nim

Karma: 1,061

nim 12 Sep 2024 16:58 UTC
2 points
0
on: On the destruction of America’s best high school
It feels like a loss, yes, but a small loss, like a single building of architecture eroding into the sea.

It does not feel like a loss of the hope for more similar schools, to me, because it existed for how long and yet spawned how few spinoffs?

If it was going to change the world at scale by existing, it sounds like it had plenty of time to do that. Why didn’t it? Why wasn’t individual love and appreciation for it enough to coordinate efforts to create more such schools?

Certainly, for the few who would have been very very lucky and gotten in if it hadn’t ended the program, it’s a potential tragedy. But if the program wasn’t successfully lowering the luck threshhold required to benefit from its ideas… I don’t feel like that’s the same loss as if we were losing a program which demonstrated an ability to scale and spread.

nim 30 Jul 2024 1:54 UTC
13 points
3
on: If You Can Climb Up, You Can Climb Down
If You Can Climb Up, You Can Climb Down

Mostly true, but the edge cases where this is untrue for adults are interesting:
- Climbing up may damage the thing you’re climbing (rock, tree) and render it impossible to return by the same route
- Steep and slippery surfaces can be more dangerous to hike down than to hike up, because gravity is in your favor for arresting uncontrolled upward motion but exacerbates uncontrolled downward motion
- Without a spotter, we tend to have better line of sight to things above us than to things below
- If fatigue or injury is incurred on the climb up, one’s physical abilities may not be sufficient for the climb down

nim 29 Jul 2024 19:49 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: kromem’s comment on: This is already your second chance
that’s a lot of words for “as above, so below” ;)

nim 15 Jul 2024 16:54 UTC
6 points
0
on: Stacked Laptop Monitor Update

I’ve also mostly stopped using the bit of wood that keeps it from collapsing, even when using this on my lap. Instead I just sit very still and try not to knock it over. This is kind of silly, but I’m too lazy to get out the piece of wood when this actually seems to work fine.

(from your original writeup)

I probably should have gotten some kind of hinge that locks, but since I didn’t I cut a piece of wood to chock it:

I should sort out something sturdier and harder to lose.

This is probably the moment to revisit locking hinges or a bolted-on, pivot-able chock to keep the hinge assembly from moving. A falling monitor could do a number on fingers, kids, or pets.

The whole thing gets me thinking that it probably wouldn’t be too intractable a design problem to make a laptop whose built-in screen slides upwards by at least half the screen’s height. The necessary hardware would add thickness and weight,but might be worth it for the ergonomic improvements.

nim 9 Jul 2024 16:04 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Consent across power differentials

In none of those cases can (or should) the power differential be removed.

I agree—in any situation where a higher-power individual feels that they have a duty to care for the wellbeing of a lower-power individual, “removing the power differential” ends up meaning abandoning that duty.

However, in the question of consent specifically, I think it’s reasonable for a higher-power individual to create the best model they can of the lower-power individual, and update that model diligently upon gaining any new information that it had predicted the subject imperfectly. Having the more-powerful party consider what they’d want if they were in the exact situation of the less-powerful party (including having all the same preferences, experiences, etc) creates what I’d consider a maximally fair negotiation.

when another entitity is smarter and more powerful than me, how do I want it to think of “for my own good”?

I would want a superintelligence to imagine that it was me, as accurately as it could, and update that model of me whenever my behavior deviates from the model. I’d then like it to run that model at an equivalent scale and power to itself (or a model of itself, if we’re doing this on the cheap) and let us negotiate as equals. To me, equality feels like a good-faith conversation of “here’s what I want, what do you want, how can we get as close as possible to maximizing both?”, and I want the chance to propose ways of accomplishing the superintelligence’s goals that are maximally compatible with me also accomplishing my own.

Then again, the concept of a superintelligence focusing solely on what’s for my individual good kind of grosses me out. I prefer the idea of it optimizing for a lot of simultaneous goods—the universe,the species, the neighborhood,the individual—and explaining who else’s good won and why if I inquire about why my individual good wasn’t the top priority in a given situation.

nim 9 Jul 2024 15:46 UTC
4 points
2
on: Consent across power differentials
Conversation about such decisions has to happen in the best common language available. This is very obvious with animals, where teaching them human language requires far more effort from everyone than learning how they already communicate and meeting them on their own intellectual turf.

