LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Here are some reflections [LW(p) · GW(p)] I wrote on the work of Grothendieck and relations with his contemporaries & predecessors. 

Take it with a grain of salt - it is probably too deflationary of Grothendieck's work, pushing back on mythical narratives common in certain mathematical circles where Grothendieck is held to be an Christ-like figure. I pushed back on that a little.  Nevertheless, it would probably not be an exaggeration to say that Grothendieck's scientific contributions were comparable to Einstein. 

Yeah, I'd be willing to bet that too.

I think for good emotions the feel-it-completely thing happens naturally anyway.

Here's a document called "Upper and lower bounds for Alien Civilizations and Expansion Rate" I wrote in 2016.  [1]

The draft is very rough. Claude summarizes it thusly:

The document presents a probabilistic model to estimate upper and lower bounds for the number of alien civilizations and their expansion rates in the universe. It shares some similarities with Robin Hanson's "Grabby Aliens" model, as both attempt to estimate the prevalence and expansion of alien civilizations, considering the idea of expansive civilizations that colonize resources in their vicinity.

However, there are notable differences. Hanson's model focuses on civilizations expanding at the highest possible speed and the implications of not observing their visible "bubbles," while this document's model allows for varying expansion rates and provides estimates without making strong claims about their observable absence. Hanson's model also considers the idea of a "Great Filter," which this document does not explicitly discuss.

Despite these differences, the document implicitly contains the central insight of Hanson's model – that the expansive nature of spacefaring civilizations and the lack of observable evidence for their existence imply that intelligent life is sparse and far away. The document's conclusions suggest relatively low numbers of spacefaring civilizations in the Milky Way (fewer than 20) and the Local Group (up to one million), consistent with the idea that intelligent life is rare and distant.

The document's model assumes that alien civilizations will become spacefaring and expansive, occupying increasing volumes of space over time and preventing new civilizations from forming in those regions. This aligns with the "grabby" nature of aliens in Hanson's model. Although the document does not explicitly discuss the implications of not observing "grabby" aliens, its low estimates for the number of civilizations implicitly support the idea that intelligent life is sparse and far away.

The draft was never finished as I felt the result wasn't significant enough. Of course, the Hanson-Martin-McCarter-Paulson paper contains more detailed models and much more refined statistical analysis.  I didn't pursue these ideas further. 

I wasn't part of the rationality/EA community. I knew about LW but didn't realize I could post there myself. Nobody I talked to was interested in these questions.

Let this be a lesson for young people: Don't assume. Publish. Make something public even if it's not in a journal. 

Indeed, from what I see there is consensus that academic standards on elite campuses are dramatically down, likely this has a lot to do with the need to sustain holistic admissions.

As in, the academic requirements, the ‘being smarter’ requirement, has actually weakened substantially. You need to be less smart, because the process does not care so much if you are smart, past a minimum. The process cares about… other things.

So, the signalling value of their degrees should be decreasing accordingly, unless one mainly intends to take advantage of the process. Has some tangible evidence of that appeared already, and are alternative signalling opportunities emerging?

Do you find it dampens good emotions. Like if you are deeply in love and feel it does it diminish the experience?

To me it's less about thoughts and more about emotions. And not about doing it all the time, but only when I'm having some intense emotion and need to do something about it.

For example, let's say I'm angry about something. I imagine there's a knob in my mind: make the emotion stronger or weaker. (Or between feeling it less, and feeling it more.) What I usually do is turn the knob up. Try to feel the emotion more completely and in more detail, without trying to push any of it away. What usually happens next is the emotion kinda decides that it's been heard and goes away: a few minutes later I realize that whatever I was feeling is no longer as intense or urgent. Or I might even forget it entirely and find my mind thinking of something else.

It's counterintuitive but it's really how it works for me; been doing it for over a decade now. It's the closest thing to a mental cheat code that I know.

I write this song about Bryan Caplan's My Beautiful Bubble 

https://suno.com/song/5f6d4d5d-6b5d-4b71-af7b-2cc197989172 

I wish you the best and look forward to hearing how it goes.

What is the mechanism, specifically, by which going slower will yield more "care"? What is the mechanism by which "care" will yield a better outcome? I see this model asserted pretty often, but no one ever spells out the details.

I've studied the history of technological development in some depth, and I haven't seen anything to convince me that there's a tradeoff between development speed on the one hand, and good outcomes on the other.