Open & Welcome Thread - December 2020

My first first-author publication of my postdoc (long delayed by health problems) is now up on a preprint server, with several more incoming in the next few months.

The central thrust of this paper (heavy on theory, light on experiments) ultimately derives from an idea I actually had while talking in the comments here, but fleshed out and made rigorous and all the interesting implications for early evolution of life on Earth I would not have thought of at first worked through.

Hesitant to tie together my professional identity and this account...

Habryka and I were invited on the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast, and the episode went up today. You might think we talk primarily about the new books, but we spend the first hour just talking about two sequences posts: Einstein's Arrogance, and Occam's Razor, before about 60 mins on the books and LW 2.0. It was very chill and I had a good time. Let me know your thoughts if you listen to it :)

I'm taking a vacation from LessWrong work at the end of the work day today, to take some rest [LW · GW]. I stuck it out for much of the book, and we ended the year with 2,271 sets sold, which is good. Jacob and Habryka are leading the charge on that for now.

So for the next few weeks, by-default I will not be responsive via PM or via other such channels for admin-related responsibilities. Have a good annual review, write lots of reviews, and vote! 

Please contact someone else on the LW team if you have a question or a request. (I'll probably write another update when I'm back.)

"Louis CK says that he doesn't use drugs. He never uses drugs. This is so that when he does use drugs, it's amazing."

"This summarizes LessWrong's approach to color."

This crazy paper says that if you're in your 20s, and in a high income country, then having comorbidities changes the Covid IFR by 200x. Two hundred times! It basically means I shouldn't care about getting covid if I have no comorbidities.

Can someone tell me why this paper is insane? Surely we'd notice if almost nobody who died of covid in their 20s had zero comorbidities, right? If not, I'm giving up on all this lockdown stuff. But I am mostly expecting it to be mistaken.

Relevant table:

I guess I'll introduce myself? Ordinary story, came from HPMOR, blah blah blah. I was active on 1.0 for awhile when I was in college, but changed usernames when I decided I didn't want my real name to be googleable. I doubt anyone really remembers it anyway. Quit going there when 1.0 became not so much of a thing anymore. Hung out with some of the people on rationalist Tumblr for awhile before that stopped being so much of a thing too. If you recognize the name, it's probably from there. Got on Twitter recently, but that's more about college football than it is the rationalist community. Was vaguely aware of the LW 2.0 effort and poked around a little when it was launched, but never stuck. I think I saw something about the books on Twitter and thought that was cool. Came back this week and was surprised at how active it was. So if this is to say anything it's to say good job to the team on growing the site back up.

On a side note, I used to live in rural Louisiana, which pretty obviously didn't have a rationalist community (Though I did meet a guy who lived a couple hours away once) and now I'm in Richmond, VA. Most surveys I've seen still show me as the only one here, (There's obviously the DC group, but nothing my way.) but if any of you are ever around after this whole "global pandemic" thing is over, hit me up.

Did the LessWrong team consider adding a dark mode option to the site? If so, I wonder what the considerations were. Judging by the fact I use dark mode on every service I use which has it, if LessWrong had dark mode i would probably use it.

I had a distinctly probabilistic experience at a doctor's office today.

Condition X has a "gold standard" way to diagnose it (my doctor described it as being almost 100%) but is very expensive (time, effort, and money). It is also not feasible while everyone is staying at home.

However, at the end of the visit, I had given him enough information to make a "clinical" diagnoses (from a statistically & clinically validated questionnaire, descriptions of alternative explanations that have been ruled out, etc) and start treating it.

In hindsight, I can see the probability mass clumping together over the years until there is a pile on X.

I'm thankful to Less Wrong-style thinking for making me comfortable enough with uncertainty to accept this outcome . The doctor may not have pulled out a calculator but this feels like "shut up and multiply" & "make beliefs pay rent".

Feature request: the possibility to order search results by date instead of the magic algorithm. For example, I had trouble finding the Embedded Predictions [LW · GW] post because searching for predictions gave me more popular results about predictions from years ago. I had to remember one of the author's name to finally find it.

Hello. I'm new, and as always, faced with the mild terror of admitting that I exist to people who have never previously met me. "You exist? How dare you!"

I've lurked on LW for a while, binge-reading tons of posts and all the comments, and every time promptly forgetting everything I just read and hoping that my subconscious got the gist (which is pretty much how I learn - terribly inefficient, but akrasia, alas, gets in the way of better forms of self-education, and thus I have likely wasted many years in inefficient learning methods).

I only just decided to join because I realized that this is the only place I've yet found where I am likely to be able to engage regularly in conversation that I actually find stimulating, thought-provoking, and personal-growth-catalyzing. (I used to think Reddit was that, until I became aware of the seething, stagnant pool of motivated reasoning and status-mongering which lay beneath the average post - as well as the annoying focus on humor to the extent of all else.)

