Dave Lindbergh

Karma: 206

Dave Lindbergh 20 Sep 2021 21:57 UTC
3 points
on: Ten Hundred Megaseconds
It’s been done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
That aside, what’s so special about base 10?
Wouldn’t it be more logical to celebrate passage of, say, 2^24 seconds (194 days)? Once we’re no longer constrained to human bodies, we can have as many fingers on our hands as we want, so we may as well have 8 or 16.

Dave Lindbergh 20 Sep 2021 21:47 UTC
−1 points
on: How should dance venues best protect the drinks of attendees?
Your social circle is very different from any I’ve ever been in. Sorry to hear that.
I assume these drugs take effect gradually, and that the effects are dramatic enough that the victim is (eventually) aware of them.
If so, mightn’t it be better to warn everyone about the problem (be on the lookout for drug effects!), and advise victims to inform others about the scumbags doing this? (Under the assumption that most of them time when people are drugged it’ll be fairly obvious who did it.)
I’d think it would be better to drive the scumbags out of your community than to just find a way to prevent one attack vector. (Surely those who’d stoop to this will find other equally objectionable ways to achieve their ends.)

Dave Lindbergh 18 Sep 2021 19:49 UTC
2 points
on: Simulated Elon Musk Lives in a Simulation
It’s cool—a little too cool; I wonder how much was the effect from your cherry-picking answers.
Even so, I’d love to ask the simulation a few questions of my own.

Dave Lindbergh 3 Sep 2021 17:51 UTC
4 points
in reply to: hippke’s comment on: Why the technological singularity by AGI may never happen
We don’t know, true. But given the possible space of limiting parameters it seems unlikely that humans are anywhere near the limits. We’re evolved systems, evolved under conditions in which intelligence was far from the most important priority.
And of course under the usual evolutionary constraints (suboptimal lock-ins like backward wired photoreceptors in the retina, the usual limited range of biological materials—nothing like transistors or macro scale wheels, etc.).
And by all reports John von Neumann was barely within the “human” range, yet seemed pretty stable. He came remarkably close to taking over the world, despite there being only one of him and not putting any effort into it.
I think all you’re saying is there’s a small chance it’s not possible.

Dave Lindbergh 8 Aug 2021 23:58 UTC
7 points
on: Against “blankfaces”
Yes, I think some web portals, and some software, are designed poorly because of malice. Not (usually) malice against users, but malice against managers and those setting requirements, when those people and their instructions are perceived as stupid and unreasonable.
One reaction to such demands is to deliver exactly what was requested—something stupid and unreasonable, in order to vividly demonstrate the stupid and unreasonable nature of the managers and requirements.
Sometimes professionalism, ethics, and dedication to user experience manage to overcome the natural human reaction to unreasonable requests. The more the developers are in an organization that rewards obedience over quality, the more likely the result will be due to malice.

Dave Lindbergh 30 Jul 2021 22:03 UTC
8 points
on: Brief thoughts on inefficient writing systems
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter “c” would be dropped to be replased either by “k” or “s”, and likewise “x” would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which “c” would be retained would be the “ch” formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform “w” spelling, so that “which” and “one” would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish “y” replasing it with “i” and Iear 4 might fiks the “g/j” anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez “c”, “y” and “x”—bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez—tu riplais “ch”, “sh”, and “th” rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Dave Lindbergh 27 Jul 2021 17:24 UTC
24 points
in reply to: Choosing Beggars’s comment on: DeepMind: Generally capable agents emerge from open-ended play
We need to understand information encoding in the brain before we can achieve full AGI.
Maybe. For many years, I went around saying that we’d never have machines that accurately transcribe natural speech until those machines understood the meaning of the speech. I thought that context was necessary.
I was wrong.

Dave Lindbergh 21 Jul 2021 2:36 UTC
8 points
on: Punishing the good
Bob’s a hero provided he’s paid his meat tax. That’s the tax we impose on people who do bad things to animals. The tax makes up for their bad karma. People who pay the tax should be considered absolved of sin—they’ve bought and paid for their indulgence, fair and square.
Am I a contemptible person because I burnt a gallon of gasoline this morning? What if I paid for it, external costs included? What if I paid a separate CO2 tax? What if I offset the carbon by planting trees? I think not.
Does this viewpoint make me a monster? As Temple Grandin likes to say, “that’s the kind of animal we are” (carnivores). Maybe we shouldn’t get too morally worked up over acting like homo sapiens. Nobody blames lions for eating antelopes. (Plus, just think of our poor mitochondria; enslaved for life...).
We’d have to physically stop carnivores if cattle had rights—but since cattle can’t respect the rights of others, they don’t themselves have rights. Sort of like the way we lock up criminals who don’t respect the rights of other humans—having proved unable to respect the rights of others, they lose (some of) their own rights.
Cattle are just protected a bit by us humans who impose meat taxes. The cattle don’t even get the tax money as compensation (unlike Bruce).
People who pay their way in the world, compensating those they’ve harmed, aren’t monsters and shouldn’t be “punished”.

