MathieuRoy

• MathieuRoy 10 Aug 2019 3:43 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: MathieuRoy's comment on: 100,000 USD to pre­dict so­cial and be­hav­ioral sci­ence results

  not sure how to delete; moved to draft

• MathieuRoy 10 Aug 2019 3:43 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: habryka's comment on: 100,000 USD to pre­dict so­cial and be­hav­ioral sci­ence results

  oops, I had looked, but not hard enough ap­par­ently; will delete

• MathieuRoy 22 Jul 2019 2:00 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: quanticle's comment on: What ques­tions about the fu­ture would in­fluence peo­ple’s ac­tions to­day if they were in­formed by a pre­dic­tion mar­ket?

  Re Climate

  Oh yeah, I also wanted to have more ques­tions that would in­form me on the ex­tent to which I should be prep­ping. Thanks for bring­ing it up, I’ll add it.

  Re Politics

  And I also wanted to know the prob­a­bil­ity that San Fran­cisco would re­ceive a nu­clear bomb or a earth­quake of mag­ni­tude >X to in­form me on whether I should avoid mov­ing there.

  it might be a sign to move one’s as­sets into more liquid forms

  Although by the time the pre­dic­tion mar­ket tells you that, a lot of money will already have moved to liquid form, and so your as­sets will already have lost a lot of value.

  Re AI

  As for AI, putting aside the is­sue of op­er­a­tional­iz­ing them in a pre­dic­tion mar­ket, how would peo­ple change their be­hav­ior based on them? I guess by be­ing more care­ful about their health and se­cu­rity if it seemed al­igned AI was around the cor­ner (and less care­ful if it seemed ex­ten­sion was). Also change ca­reer plans.

• MathieuRoy 21 Jul 2019 5:37 UTC

  9 points

  on: What ques­tions about the fu­ture would in­fluence peo­ple’s ac­tions to­day if they were in­formed by a pre­dic­tion mar­ket?

  Last up­dated: 2019-07-24

  Em­bryo selection

  How likely is it that em­bryo se­lec­tion (or other tech­nol­ogy) will be available to a con­sumer for less than [price] per ex­pected ad­di­tional IQ point in the next [num­ber of] years?

  Similarly for other re­pro­duc­tive tech­nol­ogy and char­ac­ter­is­tics.

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one could de­cide to post­pone hav­ing chil­dren and/​or cry­op­re­serve sperm/​eggs/​em­bryos.

  Re­lated: https://​​nick­bostrom.com/​​pa­pers/​​em­bryo.pdf

  Immigration

  How likely is it that peo­ple from coun­try X will still be able to im­mi­grate in coun­try Y by year Z?

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one could de­cide to im­mi­grate sooner or later.

  Cryonics

  How likely is it that Ore­gon Cry­on­ics will still offer ser­vices in 50 years? (con­di­tion­ing on cry­on­ics still be­ing offered by some or­ga­ni­za­tions)

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one could de­cide to move to Salem or oth­er­wise move near an­other fa­cil­ity (ex.: Phoenix).

  Catas­tro­phe risk in a city

  How likely is it that San Fran­cisco would re­ceive a nu­clear bomb? How likely is it that San Fran­cisco would re­ceive an earth­quake of mag­ni­tude >X.

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one could de­cide not to move to San Fran­cisco.

  Global catastrophe

  How likely is it that world GDP drops that more than 10x in the next 10 years?

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one could de­cide to start prep­ping.

  Employment

  How likely is it that there will be de­mand X for job Y in Z years?

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one could chose a differ­ent ca­reer path.

  Me­mory preservation

  How likely is it that Google Photo will still have my pic­tures in X years?

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one might do more or less back-ups.

  Privacy

  How likely is it that ser­vice X will leak some of my data by year Y?

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one might avoid us­ing the ser­vice.

  Nutri­tion studies

  How likely is it that there we be a good [to op­er­a­tional­ize] study show­ing that cre­a­tine sup­ple­ments have pos­i­tive effects [to op­er­a­tional­ize] in the next 20 years?

  Depend­ing on the prob­a­bil­ity, one might take cre­a­tine sup­ple­ments.

[Question] What ques­tions about the fu­ture would in­fluence peo­ple’s ac­tions to­day if they were in­formed by a pre­dic­tion mar­ket?

• MathieuRoy 4 Jun 2019 6:09 UTC

  3 points

  on: Far nega­tives of cry­on­ics?

