TropicalFruit

Karma: 209

TropicalFruit 9 Aug 2025 3:58 UTC
−2 points
−3
in reply to: sdeture’s comment on: The Problem
If we had a reasonable sized cohort of psych experts with an average IQ of 140+ maybe this would work. Unfortunately, the sorting processes that run on our society have not sorted enough intellectual capital into those fields for this to be practical, even if the crystalized knowledge they provide might be useful.

TropicalFruit 9 Aug 2025 3:54 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: The Problem
If I understand correctly, Eliezer believes that coordination is human-level hard, but not ASI-level hard. Those competing firms, made up of ASI-intelligent agents, would quite easily be able to coordinate to take resources from humans, instead of trading with humans, once it was in fact the case that doing so would be better for the ASI firms.
Mechanically, if I understand the Functional Decision Theory claim, the idea is that when you can expose your own decision process to a counter-party, and they can do the same, then both of you can simply run the decision process which produces the best outcome while using the other party’s process as an input to yours. You can verify, looking at their decision function, that if you cooperate, they will as well, and they are looking for that same mechanistic assurance in your decision function. Both parties have a fully selfish incentive to run these kinds of mutually transparent decision functions, because doing so lets you hop to stable equilibria like “defect against the humans but not each other” with ease. If I have the details wrong here, someone please correct me.
I’d also contend this is the primary crux of the disagreement. If coordination between ASI-agents and firms were proven to be as difficult for them as it is for humans, I suspect Eliezer would be far more optimistic.

TropicalFruit 11 Dec 2024 4:56 UTC
5 points
0
on: Survival without dignity
“Twitter, I mean X” in 2045 had me dying. So did the California red tape part. Awesome job.

TropicalFruit 22 Nov 2024 5:25 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Neutrality
Agreed, and we have well-meaning conservatives like Ben Shapiro taking marriage and monogamy as almost an unfalsifiable good, and then using it as a starting point for their entire political philosophy. Maybe he’s right, but I wish realistic post-birth-control norms were actually part of the overton window.

TropicalFruit 20 Nov 2024 3:32 UTC
9 points
0
on: Neutrality
I think much of the difficulty comes from the fact that past systems-of-the-world, the unexamined normalcies that functioned only in silence, were de facto authored by evolution, so they were haphazard patchworks that worked, but without object level understanding, which makes them particualrly tricky to replace.
Take ancient fermentation rituals. They very well may break down when a child asks “why do we have to bury the fish?” or “why bury it this long?” or “why do we have to let it sit for 4 months now?”
The elder doesn’t know the answer. All he knows is that, if you don’t follow these steps, people who eat the fish get sick and die.
Going from that system, to the better system involving chemistry and the germ theory of disease, is a massive step, and unfortunately, there’s a large gap between realizing your elder has no idea what’s going on, and figuring out the chemical process behind fermentation.
We’re suffering in this gap right now, unwinding many similar unexamaned normalcies that were authored by cultural evolution, which we don’t yet have comprehensive models to replace. Marriage and monogomy are a good example. After birth control, that system started quickly collapsing when the first child asked “why” and no adults could give a good answer, yet we still don’t have anything close to a unified theory of human mating, relationships, and child-rearing that’s better.
The tough part of building new neutral common sense is that, in so many cases right now, we don’t actually know the right answer, all we know is that the old cultural wisdom is at best incomplete, and at worst totally anachronistic.
Social media was essentially like 3 billion kids asking “why” all at once, about a mostly-still-patchwork system mostly authored by evolution, so it’s no real surprise it fell apart. Despite those whys being justified, replacing something evolution has created with a gears level comprehensive model is really, really hard.
Worthy task, of course, but I think fundamentally more complex than the manner by which the original systems were created.

TropicalFruit 30 Oct 2024 21:37 UTC
1 point
0
on: Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm
I’m single because my current location is amazing in every way except its density of young, childless people. I have met somewhere between 300-1000 people over the last 4 years, and of those, 8 have been women between the ages of 20-30.
Most are 40+ parents, the rest are those parents’ kids. The sad truth (I think), is that I simply have to move if I want to date.

TropicalFruit 30 Oct 2024 9:08 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: TekhneMakre’s comment on: Dating Roundup #1: This is Why You’re Single
Same. It would take incredible effort to find one person I reasonably connect with each year.
So much of this is just location. I’ve met 100s of people over the last few years. Nearly all either over 40 with kids, or those kids. I’ve connected with many, maybe 10%, on a pretty good level. That doesn’t help with dating at all.
I just really, really don’t want it to be the case that he only answer is: move to NY, SF, or Seattle, becuase I really like it here.

