Posts

Rationality Quotes February 2014 2014-02-02T13:35:38.227Z
Rationality Quotes October 2013 2013-10-05T21:02:36.127Z
[LINK] Wireheading in SMBC 2012-05-29T10:24:57.640Z

Comments

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Universal Basic Income and Poverty · 2024-07-28T13:53:01.185Z · LW · GW

Yes (though OTOH conversely there are also things that many Europeans struggle to afford but Americans take for granted, e.g. air conditioning)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Universal Basic Income and Poverty · 2024-07-28T13:38:32.014Z · LW · GW

Note that there are plenty of things that count as "working hours" when white-collar workers do them but not when blue-collar workers do them.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Why didn't virologists run the studies necessary to determine which viruses are airborne? · 2024-07-19T22:52:10.592Z · LW · GW

reality has a surprising amount of detail and those details really matter

See also: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/01/11/reality-is-very-weird-and-you-need-to-be-prepared-for-that/

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Why it's so hard to talk about Consciousness · 2024-07-17T08:27:52.812Z · LW · GW

Yep, the first thing I thought after reading "this isn't actually possible to achieve in the real world" was "Yes it is!  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis, or that time I played in a concert while blackout drunk and I can only actually remember playing half of the set list."  The second thing I thought was "But did I actually have no qualia, or do I just not remember them?"  The third thing I thought was "Is there any way I could possibly tell, even in principle?  If there isn't, doesn't that mean that there's no actual difference between qualia and the formation of memories of qualia?"

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on [Linkpost] A Case for AI Consciousness · 2024-07-08T14:00:53.137Z · LW · GW

Am I the only one who, upon reading the title, wondered "do they mean arguments that conscious AIs would be better than unconscious AIs, or do they mean arguments that existing AIs are conscious?"

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Travel Buffer · 2024-07-06T18:43:07.669Z · LW · GW

See also: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/slack

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on I would have shit in that alley, too · 2024-07-06T09:28:55.222Z · LW · GW

Would you apply that to other examples of loss leaders too? When I buy a Ryanair ticket with no priority boarding, a randomly assigned seat and no luggage and don't buy anything on the plane, should I feel guilty because if everybody paid as little as me the flight wouldn't be net profitable for Ryanair? If not, what's the difference?

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Medical Roundup #2 · 2024-04-10T09:13:50.685Z · LW · GW

I would instead choose a relatively light ‘this is not allowed’ where in practice we mostly look the other way

That is very seldom a good idea, for reasons detailed in https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html (if euthanasia is outlawed, only outlaws will euthanize their patients) https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted/ (any circumstance where the actual norms don't match the ostensible norms can lead to uncertainty and/or disagreements on what exactly the former are, and you don't want that)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on A Back-Of-The-Envelope Calculation On How Unlikely The Circumstantial Evidence Around Covid-19 Is · 2024-02-07T23:26:04.075Z · LW · GW

Multiplying all this together gets you to a 1 in 80 million chance of all this stuff happening under the null hypothesis, which is highly significant. 

Not until you work out the chance of all this stuff happening under alternate hypotheses, and the prior probabilities of alternate hypotheses, and the prior probability of the null hypothesis.
(I asked random.org for 10 random bytes and I got 02 c8 c2 30 60 b3 2e 93 a6 e9 .  The chance of this happening under the null hypothesis is 1 in 1.2×10^24

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on [Link] More ominous than a [Marriage] strike · 2024-01-20T19:17:31.297Z · LW · GW

"Being a physicist is a drag, but it still beats working" (Aurelio Grillo as quoted by Giorgio Parisi, translation from Italian mine)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on The case for training frontier AIs on Sumerian-only corpus · 2024-01-15T19:21:07.601Z · LW · GW

I'm almost sure Sumerian had words for "artificial" and for "intelligence".

"Paracetamol" on the other hand... :-)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on The Univariate Fallacy · 2024-01-08T13:07:08.917Z · LW · GW

I'm almost sure I saw a Wikipedia article about this back in the mid 2000s with a 2D version of your plot, but I can't find anything relevant in either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies#Statistical_fallacies or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes#Statistics ... did I just dream of it?

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on More "Stupid" Questions · 2023-11-26T16:37:02.164Z · LW · GW
Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Housing Roundup #6 · 2023-10-05T12:38:21.258Z · LW · GW

 (it's hard to get curtains that block direct sunlight that well).

