Are there any possible facts that would make you consider frogs objects of moral worth if you found out they were true?
(Edited for clarity.)
VNKKET
Karma: 187
This is a mostly-shameless plug for the small donation matching scheme I proposed in May:
I’m still looking for three people to cross the “membrane that separates procrastinators and helpers” by donating $60 to the Singularity Institute. If you’re interested, see my original comment. I will match your donation.
ETA: This scheme is done. All three donations have been made and matched by me.
I want to give $180 to the Singularity Institute, but I’m looking for three people to match my donation by giving at least $60 each. If this scheme works, the Singularity Institute will get $360.
If you want to become one of the three matchers, I would be very grateful, and here’s how I think we should do it:
You donate using this link. Reply to this thread saying how much you are donating. Feel free to give more than $60 if you can spare it, but that won’t affect how much I give.
In your donation’s “Public Comment” field, include both a link to your reply to this thread and a note asking for a Singularity Institute employee to kindly follow that link and post a response saying that you donated. ETA: Step 2 didn’t work for me, so I don’t expect it to work for you. For now, I’ll just believe you if you say you’ve donated. If you would be convinced to donate by seeing evidence that I’m not lying, let me know and I’ll get you some.
I will do the same. (Or if you’re the first matching donor, then I already have—see directly below.)
To show that I’m serious, I’m donating my first $60 right now. I will donate my second $60 after the second matching donor, and my third $60 after the third matching donor.
If you already donate regularly, please wait until it looks like my scheme is failing before taking up one of the matching-donor slots. But if you have never donated despite always wanting to, then here’s a chance to double your help.
I’m also interested in information people might have about whether this scheme is a good idea (compared to, say, quietly making the donation alone).
- 's comment on Open Thread: July 2010 by (1 Jul 2010 22:07 UTC; 13 points)
- 's comment on Open Thread: July 2010 by (2 Jul 2010 21:59 UTC; 3 points)
- 's comment on Seeking matcher for SIAI donation by (9 Oct 2010 3:38 UTC; 2 points)
- 's comment on Open Thread: July 2010 by (1 Jul 2010 22:05 UTC; 0 points)
- 's comment on Open Thread, August 2010 by (7 Aug 2010 0:56 UTC; 0 points)
How easily could the SI lose important data (like unpublished research) in, say, a fire or computer malfunction?
I donated $250 on the last day of the challenge.
Speaking of copies, I keep meaning to write a LOCKSS plugin for LessWrong. This comment will be my note-to-self, or anyone else who wants to do it first.
Good question. And for people who missed it, this refers to money that was reported stolen on SI’s tax documents a few years ago. (relevant thread)
(interested in hearing how other donors frame allocation between SI and CFAR)
I still only donate to SI. It’s great that we can supposedly aim the money at FAI now, due to the pivot towards research.
But I would also love to see EY’s appeal to MoR readers succeed:
I don’t work for the Center for Applied Rationality and they don’t pay me, but their work is sufficiently important that the Singularity Institute (which does pay me) has allowed me to offer to work on Methods full-time until the story is finished if HPMOR readers donate a total of $1M to CFAR.
And after skimming the paper, the only thing I could find in response to your point is:
Coercion detection. Since our aim is to prevent users from effectively transmitting the ability to authenticate to others, there remains an attack where an adversary coerces a user to authenticate while they are under adversary control. It is possible to reduce the effectiveness of this technique if the system could detect if the user is under duress. Some behaviors such as timed responses to stimuli may detectably change when the user is under duress. Alternately, we might imagine other modes of detection of duress, including video monitoring, voice stress detection, and skin conductance monitoring [8, 16, 1]. The idea here would be to detect by out-of-band techniques the effects of coercion. Together with in-band detection of altered performance, we may be able to reliably detect coerced users.
Of the things on your list, I’m most surprised by cognitive science and maybe game theory, unless you’re talking about the fields’ current insights rather than their expected future insights. In that case, I’m still somewhat surprised game theory is on this list. I’d love to learn what led you to this belief.
It’s possible I only know the basics, so feel free to say “read more about what the fields actually offer and it’ll be obvious if you’ve been on Less Wrong long enough.”
Hi! I’m not anti-posting, but I never do for some reason.
Candidate: Don’t pursue an idea unless it came to your attention by a method that actually finds good ideas. (Paraphrased from here.)
Is this comment supposed to be pleasant or unpleasant?
Edit: I asked because “have a good day, thank you for posting” is often used to mean “shut up”, but now that I’ve looked at your past comments, I assume you’re being friendly.
Because of this, I set up a $50/month pledge (instead of a one-time donation of $500), and I hope this drive causes lots of people to do the same.
Are you unsure about whether em torture is as bad as non-em torture? Or do you just mean to express that we take em torture too seriously? Or is this a question about how much we should pay to prevent torture (of ems or not), given that there are other worthy causes that need our efforts?
Or, to ask all those questions at once: do you know which empirical facts you need to know in order to answer this?
This makes me happy. Now, here’s a question that is probably answered in the technical paper, but I don’t have time to read it:
“New coins are generated by a network node each time it finds the solution to a certain calculational problem.” What is this calculational problem? Could it easily serve some sinister purpose?
Seeking matcher for SIAI donation
Thank you! And I just gave $200 to SI on top of the $50/month they automatically get from me.
Thank you for this post! One thing:
Look into matching donations - If you’re gonna give money to charity anyway, you should see if you can get your employer to match your gift. Thousands of employers will match donations to qualified non-profits. When you get free money—you should take it.
If GiveWell’s cost-benefit calculations are remotely right, you should downplay matching donations even more than just making this item second-last. I fear that matching donations are so easy to think about that they will distract people from picking good charities.
Nice! And for anyone freaked out by the “current balance of my bank account” part, there’s an explanation here.