LA has a tradition of guerrilla freeway sign enhancements as a result of similar authority non-responsiveness. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2015/02/11/guerrilla_public_service_on_99_invisible_richard_ankrom_replaced_a_los_angeles.html
Jonathan_Graehl
In effect, you’re encouraging rationalist posers to signal agreement with you on these signature issues. By talking about the signal and its interpretation, you weaken it.
No man has wit enough to reason with a fool.
Proyas (fictional character—author: R. Scott Bakker)
Whenever I hear an unsupported vote against conventional wisdom on a web forum, e.g. “adult-preteen intercourse isn’t very harmful”, I don’t update my view much. Absent a well-argued case for the unconventional position, I assume that such beliefs reflect some strong self-interested bias (sufficient to overcome strong societal pressure) and not fearless rational investigation—to say nothing of trolls.
I also strongly discount unreasoned votes in favor of the consensus, especially on issues subject to strong conformity pressure.
It seems that this survey is not intended to solicit arguments for particular controversial anthropological or political beliefs. Does the site accept them at all? I’d expect not, except as case studies for some general claim, due to the risk of attracting cranks.
That Iceland’s currently 1% infected as of now doesn’t say anything about how infected it would be after a few weeks of no-special-controls measures (comparable to folks’ behavior in a regular flu season). This is the beginning of this virus’s worldwide course. It’s dishonest to compare a snapshot now with the accumulated total of a whole flu sason.
Completely and clinically selfish, without apology. “I don’t blame her” but no claim that her pain ever weighed upon you. Matter of fact and remorseless in admitting to having behaved foolishly (waiting too long to experiment). Bragging.
I wonder if anyone would admit to downvoting for those reasons. The reasons given in comments are more Spock-worthy.
I enjoyed it. Writing that risks such offense parses as honest to me. My reading between the lines fleshes you out quite sympathetically.
The frequency of first letter of last names in the U.S. suggests your split is probably correct.
I wonder why the number of downvotes is hidden.
If the story is true, she’s at least exceptional in knowing how to ask and what to ask for. I expect her to be top-10% by my ranking.
It’s not disgusting that she’s begging for a chance at life. I’d do the same, even knowing that I was effectively asking people to spend less on Kenyans. Perhaps you mean it’s disgusting that her asking might work?
Imputing racism is overdone. Even if you want to slap some sense into people, please don’t go there (yes, you said “even if”, but you also chose Kenya).
“bitch”. I don’t care, but you already sufficiently signaled that you care very much that others don’t agree with you.
How do I know that supporting SI doesn’t end up merely funding a bunch of movement-building leading to no real progress?
It seems to me that the premise of funding SI is that people smarter (or more appropriately specialized) than you will then be able to make discoveries that otherwise would be underfunded or wrongly-purposed.
I think the (friendly or not) AI problem is hard. So it seems natural for people to settle for movement-building or other support when they get stuck.
That said, some of the collateral output to date has been enjoyable.
I agree that known biases can be explained by curves like those, plus the choice of a “frame”. But how do we know we’re not overfitting?
In other words: does prospect theory pay rent?
I’d want to at least see that we’re identifying some real differences between people when we fit their curves from a bunch of measurements of their behavior—I’d expect their personally fit model to describe their (held-out from fitting) future actions better than one fit over the whole population, etc.
It seems like the additional degree of freedom “well, it depends on how they chose their frame in this instance” needs to be nailed down as part of testing the model’s fit on future actions.
Solid and unsurprising.
Write important things larger.
This is brilliant. How many cents a day will it take to feed him? :)
Congrats on the accomplishments. Leaving aside the rest, I like the prompt: why don’t people wirehead? Realistically, they’re cautious due to having but one brain and a low visibility into what they’d become. A digital-copyable agent would, if curious about what slightly different versions of themselves would do, not hesitate to simulate one in a controlled environment.
Generally I would tweak my brain if it would reliably give me the kind of actions I’d now approve of, while providing at worst the same sort of subjective state as I’d have if managing the same results without the intervention. I wouldn’t care if the center of my actions was different as long as the things I value today were bettered.
Anyway, it’s a nice template for generating ideas for: when would an agent want to allow its values to shift?
I’m glad you broke free of trying to equal others’ bragged-about abilities. Not everyone needs to be great at everything. People who invest in learning something generally talk up the benefits of what they paid for. I’m thinking of Heinlein’s famous “specialization is for insects” where I presume much of the laundry lists of things every person should know how to do are exactly the arbtirary things he knows how to do.
This guy has a lot of stupid beliefs. It’s too bad we have to hear about them because he made one good call.
A small movement of the average (27 to 25) could consist of 1⁄5 of the population losing 10 points, rather than everyone losing 2 points. So quite a few people could have their health improved, even granting the unsourced 20-35 BMI iso-health range. Terrible reasoning.
As for the second point, encouraging people to get married (or Jesus) because of a correlation is very cargo-cult. At least with rural living, there’s some credible mechanism for health-improvement (reduction in air and noise pollution). I’m sympathetic to the general theme: that the health advocacy I hear is filtered and biased, but I’d like some evidence of taboo health-suggestions that are at least as effective as popular ones.
Shame spirals, the opposite of success spirals. Beat yourself up about putting off studying and you’re more likely to put it off even more.
That was incredibly enthusiastic. I object to “foom”, applied to people. I’ve found the advice to actually think about achieving goals, and not just excuse myself with “that’s hard/painful”, actually only moderately effective when executed, so I have a hard time believing that there’s much willpower or genius waiting to be so easily unlocked for others—though of course people more innately talented (and/or presently uncoordinated) than me must exist.
I take quite a few supplements that are supposed to make me smarter, healthier, etc.
I have three models by which I expect increased performance from supplements:
correction of vitamin-like deficiencies (beware U-shaped harm per dose risks); if I were serious about this, I’d be regularly measuring levels in my body.
stimulant/placebo/focus effect—somewhat substitutable for actually caring/trying harder, and possibly with similar long-run physical-stress side-effects.
actually near-linear (in the normal vs supplemented) regimes for availability of substrates/catalysts for ordinary metabolism e.g. turning up acetylcholine (piracetam and friends) - in which case, you always have to wonder—why aren’t our bodies already upregulating these things? If there’s actual fundamental scarcity of certain compounds, we should see significant cultural/local performance advantage from differences in diet.
As a final caution, I know that drugs are capable of drastically affecting emotion and motivation. But I’m not too aware of any that produce results in a person that are amazing to a sober third party. So if you find yourself becoming very excited about some new mental program or drug, the simplest explanation is that it’s unexpectedly effective in generating enthusiasm. Always be testing.
$30 Doorjam pullup bar—a few repetitions per week makes a big difference and take little time or energy. Better design than the old in-doorway bars. Should be prophylactic against hunched-forward computer posture, and helps me feel better in a way that volleyball and soccer don’t. I used to gym-weightlift regularly but found it too demoralizing (to approach personal limits and then injure yourself is silly).
ill effects of following socially supported advice are likely to be kept private and/or ignored for a very long time
Sharp. I’ve seen this especially in dieting/weightlifting communities.
I’m amused and relieved to have finally followed the “shut up and multiply” link—dozens of prior allusions left me puzzled at the advice to multiply in the biblical sense. I’d always felt it a bit cultish to win by having more (indoctrinated) babies :)