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Manufacturing
- Production per hour labor has increased in the USA and elsewhere.
- I have 3D printer in my living room.
Transportation
Home delivery is way cheaper than it used to be. Mail order has been a thing for a long time, but good mail-order products are new. It's not impractical buy everything you need without going to a store.
Manufacturing + Transportation
When you combine the developments of manufacturing plus transportation you get brand new phenomena, like being able to start a consumer hardware startup out of your living room. This doesn't affect everyone's living room, but my living room is full of shipping supplies and my basement has a small factory in it.
War
The B-2 stealth bomber reached initial operational capability in 1997. GPS and satellite mapping are ubiquitous. Guided missiles, real-time satellite surveillance and Predator drones are more capable today than in 1980s science fiction. Laser defenses, Gauss cannons and exoskeletons are on the way.
We also do nuclear tests with computer simulations instead of physical atom bombs. This particular example illustrates how physical technologies can turn into digital technologies. Physical technologies turning into digital technologies can create the illusion that physical technology is stagnating.
I don't have much to contribute to your comment except to acknowledge that it's useful, quality information. An upvote didn't feel sufficient.
There is a lot of material I like in this post.
- The idea to use Anki for math is something I've considered but never figured out a good way to do because the natural fact unit of advanced math is more complicated than a the definition of a natural language word. I would be happy to hear details more about how you did this.
- The tips on textbooks are useful. I have never read a textbook cover-to-cover (except athletic training textbooks) even though I have tried many times. It is reassuring to hear this is not important. It is also useful to hear the advice about reading easy textbooks. The value of reading easy textbooks is obvious in retrospect but something I never figured out on my own before reading this post.
Your perspective is valid. That way I look at things, Commodore Perry's expedition kicked off a Japanese-style Westernization of Japan, in contrast to the American occupation's Western-style Westernization of Japan.
Fixed. Thanks.
Fixed. Thanks.
I love Kreia. Your comment reminds me of the Darth Bane series, also from the Expanded Universe. It features a scene about sacrifice that has helped me through major life decisions.
This could work in theory but to separate everyone you have to (separate everyone, including the elderly from their caretakers, mothers from their babies, comatose patients from doctors and prisoners from each other—all at the same time. Plus animals, as Bucky mentioned.
Fortunately, quarantining everyone is overkill. It is more efficient to do contact tracing and testing, and then quarantine only those who test positive or were exposed to someone who tested positive. Countries like Taiwan did this successfully. They quarantine everyone entering the country and have had the pandemic under control for ages. You can walk around Taipei like it's 2018.
Psychopathically implementing our own values is a good way to put it. Now that you frame it this way, I can't think of a good anime whose villains don't have well-fleshed out motives. This is in stark contrast to Marvel, Star Wars, etc. where the villains' ideologies fell like caricatures.
I usually think about ethics in utilitarian and deontological grounds. It is useful to be reminded there is a virtue ethics dimension to the space too.
I agree that ethical discussion in the West tends to fall under deontology, utilitarianism or virtue ethics. There is another ethical framework which doesn't have a standard name in English since you don't see it much in Western philosophy. I like the name wuwei (無為) which roughly translates into "effortless action". The idea is to act naturally.
Wuwei doesn't constitute utilitarianism because it is focused on the present instant instead of some future result. It doesn't qualify as deontology because all rules can be broken in the right context. To classify wuwei as utilitarian or deontological is to broaden the definition of "utilitarian" or "deontological" to meaninglessness.
Wuwei could be considered a quirky form of virtue ethics, except virtue ethics implies dualism (right and wrong) whereas wuwei is non-dualist (without right and wrong).
This is a good post even compared to Scott Alexander's typical post.
A currency's exchange value is pegged by a gold reserve, a silver reserve, the tax system or something similar. Convincing people to buy goods with UBI-coin is trivial because the default value of an invented currency is zero. My question thus becomes how does MikkW incentivize people to sell goods and services in exchange for UBI-coin?
Your proposal is equivalent to a basic income funded by printing money. Where would this money derive its intrinsic value from?
Old commodity currencies were backed by gold or silver. Modern fiat currencies derive their intrinsic value from a tax system. (For example, a the US government demands taxes in dollars.)
Plus, self-reported dietary information is garbage.
Let's ignore risk. Suppose the company has a market value of right now at time , you expect the vault to open at time , and the bond rate (which equals the equities rate because this is a risk-free thought experiment) equals . Then the value of the company at time is 10 million dollars. If the value of the company at time is 10 million dollars then the market value (price) of the company right now is 10 million dollars times .