As for who I am: I have an unusual background and have internalized a schema of "Talking about myself is narcissistic and bad" alongside another schema of "I must be absolutely honest and transparent about everything all the time" constantly warring with one another, so I have trouble determining exactly how much to say here. What this implies is that I will probably say far too much, as I usually do, because there's just so much to say.

Starting point for self-divulging: My body is 23 years old. I was homeschooled (I've never set foot in a public school - nor have I gone to college, for various reasons) and raised by probably-narcissistic parents, experienced a lot of emotional abuse, and was (and still am) profoundly isolated both physically and socially (I didn't have friends in person until I was 20 or 21) - which traumas I have since detached from so completely that I can introduce myself by talking about it without feeling any discomfort - though I may be imposing discomfort on you by mentioning it - and if so I hope you can forgive me, but it just seems like these facts automatically give me a different perspective than most people and it's necessary to point them out.

The result of all this, together with my inquisitive nature, led me to emotional problems in my early teen years which culminated in an existential crisis and a search for spiritual meaning. I learned about many religions, felt bits and pieces of personally relevant meaning in each, but was unsatisfied with them, so I ended up following my own intuition and interpreting everything - dreams, fiction, random events, mystical experiences (of a sort), etc - as omens and portents leading me towards the truth. My beliefs wildly shifted at this time in a typical New Agey manner, but my personality and isolation etc led them to be extremely idiosyncratic - I don't think I've ever seen anyone else with particularly similar experiences or beliefs to my own from that time.

This process of non-hallucinatory revelation (which can best be described as like the feeling of writing poetry, but with sufficient dissociation between the reading-part and the writing-part as to seem like a communion with external beings - sometimes including emotional experiences of transcendence or vast meaning - I am often frustrated when I talk to people who claim to have never had the experience of deep reverence or spiritual awe, because I get it just listening to music - my god-spot is hyperactive) illuminates that I was likely profoundly schizotypal at this time, and indeed may still be in a much more limited way - but it eventually culminated in clarification as my rational instincts caught up with me and disowned the supernatural.

I translated what I had found into purely physicalist language, but the essence remains, and it began to seem to me that I had become the prophet of a new, somewhat rational, scientifically valid religion, which I called the Great Dream. I made a vow to serve it as its prophet for the rest of my life, but I was unfortunately too immature and messed up in various ways to be able to actually do that in any efficient manner up to now. I have intended to "write the damn book" detailing all of it for 9 years now and never yet managed it, because I can't get my thoughts in order and I have extreme akrasia problems. (I have been diagnosed with ADHD.)

The best way to sum up the Great Dream is "The gods does not exist, therefore we shall have to create them" (to paraphrase Voltaire) - it is essentially singularitarianism, but from an idiosyncratic, highly Wicca-and-Neoplatonism-influenced perspective. My goal is to create a "voluntary hive mind" of humans, weak AIs, and eventually other organisms, to become a world-optimizing singleton, which I call Anima (the Artificial Neural Interface Module Aggregate, because I adore acronyms) - as I think this is the safest route to the development of human-aligned superintelligence and that natural history (the many coalescences that have occurred in evolution - eukaryotes, multicellularity, sociality, etc.) provides a strong precedent for the potential of this method. (There are MANY other reasons but that's a whole post by itself.)

I have found that my views otherwise have a lot in common with those of David Pearce, though I am skeptical of hedonism as the be all end all of ethics - my ontology includes a notion of "True Self" and the maximization of Self-realization for all beings as the main ethical prerogative. I am aware of the arguments against any notion of a unified self, and indeed I am probably on the dissociative spectrum and directly experience a certain plurality of mind and find the multi-agent model quite intuitive - but this is not the place to go into how all that fits together, as I've gone on too long already. (And most of the Great Dream has still not been mentioned, but I need to gauge how open anyone would be to hearing about it before I go any further.)

Is there any practical reason why nobody is pursuing wireheading in humans, at least to a limited degree? (I mean actual intracranial stimulation, not novel drugs etc.). As far as I know, there were some experiments with rats in the 60s & 70s, but I haven't heard of recent research in e.g. macaques.

I know that wireheading isn't something most people seek, but

1. It seems way easier than many other things (we already did it in rats! how hard can it be!)
2. The reports I've read (involving human subjects whose brains were stimulated during operations) indicate that intracranial stimulation has both no tolerance development and feels really really nice. Surely, there could be ways of creating functional humans with long-term intracranial stimulation!

I'm sort of confused why not more people have pursued this, although I have to admit I haven't researched this very much. Maybe it's a harder technical problem than I am thinking.

Hi!

I am a Mathematics university student from Europe. I don't comment often, and English isn't my native language, sorry for any mistakes in my tone or my language. I'm reading this site since March, but I heard about this site a long time ago.

