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Isn't whether a project is "worth funding" depend on whether you think it's proposed output is an actually valuable public good? If it is, then you shouldn't mind not getting a refund that much. If it isn't, there are other places to look for arbitrage.
I'm pretty sure there are limits to the pre-tax income you can put in an index fund (like a 401K).
The consideration war tax resisters have is that it's bad for the government to get tax money it can spend on wars. Thus refusing to pay what one owes and not owing are equivalent in their effects.
For instance, maybe you think our current tax rules are bad, but perhaps you'd like the ability to have and enforce any tax rules at all, even when some of your fellow citizens disagree with you about what rules are ideal.
I think income taxes are dumb. Instead I think taxation should begin with Pigovian taxes on negative externalities, then if more money is needed Georgist taxes on supply-inelastic factors, and then finally if the government somehow needs even MORE money it should resort to consumption taxes like VATs and stop there. Does this method inhibit the ability to collect those?
Pregnancy is certainly costly (and the abnormally high miscarriage rate appears to be an attempt to save on such costs in case anything has gone wrong), but it's not that fatal (for the mother). A German midwife recorded one maternal death out of 350 births.
Forager societies didn't have below-replacement fertilities, which are now common for post-industrial societies.
Having children wasn't a paying venture, but people had kids anyway for the same reason other species expend energy on offspring.
The distinction between "somatic" and "germ" cells only exists for sexually reproducing species.
There is a remaining mystery about Epstein: where his money came from. He claimed to be a financier, but didn't seem to do any trading. Hence Eric Weinstein (who actually met him), concluding he was a "construct" whose supposed finance work was merely a cover story.
The Yanomamo maximize the number of females in their tribes by kidnapping them from other tribes sucker enough to feed & raise females rather than males (which they could have used to raid females from other tribes).
It seems odd for mitochondria to be causing the mutation problem sex is supposed to solve, when mitochondria themselves don't reproduce sexually.
Restricting mitochondria reproduction to one mating "type" does not by itself prevent a "selfish" mitochondria from arriving. If one mitochondria develops a new mutation, it is now competing against all the other mitochondria in that same organism without the mutation (like a cancer). But in fact the restriction goes beyond merely the "type", as all the somatic cells are dead-ends for mitochondria.
Robin Hanson has a worthwhile post on why some organisms are exclusively male rather than being hermaphrodites capable of male & female mating "types".
Nikolas Lloyd has an evolutionary theory on why human females have breasts instead of teats (well before they even get pregnant).
I think there's an obvious problem with the theory of runaway sexual selection: once a trait gets deleterious, there will be selection for different preferences. As Lloyd theorized, initially there would be a preference against large breasts (it would indicate not being immediately fertile), but the trait could still get going because the male who mated with such a woman anyway would turn out to be making the right move (as it no longer signalled that). And in other species of animal, large breasts would be deleterious in females. They're possible in humans because our females no longer have much need to outrun anything while while carrying such encumbrances (but there are still limits to that, which is why fantastically large breasts of the sort some men prefer are usually the product of surgery rather than genes).
I would have contributed... if I hadn't been required to use Paypal. I closed my account a while back.
By 2011, Hanson concedes at least somewhat to Yudkowsky's position and states that Cyc might not have enough information or be in the wrong format (FOOM, 496).
I looked for it on that page, but instead it's on 497 (second-to-last numbered paragraph), where he says:
4. The AI system Eliezer most respects for its promising architecture is eurisko. Its author, Doug Lenat, concluded from it that our main obstacle is not architecture but mental content—the more one knows, the faster one can learn. Lenat’s new Cyc system has much content, though it still doesn’t learn fast. Cyc might not have enough content yet, or perhaps Lenat sought the wrong content or format.
How is "success" measured among AI safety proponents?
When did this happen?
I went to his account via a different link here and found this:
https://twitter.com/DoomsdayDebunks/status/1471204307609477123
which links to this:
https://twitter.com/SetteLab/status/1469007626306392064
I couldn't see which tweet Robert Walker was linking to, and the images here as just images rather than links to tweets, so I tried to link them here, but it's not letting me submit a comment.
Immigration and clustering people together seems to have been key to the success of various intellectual hubs throughout history, like the Bay Area recently, Vienna in the 20th century, and Edinburgh in the 18th century
Was there really that much immigration in 18th century Edinburgh? And in terms of agglomeration, I'm sure it was denser than, say, the highlands of Scotland, was it really that much compared to other cities in Britain?
I was wearing a shirt designed by one of your colleagues.
It was nice to hear from Robin in person. I hope others didn't think I hogged too much of the question time.
The blogger "Education Realist" disagrees with the argument that flat scores show that spending more on education hasn't resulted in any improvements. He argues that if you divide students up demographically, we have seen improvements. It's just that the shift in the composition of the student population masks that.
I tend to dismiss Steven Landsburg's critique of the standard interpretation of experiments along the lines of the Ultimatum Game, since nobody really thinks it through like him. But I actually did think about it when taking this survey (which is not the same as saying it affected my response).
I think total utilitarianism already does that.
If I kill someone in their sleep so they don't experience death, and nobody else is affected by it (maybe it's a hobo or something), is that okay under the timeless view because their prior utility still "counts"?
The human vs animal issue makes more sense if we focus not on "utility" but "asskicking".
I thought #3 was the definition of "agent", which I suppose is why it got that label. #1 sounds a little like birds confronted by cuckoo parasitism, which Eliezer might call "sphexish" rather than agenty.
Does the bit on Gorbachev contain any references to Timur Kuran's work on preference falsification & cascades?
