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crl826's Shortform 2020-12-23T20:10:50.497Z

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Comment by crl826 on Stuff I Recommend You Use · 2023-02-20T01:39:38.301Z · LW · GW

Just ordered some of those laces. thanks for the heads up.

Comment by crl826 on crl826's Shortform · 2022-05-13T03:23:34.013Z · LW · GW

Update to this post.  Yet another way to look at/think about the three categories of people Rao thinks define corporate life from Erik Dietrich.

 

  • Pragmatists are line-level employees who find value in life outside of work, mainly because the hope of any meaningful advancement and enjoyment of their profession has been taken from them.
  • Idealists believe heartily in the meritocratic company (and organizational superiors) as a benevolent steward of their careers because perspective has been taken from them.
  • Opportunists refuse to yield hope or perspective and recognize that the only way to win the corporate game is to play by their own rules. In this realization, they give up ethical certainty and human connection – opportunists play a lonely, sad game to get what they get.

 

I think of them in terms of what the modern corporate structure has done to them:

  • Broken the losers
  • Tricked the clueless
  • And forced the sociopaths into ethical conundrums.

.

Comment by crl826 on Beyond Blame Minimization: Thoughts from the comments · 2022-04-23T22:51:11.685Z · LW · GW

I believe you've said it.

If bureaucracies generally do not get shut down, and individuals generally do not lose their jobs, the they can have inconvenient hours at offices in inconvenient locations. They can make lots of rules and forms that make life difficult for the very people that they serve. Even if no bureaucrat maliciously wants to make things difficult for anyone, in the absence of forces that weed out such inconveniences, they will only ever increase in prevalence.

I'll pull from my comment on your original article (written after you published both of these).

Politicians certainly rail against bureaucracies, but off the top of my head, I'm not aware of any bureaucracy that had its budget or its power cut.  

Even the places where "defund the police" got some traction, it was generally accounting tricks. In many cases they ended up having funding restored shortly after or funding simply came from other sources.

My point being, it's not at all obvious to me that there are actually repercussions for swollen, mis-managed bureaucracies. But I would very much love to be wrong.

If you model bureaucracies as ROI-maximizers (getting the max reward for least effort) that can never be shut down....that seems to explain everything to me.

Comment by crl826 on Beyond Blame Minimization · 2022-04-23T22:39:44.743Z · LW · GW

a swollen bureaucracy that's mis-managing its money or power is a ripe target for politicians.

 

Politicians certainly rail against bureaucracies, but off the top of my head, I'm not aware of any bureaucracy that had its budget or its power cut.  

Even the places where "defund the police" got some traction, it was generally accounting tricks. In many cases they ended up having funding restored shortly after or funding simply came from other sources.

My point being, it's not at all obvious to me that there are actually repercussions for swollen, mis-managed bureaucracies. But I would very much love to be wrong.

Comment by crl826 on Interacting with a Boxed AI · 2022-04-14T04:22:20.435Z · LW · GW

Eliezer has taken some pains to argue that we cannot even talk to the AI:... And he's provided some compelling arguments that this is the case.

 

Any chance you have links to those arguments?  I know that is his argument and I agree with his intuition, but I've never seen anything more fleshed out than that.

Comment by crl826 on Is state a (semi-) rational agent? · 2022-01-23T03:45:43.838Z · LW · GW

The authors of Dictators Handbook would argue that it is rational from the basis of what the leader needs to do to stay the leader.  

Good summary here on LW: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N6jeLwEzGpE45ucuS/building-blocks-of-politics-an-overview-of-selectorate

Comment by crl826 on [deleted post] 2021-11-24T23:32:47.666Z

As best as I can tell, most human don't care about being rational. Am I misunderstanding?

Comment by crl826 on What currents of thought on LessWrong do you want to see distilled? · 2021-10-29T23:15:26.515Z · LW · GW

I saw it!

The only reason I haven't read it yet is because I wanted to make sure I had time to read it.

