Alexei(Alexei Andreev)

• Alexei 19 Mar 2020 20:29 UTC

  4 points

  on: Coron­avirus Open Thread

  My wife’s doc­tor said chloro­quine (a treat­ment for malaria) was shown to be very promis­ing in treat­ing COVID-19. I guess it’s pub­lic now as well: https://​​www.wired.com/​​story/​​an-old-malaria-drug-may-fight-covid-19-and-sili­con-valleys-into-it/​​

• Alexei 19 Mar 2020 2:56 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Vaniver's comment on: Coron­avirus Open Thread

  The whole ab­stract:

  For over a hun­dred years Fin­nish sauna has been doc­u­mented as a phys­iother­a­peu­tic method in res­pi­ra­tory dis­eases. Phys­iolog­i­cal changes of ven­tila­tion re­main small (about 10%) in the sauna. Heat load, sauna air and sym­pa­thetic stim­u­la­tion gen­er­ally do not cause prob­lems to the lungs. Elec­tron micro­scopic stud­ies have not shown ir­re­versible dam­ages to the air­way ep­ithe­lium. Sauna tak­ers should avoid bathing dur­ing acute res­pi­ra­tory in­fec­tions. Sym­pa­th­omimetic drugs may pro­voke tachy­car­dia and ar­rhyth­mias in the sauna.

  So I think they’re speci­fi­cally talk­ing about bathing; while the sauna (dry air) is ac­tu­ally good.

  I can’t find the en­tire pa­per but if some­one send me a link, I’ll look more into it.

• Alexei 18 Mar 2020 17:44 UTC

  2 points

  on: Coron­avirus Open Thread

  A ran­dom thought: If the virus doesn’t sur­vive well in high tem­per­a­tures would go­ing to a sauna help treat it?

• Alexei 11 Mar 2020 17:57 UTC

  6 points

  on: Why don’t sin­gu­lar­i­tar­i­ans bet on the cre­ation of AGI by buy­ing stocks?

  Yeah, I think this is spot on. I’ve had this idea for a few years and have been hold­ing a few stocks of each com­pany that I think has a chance at AGI.

• Alexei 27 Jan 2020 19:50 UTC

  6 points

  on: What re­search has been done on the al­tru­is­tic im­pact of the usual good ac­tions?

  Part of my in­ter­est be­hind this ques­tion is that re­cently I’ve been notic­ing the sub­tle (but also not so sub­tle) ways our choices af­fect the peo­ple and the so­cial fabric around us. Also, listen­ing to Jor­dan Peter­son high­light his­tor­i­cal cases where the moral fabric of so­ciety fails (e.g. Nazi Ger­many and Soviet Union). It makes me think there’s a lot of un­der-ap­pre­ci­ated value in be­ing a morally up­right per­son. Some of the value is in di­rectly im­pact­ing the peo­ple around you, but the ma­jor­ity is in sig­nal­ing that “this is the kind of so­ciety we live in.”

  What links here?

  • What re­search has been done on the al­tru­is­tic im­pact of the usual good ac­tions? by Alexei (27 Jan 2020 19:33 UTC; 12 points)

[Question] What re­search has been done on the al­tru­is­tic im­pact of the usual good ac­tions?

• Alexei 26 Jan 2020 2:02 UTC

  17 points

  on: Co­or­di­na­tion as a Scarce Resource

  Love your posts! I’d recom­mend pub­lish­ing them at a slower pace so peo­ple get a chance to see and read them. It’s also a bit con­fus­ing on LW when sev­eral posts are pub­lished on the same day, and you can’t tell which one is first in the se­ries (just from the front page).

• Alexei 11 Jan 2020 22:09 UTC

  8 points

  on: Is it worth­while to save the cord blood and tis­sue?

  One source I looked at was: https://​​par­ents­guidecord­blood.org/​​en

  Some high­lights:

  • There are three pub­lic cord blood banks in CA, but non in the bay area. So donat­ing might be hard if that’s where you’re de­liv­er­ing.

  • The ex­pected cost of cryo pre­serv­ing is a bit un­der $2,000 up­front and $150 /​ yr.

  • It costs about $30,000 to ob­tain a cord blood col­lec­tion from a pub­lic bank, and that cost is charged to the pa­tient’s health in­surance.

  • Looks like the stem cells could be used by the fam­ily mem­bers too. (As­sum­ing it’s a match, I’m guess­ing?). But ac­tu­ally the child might not be able to use them. (Is it only while they are a child?)

  • The main ad­van­tage of cord blood is that it does not have to be ex­actly matched to the pa­tient like trans­plants from an adult donor.

  • In the United States, about 80% of cord blood dona­tions are dis­carded.

  • In the United States, the net prob­a­bil­ity that a child will need any type of stem cell trans­plant by age 20 is 3 in 5,000 or .06%.

[Question] Is it worth­while to save the cord blood and tis­sue?

