LessWrong 2.0 Reader

The Duke of Wellington said that Napoleon's presence on a battlefield “was worth forty thousand men”.

This would be about 4% of France's military size in 1812.

1. In research you don't usually know your precise destination. Maybe LA but definitely not the hotel.
2. research, in general, is about mapping all of California, not just the quickest route between two points and all the friends helped with that.
3. You say "Alice tackled the central bottleneck" but you don't say what that was, only her "solution". Alice is only key here with the benefit of hindsight. If the I5 didn't exist or was closed for some reason then one of her friends solutions might have been better.

Of indirect relevance here is that Derya Unutmaz is an avid OpenAI fan who they trust enough to be an early tester. So while I'm not saying that he's deliberately dissembling, he is known to be overly enthusiastic about AI, and so any of his vibes-y impressions should be taken with a pound of salt.

A brief summary of the current state of the "making eggs from stem cells" field:

• We've done it in mice
• We have done parts of it in humans, but not all of it
• The main demand for eggs is from women who want to have kids but can't produce them naturally (usually because they're too old but sometimes because they have a medical issue). Nobody is taking the warning to not "Build A Method For Simulating Ovary Tissue Outside The Body To Harvest Eggs And Grow Clone Workers On Demand In Jars" because no one is planning on doing that.

Even if you could make eggs from stem cells and you wanted to make "clone workers", it wouldn't work because every egg (even those from the same woman) has different DNA. They wouldn't even be clones.

I think it is not that unlikely that they are roughly as biologically smart as us and have advanced forms of communication, but that they are just too alien and thus we haven't deciphered them yet.

I disagree with Eliezer when he says that countries with surpluses never cash them in, which is kind of part of the core of his argument.

(Equity) Billionaires live lavish lifestyles, even though they never sell their equity. Doing so would give up their power. Instead they borrow for cheap (c.f. " buy, borrow, die"). I wonder which countries typically can borrow money very cheap. Maybe Japan, or Germany...? 

He just looks at a single number, and then utters "these numbers don't make sense". Well of course.

Look at the whole picture instead. 

There are many ways of cashing in, without running a compensating deficit, even when only looking at money, and not at other things like political, social etc. power.

Many countries refuse extradition to the US if there is a chance of the death penalty.

The problem is that people are scope-insensitive [? · GW], and one wrongly executed person becomes a martyr for a long time. People are still angry about George Stinney's wrongful execution in 1944.

The feeling of a lot of people is if normal people go to jail for minor things, Trump or Clinton should definitely go to jail for a long time. There is a visceral sense of unfairness that the elites get to be more vile than ordinary people who go to jail, get executed, etc. but don't face the same consequences because they do evil legally, because there is diplomatic immunity, presidential immunity, and all this stuff that your average Joe does not understand.

If normal people who are vile get executed, then people will crave the blood of elites they perceive to be even more vile. Japan in the 1920s and 1930s had endless political assassinations because people had the system of morality where "vile people should be killed."

Alas, you are right that we can never know which way the causality goes. I am admittedly only stating my belief without proving it.

I think Singapore actually implements a system with a lot of executions and corporal punishment which you are in favor of, and they actually do have very low crime. I attribute the low crime more to their high wealth, and their other draconian policy of overwhelming surveillance (which I also disagree with but have to admit does work, maybe you can debate it next time).

Even though prison is neither very good at keeping criminals separated from society, nor very good at deterrence, the main purpose is still keeping criminals separated from society.

Prison also deters different criminals by a similar consistent amount, since it reduces their utility. Corporal punishment does not reduce utility much but inflicts a subjective amount of pain, which some people might consider traumatizing, while other people might consider a cool "rite of passage" which demonstrates their toughness.

Nonetheless I agree with your observation that people place undue weight on the "unusual" part of "cruel and unusual punishment," and seem to be perfectly okay with prison and all the shenanigans which go on in prison, while completely shocked by any alternative idea.

It reminds me of how people are shocked by people abusing their pets, seeking to punish pet abusers as harshly as child abusers. Yet there they are eating meat out of a factory farm with 10 times worse animal abuse. Their sense of morality is governed by "if everyone does it, it's okay," yet at the same time they are shocked by societies in other places and times where what "everyone does" was different.

If you are a cold hearted utilitarian, the answer is no, we should not massively increase the death penalty, because it will worsen the diplomatic situation, increase racial hostilities, and move the Overton window on "killing vile people," such that assassinations, coups and other instability would feel less shocking and be more likely to succeed.

it will worsen the diplomatic situation

Which diplomatic situation? Many countries execute criminals, and that doesn't much impact their foreign affairs. Foreign affairs is driven by things that impact other countries, not domestic affairs.

increase racial hostilities

Did you know that black people in the USA are more likely to advocate for a tough on crime policy? After all, most crime is intraracial, and therefore it's them who have to live with it.

"killing vile people," such that assassinations, coups and other instability would feel less shocking and be more likely to succeed

Or it'll move the overton window that killing people will result in a swift execution such that people are less likely to do it. Are China and Iran less stable today as a result of their liberal application of the death penalty - or is that basically completely irrelevant to their problems? This is a claim which you could argue whichever way you want depending on how you felt like it. Making assertions is not evidence.

If you are a normal human, the answer is also no, because people don't deserve to die. A child who is unlucky enough to be born with bad genes or brain connections, does not deserve to be later executed when he grows up. A child raised in a bad environment also does not deserve to be later executed when he grows up. Finally, an adult who had bad luck does not deserve to be executed.

Do people deserve to go to prisons? Do people deserve to be punished at all? If not, and we should allow criminals to get off scott free, do people deserve to have their houses broken into, or to be threatened as they walk down the street?

We cannot simply abdicate responsibility by stating that people don't deserve death. Nobody deserves anything, crime is real, we have to do something, why is the death penalty suddenly the thing that we should only do if someone deserves it?