Really appreciate it. I think unwinding how power works will be a huge step forward for rationality.

Comment by crl826 on What are some examples from history where a scientific theory predicted a significant experimental observation in advance? · 2021-07-17T15:35:35.748Z · LW · GW

Along with your black hole example and Jeff's light bending example, Relativity also predicted time dilation and gravitational waves before they were confirmed experimentally.

Comment by crl826 on (Another) Using a Memory Palace to Memorize a Textbook · 2021-06-22T22:56:28.138Z · LW · GW

I worry I will sound like a jerk. I'm not trying to, but why?

What is the advantage of memorizing a grocery list over writing down a list?

Comment by crl826 on Quotes from Moral Mazes · 2021-05-25T16:06:49.271Z · LW · GW

Koch Industries claims that a major piece of social tech they use is compensating managers based on the net present value of the thing they're managing, rather than whether they're hitting key targets

 

I looked but can't seem to find any information about this.  Do you have any idea where I could explore this more?

Comment by crl826 on Controlling Intelligent Agents The Only Way We Know How: Ideal Bureaucratic Structure (IBS) · 2021-05-25T14:26:59.706Z · LW · GW

Bureaucracy is just as gameable as any other system. Human bad actors are able to use bureaucracies to their own ends, I see no reason to believe that AI couldn't do the same.

Might be worth checking out the Immoral Mazes sequence and the Gervais Principle to see how that goes down.

Comment by crl826 on Deliberately Vague Language is Bullshit · 2021-05-14T20:46:05.166Z · LW · GW

It's not just bending the truth. Being vague also gives you more discretion in decision making. 

If you list objective criteria for a decision, then you don't have discretion to give things out to your friends or deny things to your enemies.

Comment by crl826 on crl826's Shortform · 2021-05-14T01:02:06.299Z · LW · GW

This is a great post exploring academic environment according to the Gervais Principle. Love more stuff like this.

This is mainly just a note to call out two great comments that I think may add to the theory.

Comment by crl826 on Academia as Company Hierarchy · 2021-05-11T22:18:51.004Z · LW · GW

Sometimes people seem clueless just because we don't understand them, but that doesn't mean they are in fact clueless.

I suppose you aren't using his suspect definition of Clueless. But your point is potentially valid either way. 

It's also true that something can seem "excessively cynical, inaccurate" or "counterproductive" doesn't mean they are, in fact, excessively cynical, inaccurate, or counterproductive.

Does this framework actually explain how diffusion of responsibility works?

The framework alone doesn't but reading the whole thing does.  You can also check out some of my shortforms for some summaries.

 

You clearly don't like his advice and certainly don't have to follow it. I have found it very helpful (at understanding some previously confusing situations and getting promoted).  I'm not the only one in this thread either so I humbly suggest it might be worth updating priors on how good or bad the framework is.

Comment by crl826 on Academia as Company Hierarchy · 2021-05-11T22:05:47.714Z · LW · GW

I strongly suspect you are incorrect.  Having read much of Rao's work, he pretty explicitly advocates becoming more sociopathic (per his definition). One of his other books is called "Be Slightly Evil"

As far as underperformers getting promoted, Luthans has published work on the difference between successful managers (defined as getting promoted) and effective managers (defined as having high performance teams). The reality is that they do very few of the same things and there is very little overlap between the two. Evidence shows that 'doing well' at work is not the best way to get to the top.

https://www.boardoptions.com/successfulversuseffectivemanagers.pdf

Comment by crl826 on Academia as Company Hierarchy · 2021-05-09T23:53:08.731Z · LW · GW

That is explicitly stated in the post.

Losers recognize that being a wage slave IS a bad deal. As a result, they do the minimum necessary to not get fired and keep collecting their paycheck. Again, this is a reasonable thing to do in many cases. For example, you may be a Loser in your day job so you can pursue your real interests nights and weekends.

Comment by crl826 on Why has nuclear power been a flop? · 2021-04-16T22:58:03.056Z · LW · GW

I suspect, but can't prove, that now so many justify wanting something because of climate change that they don't actually want a solution until and unless they have already got whatever they actually want.

