lsparrish

Karma: 2,728

lsparrish Nov 8, 2013, 10:37 PM
8 points
in reply to: Dorikka’s comment on: [Prize] Essay Contest: Cryonics and Effective Altruism
Some meta notes:
- This is an essay contest because my previous attempt (in 2011) was for a video contest, and nobody entered. (The bitcoins were later stolen from the online wallet that was hosting them and half returned. The remaining 5.5 coins are in a more secure wallet valued at around $2000, which I plan to use for cryonics charity later, no sooner than next April.)
- I consider essays to be Lesswrong’s strong point. Further, utilitarians (of various kinds) and cryonicists (of various kinds) are common here as are ideas for how the two can/should overlap. I want to see those ideas.
- If anyone wins and does not want a bitcoin, I would be happy to paypal them the equivalent value, although I consider that a bit less convenient.
- There have been essay contests here in the past, at least one of which has resulted in good outcomes. I don’t know if the culture has changed too much since then or if the value of a whole bitcoin is so high it will drive people crazy, but I am assuming not.

lsparrish Nov 8, 2013, 10:19 PM
−1 points
in reply to: Thrasymachus’s comment on: [Prize] Essay Contest: Cryonics and Effective Altruism
(Edit) An essay simply detailing considerations as to why cryonics has net negative effects if successful would not qualify. However, if you were to answer one of the questions directly (they aren’t yes/no, but scenario based) you could still feature your argument prominently.

Example: Some particular kind of utilitarians think cryonics has net disutility for certain reasons (your argument), but in the event that they find that cryonicists are easy to work with (plausible scenario), they would cooperate to accomplish some particular instrumental goal despite the net disutility of cryonics.

(I’m not actively soliciting submissions of such a nature, just noting that they are possible. I actually think the utilitarian-against-cryonics space of arguments has been fairly well explored already, and there is motive to do so in the fact that cryonics competes for resources and is unpopular already.)

lsparrish Oct 28, 2013, 6:18 PM
2 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Open Thread, October 27 − 31, 2013
I find it harder to engage in System 2 when there are images around. Heck, even math glyphs usually trip me up. That’s not to say graphics can’t do more good than harm (for example, charts and diagrams can help cross inferential distance quickly, and may serve as useful intuition pumps) but I imagine that more images would mean more reliance on intuition and less on logic, hence less capacity for taking things to analytical extremes. So it could be harmful (given the nature of the site) to introduce more images.

lsparrish Oct 23, 2013, 11:23 PM
2 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open Thread, October 20 − 26, 2013
Is that a per-person maximum, or are you only accepting up to that much worth of bets?

Edit: I have contacted gwern via IRC and invested 1 BTC.

lsparrish Oct 22, 2013, 2:16 AM
0 points
in reply to: hyporational’s comment on: Open Thread, October 13 − 19, 2013
What I meant is that those properties are specific to the secret part of login information used for online services, as distinct from secret information used to encrypt something directly.

lsparrish Oct 21, 2013, 9:00 PM
1 point
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Open Thread, October 13 − 19, 2013

I am certain that that it was a negative contribution to this site.

Well, that’s harsh. My main intent with the links was to show that the system for picking the words must be unpredictable, and that password reuse is harmful. I can see now that 8-word passphrases are useless if the key is too short or there’s some other vulnerability, so that choice probably gives us little more than a false sense of security.

in the particular application of bitcoin, quantum computers break it thoroughly.

This is news to me. However, I had heard that there are only 122 bits due to the use of RIPEMD-160 as part of the address generation mechanism.

lsparrish Oct 21, 2013, 6:30 PM
0 points
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Open Thread, October 13 − 19, 2013
According to the Diceware FAQ, large organizations might be able to crack passphrases 7 words or less in 2030. Of course that’s different from passwords (where you have salted hashes and usually a limit on the number of tries), but I think when it comes to establishing habits / placing go-stones against large organizations deciding to invest in snooping to begin with, it is worthwhile. Also, eight words isn’t that much harder than four words (two sets of four).

One specific use I have in mind where this level of security is relevant is bitcoin brainwallets for prospective cryonics patients. If there’s only one way to gain access to a fortune, and it involves accessing the memories of a physical brain, that increases the chances that friendly parties would eventually be able to reanimate a cryonics patient. (Of course, it also means more effort needs to go into making sure physical brains of cryonics patients remain in friendly hands, since unfriendlies could scan for passphrases and discard the rest.)

lsparrish Oct 18, 2013, 2:11 AM
1 point
in reply to: Benya’s comment on: Boring Advice Repository
You can generate a very strong passphrase with Diceware. Physical dice are more secure than almost any electronic device, and dictionary words let you memorize the randomness very efficiently.