Suppose vaults are a fungible liquid securitized asset and that you can buy fractions of them. Suppose you invest in these vaults. Whenever a vault opens, you immediately invest your 10 million dollars cash in more vaults. Your investment grows at a rate , exactly equal to the bond rate.
I think what you're missing is that whenever a vault opens you immediately reinvest the cash. The vault has different time-adjusted value depending on when it opens. On a long enough time horizon, $10 million now is worth more than $10 billion later.
Yes, the volatility argument is formal rather than empirical. Whether it actually exists in practice is dubious. Fortunately, this does not affect the core issue of the subject at hand. This discussion concerns the theoretical market. For the volatility argument to apply, all we have to assume is an efficient market, rational actors and the Law of Diminishing Returns.
By "real" do you mean physical dollars or "real value"? In this answer, I ignore inflation and treat the vault as if it contains physical dollars.
We can build a physical system that replicates the effect of your magic vault. Suppose there is a vault tied whose lock mechanism is connected to a radioactive isotope. Each second there is a small chance the isotope will decay and the vault will open and the owner will receive $10 million cash. Each second, there is a large chance the isotope will decay and the vault will remain shut. Radioactive decay is a stocastic process. Therefore if the vault remains shut then the price of the vault remains at a constant price less than $10 million.
At every instant there is a small chance Schrödinger's vault will open and a large chance the vault will stay shut. In the quantum future where the vault stays shut you are correct and the vault's nominal market value stays constant. The time-discounted price of a closed vault actually goes down it it stays shut.
It's not the price of the closed vault that goes up faster than time-discounted non-risk-adjusted value. It's the average time-discounted risk-adjusted probability-weighted price of all possible future vault states (open and closed) that goes up faster than the time-discounted non-risk-adjusted value of the initial closed vault.
- Is the company a growth stock or a dividends stock?
- What do you mean by "underlying value"?
- Does this question concern risk-adjusted price or non-risk-adjusted price? Does it concern time-discounted price or non-time-discounted-price?
Yes. Your understanding is in line with the idea of risk-adjustment.
- In an efficient market, knowledge that changes your expected value of the stock is probably already priced in, but you can still capture the gains due to volatility.
I'm not certain I understand this bullet point. Can you explain what you mean?
[Fixed.] Typo: "volatility goes up" → "volatility goes down"
If I'm understanding correctly, you're suggesting they should go up at least at the bond market nominal rate…
Yes. It is necessary to disentangle two separate ideas. The first idea is time-discounting. Time-discounting plus arbitrage means that securities grow at no less than the bond market risk-free rate. The price of a stock right now doesn't reflected future growth. It represents future growth time-discounted by the bond market.
…but they tend to go up much faster than that?
The second idea is risk-adjustment. A 100% chance at $1 million is more valuable than a 1% chance at $100 million. If two securities have equal risk-neural expected value then the security with lower volatility has higher risk-adjusted expected value. If stocks tend to have higher volatility than bonds then an efficient risk-adjusted market ought to price stocks lower than bonds for a given expected (average) growth rate.
The value of capital invested in the bond market goes up via reverse time-discounting. The value of capital invested in the stock market goes up via reverse time-discounting and because you have purchased additional average growth by tolerating higher volatility.
Stock prices represent the market's best guess at a stock's future time-discounted price. Stock prices go up even in the absence of technological advancement because stocks are tied to the bond market via arbitrage.
But that is a complicated abstract idea. Let's examine things in simple Marxist terms.
A business is a machine that extracts rents from the proletariat. A stock is partial ownership of a business. Traditionally, the business extracted money and then distributed that money to shareholders in the form of dividends. This is called a dividend stock. In principle, a dividend stock does not go up in value. You just extract rents until the Revolution.
However, publicly-traded companies often reinvest profits into themselves instead of distributing revenues to shareholders as dividends. This is called a growth stock. If a company reinvests profits into itself then the total value of the company goes up because additional capital has been invested into it. Since you own an undiluted share of the company, the value of your stock goes up in equal proportion to the growth of the company.
The pedantic Lyle McDonald writes quality material on dietary advice.
You have to fight for your freedom, every single hour of every day.
Bingo.
…as Sun Tzu counseled, the best form of generalship is to avoid fighting at all.
Yes, and the way to conquer without fighting is via successful intimidation. Chapter 1: 卑而骄之 "If the enemy is inferior then threaten."
