philh

• philh 23 Apr 2025 19:51 UTC

  11 points

  0

  on: Ac­countabil­ity Sinks

  Blameless postmortems are a tenet of SRE culture. For a postmortem to be truly blameless, it must focus on identifying the contributing causes of the incident without indicting any individual or team for bad or inappropriate behavior. A blamelessly written postmortem assumes that everyone involved in an incident had good intentions and did the right thing with the information they had. If a culture of finger pointing and shaming individuals or teams for doing the “wrong” thing prevails, people will not bring issues to light for fear of punishment.

  This seems true and important to me. But also… some people really are incompetent or malicious. A blameless postmortem of the XZ backdoor would miss important parts of that story. A blameless postmortem of Royal Air Maroc Express flight 439 would presumably have left that captain still flying? At any rate, as long as “the captain gets fired” is a possible outcome of the postmortem, the captain has incentive to obfuscate. (Which he tried unsuccessfully. Apparently we don’t know if he was actually fired though.)

  I guess there are cases where “ability to get rid of people” is more important than “risk that people successfully obfuscate important details”, and some cases where it’s not. I don’t know how to navigate these.

Lon­don Ra­tion­al­ish meetup—Arkhipov

• philh 19 Mar 2025 21:42 UTC

  4 points

  2

  in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Boots the­ory and Sy­bil Ramkin

  Huh, thanks for the correction.

  Smaller correction—I think you’ve had her buy an extra pair of boots. At $260 she’s already bought one pair, so we apply $x\mapsto 1.07x-20$ thirteen times, then multiply by 1.07 again for the final year’s interest, and she ends with no boots, so that’s $239.41. (Or start with $280 and apply $x\mapsto 1.07(x-20)$ fourteen times.)

  Not sure why my own result is wrong. Part of it is that I forgot to subtract the money actually spent on boots—I did “the $20 she spends after the first year gets one year’s interest, so that’s $21.40; the $20 she spends after the second year gets two years’ interest, so that’s $22.90...” but actually it’s only $1.40, $2.90 and so on. But even accounting for that, I get $222.58. So let’s see...

  Suppose she only needs to buy two pairs of boots. According to your method she goes $40 → $21.40 → $1.50. (Or, $40 and no boots → $20 and boots → $21.40 and no boots a year later → $1.40 and boots → $1.50 and no boots a year later.) According to mine, of her original $40, $20 of it earns no interest and $20 of it earns a years’ interest. But that assumes the interest she earns in that year is withdrawn, she gets to keep it but it doesn’t keep earning interest. So that’s why I got the wrong answer.

• philh 19 Mar 2025 18:33 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Boots the­ory and Sy­bil Ramkin

  Well, I should like to see some examples. So far, our tally of actual examples of this alleged phenomenon seems to still be zero. All the examples proffered thus far… aren’t.

  From https://​​siderea.dreamwidth.org/​​1477942.html:

  “These boots,” I said gesturing at what I was trying on, on my feet, “cost $200. Given that I typically buy a pair for $20 every year, that means these boots have to last 10 years to recoup the initial investment.”
  
  That was on January 17, 2005. They died earlier this month – that is in the first week of December, 2018. So: almost but not quite 14 years.
  
  So, purely as an investment, they returned a bit under $80, which is a 40% ROI.

  But… if we’re talking about this just as an investment, we need to compare to other investments. Let’s say the S&P 500 returns 7% consistently (I think that’s pessimistic—note, not adjusting for inflation because the $20 boots haven’t changed with inflation either).

  • In one world, Siderea buys $200 boots and invests $80. After 14 years, she has $\$80\cdot {1.07}^{14}=\$206$ and no boots.

  • In another world, Siderea buys $20 boots and invests $260. A year later she withdraws $20 and buys boots, and so on. After 14 years, she has… finite geometric series, $20(r^1+...+r^{14})$, I think she has $483 and no boots.

  So if we think of this as a purely financial investment, I guess it was a bad one?

  (This is also often missing when people talk about buying versus renting. Yes, the mortgage is often lower than rent, and house value is likely higher at the end, but you gave up investing your deposit. How do those effects compare? Probably depends on time and place.)

