LessWrong 2.0 Reader

The visual system wouldn't detect the abstract concept of height, and that would be the brain's job to figure out by being primed on when the thing triggers and what else correlates with it.

I imagine the visual system would detect visual depth from binocular vision. Babies learn this in the first few months. It is one of the things that cause them distress when it gets activated in the brain. I don't know the research papers, but these might be starting pointers:

https://www.beltz.de/fileadmin/beltz/leseproben/978-3-621-27926-0.pdf (picture 2.2, German)   

https://www.thewonderweeks.com/babys-mental-leaps-first-year/ (week 26)

So visual depth you have without much learning - or with other priming steps ahead of that; I understand these are well researched). What is left is the vertical component, and I guess that it comes from the vestibular system. Looking down + visual depths = height trigger. 

It is funny that you mention the need to grasp something, and maybe that is the hard-wired cue: Close the hand. 

Yeah, I'd be pretty surprised if there's any demographic slice who actually demand "phase" when "faze" is correct. The correlation between "bothers to have an opinion on correctness of others' writing" and "knows what the correct answer actually is" seems too high.

It's a little unfortunate, because I do think there might be an important point here, but the OP's choice of example makes it harder for me to see. (Of course, it's possible I'm just wrong, which would be interesting in its own right.)

Hey, I want to come as well. Perhaps I'll form a second group with @smallsilo and @khushjammu at the same time and place? 

It is great for holding discussions when there are more people involved in a decision. 

As for the calculation, can you help me spot the mistake? I can't find it!

$(0.000004\ast 619.994)+(0.999996\ast 600)=.002479976+599.976=599.98$

Few quick examples:

Why is it “out of curiosity” and not “out of the curiosity”?

Why “see in context” and not “see in the context”? (See the button below this form)

Why “hide previous comment” and not “hide the previous comment”? (See the button above this form)

I read studies (seriously, it's super time-consuming!) and consider the best evidence available. Because of the lag introduced by studies, sometimes hearsay is enough to put in a guesstimate. It's interesting to play around with the values, however, and see what magnitude change in a single one would lead to a change in the ultimate decision. Sometimes you find out it doesn't make a difference, and more precise information would be irrelevant, so you can move on.

It's hard, and I find that I need to update my models every now and then. Practice makes better.

the revelations of this revolution might be terrifying

You seem to be implying that they will be terrifying for the exact opposite reasons why the previous epistemic revolution's philosophical implications were. Only this time, even more so; imagine an epistemically-induced emotional state where your only option is to force feed yourself some Schopenhauer to help mellow you out until you can acclimate to what you just learned. And it almost wasn't enough. 

I am fully committed to keep digging into this mine of Khazad-dum

If an infohazard warning doesn't at least give you second thoughts, then you haven't actually internalized the concept. Lesser infohazards have the additional danger of jading you to future infohazards that will be infinitely more powerful. The opportunity to practice acute epistemic abstinence is quickly running out.

Imagine TAI is magically not coming ... Of course, in the real world, TAI is coming.

Technological Singularity might be the least interesting one of the coming conjunction of singularities. 

I wonder when those of us who are lucky enough never to have gotten Covid (as far as we know) are going to be in such a vanishingly small minority once it's endemic...that any collective political will to keep us from getting it is going to shrivel away? ("The rest of us got it, we lived, and we don't care if you get it because we all have hybrid immunity, suck it up")

Is that the reality we're headed for?

beneficial effective plans become sparse faster than the harmful effective plans

The constants are more important than the trend here, whether a good plan for a pivotal act that sorts out AI risk in the medium term can be found. Discrimination of good plans only has to be improved enough to overcome the threshold of what's needed to search plans effective enough to solve that problem.