FiftyTwo

Karma: 4,789

FiftyTwo 23 Apr 2025 11:56 UTC
2 points
0
on: Well-foundedness as an organizing principle of healthy minds and societies
To give a counter example: If one part of my body has been hijacked by a virus and is producing viral cells, I would want all the other parts of my body to fight back against that infection, rather than leave that part alone. Similarly when you talk about conflicts within organizations of societies, you should want people to take sides in a dispute between managers if one of them is embezzling or committing crimes.
So I think your model is beneficial for some forms of conflict but not others. You could perhaps draw a line for action at “things that threaten the viability of the whole setup” But the delineation of that would become its own controversy

FiftyTwo 23 Jan 2025 11:39 UTC
6 points
3
in reply to: quiet_NaN’s comment on: Review: Planecrash
The setting for Planecrash is called “Glowlarion” sometimes and is shared with a lot of other glowfics, and makes some systematic changes from the original Paizo canon, mostly in terms of making it more similar to real life history of the same period, more internally coherent and with the gods and metaphysics being more impactful.
There’s a brief outline of some of the changes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZGaV1suMeHrDlsYovZbG4c4tdMVgdq0HzgRX0HUGYkU/edit?tab=t.0
These are the two oldest non-crossover threads I can find: https://www.glowfic.com/posts/3456 by lintamande and apprenticebard (who wrote Korva in planecrash) and https://www.glowfic.com/posts/3538 by lintamande and Alicorn (who wrote Luminosity, the HPMOR style reworking of Twilight).
Incomplete list of other notable threads: https://glowficwiki.noblejury.com/books/dungeons-and-dragons/page/notable-threads

FiftyTwo 7 Dec 2024 15:12 UTC
7 points
3
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Linkpost: Rat Traps by Sheon Han in Asterisk Mag
Was rereading a bunch of early 2010s LW recently, prompted by getting a reply on one of my old comments, and its definitely weird. But the flavor of weird feels different somehow? A lot more earnest and direct, and with people more willing to make silly jokes and tangents.
There were also more top level posts along the lines of “Here’s this new rationality technique I’ve been trying, what do people think?” It feels less, high context, I guess? A lot of current discussion is people immersed in some wider meta debate with long established sides and real world stakes to it.
I imagine that kind of posting wouldn’t work particularly well these days given that the environment around it has changed.

FiftyTwo 20 Oct 2023 10:28 UTC
7 points
6
in reply to: NicholasKees’s comment on: EA Vegan Advocacy is not truthseeking, and it’s everyone’s problem
I feel like you’re conflating two different levels, the discourse in wider global society and within a specific community.
I doubt you’d find anyone here who would disagree that actions by big companies that obscure the truth are bad. But they’re not the ones arguing on these forums or reading this post. Vegans have a significant presence in EA spaces so should be contributing to those productively and promoting good epistemic norms. What the lobbying team of Big Meat Co. does has no impact on that.
Also in general I’m leery of any argument of the form “the other side does as bad or worse so its okay for us to do so” given history.

FiftyTwo 20 Oct 2023 10:20 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: EA Vegan Advocacy is not truthseeking, and it’s everyone’s problem
I somewhat agree with this but I think its an uncharitable framing of the point, since virtue signalling is generally used for insincerity. My impression is that the vegans I’ve spoken with are mostly acting sincerely based on their moral premises, but those are not ones I share. If you sincerely believe that a vast atrocity is taking place that society is ignoring then a strident emotional reaction is understandable.

FiftyTwo 20 Oct 2023 10:12 UTC
0 points
0
in reply to: trevor’s comment on: EA Vegan Advocacy is not truthseeking, and it’s everyone’s problem
I’ve definitely noticed a shift in the time I’ve been involved or aware of EA. In the early 2010s it was mostly focused on global poverty and the general idea of evidence based charity, and veganism was peripheral. Now it seems like a lot of groups are mainly about veganism, and very resistant to people who think otherwise. And as veganism is a minority position that is going to put off people who would otherwise be interested in EA

FiftyTwo 19 Jul 2023 22:10 UTC
2 points
0
on: We have to Upgrade
You still run into the alignment problem of ensuring that the upgraded version of you aligns with your values, or some extension of them. If my uploaded transhuman self decides to turn the world into paperclips that’s just as bad as if a non-human AGI does.

FiftyTwo 16 Mar 2023 17:33 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Conor’s comment on: [link] Guide on How to Learn Programming
Never really got anywhere. Its long enough ago that I don’t really remember why, but think I generally found it unengaging. Have periodically tried to teach myself programming through different methods since then but none have stuck. This probably speaks to the difficulty of learning new skills when you have limited time/energy resources, and no specific motivation, more than anything else. (Have had similar difficulties with language learning, but got past them due to short term practical benefits, and devoting specific time to the task).

FiftyTwo 26 Feb 2023 11:47 UTC
14 points
4
in reply to: Huluk’s comment on: Consent Isn’t Always Enough
It mixes the personal and professional level
Possibly reflective of a wider issue in EA/rationalist spaces where the two are often not very clearly delineated. In that sense EA is more like hobby/fandom communities than professional ones.

