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comment by Davis_Kingsley · 2022-09-02T17:57:17.667Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

You say :

Whenever someone in your life asks you half-jokingly asks "how can I become smart like you?", you no longer need to answer "Have you ever read Harry Potter?" because Projectlawful.com does not have Harry Potter in it.

On the contrary, this is a work I strongly wouldn't recommend, and especially not to newcomers. It's highly sexualized, contains descriptions of awful torture and various other forms of extreme misconduct, has a bunch of weird fetish material that more or less immediately disqualifies it as an intro rec in my opinion (far more so than Harry Potter stuff), is very difficult to get into thanks to the formatting, and also just... generally isn't all that good? I like some of Eliezer's writing, but I think this is very much not him at his finest.

Further, I very seriously doubt the idea that reading about a fictional government ruled by hell is meaningfully providing any real policy experience at all.
 

Replies from: SaidAchmiz
comment by Said Achmiz (SaidAchmiz) · 2022-09-02T18:32:48.032Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I like some of Eliezer’s writing, but I think this is very much not him at his finest.

I like most of Eliezer’s writing, and I agree with this sentiment.

comment by Dennis Towne (dennis-towne) · 2022-09-01T14:41:55.648Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

The big problem here is that this is a glowfic, and I simply cannot bring myself to read it in that format.

I understand that the glowfic format might be better for authors / creators, but it sucks for me, and (I posit) a lot of other people.

If they really want to make it HPMOR2, it's going to have to be cleaned up and presented in a different, more readable format. The standard book/chapter format was developed for a reason.

comment by [deleted] · 2022-09-01T23:19:28.473Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Well that sounds cool!

clicks link

Oh... it's in glowfic format.

comment by Kenny · 2022-09-24T18:17:11.256Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

After a long day of work, you can kick back with projectlawful for a few hours, and then go to sleep. You can read projectlawful on the weekend. You can read projectlawful on vacation. It's rest and rejuvenation and recharging ...

I did NOT find this to be the case – I found it way TOO engaging and that it therefore, e.g. actively disrupted my ability to go to sleep. I also found the story to be extremely upsetting, i.e. NOT restful or rejuvenating. As-of now, it's extremely bleak.

I very much DO like it and I am perfectly happy that it's a glowfic. (There are some mildly confusing parts, probably because of it being a glowifc, but nothing too bad.)

This is also the first story for which I viscerally felt the utility of providing a 'trigger warning'.

I don't know what in particular makes you think the story is useful as "policy experience". I'm skeptical that much 'real world' policy in any way resembles the story.

comment by Mitchell_Porter · 2022-09-02T16:06:40.796Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I thought it was an allegory for having to deal with evil superintelligences. I suppose, like The Matrix, you can interpret that as politics or as technology or even as theology... Anyway, if it does contain valuable lessons, someone should try summarizing them, for people who could benefit, but aren't going to plough through an isekai fiction.

Replies from: Mitchell_Porter
comment by Mitchell_Porter · 2022-09-27T11:39:56.859Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I said someone should extract the valuable lessons. David Udell posted Dath Ilan's safety principles for a tool AI [LW · GW], that was interesting. 

I have slightly refined my understanding of the work. First, I didn't realize it was set in an existing fictional universe, an RPG called Pathfinder. Second, I think Eliezer wrote (tweeted?) that it's meant to be a work on "hard-core decision theory". So it's clearly HPMOR 2.0. The result is as if Bourbaki decided to write a play with Samuel Beckett - it's not something I would read for pleasure, but it's a work I might try to understand, because I'm interested in the author's oeuvre and intellectual trajectory, and because I might need to navigate it at some point. 

Dath Ilan is apparently a kind of high-IQ libertopia. Again, it's an interesting concept, but I have to say that a society based on economic calculation through and through, seems to be one in which extremely selfish personalities set the tone for everything. Not everything called selfish is bad - I am especially thinking of transhumanism; humanity's relative indifference to the prospect of radical life extension might be its most foolishly self-denying trait - but a culture in which exploitative acts are restrained only by rational self-interest is surely less than optimal. (But perhaps that's not the entirety of how Dath Ilan works.) 

comment by NicholasKross · 2022-08-31T00:28:36.987Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm already loving the story!

One quick question: what kinds of resources might be out there that have more complete/comprehensive basics to becoming a mad investor? I mean there's good reasons you can't just ask "Where are the galaxy-brained secret quant formulas written down?", and I have a lot of the mental models already, but I don't think a normal economics textbook (or even much of the existing Sequences) set out anything like "here's a comprehensive list of the basic mental models to be using in the crossover between rationality and economics".

A few actions immediately suggest themselves:

A. Crack open one of the few "books/webpages that are just lists of generally-useful mental models [? · GW]" that exist.

B. Add some recommended particular textbook or website to my reading list, and then never get around to reading it.

C. Wait for adaptation into more Sequences [LW · GW].

D. Continue reading between all of this.

Right now I'm just doing (D) and considering doing (A).

EDIT: The closest thing to a "list of things that Keltham can pull out at anytime", might be this.

comment by NicholasKross · 2022-08-30T23:55:40.215Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Wait this sounds unusually well-targeted to me. (I say this after you personally recommended it to me earlier; this post is tipping me much closer to "read it", when I get the time...)