LessWrong 2.0 Reader

A definition of physics that treats space and time as fundamental doesn't quite work, because there are some theories in physics such as loop quantum gravity in which space and/or time arise from something else.

I showed up and some other people were in the room :(

It doesn't demonstrate automation of the entire workflow—you have to, for instance, tell it which topic to think of ideas about and seed it with examples—and also, the automated reviewer rejected the autogenerated papers. (Which, considering how sycophantic they tend to be, really reflects very negatively on paper quality, IMO.)

I haven’t logged in for three months, so I just read your comment. Sure economics can’t explain everything and cost-benefit analysis is not the only factor affecting popularity (though often the most relevant). Can you be more specific about what do you think makes the card so popular, even if it didn’t satisfy the cost-benefit criterion?

I'm finishing up packing but won't make it there until 2:15 or so.

Your comment is not really a response to the comment I made. I am not missing the point at all, and if you think I have I suspect you missed my point very badly (and are yourself extremely overconfident about it). I have explicitly talked about there being a number of possible definitions of consciousness multiple times and I never favored one of them explicitly. I repeat, I never assumed a specific definition of consciousness, since I don't have a specific one I assume at all, and I am completely open to talking about a number of possibilities. I simply pointed out that some proposed definitions are clearly wrong / useless / better described with other terms. Do not assume what I mean if you don't understand.

Note that I am a not a prescriptivist when it comes to language. The reason the language is wrong isn't because I have a particular way you should talk about it, but because the term is being used in a way that doesn't actually fit together with the rest of the language, and thus does not actually convey the intended meaning. If you want to talk about something, talk about it with words that convey that meaning.

On to 'how many people have to disagree' for that to matter? One, if they have a real point, but if no one agrees on what a term means it is meaningless. 'Consciousness' is not meaningless, nor is introspection, or the other words being used. Uses that are clearly wrong are a step towards words being meaningless, and that would be a bad thing. Thus, I should oppose it.

Also, my original comment was mostly about direct disagreements with his credences, and implications thereof, not about the definition of consciousness.

Why hardware bugs in particular?

Some behaviors are red flags, for example "isolating you from unsupervised talking to people outside the group" or "expecting you to report your private thoughts to your superiors".

I wish we had a convenient handle for this set of red flags, and in a better world perhaps "cult" could be the word, but unfortunately in our world people mostly focus on things like "different from my group" and "seem weird".

EDIT: 1a3orn already said it [LW(p) · GW(p)] better.

but if no one is paying attention?

That probably means that their line manager stopped doing their work first.

Finding out who is working on what can be complicated e.g. if the person is assigned to multiple projects at the same time, and can tell everyone "sorry, the last few weeks I was too busy with the other projects".

But checking in Jira "which tickets did this person close during the last 30 days" should be simple. If you don't have a query for that, then you could still show all tickets assigned to this person, make a screenshot, and one month later check which of those tickets were closed if any. And you can set up Jira to show the links to the related commits (if you put the Jira task id in the commit descriptions, which was a rule at my recent jobs) in the ticket.

I would expect some companies to be so low on the technical skills that they couldn't set up the system this way, but not the ones on the list.

I don't doubt the stories, it's just... one of those situations where other people seem to have skills that not only I don't have, but can't even imagine.

(joke) We don't mollycoddle our kids, we're testing how to not tolerate preventable failure which we shall need to colonize space.