Said Achmiz

Karma: 12,329

Said Achmiz 4 Aug 2022 20:57 UTC
6 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: High Reliability Orgs, and AI Companies
More on the normalization of deviance: Challenger Launch Decision by Diane Vaughan (book outline).

Said Achmiz 3 Aug 2022 4:25 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Focusing
“Alief and Belief” (Gendler 2007) [PDF]

A paradigmatic alief is a mental state with associatively-linked content that is representational, affective and behavioral, and that is activated – consciously or nonconsciously – by features of the subject’s internal or ambient environment. Aliefs may be either occurrent or dispositional.

… alief – so-called because alief is associative, action-generating, affect-laden, arational, automatic, agnostic with respect to its content, shared with animals, and developmentally and conceptually antecedent to other cognitive attitudes[18].

Said Achmiz 31 Jul 2022 18:53 UTC
5 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: squidious’s comment on: Anatomy of a Dating Document
the threads resulting from such documents

What do you mean by this? Threads where?

In any case, I can’t help but notice that the things you say you base your commentary on fall into two classes:
1. The content of existing “dating documents”; and…
2. Essentially, opinion based on personal experience and interaction, having nothing to do with “dating documents”.
Notably absent is any information whatsoever about, or from, actual consumers of actual dating documents, or data about the efficacy of dating documents, or really anything at all about dating documents and their use, other than the contents of the actual documents themselves.

Given that these documents are written with the intent to be straightforward about what one does and doesn’t want in seeking a long term partner, I’m assuming people would rather know if the person has attributes they highly value in a partner sooner rather than later.

I… don’t quite get this logic. The conclusion seems to not follow from the premise… at all? Could you trace out the chain of reasoning here?

Also, like I mentioned at the start, the post is written as an instructional on how to write one, despite being more of a meta-analysis on dating docs.

Yes, but what makes your recommended way the right way to write a dating document, or even a good way of writing a dating document, or even a not guaranteed to completely torpedo your chances of ever getting a date again way of writing a dating document? Have you successfully gotten dates after having written a dating document in the way that you recommend? Have other people followed your recommendations and then gotten dates?

Re evidence, despite rising popularity, there isn’t actually enough on these dating documents to draw conclusions on what is and isn’t successful. I do think using documents like these are a great idea

But why do you think it’s a great idea? Just because you would prefer it if such things worked?

To be clear, you have no concrete reasons at all to believe that “dating documents” have any effectiveness whatsoever in getting their authors dates, getting them into relationships, etc.? Not even anecdotes?

Said Achmiz 31 Jul 2022 4:04 UTC
14 points
5 ∶ 1
in reply to: Razied’s comment on: Anatomy of a Dating Document

Guys, the way to get girlfriends is through real life interaction, get an attractive body by working out, then confidently approach women you find attractive and ask them out, get used to being rejected, and try again.

What is your estimate of the percentage of non-single Less Wrong members that met their current partner by means of the approach you recommend? (Counting both those who used the given method themselves, or whose partner used it on them.)

Said Achmiz 31 Jul 2022 4:02 UTC
12 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Anatomy of a Dating Document
When you say that dating documents “should” include this or that, do you mean by this merely that the dating documents you read did in fact include those things? Or do you have some evidence that including the things you list contributes to these documents’ success?

Likewise, you write:

In an effort to better understand what it is people tend to expect of these documents (and throw in some of my own thoughts), I decided to read through every dating document I could find (mostly through reciprocity and Bountied Rationality) and compare/contrast to find common themes, as well as good ideas of what to include that should be more common.

On what do you base claims about what “people tend to expect” of such documents? Would we not have to survey readers of such documents, to get that information?

Said Achmiz 30 Jul 2022 22:13 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Focusing
So… “alief”?