This can then be used with KeePass or some other password manager. Also useful for brainwallets and other kinds of data where offline attacks are likely.

lsparrish Oct 17, 2013, 6:25 PM
6 points
on: Open Thread, October 13 − 19, 2013
I recently memorized an 8-word passphrase generated by Diceware.

Given recent advances in password cracking, it may be a good time to start updating your accounts around the net with strong, prescriptively-generated passphrases.

Added: 8-word passphrases are overkill for most applications. 4-word passphrases are fairly secure under most circumstances, and the circumstances where in which they are not may not be helped by longer passphrases. The important thing is avoiding password reuse and predictable generation mechanisms.

lsparrish Oct 12, 2013, 12:01 AM
0 points
in reply to: JoshElders’s comment on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
I wonder if the degree of technological progress envisioned by transhumanists will eventually make the ethical problems posed by this particular sexual orientation a moot point. Just as we will eventually cure aging, and more easily switch genders, we ought to be able to alter development, for example. An adult-aged person could easily assume a childlike body, while retaining the ability to consent in every ethically relevant sense.

On the other hand, we should eventually know enough about neuroscience to make alterations to aspects of attraction and identity. Gays could become straight, straights could become gay, sadism and masochism levels could be adjusted, gender and sex could be flipped arbitrarily… And pedophilia could be added or subtracted.

We could end up with a society of only straight people—or the opposite—depending on our meta-level preferences. In fact, it would also probably be feasible to turn anyone who wants completely asexual—in the extreme case, doing away with sex entirely (presumably with everyone perfectly okay with their new asexual identity).

Given that as possible, what are our meta-level preferences? Should we prefer to peacefully coexist with pedophile/pedomorph couples, and whatever other combination comes up (furries, tentacles, whatever) or should we just cut the crap and settle on something boring like all-asexual or all-straight?

lsparrish Oct 2, 2013, 4:13 PM
4 points
on: What are you working on? October 2013
I’ve been doing small bitcoin transactions by hand using bitcoind raw transactions, and storing the information in leveldb (which is dead simple, and apparently scales well). My near-term goal is to create a colored coin client that tracks inputs/outputs to make sure they have a common origin, so they can be distinguished from regular bitcoins and acquire additional value. I’ve been using python and getting promising results for interacting with leveldb and bitcoind. The same API can apparently be used with electrum servers, so the client does not need to download the whole blockchain.

My ambition with this is to create a type of coin that generally represents stock in utilitarian ethical causes. Anyone who confused about how they should best donate their money could buy these “Utility coins” and hang onto them, thus driving up the value for other prospective donors and ensuring that those who are less confused will have more to spend.

It’s a munchkin idea that might or might not work. For now I’m telling myself the main reason to do it is because it is fun for me and as a way to gather information about what kinds of things can be done in this area (high-value research) rather than because it will necessarily be a good way to fundraise for high-utility causes.

lsparrish Sep 24, 2013, 11:20 PM
4 points
on: A map of Bay Area memespace
I wonder if the bitcoin/cryptocurrency community fits in the map somewhere, perhaps in the lower right area. It’s newer, so the influence on other things would be weaker.

lsparrish Sep 13, 2013, 7:39 PM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: low stress employment/ munchkin income thread
About 90 minutes average. First time will be longer because of paperwork.

lsparrish Sep 9, 2013, 6:04 PM
0 points
on: Request for Advice: Unschool or High School?
I vote unschool, because lots of the time you spend at school is apt to be wasted on marginally low-impact social interactions, bureaucratic rules required to govern large bodies of people but useless to the individual, and so forth.

A high school diploma is essentially equivalent to a GED. So my advice is to get some GED prep books, take some practice tests, and see if you can get a good score with your current knowledge. If so, you can basically test out of high school early. If not, you can use the prep books to figure out where you are coming up short and fill in the gaps.

Curiosity-driven learning tends to be fastest and least boring. Look for reasons to be curious, e.g. about math and science stuff slightly above your current level. Try to write compelling essays. Less Wrong is a great place for both of these things. So are various online forums like Stack Exchange.

You can also get cheap college credit by AP, CLEP, and other standardized tests. Most people pay quite a bit more for college credit, and spend a lot more time in class than they really need to.

