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Data about the new coronavirus variant (B.1.1.7) from Denmark 2021-01-02T11:38:35.187Z

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Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Generalized Stat Mech: The Boltzmann Approach · 2024-04-13T11:54:04.371Z · LW · GW

The assumptions made here are not time reversible as the macrostate at time t+1 being deterministic given the macrostate at time t, does not imply that the macrostate at time t is deterministic given the macrostate at time t+1.

So in this article the direction of time is given through the asymmetry of the evolution of macrostates. 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on General Thoughts on Secular Solstice · 2024-03-24T00:05:58.265Z · LW · GW

I think "book of X" can be usefully "translated" as beliefs about X.
The book of truth is not truth, just like the book of night is not night.

I think "book of names" can be read as human categoristion of animals (giving them name). Although other readings do seem plausible. 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Rawls's Veil of Ignorance Doesn't Make Any Sense · 2024-02-26T10:58:51.369Z · LW · GW

You might be interested in John Harsanyi on the topic.
He argues that the conclusion achieved in the original position is (average) utilitarianism.

I agree that behind the veil one shouldn't know the time (and thus can't care differently about current vs future humans). This actually causes further problems for Rawls conception when you project back in time, what if the worst life that will ever be lived has already been lived? Then the maximin principle gives no guidance at all, and in positions of uncertainty it recommends putting all effort in preventing a new minimum from being set.

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Questions about Solomonoff induction · 2024-01-11T12:34:28.677Z · LW · GW

The concept of Kolmogorov Sufficient Statistic might be the missing piece. (cf Elements of information theory section 14.12)

We want the shortest program that describes a sequence of bits. A particularly interpretable type of such programs is "the sequence is in the set X generated by program p, and among those it is the n'th element"
Example "the sequence is in the set of sequences of length 1000 with 104 ones, generated by (insert program here), of which it is the n~10^144'th element". 

We therefore define f(String, n) to be the size of the smallest set containing String which is generated by a program of length n. (Or alternatively where a program of length n can test for membership of the set)

If you plot the logarithm of f(String,n) you will often see bands where the line has slope -1, corresponding to using the extra bit to hardcode one more bit of the index. In this case the longer programs aren't describing any more structure than the program where the slope started being -1. We call such a program a Kolmogorov minimal statistic.

The relevance is that for a biased coin with each flip independent the Kolmogorov minimal statistic is the bias. And it is often more natural to think about the Kolmogorov minimal statistics. 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The Dick Kick'em Paradox · 2023-09-24T19:17:40.684Z · LW · GW

Then you violate the accurate beliefs condition. (If the world is infact a random mixture in proportion which their beliefs track correctly, then fdt will do better when averaging over the mixture)

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Contra Heighn Contra Me Contra Heighn Contra Me Contra Functional Decision Theory · 2023-09-18T14:33:25.515Z · LW · GW

I don't think the quoted problem has that structure.

And suppose that the existence of S tends to cause both (i) one-boxing tendencies and (ii) whether there’s money in the opaque box or not when decision-makers face Newcomb problems.

But now suppose that the pathway by which S causes there to be money in the opaque box or not is that another agent looks at S

So S causes one boxing tendencies, and the person putting money in the box looks only at S.

So it seems to be changing the problem to say that the predictor observes your brain/your decision procedure. When all they observe is S which, while causing "one boxing tendencies", is not causally downstream of your decision theory.

Further if S where downstream of your decision procedure, then fdt one boxes whether or not the path from the decision procedure to the contents of the boxes routes through an agent. Undermining the criticism that fst has implausible discontinuities.

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Contra Heighn Contra Me Contra Heighn Contra Me Contra Functional Decision Theory · 2023-09-17T07:34:37.493Z · LW · GW

Cant you make the same argument you make in Schwarz procreation by using Parfits hitchhiker after you have reached the city? In which case i think its better to use that example, as it avoids the Heighns criticism.

In the case of implausible discontinuities i agree with Heighn that there is no subjunctive dependence.
 

Here is a quick diagram of the causation in the thought experiment as i understand it.
We have an outcome which is completely determined by your decision to one box/two box and the predictor decision of whether to but money in the one box.
The Predictor decides based on the presence of a lesion (or some other physical fact)
Your decision how many boxes to take is determined by your decision theory.
And your decision theory is partly determined by the Lesion and partly by other stuff.

Now (my understanding of) the claim is that there is no downstream path from your decision theory to the predictor. This means that applying the do operator on the decision theory node doesn't change the distribution of the choices of the predictor.

