JoachimSchipper

• JoachimSchipper 29 Dec 2021 10:13 UTC

  8 points

  7

  on: What would you like from Micro­covid.org? How valuable would it be to you?

  I’ve used microcovid occasionally, to make sure my intuitive feelings about risk were not completely crazy (and that did cause some updates; notably, putting numbers to staying outdoors had an influence.) I’m not a heavy user, but I do appreciate the work you’ve done!

  I’d basically like to see more of the same—update microcovid.org for omicron and keep it going.

  (FWIW, I’m in the Netherlands, where we just entered a new lockdown for omicron. So COVID unfortunately isn’t “over”.)

• JoachimSchipper 24 Mar 2021 16:24 UTC

  1 point

  on: What does the re­ac­tion to NFTs tell us about how peo­ple eval­u­ate ecolog­i­cal dam­age?

  You’re right that a negative affect to NFTs in particular /​ blockchain stuff in general is part of the reaction, but I don’t see the reasoning error in

  • “<X> causes greater electricity consumption;

  • on the margin, greater electricity consumption currently causes <more pollution /​ finite resources to be consumed faster /​ more birds to die due to windmills /​ …>, which is bad;

  • this is a downside to <X>.”

  It’s probably the case that NFTs do not directly cause greater electricity consumption, but NFTs do plausibly indirectly cause greater electricity consumption, e.g. via making Ethereum more valuable, thus increasing mining rewards, thus increasing competition.

• JoachimSchipper 27 Feb 2015 13:57 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: Sav­ing for the long term

  Although I’ve heard the advice to leave after a year, my experience has been different—after three years, I’m still learning a lot and I’m beginning to tackle the really hard problems. Basically, I find myself agreeing with Yossi Kreinin’s reply to Patrick McKenzie’s advice, at least so far. (Both links are very much worth reading.)

  Of course, you do need to push for interesting assignments and space to learn. Also, be sure to pick a company that actually does something interesting in the first place—I work on embedded crypto devices for the government market, in a company that’s young enough that there’s still plenty of flexibility.

• JoachimSchipper 1 Feb 2015 15:51 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: MarkusRamikin’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, Jan­uary 2015, chap­ter 103

  • Batman is a murderer no less than the Joker, for all the lives the Joker took that Batman could’ve saved by killing him. ch. 85

  • “It’s not fair to the innocent bystanders to play at being Batman if you can’t actually protect everyone under that code.” ch. 91

  • Harry had no intention of saying it out loud, of course, but now that he’d failed decisively to prevent any deaths during his quest, he had no further intention of being restrained by the law or even the code of Batman.ch. 97.

• JoachimSchipper 16 Jan 2015 20:31 UTC

  6 points

  on: [meta] New LW mod­er­a­tor: NancyLebovitz

  Thanks, Nancy, for putting in this effort.

• JoachimSchipper 11 Jan 2015 13:07 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: alicey’s comment on: The Im­por­tance of Sidekicks

  Some people do need to see that link, but note that it, too, is rather dangerous.

• JoachimSchipper 8 Nov 2014 14:14 UTC

  13 points

  in reply to: RomeoStevens’s comment on: Unem­ploy­ment explanations

  And, of course, encouraging homeownership makes this worse. Good thing that most of the Western world hasn’t made that an explicit policy goal for the past decade...

• JoachimSchipper 5 Nov 2014 20:50 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: James_Ernest’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  I was pretty happy about that, actually.

• JoachimSchipper 5 Nov 2014 20:48 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: ChrisHallquist’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  I assume that TheAncientGeek has actually submitted the survey; in that case, their comment is “proof” that they deserve karma.

• JoachimSchipper 5 Nov 2014 20:07 UTC

  31 points

  on: 2014 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  I, too, took the survey. (And promptly forgot to claim my karma; oh well.)

• JoachimSchipper 30 Oct 2014 6:27 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: undermind’s comment on: Power and difficulty

  I didn’t exactly disagree with the content, right?

  Part of the problem is just that writing something good about epistemic rationality is really hard, even if you stick to the 101 level—and, well, I don’t really care about 101 anymore. But I have plenty of sympathy for those writing more practical posts.

• JoachimSchipper 27 Oct 2014 5:55 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: geniuslevel20’s comment on: Power and difficulty

  This is not nice—could you try to find a more pleasant way to say this?

  Also, LW does do epistemic rationality—but it’s easier to say something useful and new about practical matters, so there are more posts of that kind.

• JoachimSchipper 16 Jun 2014 19:04 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: DanArmak’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes June 2014

  Note, though, that (a) “Lisp doesn’t look like C” isn’t as much of a problem in a world where C and C-like languages are not dominant, and (b) something like Common Lisp doesn’t have to be particularly functional—that’s a favored paradigm of the community, but it’s a pretty acceptable imperative/​OO language too.