TropicalFruit 30 Oct 2024 5:25 UTC
5 points
3
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: UFO Betting: Put Up or Shut Up
As someone who’s gambled professionally, I believe the (Chesterton’s) fence around betting for normies exists because most bets are essentially scams, which is why I’m entirely okay knocking it down for LWers. Let me elaborate.
Probability is complicated and abstract. Not only that, human intuition is really bad at it. Nearly all “bets” throughout our modern history have not been the kind of skin-in-the-game prediction competition we’re praising on lesswrong—they’ve been predatory. One person who understands probability using emotional and logical minipulation to take someone else’s money, who doesn’t.
Society protects people with taboos. “Betting is icky” is a meme that can easily spread, and will quickly reproduce, becuase it’s adaptive in this betting environment. [Dissertation about Bayesian reasoning, calibration, and the Kelley Criterion] is NOT a meme that can easily spread, because it’s far too complex and long, and thus it will not reproduce (even though it is also adaptive).
Or at least, it can’t spread in the normie population, but it CAN on LessWrong, which is why, on LessWrong, most bets are not scams. They are, in fact, what the scammers falsly proclaimed their own bets to be—friendly competitions wherein two people who disagree about the future both put skin in the game.
The sportsbooks and casinos we have today are predators. From their celebrity endorsements, to the way they form their commercials, to their messaging around winning (and especially parlays), they effectively lie about what they’re selling while trying to create addicts. I’ve engaged with many people across the betting experience spectrum (from other winners, to big losers, to smart people, who were small losers, and realized they needed to quit), and it’s pretty clear to me that “betting = icky” is a reasonable idea, even today The fence around it is not Chesterton’s, though. It’s there to help regular people avoid a certain species of predator gunning for their capital.
We can safely knock it down on here.

TropicalFruit 13 Oct 2024 1:08 UTC
1 point
0
on: I’m consistently overwhelmed by basic obligations. Are there any paradigm shifts or other rationality-based tips that would be helpful?
You could be hypothyroid. What’s your morning body temperature?
I’ve had the exact same experience. Chores like that are the exact kind of thing your brain says “nope” to (forcefully) when you don’t have enough energy available. I’ve had this symptom for most of my life, and it’s gone away during the times I’ve been healthiest.
This—small chores seeming entirely awful—was positively correlated with all my other symptoms: insomina, depression, acne, brain fog, idopathic fatigue, and breathlessness under exertion (much more than normal). They all arrive and abate together, indicating they’re all the result of an underlying root cause, and it’s probably low energy availability, since my body temp has been 96.5 for most of my life.
That’s my current hypothesis anyway, and the QOL improvements getting up to ~97.4 have been tremendous, so I’m sticking with it.

TropicalFruit 30 Sep 2024 2:04 UTC
1 point
0
on: Incorrect hypotheses point to correct observations
Shout out to Karl Marx for correctly identifying many issues with what he called capitalism, but providing a compeltely inaccurate hypothesis as to the root cause of those issues.

TropicalFruit 25 Aug 2024 5:04 UTC
2 points
−1
on: Genuine question: If Eliezer is so rational why is he fat?
This is a perfectly reasonable question. No one wants to be fat, so it follows that no highly competent individual will be fat.
Turns out, it’s just a very difficult problem, and that degree of difficulty also varies greatly between people. It’s far more difficult for certain individuals than for others.
No one really knows why, yet. If they did, we’d all be thin and healthy again.

TropicalFruit 25 Aug 2024 4:13 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Joseph Miller’s comment on: Thoughts on seed oil
Agreed with this objection. And the “low caloric density” thing is, imo, just flat out wrong, especially if you’re an athlete.

TropicalFruit 25 Aug 2024 4:11 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: frankybegs’s comment on: Thoughts on seed oil
Saturated fats couldn’t reasonably have made us less sexy or infertile. Modern chronic disease makes you less sexy and infertile.

TropicalFruit 25 Aug 2024 4:09 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Ann’s comment on: Thoughts on seed oil
That’s a reasonable hypothesis, but what about all the other chronic health conditions skyrocketing?
Depression, anxiety, cancer, age-related macular degeneration, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, autism, ADHD, period pain, early onset puberty, infertility, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc, etc, etc?
Weight is just the one we talk about, because we can see the lack of health on your body, and it looks unsexy, so you pay a social cost for it. This conversation, though, really isn’t about body-weight, or even body fat, but rather chronic disease as a whole. Obesity is just one such disease, or maybe even symptom, rather than a disease in and of itself.

TropicalFruit 25 Aug 2024 4:03 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Thoughts on seed oil
Agreed. The idea that foods with “low caloric density” are healthier is thrown in at the end as something we know for sure. That’s… not accurate at all. Not even a little bit accurate. I actually think the totality of the evidence leans the other way, but like with seed oils, it’s extremely mixed.