Said Achmiz 25 Jul 2022 14:57 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Valentine’s comment on: A Bias Against Altruism
Ironically, I agree with your top-level comment, but this response of yours is rather silly… gjm, it seems to me, has a substantive disagreement with you. What’s more, there is both a difference of substance, and a sloppy and imprecise use of language. Both of those are well worth remarking on, and resolving/rectifying (respectively)! By no means is it absurd to comment on such things.

Said Achmiz 25 Jul 2022 14:39 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Duncan_Sabien’s comment on: Double Crux
Consider this hypothetical scenario:

In the course of you teaching me the double crux technique, we attempt to find a crux for a belief of mine. Suppose that there is no such crux. However, in our mutual eagerness to apply this cool new technique—which you (a person with high social status in my social circle, and possessed of some degree of personal charisma) are presenting to me, as a useful and proven thing, which lots of other high-status people use—we confabulate some “crux” for my belief. This “faux crux” is not really a crux, but with some self-deception I can come to believe it to be such. You declare success for the technique; I am impressed and satisfied. You file this under “we found a crux this time, as in 60–90% of other times”.

Do you think that this scenario is plausible? Implausible?

Said Achmiz 24 Jul 2022 20:49 UTC
8 points
2 ∶ 0
on: A Bias Against Altruism
Good post! You definitely point out a real phenomenon. (And I appreciate the tastefully crafted metaphors, like “psycho-Kremlinology”, or “a sustainable hate train which runs on renewable energy”.)

However, your explanatory theories seem to take as a premise that the “bias against altruism” that you describe is a bad thing. But might it not actually be… a good thing? I think that (especially in our current social environment) it rather is a good thing.

The fundamental problem with altruism is unbounded scope combined with lack of feedback.

If you do something for selfish reasons, there are natural limits to the scope of your actions; most of the world does not affect you or concern you, and while there do exist the occasional megalomaniacs who won’t be satisfied until they’ve carved their name into the surface of the Moon, most people—even most ambitious, driven, egotistical people—have no such grand ambitions. They want personal benefit, and simply don’t care about the rest.

And, likewise, if you act out of selfishness, and your actions harm the person they’re intended to help—you—generally speaking, it is not hard to notice this, and alter your behavior. The harm is naturally limited—in the extremity, by your own demise! And if you harm others in the process of benefiting yourself—those others will seek to punish you, and prevent you from repeating the harm. (There are exceptions, of course, but, by and large, we do a fair job at preventing one another from doing harm to our fellow humans—especially when compared with the alternative.)

How different are alruistic actions!

There is no limit to the scope of what you could do to help others, should you find within yourself that motivation. There are always more people to be helped! The world is teeming with potential beneficiaries of your altruism! And if you run out of existing humans to help, then there are always future humans (and not only the already-expected future humans, but all the potential ones whom your actions might bring into existence!).

And if you harm those whom you intend to help? If they are far away from you, or unfamiliar, or the situation is sufficiently complicated (and when isn’t it, in life, in our modern world?)… then you may well never even know it.

On every scale, from the interpersonal to the cosmic, it is extremely easy to think that you are helping, but instead inflict harm. And that’s if you take pains to be honest, and careful! It’s even easier to tell yourself that you’re helping, but be doing harm; just as easy to tell others that you’re helping, but be doing harm.

Our society already has many mechanisms for preventing you from wreaking havoc by selfish actions. If you act selfishly, then we can celebrate you for it, trusting that if your actions do harm, then you will suffer the appropriate consequences for it. But altruistic actions do not have nearly so many time-tested safety measures to hold them back from bringing disaster of unbounded scope. They must be held to a higher standard.

Yes, the altruist must be scrutinized, much more heavily than the egoist. Does this have a chilling effect on altruistic acts? Good! Does it make people think twice about undertaking projects aimed at helping others? Well that it should do so! Do we hold back status from those who merely attempt to help (as quite distinct from those who actually have helped)? We do, and rightly so.

You say:

I just want people to be aware of this phenomenon so that real positive behavior gets incentivized again.

