Currently in Karlsruhe, moving to Frankfurt (Main) soon.
Felix Karg
Karma: 119
Starting a Rationalist Meetup during Lockdown
Karlsruhe Rationalist Meetup #18
Karlsruhe Rationailty Meetup #16
Karlsruhe Rationality Meetup #14
Related: Zvi had some notes on the general FDA approval process in his last COVID-Situation-update-post, regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/rencyawwfr4rfwt5C/p/PQACEuWpkSyRgHC4p#Waiting_on_AstraZeneca
Karlsruhe Rationality Meetup #12
I appreciate your fast meta-takes and responses on the current situation.
Speed premium, will hopefully flesh out more carefully in future
I would love to see a carefully fleshed out version, since it seems to have insights, applications and implications significantly beyond their immediately discussed content.
Karlsruhe Weekly Rationalist Meetup #11
Karlsruhe Weekly Rationalist Meetup #10
Karlsruhe Weekly Rationalist Meetup #9
Ah, I see — the devil is in the detail. We are not really disagreeing about most things. I see it as a policy question where I think that network effects are more important, while your focus is (correct me if I got that wrong) on the importance of individual motivations.
that glamour/parties/fun are not the primary attractive feature of work for the people who are making the world move forward.
You are right, but their secondary effects are potentially more important: attracting more people who can work on moving the world forward. I can see why having a significant amount of people like that could be problematic for any organization, which is maybe (?) enough reason to avoid them on the policy level.
(there was a post about that some time ago, I tried to find it again but couldn’t. The basic argument was that charities should not claim to be the ‘single best’, since they could benefit more from people giving overall than competing against each other. The basic argument still holds: for big causes, more people are generally better if you can efficiently use them, whatever their primary motivation really is.)
Destroy the camaraderie, and the less talented/dedicated people, those who are most attracted to the sheer camaraderie, will quit.
In my experience, camaraderie is one of the attracting forces especially for more talented and dedicated people, since they already have/or can easily get ‘everything else’.
Karlsruhe Weekly Rationalist Meetup #8
Good catch, I didn’t consider this possibility
[Question] Genetic Engineering: How would you change your DNA?
Thank you for writing this, it was very helpful to me. I will read up on a number of links you provided in the post itself and other comments.
I’m starting to dabble in Biology since last Semester (Computer Science Bachelors, currently doing Master’s degree) as a minor, some of my current interests are:
Epigenetics
Especially related with newly available computational methods and experiments doable with CRISPR-modifications. What are the active areas of research?Simulation
Particularly of biological pathways or other relevant parts. What is commonly simulated? To what degree?Measuring
How easy it is to measure the ‘Hallmarks of Aging’, and how accurate are their relative predictions? What other measurements would be great to have (soon)?
For me, it is not ultimately clear that they are relevant for the field at all, so bear with my selfishness here. I would especially be interested in a (slightly more technical) introduction to the current state of the Art, active areas of research, how it is related to anti-aging research, and how to learn more about each of them.
Furthering anti-aging-research/awareness is actually a secondary career goal of mine, the first/current one is figuring out how to consistently raise the sanity waterline in organizations. It might even be possible to fulfill both at one organization, we’ll see.
While I am quite the fan of current ‘idea’-LessWrong, I would love to see a collection of actionable rationality exercises, especially about core concepts such as those from the sequences.
Explanations should be mainly for non-rationalists. This could be a go-to to forward to people roughly interested in the topic, but without the time to read through the ‘theoretical’ posts. Think Hammertime but formulated specifically for non-‘formal’-rationalists. Doing them should be entertaining and result in an intuitive understanding of the same concepts, and deeper understanding through having applied them.
Basically, more exercises. More explicit application.
Thank you, this post has been quite insightful. I still have this lingering feeling, maybe you can help me with that: what if the creation of unaligned AGI just so happens to not have any (noticeable) effect on GWP at all? Nanobot creation (and other projects) might just happen to not, or only minimally involve monetary transfers — I can think of many reasons why this might be preferable (traceability!), and how it might be doable (e.g. manipulate human agents without paying them).
Someone should start a collection of good translator-resources between different thinking styles. I might end up working on something similar in the far future …
I used to read a newspaper daily for half an hour during breakfast. At some point I read https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DSzpr8Y9299jdDLc9/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers and haven’t touched a newspaper for more than reading specific recommended articles since.