wheras yudkowsky called rationality as a perfect dance, where you steps land exactly right, like a marching band, or like performing a light and airy piano piece perfectly via long hours of arduous concentration to iron out all the mistakes -

and some promote a more frivolous and fun dance, playing with ideas with humor and letting your mind stretch with imagine, letting your butterflies fly -

perhaps there is something to the synthesis, to a frenetic, awkward, and janky dance. knees scraping against the world you weren't ready for. excited, ebullient, manic discovery. the crazy thoughts at 2am. the gold in the garbage. climbing trees. It is not actually more "nice" than a cool logical thought, and it is not actually more easy.

Do not be afraid of crushing your own butterflies, stronger ones will take its place!

Sometimes when one of my LW comments gets a lot of upvotes, I feel an urge that it's too high relative to how much I believe it and I need to "short" it

why should I ever write longform with the aim of getting to the top of LW, as opposed to the top of Hacker News? similar audiences, but HN is bigger.

I don't cite. I don't research.
I have nothing to say about AI.

my friends are on here ... but that's outclassed by discord and twitter.
people here speak in my local dialect ... but that trains bad habits.
it helps LW itself ... but if im going for impact surely large reach is the way to go?

I guess LW is uniquely about the meta stuff. Thoughts on how to think better. but I'm suspicious of meta.

Ways I've followed math off a cliff

1. In my first real job search, I told myself I about a month to find a job. Then, after a bit over a week I just decided to go with the best offer I had. I justified this as the solution to optimal stopping problem, to pick the best option after 1/e time has passed. The job was fine, but the reasoning was wrong - the secretary problem assumes you know no info other than which candidate is better. Instead, I should've put a price on features I wanted from a job (mentorship, ability to wear a lot of hats and learn lots of things) and judged each job within what I thought was the distribution.
   1. Notably: my next job didn't pay very well and I stayed there too long after I'd given up hope in the product. I think I was following a pattern of following a path of low resistance both for the first and second jobs.
2. I was reading up on crypto a couple years ago and saw what I thought was an amazing opportunity. It was a rebasing dao on the avalanche chain, called Wonderland. I looked into the returns, and guessed how long it would keep up, and put that probability and return rate into a Kelly calculator.
   1. Someone at a LW meetup: "hmm I don't think Kelly is the right model for this..." but I didn't listen. 
   2. I did eventually cut my losses after only losing ~$20,000, and some further reasoning that the whitepaper didn't really make sense.

I’ve been learning more from YouTube than from Lesswrong or ACX these days

Moderation is hard yo

Y'all had to read through pyramids of doom containing forum drama last week. Or maybe, like me, you found it too exhausting and tried to ignore it.

Yesterday Manifold made more than $30,000, off a single whale betting in a self-referential market designed like a dollar auction, and also designed to get a lot of traders. It's the biggest market yet, 2200 comments, mostly people chanting for their team. Incidentally parts of the site went down for a bit.

I'm tired.

I'm no longer as worried about series A. But also ... this isn't what I wanted to build. The rest of the team kinda feels this way too. So does the whale in question.

Once upon a time, someone at a lw meetup asked me, half joking, that I please never build a social media site.

Lesswrong is too long.
It's unpleasant for busy people and slow readers. Like me.

Please edit before sending. Please put the most important ideas first, so I can skim or tap out when the info gets marginal.  You may find you lose little from deleting the last few paragraphs.

Mr Beast's philanthropic business model:

1. Donate money
2. Use the spectacle to record a banger video
3. Make more money back on the views via ads and sponsors.
4. Go back to step 1
5. Exponential profit!

EA can learn from this.

• Imagine a Warm Fuzzy economy where the fuzzies themselves are sold and the profit funds the good
  • The EA castle is good actually
  • When picking between two equal goods, pick the one that's more MEMEY
  • Content is outreach. Content is income
• YouTube's feedback popup is like RLHF. Mr Beast says because of this you can't game the algo, just have to make good videos that people actually enjoy. Youtube has solved aligning human optimizers, enough that the top YouTuber got there by donating money and helping people.
• Mr Beast plans to give all his money away. He eschews luxury in favor of degenerately investing it all.
  • Unlike FTX it does good now. With his own money.
• Mr Beast is scope sensitive
• Mr Beast has an international audience.
  • circle-of-concern of his content has grown to reflect that
• The philanthropy is mostly cash transfers. In briefcases.

Isn't this effective altruism? At least with a lowercase "e"
Why isn't EA talking about this?
Should I edit up a real post on this?

I kinda feel like I literally have more subjective experience after experiencing ego death/rebirth. I suspect that humans vary quite a lot in how often they are conscious, and to what degree. And if you believe, as I do, that consciousness is ultimately algorithmic in nature (like, in the "surfing uncertainty" predictive processing view, that it is a human-modeling thing which models itself to transmit prediction-actions) it would not be crazy for it to be a kind of mental motion which sometimes we do more or less of, and which some people lack entirely.

I don't draw any moral conclusions about this because I don't ethically value people or things in proportion to how conscious they are. I love the people I love, I'm certainly happy they are alive, and I would be happier for them to be more alive, but this is not why I love them.

