LessWrong 2.0 Reader

No, and "invested in the status quo" wasn't meant as a positive descriptor, either. This is describing a sociopath who's optimizing for success within a system, not one who overthrows the system. Not someone farsighted.

You can use magnetic instead of electrostatic forces as the force holding the surface out against air pressure. One disadvantage is that you need superconducting cables fairly spread out over the airship's surface, which imposes some cooling requirements. An advantage is square-cube law means it scales well to large size. Another disadvantage is that if the cooling fails it collapses and falls down.

I bet something similar could work for getting kids to appologize.

Also, for getting them to say thank you. When kids are at a certain age, adults frequently seem to be reminding them to say thank you for gifts and such; I have a vague memory of adults also reminding me of this, when I was at that age. But these days I automatically say thank you for various things, and mean it.

Feels empirically true. I remember cases where I thought about a memory $X$ and was initially uncertain about some aspect of it, but then when I think about it later it feels either true or false in my memory, so I have to be like, "well no, I know that I was 50/50 on this when the memory was more recent, so that's what my probability should be now, even though it doesn't feel like it anymore".

Seems like the fact that I put about a 50% probability on the thing survived (easy/clear enough to remember), but the reasons did not, so the probability no longer feels accurate.

ABBYY created Finereader which was one of the best OCR systems. 

If possible, the best defense is learning about the topics before they become controversial. Also, don't jump directly into the controversial part, but learn the fundamentals of the field first.

For example, the actual reason why I don't believe in homeopathy is not because I found the "anti-homeopathy" side more convincing in the debate than the "pro-homeopathy" side. I actually suspect that most doctors do not understand half of the stuff they do, and that a large part of medical best practice is simply placebo effect.

Instead, it is because at the elementary school I learned about atoms. How water is composed of molecules of H2O, how being liquid means that those molecules bounce around randomly. Homeopathy working would require this model to be completely wrong. But that model doesn't seem to be made by someone with an anti-homeopathy agenda, because it is used in so many unrelated contexts. Therefore, homeopathy is wrong.

Another example, evolution. Instead of jumping to the deep end (trying to make My Own Opinion™ on whether something could or couldn't have evolved, without actually understanding how biology works), I start simple: Things are made out of atoms, yes or no? Atoms make molecules, yes or no? DNA is a molecule, yes or no? DNA encodes the traits of the organism, yes or no? (Don't just say [LW · GW] "yes", think about it. How specifically can different cells do different functions if all of them have the same DNA?) Is it plausible that sometimes the DNA copies incorrectly? It is plausible that sometime an error in copying provides an advantage to the organism? (Is that a frequent or a rare thing to happen? How would the organism with the magically improved DNA reproduce with the ones that have the original DNA?) Etc. Now if someone claims that evolution is not real, I can ask them which specific step of this chain was wrong.

Similarly, there are some controversial(?) topics in mathematics. Instead of engaging with them directly, I have downloaded a few university textbooks on topics that are prerequisites for that, and I am going through them step by step, actually doing the exercises, and probably being way more paranoid about them than an average student. That will take a lot of time. But I believe it is a time better spent than trying to address the controversies directly without having solid fundamentals.

Learning the fundamentals requires a lot of time, but it is a limited amount of time; I assume that at some moment I will know enough to make an expert judgment. Merely debating the topics may require less time in short term, but it is an unending process; there will always be yet another clever argument or yet another internet debate. Also, by learning the field I can become a (kind of) expert on the field, but by debating a controversial topic I become only... an expert on debating this one specific topic, in best case.

One thing that works in your favor, epistemically, is that in democracy it is not necessary to convince everyone; you just need to convince the majority. Most people are kinda stupid, so the arguments designed to convince them are usually not too complicated. If you actually listen to both sides, it is often possible to find the mistake. (Don't bother telling them, no one is going to listen.) Sometimes you find that both sides believe stupid things. Not in the "truth is exactly in the middle" way, but sometimes one side is like 90% right but really strongly insists on the one absurdity they hold dear, which the other side is happy to expose... and then connect to their own absurdities. Basically, don't assume that just because two people are arguing, one of them has to be right; you might be observing two idiots arguing for two different wrong things.

