Freelance Software Engineer at day, Rationalist and Effective Altruist at night
Profile: https://cv.martinmilbradt.de/
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Milli | Martin
Karma: 114
Postmortem: Trying out for Manifold Markets
I don’t know how to make Meditations on Moloch into a video. But it has shaped me deeply and I feel it contains a lot of important lessons that could make or break the future.
Closing paragraph:
He always and everywhere offers the same deal: throw what you love most into the flames, and I can grant you power.
As long as the offer’s open, it will be irresistible. So we need to close the offer. Only another god can kill Moloch. We have one on our side, but he needs our help. We should give it to him.
Ginsberg’s poem famously begins “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”. I am luckier than Ginsberg. I got to see the best minds of my generation identify a problem and get to work.
Long survey is long.
Be wary of survivorship bias! Of course, everything that is licensed and proven to work was not at some point. But so is everything that was tried out and ineffective / harmful, and (hopefully) still not licensed.
But things that work, accumulate evidence that they do, and good chances get licensed. That’s the way science works.
I don’t blame anyone for trying things out, in fact we need people who do to figure out what actually works. But it’s also perfectly reasonable not to want to do that.
Useful to keep in mind, especially the point of getting an introduction to the next person.
But I want to point out that it’s also easy to undershoot. Many people hesitate to ask questions or contact new people. It makes me sad when people waste hours on something that I can answer / fix in minutes.
Another thing is to keep time spent / saved in mind. A well crafted message, that’s easy to understand and only requires a short answer, is much harder to write than going back and forth a few times.
If you spend 100x the time you save the other person, it’s probably not worth it in most non-Paul-Christiano-cases.
LessWrong open thread, I love it. I hope they become as lively as the ACX Open Threads (if they have the same intention).
I’m reading the sequences this year (1/day, motivated by this post) and am enjoying it so far. Lmk if I’m wasting my time by not “just” reading the highlights.
PS: In case you or someone you know is looking for a software engineer, here’s my profile: https://cv.martinmilbradt.de/. Preferably freelance, but I’m open to employment if the project is impactful or innovative.
Here are the links to the articles from the books. Let me know if there are any mistakes.
Notes:
I didn’t find “Do Birth Order Effects Exist?”, “Challenges to Christiano’s Iterated Amplification Proposal” seems to be only on intelligence.org and “Response to FAQ on Iterated Amplification” seems to be a comment and not a post of it’s own.
Pharasma is from Pathfinder and not D&D, isn’t she?
PSA: If you’re like me, you want to subscribe to the Open Threads Tag, to not miss these: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/open-threads
Dang I seem to have not participated.
Can you give the percentiles for people with >130, 140 and 160 IQ (self reported) to determine that the 150 IQ cutoff is not cherry-picked? Does it work like that?
I don’t think religion keeps is what modern people from learning physics
Should this be “I don’t think religion is what keeps modern people from learning physics” or am I missing something?
There are some occurrences in the git of Ditritus as well and more importantly in the google Form.
EA Germany has an “Employer of Record” program. Your funding gets put into their account, and they pay your salary from it, formally becoming your employer.
This is probably what you want to google or mention to an organization in the UK. :)
Details (EAD): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EePELRNTrZGHgeJa3oeRdF_rDsN7LesYppQah_zE7g4
Thank you for short and sweet the review.
But all the personal connections of the characters before the apocalypse were transient and superficial. Their relationships after the apocalypse aren’t.
I wonder how to get that feeling of deep connectedness (I assume) people in small communities and tribes had in the past. An additional challenge is that it might cause people to care even less about people not in their group.
The close knit group that sticks together through thick and thin is a fantasy of mine that hopefully can be achieved without catastrophe.
Hey everyone, I’m amazed with how many people showed up and the atmosphere. I hope you had fun and interesting conversations as well. If you want to be connected to the Berlin Rationality or EA communities, just contact me! Contact: acx-meetups@martinmilbradt.de, t.me/truemilli or @Milli | Martin.
PS.: “My” monthly workshop is happening tomorrow evening, happy to have you: The Art of Difficult Conversations—Workshop.
Quick heads up: Most of the RSVPs are on Meetup.com (26 atm).
Thanks for the post, it’s useful to be reminded of every now and then. The first time I thought about it was when thinking about the statement by doctors that “somebodies life expectancy is 6 months”. This also actually means that there is a high chance to die very soon, but if that doesn’t happen they’ll probably live on for many years.
Planning as if they would live for +/- 6 months is useless in that case.
Here’s a form to give the Lightcone team anonymous feedback about this decision (or anything).
The link seems to be missing.
Also: Looking forward to the postmortem.
Great video.
Minor complaint: Is there no way to fix numeric mistakes in post production? Sounds to me like a problem modern sound editing software should be able to fix.
Hello all,
I am not new, but I read much more than I comment. I have not written any articles yet.
I’ve known LessWrong for maybe 10 years, but it didn’t captivate me then. When I started reading SSC again at the beginning of the pandemic, I also came back to LessWrong and got captivated this time. I have subscribed to some authors and try to stay up to date on the curated list. I don’t have the time/concentration to read everything I want, unfortunately. “The Engines of Cognition” is still lying around here wrapped up.
About me: I’m a Berlin freelance developer in my early 30s. I enjoy reading, educational and entertaining videos, board and PC games (cooperative, singleplayer and occasional competitive multiplayer).
Some stuff on LessWrong that I have enjoyed. Feel free to ask me for more links (on and off LessWrong):
* All of A Map that Reflects the Territory
* Bayeswatch by lsusr
* Theses on Sleep by guzey
* Cryonics signup guide by mingyuan
* Can you control the past by Joe Carlsmith
€: I’m also looking for a project from July onwards. Feel free to message me if you are looking for a developer.