• Alexei 8 Jan 2020 20:20 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Isnasene's comment on: Open & Wel­come Thread—Jan­uary 2020

  Can you ex­pand on “ AI/​ML ca­pa­bil­ities re­search in fi­nance” or shoot me a PM?

• Alexei 3 Jan 2020 4:42 UTC

  16 points

  on: hu­man psy­chol­in­guists: a crit­i­cal appraisal

  I’m definitely not an ex­pert, but it does sound like a few peo­ple moved the goal­posts. It sounds very similar to the “AI can’t play chess” ar­gu­ment switch­ing to “well, it’s not re­ally play­ing chess, it’s just fol­low­ing rules” and then to *quietly mum­bling some­thing about it not hav­ing the True rep­re­sen­ta­tion of chess*.

  So, I agree with the core point. GPT-2 is writ­ing! And it’s writ­ing pretty damn well. What­ever is left has more to do with the gen­eral cog­ni­tion skill than writ­ing.

• Alexei 27 Dec 2019 16:04 UTC

  6 points

  on: What spiritual ex­pe­riences have you had?

  Great ques­tion! I will just say that I had such an ex­pe­rience, but don’t know how to share it in a way that feels ad­e­quate for me.

• Alexei 26 Dec 2019 2:08 UTC

  2 points

  on: Get a Life

  I think you can lead a healthy and happy life play­ing ten­nis most of your time, while avoid­ing the (in­cor­rect and un­healthy, in my opinion) be­lief that “get­ting a life is find­ing a sin­gu­lar pas­sion and pur­su­ing it to the end”. It seems to me like a mo­ti­vated rea­son­ing used to defend what the per­son is do­ing. How­ever the rest of the post is closer to the real truth: “I en­joy play­ing and teach­ing ten­nis and I find mean­ing in it.”

  Also I think the sin­gu­lar/​plu­ral pur­pose di­vide is pretty smooth with plenty of peo­ple on both sides. I’ve met lots of peo­ple who say that to live your life you ba­si­cally need to spe­cial­ize like crazy.

  My in­vi­ta­tion to the au­thor would be to write a similar es­say to steel man the other side.

• Alexei 9 Dec 2019 21:54 UTC

  6 points

  on: Bayesian examination

  Wow, this seems huge to me! Great find! I’m not in the busi­ness of con­struct­ing tests, but if I ever do any home school­ing with my chil­dren, I’ll definitely try this method.

• Alexei 5 Dec 2019 5:27 UTC

  4 points

  on: If giv­ing un­so­lic­ited feed­back was a so­cial norm, what feed­back would you of­ten give?

  Your de­ci­sion /​ ad­vice is rooted in anx­iety /​ fear. This is much more about you than about the thing you’re talk­ing about.

• Alexei 25 Nov 2019 23:53 UTC

  4 points

  on: Laws of John Wick

  This post con­vinced me to watch the movies. Was not dis­ap­pointed: great world build­ing in­deed.

• Alexei 25 Nov 2019 7:17 UTC

  12 points

  on: What’s the largest sunk cost you let go?

  This was back in 2013. At that point I have been de­vel­op­ing games (as a hobby and then pro­fes­sion­ally) for 13 years. Dur­ing my free time in high school and col­lege, that’s ba­si­cally all I did. And then right out of col­lege I got a job in the game in­dus­try. I also de­vel­oped and pub­lished my own game. In 2011 I moved to the bay area, joined a game startup, and it was ac­quired. (By Zynga, so not that ex­cit­ing, but over­all, I’d say things were go­ing well.)

  Around that time, I re­al­ized that there was no way mak­ing games would help with x-risk. So I left the in­dus­try. This in­volved let­ting go of the deep­est pas­sion and the most de­vel­oped skill I’ve had at the time. It in­volved chang­ing which cir­cles I net­worked in. And it in­cluded aban­don­ing all the knowl­edge I ac­cu­mu­lated of the pro­gram­ming libraries and frame­work, game de­sign, game lore, and all the half-baked game ideas I had and was hop­ing to de­velop some day.

  I still stand by that de­ci­sion. But I’ve also found a way to in­cor­po­rate a bit of that old self into my pre­sent life. For ex­am­ple, some­times I de­sign a board game. Or write down and ex­plore game ideas un­til I can “see” how it would be de­vel­oped. Or dream about hav­ing enough money to just hire an en­tire stu­dio and have them de­velop it.

• Alexei 22 Nov 2019 5:58 UTC

  6 points

  on: Do you get value out of con­tentless com­ments?

  Yes.

• Alexei 20 Nov 2019 17:03 UTC

  4 points

  on: The Pit

  Found this video and it re­minded me of this story: https://​​www.youtube.com/​​watch?v=gNVqRC4mcSI

• Alexei 17 Nov 2019 21:55 UTC

  2 points

  on: A mechanis­tic model of meditation

  Tan­gen­tially re­lated: https://​​www.less­wrong.com/​​posts/​​RasFpce3fNZ8xp2T4/​​open-and-wel­come-thread-novem­ber-2019?com­men­tId=trSeGz­iLqLZ5jiAgv