• philh 19 Mar 2025 9:03 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: davekasten’s comment on: Boots the­ory and Sy­bil Ramkin

  Sam Vimes is a copper, and sees poverty lead to precarity, and precarity lead to Bad Things Happening In Bad Neighborhoods.

  Hm, does he? It’s certainly a reasonable guess, but offhand I don’t remember it coming up in the books, and the Thieves and Assassins guilds will change the dynamic compared to what we’d expect on Earth.

Boots the­ory and Sy­bil Ramkin

• philh 13 Mar 2025 18:13 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: HPMOR An­niver­sary Par­ties: Co­or­di­na­tion, Re­sources, and Discussion

  We got spam and had to reset the link. To get the new link, append the suffix “BbILI8HzX3zgJF8i” to the prefix “https://​​chat.whatsapp.com/​​IUIZc3″. Hopefully spambots can’t yet do that automatically.

• philh 6 Mar 2025 1:06 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: philh’s comment on: Microplas­tics: Much Less Than You Wanted To Know

  This reddit thread has the claim:

  Something related that you CAN do, and that is more likely to make a difference, is not ever to heat up plastic in a microwave, wash it in a dishwasher, or cook with plastic utensils. Basically, the softening agents in a lot of plastics aren’t chemically bonded to the rest of the polymers, and heating the plastic makes those chemicals ready to leach into whatever food contacts them. That’s a huge class of chemicals, none of which are LD-50-level dangerous, but many of which have been associated with hormonal changes, microbiome issues, and a whole host of other stuff that fits in the general category of “Why do organisms work differently than they did 100 years ago?”

  Notably this is about plasticizers, a different thing than microplastics.

• philh 25 Feb 2025 11:15 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: Microplas­tics: Much Less Than You Wanted To Know

  One question I have that might be relatively tractable: if I’m using plastic containers for leftovers, how much difference is there between

  1. Store in the container, put on plate to microwave and eat.

  2. Store and microwave in the container, put on plate to eat.

  3. Who needs a plate anyway? Just eat from the container.

  The bit about plastic chopping boards kind of hints that (3) might give a lot more microplastics than (2)? But you’re probably less violent to the container than the chopping board.

• philh 18 Feb 2025 21:08 UTC

  5 points

  0

  on: Microplas­tics: Much Less Than You Wanted To Know

  We suggest these low-hanging actions one can take to reduce their quantity exposure:

  a. Stop using plastic bottles and plastic food storage containers,

  b. Stop using plastic cutting boards,

  For people who didn’t read the rough notes dumps: it seems like (b) is a way bigger effect size than (a).

• philh 30 Jan 2025 13:44 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: On Deep­Seek’s r1

  There are 3 people. Each person announces an integer. The smallest unique integer wins: e.g. if your opponents both pick 1, you win with any number. If all 3 pick the same number, the winner is picked randomly

  Question: what’s the Nash equilibrium?

  (I assume this is meant to be natural numbers or positive ints? Otherwise I don’t think there is a nash equilibrium.)

• philh 17 Jan 2025 20:57 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: (The) Light­cone is noth­ing with­out its peo­ple: LW + Lighthaven’s big fundraiser

  So it is. Other than that, the remaining details I needed were:

  2740 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley
  94705
  habryka@lightconeinfrastructure.com
  Oliver Habryka

• philh 17 Jan 2025 20:34 UTC

  12 points

  0

  in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: (The) Light­cone is noth­ing with­out its peo­ple: LW + Lighthaven’s big fundraiser

  Assuming all went well, I just donated £5,000 through the Anglo-American charity, which should become about (£5000 * 1.25 * 96% = £6000 ≈ $7300) to lightcone.

  I had further questions to their how to give page, so:

  • You can return the forms by email, no need to post them. (I filled them in with Firefox’s native “draw/​write on this pdf” feature, handwriting my signature with a mouse.)

  • If donating by bank transfer, you send the money to “anglo-american charity limited”, not “anglo-american charitable foundation”.

  • For lightcone’s contact details I asked on LW intercom. Feels rude to put someone’s phone number here, so if you’re doing the same as me, I’m not gonna save you that step.

  E: and all does seem to have gone well. I got an email on Jan 25 confirming they’d passed $7260 on to Lightcone.

