Kevin
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The Craigslist Revolution: a real-world application of torture vs. dust specks OR How I learned to stop worrying and create one billion dollars out of nothing
This is great. I hope other people aren’t hesitating to make posts because they are too “elementary”. Content on Less Wrong doesn’t need to be advanced; it just needs to be Not Wrong.
Attention Lurkers: Please say hi
:) Sorry.
In 2006, Craigslist’s CEO Jim Buckmaster said that if enough users told them to “raise revenue and plow it into charity” that they would consider doing it. (source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4082 ) They really do listen to their users and the reason there is no advertising on Craigslist is that no one is asking for it.
A single banner ad on Craigslist would raise at least one billion for charity over five years. They could put a large “X” next to the ad, allowing you to permanently close it. There seems to be little objection to this idea. The optional banner is harmless, and a billion dollars could be enough to dramatically improve the lives of millions, save very real people from lifetimes of torture or slavery, or make a serious impact in the causes we take seriously around here. As a moral calculus, the decision is a no brainer. So we just need a critical mass of Craigslist users telling Jim that we need a banner ad on Craigslist. Per a somewhat recent email to Craig, they are still receptive to this idea if the users suggest it.
The numbers involved are a little insane. Fifty thousand people should count as critical mass, which means each person could effectively cause $20,000 to be generated out of nowhere and donated to charity. My mistake last time was doing it as a Facebook group rather than a Facebook fan page, where the more useful viral functions have moved. This time I would also drop the money on advertising to get an easy initial critical mass.
So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked.
This is probably the single funniest bit in your backstory.
My family is Jewish and we all went to a Reform synagogue. This sect of Judaism is very liberal in the scheme of things, making it very clear that the bible is not literally true and accepting of just about anything, even agnosticism (if not atheism).
At the age of 16, Reform Judaism has a confirmation ceremony where one makes a statement of faith to the assembled congregation. I realized that I couldn’t go up in front of a crowd and in good faith profess a belief in God. I had understood all of it to be just stories for a long time, at least since the age of 13, but I hadn’t quite realized that meant I was an atheist. I just never really thought about it, but when I finally did it seemed obvious in retrospect. I ended up reading a poem to the congregation and it was very well received as it was the shortest speech given that day.
The next year, I decided I wasn’t going to go to synagogue for the High Holidays (where my liberal synagogue had 3 hour long worship services). My parents weren’t quite sure how to react, but they told my grandparents and my grandparents responded by deciding they weren’t going either. This particular decision set off a chain reaction where it was determined that no one in my family from my grandparents on down were believers and we had all just been going along for each other’s benefits. On the holidays now, my 92 year old grandfather always mentions how nice it is that the holidays give us reason to get the entire family together.
It does not all add up to normality. We are living in a weird universe. (75%)
Disagree! Less Wrong needs more meme-y posts like this. Longness is not an inherent virtue.
It seems obviously in the spirit of Christmas to celebrate someone’s birthday on the arguably wrong date. :D
RT-LAMP is the right way to scale diagnostic testing for the coronavirus
I think this article is exceptionally nice for a hit piece on us by a gossip rag. Take it for what it is, let it go, give up on it, and don’t waste your time debating it.
I got explicit permission from lukeprog to make this post without having lukeprog levels of citations. He’s set a sort of impossible standard for mortals to follow. I agree that I would also like to see such citations, but I’m busy, and this post took me thousands of hours of procrastination and three hours of actual writing. I will do what I can to come back through and add citations later, or address specific citation wants in the comments.
Clippy’s donation of $1000 to SIAI is confirmed. Weird universe, this one.
On Less Wrong traffic and new users—and how you can help
No, I was being serious, thinking that federal prisons are a great deal safer than state and county prisons. A cursory search says this may be marginally true but not to the extent that I should have reasonably claimed that the US Federal prison system doesn’t have a rape problem. Clearly there is a rape problem.
Extended digression about how to adjust Solomonoff induction for making anthropic predictions plz
You aren’t the target audience for the stock photo, it’s a random person seeing Less Wrong for the first time. People like pictures.
I had a funny click with my girlfriend earlier this evening. I suggested that she should sign up for cryonics at some point soon, and I was surprised that she was against the idea. In response to her objections, I explained it was vitrification and not freezing, etc. etc. but she wasn’t giving me any rational answers, until she said that she really wanted to see the future, but she also wanted to watch the future unfold.
She thought by cryonics that I meant right now, Futurama style. After a much needed clarification she immediately agreed that cryonics was a good idea.
This was a private party announced via a semi-public list. A reporter showed up and she talked to people without telling them she was a reporter. This is not a report, it is a tabloid piece. Intentional gossip.