fragmential

Karma: 20

fragmential 5 May 2026 18:30 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: It’s nice of you to worry about me, but I really do have a life
I think that the country makes a huge difference here. It’s of course naïve to assume that you specifically had the choice, but there are most certainly places where that choice does genuinely exist.

The working population in my own country averages 27.7 hours per week. Excerpt from that source:
Use refers to labour market participation. Net labour participation is trending upwards. In 2024, 73.2 percent of all 15 to 74-year-olds were in employment, and in 2023 the Netherlands had the highest net labour participation in the EU. The average worker worked 27.7 hours per week in 2024. This is the total number of hours actually worked by those in employment; hours not worked due to leave and sickness are not included. The number of hours worked is partly determined by the number of working days in a year. Compared to other EU countries, the number of weekly working hours per worker in the Netherlands has long been very low. The number of weekly working hours has been stable for a decade or so, however, while other countries have seen declines. Because net labour participation in the Netherlands is relatively high, the total number of hours worked per inhabitant is slightly higher than average compared to other EU countries.
Outcomes refers to proceeds from work, working conditions and occupational safety. The outcomes point to stable well-being, at best. Dutch workers’ real hourly wages are among the highest in the EU: in 2021 prices, workers earned an average of 28.8 euros per hour worked in 2023. Real hourly wages have not increased since 2009, except for a brief spike during the pandemic. In 2009, the real hourly wage was 29.8 euros per hour worked. Hourly wages are also stable in other EU countries, although there have been particularly pronounced increases in Ireland and Eastern Europe.
The Netherlands has the highest percentage of workers in flexible employment in the EU. In 2024, 32.8 percent of workers had temporary employment contracts or worked a flexible number of hours per week. This figure is currently trending downwards after peaking at 37.1 percent in 2017. While a degree of labour market flexibility benefits entrepreneurs, it also has a negative effect on the well-being of workers. This is because a flexible employment relationship offers less livelihood security. Job and income security can influence the decisions that people make, for instance when it comes to buying a house or having children.
Now, you could of course remark that this age group is quite broad (15-74), but for people aged 20-64, it is still 32.1 hours. Of course, there is still the man/woman split, but this does not account for everything.
But of course not everyone lives here! So indeed we should be mindful that not everyone has this choice, and even in this country, there are plenty of people who do not have the luxury to be able to work part time.

fragmential 5 May 2026 18:00 UTC
5 points
1
on: It’s nice of you to worry about me, but I really do have a life
Honestly, from everything I’ve seen in my life, I tend to worry a lot more about people that don’t work and don’t have the financial need to work. They often seem to fall into mental health troubles. The healthiest people I do know that didn’t need to work, ended up doing so anyway.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the job they pick should maximise money. The benefit of having lots of money, is that you can choose a job that is fulfilling for you that might not fall under the category of jobs that cover your expenses. Or maybe your dream job required so much up-front investment that you couldn’t get into it in the first place, like car racing.

fragmential 5 May 2026 17:30 UTC
1 point
0
on: Simply reverse engineering gpt2-small (Layer 0, Part 1: Attention)
This is cool. Are you planning a part 2?

fragmential 5 May 2026 17:29 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Roger Scott’s comment on: Intelligence Dissolves Privacy
What we as society think is moral is something that changes all the time, and laws and norms follow it, that’s just the way society works. That doesn’t mean we should give up on enforcing morals because they change anyway. We make laws that try to stay up to date with what we as society think is fair.

fragmential 3 May 2026 23:02 UTC
2 points
0
on: Intelligence Dissolves Privacy
This post is deeply discomforting for me, but I am worried that it will be the future regardless.
I must say I disagree on your issue with the European approach. I do think that the current ignorance approach to preventing racial discrimination is the best one. Unless that sentence is completely unrelated to the previous one, and I completely missed your point. (this is highly probable, so if it is the case, please do explain what part of EU privacy law you are concerned about, and ignore the rest of this comment).
Doing option 1 relies on trusting people to make unbiased decisions – people that, even if honest, cannot guarantee they will not be influenced by subconscious biases. One solution to that which is common in some places is to enforce certain quotas, but that makes the competition itself less fair, among other issues.
Option 2 seems to be “just let people discriminate”, which I think we agree on is not optimal. Although feel free to tell me if I’m missing something here.
Option 3 makes it easier for people to actually focus on what does matter, without being distracted by things that only bring up prejudice. This isn’t being ignorant about important things, it’s using a screen to make it easier to not be distracted by things that aren’t relevant that would have caused one to make worse decisions.
Of course I’d prefer to live in a world where we don’t need to hide information that shouldn’t influence people, but that doesn’t seem realistic to me in the short and medium-term.