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Pandemic Prediction Checklist: H5N1 · 2023-02-05T17:31:11.717Z · LW · GW

Denmark culled all mink due to worries about a covid strain in mink. It has only recently (January 1 2023) become legal to farm mink in Denmark again.

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Logical Probability of Goldbach’s Conjecture: Provable Rule or Coincidence? · 2023-01-03T17:00:14.602Z · LW · GW

logical inductors are actually defined by the logical induction criterion. The market bit is there to prove that it is possible to fulfill the criterion.

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on What does "probability" really mean? · 2022-12-30T12:59:31.016Z · LW · GW

There is also the somewhat boring answer that probability can refer to anything which obeys the axioms of probability.

Comment by oskar-mathiasen on [deleted post] 2022-11-28T15:15:51.291Z

Note that coop is a consumer cooperative not an employee cooperative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers%27_co-operative 
 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Covid 1/6/22: The Blip · 2022-01-10T14:50:53.812Z · LW · GW

New report from Denmark called "Focusrapport about Covid-19 related hospitalizations during the Covid-19 pandemic"
https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/fokusrapport-om-covid-19-relaterede-hospitalsindlggelser-under-sars-cov-2-epidemien_06012022_1.pdf?la=da

It is sadly in danish, so i will give a translation of the main results section and some of the graphs.

Summary of main results:
Theme 1: 
* The older a patient is, the greater the likelihood that he or she will have a covid-19- related hospitalization of 12 hours or more. 
* The proportion of short hospital stays of less than 12 hours has been fairly stable in each age group in 2021 with a few fluctuations. 
* The median duration of long hospital stays (≥12 hours) has decreased from 5.5 days in March 2020, to 4.4 days in February 2021 and 4.0 days in October 2021. 
* (this one is added by me) The average duration of (long?) hospitalizations has decreased from 9.2 days in March 2020, to 7.8 days in February 2021 and 7.2 days in October 2021. 

Theme 2: 
* Among covid-19-related admissions in the period 1 June 2020 - 18 December 2021, 82% were registered with a covid-19 diagnosis, 3% with a respiratory diagnosis or an observable covid-19 diagnosis and 15% with another diagnosis. In the month of December, December 1, 2021 to December 18, 2021, they were corresponding shares resp. 73%, 4% and 23%. 
* For all age groups ≥40 years, at least 80% of the admissions were registered with a covid-19 diagnosis. For younger adults and children, the proportion was lower. 
* For vaccinated, 75% of admissions were registered with a covid-19 diagnosis, while the proportion among the unvaccinated was 82% in 2021. The proportion of patients registered with a diagnosis incompatible with Covid among vaccinated and unvaccinated were respectively. 21% and 15%.

percent of covid hospitalizations which where longer then 12 hours (in red) vs shorter than 12 hours (in blue) by age group over time.


number of hospitalizations that are covid (top), airways or observation  (middle), and other (bottom)



 the above categories as a proportion of covid positive hospitalizations over time.

And the above categories as percentage by age group (over june-december 2021)
 

By age and vaccination status (vaccinated is to the left) (there are no vaccinated at ages below 9 in the period)
 

A few thoughts:
It seems weird that the median time of a long stay is going down, but the percentage of short stays is stable
 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Omicron Post #5 · 2021-12-10T17:00:32.525Z · LW · GW

Updated numbers from today at: https://files.ssi.dk/covid19/omikron/statusrapport/rapport-omikronvarianten-10122021-ek56
Now with English translations.
Only significant change is that hospitalizations are up to 1.4% (18 cases).

There should be daily updates found her https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2021
click the newest one and click "læs rapporten her" (read the report here). Which takes you to a page where you can download the rapport for that day
 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Omicron Post #5 · 2021-12-09T23:16:04.004Z · LW · GW

Repost from wordpress blog

status rapport from Denmark

 Key numbers: they give numbers of cases by day, and also give cases of omicron as a percentage of other cases. 

Of 785 cases in Danish citizens, 76.31% of omicron cases where in double vaxed, 7.13% in triple vaxed, compared to 73.69% double (probably also including triple) vaxed for covid in general. 14.14% unvaxed for omicron 22.93% for general (over the last 7 days)

 Rate of hospitalization is 1.15% for omicron (9 cases), and 1.85 in general. 

