Viliam_Bur

Karma: 22,193

Viliam_Bur 13 Mar 2017 12:30 UTC
5 points
on: Am I Really an X?
For curious readers: Most of the vast “comment graveyard” are dozens of copies of the same two or three comments.

Viliam_Bur 21 Feb 2017 10:01 UTC
15 points
on: Open Thread, Feb. 20 - Feb 26, 2017
FYI, I just banned an account “kings11me” who didn’t participate in the forum, but was sending the following private message to multiple users:

God bless you and thanks, how are you? Happy to meet you. I got your contact via this site, I seriously have interest to invest on a profitable business in your country, the money I want to invest was acquired from my church member, and then I was his financial adviser. The amount to invest is ($14.5 million US dollars) presently, but I’m the present Catholic Church leader in my parish, if you will like to assist me as a partner, you must have the fear of God? kindly indicate your interest, and all other details relating to the funds will be revealed to you as we progress on. Confidentiality contact my direct e-mail address (REDACTED@yahoo com or REDACTED@gmail com) also indicate your direct telephone number, when replying this mail, God will guide us and with good health Amen, God bless you and your family, Rev, Chris Madurai Okon.

(In other words, I am an evil villain who has just deprived MIRI of a possible $14.500.000 donation from a secret rationality benefactor masquerading as an ordinary spammer. Business as usual. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!)

Viliam_Bur 21 Dec 2016 18:36 UTC
9 points
on: A quick note on weirdness points and Solstices [And also random other Solstice discussion]

And my impression is that people are only really weirded out by these songs on behalf of other people who are only weirded out by them on behalf of other people.

Coincidentally, I was thinking today about whether people upvote some LW articles because they felt really useful for them, or just because they believe they could be useful for other people. Another instance of a similar problem.

(Specifically, I was considering writing an article explaining some more or less high-school math. Because… well, people have random blind spots, so maybe this could actually help someone. It’s an experiment, and I would get feedback in form of upvotes, right? And then I was like: oh crap, people could actually upvote this article even if it wouldn’t be useful for anyone, just because everyone would be like: well, this is all obvious for me, but someone else will probably benefit from reading this.)

Is there a general solution? I guess in our culture, you could just tell people “please now express how you feel about the issue, ignoring your prediction of how other people will feel about it”. Or perhaps create a poll containing options in the form of “I feel X, but I predict other people will feel Y”.

Viliam_Bur 9 Aug 2016 19:27 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Prometheus’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
Hi, welcome back!

Viliam_Bur 14 Jun 2016 22:14 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Daniel_Burfoot’s comment on: Open thread, Jun. 13 - Jun. 19, 2016
If we look at this issue from an angle “ethics is memetic system evolved by cultural group selection”, then I guess it makes sense that (1) systems promoting helping your cultural group would have an advantage over systems promoting helping everyone to the same degree, and (2) systems that allow to achieve the “ethical enough” state reasonably fast would have an advantage over systems where no one can realistically become “ethical enough”.

The problem appears when someone tries to do an extrapolation of that concept.

I am not sure how to answer the question “should we extrapolate our ethical concepts?”. Because “should” itself is within the domain of ethics, and the question is precisely about whether that “should” should also be extrapolated.

Viliam_Bur 29 May 2016 19:46 UTC
2 points
in reply to: root’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
None that I’m aware of.

I suspect that no one actually fell for the scam… or if they did, they are too ashamed to admit it… so there is nothing specific to investigate.

Viliam_Bur 20 Apr 2016 21:14 UTC
2 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Open thread, Apr. 18 - Apr. 24, 2016
Banned.

Viliam_Bur 8 Apr 2016 19:43 UTC
1 point
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Monthly Bragging Thread April 2016
Congratulation! By the way, were those subjects mathematicians/programmers? Because I was told (by someone who uses hypnosis professionally) that those are the most difficult ones to hypnotize.

Viliam_Bur 8 Apr 2016 19:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016
Maybe at the front page the “Recent Promoted Articles” and “Featured Articles” should move on the top, and the “Less Wrong is…” description should be below them.

Or maybe even articles first, map of meetups second, and the website description on the bottom. And the bullet points in the description are unnecessarily large.

Things at the top of the page are more likely to be noticed.

Viliam_Bur 6 Apr 2016 20:42 UTC
4 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016
Removed (both the comment and the user).

Viliam_Bur 30 Mar 2016 19:44 UTC
0 points
in reply to: kephasp’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
I am not an American, and the American ways of transferring money are mysterious to me. When I want to send money from point A to point B, I log into a web page, fill in the required data, confirm the data, and in a day or two the money is there. If I understand it correctly, the American way to do this is to personally go to the bank, take a paper form, write the data on the paper, deliver the paper to the target, and the target must take the paper to their bank.

It was a huge surprise to learn this, because I automatically assumed that the American ways of dealing with money must be more advanced and more convenient, just because of having more experience with internet and capitalism in general. But now I guess that the American system is simply a victim of its own inertia: these methods were invented and became a norm before the internet, and now people are resistent to the change, because no one wants to experiment with the new methods when their own money is involved.

Still, I agree that the second transaction should be cancellable after the first transaction was cancelled. Not sure what is the trick here. Maybe the scammer wants the part of their money returned using a different method (one that does not allow cancelling, or has shorter deadlines). Maybe the plan is that most people will not notice the cancelling of the first transaction, or be busy enough that they miss the deadline for cancelling the second one. Maybe there is some psychological trick preventing the victim from cancelling. Really, I don’t know (and not being familiar with the American system, even if I read an explanation, there is a chance I would misunderstand it).

