Jasen

Karma: 415

Jasen 16 Jun 2009 19:32 UTC
9 points
on: Rationalists lose when others choose

There are instances where nature penalizes the rational. For instance, revenge is irrational, but being thought of as someone who would take revenge gives advantages.

I would generally avoid calling a behavior irrational without providing specific context. Revenge is no more irrational than a peacock’s tail. They are both costly signals that can result in a significant boost to your reputation in the right social context...if you are good enough to pull them off.

Jasen 1 Oct 2009 10:30 UTC
14 points
on: NY-area OB/LW meetup Saturday 10/3 7 PM
This is an excellent opportunity to announce that I recently organized an OB/LW discussion group that meets in NYC twice a month. We had been meeting sporadically ever since Robin’s visit back in April. The regular meetings only started about a month ago and have been great fun. Here is the google group we’ve been using to organize them:

http://groups.google.com/group/overcomingbiasnyc

We meet every 2nd Saturday at 11:00am and every 4th Tuesday at 6:00pm at Georgia’s Bake Shop (on the corner of 89th street and Broadway). The deal is that I show up every time and stay for at least two hours regardless of whether or not anyone else comes.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but I don’t have enough Karma...
What links here?
- Regular NYC Meetups by MBlume (1 Oct 2009 12:44 UTC; 11 points)

Jasen 1 Oct 2009 16:03 UTC
2 points
on: Regular NYC Meetups
Thank you for posting this!

Now I feel bad about not spreading the word sooner...but better late than never I suppose.

So far, attendance has ranged from 4 to 8 people per meetup. If enough people are interested in meeting regularly we might have to switch venues. I had a good experience at the Moonstruck Diner during another meetup, so that would probably be my second choice:

http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/moonstruck-diner/

It was quiet, cheap, had a large empty dining area at the back and they left us a lone to talk for over four hours. If anyone has any other suggests, feel free to post them here or on the google group.

I hope to see more of you all in the future!

Jasen 20 Feb 2010 0:45 UTC
0 points
in reply to: olimay’s comment on: Friendly AI at the NYC Future Salon
Yeah, It will be recorded. I’ll add a link to the post when the video is up.

Jasen 26 Apr 2010 1:47 UTC
7 points
on: Report from Humanity+ UK 2010
I was the main organizer for the NYC LW/OB group until I moved out to the Bay Area a few weeks ago. From my experience, if you want to encourage people to get together with some frequency you need to make doing so require as little effort and coordination as possible. The way I did it was as follows:

We started a google group that everyone interested in the meetups signed up for, so that we could contact each other easily.

I picked an easily accessible location and two times per month, (second Saturdays at 11am and 4th Tuesdays at 6pm) on which meetups would always occur. I promised to show up at both times every month for at least two hours regardless of whether or not anyone else showed up. I figured the worst that could happen was that I’d have two hours of peace and quiet to read or get some work done and that if at least one person showed up we’d almost certainly have a great time.

We’ve been doing that for about 9 months and I’ve never been left alone. In fact, we found that twice a month wasn’t enough and started meeting every week a few months ago.

At the moment, only one meetup per month is announced to the “public” through the meetup.com group (so that we don’t have to explain all of the basics to new people every meeting), one is for general unfocused discussion and two are rationality-themed game nights (such as poker training).

You should probably set up the google/meetup.com group first and poll people on what times work best for them and what kinds of activities they are most interested in and then take it form there.

I wish you the best of luck, and I’d be happy to answer any other questions you might have.

Jasen 21 Aug 2010 21:00 UTC
26 points
in reply to: multifoliaterose’s comment on: Transparency and Accountability
Jonah,

Thanks for expressing an interest in donating to SIAI.

(a) SIAI has secured a 2 star donation from GiveWell for donors who are interested in existential risk.

I assure you that we are very interested in getting the GiveWell stamp of approval. Michael Vassar and Anna Salamon have corresponded with Holden Karnofsky on the matter and we’re trying figure out the best way to proceed.

If it were just a matter of SIAI becoming more transparent and producing a larger number of clear outputs I would say that it is only a matter of time. As it stands, GiveWell does not know how to objectively evaluate activities focused on existential risk reduction. For that matter, neither do we, at least not directly. We don’t know of any way to tell what percentage of worlds that branch off from this one go on to flourish and how many go on to die. If GiveWell decides not to endorse charities focused on existential risk reduction as a general policy, there is little we can do about it. Would you consider an alternative set of criteria if this turns out to be the case?

We think that UFAI is the largest known existential risk and that the most complete solution—FAI—addresses all other known risks (as well as the goals of every other charitable cause) as a special case. I don’t mean to imply that AI is the only risk worth addressing at the moment, but it certainly seems to us to be the best value on the margin. We are working to make the construction of UFAI less likely through outreach (conferences like the Summit, academic publications, blog posts like The Sequences, popular books and personal communication) and make the construction of FAI more likely through direct work on FAI theory and the identification and recruitment of more people capable of working on FAI. We’ve met and worked with several promising candidates in the past few months. We’ll be informing interested folk about our specific accomplishments in our new monthly newsletter, the June/July issue of which was sent out a few weeks ago. You can sign up here.