fragmential 27 Apr 2026 19:30 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them
Sounds like a good idea. I recommend being at least able to set strictly which things are flagged though (including being able to turn off the feature). It could potentially be an annoyance otherwise. Not to mention there are definitely people that would prefer their post does not contribute to any excess energy usage regardless of how minor it may be.

fragmential 22 Apr 2026 10:01 UTC
4 points
0
on: Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them
Great essay. Some sentences tripped me up, however. So here’s some things I found regarding spelling, grammar, or clarity.
They sort of systematically choosing to believe or say false things or bad arguments,
“they are choosing”, or “they choose”.
distort their shared map of reality in a way that let’s them ignore Alice’s arguments about X
Redundant apostrophe; it should be “lets”, not “let’s”.
Making Alice feel like she’s the one losing her group on reality.
I think “group” is supposed to be “grip”.
that results them to double down on more extreme version of their position.
“more extreme versions”, or “a more extreme version”
Some Alices have talked to me, when I’ve expressed “I’m worried you’re making this a bigger deal than appropriate” is “I would chill out so much if I didn’t feel like everyone else was going to round Problem X to zero, and not take it seriously.”
This sentence is probably technically correct but it took me 3 rereads to understand. Most of all, the ” ‘Quote 1’ is ‘Quote 2’ ” structure really confused me. Also, the meaning of Alices “talking” to you is quite unclear. I needed to infer the specific meaning of talking only after reading the whole sentence.
I’m kinda new here. So if surface-level comments like these aren’t appreciated, please do tell me.

fragmential 15 Apr 2026 13:20 UTC
7 points
0
in reply to: RohanS’s comment on: Morale
I understand the point here, but I don’t really think that “try” really changes the meaning much in the direction you want, because of course you can also try really hard without taking a break to think that perhaps your attempt vector isn’t quite the right one. It’s functionally identical to the term work here.

Perhaps a more accurate phrasing for your interpretation involves “doing the right things”, which I think compounds both the choice element and the hard-work element. (This also ties the word morale nicely to the word moral, an etymological sibling.)

I think the core important belief is that your actions have consequences, and that those consequences matter. To be fair to the post, I think the original definition with “working hard” is a respectable simplification that boils it down to the component that we can really control longer for our life as a whole.

If we do decompose the problem into the components hard work and good decisions, then hard work is the part which we need dopamine for. Which we need to try and get our body to produce for us through habit. It is this that I think the post is actually about, and thus why that is a fair definition to choose.

Although I agree with you that there are cases where the choice component is important to factor in. That component is, I think, controlled much more by how smart you are, both intrinsically and from an having environment that boosts your decision-making skills (for example: parents that teach good life lessons, or role models that show you how they make good decisions). I think this is somewhat already conditioned on when we talk about the morale of a specific individual. But it could potentially be important when comparing people(s), depending on how much it actually matters for morale overall.

Very tangential, but this made me think that perhaps the latter is also one of the reasons that less intelligent people are more prone to addictions (for example problematic gambling, adjusted for socioeconomic factors). My hypothesis here is that if, on average, your effort correlates less with reward due to making poor decisions, the scale of reward required to disrupt your standard morale is also lower. This is pure conjecture of course; I just thought of it and wanted to share.

fragmential 13 Aug 2025 7:42 UTC
5 points
1
in reply to: the gears to ascension’s comment on: Open Thread—Summer 2025
Honestly. I am often a “dark mode” preference person, but I use lesswrong in light mode, because I think lesswrong has a light mode aesthetic and looks very good in it. I personally don’t like the dark mode very much. I think it is perfectly acceptable to have light mode by default. I think that serving dark mode to users that have their system theme set to dark mode is not necessarily good. It costs you just a few seconds to change it if you don’t like it, and showing the site’s identity and aesthetic is good for newcomers. This is just my anecdotal experience, but it is at least evidence that not all dark system theme people prefer to have automatic dark mode.

fragmential 25 Jun 2025 11:10 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: Socratic Persuasion: Giving Opinionated Yet Truth-Seeking Advice
I’d think that in this scenario the best thing to do might be to simply wait it out and ask them about it at a time that they are in less of a dominant mode. That is, maybe the next day during lunch. And then ask them, still socratically, in a way that respects their authority. So perhaps: “Hey. About the feedback I got yesterday, I’ve been looking to really understand it better so I can improve more. I’ve really been thinking about what I could and should have done, and why. Would you like to discuss it with me briefly?”
Absolutely not a professional in regards to being a good communicator, but reasoning logically, I thought that this strategy might work since it aims to avoid direct contact after the feedback (which otherwise might trigger the sentiment that you are being defensive) and also clearly shows that we value their authority and opinion, since that is why we approached them after all, thus avoiding an attack at their ego. These two together might set up the conversation in a frame in which the other party is more open to truth seeking discussion.