Comment by crl826 on The National Dashboard and Human Progress · 2021-04-16T02:41:44.017Z · LW · GW

I like it. I'd love to pair it with a prediction market so we can find out who best understands what drives these metrics

Comment by crl826 on A New Center? [Politics] [Wishful Thinking] · 2021-04-14T00:44:50.422Z · LW · GW

What values are exclusively centrist?

Comment by crl826 on Rediscovery, the Mind's Curare · 2021-04-13T23:51:15.509Z · LW · GW

I think you're overlooking the biggest (best?) reason to not worry about this.

Just because someone has said it doesn't mean everyone has heard it. Unless everyone you're writing for knows everything ever written....you are making the world a better place by letting them know whatever the thing is.

Comment by crl826 on Compounding Incumbent Advantage · 2021-04-07T20:54:12.261Z · LW · GW

I love it, but since unpaid internships are extremely frowned on and/or explicitly illegal I can only imagine that "you pay me" internships are a non starter.

Comment by crl826 on [deleted post] 2021-04-07T15:16:57.024Z

How many people truly wish they were never born?

Comment by crl826 on Would a post about optimizing physical attractiveness be fitting for this forum? · 2021-04-04T15:29:40.395Z · LW · GW

I'd like to read it. PM me please if you decide not to post it publicly.

Comment by crl826 on What is the semantics of assigning probabilities to future events? · 2021-04-03T14:37:04.946Z · LW · GW

First, how can we settle who has been a better forecaster so far?

 

The first forecaster thought it was less likely that 2 out of 3 things that didn't occur -  wouldn't. The second forecaster thought it was more likely that 2 out of 3 things that didn't occur - would. So I think that the first forecaster has got a pretty easy case on this one.

I think the rest of your questions seem to be thinking that the percentages are measuring something in the real world.  They are a measure of the predictor's confidence. A way to tell the world how seriously they think you should take their prediction.

What kind of argumentation can the first forecaster make to convince the other one that 42% is the 'correct' answer?

I don't think he can. He is technically a little less sure that humans that will land on the Mars than second forecaster. (or, if you prefer, a little more sure that they won't) And a 1% difference is functionally 0 difference in this situation.

If they had vastly different levels of confidence, they could discuss the gaps in the optimism/pessimism,  but at 1% difference....that's just personal preference 

And what does this numerical value actually mean, as landing on Mars is not a repetitive random event nor it is a quantity which we can try measuring like the radius of Saturn?

To repeat self, They are a measure of the predictor's confidence. A way to tell the world how seriously they think you should take their prediction. 

If one believes the 42% is a better estimation than 43%, how can it help making any choices in the future?

Even if you had predictors with so many predictions that you could actually take a 1% difference seriously....I still don't know when that 1% would matter much.

Comment by crl826 on crl826's Shortform · 2021-03-21T22:30:51.553Z · LW · GW

Why your boss is a jerk and your coworkers are idiots

There are people who want to be at the top of an organization, for status or money, not because they care about the stated goals of an organization. 

By definition, the larger and more successful the organization is the more these types of people will be attracted to it. 

Also, by definition, these people are willing to do far more to get to the top than people who only want to “be good” at their jobs.

Given that willingness to do anything to get to the top, they have an edge on hiring and promotions and will eventually succeed.

To ensure they don’t lose their position, they will bring in people that are loyal to them. The only way to prove loyalty is by doing something against their own self interest and/or the interests of the organization. Loyalty means being willing to act dumb.

Over a long enough timeline, the odds that a large organization is led by people who don’t care about the goals of the organization approaches 1. And those leaders will bring in people whose most valuable trait is a willingness to act in a non-productive fashion.

