Sayan's Braindump

Seems like this has been done already.

https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/yXPT4nr4as7JvxLQa/classifying-specification-problems-as-variants-of-goodhart-s [AF · GW]

I wonder if there's a game theoretic and evolutionary argument that could be made here about cooperation being the sane default in the absence of other priors.

What Dharma traditions in particular so you have in mind, because I can't think of one i would describe as saying everyone had innate "moral" perfection unless you sufficiently twist around the word "moral" such that it's use is confusing at best.

I'm interested in this. The problem is that if people consider the value provided by the different currencies at all fungible, side markets will pop up that allow their exchange.

An idea I haven't thought about enough (mainly because I lack expertise) is to mark a token as Contaminated if its history indicates that it has passed through "illegal" channels, ie has benefited someone in an exchange not considered a true exchange of value, and so purists can refuse to accept those. Purist communities, if large, would allow stability of such non-contaminated tokens.

Maybe a better question to ask is "do we have utility functions that are partial orders and thus would benefit from many isolated markets?", because if so, you wouldn't have to worry about enforcing anything, many different currencies will automatically come into existence and be stable.

Of course, more generally, you wouldn't quite have complete isolation, but different valuations of goods in different currencies, without "true" fungibility. I think it is quite possibe that our preference orderings are in fact partial and the current one-currency valuation of everything might be improved.

Can you define a post-scarcity economy in terms of what you anticipate the world to look like?

• Multiple large monitors, for programming.
• Waterproof paper in the shower, for collecting thoughts and making a morning todo list
• Email filters and Priority Inbox, to prevent spurious interruptions while keeping enough trust that urgent things will generate notifications, that I don't feel compelled to check too often
• USB batteries for recharging phones - one to carry around, one at each charging spot for quick-swapping

I find having a skateboard is a compact way to shave minutes off of the sections of my commute where I would otherwise have to walk. It turns a 15 minute walk to the bus stop into a 5 minute ride, which adds up in the long run.

The brain, I guess.

What kills you doesn't make you stronger. You want to get out of your comfort zone, not out of your survival zone.

How specifically would you do better than status quo?

I could easily dismiss some charities for causes I don't care about, or where I think they do more harm than good. Now there are still many charities left whose cause I approve of, and that seems to me like they could help. How do I choose among these? They publish some reports, but are the numbers there the important ones, or just the ones that are easiest to calculate?

For example, I don't care if your "administrative overhead" is 40%, if that allows you to spend the remaining 60% ten times more effectively than a comparable charity with smaller overhead. Unfortunately, the administrative overhead will most likely be included in the report, with two decimal places; but the achieved results will be either something nebulous (e.g. "we make the world a better place" or "we help kids become smarter"), or they will describe the costs, not the outcomes (e.g. "we spent 10 millions to save the rainforest" or "we spent 5 milions to teach kids the importance of critical thinking").

Now, I don't have time and skills to become a full-time charity researcher. So if I want to donate well, I need someone who does the research for me, and whose integrity and sanity I can trust.