Also, it’s rare to have only a single isolated power differential in play. There are usually several, pointing in different directions. Draft animals can destroy stuff and injure people if they panic; pets can destroy their owners’ possessions. Oppressed human populations can revolt; oppressed individuals can rebel in all kinds of creatively dangerous ways. In the rare event of dealing with only a single power gradient at once, being on top is easy because you decide what you’re doing and then you do it and it works. But with multiple power gradients simultaneously in play, staying “on top” is a high-effort process and a good-faith negotiation can only happen when every participant puts in the effort to not be a jerk in the areas where their power happens to exceed that of others.

nim 1 Jul 2024 15:01 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Anti-circumcision Essay 2 of 3: Physical and Psychological Realities
Your framing here gets me thinking about elective appendectomies. It’s a little piece of the body that doesn’t have any widely agreed-upon utility (some experts think it’s useful, others don’t), and it objectively does cause problems for some people if left in place, and sure there are some minor risks of infection or complication when removing it but there are risks to any surgery...

Appendectomies seem like a great way to test whether we’re at the crux of a pro-circumcision argument. If the ”...and that’s why it’s appropriate to remove this small and arguably useless body part” logic is sufficiently robust to get an appendectomy before rather than during the organ’s attempt to murder its owner, we’ll know the argument pulls real levers in the medical system.

nim 21 May 2024 16:27 UTC
5 points
0
on: My Dating Heuristic
Magnificent, and thank you for sharing! I was curious who your youtube link would be about trusted sources and delighted to see Dr. K’s channel on the mouseover.

nim 20 May 2024 18:00 UTC
2 points
0
on: A Dozen Ways to Get More Dakka
“and seek amateur advice”

well said!

nim 9 May 2024 23:46 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Open Thread Spring 2024
I notice that I am confused: an image of lily pads appears on https://www.lesswrong.com/s/XJBaPPEYAPeDzuAsy when I load it, but when I expand all community sequences on https://www.lesswrong.com/library (a show-all button might be nice....) and search the string “physical” or “necessity” on that page, I do not see the post appearing. This seems odd, because I’d expect that having a non-default image display when the sequence’s homepage is loaded and having a good enough image to appear in the list should be the same condition, but it seems they aren’t identical for that one.

nim 9 May 2024 23:39 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Lorxus’s comment on: Open Thread Spring 2024
I am delighted that you chimed in here; these are pleasingly composed and increase my desire to read the relevant sequences. Your post makes me feel like I meaningfully contributed to the improvement of these sequences by merely asking a potentially dumb question in public, which is the internet at its very best.

Artistically, I think the top (fox face) image for lotteries cropped for its bottom ²⁄₃ would be slightly preferable to the other, and the bottom (monochrome white/blue) for geometric makes a nicer banner in the aspect ratio that they’re shown as.

nim 6 May 2024 20:57 UTC
5 points
1
in reply to: michael_mjd’s comment on: Open Thread Spring 2024
More concrete than your actual question, but there’s a couple options you can take:
- acknowledge that there’s a form of social truth whereby the things people insist upon believing are functionally true. For instance, there may be no absolute moral value to criticism of a particular leader, but in certain countries the social system creates a very unambiguous negative value to it. Stick to the observable—if he does an experiment, replicate that experiment for yourself and share the results. If you get different results, examine why. IMO, attempting in good faith to replicate whatever experiments have convinced him that the world works differently from how he previously thought would be the best steelman for someone framing religion as rationalism.
- There is of course the “which bible?” question. Irrefutable proof of the veracity of the old testament, if someone had it, wouldn’t answer the question of which modern religion incorporating it is “most correct”.
- It’s entirely valid and consistent with rationalism to have the personal preference to not accept any document as fully and literally true. If you can gently find out how he handles the internal contradictions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_consistency_of_the_Bible), you’ve got a ready-made argument for taking some things figuratively.
And as unsolicited social advice, distinct from the questions of rationalism—don’t strawman him into someone who criticizes your atheism until he as an actual human tells you what if any actual critiques he has. That’s not nice. What is nice is to frame it as a harm reduction option, because organized religion can be great for some people with mental health struggles, and tell him the truth about what you see in his current behavior that you like and support. For instance if his church gets him more involved with the community, or encourages him to do more healthy behaviors or less unhealthy ones, maintain common ground by endorsing the outcomes of his beliefs rather than endorsing the beliefs themselves.

nim 6 May 2024 20:41 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: skybluecat’s comment on: Open Thread Spring 2024
Welcome! If you have the emotional capacity to happily tolerate being disagreed with or ignored, you should absolutely participate in discussions. In the best case, you teach others something they didn’t know before, or get a misconception of your own corrected. In the worst case, your remarks are downvoted or ignored.

