I fear that this system doesn't actually provide the benefits of a breadth-first search, because you can't really read half a comment. If I scroll down a comment page without uncollapsing it, I don't feel like I got much of a picture of what anyone actually said, and also repeatedly seeing what people are saying cut off midsentence is really cognitively distracting.

Reddit (and I think other sites, but on Reddit I know I've experienced this) makes threads skimmable by showing a relatively small number of comments, rather than a small snippet of each comment. At least in my experience, this actually works, in that I've skimmed threads this way and felt like I got a good picture of the overall gist of the thread without having to read every comment.

I know you don't like Reddit's algorithm because it feeds the Matthew effect. But if most comments were hidden entirely and only a few were shown, you could optimize directly for whatever it is you're trying to do, by tweaking the algorithm that determines which comments to show. As a degenerate example, if you wanted to optimize for strict egalitarianism, you could just show a uniform random sample of comments.

I've already been whingeing at Ben in PMs about the comment-abridging system; Ben, if you're reading this, feel free to ignore it since I promised I'd shut up about it :-). Anyway, this is just to go on record as really disliking this "feature", which I think encourages superficial skimming over careful reading, makes it a big pain to engage fully with what others have said (because you have to expand lots of things separately), and just generally feels to me as if it does nothing I can see why I should actually want.

I agree with Raemon that any choice about how comments behaviour will shape what sort of conversations are had. I think this particular choice will encourage the wrong sort of conversations. And it makes LW harder to read.

I previously tried to do something similar - define an objective complexity upper bound by adding the complexity within a UTM to the complexity of the UTM. I don't recall how I defined the complexity of a UTM - I don't think it was recursive, though. Perhaps I used an average over all UTMs, weighted by the complexity of each UTM? But that still requires us to already have a definition of complexity for UTMs! (Unless there's a unique fixed point in the assignment of complexity to UTMs, but then I'd suspect that function to be non-computable. And uniqueness doesn't seem very likely anyway.)

I'm going to partially answer your question. The full answer is that I followed the instructions of The Mind Illuminated, and that if you want to meditate regularly I suggest doing the same. And also find a teacher. I lack one and notice the lack; I'll be seeking one out when I move to Boston soon.

I did both sitting and walking meditation. While sitting, I would pay attention to the sensations of my breath, while also trying to be aware of everything else (sight if eyes open; sounds; itches; etc.). My mind would then wander. When I noticed it had wandered, I would return focus to my breath. This would happen over and over again, something like once a minute.

I wouldn't describe meditation as modifying my thought patterns, because the (e.g. breath) sensations I put my attention on are not thoughts. My thoughts take me away from them.

I'd usually sit cross-legged, but when that got uncomfortable I would just sit upright in a chair. You should sit in a comfortable but alert position. (Sit upright! Don't slouch. It seems to me to have a surprising detrimental effect on focus.)

I haven't tried amplifying emotions. I don't know of any style of meditation that centers around that, but I hear there's a wide variety, most of which I know nothing about. I just tried, and wasn't able to immediately produce a strong emotion in myself (just middling ones).

The subjective effect I experience from meditation usually happens after the fact. (Or appears to; it might just be harder to notice when you're repeatedly returning to your breath.) It's a phase transition in my mind. Like I said, I'm rather confused about what's going on, but I can tell you how it feels. It feels (repeatedly) like I have just woken from a dream; my inner monologue grows quieter; it no longer feels appropriate to say that "I am experiencing this", rather there are only sensations; the present feels isolated from the past, even seconds ago; objects in sight feel more real than those not in sight. It sounds (and feels) strange, but A++ would experience again.

Oh, yeah that makes sense.

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What is the way you were meditating? Relaxed or focused? Comfortable or cross legged? Focusing on a meaningless symbol, or letting your mind wander, or focusing on something meaningful?

I have found that I can produce a significant amount of emotion, of a chosen type, eg anxious, miserable, laughing, foucssedly happy, ect in seconds. I seem to do this just by focusing on the emotion with little conscious thinking of a concept that would cause the emotion. Is this meditation? (Introspection, highly unreliable)

Can you describe the meditation as attempting to modify your thought pattern in some way?

I basically agree with this. I once went to a transhumanist conference and attendees I talked to seemed at least a bit like this.

Clicking on comment expands all comments below it. We don’t currently expand comments above it because that changes your screen position which can be disorienting, although i could imagine changing my mind about that

The whole idea of effective altruism is in getting the biggest bang for your charitable buck. If the evidence about how to do this was simple and incontrovertible, we wouldn't need advanced rationality skills to do so. In the real world, choosing the best cause requires weighing up subtle balances of evidence on everything from if animals are suffering in ways we would care about, to how likely a super intelligent AI is.

On the other side, effective altruism is only persuasive if you have various skills and patterns of thought. These include the ability to think quantitatively, avoiding scope insensitivity, the ideas of expected utility maximization and the rejection of the absurdity heuristic. It is conceptually possible for a mind to be a brilliant rationalist with the sole goal of paperclip maximization, however all humans have the same basic emotional architecture, with emotions like empathy and caring. When this is combined with rigorous structured thought, the end result often looks at least somewhat utilitarianish.

Here are the kinds of thought patterns that a stereotypical rationalist, and a stereotypical non rationalist would engage in, when evaluating two charities. One charity is a donkey sanctuary, the other is trying to genetically modify chickens that don't feel pain.

The leaflet has a beautiful picture of a cute fluffy donkey in a field of sunshine and flowers. Aww Don't you just want to stroke him. Donkeys in medows seem an unambiguous pure good. Who could argue with donkeys. Thinking about donkeys makes me feel happy. Look, this one with the brown ears is called buttercup. I'll put this nice poster up and send them some money.

Genetically modifying? Don't like the sound of that. To not feel pain? Weird? Why would you want to do that? Imagines the chicken crushed into a tiny cage, looking miserable, "its not really suffering" doesn't cut it. Wouldn't that encourage people to abuse them? We should be letting them live in the wild as nature intended.

The main component of this decision comes from adding up the little "good" or "bad" labels that they attach to each word. There is also a sense in which a donkey sanctuary is a typical charity (the robin of birds), while GM chickens is an atypical charity (the ostrich).

The rationalist starts off with questions like "How much do I ...