Stop Using LessWrong: A Practical Interpretation of the 2012 Survey Results

Look, while nothing you're saying here is particularly objectionable in my opinion (not that I agree, it's just that the disagreement is not violent), I've just gone over your comment history and they were all like "I don't believe I've gained any benefit from reading this post", "I don't think there's much worth in discussing this", "I'm not very convinced by the arguments made in this post" etc. It goes like this for about half a year.

Which gets me thinking, okay, so you didn't like LessWrong from the very beginning -- but then why spend time on showing this to everybody? It doesn't make sense to make an account just to periodically express your dissatisfaction with the content posted -- I mean, when I believe a website to be boring and useless, I prefer not to bother with it and click the red X instead. Do you do this for every other site you stumble upon and get to dislike? Because that would be quite a lot of time wasted on places that just aren't worth it.

I have seen insufficient evidence for the value of using this site to continue doing so.

Bye!

There are probably several things where I would broadly agree with you, however your post would be much better without the condescending tone. And perhaps without all the non sequiturs:

If the rest of the world is underconfident about these ideas, then these investments would surely have an enormous expected rate of return.

Why? If people don't believe that cryonics will work, you can't sell it to them for a lot of money even if they are wrong. (Disclaimer: I haven't signed for cryonics.)

How many people responding to this survey have actually made significant personal preparations for survival, like a fallout shelter with food and so on which would actually be useful under most of the different scenarios listed?

1. If you believed that there is going to be a nuclear war in 90 years, would you start buying the food and preparing the shelter just now?
2. The risks listed in the survey results were pandemic (bioengineered), environmental collapse, unfriendly AI, nuclear war, economic/political collapse, pandemic (natural), nanotech, asteroid. Few of them could be short term catastrophes with critical first few weeks that can be survived in a shelter, but not necessarily. If we are speaking about a disaster wiping out 90% of the global population or more, it's pretty good to assume that lot of people are thinking of an event which renders Earth unlivable, with a shelter or without it.
3. People can prefer death to living in a post-apocalypse world. (Or prefer "normal" pre-apocalyptic life and then death to life spent in preparation for the apocalypse and survival.)
4. The question was "which disaster do you think is most likely...". Therefore, if 23% answer bioengineered pandemics, it doesn't imply that 23% of people actually consider bioengineered pandemics probable. It can mean that it is less improbable than the rest of the list.
5. That no more than 5% of LW readers are preparing a shelter (likely a correct guess) is an argument for what, exactly? It can be evidence that the general LW opinion is actually closer to yours than you seem to believe, or it can be evidence that people are procrastinating, but it certainly doesn't imply "grand level of overconfidence in the probabilities of any of these [catastrophes] occurring".

(Disclaimer: I don't especially fear future global catastrophes and moreover don't think that we can predict them significantly better than by random guess.)

The questions on dust specks vs torture and Newcomb's Problem are so unlikely to ever be relevant in reality that I view discussion about them as worthless.

Relevant to what? It seems that those discussions were intended as illustrations of theoretical problems with common utilitarian and decision-theoretic intuitions. Learning that one's intuitions have bounded domain and don't work well in extreme unrealistic scenarios isn't perhaps a life changing achievement, but it is at least interesting. Perhaps not interesting to you, but not interesting to you and worthless are different things. (Disclaimer: I don't think that having correct answer to Newcomb and dust specks is going to be practically important in and of itself.)

Other people here apparently disagree, but if the rest of the world is undervaluing cryonics at the moment then why do those here with privileged information not invest heavily in the formation of new for-profit cryonics organizations, or start them alone, or invest in technology which will soon develop to make the revival of cryonics patients possible? If the rest of the world is underconfident about these ideas, then these investments would surely have an enormous expected rate of return.

I think you're relying on a whole slew of assumptions here which obviously do not hold.

How many people responding to this survey have actually made significant personal preparations for survival, like a fallout shelter with food and so on which would actually be useful under most of the different scenarios listed? I generously estimate 5% have made any such preparations.

What existential threat would a fallout shelter help with? There's a long list of existential threats which one could be worried about, you know... For someone enamored of economic judgment, you don't seem to be doing it very well.

My judgment of this site as of now is that way too much time is spent discussing subjects of such low expected value (usually because of absurdly low expected probability of occurring) for using this site to be worthwhile.

Possibly, but criticizing people for not doing cryonics startups or digging shelters is not going to prove such assertions.

I have never received evidence that I am less likely to be overconfident about things than people in general or that any other particular person on this site is.

You've never caught yourself in the act of falling for a cognitive bias detailed on this site?

My judgment of this site as of now is that way too much time is spent discussing subjects of such low expected value (usually because of absurdly low expected probability of occurring) for using this site to be worthwhile. In fact I hypothesize that this discussion actually causes overconfidence related to such things happening, and at a minimum I have seen insufficient evidence for the value of using this site to continue doing so.

I'm curious about what other web sites satisfy similarly high expectations. No snark intended.

RE: Cryonics - that particular *reverse Kool-Aid doesn't come in my flavor yet, but I enjoy that a notable minority are willing to put their money where their mouth is. It gives discussions of futuristic edge-cases a novel weight.

why do those here with privileged information not invest heavily in the formation of new for-profit cryonics organizations, or start them alone, or invest in technology which will soon develop to make the revival of cryonics patients possible?

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." (John Maynard Keynes)

Also, at which amount of money would you be indifferent between either being put to death and receiving that much (to do as you please with, as set in your last will if you wish), or staying alive and not receiving that amount of money?

Newcomb's problem and Specks vs. Torture...yes...the theory behind them, used to program AI...not so much. Eliezer is generous enough to write in English for those who don't speak C++/pseudocode/math.

This post was pretty useless, to me, by the way. I've heard these very same opinions before, on this very website (put much more politely, eloquently, and, in some cases, even better argued for), so this post doesn't affect my beliefs. Downvoting.

Edit: By the way, I'm here mostly because I enjoy spending time here. I didn't start reading this website to learn about existential risk OR cryonics OR Newcomb's problem.

While it's a fair point that this forum has a lot of noise and nonsense, the amount of insights not easily available elsewhere easily justifies spending some of my time here for me. It only takes a moment to ignore/downvote posts you don't care for, anyway. YMMV.

Evidently 72.9% of people here are at least considering signing up. I think the chance of cryonics working [...]

Doom avoidance and death avoidance evidently go together.

way too much time is spent discussing subjects of such low expected value

Yeah, because the rest of the internet only discusses really relevant stuff, such as whether Wikipedia articles should write “31 December” or “December 31”. (SCNR.)