LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Wait my bad, I didn't except so many people to actually see this. 

This is kind of silly, but I had an idea for a post that I thought someone else might say before I have it written out. So I figured I'd post a hash of the thesis here. 

It's not just about, idk, getting more street cred for coming up with an idea. This is also what I'm planning to write for my MATs application to Lee Sharkley's stream. So in the case someone else did write it up before me, I would have some proof that I didn't just copy the idea from a post.

(It's also a bit silly because my guess is that the thesis isn't even that original)

Edit: to answer the original question, I will post something before October 6th on this if all goes to plan. 

Not my area of research, but I would like to make an endorsement of Alex from knowing him socially.

Some researchers can be rather socially prickly and harsh, but Alex is not. He's an affable fellow. So if you are someone who needs non-prickly colleagues to be comfortable, you will likely enjoy working with Alex.

Example of what I mean by prickly: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BGLu3iCGjjcSaeeBG/related-discussion-from-thomas-kwa-s-miri-research [LW · GW]

you can have an alignment problem without humans. E.g. two strawberries problem.

Decoherence means that different branches don't interfere with each other on macroscopic scales. That's just the way it works.

Superfluids/superconductors/lasers are still microscopic effects that only matter at the scale of atoms or at ultra-low temperature or both.

"Optimism is a duty. The future is open. It is not predetermined. No one can predict it, except by chance. We all contribute to determining it by what we do. We are all equally responsible for its success." --Karl Popper

bringing QM into this is not helping. All these types of questions are completely generic QM questions and ultimately they come down to measure ||Psi>|²

Most of us do useful things. Most of us do it because we need to, to earn a living. Other people give us money because they trade with us so we'll do things that are useful to them (like providing goods or services or helping others to do so).

I think it's a profound mistake to think that earning money (honestly) doesn't do anything useful. On the contrary, it's what makes the world go.

Very true. I think "can you keep a secret", in the context of true secrets, is a bit of a non-question. What kind of secret? Sometimes, even revealing the type of the secret in question reveals bits about the secret itself (sometimes through multiple layers). How do you communicate about the meta-parts of said secret? What are your skills in behaving around true-secret material? Doing a " Can you keep a secret?" "Yeah I can keep a secret!" interaction doesn't really tell you much at all and seems to me more just a social dance to initiate gossip (or a similar interaction).

Thanks! This makes me curious: is sports betting anomalous (among forms of consumption) in terms of how much it substitutes for financial investing?

Another thought on this is that people often talk about smothering social norms or moralities by giving examples of petty, infantilizing rewards for behaving in infantilized ways. What about a libertarian-oriented society that enforces rules primarily intended to prevent people from restricting one another's behavior? What about an economic system that encourages entrepreneurship and invention by doing things like enforcing contracts, or providing a social safety net so that more people can start businesses or create products without worrying that they'll literally starve to death in the street if their first idea doesn't work? Participants in a society like that should still maintain some awareness that this is the work of humanity, not an expression of a fundamentally just universe, but it's hard for me to argue that just participating makes them into slaves.