected Problems in Human-AI Safety"
2019 January 4 Blog post LessWrong "Two More Decision Theory Problems for Humans"
2019 January 8 Question post Effective Altruism Forum "How should large donors coordinate with small donors?"
2019 January 11 Question post LessWrong "Why is so much discussion happening in private Google Docs?"
2019 February 9 Blog post LessWrong "The Argument from Philosophical Difficulty"
2019 February 9 Blog post LessWrong "Some Thoughts on Metaphilosophy"
2019 February 15 Blog post LessWrong "Some disjunctive reasons for urgency on AI risk"
2019 February 15 Question post LessWrong "Why didn't Agoric Computing become popular?"
2019 March 5 Blog post LessWrong "Three ways that 'Sufficiently optimized agents appear coherent' can be false"
2019 March 20 Question post LessWrong "What's wrong with these analogies for understanding Informed Oversight and IDA?"
2019 March 21 Blog post LessWrong "The Main Sources of AI Risk?"
2019 March 28 Blog post LessWrong "Please use real names, especially for Alignment Forum?"
2019 April 24 Blog post LessWrong, Alignment Forum "Strategic implications of AIs' ability to coordinate at low cost, for example by merging" The post argues that compared to humans, AIs will be able to coordinate much more easily with each other, for example by merging their utility functions. The post then discusses two implications of this: (1) Robin Hanson has argued that it is more important for AIs to obey laws than to share human values and that this implies humans should work to make sure institutions like laws will survive into the future; but if AIs can coordinate with each other without laws, it doesn't make sense to work toward this goal; (2) it is likely that an important part of competitiveness for AIs is the ability to coordinate with other AIs, so any AI alignment approach that aims to be competitive with unaligned AIs must preserve the ability to coordinate with other AIs, which might imply for instance that aligned AI will refuse to be shut down because doing so will make it unable to merge with other AIs. 472
2019 May 10 Blog post LessWrong "Disincentives for participating on LW/AF"
2019 May 11 Blog post LessWrong "'UDT2' and 'against UD+ASSA'"
2019 May 21 Question post LessWrong "Where are people thinking and talking about global coordination for AI safety?"
2019 May 29 Blog post LessWrong "How to find a lost phone with dead battery, using Google Location History Takeout"
2019 June 7 Blog post LessWrong "AGI will drastically increase economies of scale"
2019 July 25 Blog post LessWrong "On the purposes of decision theory research"
2019 July 30 Blog post LessWrong "Forum participation as a research strategy"
2019 August 17 Blog post LessWrong "Problems in AI Alignment that philosophers could potentially contribute to"
2019 August 26 Blog post LessWrong "Six AI Risk/Strategy Ideas"
2019 September 6 Blog post LessWrong "AI Safety 'Success Stories'"
2019 September 10 Blog post LessWrong "Counterfactual Oracles = online supervised learning with random selection of training episodes"
2019 September 18 Blog post LessWrong "Don't depend on others to ask for explanations"
2019 September 30 Blog post LessWrong "List of resolved confusions about IDA"
2019 November 4 Link post LessWrong "Ways that China is surpassing the US"
2019 December 9 Question post LessWrong "What determines the balance between intelligence signaling and virtue signaling?"
2019 December 18 Blog post LessWrong "Against Premature Abstraction of Political Issues"
2020 January 24 Question post LessWrong "Have epistemic conditions always been this bad?"

Visual data

Google Trends

The chart below shows Google Trends data for Wei Dai (Computer scientist), from January 2004 to April 2021, when the screenshot was taken. Interest is also ranked by country and displayed on world map.[5]

Wei Dai gt.png


Google Ngram Viewer

The chart below shows Google Ngram Viewer data for Wei Dai, from 1980 to 2019.[6]

Wei Dai ngram.png

Wikipedia Views

The chart below shows pageviews of the English Wikipedia article Wei Dai, from July 2015 to March 2021.[7]

Wei Dai wv.png


Meta information on the timeline

How the timeline was built

The initial version of the timeline was written by Issa Rice.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

Feedback and comments

Feedback for the timeline can be provided at the following places:

What the timeline is still missing

Timeline update strategy

I think the new stuff is posted on LessWrong.

Pingbacks

  • Wei Dai on X cites this timeline as evidence against him being Satoshi Nakamoto, by showing that his interests had moved away from digital money by the time Bitcoin was introduced.

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ Adam Back (December 5, 1998). "Wei Dei's "b-money" protocol". Retrieved February 16, 2018. 
  2. ↑ https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/14000.html -- the nabble.com link is broken as of 2020-03-06, so I can't be certain of which email Wei is linking to, but at least I know that the thread is the right one.
  3. ↑ https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/6919.html -- this email doesn't mention the name "UDASSA", but I'm pretty sure that they are talking about UDASSA, given the context.
  4. ↑ Wei Dai (July 1, 2018). "Wei_Dai comments on Another take on agent foundations: formalizing zero-shot reasoning". LessWrong. Retrieved July 3, 2018. 
  5. ↑ "Wei Dai". Google Trends. Retrieved 28 April 2021. 
  6. ↑ "Wei Dai". books.google.com. Retrieved 28 April 2021. 
  7. ↑ "Wei Dai". wikipediaviews.org. Retrieved 28 April 2021. 
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