New startup idea: cell-based / cultured saffron. Saffron is one of the most expensive substances by mass. Most pricey substances are precious metals that are valuable for signalling value or rare elements used in industry. On the other hand saffron is bought and directly consumed by millions(?) of poor people - they just use small amounts because the spice is very strong. Unlike lab-grown diamonds, lab-grown saffron will not face less demand due to lower signalling value.
The current way saffron is cultivated is they grow these whole fields of flowers, harvest them, then just pick out the stigmata - that tiny strand is the saffron. You can't even use the whole strand if you want good quality saffron - you only keep the red part of the strand.
Vanilla, also an expensive space, gets the vast majority of its flavor from the chemical vanillin. But saffron gets it's flavor from lots of different chemicals. Artificial vanilla flavoring is very prevalent but artificial saffron flavoring is not because it's harder to get it right.

I expect that lab grown saffron would make a lot of money if you can get the cost lower than field-grown saffron. It would not be easy for existing providers to lower their prices because growing saffron is intrinsically expensive and it's already fairly priced. The demand for it is very robust, and its existing consumers are price-sensitive.

woah I didn't even know lw team was working on a "pre 2024 review" feature using prediction markets probabilities integrated into the UI. super cool!

I am a GOOD PERSON

(Not in the EA sense. Probably more closer to an egoist or objectivist or something like that. I did try to be vegan once and as a kid I used to dream of saving the world. I do try to orient my mostly fun-seeking life to produce big postive impact as a side effect, but mostly trying big hard things is cuz it makes mee feel good

Anyways this isn't about moral philosophy. It's about claiming that I'm NOT A BAD PERSON, GENERALLY. I definitely ABIDE BY BROADLY AGREED SOCIAL NORMS in the rationalist community. Well, except when I have good reason to think that the norms are wrong, but even then I usually follow society's norms unless I believe those are wrong, in which case I do what I BELIEVE IS RIGHT:

I hold these moral truths to be evident: that all people, though not created equal, deserve a baseline level of respect and agency, and that that bar should be held high, that I should largely listen to what people want, and not impose on them what they do not want, especially when they feel strongly. That I should say true things and not false things, such that truth is created in people's heads, and though allowances are made for humor and irony, that I speak and think in a way reflective of reality and live in a way true to what I believe. That I should maximize my fun, aliveness, pleasure, and all which my body and mind find meaningful, and avoid sorrow and pain except when that makes me stronger. and that I should likewise maximize the joy of those I love, for my friends and community, for their joy is part of my joy and their sorrow is part of my sorrow. and that I will behave with honor towards strangers, in hopes that they will behave with honor towards me, such that the greater society is not diminished but that these webs of trust grow stronger and uplift everyone within.

Though I may falter in being a fun person, or a nice person, I strive strongly to not falter in being a good person.

This post is brought to you by: someone speculating that I claim to be a bad person. You may very well dispute whether I live up to the moral code outlined above, or whether I live up to a your moral code or one you think is better. I encourage you to point out my mistakes. However, I will never claim to be a person who no longer abides by the part of the moral law necessary to cooperate with the rationalist community and broader society. I acknowledge that any community I am a part of has the right to remove me if they no longer believe that I will abide by their stated and unstated rules. I do not fear this happening, yet I strive to prevent it from happening, because I follow my own code. I declare this not out timid sense of danger, but out of a sense of self determination, to see if this community will allow me to grow the strengths that I share with it.

what's the deal with bird flu? do you think it's gonna blow up

EA forum has better UI than lesswrong. a bunch of little things are just subtly better. maybe I should start contributing commits hmm

The s-curve in prediction market calibrations

https://calibration.city/manifold displays an s-curve for the market calibration chart. this is for non-silly markets with >5 traders.

This is what it looks like at close:

this means the true probability is farther from 50% than the price makes it seem.

The calibration is better at 1/4 of the way to close:

you might think it's because markets closing near 20% are weird in some way (unclear resolution) but markets 3/4 of the way to close also show the s-curve. Go see for yourself.

The CSPI tournament also exhibited this s-curve. In that article it points out predictit does too!

I left a comment there on why I think this might be the case:  the AMM is inefficient, limited balances, people chasing higher investment returns elsewhere.

I'm curious what people think. And also curious if polymarket or the indian prediction markets also have a similar curve.

---

should I make a real post for this? to-do's are: look into polymarket data (surely it exists? it's blockchain) and fit a curvy formula to this.

