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Very interesting!
Obvious question: who wins when the debate is ultra BS Vs ultra BS? Is then the duel back to a rhetoric one?
I'd be really interested in how the kids do in school and in general in their future. It seems to me that they may get really bored, at least at some classes, and this can backfire --it often happens with gifted kids.
Now it is illegal in some places and not recommended in others -> social & cívic pressure against. Plus the increase in usefulness for the cars.
Context: in urban environment + slow roads/streets in general.
Also, are you using the term “zebra crossing” in an unusual way…? It seems like you are
??
That would reduce the usefulness of the road for pedestrians to zero
On the contrary, they could cross anywhere without needing to walk to the zebra crossing! That would increase the road's usefulness for them.
These were not rhetorical questions, I would like to see your opinion on yield signs and their difference with zebra crossings.
It's an hyperbole, of course —to keep the usefulness of the road, if it is less dangerous that people just cross in random places than that cars stop before zebra crossings, let's get rid of the crossings.
It is clear that cars not being forced to stop before zebra crossings is more unsafe.
Then let's just get rid of zebra crossings all together. But I highly suspect that this would not be a good solution (eg. in Europe I have never seen a stop sign for a zebra crossing).
if they decide to break the rules, that’s their choice
The point is that your proposal incentivises people to break the rules and cross unsafely; which is the opposite of what the proposal intends.
On the other hand, having zebra crossing more often incentivises people to use them.
The appropriate question here is what is more unsafe? 1) significant amounts of people crossing in random places, or 2) cars not being forced to stop before zebra crossings.
For me, in normal conditions 1) is clearly more unsafe, as car drivers must be paying attention to the traffic anyway. And I'd guess that this is the actual case, otherwise zebra crossings would not have been adopted.
It is not literally forcing anyone but it is effectively forcing everyone. Or don't call it forcing if you want, but it is what people are going to do.
Note that moving a zebra crossing just 200 m means having to walk 400 m more, so 5 minutes walking. For people with reduced mobility it is much longer. [edited to add the ending 'd' in reduced]
Good design is not about the theory it is about what happens in practice. Search for, for example, the design failure of Brasilia. Super well designed on plan, a failure in practice. Something similar is repeated once and again.
So, basically forcing people to cross unsafely (and potentially illegally) is the best design choice?
Less accurate, not less predictable ;-)
What is the difference with the yield sign? Or are you also against the yield sign?
Then only busy places should have zebra crossings?
Why is driving slow less predictable than stopping?
A zebra crossing is similar to a Yield sign, just giving way to pedestrians instead of other cars.
This sounds pretty good.
A designated pedestrian crossing without an associated stop sign or traffic light is just very, very bad design.
Why should this be bad design? I find it would be even more stupid to have to stop all the time (stop sign) or when the light is read but no one wants to cross. The traffic lights with a button for pedestrians are useful in some circumstances, but in many they are even more stupid (eg. often the pedestrian would have been able to cross without a problem but is forced to press the button, wait that the traffic light changes and cross, and then several cars have to stop and wait). Of course, in places with a lot of traffic and pedestrians traffic lights are the right choice, but IMO outside the city centres this is often not the right choice.
I'm not sure this is so everywhere, but in Europe one is supposed to drive carefully when approaching a zebra crossing. It is not that the guy I mention above was super-reckless -just that it is easy and useful to signal it when one wants to cross. I could easily stop on time because I drove slow and had him and the crossing in my focus, as one is supposed to do.
I live in Germany and I do something similar... but it has to be always. If you are close to a zebra crossing most cars will stop to let you cross even if you haven't made any intent to cross, so you have to do all kinds of theatre to make it clear that you are not going to cross (in that moment).
But the other day I understood why they do it (I almost never drive). I was driving approaching a zebra crossing an a guy who was walking in the same direction but through the sidewalk just turned 90º and continued walking when he reached the zebra crossing. He didn't signal the turn at all and didn't even look before crossing. He even stared at me annoyed that I did not stop before. It was like, "dude read my mind, I was going to turn all along".
This system is so inefficient and stupid. The best moments are when people do not realise they are close to a zebra crossing (or they don't give a damn) and cars approaching stop to let them cross. I've seen someone making several cars stop because they were just waiting for something in front of a zebra crossing and the traffic was low enough so that one driver would not see the previous car stopping for nothing.
Cool, thanks!
Thanks for your answer!
Oh, in the US this is dangerous, isn't it? (I mean, legally)
This is probably very location sensitive, are you both in the UK?
