Yeah, johnswentworth should consider an electric toothbrush with a pressure sensor. There are multiple models available for <$50.
krs
Karma: 17
I assumed that if you are flipping a coin, trials would be independent events and each flip would have a fixed rule (which is what happens when you flip a single coin). Instead, the coin had a different rule for odd and even numbered flips. I think that the language of the website should be amended to reflect this.
I think a useful heuristic for updating beliefs is to ask yourself “What would make this belief false?” rather than casting the issue in the framework of confirmation vs. balance. To make this concrete, consider the example of flat earthers vs. scientists. If you believed in a flat earth, there are any number of tests you could do to (e.g. watching ships sail down below the horizon) that would lead you to update towards falsifying your belief. This type of information seeking is neutral with respect to confirming your beliefs. This also allows us to look for more direct evidence around our beliefs rather than appealing to indirect methods such as whether or not a person agrees with us (see hug the query).
Second, I haven’t looked into the work of Weijie Zhong, but I was wondering if there might be a bias variance tradeoff at play here for efficient information seeking (i.e. obtaining only confirmatory evidence seems likely lead to low variance but high bias)?
I’m only a vegetarian but I try to eat vegan when possible. I personally think that fortified foods are too often overlooked by people going on plant based diets. A lot of products targeted at vegans are fortified really well with nutrients that vegans tends to lack. For instance, at least at the grocery store I go to, the plant based milks contain as much calcium, b12, and vitamin D as the cow’s milk. Breakfast cereals are also great and usually have an assortment of nutrients including iron (this comes with the usual caveat of avoiding the really sugary cereals). Personally, I like Cheerios and Total.
Other than that, I think it is sufficient to eat a varied diet with a wide array of grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, beans, etc. and some relevant supplements.
Edit: This guide on FDA fortification policy is not specifically targeted at those on plant-based diets, but it has useful information on how the FDA decides to implement fortification guidelines in the first place, e.g. by recommending that soy beverages be fortified with similar amounts of calcium as cow’s milk: https://www.fda.gov/media/94563/download
Also, there are some podcast episodes and articles I like:
The “Stronger by Science” podcast and website has several good resources on vegan nutrition (though it is not vegan specific resource and it is geared towards strength athletes). The following posts and podcast episodes are quite good:
I remember this podcast episode was quite good, though I haven’t listened to it in a while:
Could you integrate Blackbelt with Anki or another spaced repetition framework? Someone made this set of anki cards on AI alignment sometime ago, which I have found to be a useful resource: https://www.ai-alignment-flashcards.com/decks
My tentative viewpoint on this is that the preference one has over value drift from AI vs. human made value drift comes from an entity’s ability to experience joy and suffering.
In the context of AI safety, many humans who experience mostly positive lives could be killed or made to suffer at the hands of superintelligent AI in the future, and the experience of the AI in terms of pain and suffering is mostly unknown. I’m worried that an AI will optimize for something that does not lead to any subjective increase of wellbeing in the universe at the cost of human happiness.
This post mostly doesn’t resonate with me, and I’m coming from a place where I really value the advice put forth in the excellent blogpost “To Listen Well, Get Curious” by Ben Kuhn. It was frustrating for me to watch “It’s Not About the Nail” because I couldn’t help but think about how poorly this video characterizes common misunderstandings that happen during conversations where one person is helping another. Kuhn argues that the common advice to not offer help during helper conversations is bad, since it presumes that the one being helped doesn’t actually want their problem solved. He explains that this advice seems good on the surface, since many people offer fix-it advice based off of incomplete or inaccurate knowledge which isn’t helpful, so the alternative to offer kind words instead of solutions tends to be received better. However, kind words are also suboptimal, and Kuhn argues that instead of offering emotional support, you should be genuinely curious to build an accurate model of the person’s problem in order to offer the best possible solution. To quote Ben Kuhn’s article:
“It turns out that reality has a surprising amount of detail, and those details can matter a lot to figuring out what the root problem or best solution is. So if I want to help, I can’t treat those details as a black box: I need to open it up and see the gears inside. Otherwise, anything I suggest will be wrong—or even if it’s right, I won’t have enough “shared language” with my friend for it to land correctly.”
From the outside, good listening can look a lot like emotional support. But the key difference here is that the goal isn’t to merely support someone emotionally; it’s that you need to understand a problem well so that you can actually offer up good practical advice in the first place.
I get the perception from that John Wentworth is engaging in the kind of superficial “good listening” that doesn’t move anyone towards a productive solution. It’s understandable that he’d feel a disconnect between kindness and empathy under this mode of communication, and reframing his assumptions about these types of conversations could fix this problem for him.