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source on my blog: https://sundaystopwatch.eu/some-thoughts-in-traffic/
Some Thoughts in Traffic
(these are literally thoughts I had sitting in traffic and that relate to traffic, but you're free to extract generalized life lessons from them if you want)
- When someone cuts you off in traffic, you might get angry, but their behavior, their cutting-off-other-people-in-traffic personality guarantees that you will never be stuck behind them, unable to go faster.
- The way to minimize killing animals on the road is to drive in the middle of the road, straddling two lanes (if the oncoming lane is empty). That way, you are maximizing the space (and therefore reaction time) between the road and whatever it is on the side of the road. This predisposes that both sides of the road are equally likely to contain crossing animals - if there's a literal wall on one side, then it's less killing per kilometer (kpk - nice measure eh?) to drive near that wall.
- Google Maps, on the surface, appears to be an Earth element (Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Void), but it's actually a Water element because when it detects congestion ahead, it reroutes you to the same destination, just like water finds another path. (I can't decide if this thought is high, pseudo-deep or plain schizo.)
- There are defensive drivers and offensive drivers. Defensive drivers worry about bad things happening, and imagine them happening before they do. So the difference isn't "one speeds, the other one doesn't". In fact, defensive drivers also speed. The difference is what you're thinking about. If you're feeling really optimistic on your every drive, you're likely an offensive driver. If you are imagining all the ways something could go wrong as you drive, you're defensive. Thinking about the direction of oncoming animals is an example of pessimistic thinking, and therefore defensive driving.
- Defensive driving is the obvious right choice.
- Defensive driving has a bad effect though. Bad actors (offensive drivers) can do their thing unchallenged, such as cutting people off in traffic, because defensive drivers will have predicted their actions and already have adapted their maneuvers. Therefore the only thing that curtails offensive driving is offensivemaxxing, where an offensive driver is so offensive that nothing could be done to help them (e.g. driving at 100 km/h into a narrow corner and going offroad) OR other offensive drivers, which will cause crashes. It's a sort of predator-prey dynamic, but offensive drivers are both the predator and prey, and defensive drivers are the background foliage.
- I've changed my mind about driving cars with manual shifting. I no longer think that makes any sense, unless you're racing or a hobbyist with retro cars. For everyday driving, automatic shifting is good, more relaxed, less cognitive overhead, and if traffic is safe enough, you can take a sip of water without worrying that you won't be able to downshift in time for a corner or something.
- Despite my strong occasional bouts of hate towards automobile traffic and optimization for automobile infrastructure, overall I still think that cars did a whole lot of good, despite all the CO2 emissions, lead poisoning, community disruption - both on the level of making streets unsafe for children to play on, and disrupting public transport as a joining force of the community. If we can choose between a world where people have their own robocarriage, and a world where you can't go anywhere except on foot or by horse, even if all else isn't equal (!), you'll still probably choose to live in the robocarriage world... because people want to go places!
- Computer networking and traffic engineering are essentially the same discipline, with differences in the protocol specifications (e.g. TCP vs. right-hand-side rule) and packet formats (e.g. datagrams vs. cars). Yet all the guys that I know that studied traffic engineering in college know nothing about protocols, or even that kind of thinking. You would expect that you'll learn about e.g. Dijkstra's pathfinding algorithm in computer science and in traffic engineering, but (from my experience with people in both disciplines), you only learn about it in CS.
- The European version of the pickup truck is the cargo van with the pickup bed. It's almost the same thing, actually it literally is the same thing. Yet there's a sense in which a pickup truck is a car (a personal vehicle), and a pickup van is a van (a work vehicle), even when a pickup truck is used for work.
There's an established path towards passing a regulation; there is not an established path towards discovering new technology. The first can fail, but you have a known way how it is done. The second can also fail, but you generally have no recipe to follow.
I meant "almost guaranteed (that you can pass it)", not "almost guaranteed that it'll work". Meaning, you know you have recourse (though it might not work). As opposed to "not guaranteed (that there even will be any tech)". Should've been clearer. Generally I agree with your comment.
Something like that, yeah
I don't mean this only for group sizes, but good point, there could be a qualitative difference and simplifying is actually fundamentally changing the topic.
I don't know, I still feel like it helps me figure out the core of a problem. However, I agree that asking if a proposed solution scales is important for the types of issues I listed in the examples.
Your strategy for AI risk seems to be "Let's not build the sort of AI that would destroy the world", which fails at the first word: "Let's".
I don't have a strategy, I'm basically just thinking out loud about a couple of specific points. Building a strategy for preventing that type of AI is important, but I don't (yet?) have any ideas in that area.
Time-slack isn't rewarded with status that much, I think. Whenever someone can say "yeah, whenever's fine" in response to somebody that can only make it for exactly 4.32 minutes every second full Moon but only in January, I rarely find that this person is awarded status, even implicitly. It's basically taken for granted. Which reinforces your point that high-slack people don't capture the upside that much.
And which, in turn, leads me to ask: is the status payoff enough even for a rough selection? I think not. To reliably select for high-slack people (and therefore create high-slack groups), even roughly, I think you need to explicitly require some X amount of slack (easy for time, difficult for emotions).
And, of course, to make the implicit explicit - which seems to be the point of your post.
Regarding 2 and 3: that's the main practical perk of reading LessWrong, or as I'm inclined to call it now, SoonerRight.
Thanks everyone!