I was always interested in computers and AI, so I found LW and Miri in 2015. But I didn't stay at that time. I think my entry point was when someone (around 2018 maybe?) recommended Unsong on reddit because it was weird and fun. I read a lot of stories on the rational fiction subreddit. (Somehow, I did not read HPMoR. Yet.) This March, there was a national lockdown, I got bored, so I looked up again SSC and this site. Since then, I read a lot of quality essays, for which I'm thankful.

During this winter, I try to participate more in online communities. I am interested in any topic, and I know a lot about mathematics and computers, so I might write something adjacent to these subjects.

Best,

CoafOS

I believe that many people will take COVID to their relatives during Christmas and the New Year, and I'm seriously thinking about starting some campaign to make people aware that they should at least this time consider wearing a mask for the next weeks and also stop socializing without a mask during this period in order to protect their relatives during the traditional holidays. I started developing a mobile app today to be released by December 12 and another (also related to COVID) to be released by December 20, I don't know what impact this will have on people's decisions, but I'm already leaving here publicly registered so that it works as a personal incentive not to pay attention to anything else until the two apps are released.
PM me if you want to join development, I'm using KivyMD to develop the apps. The first app lets you easily record your last social gatherings, saying how many people (with and without masks) were present, when it happened, the duration (short or long), and if were indoors or outdoors. Then it says how risky is going to see your relatives on Christmas or in any other date and what you should do to mitigate the risks. There are also other things, but this is the main idea. The second one is a COVID game, aiming to influence social behavior and public discourse during pandemic, details later.

Merry Christmas! 

Hope you are all having a good day, even if this year makes lots of usual holiday celebrations a bit harder.

An analogy that I use for measured IQ is that it relates to intelligence similarly to how placement in a badminton tournament relates to physical fitness.

I think this has been pretty effective for me. I think the overall analogy between intelligence and physical fitness has been developed well in places so I don't care to rehash it, but I'm not sure if I've seen the framing of IQ as a very specific (and not very prestigious, maybe somewhat pretentious) sport, which I think encapsulates the metaphor well.

Are there simple walkthrough references for beginning investing?

I have failed to take sensible actions a few times with my savings because I'm stuck on stages like, how do I transfer money between my bank account and investment account, or how can I be confident that the investment I'm making is the investment I think I'm making. These are things that could probably be resolved in ten minutes with someone experienced.

Maybe I should just consult a financial advisor? In which case my question becomes how do I identify a good one/a reasonable fee/which subreddit should I look at for this first five minutes kind of advice?

Has anybody rat-adjacent written about Timnit Gebru leaving Google?

I'm curious (1) whether and how much people thought her work was related to long term alignment, (2) what indirect factors were involved in her termination, such as would her paper make GOOG drop, and (3) what the decision making and especially Jeff Dean's public response says about people's faith in Google RMI and the DeepMind ethics board.

I'd like to point people to this contest [LW · GW], which offers some prizes for forecasting research. It's closing  on January the 1st, and hasn't gotten any submissions yet (though some people have committed to doing so.)

is there a way to see all the posts that were ever nominated to a review? should there be a tag for that, perhaps?

Are there plans to import the Arbital content into LW? After the tag system & wiki, that seems like one possible next step. I continue to sometimes reference Arbital content, e. g. https://arbital.com/p/dwim/ just yesterday.

Does c3.ai believe in the scaling hypothesis? If gwern is right, this could be the largest factor in their success.

[ETA: posted a Question [LW · GW] instead]

Question: What's the difference, conceptually, between each of the following if any?

"You're only enjoying that food because you believe it's organic"

"You're only enjoying that movie scene because you know what happened before it"

"You're only enjoying that wine because of what it signals"

"You only care about your son because of how it makes you feel [LW · GW]"

"You only had a moving experience because of the alcohol and hormones in your bloodstream"

"You only moved your hand because you moved your fingers [LW · GW]"

"You're only showing courage because you've convinced yourself you'll scare away your opponent"

For example:

• Do some of these point legitimately or illegitimately at self-deception [LW · GW]?
• Are some of these a confusion of levels [LW · GW] and others less so?
• Are some of these instances of working wishful thinking [LW · GW]?
• Are some of these better seen as actions rather than rationalizations?

 THIS [LW(p) · GW(p)] is still true: https://www.lesswrong.com/allPosts?filter=curated&view=new [? · GW] looks really weird (which you get from googling for curated posts) because the shortform posts are not filtered out.

Since the implementation and adoption of shortform, has Open Thread content decreased?

Mods, if you want to make this post frontpage, stickied, etc., feel free to do so.

Consider a fully deterministic conscious simulation of a person. There are two possible futures, one where that simulation is run once, and another where the simulation is run twice simultaneously in lockstep, with the exact same parameterization and environment. Do these worlds have different moral values?

I ask because...