[These things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stellladen_Roll_fcm.jpg) are pretty much ubiquitous in Italy in buildings since circa 1970s, and [these ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Villa_Olmi_K.jpg) (which are somewhat less effective but still way better than a curtain) in earlier buildings.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Salvage Epistemology · 2023-08-21T15:11:28.023Z · LW · GW

I dunno...  IME, when someone not capable of steelmanning him reads e.g. David Icke, what usually happens is that they just think he must be crazy or something and dismiss him out of hand, not that they start believing in literal reptilian humanoids.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity · 2023-08-11T13:43:21.950Z · LW · GW

The ToC makes it looks like "blood donations" and "exercise" are among "things that will eventually kill you"...

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on How can I spend money to improve my life? · 2023-08-11T13:41:19.672Z · LW · GW

(Not sure whether $50/day allows you to do this in San Francisco, but:) Live within walking/cycling distance of work, grocery stores, nightlife, museums, etc. so you won't have to drive a car every day.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on 100 Tips for a Better Life · 2023-08-11T13:39:35.029Z · LW · GW

Yeah, I often refuse giving people money for something I don't care about even if the impact of that on my wealth would be negligible just in order to not reward them.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on 100 Tips for a Better Life · 2023-08-11T13:35:25.676Z · LW · GW

98.: I don't think the link points where you wanted it to point

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Is Light Drinking Protective? · 2023-07-31T21:41:43.491Z · LW · GW

My guess would be that:

  • the direct biological harms of alcohol are roughly linear, i.e. one drink a week is about 1/7 as harmful as seven drinks a week, which in turn is about 1/7 as harmful as forty-nine drinks a week;
  • the psychologically mediated benefits of alcohol (through reduced anxiety, improved socialization, etc.) quickly rise up to a few drinks a day, then plateau (and even reverse at very high doses)
  • when you subtract something like atan(x) from a straight line you may or may not get a minimum at x slightly greater than zero, depending on the slopes involved
Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Blanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer · 2023-07-10T15:57:58.645Z · LW · GW

(which I think is still not quite enough to make it obvious he's less dangerous than complete strangers on her way from the metro station back home unless she's in a third-world country, but still)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Blanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer · 2023-07-10T15:53:02.989Z · LW · GW

What do you think they might be tracking that Sinclair isn't?

e.g. his demeanor, and the way other people at the meetups who've known him for longer than she has treat him

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on AI #19: Hofstadter, Sutskever, Leike · 2023-07-06T18:37:05.122Z · LW · GW

I wonder whether there's a niche for generative AIs exclusively trained on works in the public domain...

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Automatic Rate Limiting on LessWrong · 2023-06-23T22:10:12.065Z · LW · GW

Roll back the thing whereby you not only can but automatically do upvote your own comments?

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open Thread With Experimental Feature: Reactions · 2023-05-27T09:08:16.793Z · LW · GW

Sounds like a solution in search for a problem TBH

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on When should I close the fridge? · 2023-05-17T20:17:23.403Z · LW · GW

I'm almost sure the energy you'd save in your lifetime by doing it the optimal way would be less than the energy you spent to write this post...

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on "notkilleveryoneism" sounds dumb · 2023-04-28T20:52:13.028Z · LW · GW

How 'bout "non-omnicidality"?

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Sayeth the Girl · 2023-04-27T12:32:34.711Z · LW · GW

(BTW, the term for this is "Muhammad Wang fallacy")

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Losing the root for the tree · 2023-04-22T12:28:58.267Z · LW · GW

I opened the comments just to say that!

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Writing Russian and Ukrainian words in Latin script · 2023-04-21T21:49:17.155Z · LW · GW

(Oleg and Olga are the masculine and feminine variants of the same name, which is nearly obvious from their spellings but you'd never guess that from their Russian pronunciations alone)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Writing Russian and Ukrainian words in Latin script · 2023-04-21T21:44:29.861Z · LW · GW

And Irish (Gaelic) has both! (/ɲ/ is slender ng, /nʲ/ is slender n)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Rational and irrational infinite integers · 2023-04-21T21:32:55.939Z · LW · GW

BTW, see http://www.numericana.com/answer/p-adic.htm#decimal for solutions to x^3 = x, x^4 = x etc.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open & Welcome Thread — March 2023 · 2023-04-21T21:14:41.961Z · LW · GW

...and my votes count twice because I have lots of karma, even though it's from eight years ago?

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open & Welcome Thread — March 2023 · 2023-04-21T21:04:46.103Z · LW · GW

Wait... do I upvote my own comments by default now?

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on ChatGPT (and now GPT4) is very easily distracted from its rules · 2023-03-25T20:52:48.802Z · LW · GW

Do the Chinese verses in the last screenshot also rhyme, and are the English ones actually translations of them?