  Some notes on this: https://​​docs.google.com/​​doc­u­ment/​​d/​​1xGjvSHq7YdJDoTgfP08cgzeJKSr­ciT9b5E9AConBvjY/​​

• MathieuRoy 26 Apr 2019 3:10 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Bae's Theorem's comment on: Epi­sode 1 of “Tsuyoku Nar­i­tai!” (the ‘be­com­ing stronger’ pod­cast/​YT se­ries).

  please go ahead!:) and let me know if you have trou­ble edit­ing the wiki

• MathieuRoy 24 Apr 2019 16:33 UTC

  1 point

  on: What are re­li­able ways to make a state­ment in such a way that I will be able to prove in the fu­ture that I had made that state­ment?

  I guess the best way is just to post on a bunch of plat­forms and have those web pages back-up by var­i­ous archiv­ing ser­vices (no­tably the Way­back Ma­chine).

  Pub­lish­ing a book is prob­a­bly too much work for most used cases.

  I’ve also heard one could pub­lish text on the Bit­coin blockchain for ex­am­ple, but I’m not sure how well that works.

[Question] What are re­li­able ways to make a state­ment in such a way that I will be able to prove in the fu­ture that I had made that state­ment?

• MathieuRoy 24 Apr 2019 16:08 UTC

  4 points

  on: Epi­sode 1 of “Tsuyoku Nar­i­tai!” (the ‘be­com­ing stronger’ pod­cast/​YT se­ries).

  Sweet! I added it to the list of pod­casts by peo­ple with a LessWrong pro­file: https://​​wiki.less­wrong.com/​​wiki/​​List_of_Pod­casts#By_peo­ple_with_Less_Wrong_pro­files

• MathieuRoy 15 Apr 2019 21:55 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: ChristianKl's comment on: If a “Kick­starter for Inad­e­quate Equlibria” was built, do you have a con­crete in­ad­e­quate equil­ibrium to fix?

  See sec­tion “Games and Ex­er­cises” of “How to Run a Suc­cess­ful LessWrong Meetup Group” for some ideas: https://​​wiki.less­wrong.com/​​me­di­aw­iki/​​images/​​c/​​ca/​​How_to_Run_a_Suc­cess­ful_Less_Wrong_Meetup_Group.pdf

• MathieuRoy 6 Apr 2019 18:21 UTC

  12 points

  in reply to: Jayson_Virissimo's comment on: If a “Kick­starter for Inad­e­quate Equlibria” was built, do you have a con­crete in­ad­e­quate equil­ibrium to fix?

  Be­cause it’s near the best cry­on­ics fa­cil­ity in the world: https://​​al­cor.org, and the qual­ity of cry­op­reser­va­tions for peo­ple liv­ing in Phoenix is much higher in av­er­age than re­mote cases (it re­duces the de­lay to start the pro­ce­dure, it avoids prob­lems at bor­ders, the de­lay to start the sub-zero cool-down is shorter, they have good re­la­tion­ships with nearby hos­pi­tals, they have bet­ter in­fras­truc­ture, and there’s more le­gal an­tecedent sup­port­ing cry­on­ics).

  This sum­mer I went to Phoenix for about a month to see how it was. I or­ga­nized the first lo­cal effec­tive al­tru­ism event: https://​​www.face­book.com/​​groups/​​Effec­tiveAltru­is­mPhoenix/​​. I reached out to the LessWrong group: https://​​www.face­book.com/​​groups/​​317266081721112/​​ and the SlateS­tarCodex group: https://​​groups.google.com/​​fo­rum/​​#!fo­rum/​​slate-star-codex-phoenix . There are 4 peo­ple in the Brain De­bug­ging Dis­cus­sion Face­book group that speci­fied liv­ing in Phoenix on their Face­book pro­file: https://​​www.face­book.com/​​groups/​​144017955332/​​lo­cal_mem­bers/​​ , 1 on the Effec­tive Altru­ism Face­book group: https://​​www.face­book.com/​​groups/​​437177563005273/​​lo­cal_mem­bers/​​ , 0 on EA Hub: https://​​eahub.org/​​pro­files , and 7 on the Global Tran­shu­man­ist As­so­ci­a­tion: https://​​www.face­book.com/​​groups/​​2229380549/​​lo­cal_mem­bers/​​ . IIRC, I had reached out to (some of) them as well (and prob­a­bly more). I also had in­vited peo­ple from the cry­on­ics com­mu­nity. IIRC, there was 2-3 ra­tio­nal­ists and 3 cry­on­i­cists that showed up to the event. And maybe around 5 that were in­ter­ested but couldn’t make it. IIRC, there had been a few SSC events in the last 2 years, with maybe a to­tal of some­thing like 12 peo­ple show­ing up. I’ve also met with about 20 cry­on­ics old-timers.

