sapphire

Karma: 2,310

sapphire 24 Apr 2024 5:42 UTC
4 points
0
on: deluks917′s Shortform
I prefer to keep plans private but I’m making big progress on meditation and mental re-wiring. Am working on a way to publicly demonstrate. Public plans just stress me out. I recently set two pretty ambitious goals. I figured I could use psychedelics to turbo-charge progress. The meditation one is coming along FAST.

The other goal is honestly blocked a bit on being super out of shape. Multiple rounds of covid really destroyed my cardio and energy levels. Need to rebuild those before a big push on goal 2.

sapphire 24 Apr 2024 0:04 UTC
2 points
0
on: Mid-conditional love
Im with several other commentators. People know what unconditional love is. Many people have it for their family members, most commonly for their children but often for others. They want that. Sadly this sort of love is rare beyond family.
I felt some amount of unconditional towards my dad. He was really not a great parent to me. He hit me for fun, was ashamed of me, etc. But we did have some good times. When he was dying of cancer I was still a good son. Was quite supportive. Not out of duty, I just didnt want him to suffer any more than needed. I felt genuinely love. I would have done a lot of costly things for him if he asked. My mom and uncle were giving him intrusive treatment than he wanted. Though it hadnt gotten too out of hand yet (except for the fact it burned all my moms money). But I very seriously told him during visits if he said the word Id call my lawyers and make sure he didn’t get medically tortured. This would have cost me a lot of money and time but he was my dad! How can a son let his father down like that. He died before legal issues came to a head but I was in his camp. I didnt care how many people got mad at me.

sapphire 8 Apr 2024 10:19 UTC
2 points
0
on: Open Thread Spring 2024
Does anyone have high quality analysis of how effective machines are for strength training and building muscles. Not free weights specifically machines. Im not the pickiest on how one operationalizes ‘work’. More interested in the quality of the analysis. But some questions:
-- Do users get hurt frequently? Are the injuries chronic? (This is the most important question)
-- Do people who use them consistently gain muscle
-- Can you gain a ‘lot’ of muscle and strength liek you can with free weights. Or people cap out quickly if they are fit
-- Does strength from free weight carry over to other things. To barbells? To bodyweight calisthenics? To sports?
As I said im not the pickiest. Id rather have a great analysis of ‘carryover to curling’ than a meh quality analysis that covered all of my questions.

sapphire 6 Apr 2024 20:25 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: Vanessa Kosoy’s comment on: Vanessa Kosoy’s Shortform
Im not particularly against pivotal acts. It seems plausible to me someone will take one. Would not exactly shock me if Sam Altman himself planned to take one to prevent dangerous AGI. He is intelligent and therefore isnt going to openly talk about considering them. But I dont have any serious objection to them being taken if people are reasonable about it.

sapphire 4 Apr 2024 18:13 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Dmitriy’s comment on: Best in Class Life Improvement
A rather large fraction of the total words in this document are dedicated to safety warnings. I do not see how its possible to deny I seem quite focus on some sense of safety. I focused on the safety issues I think are genuinely the most pressing (addiction risks, trauma). I genuinely do not think that drug purity issues are the main risk of taking this advice. Certainly not for ketamine sourced in San Fransisco. Also the service I linked in SF also sends samples to a lab for quite thorough testing and you get results in about four weeks. You should believe I genuinely disagree with you on what the risks are for the substances mentioned.

sapphire 4 Apr 2024 16:46 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Metacelsus’s comment on: Best in Class Life Improvement
I think modafinal is great for a lot of people. But I made the choice to only write up the very best (in terms of expected outcomes) stuff. Given that many substances have risks or legal issues it was much simpler for me to just not mention a lot of stuff. I do not intend any implicit claim that other things aren’t useful. But I didn’t make a list of ‘stuff I’ve investigated and found less good on average’ vs ‘stuff I have not investigated’.

Thanks for sharing moda is working that well for you

Best in Class Life Improvement

sapphire4 Apr 2024 1:51 UTC

64 points

15 comments16 min readLW link

sapphire 1 Apr 2024 4:25 UTC
5 points
5
in reply to: Zack_M_Davis’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
It feels like bad praxis to punish people for things they got right!

sapphire 26 Mar 2024 4:05 UTC
2 points
0
on: General Thoughts on Secular Solstice
The circle is by far my favorite solstice song. I like to it all the time. It is definitely the most ‘sapph values’ part of the performance. I find it beautiful. A ray of pure divine grace. I will say im not exactly bad at being rational in concrete ways. Im fairly successful economically, socially and romantically despite having an abusive childhood. I attribute my success to being methodical and rational about things, at least some of the time. But there is something about rat values that differs from mine. So its very good for my feeling included that the Circle has survived the culls.

