CraigMichael

Mini thoughts on mintheism

• CraigMichael 11 Jan 2021 20:19 UTC

  7 points

  on: In Defense of Twit­ter’s De­ci­sion to Ban Trump

  I agree with 6 and 7, and I agree with your conclusion in general—removing Trump at this point in time was better for the world than leaving him on the platforms. Let me point out where I see the gap.

  I believe the model that Eliezer, Naval and Balaji are using here would be correct if this was, say, 2015 before Twitter’s timeline went algorithmic. https://​​www.theverge.com/​​2016/​​2/​​10/​​10955602/​​twitter-algorithmic-timeline-best-tweets

  In 2020 when someone talks in a way that presupposes Twitter and Facebook are “speech platforms” similar to writing a blog or a book or something like that, the immediate question that comes to mind is if they’ve read any Shoshana Zuboff or Jaron Lanier?

  Twitter is addictive and Trump is a Twitter-addict. To the extent you can blame the existence and marketing of a drug for someone’s addict behavior while they’re on it, Twitter as an behavioral addiction platform is very culpable in what happened on January 6th. They’re something like the drug dealer or the Purdue Pharma the analogy.

  If you’re Jack Dorsey, getting the president of the Untied States addicted to your technology is a big win. As a corporation Twitter profited off Trump for the better part of a decade and a significant percentage of Twitter’s traffic was dependent on his presence there.

  A better analogy is something like getting banned from a casino or getting 86′d from a bar. High rollers sometimes get kicked out of casinos even if they still have plenty of money to spend. In a similar sense this is Twitter saying “you’ve made us a lot of money, but your presence is starting to detract enough from our other customers that on balance you’re no longer valuable to us.”

  …

  I’m nonplussed with Eliezer, Naval and Balaji’s takes on this. It may be their own use of Twitter that’s making it difficult for them to see (I mean, I do too, but I consciously equate Twitter usage with something like smoking a cigarette in terms of it’s impact on my health—and I should cut back).

  In a way, we would all be lucky if we were to get suspended from Twitter.

• CraigMichael 11 Jan 2021 20:29 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: In Defense of Twit­ter’s De­ci­sion to Ban Trump

  My Translation: I’m worried that banning Trump from twitter will increase polarization because it will make the two tribes more segregated than they were before. This is not that similar to your #7, and otherwise missing from the list entirely.

  I can’t prove this isn’t true, but I believe it’s unlikely given what we know about how the algorithms currently work. To generate outrage engagement you want to identify ideas that are being shared on social media in various forms and then find out what groups of people are most enraged by have increased engagement with the platform when viewing them and find ways to show that content to those people more often.

  Segregating platforms wouldn’t fundamentally change this. I’d say it’s a wash either way.

• CraigMichael 11 Jan 2021 23:15 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: ragintumbleweed’s comment on: In Defense of Twit­ter’s De­ci­sion to Ban Trump

  Your post is a good one and it sucks people are coming down on it that way.

  It made me wonder if Eliezer and Jaron Lanier had ever had a conversation before. They did not too long ago and I missed it. https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​posts/​​N6MNzvgmHtTASpaSS/​​bhtv-jaron-lanier-and-yudkowsky—video is missing from the LW post but is here https://​​www.youtube.com/​​watch/​​Ff15lbI1V9M

  I would love to see this happen again with a moderator and some more structure.

  I wonder if this isn’t a consequence of a kind of philosophical blind spot in EYs rationalist perspective. Sort of that to EY Twitter represents an achievement to pedestalize rather than a albatross that we’ve bought in to and accept because of network lock-in effects.

  I used to tell people in college that I “had two pack a year habit.” I would smoke rarely to strike up conversations because it was an easy ice breaker when I wanted a conversation. Twitter is like that, but instead trading seven minutes of your life you’re trading chunks of your humanity.

  I mean… I’m jealous of Trump for losing access to his drug of choice. I think it could be a really positive things for him and for all of us. :)

• CraigMichael 22 Jan 2021 20:05 UTC

  1 point

  on: Covid 1/​21: Turn­ing the Corner

  lol imagining Very Serious People telling us to eat out. Like someone named Colonel Angus.

  I mean… are other 80s/​90s kids laughing at ‘eat out to help out’ and then feeling old? Because I am.

• CraigMichael 27 Jan 2021 1:24 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: ThomasJ’s comment on: ThomasJ’s Shortform

  I like it, but it strikes me as mostly rhetorical. Pies are different than lives are different than yogurt.

  As I’m thinking about it now, there’s something like a contrast between orthorexia and right effort. The former is something like taking a virture to a vice, whereas the later has some embedded to to prevent it from being taken too far.

  There may be an overexamined life that is not worth living, but there are also lives where the right amount of effort was put in to examination that were better because of it.

• CraigMichael 12 Feb 2021 10:50 UTC

  1 point

  on: Par­ti­ci­pat­ing in a Covid-19 Vac­ci­na­tion Trial

  What color was the liquid in the vaccine? B12 is often used for placebos and had a characteristic color.

Semaglu­tide is cool, but no one wants to talk about b. an­i­malis ssp. lac­tis?

• CraigMichael 17 Feb 2021 19:19 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Slider’s comment on: Semaglu­tide is cool, but no one wants to talk about b. an­i­malis ssp. lac­tis?

  You know, I thought about that when I was writing it. You’re right, it should have been more of a content warning.

