Posts

Prediction markets are consistently underconfident. Why? 2024-01-11T02:44:02.824Z
Anki setup best practices? 2023-12-25T22:34:34.639Z
Sinclair Chen's Shortform 2023-04-15T07:27:32.738Z
Manifold Markets community meetup 2022-12-07T03:25:42.459Z
Prediction markets meetup/coworking (hosted by Manifold Markets) 2022-07-26T00:14:53.704Z
View and bet in Manifold prediction markets on Lesswrong 2022-05-26T02:41:02.599Z

Comments

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on If you weren't such an idiot... · 2024-03-10T09:10:02.463Z · LW · GW

Diet

Ok. Well I don't think there's a robust nutrition engineering either. Except maybe whatever the gym bros are cooking up (iirc mostly macronutrients, some supplements, and don't take certain research chemicals that will kill you). There is a lot of incredible engineering in making food tasty and cheap though.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on If you weren't such an idiot... · 2024-03-10T09:09:37.703Z · LW · GW

Skipping showering is easy actually.

Caveat: people differ in body odor based on genetics, hormones, and armpit microbiome. I personally am privileged to not smell bad, therefore I don't shower until my skin or hair starts to feel icky (a few days).

I used to get dandruff a lot even back when I was showering daily. I saw r/HaircareScience saying sulfates and other chemicals in typical shampoos dry out the scalp and make it overcorrect by producing more oil. this matches my experience. Shampoo is like coffee; it creates dependency. Later, when I stopped showering daily, I did some experimentation and found that if I used shampoo, my scalp would actually feel worse the day after. So I just went cold turkey.
Now, my hair routine is: brush it every morning, use normal conditioner every time I shower, and use clarifying conditioner if my hair feels icky.

Shoes

I saw people on r/parkour talk about running barefoot, so I gave it a try. The impact hurt at first, but I focused on landing on my forefoot, I immediately learned the technique and honed it over a few runs. Then I was able to use this technique even while having my shoes on. 

At the time, I reasoned that this skill would allow me to be prepared in scenarios where I was wearing high heels or something, because I had the option to take them off and run. Which is true but moot: now I prefer to wear shoes with a "zero drop" because they pack light, are cheap, and comfortable to me.

Walking

Walking strictly slower than running. Most things if done faster will give you more stress, but pure movement done fast both saves time and is healthy.

I tried to give up walking for Lent - except when inside or walking with a group of people, and I can walk when out of breath. Honestly I've forgotten to do this sometimes. But it's fun and I'm getting better.

I also don't have a sports bra, or any bras really because I've grown out of my old ones. This is definitely me being an idiot, but to cope I've discovered how to run with long gentle strides such that when the foot lands it loads the energy into the arc of my foot like a spring, using my leg and foot almost like a suspension, and this eliminates the jerky shockwave that would make my tits hurt. It's easier on the knees and saves energy I think, but harder on the achilles tendon probably? (I don't trust my biomechanical description here.) 

warning that these things can have surprising tradeoffs. my energy-saving technique for descending stairs / slopes quickly also makes me more likely to slip, for instance, though I think I am better at catching myself than most people...

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on If you weren't such an idiot... · 2024-03-10T08:14:39.631Z · LW · GW

(Splitting into multiple comments)

401k

  • Yes, the employee matching is "free money." But transferring my money out of this to do a Roth IRA rollover was really annoying and I may have accidentally done it wrong and now I need to talk to a CPA.  All this work for just for a matched $6000. Bureaucracy, friction, and poor UI are bad because it makes my adhd brain procrastinating on actually investing. (Incidentally this is also a reason to be wary of crypto as an investment - annoying to get on/off chain)
  • Retirement accounts are also often not able to invest in non-traditional assets like crypto or startup equity. They are less liquid.
  • I've reduced my "necessary" possessions to only what fits in a single tiny backpack. I've also cut my expenses substantially. I've saved so much money, I could retire very soon and travel the world in low cost-of-living countries, just living off the 4% of the principal. So by keeping my money in "retirement" accounts I am delaying the age at which I can retire because of the tax penalty!
    (I love working at manifold tho, and even if I left I'd probably just start my own startup, or something else ambitious, while being a nomad.)
    • maybe you don't earn very much, but the future is coming fast so who knows when financial escape velocity will come for you