Or are you quoting Chapter 2? If so, then there is context to consider.
故善用兵者，
屈人之兵而非战也，
拔人之城而非攻也，
毁人之国而非久也，
必以全争于天下。
The perfect general
- subdues the enemy without battle,
- draws enemies out of cities without attacking,
- destroys people without expending much time,
utilizes every attack under the sun.
Sunzi was a Daoist. He would say there are circumstances to intimidate and circumstances to flee, circumstances to fight and circumstances to maneuver, circumstances to boast and circumstances to hide. But there too are attributes you should always exhibit.
将者，智、信、仁、勇、严也。
"Generalship" is a matter of wisdom, fidelity, benevolence, bravery and severity.
It is always right to be wise, fidelious, benevolent, brave and severe.
I mean in contrast to noninfectious toxins like ricin of the Bush-era WMD program.
I have never heard someone use the "end of history illusion" explicitly in this context before. I feel it is appropriate.
In the section on how to change one's personality, he suggests (albeit doesn't cite studies) that the reason personality changes less in adulthood than childhood may be because our environment becomes more constant and environment can shape personality.
Plus, adults have more control than children over their environments. I suspect most people choose environments conducive to their present personality. (I do the opposite by deliberately seeking out environments that nudge me toward a more dynamic personality.)
Four of the Big Five personality traits seem to be mostly immutable. I have on (what I consider to be) good evidence that neroticism can be reduced through extreme contemplative practice. This is evidence environment can shape personality. Unfortunately, a comprehensive scientific investigation of this phenomenon is not available yet.
In my personal experience, I have managed to cultivate deliberate interests too. However, I understand I am an outlier.
Your neighbors and family, for instance, are worth some effort to keep the relationship positive.
Yes. It is absolutely worth avoiding conflict with people you cannot avoid.
I believe the cost/benefit curve is quite nonlinear, and idiosyncratic to each individual, so there's no way to avoid thinking about it and explicitly trying a couple of different strategies to see what works for you. That doesn't contradict most of your explicit advice, and your first point that it doesn't cause much (if any) harm to be mildly disliked by many people.
Also yes. I am an outlier in many different ways. The weirder you are, the greater potential you have to leverage your idiosyncrasies.
I think your understanding of my post differs significantly from what I intended to convey. I am extremely polite, courteous and respectful to other people all of the time and I do not intend to change this behavior. Nor do I intend to impose anything on anyone besides myself.
How often are you really exposed to the whole city, with an equal chance at seeing each individual?
I run an online business. I write online too. The other day, someone wrote me an email about my blog post on Noether Current. If you count the number of people using search engines then I am frequently exposed to populations far larger than a mere city.
- Personality may not be very mutable
I think this is an interesting subject. Personality can roughly be defined as those traits which are not very mutable. I think that aversion to dislike can be deconditionable because it is something of a cross between a fear and a social risk tolerance, both of which I have had success deconditioning myself out of in my work as a magician.
- Being genuine might not be that hard
It depends how nonconformist you are. Paul Graham writes about this phenomenon in Orthodox Privilege.
I think the core thesis of your comment is dead-on. Variance could explain all of my observed effects. If people label you unimportant by default then increasing variance is a good way to make friends amidst a large population.
As for enemies…
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
―Winston Churchill
Originally, former health workers were being asked to provide 21 pieces of evidence before being allowed to take part, which included evidence of anti-terrorism training, fire safety and conflict resolution.
But the [British] Government came under huge pressure to get rid of the excessive bureaucracy, with Boris Johnson promising last Wednesday 'all such obstacles and all such pointless pettifoggery has been removed'.
It was reported last night that the number of requirements had been chopped down from 21 to 15, which critics said did not go far enough. NHS sources told MailOnline today there had been confusion and that medics looking to sign up now actually only need to provide 13 documents.
―Boyd, Connor (2021, January 11). Retired medics are still being asked to fill out THIRTEEN forms to join national Covid vaccine effort despite Boris' promise to 'blast away bureaucracy'. Mail Online. Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9134613/Retired-medics-asked-THIRTEEN-forms-join-Covid-vaccine-effort.html
How to be an agent: Abstain from all of passive activities including watching YouTube, playing videogames, reading blogs, following the news, abnegation drugs, etc. Music, podcasts and audiobooks are okay because they don't displace you from doing things. Put all your effort into not doing things. Do not compel yourself to do anything. Put zero effort into doing things unless you just feel like it. If you're not doing passive activities then either you're doing active activities (which makes you an agent) or you're doing nothing (which makes you a yogi). It's really hard to be a yogi so most people turn into agents within one week of abstaining from passive activities.