Your question on games would do well fleshed out into at least a quick take, if not a whole post, answering:
- What games you’ve ruled out for this and why
- what games in other genres you’ve found to capture the “truly simulation-like” aspect that you’re seeking
- examples of game experiences that you experience as narrative railroading
- examples of ways that games that get mostly there do a “hard science/AI/transhumanist theme” in the way that you’re looking for
- perhaps what you get from it being a game that you miss if it’s a book, movie, or show?
If you’ve tried a lot of things and disliked most, then good clear descriptions of what you dislike about them can actually function as helpful positive recommendations for people with different preferences.

nim 6 May 2024 20:35 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Open Thread Spring 2024
Can random people donate images for the sequence-items that are missing them, or can images only be provided by the authors? I notice that I am surprised that some sequences are missing out on being listed just because images weren’t uploaded, considering that I don’t recall having experienced other sequences’ art as particularly transformative or essential.

nim 6 May 2024 20:32 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: thornoar’s comment on: Open Thread Spring 2024
Congratulations! I’m in today’s lucky 10,000 for learning that Asymptote exists. Perhaps due to my not being much of a mathematician, I didn’t understand it very clearly from the README… but the examples comparing code to its output make sense! Comparing your examples to the kind of things Asymptote likes to show off (https://asymptote.sourceforge.io/gallery/), I see why you might have needed to build the additional tooling.

I don’t think you necessarily have to compare smoothmanifold to a JavaScript framework to get the point across—it seems to be an abstraction layer that allows one to describe a drawn image in slightly more general terms than Asymptote supports.

I admire how you’re investing so much effort to use your talents to help others.

nim 6 May 2024 20:09 UTC
7 points
3
in reply to: atergitna’s comment on: Open Thread Spring 2024
hey, welcome! Congrats on de-lurking, I think? I fondly remember my own teenage years of lurking online—one certainly learns a lot about the human condition.

If I was sending my 14-year-old self a time capsule of LW, it’d start with the sequences, and beyond that I’d emphasize the writings of adults examining how their own cognition works. Two reasons—first, being aware that one is living in a brain as it finishes wiring itself together is super entertaining if you’re into that kind of thing, and even more fun when you have better data to guess how it’s going to end up. (I got the gist of that from having well-educated and openminded parents, who explained that it’s prudent to hold off on recreational drug use until one’s brain is entirely done with being a kid, because most recreational substances make one’s brain temporarily more childlike in some way and the real thing is better. Now I’m in my 30s and can confirm that’s how such things, including alcohol, have worked for me)

Second, my 20s would have been much better if someone had taken kid-me aside and explained some neurodiversity stuff to her: “here’s the range of normal, here’s the degree of suffering that’s not expected nor normal and is worth consulting a professional for even if you’re managing through great effort to keep it together”, etc.

If you’d like to capitalize on your age for some free internet karma, I would personally enjoy reading your thoughts on what your peers think of technology, how they get their information, and how you’re all updating the language at the moment.

I also wish that my 14-year-old self had paid more attention to the musical trends and attempted to guess which music that was popular while I was of highschool age would stand the test of time and remain on the radio over the subsequent decades. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I could probably have taken some decent guesses, but I didn’t so now I’ll never know whether I would have guessed right :)

nim 6 May 2024 14:49 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Tigerlily’s comment on: How would you navigate a severe financial emergency with no help or resources?
I hear you, describing how weird social norms in the world can be. I hear you describing how you followed those norms to show consideration for readers by dressing up a very terrible situation as a slightly less bad one. In social settings where people both know who you are and are compelled by the circumstances to listen to what you say, that’s still the right way to go about it.

The rudeness of taking peoples’ time is very real in person, where a listener is socially “forced” to invest time in listening or effort in escaping the conversation. But posts online are different: especially when you lack the social capital of “this post is by someone I know I often like reading, so I should read it to see what they say”, readers should feel no obligation to read your whole post, nor to reply, if they don’t want to. When you’re brand new to a community, readers can easily dismiss your post as a bot or scammer and simply ignore it, so you have done them no harm in the way that consuming someone’s time in person harms them. A few trolls may choose to read your post and then pretend you forced them to do so, but anyone who behaves like that is inherently outing themself as someone whose opinions about you don’t deserve much regard. (and then you get some randos who like how you write and decide to be micro-penpals… hi there!)

However, there’s another option for how to approach this kind of thing online. You can spin up an anonymous throwaway and play the “asking for a friend” game—take the option of direct help or directly contacting the “actual person” off the table, and you’ve ruled out being a gofundme scam. Sometimes asking on behalf of a fictional person whose circumstances happen to be more like the specifics of your own than you would disclose in public gets far better answers.

For instance, if the fictional person had a car problem involving a specific model year of vehicle and a specific insurance company, the internet may point out that there’s a recall on some part of that particular car and you have the manufacturer as a recourse, or they may offer a specific number that gets you a customer complaint line that’s actually responsive at the insurance company. If the fictional person had a highly specific medical condition, there may be a new treatment with studies that you have to know to ask to get into, and the internet may be able to offer that information.

At this point, I don’t think it would be wise for someone in your situation to do a throwaway account on lesswrong in particular. However, I would seriously consider using several separate throwaways and asking about various facets of the details on the relevant subreddits. Reddit will get you a lot of chaff in the replies, but if you’re sifting the internet for novel ideas, it’s also a good way to query the hivemind for kernels of utility as well.