Michael Levin's video is wild! I'm speechless.
Nobody is saying that not sending kids to school could be not-net-negative economically in some specific cases (eg. when someone is anyway at home not doing much, maybe in farms still nowadays?). Such cases represent a tiny minority of current population, at lest in Europe (and in all rich countries). And, even for these small percentage of cases, not being net negative economically is still far away from dramatically raising the economic cost of raising these kids (even if tuition is zero).
But it is obvious that if they don't go to school someone has to take care of them, and this is much more expensive. One cannot leave a kid alone at home (regardless if he is tasked to do chores or not) until (s)he is quite grown. That would be pretty crazy (and probably illegal). And having kids working on a family business or similar, it is costly as well: you cannot work half as well, they don't work well either or fast.
The fact that Zvi thinks the value of school to kids is negative is irrelevant here, as what I quoted strictly refers to economic cost (dramatically increasing it, he says, even if tuition is 0). It really looks to me like blatant overlooking of the economic costs of not bringing kids to school. But Zvi seems reasonable (and the tweet is not available), so I asked.
One could argue that from, I don't know, 12 or 13y they could start doing something marginally productive (BTW, sorry, the legal age to start working is 16y, not 14y). This means a max of 4 years doing something productive before they can start legally working, and leaves at least 6 years having someone locked at home taking care of the kid (and hopefully trying to teach something to him), the productivity of whom would be anyway much higher than that of the kid. And note that the kid being able to start doing something productive does not exclude the adult having to be locked at home during that time.
Sorry, I haven't noticed your reply.
I think he's arguing that if kids aren't in school they could be doing something productive (working, chores, family business).
Well, this is assuming that education is not productive. Even if its only use were signalling, it is useful. But if children don't go to school, they cannot work legally until 14y, at least in Europe. Which means that there has to be someone taking care of them, which is the opposite of cheap.
I don't think anything this article talks about is meaningfully different in Europe?
I don't remember anymore the post, sorry, but it might be because social benefits making it cheap to attend school in Europe or because the school system here seems to work better? Teachers seem to be in general better paid in Europe and there are no extreme problems, nor could anybody think that having armed security is anything necessary or useful or a good idea at all. And, at least for higher education, it is usually for free, for example.
I'm so confused how 2 weeks after the post nobody has mentioned that this increases a lot (plastic) waste generation. This is an obvious con!
I think that the tradeoff in terms of getting feedback and providing something for others to build on, especially others outside of the narrow EA-motivated community, is often worthwhile.
This should be obvious for everyone! As an outside observer and huge sympathizer, it is super-frustrating how siloed the broad EA/rational/AI-alignment/adjacent community is --this specific issue with publication is only one of the consequences. Many of "you people" only interacting between "yourselves" (and I'm not referring to you, Davids), very often even socially. I mean, you guys are trying to do the most good possible, so help others use and leverage on your work! And don't waste time reinventing what is already common or, at least, what already exists outside. More mixing would also help prevent Leverage-style failures and probably improve what from the outside seems like a very weird and unhealthy "bay area social dynamics" (as put by Kaj here).
Oh, thank you! I thought that what doesn't exist was a list of initial conditions that we could already work on. I didn't expect that there is nothing at all, even far fetched. So, if I understand it correctly, for all the proposals so far developed, there have been someone suggesting a credible way an AGI could doge them. Do I understand it correctly?
Along with everything else it does, school dramatically raises the economic cost of raising kids even if tuition is zero.
I really don't get this, can anyone explain it?
In general, after reading this post, I feel very happy to have been raised in Europe.
This came out few days or weeks after my post.
It is not easy to store it for longer time, but that's one of the uses of hydrogen (for energy).
I only skimmed it as well as an article. I think it is quite likely that someone here has been very curios about this is a topic and would be happy to write about it. It is just a question, so why not asking? I am not forcing anyone to answer it or even to read the question (and I have willingly make it short).
Imagine if you had always been like this, not only during the last time. There is a large problem where people who feel like this are in a huge competitive disadvantage (or end up "corrupted"). And these people tend to be the most ethical ones. It is really not surprising that people tend to get less ethical as one looks at higher status jobs/positions.
That's a nice example. I heard about it long ago with investments instead of games. It is really something important to keep in mind!
I think you explain it very well!
So the thing is something like the following, right?: "Looking at it from the outside, a world where 21 heads showed in a row is incredibly unlikely: (if the coin is fair) I would happily bet against this world happening. However, I am already in an incredibly weird world where 20 heads have shown in a row, and another heads only makes it a bit more weird, so I don't know what to bet, heads or tails."