My other heuristic is to have a list of people I trust and ask about their opinion. Explaining how to make such list would be quite complicated, but similarly to the "learn the fundamentals" advice, those people should be experts on something related to the controversy, but not solely on the controversy itself. (You want people good at modeling things, not just good at arguing for/against a side of a controversy.)

I didn't get the premise, no. I got that it was before a lot of physics was known, didn't know they didn't know calculus either. 
Just stating it plainly and clearly at the start would have been good. Even with that premise, I still find it very annoying. I despise the refusal to speak clearly, the way it's constantly dancing around the bush, not saying the actual point, to me this is pretty obviously because the actual point is a nothing burger(because the analogy is bad) and by dancing around it, the text is trying to distract me and convince me of the point before I realize how dumb it is. 

Why the analogy is bad: rocket flights can be tested and simulated much more easily than a superintelligence, with a lot less risk

Analogies are by nature lossy, this one is especially so. 

I've been thinking along very [LW(p) · GW(p)] similar [LW(p) · GW(p)] lines [LW(p) · GW(p)] for a while (my inside name for this is "mask theory of the mind": consciousness is a "mask"). But my personal conclusion is very different. While self-deception is a valid strategy in many circumstances, I think that it's too costly when trying to solve an extremely difficult high-stakes problem (e.g. stopping the AI apocalypse). Hence, I went in the other direction: trying to self-deceive little, and instead be self-honest about my^[1] real motivations, even if they are "bad PR". In practice, this means never making excuses to myself such as "I wanted to do A, but I didn't have the willpower so I did B instead", but rather owning the fact I wanted to do B and thinking how to integrate this into a coherent long-term plan for my life.

My solution to "hostile telepaths" is diving other people into ~3 categories:

1. People that are adversarial or untrustworthy, either individually or as representatives of the system on behalf of which they act. With such people, I have no compunction to consciously lie ("the Jews are not in the basement... I packed the suitcase myself...") or act adversarially.
2. People that seem cooperative, so that they deserve my good will even if not complete trust. With such people, I will be at least metahonest: I will not tell direct lies, and I will be honest about in which circumstances I'm honest (i.e. reveal all relevant information). More generally, I will act cooperatively towards such people, expecting them to reciprocate. My attitude towards in this group is that I don't need to pretend to be something other than I am to gain cooperation, I can just rely on their civility and/or (super)rationality.
3. Inner circle: People that have my full trust. With them I have no hostile telepath problem because they are not hostile. My attitude towards this group is that we can resolve any difference by putting all the cards on the table and doing whatever is best for the group in aggregate.

Moreover, having an extremely difficult high-stakes problem is not just a strong reason to self-deceive less, it's also strong reason to become more truth-oriented as a community. This means that people with such a common cause should strive to put each other at least in category 2 above, tentatively moving towards 3 (with the caveat of watching out for bad actors trying to exploit that).

1. ^{^}

   While making sure to use the word "I" to refer to the elephant/unconscious-self and not to the mask/conscious-self.

I think that "getting good" at the "free association" game is in finding the sweet spot / negotiation between full freedom of association and directing toward your own interests, probably ideally with a skew toward what the other is interested in. If you're both "free associating" with a bias toward your own interests and an additional skew toward perceived overlap, updating on that understanding along the way, then my experience says you'll have a good chance of chatting about something that interests you both. (I.e. finding a spot of conversation which becomes much more directed than vibey free association.) Conditional on doing something like that strategy, I find it ends up being just a question of your relative+combined ability at this and the extent of overlap (or lack thereof) in interests.

So short model is: Git gud at free association (+sussing out interests) -> gradient ascend yourselves to a more substantial conversation interesting to you both.

Hmm, I find that I'm not fully following here. I think "vibes" might be thing that is messing it up.

Let's look at a specific example: I'm talking to a new person at an EA-adjacent event and we're just chatting about how the last year has been. Part of the "vibing" here might be to hone in on the difficulties experienced in the last year due to a feeling of "moral responsibility", in my view vibing doesn't have to be done with only positive emotions?

I think you're bringing up a good point that commitments or struggles might be something that bring people closer than positive feelings because you're more vulnerable and open as well as broadcasting your values more. Is this what you mean with shared commitments or are you pointing at something else?