If I got a few distinct points in reply to a comment or post, should I put my points in seperate comments or a single one?

is anyone in this community working on nanotech? with renewed interest in chip fabrication in geopolitics and investment in "deep tech" in the vc world i think now is a good time to revisit the possibility of creating micro and nano scale tools that are capable of manufacturing.

like ASML's most recent machine is very big, so will the next one have to be even bigger? how would they transport it if it doesn't fit on roads? seems like the approach of just stacking more mirrors and more parts will hit limits eventually. "Moore's Second Law" says the cost of semiconductor production increases exponentially. perhaps making machines radically smaller, manufacturing nano things using many micro scales machines working in parallel, could be a way to reign in costs and shorten iteration cycles.

there's a two papers I found about the concept of a "fab on a chip" - they seem promising, but mostly exploratory. they did succeed in using microelectromechanics (MEMS) and tweezers to create a tiny vapor deposition tool i believe.

obviously the holy grail would be a tiny fab that could create another version of itself as well as other useful things (chips, solar panels). then you can do the whole industrial revolution recursion thing where you forge better tongs to forge better. I think this vision is lost on people that do nanoscale R&D now - academics and people working long hours in cleanrooms running expensive tests on big expensive machines.

anyways, I've only been looking into this for a short while

I see smart ppl often try to abstract, generalize, mathify, in arguments that are actually emotion/vibes issues. I do this too.
The neurotypical finds this MEAN. but the real problem is that the math is wrong

LW posts about software tools are all yay open source, open data, decentralization, and user sovereignty! I kinda agree ... except for the last part. Settings are bad. If users can finely configure everything then they will be confused and lost.

The good kind of user sovereignty comes from simple tools that can be used to solve many problems.

despite the challenge, I still think being a founder or early employee is incredibly awesome

coding, product, design, marketing, really all kinds of building for a user - is the ultimate test.
it's empirical, challenging, uncertain, tactical, and very real.

if you succeeds, you make something self-sustaining that continues to do good.
if you fail, it will do bad. and/or die.

and no one will save you.

why do people equate conciousness & sentience with moral patienthood? your close circle is not more conscious or more sentient than people far away, but you care about your close circle more anyways. unless you are SBF or ghandi

lactose intolerence is treatable with probiotics, and has been since 1950. they cost $40 on amazon.
works for me at least.

The latest ACX book review of The Educated Mind is really good! (as a new lens on rationality. am more agnostic about childhood educational results though at least it sounds fun.)

- Somantic understanding is logan's Naturalism [? · GW]. It's your base layer that all kids start with, and you don't ignore it as you level up.
- incorporating heroes into science education is similar to an idea from Jacob Crawford that kids should be taught a history of science & industry - like what does it feel like to be the Wright brothers, tinkering on your device with no funding, defying all the academics that are saying that heavier than air flight is impossible. How did they decide on what materials, designs? If you are a kid that just wants to build model rockets you'd prefer to skip straight to the code of the universe, but I think most kids would be engaged by this.  A few kids will want to know the aerodynamics equations, but a lot more kids would want to know the human story.
- the postrats are Ironic, synthesizing the rationalist Philosophy with stories, jokes, ideals, gossip, "vibes".

fun, joy, imagination are important for lifelong learning and competence!

anyways go read the actual review

LWers worry too much, in general. Not talking about AI.

I mean ppl be like Yud's hat is bad for the movement. Don't name the house after a fictional bad place. Don't do that science cuz it makes the republicans stronger. Oh no nukes it's time to move to New Zealand.

Remember when Thiel was like "rationalists went from futurists to luddites in 20 years" well he was right.

Moderating lightly is harder than moderating harshly.
Walled gardens are easier than creating a community garden of many mini walled gardens.
Platforms are harder than blogs.
Free speech is more expensive than unfree speech.
Creating a space for talk is harder than talking.

The law in the code and the design is more robust than the law in the user's head
yet the former is much harder to build.

People should be more curious about what the heck is going on with trans people on a physical, biological, level. I think this is could be a good citizen science research project for y'all since gender dysphoria afflicts a lot of us in this community, and knowledge leads to better detection and treatment. Many trans-women especially do a ton of research/experimentation themselves. Or so I hear. I actually haven't received any mad-science google docs of research from any trans person yet. What's up with that? Who's working on this?

Where I'd start maybe:

- https://transfemscience.org/
- Dr Powers's powerpoint deck
- r/diyhrt

My open questions

- trans is comorbid with adhd, autism, and connective tissue disorders.
  - what's the playbook for connective tissue disorders? Should more people try supplementing collagen? it's cheap!
- trans is slightly genetic. which genes?
- do any non-human animals have similar conditions?
- is the late-transitioning + female-attraction / early-transitioning + male-attraction typology for trans-women real? like are these traits actually bimodal or is it  more linear and correlated?
- best ways to maintain sexual desire and performance on feminizing hrt.

but probably best research directions are ones I haven't thought of. there's so much we don't know (or or maybe just so much I don't know) just gotta keep pulling threads until we get answers!

anyone else super hyped about superconductors?
gdi i gotta focus on real work. in the morning

There's something meditative about reductionism.
Unlike mindfulness you go beyond sensation to the next baser, realer level of the physics
You don't, actually. It's all in your head. It's less in your eyes and fingertips. In some ways, it's easier to be wrong.

Nonetheless cuts through a lot of noise - concepts, ideologies, social influences.

In 2022 we tried to buy policy. We failed.
This time let's get the buy-in of the polis instead.

let people into your heart, let words hurt you. own the hurt, cry if you must. own the unsavory thoughts. own the ugly feelings. fix the actually bad. uplift the actually good. 

emerge a bit stronger, able to handle one thing more.

my approach to AI safety is world domination