Dave Lindbergh 25 Jun 2021 17:37 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Andrew Vlahos’s comment on: The homework assignment incentives, and why it’s now so extreme
By policing that, I mean if the students don’t get the graded homework back in 48 hours, they can complain to administrators and parents, who can pressure the teacher. This assumes the administrators decide to make and enforce the 48 hour rule.
Re coordination, I’ve seen kids using “group chat” on Facebook or similar. In some schools (good ones) it seems to be de rigueur.

Dave Lindbergh 25 Jun 2021 0:26 UTC
3 points
in reply to: TekhneMakre’s comment on: ELI12: how do libertarians want wages to work?
Managers are fewer than workers but there are thousands of firms in every country (as well as millions of workers) so in either case we’re well into the law of large numbers. There’s no practical way for thousands of entities to form stable cartels (without government backing).
If you worry about employers in a city forming a cartel to keep wages low, shouldn’t you worry even more about supermarkets doing the same to keep grocery prices high? There are a lot fewer supermarkets than firms that employ workers.
And all other prices are set by dealings between mortal entities.
I don’t think there are good reasons to treat worker-employer relations as any different than seller-buyer relations for any other goods or services.
I think you’re complicating things needlessly by treating the labor market as different from all other markets—cartels and unions are the same thing. Scabs and those who undermine cartels are the same thing. Price controls are price controls.
In general price caps (say, rent control) are bad because they cause shortages, blunt incentives to provide more supply and improve quality, and prevent people from buying things at prices they’re willing to pay. Price floors (say, minimum wages) are bad because they create gluts (unemployment), reduce incentives to create jobs, and prevent people from selling stuff at prices they’re willing to accept (esp. the labor of the least-skilled workers).
In general. There’s nothing terribly different about the labor market vs. other markets.

Dave Lindbergh 24 Jun 2021 19:26 UTC
2 points
in reply to: TekhneMakre’s comment on: ELI12: how do libertarians want wages to work?
Government intervention is generally considered a bad idea (I won’t say “not legitimate”) because the intervention is usually laws that stop people from making the deals they want to make, which usually is bad for all parties involved—if they didn’t think the deal was better than no deal, they wouldn’t want to make it.
But I suppose there might be other government interventions that would be OK (for example providing information about competing offers, or offering education, etc.).

Dave Lindbergh 24 Jun 2021 19:08 UTC
1 point
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: ELI12: how do libertarians want wages to work?
Lots of other prices are “sticky” like that. It’s a psychological thing—nothing special about wages.
The question was about wages, not how to survive. Lots of people who earn wages don’t live on them. Lots of people don’t sell their labor at all. Children, disabled people, retired people, people in business, etc. don’t live on wages.
How to get enough money to live is an entirely separate question from how “wages work”. There are lots of other ways to survive that don’t involve wages—making and selling things, telling stories and writing books, gifts from family or friends or charitable organizations, making art, receiving grants, spending money previously saved or invested, welfare payments from governments, etc., etc. (A lot of talk lately about “Universal Basic Income”, too.)
Really “how wages work” and “how to get money to survive” are two entirely disconnected subjects. Mixing them together only leads to confusion (and I’m sorry to say, misery).

Dave Lindbergh 24 Jun 2021 18:12 UTC
2 points
on: ELI12: how do libertarians want wages to work?
I’m amazed you only have 4 answers so far.
The bog-standard classical (and, yes, “libertarian”) answer is that wages work exactly the same as all other prices—prices for candy bars, gasoline, houses, lawn mowing services, plumbers, and milk.
That’s to say, supply and demand (sellers and buyers) set prices, same as with everything else. If buyers don’t like the price, they shop around some more, settle for a lower-quality “product” that’s cheaper, or offer more to get what they want. If sellers don’t like what’s on offer, they look for another buyer who’ll pay more, try to improve the “product”, or settle for what buyers are willing to pay.
Generally speaking, price controls (a minimum wage is a price floor on labor) make things worse for pretty much everybody—laws that make mutually-advantageous trades illegal are generally a bad idea. Plenty of countries don’t have any minimum wage (last I checked, those included Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—all pretty decent places to live).
There’s a whole academic field dedicated to studying and understanding this called “economics”.

