kjz

Karma: 279

kjz 2 Dec 2024 19:56 UTC
9 points
0
on: (The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven’s big fundraiser
Donated $100. Thanks for everything you do!

kjz 7 Nov 2024 23:28 UTC
9 points
0
in reply to: Adam Scherlis’s comment on: Should CA, TX, OK, and LA merge into a giant swing state, just for elections?
I could imagine this turning into a flexible system of alliances similar to the conference system in NCAA college football and other sports (see here for a nice illustrated history of the many changes over time). Just as conferences and schools negotiate membership based on the changing quality of their sports programs, ability to generate revenue, and so on, states could form coalitions that could be renegotiated based on changing populations or voter preferences.
Thinking from that perspective, one potential Schelling point could be a “Northwest” coalition of WA/OR/ID/MT/WY/ND/SD/NE. This is quite well-balanced, as these states combined to give 21 EV to each candidate. And although the state populations are higher in WA/OR (12.0M) than the six red states (7.4M), the combined vote totals actually show a small lead for Trump (4.1M vs 3.9M, with more votes remaining to be counted in the blue states likely to close the gap).
After this, maybe the remaining “Southwest” states (NV, UT, CO, AZ, NM) decide to join forces? Here a state by state analysis is less useful, especially since two of them still haven’t been called, but the current combined vote count is a very narrow Trump lead of 4.07M to 4.05M.
The eastern half of the country seems harder to predict—clearly there are large potential blocs of blue states in the northeast and red states in the southeast, but it’s harder to see clear geographical groupings that make sense.
Unlikely any of this happens of course, but fun to think about.

kjz 25 Jun 2023 13:57 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Metacelsus’s comment on: Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not?
I was thinking more that the acidic environment of the stomach could break down the aggregates to the protein monomers. This step wouldn’t be reliant on proteases, although proteases might then be able to further break down the monomers. But I haven’t looked into whether this has been studied.

kjz 25 Jun 2023 6:08 UTC
2 points
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on: Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not?
I’m not convinced that eating prion-contaminated tissue is a major factor in transmitting prion diseases. Prions are still proteins, which are broken down to amino acids very readily by the digestive system. Even if prions are more stable than most proteins because they have formed these crystalline-like oligomers, such large molecules would have little chance of being absorbed intact into the bloodstream. Instead, I would imagine they would pass through the digestive system and be excreted in feces.
The Wikipedia article on kuru proposes an alternate mechanism which seems more plausible to me:
the strong possibility exists that it was passed on to women and children more easily because they took on the task of cleaning relatives after death and might have had open sores and cuts on their hands.
This would allow the prion particles to enter the bloodstream directly where they could be absorbed into tissues and persist for a long time, bypassing the digestive system entirely.
If this is the primary mechanism of transmission, it would support your argument that eating cooked meat would have minimal risk, while handling diseased tissue would actually be the much higher risk activity.
Do you know if any of the 200 people who came down with BSE were involved in handling/butchering the meat, as opposed to just buying contaminated meat at the store and eating it? (I suppose people who bought meat at the grocery store could have still gotten infected during meal prep, but if a substantial number of victims were butchers/slaughterhouse workers/etc., it could be evidence in support of this hypothesis.)

kjz 11 Jan 2023 22:13 UTC
2 points
1
on: We don’t trade with ants
Should we humans broadcast more explicitly to future AGIs that we greatly prefer the future where we engage in mutually beneficial trade with them to the future where we are destroyed?
(I am making an assumption here that most, if not all, people would agree with this preference. It seems fairly overdetermined to me. But if I’m missing something where this could somehow lead to unintended consequences, please feel free to point that out.)

kjz 11 Jan 2023 16:59 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: We don’t trade with ants
Sorry, I thought that would be more commonly understood. As Carl said, it stands for Contract Research Organization. Hiring one is a way to get additional resources to perform specific tasks without having them be part of your organization, understand your corporate strategy, or even know what project you’re working on. For example, a pharma company can hire a CRO to synthesize a specific set of potential drug compounds, without telling them what the biological target is or what disease they are trying to treat. Or think of the scenario where a rogue AGI hires someone to make a DNA sequence which turns out to code for a pathogen that kills all humans. This would likely be done at a CRO.
CRO’s are often thought of as being fairly competent at executing the specific task required of them, but less competent at thinking strategically, understanding the big picture, etc. So they are generally only hired for very well-defined trades, as you mentioned above.

kjz 11 Jan 2023 4:08 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: We don’t trade with ants
Maybe it’s better to model the army of ants as a CRO you would hire instead of an employee? And by extension, I would much prefer to be part of an AGI’s CRO than be extinct.

kjz 10 Jan 2023 13:32 UTC
4 points
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on: How to Bounded Distrust
I often use the heuristic that if two sources with opposing Narratives both claim that a certain fact is true, it is strong evidence that the fact is indeed true. Are there cases where this heuristic fails? E.g. where both sides claim a fact is true (likely with different motives), but it is actually false?