  “Doesn’t run well on my computer” was probably a bigger problem. (Modern computers are much faster; modern Lisp implementations are much better.)

  Edit: still, C is clearly superior to any other language. ;-)

• JoachimSchipper 1 Mar 2014 20:39 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: bentarm’s comment on: How to avoid dy­ing in a car crash

  The Dutch figures [are closer to yours than I expected|https://​​www.swov.nl/​​ibmcognos/​​cgi-bin/​​cognos.cgi?b_action=powerPlayService&m_encoding=UTF-8&BZ=1AAAB7pUZHH542oVOXW~CIBT9M1C3F3Oh1o_HPtBSo8ummzXZM7PXhrUFQxuX7NePWhNjlmU3cM7J4cAhyLfjfL~dZWsZt511uJYPlHM9S6eMQyKFWLIJiGweZnKazMVSzESSJNJnHoP_biZ26epV7Fcx5cuDNR2azqujrQt0NEroBIxqkIZytEFv1coU7YhG8o~QTrf6YK_BkzpUqsT7xDu6Cmv9WSHloJTpVO1FYQs0ngdwpu106dW5D6NrS~yyZkicfCWHpi48OtTfuvTnla5tg51XfXUg83ScbjebLN2vPYmXLL6rtc1ZmfL~x4LkLT4CEAYAjAEhBMg0isLoikB67xm7FuvLpyksnpRyngjlc8pDoBwZ5R_ULwaD3Qzya9hl9WIovezb~ACpc4us] (link in Dutch); I’d expect us to do quite a bit better than that, since people here are very used to bicyclists. Unfortunately, cyclists still die at 12 per 10^9 km traveled, pedestrians at 14 per 10^9 km, but drivers at 2 per 10^9 km (i.e. 1 to 6 instead of 1 to 10+, but still not very good.)

  I do wonder how much of this effect can be explained by the fact that travelling (by car or otherwise) in a city or on a country road is much harder than highway driving. Or by the fact that people standing still die at a rate of infinity per km traveled. (And standing still near traffic is indeed measurably dangerous!)

• JoachimSchipper 22 Nov 2013 7:44 UTC

  49 points

  on: 2013 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  Surveyed.

  Also, spoiler: the reward is too small and unlikely for me to bother thinking through the ethics of defecting; in particular, I’m fairly insensitive to the multiplier for defecting at this price point. (Morality through indecisiveness?)

• JoachimSchipper 3 Sep 2013 19:09 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Septem­ber 2013

  Start from “The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done”, I guess.

• JoachimSchipper 30 Aug 2013 17:44 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: Yet more “stupid” questions

  Assuming that you become some kind of superintelligence, I’d expect you to find better ways of amusing yourself, yes; especially if you’re willing and able to self-modify.

• JoachimSchipper 15 Aug 2013 21:04 UTC

  8 points

  in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 26, chap­ter 97

  Unless I am badly mistaken, indemnify would mean that Harry has to pay etc. if e.g. Dumbledore decides to demand recompense of his own. (Note that Dumbledore may well have similar power over her as he has over Harry himself.)

  This is obviously much worse than just giving up his own claim (“exonerate”).

• JoachimSchipper 23 Jul 2013 6:32 UTC

  5 points

  on: Su­per­ra­tional­ity and net­work flow control

  Relatedly, most TCP scheduler are variants of the Reno algorithm, which basically means that they increase transmission rate until (the network is so congested that) packets begin dropping. In contrast, Vegas-type schedulers increase transmission rate until packets begin to take longer to arrive, which starts happening in congested networks shortly before packets are actually lost. A network of Vegas machines has considerably lower latency, and only minimally worse throughput, than a network of Reno machines.

  Unfortunately, since Reno backs off later than Vegas, a mixed Vegas/​Reno network ends with the Reno machines consuming the vast majority of bandwidth.

  Interestingly, while almost all TCP schedulers are Reno variants (i.e. efficient in the presence of likely neighbours), there is basically no-one who entirely foregoes a scheduler and just sends as fast as possible, which was the original pre-Reno behaviour (and which is pretty optimal for the individual, at least until the entire internet collapses due to ridiculous levels of congestion. This has happened.)

• JoachimSchipper 10 Jul 2013 11:42 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 23, chap­ter 94

  Is she particularly powerful, though? She’s extraordinarily talented, very knowledgeable for her age, and has more raw power than anyone in her year including Draco; but Rita is more experienced, and most importantly older—it has been repeatedly pointed out that HP lacks the raw power for something-or-other, and the twins are far stronger than he despite not being particularly talented. It seems that Rita should have an edge in the “raw power” department, and I’d expect this effect to key off raw power.

  Note that it’s also sufficient to assume that Quirrel and/​or Mary’s room can suppress this effect.