Dave Lindbergh 22 Jun 2021 16:04 UTC
5 points
on: The homework assignment incentives, and why it’s now so extreme
It has been more than 40 years since I personally had to deal with this BS.
The stories I hear from my children confirm what you say. One result seems to have been students cooperating online to do homework. That seems to be impossible to police. For sure that would have been “cheating” when I was in school, but it seems there is no practical alternative for students who want to get decent grades. Perhaps peer pressure makes students try to contribute to the group effort, which might ensure that most of them learn some of the material. There may be positive effects—students to some extent specialize in doing homework in subjects they find easy, and get extra help on subjects they find hard. That could be a good thing (there’s always a tension between exploiting natural talents and being “rounded”).
AFAICT this doesn’t seem to have reduced the amount students actually learn. But I worry about the effect on standards of probity (but have no evidence that there has in fact been a negative effect so far).
The simplest solution for school administrators might be to insist that teachers grade assignments personally (no outsourcing to students or the Internet) and promptly—within 48 hours of receiving the homework.
The students themselves could police that, and it would naturally place some limits on how much homework the teachers can assign.

Dave Lindbergh 21 Jun 2021 15:47 UTC
1 point
in reply to: amaury lorin’s comment on: How can there be a godless moral world ?
“I feel like there is objective truth about why killing is bad, but I don’t understand why.”
I think I get that. I tried to explain “why” in my answer above. “Why” is because you’re built to feel that way. For good, practical reasons.

Dave Lindbergh 21 Jun 2021 15:08 UTC
10 points
on: How can there be a godless moral world ?
Your answer is in your own question—“societies that discourage murder will probably fare better than societies that promote it. I don’t understand why murder is bad”.
Our sense of good and evil is shaped by what helped our ancestors survive in competition with other tribes. Societies with less murder—because of people who abhor murder—fared better, resulting in descendants who also abhor murder (us).
People who didn’t abhor murder didn’t form societies or formed societies that were less successful, leaving behind few descendants with those instincts. People mixed, societies formed and disbanded. Over time, people who instinctively and culturally abhorred murder relatively flourished, while those who didn’t relatively diminished.
That’s it—there’s nothing more to the story than that.
All our modern philosophy about good and evil and law is post-hoc justification, regularization, and exploitation of our instinctive disdain for murder (and other evils). Intellectuals among us try to extend our instincts and observations about what makes for successful societies (morals, ethics, law...) in a regular, predictable, and logical way, but have trouble coming up with tight, closed, well-argued positions that don’t lead to perceived absurd consequences. Because the universe isn’t necessarily compatible with our ideas of justice and morality.

Dave Lindbergh 13 Jun 2021 19:52 UTC
6 points
on: Experiments with a random clock
You’re an unusual person. I’m glad you found something that works for you. I just learned to relish the “quiet time” that comes from being a few minutes early—use it to rest, meditate, catch up on email, read an article, whatever. Before smartphones (I’m that old) I’d carry a book with me everywhere I went—to have something to read.

Dave Lindbergh 27 Apr 2021 17:34 UTC
−27 points
on: Jaan Tallinn’s 2020 Philanthropy Overview
Thank you for doing that. I hope the donations have positive effect.
Please don’t use “MM” to mean 10^6. The only other people I know who do that are over 90 years old.
The Romans have been gone a long time. The SI prefix for 10^6 is just one M, as in “mega”.
Cheers.

Dave Lindbergh 23 Apr 2021 16:37 UTC
20 points
on: The Fall of Rome: Why It’s Relevant, And Why We’re Mistaken
I fear you’re beating up a strawman. As Gibbon makes pretty clear (and he’s nothing if not the “standard narrative”), Rome rotted from the inside—politically and economically. The barbarians didn’t get anywhere until Rome was practically collapsed from internal corruption.
Rome suffered an extreme case of all the standard things that modern economists write about—public choice failures, protectionism, price controls, government-backed trade monopolies, etc., etc. The political system was inherently unstable and tended to dictatorships.
The founders of the United States studied classical history closely, and consciously attempted to create a structure that would resist those failure modes. They succeeded better than they imagined (IMHO most of the American founders would have been shocked to hear the USA made it even 100 years, yet it’s sort of still running today...sort of) but of course far from perfectly. They were aware that this is a hard problem never before solved in history (altho Switzerland has done pretty well too).
And, as you hint, lead pipes and lead poisonings didn’t help any either. That was just bad luck.

Dave Lindbergh 6 Apr 2021 19:21 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Gerald Monroe’s comment on: What do you think would be the best investment policy for a cryonics trust?
“in order for something to exist, everything must exist, eternally”
Care to explain why? The rest of your comment I understand.