I don’t want to spend ten years figuring this out.
A driving factor in my own philosophy around figuring out what to do with my life. Some people spend decades doing something or living with something they don’t like, or even something more trivially correctable, like spending one weekend to clean up the basement vs. living with a cluttered mess for years on end.
Hmm. My family and I always let the ice cream sit for about 10 to 15 minutes to let it soften first. Interesting to see the wide range of opinions, wasn’t even aware that wasn’t a thing.
My thinking is that the more discussed threads would have more value to the user. Small threads with 1 or 2 replies are more likely to be people pointing out typos or just saying +1 to a particular passage.
Of course, there is a spectrum—deeply discussed threads are more likely to be angry back-and-forths that aren’t very valuable.
Ooh, nice. I’ve been wanting this kind of discussion software for awhile. I do have a suggestion: maybe, when hovering over a highlighted passage, you could get some kind of indicator of how many child comments are under that section, and/or change the highlight contrast for threads that have more children, so we can tell which branches of the discussion got the most attention
Noted, thank you. This does raise my confidence in Alcor.
This doesn’t really raise my confidence in Alcor, an organization that’s supposed to keep bodies preserved for decades or centuries.
I can kind of see the original meme’s point in the extremes. Consider a mechanic shop that has had very, very slow business for months and is in serious financial trouble. I can see the owners Moloching their way into “suggesting” that their technicians maybe don’t fix it all the way. After all, what’s the harm in having a few customers come back a little more often if it means maybe saving the business?
But this is only on the extremes.
Noted, thank you.
Here’s Duncan Sabien describing the experience of honing down on a particular felt sense
I’m confused—the original author seems to be Connor Morton?
I mean, sure, but that does kinda answer the question in the question—“if event X happens, should you believe that event X is possible?” Well, yes, because it happened. I guess, in that case, the question could be more measuring something like “I, a Rationalist, would not believe in ghosts because that would lower my status in the Rationalist community, despite seeing strong evidence for it”
Sort of like asking “are you a Rationalist or are you just saying so for status points?”
I kinda disagree—if you see ghosts, almost all the probability space should be moving to “I am hallucinating”.
Fair! That’s a simple if not easy solution, definitely bottom-left quadrant instead of bottom-right!
Likely true. The sorts of problems I was thinking about for the razor are ones that have had a simple solutions for a very long time—walking, talking, sending electrical current from one place to another, illuminating spaces, stuff like that.
Perhaps a 2x2 grid would be helpful?
I feel like this post is standing against the top-left quadrant and would prefer everyone to move to the bottom-left quadrant, which I agree with. My concern is the people in the bottom-right quadrant, which I don’t believe lukehmiles is in, but I fear they may use this post as fuel for their belief—i.e. “depression is easy, you attention-seeking loser! just stop being sad, it’s a solved problem!”
Yes, so long as one can tell the difference between a problem that is solved (construction, microprocessor design, etc.) and one that is not (“depressed? just stop being sad, it’s easy”)
Also, we might apply an unnamed razor: If a problem has a simple solution, everyone would already be doing it.
I broadly agree, but I think it’s worth it to learn to distinguish scenarios where a simple solution is known from ones where it is not. We have, say, building design and construction down pat, but AGI alignment? A solid cure for many illnesses? The obesity crisis? No simple solution is currently known.
Pretty good overall. My favorite posts are about the theory of the human mind that helps me build a model of my own mind and the minds of others, especially in how it can go wrong (mental illness, ADHD, et. al.)
The AI stuff is way over my head, to the point where my brain just bounces off of the titles alone, but that’s fine—not everything is for everyone. Also reading the acronyms EDT and CDT always make me think of the timezones, not the decision theories.
About the only complaint I have is that the comments can get pretty dense and recursively meta, which can be a bit hard to follow. Zvi will occasionally talk about a survey of AI safety experts giving predictions about stuff and it just feels like a person talking about people talking about predictions about risks associated with AI. But this is more of a me thing and probably people who can keep up find these things very useful.
This post demonstrates another surface of the important interplay between our “logical” (really just verbal) part-of-mind and our emotional part-of-mind. Other posts on this site, including by Kaj Sotala and Valentine, go into this interplay and how our rationality is affected by it.
It’s important to note, both for ourselves and for our relationships with others, that the emotional part is not something that can be dismissed or fought with, and I think this post does well in explaining an important facet of that. Plus, when we’re shown the possible pitfalls ahead of any limerence, we can be more aware of it when we do fall in love, which is always nice.
My review mostly concerns the SMTM’s A Chemical Hunger part of this review. RaDVaC was interesting if not particularly useful, but SMTM’s series has been noted by many commenters to be a strange theory, possibly damaging, and there were, as of my last check, no response by SMTM to the various rebuttals.
It does not behoove rationalism to have members that do not respond to critical looks at their theories. They stand to do a lot of damage and cost a lot of lives if taken seriously.
Oh, yes, true. However, I still maintain that particularly jerkish people would be happy to misgender in that manner as they’d think that the only good gender is male or somesuch nonsense.
The thing about Newcomb’s problem for me was always the distribution between the two boxes, one being $1,000,000 and the other being $1,000. I’d rather not risk losing $999,000 for a chance at an extra $1,000! I could just one-box for real, take the million, then put it in an index fund and wait for it to go up by 0.1%.
I do understand that the question really comes into play when the amounts vary and Omega’s success rate is lower—if I could one-box for $500 and two-box for $1,500 total and Omega is wrong 25% of the time observed, that would be a different play.