sapphire 19 Mar 2024 18:10 UTC
10 points
0
on: deluks917′s Shortform
If any of my adoring fans, or anyone else, wants to grab lunch/dinner/a drink let me know. Im in SF for a bit. Lots to talk about. Also I try to do an hour plus of walking per day. So happy to walk. Though im not always up for a big hike. Lots to do.

sapphire 18 Feb 2024 23:02 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Jonas V’s comment on: FUTARCHY NOW BABY
I didn’t have time or energy! This shit was going parabolic! Whatever happened to Aumann’s agreement theorem!

sapphire 18 Feb 2024 7:41 UTC
2 points
0
on: FUTARCHY NOW BABY
I will note this is both a cool as fuck project and the token is like 2x+ from when I posted. So idk why im getting downvoted. I guess lesswrong jsut isnt into finance for personal gain or to look at dope stuff.

FUTARCHY NOW BABY

sapphire17 Feb 2024 0:03 UTC

−12 points

7 comments1 min readLW link

sapphire 12 Feb 2024 21:04 UTC
8 points
10
on: Sam Altman’s Chip Ambitions Undercut OpenAI’s Safety Strategy
The lesswrong/EA communities ‘inside game’ strategy for AI safety is genuinely embarrassing to me as a longtime community member. Quokkas gonna quokka but this is ridiculous.

sapphire 10 Feb 2024 21:20 UTC
7 points
0
in reply to: sapphire’s comment on: How to (hopefully ethically) make money off of AGI
Obviously this is up a fuckton

sapphire 28 Jan 2024 15:32 UTC
3 points
on: deluks917′s Shortform
Serious advice: Your close friends and partners should actively admire you and how you live your life. Don’t settle for less. You can have less close relations across the divide. But your closest circle should see you as a hero.

sapphire 25 Jan 2024 7:45 UTC
2 points
0
on: Monthly Roundup #14: January 2024
Emmett Shear reminds us that if you are playing Street Fighter [2 Turbo, presumably] then the solution to the so-called ‘cheese’ moves that seem overpowered is not to ban them, it is to use them until someone shows you or figures out the counter, then everything is fine.
This works exactly because the game is well-designed, with good counters to every such move. If that was not true, this would fail. It also relies on having enough data to find the counter-moves, and enough practice to learn them, to get to the new equilibrium. It does genuinely ruin a different experience some people want. Keep those things in mind while generalizing.
Its worth noting that, at this point, the vast majority of paper magic is explicitly competitive. Commander has eclipsed everything else combined. And in normal commander if your playgroup finds something cheap than you basically can’t use it! Normal commander games run on social consensus of whats acceptable, definitely de facto ban fully optimized lists, and have a strong norm of not bringing strategies anyone at the table strongly objects to. Seems like most people prefer this flexible ‘scrubby’ ruleset.
it is interesting to me that what has won out is neither strictly competitive nor strictly freeform. Commander has a banned list and most people dont explicitly deviate from it. People rarely play totally homebrew formats. What has won is a ‘consensus ruleset’ + ‘flexible social norms around what is de facto banned for being too strong or cheesy’. Very interesting to me.
Note: Im aware CEDH exists but I’m counting it as part of ‘everything else’ for these purposes. I play IRL modern and modern/legacy on mtgo (im sapphirestar on mtgo! send me a friend request if you wanna jam some games). so im not exactly the scrubbiest person myself. But it definitely seems like the hardcore tribe lost out in the marketplace for playershare.

sapphire 25 Jan 2024 1:10 UTC
4 points
2
on: This might be the last AI Safety Camp
I don’t really get why this wouldn’t get funded.

sapphire 24 Jan 2024 3:36 UTC
3 points
on: deluks917′s Shortform
Current AI weights

sapphire 22 Jan 2024 18:56 UTC
4 points
0
on: When Does Altruism Strengthen Altruism?
A culture that denigrates being altruistic/nice in small ways makes it really hard to know who to trust. I understand their is an aversion to ‘virtue signaling’ but accepting rat/ea culture really feels like it disables my intuitive (and honestly decently reliable) intuition for who is trustworthy. Imo there is a good reason people check things like ‘how do they treat waiters’ when deciding who is a trustworthy partner or friend. That stuff cannot replace explicit logical altruism. But it seems like a mistake to jettison being kind in smaller ways throughout your life.