Comment by crl826 on On Changing Minds That Aren't Mine, and The Instinct to Surrender. · 2021-03-19T23:40:55.745Z · LW · GW

I would consider that most people aren't really in the market to have their mind changed. Especially about politics. They aren't talking do open a discussion. They are talking to let you know how smart or 'good' they are. (or how dumb or 'bad' the people who disagree with them are)

If you want to change people's mind, start with people who accept the concept of 'mind changing'.

 

Shameless plug for my idea for a new internet forum :)

Comment by crl826 on Prediction: The Defense Department Will Blame Trump for the Slow Response on Jan. 7, 2021 · 2021-03-03T18:34:52.486Z · LW · GW

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/541412-pentagon-prevented-immediate-response-to-mob-says-guard-chief?amp&__twitter_impression=true

National Guard blaming DOD. Not sure that DOD has responded.

Comment by crl826 on The Median is Less than the Average · 2021-02-20T04:57:54.061Z · LW · GW

This makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

Comment by crl826 on The Median is Less than the Average · 2021-02-20T04:57:15.190Z · LW · GW

This is a good, fair point (unlike the person who wrote me and told me I was spreading Nazi propaganda). Thank you.

I confess I am not tech savvy enough to validate these arguments, but I have heard that Piratebay is much simpler (text files that point to other files) and is much easier to keep play cat and mouse games than, say, a social network.

But, either way, you are right to point out that a determined opponent can keep up a fight for awhile.

Comment by crl826 on The Median is Less than the Average · 2021-02-15T05:14:40.305Z · LW · GW

Except blogs have been removed from the internet. And entire, smaller platforms are wiped from the internet.

It's becoming less true that you can always move to a blog or a smaller platform. That's what I said. Seems true and not in the article.

But I suppose I will live to fight another day.

Comment by crl826 on The Median is Less than the Average · 2021-02-15T04:42:01.785Z · LW · GW

As I wrote: that is becoming less and less true. 

I'm surprised that that was taken so negatively. I'm not exactly sure why.

Comment by crl826 on The Median is Less than the Average · 2021-02-15T03:50:59.540Z · LW · GW

Now you can access all the opinions.

 

This is becoming less and less true. Removing people from social media. Removing entire websites. Even denying people the ability to participate in financial systems.

Comment by crl826 on Five examples · 2021-02-15T00:22:15.860Z · LW · GW

Sure. I'd love to hear what other caveats you think are important.

Comment by crl826 on Five examples · 2021-02-14T21:18:59.887Z · LW · GW

2) If you’re not feeling “hell yeah!” then say no

 

I've thought a lot about this myself.  

I think the first thing you have to stipulate is that this helps when deciding on goals, not necessarily the things you have to do to get the goal. You may be "hell yeah" about traveling the world, but not "hell yeah" about packing. That doesn't mean you shouldn't travel the world. I don't think Derek was arguing for this level of decision making.

If you buy that, I think the key is that it only works when you have a lot of slack. Derek Sivers is and has been independently wealthy and has way way more options than most people do. It's a very good sorting move in that situation. If you have few options, you probably can't use this as universally as he suggests.

Comment by crl826 on Making Expertise Legible: Being right should make you respected, not the other way around · 2021-02-10T23:40:58.231Z · LW · GW

It would probably be better described as staying within the Overton window.

 

It's a different name, but by definition, this standard means you are not getting new, unorthodox opinions to the public.

OP was trying to figure out how to have respectability follow 'rightness'. Only talking to people who are already respectable doesn't help that at all.

Comment by crl826 on Making Expertise Legible: Being right should make you respected, not the other way around · 2021-02-10T00:16:39.003Z · LW · GW

I hesitate to bring this up since politics, but in the US it is a very common perception that the media is liberally biased. 

And the fact that certain stories are almost exclusively discussed in certain outlets based on politics makes me think that it is not random error.

https://ground.news/blindspot

Also, wouldn't avoiding controversial figures be the opposite of helpful if you are trying to get new information out.  Seems to not solve the problem of getting legible expertise that is contrary to popular opinion into the marketplace.