The first sentence of the quote sounds like a mix of the Buddhist concept of the now plus the financial concept of how the current price of a security reflects all information about its price.
I think your point about the importance of Christian churches as a center of community to the rural USA is underappreciated in liberal cities. There are good arguments that the breakdown of Christianity equals the breakdown of Middle America.
YouTube does have a "Don't recommend channel" button. Judicious use of this option, plus not clicking on news, can dramatically reduce the quantity of news displayed.
This post references Jordan Peterson (Christian), the Bible (Christian), Mormanism (Christian), Judaism (Abrahamic), Catholocism (Christian) and "standard Christianity". It claims to critique "religion" while mostly addressing a peculiar Monotheistic religion.
Most religious people are Monotheistic. But "Monotheism" describes a minority of religious diversity. To criticize "religion" and then draw all your data from Monotheism is like discussing "life" and then drawing all your data from hominids.
Monotheism (including Christianity and Judaism) is anomalous among religions because it is predicated on a singular truth. I suspect Monotheism's requirement for a global religious truth is foundational to weird Christian behaviors like the Arian debates at the Council of Nicea. From my understanding of history, no equally abstract-and-esoteric religious debate ever rose to comparable political importance in a polytheistic civilization. It could be that "Monotheistic religion"—not "religion"—is what causes the particular religious anti-epistemologies we are familiar with in the West.
Related to Monotheistic singular truth is its emphasis on cosmology (including physics). In polytheistic religions, cosmology is often as unimportant as it is flexible. Such a theology is hardly an obstacle to science. To criticize all of polytheistic religions by their cosmology is like judging science by the fashion sense of grad students, or grading runway models according to their skills at calculus.
In my experience, the word "religion" is often used by Western intellectuals to describe Monotheism instead of reflecting the true diversity of an anthology that includes Zen mysticism, !Kung polytheism and Daoism.
However much humble respect you have for some Abrahamic religion like Judaism, you should have even more for the primitive spiritualism of hunter gatherer tribes. Such superstitions survive in harsher environments, they have less margin for error, they have tighter feedback loops, their anti-epistemologies are less developed, and all their practitioners have major skin in the game.
I think this is the right direction to go.
Fixed. Thanks.
It is supposed to be heptagon, not hexagon. Thanks. I have fixed it.
Fixed the typos. Thanks.
The thing about six desks was bad writing. I have clarified the geometry.
Fixed. Thanks.
In a big pond, it is irrelevant how many people hate you, dislike you or even tepidly like you. All that matters is how many people love you.
If you publish a work on the Internet, the amount of negative feedback equals the number of people who view the work times the density of critics among them. If and then . In other words, the only way to escape Internet criticism is if nobody reads anything you publish.
On the other hand, if you create good work then lots of people will read it and will increase. People criticizing your work means people are paying attention to you. Lots of people criticizing your work is a sign lots of people are viewing it. Lots of people criticizing you is inevitable once enough people know who you are.
Ignoring the Negative
- There are two red flags to avoid almost all dangerous people: 1. The perpetually aggrieved ; 2. The angry.
―100 Tips for a Better Life by Ideopunk
Most criticism comes from the angry and aggrieved. It is trivial to dismiss these people in meatspace. It is harder to do so on an pseudonymous text-based online forum.
I think we can create similar filters for the online world.
- Ignore anyone who does not refute the central thesis.
- Ignore arguments that do not endorse an alternative thesis.
- Ignore comments that persuade instead of explaining.
Fixed. Thanks.
Fixed. Thanks.
Fixed. Thanks again.
Fixed. Thanks.
I'm leaving those as-is.
Fixed. Thanks.
I had originally intended for the numbers to be negated. After reading the discussion and thinking about it, I changed them to not be negated. Negating one of them but not the other, as I did by mistake, is completely wrong. This story is not intended to explore chirality.
Your traditional nautical coordinates are much better. I have changed it to degrees, minutes and seconds.
Also, that post points out something that seems important. What could be a better way to motivate people wanting the vaccine, than to show our richest, most famous and most powerful people paying really big bucks to get the shot a few months sooner?
I did not think of this at all until you pointed it out.
a) The use of the Fidelius Charm in 683 is not in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality itself. The unavailability of the Fidelius Charm in modern times is non-canon to this story.