• philh 11 Jan 2025 0:41 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: philh’s comment on: (The) Light­cone is noth­ing with­out its peo­ple: LW + Lighthaven’s big fundraiser

  not sure if that would be legit for gift aid purposes

  Based on https://​​www.gov.uk/​​government/​​publications/​​charities-detailed-guidance-notes/​​chapter-3-gift-aid#chapter-344-digital-giving-and-social-giving-accounts, doing this the naive way (one person collects money and gives it to the charity, everyone shares the tax rebate) is explicitly forbidden. Which makes sense, or everyone with a high income friend would have access to the 40% savings.

  Not clear to me whether it would be allowed if the charity is in on it and everyone fills in their own gift aid declaration. But that’s extra steps for all parties.

• philh 8 Jan 2025 18:05 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: (The) Light­cone is noth­ing with­out its peo­ple: LW + Lighthaven’s big fundraiser

  Thanks—I think GWWC would be fewer steps for me, but if that’s not looking likely then one of these is plausible.

  (I wonder if it would be worth a few of us pooling money to get both “lower fees” and “less need to deal with orgs who don’t just let you click some buttons to say where you want the money to go”, but not sure if that would be legit for gift aid purposes.)

Lon­don ra­tio­nal­ish meetup

• philh 4 Jan 2025 0:54 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: The Field of AI Align­ment: A Post­mortem, and What To Do About It

  That’s not really “concrete” feedback though, right? In the outcome game/​consensus game dynamic Stephen’s talking about, it seems hard to play an outcome game with that kind of feedback.

• philh 29 Dec 2024 21:33 UTC

  7 points

  2

  in reply to: Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel’s comment on: Alexan­der Gietelink Ol­den­z­iel’s Shortform

  Beyond being an unfair and uninformed dismissal

  Why do you think it’s uninformed? John specifically says that he’s taking “this work is trash” as background and not trying to convince anyone who disagrees. It seems like because he doesn’t try, you assume he doesn’t have an argument?

  it risks unnecessarily antagonizing people

  I kinda think it was necessary. (In that, the thing ~needed to be written and “you should have written this with a lot less antagonism” is not a reasonable ask.)

• philh 29 Dec 2024 19:55 UTC

  4 points

  0

  on: Some ar­gu­ments against a land value tax

  For instance, if a developer owns multiple adjacent parcels and decides to build housing or infrastructure on one of them, the value of the undeveloped parcels will rise due to their proximity to the improvements.

  An implementation detail of LVT would be, how do we decide what counts as one parcel and what counts as two? Depending how we answer that, I could easily imagine LVT causing bad incentives. (Which isn’t a knock-down, it doesn’t feel worse than the kind of practical difficulty any tax has.)

  I wonder if it might not be better to just get rid of the idea of “improvements to your own land don’t get taxed”. Then we figure out the value of land in fairly broad strokes (“in this borough, it’s worth £x per square meter”) and just tax based on how much land you own in each price region.

  Disadvantage is that improvements to your own land get taxed. I guess most of the time the tax is fairly low, because that tax is distributed over all the land in the price region.

  Advantage is less implementation complexity. No need to figure out “how much is this specific land worth without improvements”. (Suppose there’s a popular theme park here. Nearby land probably gets more valuable. When you want to assess the value of the land under the theme park, as if there was no theme park there, how do you do that?)

  Asking the question for “land in this general area” seems, still hard, but easier. (Lars Doucet was on the Complex Systems podcast recently, and said one way is to look at sales that were shortly followed by demolition. “This person paid $1m for the land and then an extra $500k to demolish what was there, so the land itself was probably worth $1.5m.”)

• philh 29 Dec 2024 19:30 UTC

  5 points

  2

  in reply to: romeostevensit’s comment on: Some ar­gu­ments against a land value tax

  I’ve read/​listened about LVT many times and I don’t remember “auctions are a key aspect of this” ever coming up. E.g. the four posts by Lars Doucet on ACX only mention the word twice, in one paragraph that doesn’t make that claim:

  Land Price or Land Value is how much it costs to buy a piece of land. Full Market Value, however, is specifically the land price under “fair” and open market conditions. What are “unfair” conditions? I mean, your dad could sell you a valuable property for $1 as an obvious gift, but if he put it on the open market, it would go for much more than that. Likewise, it’s not uncommon for a property that’s been foreclosed on and hastily auctioned off to be re-listed publicly by the auction winner for a higher price.