LessWrong 2.0 Reader

That is a complicated subject which would require a dedicated post to explore in detail.

I accept that it successfully builds muscle. What I'm asking is why having muscle is something you see as really valuable.

maybe I'll make a part 2 in the future

Please do. Although "the standard advice does not work" is a useful information, telling us what worked would be even more useful. Removing one option still leaves a huge search space.

I agree that various forms of escape are less about the attractivity of the addictions (although yes, they do become more efficient, and after some time they form a habit) and more about unattractivity of the life you are trying to escape. Back when we did not have internet with all the dark patterns, some kids spent entire day reading books. Blocking one escape route may just drive you to find another.

I think it is easier to feel your feelings when you also have someone you can discuss them with openly, at least once in a while. Therapy can work, good friends too. It probably helps to get an outside perspective on where you need to adapt to your environment (learn to suffer the frustrations of everyday life), and where you need to actively change the environment (do some work to fix the things that frustrate you). As in the classic "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference", the therapist or the friend can provide the wisdom, so you can focus on the remaining two parts.

Obviously, this is a theoretical set up! Bob can be replaced by an organization, for instance.

Research into exercise physiology plus personal experience lifting weights.

You could try to start your own ring, there's templates for it on that page, or I could put you down to invite in for the second meeting. (provided we're not full up then)

Another way to think about books is as training data for a deep learning network. When you feed a thousand photos of airplanes into a neural network your goal isn't to get the network to remember the specific airplanes in your training dataset. If you did you'd probably have made the mistake of overtraining it. Rather, your goal is to teach the network to recognize the abstract concept of an airplane. Books could be similar. Their purpose could be to feed many variations of the a single concept through a human brain so it can absorb the pattern.

We have a chemical weapons ban because chemical weapons are obsolete. We have a Biological Weapons Convention too, but I think that's because today's biological weapons are like chemical weapons and future biological weapons favor non-state actors [LW · GW]. Russia, China and the USA haven't even joined the Ottawa Treaty which bans landmines. We don't have a "multilateral, international governmental/legal agreement to halt" the production of nuclear weapons, cyberweapons or autonomous weapons. Nuclear weapons are easier to ban than AI because nuclear weapons require uranium, centrifuges and missiles whereas AI requires an AWS account. The risk of nuclear weapons are well-understood. The risks of AI are not.

If the short timeline theories are correct then the only thing which could slow the development of AI is to break civilization so hard technological progress grinds to a halt. If the short timeline theories are correct then nuclear war could slow down the advent of AI by mere decades.

Thanks, this is really helpful! I'll ask more questions if I think of them.

I think this applies to every wiki ever, and also to this very site. There are probably a lot of others that I'm missing but this is a start.