All that is to say, part of your search for insight and ideas should probably involve carving up the aspects of the situation that you cannot justify sharing here into pieces that you can justify sharing elsewhere, and pursue those lines of inquiry. Those topics contain potential insight that cannot be found under the circumstances you’ve created here, and that’s ok—I just want to make sure not to endorse leaving them un-explored.

nim 4 May 2024 14:10 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Tigerlily’s comment on: How would you navigate a severe financial emergency with no help or resources?
Ah, so you have skill and a portfolio in writing. You have the cognitive infrastructure to support using the language as art. That infrastructure itself is what you should be trying to rent to tech companies—not the art it’s capable of producing.

If the art part of writing is out of reach for you right now, that’s ok—it’s almost a benefit in this case, because if it’s not around it can’t feel left out if you turn to more pragmatic ends the skills you used to celebrate it with.

Normally I wouldn’t suggest startups, because they’re so risky/uncertain… but in a situation as precarious as yours, it’s no worse to see who’s looking for writers on a startup-flavored site like https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs.

And finally, I’m taking the titular “severe emergency” to be the whole situation, because it sounds pretty dire. If there’s a specific sub-emergency that drove you to ask—a medical bill, a car breakdown—there may be more-specific resources that folks haven’t mentioned yet. (or if you’ve explained that in someone else’s comment thread, i apologize for asking redundantly; i’ve not read your replies to others)

nim 3 May 2024 16:27 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: Anders Lindström’s comment on: Which skincare products are evidence-based?
“Minimize excessive UV exposure” is the steelman to the pro-sunscreen arguments. The evidence against tanning beds demonstrates that excess UV is almost certainly harmful.

I think where the pro-sunscreen arguments go wrong is in assuming that sunscreen is the best or only way to minimize excess UV.

I personally don’t have what it takes to use sunscreen “correctly” (apply every day, “reapply every 2 hours”, tolerate the sensory experience of smearing anything on my face every day, etc) so I mitigate UV exposure in other ways:
- Pursue a career of work that can be done indoors
- Avoid doing optional outdoor activities during the parts of the day with the highest UV levels—before and after the heat of the day is more pleasant to be out in anyway
- use sun-protective clothing like UV-proof gloves, wide-brimmed hats, UV hoodies, etc
- choose shady over sunny locations, or create shade with a large hat or parasol
- choose full-coverage swimwear for outdoor recreation
- wear dark colors on hot days, because dark clothing makes it uncomfortable to remain in the sun very long. I’m good at noticing when I’m too warm, so that’s my cue to relocate to shade.

nim 3 May 2024 15:59 UTC
5 points
2
on: How would you navigate a severe financial emergency with no help or resources?
You’re here, which tells me you have internet access.

I mentally categorize options like Fiverr and mturk as “about as scammy as DoorDash”. I don’t think they’re a good option, but I also don’t think DoorDash is a very good option either. It’s probably worth looking into online gig economy options.

What skills were you renting to companies before you became a stay-at-home parent? There are probably online options to rent the same skills to others around the world.

You write fluently in English and it sounds like English is your first language. Have you considered renting your linguistic skills to people with English as a second language? You may be able to find wealthy international people who value your proof-reading skills on their college work, or conversational skills to practice their spoken English with gentle correction as needed. It won’t pay competitively with the tech industry, but it’ll pay more than nothing.

If you’re in excellent health, the classic “super weird side gig” is stool donor programs. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i48nw33pW9kuXsFBw/being-a-donor-for-fecal-microbiota-transplants-fmt-do-good for more.

Another weird one that depends on your age and health and bodily situation, since you’ve had more than 0 kids of your own, is gestational surrogacy. Maybe not a good fit, but hey, you asked for weird.

For a less weird one, try browsing Craigslist in a more affluent area to see what personal services people offer. House cleaning? Gardening? Dog walking? Browse Craigslist in your area and see which of those niches seem under-populated relative to elsewhere. Then use what you saw in the professionalism of the ads in wealthier areas to offer the missing services. This may get 0 results, but you might discover that there are local rich techies who would quite enjoy outsourcing certain household services for a rate that seems affordable to them but game-changing to you. Basically anything you imagine servants doing for a fairytale princess, someone with money probably wants to hire a person to do for them.

You mention that your kids are in the picture. This suggests a couple options:
1. Have you contacted social services to find out what options are available to support kids whose parents are in situations like yours? You probably qualify for food stamps, and there may be options for insurance, kids’ clothing, etc through municipal or school programs. If your kids are in school, asking whatever school district employee you have the best personal rapport with is an excellent starting point.
2. What do childcare prices look like in your area? Do you have friends who are parents and need childcare? Can you rent your time to other parents to provide childcare for their kids at a rate lower than their other options? This may or may not be feasible depending on your living situation.