index funds

  • diversification has diminishing marginal returns.
  • if instead you just hand-pick a dozen of stocks of companies you think are underrated, spread out across industries, you've got most of the benefit of diversification already, but at higher EV
  • if you're young, you should be taking on more risk for higher EV
  • the lesswrong zeitgeist in particular was ahead on crypto, covid, and AI. I have made money listening to it. what else will this community be ahead on?
  • if everyone buys the top 500 companies in the S&P, because "they're supposed to," then the top 500 are overvalued and you should buy the 501st company. (some mutual funds do this trade, and my rationalist friend who I think is smart, but who also lives in his mom's basement, swears there's still alpha in this. I don't bother.)
  • The future will be weird
  • Markets are anti-inductive

Of course, you probably should not be thinking too much about optimal investments if you have very little to invest, or if you are in debt. Weigh the value of your time. If you are young the most important thing to invest in is in yourself - your skills, equipment, knowledge, etc.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on If you weren't such an idiot... · 2024-03-04T07:13:23.001Z · LW · GW

Whatever you use, remember to backup your vault regularly. A cautionary tale:

I lost access to my bitwarden vault containing a private key to a few thousand $ worth of crypto, after changing my master password to something that I was then not able to recall perfectly.  And bitwarden's website / extension start to rate limit you client-side after failed attempts. So instead, after a lot of research I was able to find the bitwarden hashfile on my computer where chrome stores data for its extensions. I then downloaded hashcat and tried to do a dictionary attack and some other clever attacks that made use of what I thought my password was supposed to be, but to no success.

Don't be me. Bitwarden lets you download your encrypted vault from the website or CLI. do that.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on If you weren't such an idiot... · 2024-03-04T06:47:47.594Z · LW · GW

A list of things that "everyone knows you should do" that I have gained value from NOT doing:

- health things recommended by "experts" that few people do and are therefore not lindy
  - drink lots of water - diminishing marginal returns. if you have to get to pee at night you may be drinking too much
  - sunglasses - outdoor light improves your eyesight and makes you more alert. 
  - diet stuff. eating a lot of vegetables, eating no vegetables, cutting salt, cutting fat, cutting carbs - nutrition is not solved, your body is a complex system, and your body is not like other bodies for reasons no one really knows.
  - avoid fast food
  - drink red wine
- don't waste food
- avoid nicotine
- buy a car
- get a mortgage for a house
- save lots of money in a retirement account and buy index funds
- shower daily
- use shampoo
- wear shoes
- walk
- sleep under a blanket

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2024-02-22T14:21:23.981Z · LW · GW

I see smart ppl often try to abstract, generalize, mathify, in arguments that are actually emotion/vibes issues. I do this too.
The neurotypical finds this MEAN. but the real problem is that the math is wrong

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Believing In · 2024-02-22T14:12:39.891Z · LW · GW

after thinking and researching for not-long, I think there may be nonzero prior art in gift economics, blockchain reputation systems (belief in people); public goods funding (like quadratic funding); and viewpoints.xyz or vTaiwan (polling platform that k-means "coalitions" and rewards people who "build bridges"). It in general feels like the kind of math problem that the RadicalXChange people would be interested in.

I am not impressed with the current versions of these technologies that are actually "in production."
I think the field is still very experimental. I think its so pre-paradigm that art / philosophy / anthropology / "traditional-ways-of-knowing" are probably ahead of us on this

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2024-02-21T21:07:17.102Z · LW · GW

woah I didn't even know lw team was working on a "pre 2024 review" feature using prediction markets probabilities integrated into the UI. super cool!