FiftyTwo 10 Nov 2022 0:41 UTC
2 points
on: Kelly Bet on Everything
Saying that people would be better off taking more risks under a particular model elides the question of why they don’t take those risks to begin with, and how we can change that. If its desirable to do so.
The psychological impact of a loss of x is generally higher than that of a corresponding gain. So if I know I will feel worse from losing $10 than I will feel good from gaining $100, then its entirely rational in my utility function to not take a ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ bet between those two outcomes. Maybe I would be better off overall if I didn’t over weight losses, but utility functions aren’t easily rewritable by humans. The closest you could come is some kind of exposure therapy to losses.

FiftyTwo 10 Aug 2022 22:42 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: jaspax’s comment on: Proposal: Consider not using distance-direction-dimension words in abstract discussions
Also, we have a huge amount of mental architecture devoted to understanding and remembering spatial relationships of objects (for obvious evolutionary reasons). Using that as a metaphor for purely abstract things allows us to take advantage of that mental architecture to make other tasks easier.
A very structured version of this would be something like a memory palace where you assign ideas to specific locations in a place, but I think we are doing the same thing often when we talk about ideas in spatial relationships, and build loose mental models of them as existing in spatial relationship to one another (or at least I do).

FiftyTwo 30 Jul 2022 22:49 UTC
11 points
0
in reply to: Valentine’s comment on: ITT-passing and civility are good; “charity” is bad; steelmanning is niche
I think the core thing here is same-sidedness.
The converse of this is that the maximally charitable approach can be harmful when the interlocutor is fundamentally not on the same side as you, in trying to honestly discuss a topic and arrive at truth. I’ve seen people tie themselves in knots when trying to apply the principle of charity, when the most parsimonious explanation is that the other side is not engaging in good faith, and shouldn’t be treated as such.
It’s taken me a long time to internalise this, because my instinct is to take what people say at face value. But its important to remember that sometimes there isn’t anything complex or nuanced going on, people can just lie.

FiftyTwo 1 Jul 2022 10:05 UTC
28 points
0
on: CFAR Handbook: Introduction
Thanks. This is the kind of content I originally came to LW for a decade ago, but seems to have become less popular

FiftyTwo 12 Apr 2022 16:07 UTC
2 points
on: Ideal governance (for companies, countries and more)
You might find Origins Of Political Order interesting. Emphasis on how the principle agent problem is one of the central issues of governance and how without strong mechanisms systems tend to descend into corruption

FiftyTwo 10 Apr 2022 18:49 UTC
2 points
on: Playing with DALL·E 2
Is there any way of reverse engineering from these pictures what existing images were used to generate them? Would be interesting to see how much similarity there is.

FiftyTwo 9 Apr 2022 22:38 UTC
14 points
in reply to: Not Relevant’s comment on: It’s time for EA leadership to pull the fast-takeoff fire alarm.
So we just need to get two superpowers who currently feel they are in a zero sum competition with each other to stop trying to advance in an area that gives them a potentially infinite advantage? Seems a very classic case of the kind of coordination problems that are difficult to solve, with high rewards for defecting.

We have, partially managed to do this for nuclear and biological weapons. But only with a massive oversight infrastructure that doesn’t exist for AI. And relying on physical evidence and materials control that doesn’t exist for AI. It’s not impossible, but it would require a similar level of concerted international effort that was used for nuclear weapons. Which took a long time, so possibly doesn’t fit with your short timeline

FiftyTwo 8 Apr 2022 20:07 UTC
7 points
on: Dr Fauci as Machiavellian Boddhisattva
A more charitable interpretation of the same evidence would be that as a public health professional Dr Fauci has a lot of experience with the difficulties of communicating complex and messages and the political tradeoffs that are necessary for effective action. And has judged based on that experience what is most effective to say. Do you have data he doesn’t? Or a reason to think his experience in his speciality is inapplicable?

FiftyTwo 8 Apr 2022 19:23 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Not Relevant’s comment on: It’s time for EA leadership to pull the fast-takeoff fire alarm.

Earth does have the global infrastructure

It does? What do you mean? The only thing I can think of is the UN, and recent events don’t make it very likely they’d engage in coordinated action on anything.

FiftyTwo 8 Apr 2022 19:21 UTC
42 points
on: It’s time for EA leadership to pull the fast-takeoff fire alarm.

It should not take long, given these pieces and a moderate amount of iteration, to create an agentic system capable of long-term decision-making

That is, to put it mildly, a pretty strong claim, and one I don’t think the rest of your post really justifies. Without which it’s still just listing a theoretical thing to worry about

FiftyTwo 19 Mar 2022 17:52 UTC
6 points
on: The Long Long Covid Post
If you’re an otherwise healthy young person who has tested positive, what’s the best thing you can do to prevent getting long covid? Seems like there’s research saying that exercising too early can make it worse, but other articles saying good things about exercise, and I’m not sure how to evaluate it.