Viliam_Bur 21 Mar 2016 19:08 UTC
18 points
in reply to: SanguineEmpiricist’s comment on: Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016
How I see it, deleting of Eugine’s new accounts is a continuous enforcement of the permanent ban from 2014 (explained here). Whether he continues in his previous behavior should in theory be irrelevant; I would delete his new accounts anyway because that’s what “permanent” means. But in practice, he continues with his old behavior, which makes him easier to detect, and motivates me to overcome my laziness.

Viliam_Bur 20 Mar 2016 20:49 UTC
16 points
on: Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016
moderator action: Torchlight_Crimson is banned

Another account of Eugine_Nier / Azathoth123 / Voiceofra / The_Lion / The_Lion2 / Old_Gold is banned, effective now. This is an enforcement of the already existing ban, therefore only this message in Open Thread.

EDIT: Also Crownless_Prince.

Viliam_Bur 12 Mar 2016 11:18 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
This seems like a correct answer. The company (1) wants to be seen as the sort of company that helps charities, (2) doesn’t care deeply about the charities, and (3) wants to motivate employees.

The first part explains why they have a budget for charities, and the second and third part together explain why they let employees allocate that budget instead of the company doing it itself. The charitable explanation of the second part is that the company trusts their employees to have good knowledge about charities, and thus kinda outsources the research of good charities to them.

On the other hand, an uncharitable explanation is that if most employees don’t donate to charities, then this strategy allows the company to appear more generous than it actually is. For example, if a company with 1000 employees publicly declares to match each employee’s donations up to $1000, it gives an impression as if they are going to donate $1000000 to charities, while in fact they may know that only five of their employees actually donate to charities, so the expected expense is $5000. (There is a risk this could backfire, but maybe they did experiments with smaller sums in the previous years, and/or maybe there is a small print somewhere making an exception in the case that too many employees decide to donate.)

Viliam_Bur 7 Mar 2016 8:40 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Grif’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users

I think it can be taken for granted that people on this site have an elevated sense of skepticism

They also have an elevated sense of contrarianism. I suspect it’s not enough to make them literally send money to a scammer, but enough to argue publicly about giving the benefit of doubt.

My long comment was written for the audience. To make people potentially swayed by clever arguments remember the context—that this is a website where we publicly talk about donating to MIRI, publicly talk about money in general, already have a lot of quality financial advice, and no one is preventing our mysterious benefactor from posting an article.

Viliam_Bur 7 Mar 2016 8:33 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
So, Vaniver, are you personally going to cooperate with this guy in the “donating to MIRI through you” project? Could you please promise in advance to write an article about it when the financial transaction is over?

Viliam_Bur 5 Mar 2016 20:51 UTC
9 points
in reply to: hans_jonsson’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
I apologize if I wronged you, but if you are honest, please act publicly, especially when it includes asking members to participate in financial transactions.

Money is no taboo here. MIRI asks for money publicly by posting an article (December 2015, August 2015, …). Members post articles with financial advice (Twenty basic rules for intelligent money management, Financial Effectiveness Repository, A Guide to Rational Investing, and many debates in the regular Open Threads). According to our recent survey, 71 members work in “Finance/Economics” and 38 work in “Law”; and although some of them specialize in things irrelevant to your proposal, most likely a few could provide a valuable feedback, maybe even a warning of what could possibly go wrong.

It is your insisting to work behind the courtains that seems fishy to me. You try to make the recipients of your messages feel special, yet you and your associate copy/paste the same messages to multiple people. If your goal is to provide free education, you could have posted the first lesson publicly. If you don’t want to be public with your name or with the name of your company, just create a pseudonymous account called e.g. “JumpingSquirrel2016” and refer to your company as e.g. “CompanyX”. Even if your goal is to find two or three people to cooperate with privately in the future, you can still advertise your skills by posting one free lesson publicly. People who are experts in some area don’t have to keep all their knowledge secret; there is usually at least 90% of the information known to enough people, sometimes even taught at universities.

For now, it seems like your priority is to send money through someone else, because reasons (“accelerating the value created”). Everything else seems like a cover story to make people cooperate. I suspect that the promised free education is also supposed to only happen after the person participated in the transaction.

If you are fake, your likely next step would be to send someone a fake check or fake “payment confirmation”, and then use social engineering and time pressure to make them send a part of the money back to you before they can verify that they actually received the money. Which is much easier to do in private, even with dozen people in parallel. Would be more difficult to achieve when communicating with all people publicly, especially if they were warned about this option in advance.

So my advice, if you are serious, is to post a message in an Open Thread (it could be strategical to wait two days until someone creates “Open Thread March 7 - March 13, 2016” in the “Discussion” section) describing why exactly do you need to send money through someone else, and describe the specific steps in this transaction. Specifically, promising to never ask people to send you back the money (either all or a part) and not to use time pressure until they have fully verified that they have actually received the money. For the sake of transparency, you should publish the names of specific users and the amount of money sent through them, and they should verify it using their own accounts.

Meanwhile, feel free to publish any free education in the current Open Thread or in the next one.

Viliam_Bur 2 Mar 2016 21:42 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
There is a chance that you are right. I feel like it’s about 10% though. I apologize in advance if I am wrong. But I acted on the chance that I’m right and that I may save some naive altruistic student’s money.

Viliam_Bur 2 Mar 2016 21:30 UTC
4 points
in reply to: TheAltar’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
It is promoted now, so it will stay on the main page for a longer time. (I don’t know how long the scammers will stay here.)

I reposted it in the facebook group.

Viliam_Bur 2 Mar 2016 21:28 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users

I also am not sure they’re scams in the traditional sense.

If there is nothing fishy, why do they contact people via private messages instead of posting in the forum?

Typically the reason for contacting people individually, when the public announcement would be the natural way, is to prevent the contacted people from seeing each other’s reactions.