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Believing In · 2024-02-21T18:29:08.895Z · LW · GW

what would the math for aggregating different "believing in"s across people in an incentive aligned, accurate way look like?

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Wrong answer bias · 2024-02-05T18:19:24.607Z · LW · GW

This reminds me of the observation that most things on the internet are written by insane people - empirically for most forms of media, including user-produced media, a few exceptional users contribute a supermajority of the output. And to be this exceptional you are likely to differ from the population in a lot of other ways as well.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Running a Prediction Market Mafia Game · 2024-02-05T18:03:14.201Z · LW · GW

yes, I'd recommend play money isolated to the game itself

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Running a Prediction Market Mafia Game · 2024-02-02T15:29:52.267Z · LW · GW

Each player has certain information on the distribution because they know their own role. The game would become a mixed game that depends on how much you care about the market payout vs winning, like mafia members would have an incentive to throw if they cared more about the money. I think this would be tricky to balance. The spectator version can mostly use existing rules (such as mafia members knowing for certain who the other members are). This also means that of you do figure out the balance, the game would be more novel and interesting

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Don't sleep on Coordination Takeoffs · 2024-01-28T18:22:35.886Z · LW · GW

Concrete steps towards removing language barriers:
- promote idea that letting languages die is good actually
- improve translation speed, offline-capability, and UI
- create great products that take advantage of auto-translating non-english internets, social media, or traditional media
- accelerate capabilities of LLMs

Concrete steps towards free banking
- Fintech startup that issues VISA cards backed by your liquid investment portfolio, that autosells to pay for things
- Write code for crypto projects

More pie in the sky
- Design new social media that is fun and meaningful rather than divisive or draining
- Create the one true religion
- Stop tipping

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Don't sleep on Coordination Takeoffs · 2024-01-28T18:05:14.959Z · LW · GW

Decision theory didn't take off because it's "law thinking" but better decisionmaking in practice needs "rule thinking". And the mathematical formalisms early on actually weren't very complete or meaningful? 

There were and are market-economics-knowing people who tried very hard to get the world to a better place. They're called developmental economists. Turns out that stuff is actually pretty hard, but people are making progress.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2024-01-15T16:39:40.565Z · LW · GW

People should be more curious about what the heck is going on with trans people on a physical, biological, level. I think this is could be a good citizen science research project for y'all since gender dysphoria afflicts a lot of us in this community, and knowledge leads to better detection and treatment. Many trans-women especially do a ton of research/experimentation themselves. Or so I hear. I actually haven't received any mad-science google docs of research from any trans person yet. What's up with that? Who's working on this?

Where I'd start maybe:

- https://transfemscience.org/
- Dr Powers's powerpoint deck
- r/diyhrt

My open questions

- trans is comorbid with adhd, autism, and connective tissue disorders.
  - what's the playbook for connective tissue disorders? Should more people try supplementing collagen? it's cheap!
- trans is slightly genetic. which genes?
- do any non-human animals have similar conditions?
- is the late-transitioning + female-attraction / early-transitioning + male-attraction typology for trans-women real? like are these traits actually bimodal or is it  more linear and correlated?
- best ways to maintain sexual desire and performance on feminizing hrt.

but probably best research directions are ones I haven't thought of. there's so much we don't know (or or maybe just so much I don't know) just gotta keep pulling threads until we get answers!

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on On the Contrary, Steelmanning Is Normal; ITT-Passing Is Niche · 2024-01-12T04:51:41.279Z · LW · GW

Zach's post is not vibe-neutral because nothing is vibe-neutral. There's a subtextual claim that: 1. when people criticize your arguments you should take it as a gift 2. when you criticise other people's opinions you should present it as a gift. 3. when "debating" be chill, as if you are at the grocery store check-out

I think this is a good strategy, and that (2) actually can succeed at at quelling bad emotional reaction. If you present an argument as an attack, or prematurely apologize for attacking, it will be felt like an attack. If you just present it with kindness, people will realize you mean no harm. If you present it with a detached professional "objectivity" and like actually feel [i just care about the truth] then ... well some people would still react badly but it should usually be fine. could be done with a bit more finesse maybe.