In my experience (Zagreb), you have this same organic development which leads to very crowded buildings with drastically different styles (like massive apartment buildings "boxing in" houses), very little pedestrian space, few parks and green areas... Some pretty messy and inhospitable neighborhoods.
Also some really good ones, so I'm wondering if the main factor is "some person in charge of a building wants to ensure that it fits the neighborhood".
For me, probably 2. I read "How to become a hacker" several years ago and it shaped many of my career-related choices. The writing/reasoning style is very similar to the ratsphere, so I was not too surprised that I would also find you here.
I totally get the frustration, that's why I felt the disclaimer in the beginning was necessary!
As for the question of many students - yes, absolutely. Promoting EA is a smart and valuable goal, and will definitely produce more effect ("or you raise awareness in town, and try to explain to others that there are children drowning in some ponds nearby"). And, as you say, it's precisely what Singer is doing.
Regarding systemic change: I think that's a conversation stopper in many cases. People say "X is cool and everything, but what we REALLY need is systemic change". But that's, like, a really big task, and it seems to me that it just breeds inaction, as opposed to interventions. I wasn't going for an applause light, only a very narrow criticism of one specific analogy/argument.
I'm sorry you don't find it valuable. It's an argument that bugged me - I first heard it only a couple of years ago on a podcast completely unrelated to EA, accepted is as valid, but felt that something was off. I worked through my confusion and this is the result. Maybe everyone who hears it immediately thinks of all the criticism you listed, but I doubt it.
Who benefits from the last sentence? I guess people like me, or whoever hears the analogy and accepts it without first analyzing it a bit.
It's not criticism of Singer in general either. Chris says that this analogy is only the beginning of his argument, and I totally agree (and I happen to agree with almost all of Singer's conclusions, at least those that I've read afterwards).
That is true, rarely do you get someone who intentionally wants to make you miserable. They usually just make you miserable as a side-effect of not caring enough, but as soon as you're sufficiently annoying, they do one of those two things.
Added to reading list, thanks!
Going outside of the world of house buying, I find that 50% of interactions I had with repair people were like that as well. So that definitely makes sense.
Other explanations are that people are afraid of trying things out, don't have time, or insist on a reality that simply isn't there (that when you pay someone to do something, they should reliably do it).
"Embracing the Extended Mind" is my short film (8 min) about the importance of embracing things outside of your head so that things inside of your head can work better. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWDp4IzjrQ8
Excellent! I've also been cryocrastinating for far too long, this might be the impetus I need to finally start.
I want to share one of the most useful articles I read: You Might as Well Be a Great Copy Editor.
https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1471
Most writing is MUCH better if it goes through at least one editing pass, with diminishing returns the more editing you do. The trick is not to mix writing with editing - write first, let it be ugly, let your stream of consciousness take you away. And when you're done, then become the critic and the editor.
I totally agree with "activists are one of the constraints". And while getting more knowledge can give you greater legitimacy, there's also significant opportunity cost here. Like, in certain eco-activism circles, you have to specialize. You need to learn skills, and the specialization is even more granular than someone from the outside might expect. Example: there's a lot of training involved in preparing and releasing banners, or in organizing peaceful demonstrations. You simply don't have time to learn about the subject matter in depth, because you have to practice your knots, or social engineer your way onto a roof. Doubly so if you have work and family to balance alongside! I could maybe write about this as well.
Anyway, great observation and analysis, thanks!
A good explanation of the difference between intellectual exploration and promoting people. You don't need to agree with everything someone says, and you don't even need to like them, but if they occasionally provide good insight, they are worth taking into account. If you propagate this strategy, you may even get to a "wisdom of the crowds" scenario - you'll have many voices to integrate in your own thinking, potentially getting you farther along than if you just had one thought leader you liked.
Having many smart people you don't necessarily agree with, like, or respect > having an idol you always agree with.
The prerequisite for all of this is to be a "high-decoupling" person. Rationalists (by definition?) have this personality, but this post is nevertheless very useful as it sketches out why separating the messenger, the context, and the message is good. And potentially, it teaches those with lower decoupling philosophies to stop "respecting" a Person Who Is Correct, but to start listening to many voices and judge for themselves what makes sense and what doesn't.
Honestly... parenting goals!
This is no surprise — as I mentioned, translators are few and far between — but this example goes to show how useful a translator can be.
In addition to that, they can be explicitly unwanted or feel unwanted. I think that this is partially because translation is often done by people who argue for moderation to give off an air of wisdom which isn't there.
But another, maybe more significant part, is the fact that even good translators (like Scott Alexander) have limited power. Not everyone wants to read Scott Alexander-like bloggers, and not everyone wants a competing perspective. That leaves you with the option to stretch your translation, but stretch it too far, and you get to a point where you just have a useless analogy to something your audience already understands. Try to be true to the original worldview and nobody listens you unless they exceed some level of openness.
Great post.
Some career ideas for non-math and non-finance people:
Pursue a more primitive lifestyle: live off the land and farm. You can make it escapist (trying to ignore what's going on in the world) or a strategic fortress (if everything crumbles, I will not starve in the city). Everyone will always need food, so for as long as there are humans, there will be need for those who grow it. Also a good option because you can dial the primitive part up or down: you can either be a secluded monk or a farmer feeding the region.
Pursue a trade or human contact job: no GPT will replace a nurse, a physical therapist, a plumber, an electrician. For as long as people need things, they will need someone to do these things for them.