kjz 2 Jan 2023 23:20 UTC
32 points
2
on: Recursive Middle Manager Hell
If you have hierarchy in a company, regardless of whether people are “middle managers” per se, there’s a tendency for people to come to care about advancing in the hierarchy. It’s a natural thing to want to do.
I would take this a step further and say that once maze levels are high enough, it essentially becomes a requirement to care (or at least pretend to care) about advancing in the hierarchy. Instead of advancement being something that some employees might want and others might not want, it becomes almost an axiom within the organization that everyone must strive for advancement at all times. But although advancement can be a natural thing to want, it’s certainly not a universal thing to want. And for people like me who aren’t strongly motivated by their place in the hierarchy, this can lead to a lot of conflict, stress, and low morale.
When I was a kid (maybe around 10) I learned about the Peter Principle, how everyone in an organization gets promoted to the level of their incompetence. I thought that was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard. Why would everyone try so hard to get promoted to a role they weren’t good at? Just for the extra money? I decided that when I started working, I would rather stay in a role I was good at and enjoyed on a day to day basis than get promoted to a managerial role which already sounded awful, even if it meant staying at a lower salary.
Once in the maze, however, I found it a lot harder to stay in my happy, productive role than I was expecting. I constantly felt pressure to want to get promoted. But I secretly didn’t want to, because that would mean spending less time doing the actual hands-on work that I liked and more time spent in the maze world interacting with other managers. This led to a lot of tension with my bosses. They couldn’t comprehend why anyone wouldn’t be excited about getting promoted. Higher level jobs were just better; why couldn’t I see that? But to me, they weren’t better and I couldn’t get them to see my perspective. Ironically, their desire to promote me incentivized me to be less productive than I would have been otherwise—if we had been able to come to an agreement where I could stay in my desired role, I would have been more motivated to work harder without the fear of accidentally getting promoted too quickly.
This was all very frustrating and confusing to me for a long time. Eventually I came across the Moral Mazes sequence and the Gervais principle, which together seemed to explain a lot of what I was experiencing and ultimately gave me the courage to leave that organization.
Anyway, that’s my story of working in a maze—happy to discuss further if this was useful or informative.

kjz 7 Dec 2022 23:59 UTC
2 points
1
on: Be less scared of overconfidence
Another potential assumption/limitation of the EMH:
- Socially acceptable to trade: It must be socially acceptable for people who have enough financial resources to noticeably affect market prices to trade based on the new information.
I initially proposed this idea to try to explain the market’s slow response to the early warning signs of Covid in this comment. Similar dynamics may come into play with respect to the social acceptability of ESG vs anti-ESG investing based on political affiliation, although in this case I don’t think there is enough anti-ESG money to affect the prevailing ESG trends much at this point.

kjz 25 May 2022 13:26 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Radford Neal’s comment on: Mandatory Post About Monkeypox
Maybe the market is predicting that R0 will be >1, but isolation and contact tracing will be enough to prevent a wider outbreak?

kjz 3 May 2022 0:50 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Charlie Steiner’s comment on: What DALL-E 2 can and cannot do
What about the combo: a tic-tac-toe board position, a tic-tac-toe board position with X winning, and a tic-tac-toe board position with O winning. Would it give realistic positions matching the descriptions?

kjz 20 Apr 2022 17:25 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: “Pivotal Act” Intentions: Negative Consequences and Fallacious Arguments
That’s fair. Maybe I was more trying to get at the chances that current live orgs will develop this know-how, or if it would require new orgs designed with that purpose.

kjz 20 Apr 2022 15:49 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: “Pivotal Act” Intentions: Negative Consequences and Fallacious Arguments
Does an organization’s ability to execute a “pivotal act” overlap with Samo Burja’s idea of organizations as “live players”? How many are there, and are there any orgs that you would place in one category and not the other?

kjz 23 Mar 2022 12:48 UTC
1 point
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on: On expected utility, part 2: Why it can be OK to predictably lose
Do you prefer D over E? I do.
Is this backwards? Seems like it should be E over D.

kjz 14 Mar 2022 23:48 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: AVoropaev’s comment on: Ukraine Post #2: Options
Galeev mentions Navalny in his newest thread about power dynamics and how they might change in response to the current crisis. It’s a long thread so you’ll need to scroll down quite a bit to see the section on Navalny. Galeev doesn’t portray him in a very positive manner.

kjz 2 Mar 2022 17:18 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Valentine’s comment on: Russia has Invaded Ukraine
Yeah, I like his prediction that if Europe stops buying Russian energy it could force Russia into greater economic dependence on China. I’m wondering how likely Europe is to actually move away from Russian energy though. It sounds like the obvious thing to do, but I don’t know from a practical standpoint how easy it would be without causing a lot of disruption in the short to medium term. I doubt they can just flip a switch and convert to new energy sources overnight, especially in Eastern Europe which is heavily reliant on Russian supply.
I think the longer the war lasts, the more likely it is for Europe to move away from Russian energy. But if the war ends relatively quickly, the motivation to do so might fade away due to economic considerations as well as general inertia/political difficulty when trying to make substantial changes.

kjz 2 Mar 2022 16:28 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Seek Mistakes in the Space Between Math and Reality
There is also the consideration that the earlier you pick a partner, you get to enjoy the benefits of having a partner for longer.

kjz 2 Mar 2022 0:39 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Valentine’s comment on: Russia has Invaded Ukraine
Thanks for the link. I found it well thought out and plausible, but it seems strongly based on the assumption that Russia will remain isolated from the global financial system for the next 5-20 year timeframe discussed in the article. Is that a reasonable assumption? Although Russia is a pariah now, once the hostilities have ended I would guess the sanctions will be lifted over time, since they are also expensive for the West to maintain.

kjz 24 Feb 2022 20:27 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Russia has Invaded Ukraine
This article by Tomas Pueyo looks at Russia from a historical and geographical perspective. It makes the case that much of Russia’s foreign policy is based on the need to protect Moscow, which is in the middle of the vast Eurasian plain with no natural barriers for defense, and so is vulnerable to attack from all directions. So Russia’s strategy has been to expand as much as possible, to either control directly the land where invasions might have otherwise come from (e.g. Siberia), or failing that, to at least create predictably controllable buffer states (the former Soviet republics) between them and their rivals. From that perspective, Ukraine may have been becoming too unpredictable as a buffer state recently, giving Russia an incentive to want to control the land directly.