There's also 4. this is the right frame that people who read LW ought to take to debates with other people who read LW. Which I also agree with.

[I'm probably reading into Zach's writing stuff that he didn't intend to imply. But death of the author; I'm following the advice of the post]

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on What is the next level of rationality? · 2024-01-05T08:21:43.180Z · LW · GW

I don't think, like, re-editing AI to Zombies once again is valuable.

I do think, like, "come up with your own n virtues of rationality" is a good exercise. I think destruction & resynthesis could be more fruitful

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Effective Aspersions: How the Nonlinear Investigation Went Wrong · 2023-12-21T09:19:33.988Z · LW · GW

I added the reviews feature on July 12.

We've been thinking about letting market creators delegate a judge that is not themselves. People sometimes do this informally.
Also Manifold team members (and mods we delegate) have the power to overturn resolutions - though iirc we only do this in extreme cases.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Towards no-math, graphical instructions for prediction markets · 2023-12-14T19:23:04.221Z · LW · GW

Yes, and firms already experiment with different economic mechanisms to produce this self-generated information - this is just compensation and employee benefits, including stock options, commissions, bonuses. In this frame, it's seems like a bad idea to let employees bet against, like projects shipping on time. A negative stake is the least aligned form of compensation possible. There are hacks on top of a pure prediction market you could do to prevent people from having a negative stake. But I think once you realize that the recursive aspect of the market you may as well just ... design good compensation. 

I'm also more enthusiastic about prediction markets on things mostly outside of employees' control that are still relevant to business decisions - market trends, actions of competitors and regulators, consumer preferences maybe. Though there's less reason for these to be internal.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Towards no-math, graphical instructions for prediction markets · 2023-12-14T07:39:35.751Z · LW · GW
  1. Prediction markets with even very small amounts of traders are remarkably well-calibrated. Try playing around with the data in https://calibration.city/. Albeit these are traders out of a wider population.
  2. I am skeptical of prediction markets as tools within organizations, even very large organizations (like Google's Gleangen or Microsoft). It hasn't been very useful, and I don't think this is a just a UX or culture issue, I think the information just isn't valuable enough. Better off running polls, doing user studies, or just letting project owners execute their big-brained vision. I more bullish of prediction markets that are part of a product/service, or part of an advertising campaign.
Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Do websites and apps actually generally get worse after updates, or is it just an effect of the fear of change? · 2023-12-14T07:09:25.128Z · LW · GW

I think it incorrect to paint with such a broad brush that external capital ruins design.

Apple is publicly traded. If I think of software with design that I personally love a lot - Notion, Raycast, Figma, Partiful, Discord, Supabase - are all venture-backed or were early on. Some exceptions are Sublime Merge, the personal site dimden.dev, and I guess a lot of open-source packages although that is more engineering than design.

The startup wisdom I've heard is that VCs should mostly leave founders alone to do whatever crazy thing they think is right. I agree with this take.

I can think of many examples of software getting worse due to growth pressure (insomnia.rest) 
or acquisition by a big company (OkCupid).
You mention investors pushing founders to take risks being bad. I disagree - risk is good. It's interesting to ask whether the median venture-backed software is better or worse than than the median bootstrapped software. But in terms of utilitarian value I think the user-weighted average is what matters.  And personally what matters to me is how good the very best software is, because that's what I'll use if I can. 

I'm sorry, but Atlassian's Jira is bad design. Steam is bad design - it's slow, ad-filled and hard to find your friends; compare its design to Itch.io (also bootstrapped). Jetbrains is fine, I guess.