Comment by crl826 on Making Expertise Legible: Being right should make you respected, not the other way around · 2021-02-09T23:15:21.449Z · LW · GW

Utopia isn't an option, but that aside....I would argue that it is still better today where people can consistently be wrong and still get to consistently give incorrect opinions. And everyone else in the market will still learn along the way which is an improvement over current state.

I don't think there would be much of a market for ridiculous conditional like that so not too worried about that.

Comment by crl826 on Making Expertise Legible: Being right should make you respected, not the other way around · 2021-02-09T00:08:23.629Z · LW · GW

I've been thinking about this a lot.  

Imagine Reddit + Prediction market.  Instead of betting/winning money, you get enhanced karma and increased posting/commenting weight.

If you predict something successfully, say number of COVID deaths for the week, your posts and votes would have more weight than the people who failed to correctly predict the number of deaths. 

Comment by crl826 on crl826's Shortform · 2021-02-07T18:54:51.667Z · LW · GW

Do tell

Comment by crl826 on crl826's Shortform · 2021-02-07T01:46:58.958Z · LW · GW

Hiding metrics as a way of avoiding Campbell's Law and Goodhart's Law.

What if you weren't 100% honest about telling people what metrics you were using? Wouldn't that avoid much of the downsides of the 2 laws?

Comment by crl826 on crl826's Shortform · 2021-02-07T00:27:40.229Z · LW · GW

Gervais Principle

Chapter 4 Part 2

The Lake Wobegon Effect Reconsidered

I began this post with an homage to Garrison Keillor’s “Lake Wobegon,” where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”

The delusions of the Clueless (false confidence of the Dunning-Kruger variety, which are maintained through the furious efforts and desperate denials on the part of the deluded individuals themselves).

Loser superiority is generally not based on an outright falsehood. Loser dynamics are largely driven by Lake-Wobegon-effect snow jobs, which obscure pervasive mediocrity. Loser delusions are maintained by groups. You scratch my delusion, I’ll scratch yours. I’ll call you a thoughtful critic if you agree to call me a fascinating blogger. And we’ll both convince ourselves that our lives are to be valued by these different measures. The delusion lies not in a false assessment of skills, but in the group choosing to evaluate members on the basis of different skills in the first place.  

In other words, Losers are too smart to fool themselves. They enter into social contracts which require them to fool each other.

Remember, you are unique, just like everybody else. And everybody is uniquely above average. This is why, paradoxically, collectivist philosophies that value equality must necessarily value diversity. Nobody wants to be equally average. Everybody must be given a chance to be equally above average. The “uniqueness” game is a game of mutual delusion.

Comment by crl826 on crl826's Shortform · 2021-02-06T00:30:57.062Z · LW · GW

Gervais Principle

Chapter 4 Part 1

Marxist Office Theory

Marx provides the core idea we need in his famous line, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”  

There is a deep truth here. Social clubs of any sort divide the world into an us and a them. We are better than them. Any prospective new member who could raise the average prestige of a club is, by definition, somebody who is too good for that club.

So how do social groups form at all, given Marx’s paradox? 

If your status is clear, and the status of the club is clear (which is, by definition, the average status of all its current members), then either your status is higher, in which case the club will want you, but you won’t want to join, or your status is lower, in which case the opposite is true. If status were precisely known all around, then the only case that allows somebody to join a club is if their status exactly matches the average of the club. The probability of this happening is vanishingly small, even if status could be measured accurately and quantitatively. Worse, this benefits neither joiner nor club. 

But consider what happens when all you really know about the club is the range of status, from lowest to highest. If you know you belong in the range, but have no idea whether your status is above or below the average, the uncertainty allows you to join. And your fealty to the group, and the group’s to you, will be in proportion to the legibility of your status. If events conspire to make status too legible, competitiveness is amplified, weakening group cohesion, and stabilizing dynamics kick in, restoring the illegibility, or the group breaks down.

The answer lies in the idea of status illegibility, the fuzziness of the status of a member of any social group. Status illegibility is the key to the Marx paradox, and the foundation of every other aspect group dynamics. Status illegibility is necessary to keep a group stable. 