So, what was the answer given in the course?
Just to add, this thread of Phil Metzger argues otherwise:
https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1583106346538311680
I love to listen to stuff. Books, articles, podcasts, music, radio... But I must warn the audience that modern life leaves us very few opportunities for mind-wander, and that listening to articles/books while doing chores, commuting, exercising, etc. diminishes these even further. So be mindful of this and try freeing some time for you to wander / not concentrate in anything.
To read a website in your computer (blog post, news article, etc):
- If you use Firefox, the built-in tool "Reader view" (you can access it pressing F9 or clicking a small Written-paper-icon at the right-most side of the url bar, left of the Bookmarking star) has an option to listen to the text. You can control the speed (up to a point, it does not allow to speed it up enough, in my view) and the voice. It is not awesome, but for the standards of the (free) text-to-speech options, I find it good and used it very often. A very useful plus of the Reader view is that it indicates the approximate time one would need to read the text.
- If you use Chrome, you can download an extension called Reader View. It basically does the same than the Firefox Reader View (and it looks very similar as well, I actually believe that it is deliberate). There are other extensions offering more or less the same. I settled for this one because it also indicates the approximate time one needs to read the text.
Reading PDFs with headers/footers:
- Every app I tried suck at reading PDFs with headers/footers! I have not found a way to make the reader ignore them. However, there is an hilarious workaround: open the pdf file with MS Word and use the in-built tool to read the text. It takes a while for word to open long pdfs, but Words "understands" the pdf's headers and footers (it formats them as headers/footers in word), and the reading tool do not read them.
All these are not perfect but alright in my opinion. However, listening to (or reading+listening to) a text with too many citations is very tedious. (Free) readers do not handle them well. They read them with a very weird and slow pace.
How can you read 2-3x faster than a person speaks (1x)? Do you mean that when you "read" you just skim most of the time and really read only the parts you are interested in?
As others mention, most readers allow you to increase the speed of the the audio. Up to 2x, for light content and with headphones is usually alright if you can concentrate on the audio. Faster than that, I find it really difficult to follow, so you are probably still faster.
I'm always curious to understand how people with very low confidence can end up doing such amazing stuff or in very high positions in organisations. How do you even think in going for it? (I know it is a very personal question. Please, don't feel obliged to answer!)
For completeness, I would add another (more general) Possible action:
develop a system that is able to investigate, develop and provide such cheap (probably not-patentable) treatments, therapies or improvements in general that are currently not pursued because they are not expected to be profitable.
(I know, much easier said that done!)
We want our farm animals to eat a lot...
What we "want" is that farm animals grow fast and big, not that they eat a lot. Actually we want them to eat the least possible and grow fast and big.
My idea so far is to use a spreadsheet set to something similar to this:
where the cells are checkboxes and the erased text would include different chores, types of work tasks/projects, and entries such as commuting, sleeping, eating... probably I would also include hobbies or something similar to "other fun", "other productive", "time wasted". Then it automatically counts how many boxes are checked for each column and so tells me how much time I spent in each task/chore/etc.
However, I am really not sure if this is going to be useful in the long run. I think that this degree of detail will be very useful at the beginning to get a sense of how much time I spend in all aspects of my life, but probably in the long run it makes more sense to track work time? Does this seem like a reasonable method? Any feedback is welcome, thanks.
Yes! Thanks
Some days (weeks?) ago I saw a tweet from somebody saying something similar to: "What would you guys think of paying AI developers to change careers (to slow AI development)". I am now not able to find anymore.
Has anyone seen it as well and could link it to me here, please?
Thanks!
Is this kind of thinking gaining momentum?
Cool, thanks. I'll read it!
This sounds useful, thanks.
However, I was thinking more in something that reminds of all the tasks that are dependent on B. Actually this app is a good way to have the trigger (as long as it is something changing a website), but it misses the part or reminding the tasks.
UPDATE:
The app has an expansion pack that seems to get (at least very close) to the issue at hand. It contains a "Plug-in to integrate with Tasker, Automate and Automagic". I have actually never used these apps, but for what I've read about them I would be surprised if they would not be able to add events in a calendar or entries in a to-do list.
Still, I would like to know how people deal with these kinds of situations in general, as this only works when a website changes.
Awesome, thanks Kaj!
I know there are posts in LW that mention a behaviour and/or productivity tip of the form "if/when X happens, do Y". I don't know how this is called so I am not able to find any. Could anybody point me to the right direction, please?