Yet also:

Here’s what I notice: when I declare that I’m doing something selfishly and avowedly, I get praised. When I do something out of altruism, or do something that is coded as altruistic, my motives and true values get heavily scrutinized.

My advice: ignore the scrutiny, and forge ahead, secure in the knowledge that when your altruistic actions have succeeded, you will have your (at that point, well-deserved) status.

You are not sure that your actions will succeed, and so the status you will gain does not, in expectation, suffice to motivate you? You therefore abstain from your altruistic efforts?

Working as intended.

Said Achmiz 23 Jul 2022 14:58 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Noosphere89’s comment on: Which singularity schools plus the no singularity school was right?
Like this:
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Which results in:

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Said Achmiz 19 Jul 2022 19:18 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lanrian’s comment on: Without specific countermeasures, the easiest path to transformative AI likely leads to AI takeover
Oh, I see.

Said Achmiz 19 Jul 2022 19:10 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lanrian’s comment on: Without specific countermeasures, the easiest path to transformative AI likely leads to AI takeover
Since comments start with a small upvote from the commenter themselves—which for Ajeya has a strength of 1—a single strong downvote, to take her comment down to −16, would actually have to have a strength of 17.

That is, quite literally, off the scale.

Said Achmiz 17 Jul 2022 22:33 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: niknoble’s comment on: Culture wars in riddle format
This seems like a stretch, a just-so story. Do you have any concrete reason to believe this to be the case?

Said Achmiz 17 Jul 2022 21:41 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Malmesbury’s comment on: Culture wars in riddle format
Er, how exactly does this cause the man and the woman to get different salaries, unless they work at different companies, in different locations? And if so, then, contrary to the stipulations, they’re not doing “the exact same job”!

Said Achmiz 17 Jul 2022 17:50 UTC
11 points
5 ∶ 1
on: Culture wars in riddle format

This is unfortunate, because the prospect of stuff like social justice is actually pretty great. Everybody agrees that it’s better when society is fair.

Hmm, I don’t think this is true…

But social justice is a calibration problem, and a hard one: there’s only one way to be fair, and infinitely many ways to be unfair.

Ok, now this is definitely not true.

Said Achmiz 15 Jul 2022 14:32 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: User research as a barometer of software design

In the case of software, UX-style user testing is going to lead straight into a well known, known bad attractor: brittle magic. There is a common pattern in libraries and frameworks where they do a great job making a few common development tasks look really easy, shielding the developer from a lot of details that they probably should not have been shielded from.

Indeed. This is, for example, possibly the biggest problem with Ruby on Rails.

Said Achmiz 14 Jul 2022 23:48 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Potato diet: A post mortem and an answer to SMTM’s article
What’s a “chisp”?

Said Achmiz 14 Jul 2022 18:06 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Criticism of EA Criticism Contest

Effective Altruism, in this model, very much wants criticism of its tactics, and mostly wants them also of its strategy, but only within the framework.

Relevant: Four Scopes of Advice.

Said Achmiz 14 Jul 2022 10:39 UTC
5 points
on: Steelmanning Marxism/Communism
The easiest steelman I can think of (as distinct from “the most convincing steelman”, “the strongest steelman”, etc.) is just to observe that the Soviet Union—the paradigmatic communist country—was, while certainly worse than capitalist countries in some ways, also better than capitalist countries in some other ways.

Note: this is not a claim that the USSR was better on net, or that it was good (whatever such an absolute claim might mean), or that living in it was preferable to living in a capitalist country, etc., etc. Only that it wasn’t strictly worse; that on some dimensions, it was superior.

This suggests (though does not prove!) that there’s something of value in communism, that it’s not literally worse in all respects, strictly dominated by capitalism, and discardable without any loss whatsoever.

This is a very weak claim! And it’s also not clear what to do with this claim, even if we believe it to be true. But it does present a clear obstacle to simply dismissing communism and calling it a day.

Said Achmiz 12 Jul 2022 10:34 UTC
0 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Rainmaking
What did you do after having this realization?

Said Achmiz

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