(b) You publically apologize for and qualify your statements quoted by XiXiDu here. I believe that these statements are very bad for public relations. Even if true, they are only true at the margin and so at very least need to be qualified in that way.

It would have been a good idea for you to watch the videos yourself before assuming that XiXiDu’s summaries (not actual quotes, despite the quotation marks that surrounded them) were accurate. Eliezer makes it very clear, over and over, that he is speaking about the value of contributions at the margin. As others have already pointed out, it should not be surprising that we think the best way to “help save the human race” is to contribute to FAI being built before UFAI. If we thought there was another higher-value project then we would be working on that. Really, we would. Everyone at SIAI is an aspiring rationalist first and singularitarian second.
What links here?
- Wei Dai's comment on Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) by HoldenKarnofsky (12 May 2012 20:49 UTC; 7 points)

Jasen 28 Oct 2010 22:55 UTC
9 points
on: Call for Volunteers: Rationalists with Non-Traditional Skills
On a related note, a friend of ours named John Ku has negotiated a donation of 20% stock to SIAI from his company MetaSpring. MetaSpring is a digital marketing consultancy that mostly sells a service of rating the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and they are currently hiring. They are looking for experience with:

Ruby on Rails MySql / Sql web design / user interface JavaScript wordpress php web programming in general sales client communication unix system administration Photoshop / slicing HTML & CSS drupal

If you’re interested, contact John Ku at ku@johnsku.com

Jasen 16 Nov 2010 3:07 UTC
8 points
on: Diplomacy as a Game Theory Laboratory

Jasen himself explained it as a desire to prove that SIAI people were especially cooperative and especially good at game theory, which I suppose worked.

Close, I was more trying to prove that I could get the Visiting Fellows to be especially cooperative than trying to prove that they were normally especially cooperative. I viewed it more as a personal challenge. I was also thinking about the long-term, real world consequences of the game’s outcome. It was far more important to me that SIAI be capable of effective cooperation and coordinate than that I win a board game, and I thought rallying the team to stick together would be a good team-building exercise. Also, if I actually imagine myself in the real-world situation the game is kinda based off of, I would hugely prefer splitting the world with 5 of my friends than risking everything to get the whole thing. If I delve into my psychology a bit more, I must admit that I tend to dislike losing a lot more than I like getting first place. Emotionally, ties tend to feel almost as good as flat out wins to me.

Finally, an amusing thing to note about that game is that, before it started, without telling anyone, I intentionally became sufficiently intoxicated that I could barely understand the rules (most people can’t seem to tell unless I tell them first, which I find hilarious). This meant that my only hope of not losing was to forge a powerful alliance.

Jasen 6 Dec 2010 21:55 UTC
0 points
on: Berkeley LW Meet-up Friday December 10
I’ll be there.

Jasen 3 Jan 2011 20:57 UTC
11 points
in reply to: Marcello’s comment on: Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting
I’ve been able to implement something like this to great effect. Every time I notice that I’ve been behaving in a very silly way, I smile broadly, laugh out loud and say “Ha ha! Gotcha!” or something to that effect. I only allow myself to do this in cases where I’ve actually gained new information: Noticed a new flaw, noticed an old flaw come up in a new situation, realized that an old behavior is in fact undesirable, etc. This positively reinforces noticing my flaws without doing so to the undesirable behavior itself.

This is even more effective when implemented in response to someone else pointing out one of my flaws. It’s a little more difficult to carry out because I have to suppress a reflex to retaliate/defend myself that doesn’t come up as much when I’m my own critic, but when I succeed it almost completely eliminates the social awkwardness that normally comes with someone critiquing me in public.

Jasen 9 Mar 2011 1:21 UTC
2 points
on: Less Wrong at Burning Man 2011
I’ll be there.

Jasen 17 Mar 2011 21:06 UTC
5 points
on: Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter
Preach it, brother!

;-)

Jasen 22 Mar 2011 21:17 UTC
5 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
That book was part of what gave me the idea. I expect most of the exercises will come from it.

Jasen 22 Mar 2011 21:18 UTC
1 point
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Whoops, thank you. Post edited

Jasen 22 Mar 2011 21:21 UTC
8 points
in reply to: MartinB’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Probably, though I’m not sure when.

Jasen 22 Mar 2011 21:26 UTC
12 points
in reply to: XFrequentist’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Congrats indeed!

We’ll definitely be writing up a detailed curriculum and postmortem for internal purposes and I expect we’ll want to make most if not all of it publicly available.

Jasen 22 Mar 2011 21:28 UTC
3 points
in reply to: ata’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Edited post.

Jasen 22 Mar 2011 21:32 UTC
12 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
It will definitely cost us money but, due to its experimental nature, will be free for all participants for this iteration at least. If we continue offering it in the future, we will probably charge money and offer scholarships.

Jasen 22 Mar 2011 21:36 UTC
3 points
in reply to: katydee’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Definitely apply, but please note your availability in your answer to the “why are you interested in the program?” question.

Jasen 22 Mar 2011 21:36 UTC
10 points
in reply to: Mass_Driver’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Definitely all-consuming.