I agree with your thesis when it comes to game design. I grant that Minecraft is very well designed (actually not entirely, it just gets the important things really right). I feel like AAA games are punching way below their weight compared to indie games in terms of how fun they should be.
... actually do indie devs/studios seek venture capital? I am much less informed about how game development is financed.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Do websites and apps actually generally get worse after updates, or is it just an effect of the fear of change? · 2023-12-10T19:47:14.688Z · LW · GW

I’m not convinced that the new reddit example is worse than the old one. They serve different purposes, the new one lets you actually read the posts without having to click in. It’s also more pretty and clean - I expect the median and modal user to like the new UI better even if it less useful to reddit powerusers.

Capitalistic forces causes companies to converge on design that most people find intuitive, and this is good

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Towards no-math, graphical instructions for prediction markets · 2023-12-10T19:31:17.201Z · LW · GW

People bet a lot on sports despite sports odds having very confusing notation. many non-professionals trade options or crypto with numerical interfaces. a lot of popular videogames have resources denominated in numbers.

The way info from the non-numerate gets incorporated into financial markets today is that more sophisticated people & firms scrape social media or look at statistics (like generated by consumer activity). markets do not need to be fully accessible for markets to be accurate.

I’m very skeptical of the need to represent functions.

That said I’m always game to try out building new, simpler trading interfaces. At manifold we tried a mobile interface where you swiped left to bet no and right to bet yes. It was kinda fun and saw limited use but we ended up killing it because it was a lot to maintain

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Saying the quiet part out loud: trading off x-risk for personal immortality · 2023-11-07T08:02:47.886Z · LW · GW

I'm very much of an egoist but I don't really agree with this statement. Even if the last smidge of my altruism were deleted, I still wouldn't rob banks or run a fraudulent asset exchange because I have a very cushy position in society as it is and cooperating with humanity in fact makes my life much better than not. I similarly wouldn't do existentially crazy things to try to reach the singularity for me personally. Even if normal people wouldn't understand how I'm burning the commons, you guys would.

I'm like way more likely to do norm-breaking stuff (like sell unlicensed securities) for altruistic reasons, though it is still usually a bad idea.

--

I really do feel it's a bummer that I don't get to be part of the Future. It really does suck. The way I cope is by trying to make the present a little bit more future (in a way that isn't existentially threatening). I'll get to see a few cool things this way at least.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on How to Resolve Forecasts With No Central Authority? · 2023-10-26T03:49:58.918Z · LW · GW

Kleros-like mechanism where a jury votes and you only get a reward if you vote the same way as consensus.

Or better, for Community Notes you could use CN algorithm itself (consensus of people across the political aisle)

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Cohabitive Games so Far · 2023-10-19T16:56:24.813Z · LW · GW

If you have any skill at software, I actually think it is very simple to prototype simple tabletop games demos with any conventional web stack such as nextjs + firebase. My brother has done it before

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Cohabitive Games so Far · 2023-10-19T16:48:10.426Z · LW · GW

You don't need VR for board games, you just need to transfer the entire board game into a user interface, which very doable since board games are 2D. That said, Tabletop Simulator is a full physics-based board game playing environment, often played on desktop.

I think Among Us (though competitive) has shown that voice chat is all you need. Alternatively, you can lean into limited communication channels as a source of conflict, like Hanabi
 

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Competitive, Cooperative, and Cohabitive · 2023-10-19T16:30:20.278Z · LW · GW

Example 4. The management of Generic Corp is missing out on a huge opportunity. So I buy a bunch of stock, use my voting power to advocate for a new set of policies that would churn out nicer widgets at a lower cost. Generic Corp stock goes up, then I sell it at a profit.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on A thought about the constraints of debtlessness in online communities · 2023-10-19T06:45:26.880Z · LW · GW

there's also hive (formerly steemit) that tries to reward posters of highly upvoted things, and early upvoters who correctly predict what will become big.