• CraigMichael 6 Mar 2021 8:42 UTC

  1 point

  on: Covid 3/​4: De­clare Vic­tory and Leave Home

  I have wanted to look at the source code from rt.live for awhile. I’m not sure where they were getting their state by state data from. That might be a place to start? https://​​rt.live/​​

  Also curious as to where https://​​covidly.com/​​ gets their data.

• CraigMichael 10 Mar 2021 7:14 UTC

  2 points

  on: An­nounce­ment: Real-time dis­cus­sions in a new Club­house com­mu­nity.

  Joined. As of right now I have two invites if anyone else wants them. You will need to DM me and so will need the mobile number for your iPhone.

• CraigMichael 11 Mar 2021 23:14 UTC

  6 points

  on: Open & Wel­come Thread – March 2021

  Hey—started posting in January but haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m an old man, but trying to pretend that I’m younger.

  Have read LW occasionally since the late 2000s and SSC since 2015 or so.

  There are a few islands of the Internet left that feel like the Internet felt when I first experienced it in the 90s (called BBSes before that).

  In some ways I feel like the Internet was mostly aspiring rationalists (and porn) until around 2007. Now we’re a minority.

• CraigMichael 12 Mar 2021 6:31 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Donald Hobson’s comment on: Covid 3/​4: De­clare Vic­tory and Leave Home

  This is pretty awesome

• CraigMichael 12 Mar 2021 6:42 UTC

  3 points

  on: Covid 3/​4: De­clare Vic­tory and Leave Home

  Zvi—if you’re taking requests for the next update—would like reviews of the data showing J&J is better at the new variants (which ones and to what do extent and how certain are we)?

• CraigMichael 13 Mar 2021 2:31 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Zvi’s comment on: Covid 3/​4: De­clare Vic­tory and Leave Home

  I don’t entirely understand the arguments myself, but it goes something like what MarketWatch said here:

  “Experts are quick to point out that the clinical trials were conducted at different times — Pfizer and Moderna conducted their trials before several mutated variants had been reported, whereas Johnson & Johnson’s trials were conducted after that. Consequently, Johnson & Johnson has clinical-trial data to show its vaccine can work effectively against variants first reported in the U.K., South Africa and Brazil.”

  https://​​www.marketwatch.com/​​story/​​the-backlash-against-johnson-johnsons-covid-19-vaccine-is-real-and-riskyheres-exactly-how-to-make-its-rollout-a-success-11615407137

  They link to this ABC news page:

  https://​​abcnews.go.com/​​Politics/​​single-dose-johnson-johnson-vaccine-effective-variants-data/​​story?id=76084549

  That actually says it’s least effective against the South African variant.… so… there’s that.

  I originally heard about it from my wife who heard about it from Sanjay Gupta’s podcast who said there was a study showing this, but I couldn’t find whatever Sanjay was talking about.

• CraigMichael 13 Mar 2021 21:17 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: gianlucatruda’s comment on: An­nounce­ment: Real-time dis­cus­sions in a new Club­house com­mu­nity.

  I found it right away.

  We should schedule a discussion!

[Question] Apollo Creed prob­lems and Club­ber Lang prob­lems—fram­ing, and how to ad­dress the lat­ter?

• CraigMichael 14 Mar 2021 3:55 UTC

  1 point

  on: Covid 3/​12: New CDC Guidelines Available

  Is anyone tracking “variants of indifference?”

  By which I mean variants that do the expected thing where mutations increase transmissibility but decrease virulence?

  The logic of natural selection would tell us those should be the much more common kinds of variants as they should increase the changes of newer generations of virus surviving to reproduce.

  It’s strange to me that all of the variants discussed have both increased transmissibility and virulence. It seems anti-Darwinian.

  If there are thousands of VOIs (variants of indifference), which you might predict for every VOC, could that not have an effect on the overall statistics? More people get less virulent VOIs and some immunity?

• CraigMichael 15 Mar 2021 19:04 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: Rana Dexsin’s comment on: Open & Wel­come Thread – March 2021

  Not specifically by name. It was more of a world of mistake theorists rather than conflict theorists, or scribes rather than actors. http://​​benjaminrosshoffman.com/​​actors-and-scribes-words-and-deeds/​​

  I could have conversations with just about anyone about evidence or entertaining an argument about almost anything. Most people would discuss whatever it was in good faith, and they almost certainly wouldn’t try to dox you and try to get you fired. (There were some exceptions, but they were exceptions and not the rule, they were usually scandals in communities when they happened and the predominant opinion was generally against the person doing it).

  Now not only are there not many good faith discussion forums, so many topics are verboten and the consequences of discussing can be so dire.

  If you post controversial things long enough in the wrong places and have a sufficiently large audience, you can expect real world consequences now. It’s not a “there’s a small chance you’ll have a minor disruption” it’s “if you haven’t bulletproofed your life, expect to lose your job—at least.”

• CraigMichael 15 Mar 2021 19:46 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Covid 3/​12: New CDC Guidelines Available

  Does he have anything to say about the case of sars-Cov-2 specifically?

  On one hand, yes it seems like there’s something like antagonistic pleiotropy here where most of the transmission is done before the “acute phase” (the time when your o2 sat drops and you go to the ER, there’s probably a better term for that I’m just not sure what it is).

  But we’re also applying non-trivial selection pressure via lockdowns and other precautions, and if sars-Cov-2 would stop killing people and just give them a runny nose we would stop and it could reproduce more. I’m just not certain why that isn’t have more of an effect.