Economist.
Sherrinford
Karma: 1,164
“It is to train up and hire health care workers who can speak Low German.”
Could you please write a bit about how many potential health care workers who speak Low German are there in Canada? How easy is it to do that?
Due to Raemon’s call for more reviews, “especially critical ones”, I decided to read and review this one, so yes, I am interested in the topic. The post lists many interesting aspects of the discussed regulation.
Nonetheless, I think the post would not be a good choice for the 2024 Review.
Firstly, the post is a post about American politics and American policy, and I hope the perspective or target audience of LW is not such that is assumed that readers of LW posts naturally understand “we”, “our failures”, “we have required” etc as “American”.
Secondly, while it is possible that the policy change would yield the benefits promised here, there are strong claims in the beginning of the article (“Repeal would restore America’s oceangoing trade between its ports and rebuild its merchant marine, noticeably impacting the price level and GDP growth.”) and you need to read much further to get to a point where sources are presented and discussed.
Thirdly, at least in the first few sections, the causality between the things in “What is the Jones Act?” and “What is the Effect of the Jones Act?” is not explained clearly. “The Jones Act has failed to protect America’s shipbuilding and merchant marine.” Okay, so how did it destroy America’s shipbuilding and merchant marine? It seems that you already need a clear model of the effects of protectionism in your head to understand what the author is saying.
I read only the first sections including “What Else Happens When We Ship More Goods Between Ports?” I will probably continue reading the post later, but for the 2024 Review review, I will stop here.
Thanks, good to know. So I assume there is an incentive difference between monetary incentives that can be distributed in such a way, and the incentive of being able to say that you won a tournament (maybe also as a job qualification).
I’m a bit confused about forecasting tournaments and would appreciate any comments:
Suppose you take part in such a tournament.
You could predict as accurately as you can and get a good score. But let’s say there are some other equally good forecasters in the tournament and it becomes a random draw who wins. On expectation, all forecasters of the same quality have the same forecasts. If there are many good forecasters, your chances of winning become very low.
However, you could include some outlier predictions in your predictions. Then you lower your expected accuracy, but you also incrase your chances of winning the tournament if these outlier probabilities come true.
Therefore, I would expect a lot of noise in the relation between forecasting quality and being a tournament winner.
Yes, a one-time investment is different from permanent effort. But they both can be very costly. In my original post, I meant all things that raise the cost / time investment / whatever of being a parent (and did not use the term “parenting”). I also think it is totally great if people invest a lot of time, effort, money, and other things into having great children. But I think there is a tension with saying that society should lower the demands on parents, so that people have more kids. Parts of the same community seem to have really high standards, and other parts say that we need to lower the standards, and I do not yet see how the tension is resolved.
How much time do you need for this per week, including preparation etc?
I would include posts on health-optimizing genetic manipulation and similar things in this category. All of this is okay if just chosen but in conflict with “having kids is too costly”. Similar for homeschooling.
Maybe, but that does not seem to be what @jackjack meant, though I am not sure whether I understand what he means, and why it’s different now.
my fellow instructor Jack Carroll said they liked the participants for the first time instead of feeling at war
I find it sad to read and did not expect that Jack always felt at war and did not like previous participants.
This post emphasizes that truthseeking is the foundation for other principles, and that you cannot costlessly deprioritise truthseeking. The post gives practical advice how to consciously apply the principle of truthseeking. It also encourages positive behavior like pushing back against truth-inhibiting behavior. In some parts, the article seems to me not to be fully focused and Elizabeth herself writes “In practice it’s mostly a bunch of pointers to facets of truthseeking and ideas for how to do better”, but overall I think these pointers are very valuable.
Vibes among rationalists and some adjacent communities/blogs:
“Schools are bad, you need to homeschool your kids”, “improve your kid’s life outcomes by doing a lot of research and going through complicated procedures!”
Also:
“It is way too hard to be a parent nowadays, therefore nobody wants kids anymore.”
This post raises a relevant objection to a common pro-AI position, using an easily understandable analogy. Katja’s argument shows that the best-case pro-AI position is not as self-evident as it may seem.
I find this post emotionally moving, and at the same time it offers an important insight into an overlooked part of reality.
On occasion of the 2024 review, I reread my post and I still endorse it.
The post is conceptual. Its aim is to explain that the theory of comparative advantage only predicts mutual benefits of trade if certain conditions are fulfilled. They are likely not fulfilled in the case of interacting with an ASI. In particular, you do not have to trade with people (i.e., compensate them) if you can just force them to produce what you want, or if you can just take away their resources. Therefore, it is not justified to believe that the existence of an ASI is fine because people could trade with it.
A year later, I still find the idea of humans trading with an ASI rather strange.
The only protagonist who spontaneously comes to mind is Sarah Connor, but maybe that is not the kind of story you meant?
but different from what you normally do
The previous exercise already contains the words “radically different”. Would you elaborate on what you mean by the question 3?
Very interesting and actionable guide.
I have two questions (maybe I’ll have more later):
Is it possible that the government shuts down bitwarden, or the country where someone who uses bitwarden blocks it, and then the user loses accessto all passwords?
Why proton authenticator and not bitwarden authenticator?
I really welcome the announcement that CFAR is restarting. When I attended a workshop, I liked the participants, the lecturers, the atmosphere, and the impact of committing time to work on problems that participants had previously procrastinated. That said, a bunch of thoughts and questions:
I am not sure whether there is really some specific “rationality magic” about these workshops. The CFAR technique collection contains cool techniques, but it does not really feel that different from what you might do in time-management/micro-habits/GTD/whatever workshop combined with some things that seem like group coaching, psychological process consulting or things that at least feel a little woo.
There might be a specific group dynamic going on in these workshops that has to do with the commitment atmosphere, self-expectations, selection effects, the payment of $ 5000. This may get some people to become productive or whatever, but I assume it can also be unhealthy to others (note that not all unhealthy developments are on the level of psychosis or mania or whatever).
I attended a free workshop in Prague in 2022. So maybe some of the effects were different there. Nonetheless, I would like to know what insights you generated with those workshops (assuming that that was evaluated systematically). I think they were held for generating data.
It seems positive that “circling” is not mentioned as a “CFAR classic”.
I think even that signature tagline version does not work so well, as people who do not know it would possibly not understand that you are referring to a specific organization. It would at least need to be
“Anna from
CFAR—a center for …”
The idea to have a “agree/disagree” voting button seems better than just vote/downvote. However, it can be just a button for unproductively signaling “this post’s overall direction is different from my prior opinions”, instead of writing down your reasons for disagreeing, and thus instead of enabling productive discourse and learning. This seems much worse for disagreement than agreement, but unnecessary “ingroup signaling to yourself” may happen in both directions.