UtilityMonster

Do You Care Whether There Are “Suc­cess­ful” Ra­tion­al­ists?

Utility In Faith?

Long-term Short-term Happiness

• UtilityMonster 28 Dec 2021 21:22 UTC

  10 points

  on: Omicron: My Cur­rent Model

  I was wondering if you had updated your thoughts on how much viral loads matter since your April 2020 post on it. I live in a co-living space of over 60 people with poor ventilation. I’m wondering if that means I should worry about getting covid more than the average healthy 30 year old man.

  Also, I wanted to more enthusiastically thank you for your feedback on my fantasy sports poker card game in July. You saved me a lot of time! I decided not to continue doing it.

How Can I Max­i­mize My Hap­piness?

Dig­ging From The Pit­falls of Rationality

Have The Effec­tive Altru­ists And Ra­tion­al­ists Brain­washed Me?

Maybe I 100% Know Some­thing. But I Prob­a­bly Won’t Be Able To 100% Ex­plain It

My Morality

Pure Altruism

I Think There­fore Some­one Is Or Was?

My Take On Philosophy

• UtilityMonster 1 Jul 2022 4:06 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: Covid 6/​30/​22: Vac­cine Up­date Update

  If Omicron really is off in a complete different direction than any of the previous dominant strains, then that is importantly good news. It means that Omicron did not take Alpha, Beta or Delta and then add additional changes to make things worse. Instead, it did different things.

  If that’s true, then it means the virus has gotten stuck via hill climbing at various points, and there’s a chance we don’t have to worry as much about Variant A → Variant B → Variant C → Variant D.

  Why are the odds higher that a new variant that emerges from the current dominant strain would be more deadly than a new variant that emerged from something else? Especially since the current dominant strain is now Omicron rather than Delta.

Cat­e­go­riza­tion Hell

• UtilityMonster 14 Oct 2023 2:53 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: cata’s comment on: Pre­dic­tion mar­kets cov­ered in the NYT pod­cast “Hard Fork”

  If it’s known that insider trading is allowed, wouldn’t that make some people more reluctant to bet? Would this reduce the liquidity of the market enough to be damaging overall?

• UtilityMonster 12 Aug 2022 0:53 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Anubhav’s comment on: Value of In­for­ma­tion: Four Examples

  I think Anubhav is referring to this lecture. I agree it’s a helpful, simpler explanation of VOI too.

• UtilityMonster 29 Jun 2022 3:42 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Gerald Monroe’s comment on: Do You Care Whether There Are “Suc­cess­ful” Ra­tion­al­ists?

  I’d say it’s rational to maximize expected utility. The small probability of an enormous success could outweigh the larger probability of a failure that won’t ruin your life.

• UtilityMonster 29 Jun 2022 3:02 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Do You Care Whether There Are “Suc­cess­ful” Ra­tion­al­ists?

  I was paraphrasing. I agree it makes sense to trust people when they’re talking about things they seem to know more about.

• UtilityMonster 28 Jun 2022 23:47 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Do You Care Whether There Are “Suc­cess­ful” Ra­tion­al­ists?

  I meant to convey that I was evaluating my trust in the rationalist community, not rationality itself.

  And I concluded that the opinions of really successful people is only a minor factor affecting my trust in the rationalist community.

• UtilityMonster 2 Jun 2022 1:17 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Shar­ing Is Car­ing?

  Yeah, “Hot girls excite me!” has been interpreted in ways I didn’t intend more often than I expected. I’ve crossed it out on my about page.

  I hadn’t thought about your second point before. It’s possible you’re right. My gut says it could’ve been boredom and/​or loneliness too. I can’t remember how I was feeling on that day.

  As far as I can remember, I haven’t done anything else like searching for the Hungary delegate over the past 4.5 years. And, off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other potential unintended consequences of not masturbating. So for now, I don’t think it’s worth spending more time thinking about it.