I would like a Diary thread every week.
RobertLumley
Karma: 2,968
[META] My Negative Results
[LINK] Terrorists target AI researchers
Web of Trust lists Singularity.org as having a bad reputation
Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant.
– CEO Nwabudike Morgan in Alpha Centauri
It seems important to note, however, that doing good work on LW is superior to not doing good work at all.
Edit:
In conclusion, if you want to do important work, cross-post it if you must, but don’t do it for LW exclusively. Big fish in a small pond always looks kinda sad.
Most places that would be cross-posted with LW would be even smaller ponds. So I’m not sure this supports your point here.
Yvain had what I thought was a very thorough discussion in the original thread. If you’re unhappy with that, I don’t think there’s really anything to say but I’m sorry. Because we’re not going to get any better data—realistically, any survey you conduct isn’t going to get the response rate that the general census did, especially when your tests are going to take a long time. Furthermore, I have no faith that your tests are any better than the one that was given in the census. Lastly, the correlations with SAT and ACT have settled the question to what I feel is a reasonable degree of accuracy, and sitting around talking about how smart we are doesn’t send signals to onlookers that I think are in the best interests of LessWrong.
I think that’s an inescapable result of the idiot world J. K. Rowling made. There is just so much in cannon that makes so little sense.
The modifier “rationalist” is pretty unnecessary—I’d just ask for “Opinions on Nietzsche”. There seems no good reason for putting it in and several good ones for leaving it out. As a semantic point, it sends off dark arts alarms when you ask for the “rationalist opinion” on Nietzsche. While I certainly think that, in this case, it’s possible to rationally evaluate Nietzsche, asking for consensus of “rationalist opinions” is going to get very cultish—it implies that you’re not a rationalist if you disagree. And there shouldn’t necessarily be a “rationalist opinion” on everything. There are some things that aren’t issues of rationality—like asking for the “rationalist opinion” on what the best flavor of ice cream is.
It is time for a new census.
I had a dream this post was promoted and got 172 karma, spawning another post calling for DDOS attacks and other cyber-terrorism on Psychology Today by LW. Eliezer promoted that article too, and LW went to war with them. Eliezer got arrested and LW was shut down. It was weird.
I think that one of the strongest pieces of evidence against this being a scam is that she picked cryonics, which seems low payout even in the demographics of reddit. Not saying that it’s not a scam, but if I were designing a scam, I’d pick something else.
I think a monthly thread devoted to book or other types of recommendations (movies, blogs, websites) would be a good idea.
What’s going on here?
I kind of recently came to the realization that I think Eliezer meant Harry and Hermione’s relationship to personify what he says often, which is “Utilitarianism is what is correct, virtue ethics is what works for human beings”.
I think this topic has pretty effectively been beaten to death already. What is the endgame of this discussion?
I voted other because of my confusion on this point. I think we need to taboo “exists”.
Regarding the theft:
I was telling my friend (who recently got into HPMOR and lurks a little on LW) about Holden’s critique, specifically with regard to the theft. He’s an accounting and finance major, and was a bit taken aback. His immediate response was to ask if SI had an outside accountant audit their statements. We searched around and it doesn’t look like to us that you do. He immediately said that he would never donate to an organization that did not have an accountant audit their statements, and knowing how much I follow LW, immediately advised me to not to either. This seems like a really good step for addressing the transparency issues here, and now that he mentions it, seems a very prudent and obvious thing for any nonprofit to do.
Edit 2: Luke asked me to clarify, I am not necessarily endorsing not donating to SI because of this, unless this problem is a concern of yours. My intent was only to suggest ways SI can improve and may be turning away potential donors.
Edit: He just mentioned to me that the big four accounting firms often do pro bono work because it can be a tax write-off. This may be worth investigating.
I’d prefer he write a summary of it—I am quite glad that I was able to read the whole thing.
In other news, over 91,000 people have died since midnight EST.