(If so, color me very impressed.)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open & Welcome Thread — March 2023 · 2023-03-25T20:46:13.485Z · LW · GW

Hello everyone, I used to have an account here a looong time ago which I had deactivated and I just realized I could undeactivate it.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-26T08:49:44.642Z · LW · GW

I have been convinced that deleting my comments would be overkill, so I'm going to just delete my account, which will anonymize my comments, and hope that the permalink page title bug will be fixed.

I might come back here with a different username later.

Thanks to Baughn for their offered help.

Have a nice day.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Request for suggestions: ageing and data-mining · 2014-11-25T15:33:39.014Z · LW · GW

The nice thing about IF is that in many forms, it's dead easy: you eat nothing one day, twice as much the next.

A particular form of IF I've heard of from several places is even easier: only eat within an 8-hour window each day. I often do that out of sheer can't-be-arsed-to-have-breakfastness.

(I hear that existing studies about that are pretty confounded, e.g. they find that people who don't have breakfast are less healthy but the effect disappears when controlling for conscientiousness.)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-25T10:57:43.590Z · LW · GW
  • You might be underestimating P(X read that particular XKCD | I know X), as I am a physicist, and know a fair number of engineers and computer scientists and a few mathematicians;
  • you might be underestimating P(X continued to read enough of the site to stumble on my username | X was led to LW for the first time) -- I've commented a lot, including on many of the posts linked to on the about page and the welcome threads;
  • it's not motivated doxxing (which I know is very very unlikely) that I'm worried about -- comments which I would mind someone I know in meatspace reading comprise a sizeable minority of all my comments (not just for the consequences to myself -- I'd dislike, as a terminal value, certain people to hear certain things I've said about certain topics, especially other people).
Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-25T10:36:59.940Z · LW · GW

How many of said threats are not bluffs? I mean, I know that some of them aren't, but I can't get myself to alieve it.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T21:31:12.501Z · LW · GW

As of now, after both you and lfghjkl suggested me not to delete valuable comments, I'm leaning towards just deleting my account. (I've already removed my location from it as per ChristianKl's suggestion.) If I was in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber I'd delete all comments excepts those with positive karma which I wouldn't mind anybody I know reading, but...

(BTW FWIW I'm a “he”.)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T18:42:00.135Z · LW · GW

It'd be a hell of a lot of work to find all of them.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T18:40:41.578Z · LW · GW

You can still tell who wrote such comments by following the permalink and looking at the title of the page.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T18:28:31.973Z · LW · GW

I'm mostly worried about people stumbling upon LW e.g. from the title text of that comic, starting browsing the site, reading my comments, and recognizing my username from elsewhere. Granted, someone motivated to doxx me enough to overcome trivial inconveniences could still do so, but I don't think that's likely to happen enough for me to worry about it.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T17:36:48.744Z · LW · GW

I've written things about other people without their consent, figuring there would be a negligible chance anybody could guess who they were. But now I think that chance, while still not huge, is no longer that negligible.

(I've also written certain politically incorrect things, but as someone working in a non-humanities field over 4000 miles away from Harvard, and who isn't going to apply for a job in the US any time soon, and likely not anywhere else in the Anglosphere either, I'm not terribly worried about that.)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T17:21:34.402Z · LW · GW

Do you really think that who you are in meatspace is possible to identify from reading a few LW posts?

My username is formed by a shortening (though not one I often go by) of my real first name and my real birth year, and I've used it elsewhere, including in my main non-work e-mail address; so anyone who knows my e-mail would at least suspect that this LW account is mine.

(I first picked this username when I was 14 and kept using it everywhere out of habit.)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T17:11:57.900Z · LW · GW

Will you be making a new account that will be even less tied to you,

I probably will. I might also create an account under my full name which I will only use for things I'm (100 - epsilon)% sure I wouldn't mind anyone reading.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T12:37:42.914Z · LW · GW

I would own much but not all of what I've written on LW, and selectively deleting only the things I wouldn't own would take infeasibly long.

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on Open thread, Nov. 24 - Nov. 30, 2014 · 2014-11-24T11:46:40.995Z · LW · GW

I am considering deleting all of my comments on Less Wrong (or, for comments I can't delete because they've been replied to, editing them to replace their text with a full stop and retracting them) and then deleting my account. Is there an easier way of doing that than by hand?

(In case you're wondering, that's because thanks to Randall Munroe the probability that any given person I know in meatspace will read my comments on Less Wrong just jumped up by orders of magnitude.)

Comment by A1987dM (army1987) on When should an Effective Altruist be vegetarian? · 2014-11-23T15:18:21.541Z · LW · GW

For me, "Don't eat meat" is about as difficult as "Don't wear the color blue". It's not a large sacrifice. Yes, I may not be typical.

Not wearing anything blue would be a heckuva sacrifice for me. ;-)