LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Ooh.

I lean towards an opt-out system for whole post imports? I'd expect the vast majority of relevant authors to be happy with it, and it would offer less inconvenience to readers. Letting an author easily register as "no whole text imports please" seems worthwhile, and maybe if people aren't happy with that switching to opt-in?

I look forward to seeing some of this integrated into LW!

I spend a fair amount of time writing comments that are probably pretty obvious to experienced LWers. I think this is important for getting newer people on-board with historical ideas and arguments. This includes explaining to enthusiastic newbies why they're being voted into oblivion. Giving them some simulated expert comments would be great.

I think we'd see a large improvement in how useful new user's early posts are, and therefore how much they're encouraged to help vs. turned away by downvotes because they're not really contributing. It would be a great way to let new posters do some efficient due diligence without catching up on the entire distributed history of discussion on their chosen topic.

I think it would also be useful for the most knowledgeable authors to have an LLM with cached context/hidden state from the best LW posts and comment sections giving virtual comments before publication.

I'd love to see whatever you've got going internally as an optional feature (if it doesn't cost too much) rather than wait for a finished, integrated feature.

Sure. So, there are some workplaces have implicit cultural norms that aren't written down but are crucial for career advancement. Always being available and responding to emails quickly might be an unspoken expectation, or participating in after-work social events might not be mandatory but would be noted and count against people looking for promotion. Certain dress codes or communication styles might be rewarded or penalized beyond their actual professional relevance.

In a community, this usually comes as a form of purity testing of some kind, but can also be related to preferences around how you socialize or what you spend your time doing. If you're in a community that thinks sex-work is low status, for example, and you want to ask if that's true... just asking might in fact be costly, because it might clue people in to your potential interest in doing it.

Does that make sense?

What does winning look like? What do you do next?

This question is a perfect mirror of the brain-dead "how is AGI going to kill us?" question.  I could easily make a list of 100 things you might do if you had AGI supremacy and wanted to suppress the development of AGI in China.  But the whole point of AGI is that it will be smarter than me, so anything I put on the list would be redundant.

You're touching on one of the questions that occurred to me. What do the current and post-Jones transportation flows look like? While I agree that the law must shift some from shipping to truck, rail or pipeline I'm not sure I would expect massive changes here. Do you have some data on that point?

We're looking for speakers for the Boston Solstice. This year Solstice is December 28th, 7pm. Being a speaker at solstice is pretty straightforward; public speaking skill is useful but you can read off a script, don't feel like you need to memorize something.

If you're at all interested, reach out. We have speeches ranging from very short and silly to a couple of pages and somber.

Additionally, if you feel like you have an original speech on the themes of persistence or camaraderie, especially if you feel you have a good speech about not giving up even when it's hard, then please feel free to send a draft! The overall arc is set at this point but you might have something better for a given slot.

I agree that those are the thoughts at the surface-level of Bryce in those situations, and they are not the same as "it's wrong/stupid to enjoy eating ice cream."

But I think in many cases, they often do imply "and you are stupid/irrational if knowing these things does not spoil your enjoyment or shift your hedonic attractor." And even if Bryce genuinely doesn't feel that way, I hope they would still be very careful with their wording to avoid that implication.

Tentative support for only auto-importing the first few paragraphs, if not that then start by auto-importing the whole post and waiting until anybody complains. My guess (~65%?) is that somebody will. Against having an LLM extract some important highlights- if doing highlights is the way to go I think whoever nominated the piece for the review can find the highlights?

I'd love it if I could use LessWrong as a central place to read rationalsphere content, and since more and more rationalist sphere writers are writing elsewhere this seems like it's worth trying.

Great post! I especially agree that for most independent researchers, applying to PHDs before you necessarily want one would be a helpful option to have as a backstop for if your near term career plans don't work out - and people should apply early because there's such a long lag time between application and starting.

I think it's also worth emphasising that if you have a non-standard work history (or are a bit junior), but might want to work in the United States, pursuing higher education in the US is one of the easiest ways to secure long-term work authorisation (And if someone funds your PhD, is radically cheaper than almost every alternative)