I think empirically money-based social media hasn't really taken off, but I suspect it's mostly due to transaction costs, bad UI, and the public goods problem (as information is freely copied). These are all solvable!

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on "The Heart of Gaming is the Power Fantasy", and Cohabitive Games · 2023-10-10T20:04:50.981Z · LW · GW

Nitpick: pvp tetris exists, is quite popular, and I think a majority of the tetris fanbase in the modern era

Though tetris definitely wasn't designed to multiplayer and it really shows. You can be good at it without looking much at your opponent at all, and even at high levels of play it is much less interactive at high levels compared to, like, Catherine (which admittedly also wasn't designed for pvp)

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Luck based medicine: inositol for anxiety and brain fog · 2023-10-05T05:40:52.077Z · LW · GW

I've had success using inositol to treat romantic limerance / obsession. Full writeup here. In short, I tried it out of a theory that brain patterns of people in love is similar to OCD and inositol is used off label to treat OCD. At the peak I took 8g a day. Taking powder inositol under the tongue was faster and more intense but shorter lasting.

Of the people who saw my post, some tried it, and only one other person has told me it helped them get over someone while 2 or 3 people told me it didn't help at all.

It has a calming effect for me in general.
I still occasionally take 0.5g under the tongue sometimes when I feel like I need to. I try to avoid it because on reflection choosing not to be in love was a bit personality suicide, wasn't actually what I valued, but I think it's still good that I have the choice, and that I was able to think about it from a clearer mind

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on The point of a game is not to win, and you shouldn't even pretend that it is · 2023-09-29T16:29:02.703Z · LW · GW

This may be a healthy attitude to have as a player but it's a terrible attitude to have as a game designer

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-09-20T00:10:05.417Z · LW · GW

As in visually looks better.
- LW font still has bad kerning on apple devices that makes it harder to read I think, and makes me tempted to add extra spaces at the end of sentences. (See this github issue)
- Agree / Disagree are reactions rather than upvotes. I do think the reversed order on EAF is weird though
- EAF's Icon set is more modern

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-09-15T17:43:52.117Z · LW · GW

Sometimes when one of my LW comments gets a lot of upvotes, I feel an urge that it's too high relative to how much I believe it and I need to "short" it

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on PSA: The community is in Berkeley/Oakland, not "the Bay Area" · 2023-09-15T00:29:40.519Z · LW · GW

My personal experience - I live in SF and used to live in Berkley / work in Oakland -

There are more "deep rationalists" in Berkeley, Oakland; but there are enough rationalists / EAs in SF to say that a rationalist community exists here. All the big AI capabilities companies are here, and their employees are smart and familiar with lesswrong. And also the non-"rationalists" in SF are way smarter than the non-"rationalists" in Berkeley / Oakland. The baseline level of ambition / energy is way higher. So if you just want to hang out with rational people or chat about deep things then I suggest coming to SF, particularly around the Hayes Valley neighborhood.

South bay sucks though. It really suffers from brain drain. I guess David Friedman (founder of anarcho capitalism) is down there and goes to / hosts ACX meetups sometimes. I consider him the only anchor of the community down there. Almost everyone else cool has left.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on How ForumMagnum builds communities of inquiry · 2023-09-14T06:35:57.131Z · LW · GW

I'm happy you analyzed the design of this site! I greedily want rationalists to discuss social media design more. Info tech is truth tech (or it can be!) and despite advances in mediums, text is king.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-09-14T05:57:13.015Z · LW · GW

EA forum has better UI than lesswrong. a bunch of little things are just subtly better. maybe I should start contributing commits hmm

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-09-05T03:44:54.000Z · LW · GW

The s-curve in prediction market calibrations

https://calibration.city/manifold displays an s-curve for the market calibration chart. this is for non-silly markets with >5 traders.

Image

This is what it looks like at close:

this means the true probability is farther from 50% than the price makes it seem.