Everything is probably confounded by age and region. (omicron is less prevalent in children and over 65) 

sources: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/aa41b29149f24e20a4007a0c4e13db1d/page/page_5/ https://files.ssi.dk/covid19/omikron/statusrapport/rapport-omikronvarianten-09122021-ke43

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Omicron Post #4 · 2021-12-07T15:18:22.719Z · LW · GW

Todays cumulative omicron cases is 398 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Omicron Post #4 · 2021-12-07T10:38:22.649Z · LW · GW

Repost from my wordpress comments:
Danish seroprevalance (from https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2021/markant-stigning-i-den-fjerde-nationale-praevalensundersoegelse) seems to have been about 50% above commulative cases (from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/) by may 2020.

Commulative omicron cases in Denmark per SSI https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2021
dec 3: 18 omicron cases
dec 5: 183 cases
dec 6: 261 cases

Oddly this looks linear (80 cases per day), but that is almost certainly random.
 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Nate Soares on the Ultimate Newcomb's Problem · 2021-11-01T18:04:21.479Z · LW · GW

The fact that the 2 numbers are equal is not always true, it is randomly true on this day.

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The Point of Trade · 2021-06-27T09:18:19.327Z · LW · GW

Yes.
I agree that the original post keeps going after removing differences in values because they don't remove differences in marginal value, which is what matters.
I am providing an example where properly removing the differences in marginal value results in no trade.

You are using a nonstandard definition of goods. Would you equally object to a market with only blueberries, apples and bananas on the basis that there is only one good available (fruits)?

The example world can be modified easily to use any utility function of the form a·red points + b·yellow points + c·blue points.

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The Point of Trade · 2021-06-26T16:26:25.932Z · LW · GW

Yes.
The comment was meant as a proof by example that you can have no trade in a world with comparative advantages, if everyone has the same marginal value of all products the result is no trade.
Diminishing marginal returns are indeed enough to make marginal values different between people.
 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The Point of Trade · 2021-06-23T21:01:51.417Z · LW · GW

People could trade making each others numbers bigger, it's just that it will never be beneficial for both.
Letting people increase others numbers by decreasing their own number doesn't change the results

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The Point of Trade · 2021-06-22T21:50:07.776Z · LW · GW

Example world without trade.

Every person gets at birth assigned an array of 3 integers a blue number, a yellow number and a red number. Every person has 3 attributes: the speed they can increase a red number (by spending that amount of time counting out loud), the speed they can increase a blue number, and the speed they can increase a yellow number. They can increase their own numbers or anyone elses. (Note we are not assuming everyone has the same amount of red, blue and yellow points at birth or that they are all equally fast at producing them). Everyone knows that there are no ways to become better at increasing your numbers.
Everyone has the following utility function: red points + blue points + yellow points.
This world has no trade! But it does have comparative advantages!

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The Point of Trade · 2021-06-22T21:37:31.029Z · LW · GW

Two of the removed features are removed incompletely.
Differerences in preferences. What is important for trade is the marginal preference. So to remove this motivation to trade one mus assume the marginal value (both intrinsic and instrumental) to be equal for everyone for all goods, which i think can only happen in some very weird cases (eg all gods have no instrumental value and utility is a linear combination of the products).

The difference in peoples productive capacity (which doesn't by itself result in trade (it does when assuming diminishing marginal value to personal consumption of the same product)) is not captured completely by their human capital, it is their all their capital. So normal capital differences could cause trade in any situation where human capital could.

Trade can also be used to facilitate coordination, cooperation and information.

Trade can allow parallelization of work (a kind of cooperation), and can in general let you play with time (eg work to create a product with the intention of trading it for something later (when you have better information about what you want)) 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Against neutrality about creating happy lives · 2021-03-16T11:21:58.103Z · LW · GW

Does you intuition still hold in the [Least Convenient Possible World](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/neQ7eXuaXpiYw7SBy/the-least-convenient-possible-world) where costs of creating new beings is 0?

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The average North Korean mathematician · 2021-03-09T11:14:01.435Z · LW · GW

At least the big Brittish schools this doesn't clearly hold based on the experience of people i know. Granted the evidence i have is consistent with them only caring about silver or better.

Also my impression for the Russian schools was that not speaking Russian was a problem they were happy to work around (which certainly isn't true everywhere)

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The average North Korean mathematician · 2021-03-08T12:10:40.163Z · LW · GW

The Danish team leader (the closest source to these events i have talked to) seems to (personally) believe the cheating allegations in 2010 or at least that the evidence was insufficient. 
Also note their non participation in 2017 and 2018 for reasons not known to me and in 2020 likely because the event was online

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The average North Korean mathematician · 2021-03-08T12:05:32.108Z · LW · GW

The comparison to chess is maybe more accurate than you think.
See stuff like:
Beginnings: The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It was initially founded for eastern European member countries of the Warsaw Pact, under the USSR bloc of influence, but later other countries participated as well.[2] (source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mathematical_Olympiad)
Also classic geometry is (to my knowledge) taught more generally in many eastern European countries (and make up 1/6-1/3 of the imo).