  Other ap­proaches I see to­wards solv­ing this prob­lem:

  • do move­ment build­ing once I’m Phoenix, or sup­port other peo­ple that are in­ter­ested in do­ing that

  • try to con­nect more with ra­tio­nal­ists (or ra­tio­nal­ists ad­ja­cent) that are already in Phoenix

  • in­stead of find­ing 75 in­ter­est­ing (to me) peo­ple, find only a dozen, but start a strong in­ten­tional community

    • here’s one pro­ject pro­posal for this idea: https://​​docs.google.com/​​doc­u­ment/​​d/​​1JdZ1lnX­woJatofsYa-oVKM0b55ev9EFr081Twd0YebI/​​ (this is just an idea; I’m much more flex­ible than that, and my in­ter­ests are wider); I vis­ited a lot of in­ten­tional com­mu­ni­ties, and have been run­ning one for 3 years ( https://​​macro­scope.house/​​ ), so I think I would have the ex­per­tise to start a new one

  • sig­nifi­cantly im­prove the cry­on­ics re­sponse qual­ity in other cities (cur­rent con­tenders: Salem, Berkeley, Los An­ge­les)

  If you (or any­one you know) are in­ter­ested or can help with any of those, that would be great/​ap­pre­ci­ated!

  How many ra­tio­nal­ists /​ EAs /​ in­ter­est­ing peo­ple do you know in Phoenix? Do you like liv­ing in Phoenix?

  I would like to con­nect with more LessWronger in Phoenix. If you want, you can add me on Face­book: https://​​www.face­book.com/​​mati.roy.09 and/​​or send me an email at con­tact@matiroy.com and/​or chat in pub­lic on https://​​www.red­dit.com/​​r/​​Mati_Roy/​​ .

• MathieuRoy 6 Apr 2019 0:17 UTC

  3 points

  on: LessWrong 2.0 Fea­ture Roadmap & Fea­ture Suggestions

  Allow to edit one’s user­name (con­text: I now go by Mati_Roy in­stead of MathieuRoy, but I don’t want to cre­ate an­other ac­count and loose my his­tory).

• MathieuRoy 5 Apr 2019 23:54 UTC

  4 points

  on: How could “Kick­starter for Inad­e­quate Equil­ibria” be used for evil or turn out to be net-nega­tive?

  I added this thread here: https://​​causepri­ori­ti­za­tion.org/​​Co­or­di­na­tion

• MathieuRoy 5 Apr 2019 23:50 UTC

  23 points

  on: If a “Kick­starter for Inad­e­quate Equlibria” was built, do you have a con­crete in­ad­e­quate equil­ibrium to fix?

  Meta note: I’ll likely edit this an­swer when I think of more an­swers.

  Gen­eral note: If you’re in­ter­ested in any of the propo­si­tions be­low (ex­cept the first one), please let me know, ei­ther here or at con­tact@matiroy.com .

  Boot­strap­ping a com­mit­ment platform

  Make at least 5 com­mit­ments if a com­mit­ment plat­form is cre­ated (or rather, the cre­ator might want to com­mit to im­prov­ing a bare-bone plat­form if at least 200 peo­ple com­mit to make a to­tal of at least 1,000 com­mit­ments).

  Im­prov­ing the Cause Pri­ori­ti­za­tion Wiki (CPW)

  Mi­grate the CPW on the Me­di­aWiki plat­form and im­prove the struc­ture if enough peo­ple com­mit ed­its for a to­tal of 2000+ ed­its.

  Side note: I’ve added this thread here: https://​​causepri­ori­ti­za­tion.org/​​Co­or­di­na­tion

  Mov­ing to Phoenix

  If 75 EAs /​ ra­tio­nal­ists /​ life ex­ten­sion­ists com­mit­ted to move to Phoenix this year, I’d move to Phoenix this year.

  Fi­nanc­ing cry­on­ics research

  If 500 other peo­ple com­mit­ted 10,000 USD to cry­on­ics re­search, I would give 10,000 USD to cry­on­ics re­search.

  Do­ing a cry­on­ics re­lated PhD

  I would do a PhD in some field rele­vant to cry­on­ics if some peo­ple com­mit­ted a frac­tion of my salary to do cry­on­ics re­search over 10 years. That is, they would give say 20% (or 10k USD /​ year) of my salary to what­ever cry­on­ics lab that hires me.