If you have boring homework to do that can’t compete against video games and such for your attention (e.g. brushing up on some topic that you notice you are not testing well on), you will need to either become more interested or put yourself in an environment without distractions. You can get away with resisting distractions directly for a while, but eventually that tends to cause willpower depletion, so think of that as something that has to be budgeted carefully. Simple trivial inconveniences like putting games on the top shelf or protecting them with a long password that’s a pain to type can reduce the willpower required to resist.

lsparrish Sep 9, 2013, 2:53 PM
9 points
on: Yet More “Stupid” Questions
Is accounting underrated in most nerd circles? What would a transhumanist or rationalist take on accounting look like? Are there any good blog posts introducing accounting to make it look like an awesome and exciting topic?

The reason I ask is that as I’ve gotten some actual experience working at a software business, I notice a lot of time and effort seems to go into making sure the numbers add up. At first I thought this was largely wasted, but lately I’ve been thinking it helps combat many of the kinds of things we talk about here such as scale blindness… It’s sort of like an intelligence augmentation that lets us tackle resource allocation issues we did not evolve natural intuitions to solve.

lsparrish Sep 2, 2013, 9:36 PM
13 points
on: Open thread, September 2-8, 2013

Abstract

What makes money essential for the functioning of modern society? Through an experiment, we present evidence for the existence of a relevant behavioral dimension in addition to the standard theoretical arguments. Subjects faced repeated opportunities to help an anonymous counterpart who changed over time. Cooperation required trusting that help given to a stranger today would be returned by a stranger in the future. Cooperation levels declined when going from small to large groups of strangers, even if monitoring and payoffs from cooperation were invariant to group size. We then introduced intrinsically worthless tokens. Tokens endogenously became money: subjects took to reward help with a token and to demand a token in exchange for help. Subjects trusted that strangers would return help for a token. Cooperation levels remained stable as the groups grew larger. In all conditions, full cooperation was possible through a social norm of decentralized enforcement, without using tokens. This turned out to be especially demanding in large groups. Lack of trust among strangers thus made money behaviorally essential. To explain these results, we developed an evolutionary model. When behavior in society is heterogeneous, cooperation collapses without tokens. In contrast, the use of tokens makes cooperation evolutionarily stable.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/21/1301888110

lsparrish Aug 29, 2013, 2:55 PM
0 points
on: How Efficient is the Charitable Market?
It seems like the tax advantages of having 501(c)3 nonprofit status should give charities a competitive advantage over for-profits. I wonder what holds them back from taking over entire industries? Are they significantly less efficient than for-profit businesses? Or is it the fact that donors cannot receive dividends and thus lack incentive?

lsparrish Aug 13, 2013, 12:58 AM
8 points
on: Open thread, August 12-18, 2013
Here’s an interesting article that argues for using (GPL-protected) open source strategies to develop strong AI, and lays out reasons why AI design and opsec should be pursued more at the modular implementation level (where mistakes can be corrected based on empirical feedback) rather than attempted at the algorithmic level. I would be curious to see MIRI’s response.

lsparrish Jul 25, 2013, 4:42 AM
1 point
in reply to: AlexanderD’s comment on: Why Eat Less Meat?
Yes, it is very different, if we are talking about core motivations. The main point of powdered cyborg food is to be cool for transhumanist hacker types (by virtue of being convenient, useful, inexpensive, cognition-boosting, and liberating oneself from the conventional norms and hassles of food dependency), and not to save helpless suffering animals.

However, just because cyborg food is not motivated by animal rights does not mean that it does not serve the interests of animal rights. The main competitors in the cyborg food market are soy and whey, neither of which is flesh based (although some whey contains rennet from calf stomach). Contrast to conventional food, where veggie burgers play second fiddle to aggressively marketed and addicting meat products.

Whether the whey based version is harmful for animal rights is debatable, given its status as a waste product from cheesemaking. Purchasing whey does support the dairy industry, but since we are talking about replacing meals that contain cheese, it could actually reduce demand for cheese and thus reduce milk production overall. Under current market conditions, casein (cheese protein) is more expensive than whey protein, despite representing 80% of the protein content of cow’s milk.

If it were to become a primary food product (as opposed to a niche bodybuilding product), particularly if there was a reduced demand for cheese, I expect that whey protein would become more expensive, and thus would probably be disfavored as a base for cyborg food on grounds of cost. Thus it is probably not straightforwardly analogous to the chicken wing example in Peter’s post.

lsparrish Jul 24, 2013, 6:38 PM
5 points
in reply to: CAE_Jones’s comment on: low stress employment/ munchkin income thread
If there’s a nearby plasma bank, plasma donations can pay around $20, a couple times a week. Not a lot, but pretty easy/low-stress if needles don’t freak you out too much. To make it go faster, be sure to drink plenty of water fluids and don’t eat too much fatty foods.