Also the note about incentives being larger in North Korea also applies to much of eastern Europa to a lesser degree, where qualifying for imo is seemingly enough to get access to any university (source: Sankt Petersberg university gave an open offer at Baltic Way (a regional math competition), and i know someone who used something like that to get into Moscow university)

(Romania, Serbia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine Hungary are the eastern european countries with consistently good results)

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Kelly *is* (just) about logarithmic utility · 2021-03-02T13:20:53.829Z · LW · GW

One possible way to get at the hack of ignoring unlikely possibilities in a reasonable way might be to do something similar to the "typical set" found in information theory. Especially as utility function maximization can be reformulated as relative entropy minimization. 
(Epistemic status: my brain saw a possible connection, i have not spent much time on this idea)

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Data about the new coronavirus variant (B.1.1.7) from Denmark · 2021-01-09T14:55:22.973Z · LW · GW

Here is the updated graph
 

on this one days with 0 cases are not excluded
 

Worth noting that there doesnt seem to be any significant differences in the ages of people who have the new and old variant 

Source https://www.ssi.dk/-/media/cdn/files/notat_engelsk_virusvariant090121.pdf?la=da 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Data about the new coronavirus variant (B.1.1.7) from Denmark · 2021-01-09T14:03:27.648Z · LW · GW

Update with new numbers.

In the period from 28-12 to 02-01 we get the following numbers

Positive tests: 14408
sequenced tests: 1261 (8.8%)
B.1.1.7 cases: 36 (2.9%)

Which is slightly slower than a doubleing time of a week (a 1.8 multiplier per week with naive extension (i believe the naive method is likely to underestimate))

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on What evidence will tell us about the new strain? How are you updating? · 2021-01-03T22:10:49.801Z · LW · GW

Update can be found here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qtett2vv34jhBZkCw/data-about-the-new-coronavirus-variant-b-1-1-7-from-denmark

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets - Part 13 · 2021-01-01T16:52:45.858Z · LW · GW

In this alternate universe the old testament is true, so it is a reference to the seventh day of creation where god rested (after having created the world)

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on What evidence will tell us about the new strain? How are you updating? · 2020-12-26T11:26:59.829Z · LW · GW

85 seems incongruent with this source https://covidcg.org/?tab=global_sequencing
 

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on What evidence will tell us about the new strain? How are you updating? · 2020-12-26T11:13:27.485Z · LW · GW

The countries that do the most sequencing (who also have a significant number of cases) is Denmark (10.9% of positives are sequenced) and the UK(5.61%).
The Danish data makes me slightly hopeful:
1. the virus has been found in Denmark.
2. But the numbers are surprisingly small, 9 confirmed cases by 20-12,  
3. The Danish government have not released statements regarding its effects on vaccines.
3-1. Denmark made such an announcement as soon as any evidence above baseline existed for cluster 5, so the lack of announcement is more significant than one might otherwise think.
4. Case numbers are not going up in Denmark

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The LessWrong 2018 Book is Available for Pre-order · 2020-12-02T15:08:00.075Z · LW · GW

Denmark seems to also not be an option.
(and switzerland is an option twice)

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on The Darwin Game · 2020-10-10T09:58:39.081Z · LW · GW

If i had to guess on the motives, the last time a similar game was played (non publically) the meta developed to be about self recognizing, this is likely a rule to avoid this.
Winning strategy was some key string to identify yourself, cooperate with yourselt, play 3 otherwise. (Granted number of iterations was low, so people might not have moved to be non cooperating strategies  enough (something like grim trigger))

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on 2020's Prediction Thread · 2020-01-01T22:35:42.388Z · LW · GW

You predict that it is more likely to have an ai which " that can perform nearly every economically valuable task more cheaply than a human, will have been created " than "will write a book without substantial aid, that ends up on the New York Times bestseller list. "

This seems weird as the first seems very likely to cause the second.

Comment by Oskar Mathiasen (oskar-mathiasen) on What's going on with this failure of Bayes to converge? · 2019-12-21T00:09:34.498Z · LW · GW

They seem to forget to first condition on the fact that the threshold must be an integer. This narrows the possibility space to have size countable infinit rather than uncountable infinit. Meaning they need to do a completely different mahtematics, which gives the correct ressult