LessWrong 2.0 Reader

I can't remember pain, in much the same way. Perhaps extreme depression “counts as” mental pain enough to trigger this effect?

Thanks for the response.

like if you want to remember simple things, like a grocery list, you can plop groceries around a path in your house

I will certainly try this.

1. Their subjects are taught to worship them.

2. They don't do anything,so they don't do anything wrong.

For what it’s worth, I am in the second camp, and think the probability of doom is currently high, partly for the reason explained in this thread: N

Unstated assumptions: ASI will be achieved by a sudden jump, not incremental improvement. Corrigibility won't work. ASI will agentive.

There is a whole hierarchy of incentives to medical people at different levels in the system. 

At the bottom
1. Free samples
2. Free education. 
3. Cute/good looking drug reps...

The free education comes with a nice meal and convivial company. You just need to sit through the drug company propaganda, which is duly accredited as good for mandatory training hours. What happens if your prescribing fails to conform to the desired profile? You don't get invited to the next "free" training. 

At the top (influential professors):
1. Funding for studies 
2. "Speaking fees". 
3. "Consultancy fees"

As with the lucrative "speaking fees" paid to ex politicians and the highly paid and often made-up jobs provided to ex-politicians and bureaucrats and their families, everyone knows the score. If you make trouble the "speaking fees" and the like dry up. Completely by coincidence of course. 

I have begun to think that the biggest factor in a drug being approved is drug company sponsorship, and thus the potential for drug company profits. Patentability appears to be a big factor. 

See "regulatory capture". 

Can we develop a drug that makes people afraid of people who suggest making drugs to make people afraid of something?

Many monarchies survived very long (and longer then our modern Republics are around) with suggests that they manage to be coverned well enough to be politically stable over long periods of time. 

If we look at the British or Danish queen both engage in international politics and have a higher approval rating then their respective elected leaders. If they are less competent then the elected leaders why is their approval rate so high?

The writing offer sounds like exactly what i need. I'm in

[I'll write you directly; also posting here as evidence that The System Works]

This reminds me of the propensity of social scientists to drop inference when studying the entire population, claiming that confidence intervals do not make any sense when we have every single existing data point. But confidence intervals do make sense even then, as the entire observed population isn't equal to the theoretical population. The observed population does not give us exact knowledge about any properties of the data generating mechanism, except in edge cases. 

(Not that confidence intervals are very useful when looking at linear regressions with millions of data points anyway, but make sure to have your justification right.)