Open thread, June 5 - June 11, 2017

Update on LW2.0: this week, Oliver and I are in Seattle at a CFAR workshop, so only Harmanas is working. This week is some final feature work and bugfixing, as well as user interviews. Next week we plan to start the closed beta. Rather than running for a predefined length of time, the plan is to run until we're happy with the user experience, and then do an open beta, which will probably have a defined length.

I just realized that Paul Graham's "Make something people want" can be flipped into "Make people want something", which is a better description of many businesses that make money despite creating zero or negative value to society. For example, you can sell something for $1 that gives people $2 in immediate value but also sneakily gives them $3 worth of desire to buy otherwise useless stuff from you. Or you can advertise to create desire where it didn't exist, leading to negative value for everyone who saw your ad but didn't buy your product. Or you can give away your product for free and then charge for the antidote.

This seems like a big loophole in markets which has no market-based solution. It also helps explain why rich people and countries aren't proportionally happier than poor ones, if they are mostly paying to make manufactured pains go away. People's criteria for happiness are too easily raised by what they buy, see or think, but hardly anyone pushes back against that.

My previous thoughts on this topic: 1, 2, 3, 4. I feel like the ideas are coming together into something bigger, but can't put a finger on it yet.

If you use online dating, I just launched a site called WittyThumbs to analyze and improve your conversations, in order to get better dates. Let me know what you think!

I am reading a book Bring Up Genius (mentioned at SSC recently), and I am confused. I am still in the first part of the book, but seems like the author is alternating between "every healthy child can become a genius if educated properly" and describing reseach and observation of high-IQ children, without ever acknowledging the difference between "every" and "high-IQ". I am trying to write a summary for LW, but I fail to make a coherent explanation.

When I try hard, I could make a consistent hypothesis like: the behavior of high-IQ children gives us hints on the direction we should try to move all children; and the spectacular failures of educational system with regards to high-IQ children are an evidence that the education may be failing the average children in a similar way, only less visibly -- but here I suspect I am simply making up my own stuff instead of explaining the author's view. I suspect the author may have believed that IQ is largely determined by nurture, but he doesn't directly say or deny this; it's just a position I can imagine that would make the rest of the book sound coherently. (But it is obviously wrong.) A less charitable explanation is that the author simply didn't see high IQ as a privilege, because within his family it was a norm. But that would make his lessons less universal. Although still useful for e.g. the folks at Less Wrong.

Anyone else reading the book? Unfortunately, I can't find an English version; I am currently reading Eduku Geniulon in Esperanto, uhm, here.

Heh.

We like to think that we’re hyper-rational, but when we have to choose a technology, we end up in a kind of frenzy — bouncing from one person’s ... comment to another’s blog post until, in a stupor, we float helplessly toward the brightest light and lay prone in front of it, oblivious to what we were looking for in the first place.

(source)

I've moved a post about an ongoing legal issue to its author's drafts. They can return it to public discussion when the trial concludes.

Thoughts on Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny"?

Wanted to share this concept of a metaquiz with this community.

The primary goal is that participants do poorly on the “other side” section. Underestimating the other side’s knowledge raises the questions “maybe they’re not all stupid?”. Incorrectly stereotyping their beliefs raises the question “maybe they’re not all evil?”. As a secondary goal, if participants do poorly on the quiz itself, they may learn something about climate change. Any feedback on this idea? Links to related concepts?

Here’s an example metaquiz on climate change: https://goo.gl/forms/ZqNQs3y1L1kpMPtF2

I am considering ending my life because of fears related to AI risk. I am posting here because I want other people to review my reasoning process and help ensure I make the right decision.

First, this is not an emergency situation. I do not currently intend to commit suicide, nor have I made any plan for doing so. No matter what I decide, I will wait several years to be sure of my preference. I am not at all an impulsive person, and I know that ASI is very unlikely to be invented in less than a few decades.

I am not sure if it would be appropriate to talk about this here, and I prefer private conversations anyway, so the purpose of this post is to find people willing to talk with me through PMs. To summarize my issue: I only desire to live because of the possibility of utopia, but I have recently realized that ASI-provided immortal life is significantly likely to be bad rather than good. If you are very familiar with the topics of AI risk, mind uploading, and utilitarianism, please consider sending me a message with a brief explanation of your beliefs and your intent to help me. I especially urge you to contact me if you already have similar fears of AI, even if you are a lurker and are not sure if you should. Because of the sensitive nature of this topic, I may not respond unless you provide an appropriately genuine introduction and/or have a legitimate posting history.

Please do not reply/PM if you just want to tell me to call a suicide prevention hotline, tell me the standard objections to suicide, or give me depression treatment advice. I might take a long time to respond to PMs, especially if several people end up contacting me. If nobody contacts me I will repost this in the next discussion thread or on another website.

Edit: The word limit on LW messages is problematic, so please email me at sad_dolphin@protonmail.com instead.

Yvain once wrote a cute (but, to my mind, rather pointless) post about "rational poetry" or some such; but do rationalists even like poetry as a form of expression? Empirically?

[pollid:1199]

If you want to say something in more detail, please leave a comment.

Due to Life, I now have a 2x3-foot corkboard just above the foot of my bed. What should I pin to it?

Got another customer who wanted a book for a childof less than 1 y.o. Are there any simple things I can tell them besides "their vision is just developing, come back later"? Because I have the feeling this one didn't quite believe me.

Has anyone here read Industrial Society And Its Future (the Unabomber manifesto), and if so, what are your thoughts on it?

Here is a new problem:

https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/create-2314/

MakeIntVar A
Inc A
Shl A, 5
Inc A
Inc A
A=A*A
Inc A
Shl A, 1

int a    // a = 0
int b    // b = 0
int c    // c = 0
a++    // a = 1
a++    // a = 2
b = a * a    // b = 4
c = a << a    // c = 8
c = b * c    // c = 32
c = c + a    // c = 34
b = b >> a     // b = 1
c << b    // c = 1156
c++    // c = 1157
c = c * a    // c = 2314

1 int a        //a=0
  2 int b      //b=0
  3 inc a      //a=1
  4 inc a     //a=2
  5 shl a,a    //a=8
  6 b=a*a    //b=64
  7 inc a         //a=9
  8 b=b+b      //b=128
  9 b=b+a      //b=137
10 a=a*b    //a=1233
11 a=a*b    //a=168921
12 inc a     //a=168922
13 a=b*a   //a=23142314

MakeIntVar A
Inc A
Inc A
A=A+A
A=A*A
Inc A
A=A+A
A=A*A
Inc A
A=A+A

int a
a++
a++  // a = 2
a << a // a = 8
a << a // a = 2048
a << a // a = large number