This is governed by what I will call Marx’s laws of status illegibility.  

  1. Marx’s First Law of Status Illegibility: the illegibility of the status of any member of a group is proportional to his/her distance from the edges of the group.
  2. Marx’s Second Law of Status Illegibility: the stability of the group membership of any member is proportional to the illegibility of his/her status.

The laws imply that in a group of ten people it is much easier, both for insiders and outsiders, to identify numbers 1 or 10 (alpha and omega) than it is to identify number 4 unambiguously. 

The legible limit points are necessary to provide basic calibration to potential new members, and to help Sociopaths assess the social capital represented by the group, and negotiate terms with alphas with legitimate authority. The alpha and omega set the range. But the status of anyone who is not the alpha or the omega, is necessarily fuzzy. It requires that the middle be jumbled up. It is a deep form of uncertainty. I am not saying that there is a ranking that is just not known or knowable. I am saying there is no clear ranking to be known. There can be no correct rank ordering, but the group is still meaningfully coherent. 

The laws also imply that alpha and omega are weakly attached to the group, while Both are by definition the most unstable members. The alpha can be tempted away into the illegible middle of a higher-ranking group, with more murky room to climb, while the omega, might get sick of being the whipping boy, and move to a higher relative status in a lower group. The obscure middle is stably attached. Should either the alpha or omega leave, a new alpha or omega will emerge through a succession battle. Social groups grow from the illegible but stable center of the status spectrum, and leak at the legible but unstable edges.

Continued in Part 2

Comment by crl826 on Any rationalist judges? · 2021-01-16T18:01:33.403Z · LW · GW

I'm not in the law field so don't know any judges or judges to be.

I would offer that in many (most?) cases, the judge is not supposed to offer new thoughts but instead follow precedents.

The legal field is often already very rigorous in applying analytic/rational frameworks to the new problems. The debate comes from which frameworks to use.

Comment by crl826 on A vastly faster vaccine rollout · 2021-01-14T02:23:34.923Z · LW · GW

The question was "why didn't we ramp up sooner?".  I answered the question as best I knew how. Everyone is acting like I'm the one that decided to not use option pricing. 

And yes, government paying for things that might not work is hard. Besides generic mind killing, there are people that don't want the government to spend money and the people who don't believe in vaccines at all.  They all vote.

Comment by crl826 on A vastly faster vaccine rollout · 2021-01-12T21:30:33.887Z · LW · GW

How?

If you want to eliminate testing and government approval, I'd be willing to have that conversation. I don't think many would though.

Why would anyone pay to ramp up production on something that might not do anything? Or might even make thins worse?

Comment by crl826 on A vastly faster vaccine rollout · 2021-01-12T21:28:17.162Z · LW · GW

I mean....sure.

But why would the government, or anyone, pay for a vaccine that couldn't be used? An unapproved vaccine does nothing for anyone.

Comment by crl826 on A vastly faster vaccine rollout · 2021-01-12T18:37:26.366Z · LW · GW

Don't worry so much about "fairness"

 

Along with all the points you brought up, "fairness" is also where politics gets involved and slows things down.

In extreme cases, people destroyed vaccines rather than give them to someone that jumped the line. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/nyregion/new-york-vaccine-guidelines.html

Comment by crl826 on A vastly faster vaccine rollout · 2021-01-12T18:33:55.851Z · LW · GW

They can't ramp up until they are approved.  You don't make a billion doses only to discover a year later you aren't going to get paid for them.

Comment by crl826 on Prediction: The Defense Department Will Blame Trump for the Slow Response on Jan. 7, 2021 · 2021-01-11T13:52:56.653Z · LW · GW

Sounds like they are going with "lack of planning".

If you wanted to convert that into "someone" sounds like they are blaming it on DC city politicians for not figuring out the plan with them

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/01/09/military-quick-reaction-force-not-deployed-during-storming-capitol-because-lack-planning-defense-officials-say/