  Train­ing a lo­cal cry­on­ics team

  I would ar­range to have a lo­cal (to Mon­treal) standby cry­on­ics team if at least 500,000 CAD was com­mit­ted (ex­act amount TBD). (Although I guess I could just use Kick­starter for that, or do it en­tirely ad hoc?)

  Or­ga­niz­ing Ra­tion­al­ist Olympiads

  If 12+ peo­ple com­mit­ted to go to Ra­tion­al­ist Olympiads (in Mon­treal), I would or­ga­nize Ra­tion­al­ist Olympiads.

[Question] What are the ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages of know­ing your own IQ?

• MathieuRoy 31 Mar 2019 17:07 UTC

  6 points

  on: How to Un­der­stand and Miti­gate Risk

  How would you clas­sify ex­is­ten­tial risks within this frame­work? (or would you?)

  Here’s my at­tempt. Any cor­rec­tions or ad­di­tions would be ap­pre­ci­ated.

  Trans­par­ent risks: as­ter­oids (we roughly know the fre­quency?)
  Opaque risks: ge­o­mag­netic storms (we don’t know how re­sis­tant the elec­tric grid is, al­though we have an idea of their fre­quency), nat­u­ral physics dis­asters (such as vac­uum de­cay), kil­led by an ex­trater­res­trial civ­i­liza­tion (could also fit black swans and ad­ver­sar­ial en­vi­ron­ments de­pend­ing on its na­ture)
  Knigh­tian risks:
  - Black swans: ASI, nan­otech, bio­eng­ineered pan­demics, simu­la­tion shut­down (as­sum­ing it’s be­cause of some­thing we did)
  - Dy­namic en­vi­ron­ment: “dys­genic” pres­sures (maybe also ad­ver­sar­ial), nat­u­ral pan­demics (the world is get­ting more con­nected, medicine more ro­bust, etc. which makes it difficult how the risks of nat­u­ral pan­demics are chang­ing), nu­clear holo­caust (the game the­o­retic equil­ibrium changes as we get nu­clear weapon that are faster and more pre­cised, bet­ter de­tec­tors, etc.)
  - Ad­ver­sar­ial en­vi­ron­ments: re­source de­ple­tion or ecolog­i­cal de­struc­tion, mis­guided world gov­ern­ment or an­other static so­cial equil­ibrium that stops tech­nolog­i­cal progress, re­pres­sive to­tal­i­tar­ian global regime, take-over by a tran­scend­ing up­load (?), our po­ten­tial or even our core val­ues are eroded by evolu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment (ex.: Han­so­nian em world)

  Other (?): tech­nolog­i­cal ar­rests (“The sheer tech­nolog­i­cal difficul­ties in mak­ing the tran­si­tion to the posthu­man world might turn out to be so great that we never get there.” from https://​​nick­bostrom.com/​​ex­is­ten­tial/​​risks.html )

• MathieuRoy 30 Mar 2019 23:09 UTC

  14 points

  on: X-risks are a tragedies of the commons

  From the origi­nal ar­ti­cle by Nick Bostrom: “Re­duc­tions ex­is­ten­tial risks are global pub­lic goods [13] and may there­fore be un­der­sup­plied by the mar­ket [14]. Ex­is­ten­tial risks are a men­ace for ev­ery­body and may re­quire act­ing on the in­ter­na­tional plane. Re­spect for na­tional sovereignty is not a le­gi­t­i­mate ex­cuse for failing to take coun­ter­mea­sures against a ma­jor ex­is­ten­tial risk.” See: https://​​nick­bostrom.com/​​ex­is­ten­tial/​​risks.html

• MathieuRoy 23 Mar 2019 1:19 UTC

  1 point

  on: X-risks are a tragedies of the commons

  re­lated com­ment: https://​​fo­rum.effec­tivealtru­ism.org/​​posts/​​F7hZ8co3L82nTdX4f/​​do-eas-un­der­es­ti­mate-op­por­tu­ni­ties-to-cre­ate-many-small#XGSQX45NkAN9qSB9A

• MathieuRoy 21 Feb 2019 1:26 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky's comment on: New­comb’s Prob­lem and Re­gret of Rationality

  it’s cer­tainly in­ter­est­ing from the per­spec­tive of the Dooms­day Ar­gu­ment if ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tions have a ther­mo­dy­namic in­cen­tive to wait un­til nearly the end of the uni­verse be­fore us­ing their hoarded negentropy

  Re­lated: That is not dead which can eter­nal lie: the aes­ti­va­tion hy­poth­e­sis for re­solv­ing Fermi’s para­dox (https://​​arxiv.org/​​pdf/​​1705.03394.pdf)