TropicalFruit 19 Oct 2023 15:04 UTC
1 point
0
on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
It’s funny to see the “left/right” slant debate in the comments. I thought we were past that. Who cares what Team each statement is a soldier for? They’re all pretty good examples of the noncentral fallacy, and the further discussion about Schelling fences addressed almost all of my few objections while reading them. I’ve actually had those “taxation is theft” and “imprisonment is kidnapping” conversations with people, because they’ve never even considered the similarities.
My only remaining objection is that the word “racism” has gotten overloaded, but to me, affirmative action is central to systemic racism. The defining feature of the category is collective judgement based on race (rather than individual merit), and affirmative action fits. When I object to it emotionally, I am not objecting because I’m using the same emotions I have towards the actions of the KKK, I’m objecting because I’m disgusted when race makes its way into law.

TropicalFruit 31 Aug 2023 7:15 UTC
3 points
0
on: Rest Days vs Recovery Days
Has anyone else run into the issue where they don’t really want to rest—they just want to do different work?
When I try a rest day, I immediately just want to play a strategy video game. I have an urge to study, improve, learn, etc. That’s literally what my mind always goes to. I don’t really want to rest, I want to work, it just seems clear that, deep down, I don’t think the work I do on normal days is worthwhile.

TropicalFruit 13 Jun 2023 9:55 UTC
9 points
2
in reply to: dr_s’s comment on: The Dictatorship Problem
Alright I see one crux here.
Bush and Obama governed almost identically, despite the “heated” election between Obama and Romney/McCain. It seems like what we have is essentially a uniparty with two WWE faces for the public, and they execute mostly Kayfabe performances that all lead to the same outcome in the end.
It appeared, from the media reaction to Trump, that the uniparty was actually threatened by him. This is why I think it’s more likely in this election, rather than previous elections, that there was more of an effort to rig on one side than there was on the other.
I do find myself confused: Trump himself seems relatively incompetent, and his first term didn’t seem all that threatening to the establishment (despite the rhetoric). Even with this confusion, though, I still think the difference between Trump and “Republican candidate X” is significant.
Also, I intentionally didn’t refute your point about “as fair as any other election.” I completely understand that idea; no one here is claiming nothing nefarious ever happens, it’s just a matter of degree and impact.

TropicalFruit 13 Jun 2023 9:17 UTC
1 point
−3
in reply to: frontier64’s comment on: The Dictatorship Problem
I think there are significant differences between this post and the run of the mill leftist drivel you see somewhere like reddit. This post is well written and coherent, and, as such, invites discussion. I’ve also seen the author respond to opposing comments with real counter-arguments, rather than random ad hominems and fallacies.
Also, while politics is certainly the mind-killer, I personally enjoy the occasional political article where we get to discuss it with LessWrong’s forum features and LessWrong’s audience. There’s a chance of actually having my mind changed, and the new agree/disagree feature, as distinct from upvote/downvote, makes this kind of thing possible.
I will agree, though, that it’s not the same class as the typical post. I can feel my own mind being killed by my own political bias trying to engage with this, as I’m sure others can as well, but I still want to try. Maybe some sort of compromise with a political and non-political section would be useful.

TropicalFruit 13 Jun 2023 9:06 UTC
10 points
2
in reply to: dr_s’s comment on: The Dictatorship Problem
It was the mechanism and order of the counting which differentiated this election from others. The counts continued long into the night, and into the following days. It was the first election with substantial mail in voting, adding many new attack vectors for fraud.
At about 2am on election night, Trump was a −190 favorite, so not huge, but definitely expected to win. It was certainly unlikely that there were enough votes in the deep blue areas that had yet to be counted to swing the election, although it was no where near prohibitively unlikely.
Then there were the tens of anecdotal reports of various fraudulent or suspicious behaviors at polling and counting sites. To determine what update, if any, these provide, we’d need to know the base rate for them: would there be this many reports for any election where there was sufficient scrutiny? It’s very possible, but it’s also possible this one really was worse.
So those are the updates. Again, it’s unclear how large they are, but they are there.
I can’t think of a position I hold for which the election being rigged/sound is actually a crux, other than “I think 99% probability the election was sound is too high,” which is why I objected. As far as “roughly as fair as any other election,” it’s possible, but as the first election with widespread mail in voting, it’s certainly reasonable that it wasn’t.
I do want to stress though, I really don’t care whether or not the election was rigged. What I’m interested is where people get these really high priors that elections are sound and fair. Everyone is assuming a base rate of rigging that is so low so as to ignore everything that transpired.
It seemed like the second we started actually looking at the election mechanics, there were fraud reports and suspicious activity everywhere, and now I have no idea what to make of election integrity as a whole. There seem to be tens or hundreds of relatively trivial attack surfaces, and especially in non-federal elections, where voting and counting take place in far fewer locations, and far less people vote, it seems very likely some results are fake.