The calibration is better at 1/4 of the way to close:

Image

you might think it's because markets closing near 20% are weird in some way (unclear resolution) but markets 3/4 of the way to close also show the s-curve. Go see for yourself.

The CSPI tournament also exhibited this s-curve. In that article it points out predictit does too!

I left a comment there on why I think this might be the case:  the AMM is inefficient, limited balances, people chasing higher investment returns elsewhere.

I'm curious what people think. And also curious if polymarket or the indian prediction markets also have a similar curve.

---

should I make a real post for this? to-do's are: look into polymarket data (surely it exists? it's blockchain) and fit a curvy formula to this.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Defunding My Mistake · 2023-09-05T02:40:54.506Z · LW · GW

I'm a fan of corporal punishment as an alternative to prison for most crimes

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-08-08T23:09:04.031Z · LW · GW

why should I ever write longform with the aim of getting to the top of LW, as opposed to the top of Hacker News? similar audiences, but HN is bigger.

I don't cite. I don't research.
I have nothing to say about AI.

my friends are on here ... but that's outclassed by discord and twitter.
people here speak in my local dialect ... but that trains bad habits.
it helps LW itself ... but if im going for impact surely large reach is the way to go?

I guess LW is uniquely about the meta stuff. Thoughts on how to think better. but I'm suspicious of meta.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-08-07T04:17:07.446Z · LW · GW

if it is superconducting, I'm excited not just for this material but of the (lost soviet?) theories outlined in the original paper - in general new physics leads to new technology and in particular it would imply other room-temp standard pressure superconductors are possible.

idk it could be the next carbon nanotubes (as in not actually useful for much at our current tech level) or it could be the next steel / (not literally, I mean in terms of increasing rate of gdp growth). like if it allows for more precise magnetic sensors that leads to further materials science innovation, or just like gets us to fusion or something.

I'm not a physicist, just a gambler, but I have a hunch that if the lk-99 stuff pans out that we're getting a lot of positive EV dice rolls in the near future.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-08-05T18:18:52.484Z · LW · GW

you and i have very different conceptions of low

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-07-28T07:40:42.786Z · LW · GW

anyone else super hyped about superconductors?
gdi i gotta focus on real work. in the morning

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-07-28T07:35:39.486Z · LW · GW

There's something meditative about reductionism.
Unlike mindfulness you go beyond sensation to the next baser, realer level of the physics
You don't, actually. It's all in your head. It's less in your eyes and fingertips. In some ways, it's easier to be wrong.

Nonetheless cuts through a lot of noise - concepts, ideologies, social influences.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-07-22T21:08:28.786Z · LW · GW

wheras yudkowsky called rationality as a perfect dance, where you steps land exactly right, like a marching band, or like performing a light and airy piano piece perfectly via long hours of arduous concentration to iron out all the mistakes -

and some promote a more frivolous and fun dance, playing with ideas with humor and letting your mind stretch with imagine, letting your butterflies fly -

perhaps there is something to the synthesis, to a frenetic, awkward, and janky dance. knees scraping against the world you weren't ready for. excited, ebullient, manic discovery. the crazy thoughts at 2am. the gold in the garbage. climbing trees. It is not actually more "nice" than a cool logical thought, and it is not actually more easy.

Do not be afraid of crushing your own butterflies, stronger ones will take its place!

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Blanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer · 2023-07-18T04:46:33.078Z · LW · GW

before I transitioned, women were more likely to cross the street if i walk behind them, more likely to be cagey if I ask to hang out, less cordial overall in conversation, spoke in lower pitch. the last one is probably mimicry, and some confounders are that i was depressed at the time and semi-religious university was a very different environment than SF bay rationalists

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning · 2023-07-17T11:44:17.518Z · LW · GW

Seems like a lot of the asserted "failure to cut reality at its joints" is about trans people before they have started transitioning or before they pass.

I nominate the term "aspiring woman" for people who are biologically male, perceived as men, but who desire to be perceived as women. (That's what I used to call myself, but people were confused why I didn't just call myself a woman, so instead I resorted to various long winded explanations, and then various inaccurate nonbinary labels that required a tumblr account or university education to understand, and people were still confused, and then I gave up and just identified as a woman.)

Much like "aspiring rationalist" the term is technically correct while still vibes-implying that you are sorta the thing you aspire to but sorta not, or not yet at least.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning · 2023-07-17T11:07:10.776Z · LW · GW

I said, "I need the phrase 'actual women' in my expressive vocabulary to talk about the phenomenon where, if transition technology were to improve, then the people we call 'trans women' would want to make use of that technology; I need language that asymmetrically distinguishes between the original thing that already exists without having to try, and the artificial thing that's trying to imitate it to the limits of available technology".

Kelsey Piper replied, "the people getting surgery to have bodies that do 'women' more the way they want are mostly cis women [...] I don't think 'people who'd get surgery to have the ideal female body' cuts anything at the joints."

Another woman said, "'the original thing that already exists without having to try' sounds fake to me" (to the acclaim of four "+1" emoji reactions).

 

I would also give that second comment a +1 (though not Kelsey's). For cis women to achieve the social target of femininity requires active self modification - shaving body hair periodically, for instance. Okay, to nitpick, one could get it all lasered/electrolyzed (in which case it's just one-time self modification) or be fortunately born with buttery smooth legs. But the modal woman actively performs womanhood.  The level of effort and performance success is a matter of degree, and I think this follows a bimodal distribution with a peak of high effort lower results (trans women) and taller peak of lower effort higher results (cis women).

Perhaps we should have a different term for the target, for [that which women on average try to become or fantasize about becoming.] Trans people sorta call it "transition goals" but I think a more typical term would be the "ideal woman"? I think it's hard to pin down what the "ideal woman" is like, because everyone's personal aesthetic vision is different, and people probably bias towards everyone else having the same vision as they do. But if we look at virtual reality as glimpse at what people choose to be given the choice, then the ideal woman is a pretty girl that is overall human with the exception of cat ears and a tail, and sometimes paws but that is a little bit too experimental for me personally.

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Sinclair Chen's Shortform · 2023-07-16T02:32:35.593Z · LW · GW

The latest ACX book review of The Educated Mind is really good! (as a new lens on rationality. am more agnostic about childhood educational results though at least it sounds fun.)

- Somantic understanding is logan's Naturalism. It's your base layer that all kids start with, and you don't ignore it as you level up.
- incorporating heroes into science education is similar to an idea from Jacob Crawford that kids should be taught a history of science & industry - like what does it feel like to be the Wright brothers, tinkering on your device with no funding, defying all the academics that are saying that heavier than air flight is impossible. How did they decide on what materials, designs? If you are a kid that just wants to build model rockets you'd prefer to skip straight to the code of the universe, but I think most kids would be engaged by this.  A few kids will want to know the aerodynamics equations, but a lot more kids would want to know the human story.
- the postrats are Ironic, synthesizing the rationalist Philosophy with stories, jokes, ideals, gossip, "vibes".

fun, joy, imagination are important for lifelong learning and competence!

anyways go read the actual review

Comment by Sinclair Chen (sinclair-chen) on Adversarial Priors: Not Paying People to Lie to You · 2023-07-14T21:35:35.877Z · LW · GW

Interesting. In practice I try (not that successfully) to not punish people who tell me the truth. It requires reframing insults and bad news in a positive light, which is hard.

I think in practice people don't really listen to most sales pitches, and pitches that involve something objective and verifiable do better.  Alex Hormozi talks about a method of putting metrics into advertising like "X% of our customers last month increased their revenue by Y%" - it's just literally true, can be checked, and cannot be copied by your competitors unless they are actually better than you.