2: An outside view works best when using a reference class with a similar causal structure to the thing you're trying to predict. An inside view works best when a phenomenon's causal structure is well-understood, and when (to your knowledge) there are very few phenomena with a similar causal structure that you can use to predict things about the phenomenon you're investigating. See: The Outside View's Domain.
When writing a textbook that's much like other textbooks, you're probably best off predicting the cost and duration of the project by looking at similar textbook-writing projects. When you're predicting the trajectory of the serial speed formulation of Moore's Law, or predicting which spaceship designs will successfully land humans on the moon for the first time, you're probably best off using an (intensely informed) inside view.
Is there data/experiments on when each gives better predictions, as with Kahneman's original outside view work?
There's a bloggingheads episode on the marshmallow experiment, and its variations, here.
Centrists view "radical" as a derogatory term, but I've come across lots of folks who embrace it.
Just because I don't like the label, doesn't mean it's inapt!
Robin was one of the people initially impressed with Ryan & Jetha, later persuaded by Saxon in "Dusk".
I personally recommend Azar Gat's "War in Human Civilization" as much more sweeping than Keeley's book. Despite the title, it's range precedes civilization, and even the emergence of humanity (although those are smaller portions of the book near the beginning). My posts about it are here. At any rate, there seems to be substantial evidence for warfare (or at least something analogous to "gang war" given their social scale) among hunter-gatherers, even if not to the extent of primitive agriculturalists like the Yanomamo or New Guineans.
I don't like the idea of being labeled a "political blogger" (I don't think I wrote anything about the election or its run-up), but it's hard to deny that politics is discussed a lot at my blog and I don't really have any other forte I could claim to displace it. I could defend myself by linking to Razib Khan on how many of the "science" blogs on his old blogroll spend most of their time discussing politics (generally, politically inflected atheism), but for one who accepts "politics is the mind-killer" that's just a "but they do it too". The post you link to could be construed as "sociological" rather than "political" and would be relevant in an alternate universe without politics.
I appreciate the hat-tip, but you might have wanted to link to the more thorough explication of that chapter from Collins' book, which Hanson discussed here.
EDIT: Some of what you quoted is in my comment you linked originally, and not in my follow-up post. Hope nobody got confused when they weren't able to find those quotes.
"In any case, 55% is pretty conservative; it means I consider myself to have almost no information." I'm wondering what evidence there is for a probability above 50. That's what I would consider "conservative". It's not literally "no information", it's "no more information than the median voter". That's what it would mean for your vote to affect the outcome in a positive manner. Conditional on your vote affecting the outcome, there must be as many people (in your area) for one candidate as the other. The more lopsided the outcome, the more plausible it is that a random voter (such as yourself) is making a "correct" decision in light of philosophical majoritarianism. The more divided it is the less it seems likely.
Steve Randy Waldmann has an interesting argument for voting, going from a tribalist to greater-good scenario.
What about Milton Friedman's thermostat?
The cold hard utilitarian calculus is hard in many cases because it aims to maximize rather than satisfice. In many ways that seems a feature rather than a bug. Deontological ethics tend to rely heavily on the act-omission distinction, which I must admit I would prefer as the bar I have to pass. But if, as Kant suggested, I ask how I would prefer others to behave, I would want them to act to increase utility. From a contractarian perspective, we can indicate to others that we will increase their utility if they increase ours. It's hard to make contracts with beings that don't exist yet, but there can still exist incentives to create them in the case of farm animals now (which I believe are produced through insemination rather than sex in factory farms) or ems in the future.
My preferred approach also includes not bothering to argue with a great many people. The folk activism of argument is not going to be very effective at changing anything for most people (I definitely include myself in that set). Like Stirner, I instead converse for my own benefit. This actually makes points in disagreement more valuable because it's more likely to tell me something I don't already know. Yes, I intentionally linked to a post critiquing the actual argument I am relying on.
I actually thought this argument was quite poor. There are lots of possible features in different cases of a type, and to claim some are vitally important seems to beg the question. Murdering a homeless loner estranged from any family or friends may lack many of the features mentioned, but there's little dispute it would qualify. And preventing the creation of a new life prevents the relationships that person would eventually develop. Pointing out that an example falls into a commonly understood category seems a pretty good starting point before delving into what features of that category are important (which isn't something universally agreed on or even consciously thought about). My preferred approach is what you said for eugenics: just admit that I'm alright with murder some of the time, as per the economically efficient amount of crime (such as theft!).
I also think it is a good thing there is a general norm against breaking laws (even stupid ones) and that it is highly questionable whether George Washington & other "patriot" actions did more good than harm, requiring actual justification in each case against an initial presumption.
As is mine. Twitter wouldn't allow just TGGP or T.G.G.P
McCarthy was being fed info from J. Edgar Hoover, who did have access to the Venona transcripts. I don't know if he was given the identities of known spies, but he was sent after Hoover's bureaucratic rivals.
The poor also commit significantly more non-lucrative crime.
I found your top-level post hard to understand at first. You may want to add a clearer introduction. When I saw "The issue in brief", I expected a full sentence/thesis to follow and had to recheck to see if I overlooked a verb.
You'll be missed. Wouldn't be so bad if you blogged regularly at one location.
Seconded. I don't go as far as Mitchell Porter because I'm not into protests. To take another example, Barkley Rosser told me he's boycotting the comments at EconLog to protest censorship, but I just assume I'd stray too far and get banned again if I had my privileges reinstated.
I'm somewhat similar. I'm pretty easily satisfied and right now don't feel any discomfort pushing me toward change. LW is interesting entertainment. I continued reading it when it split from OB, but I never had interest in self-improvement or saving the world. I lack "something to protect" as Eliezer put it.
A while back somebody I had done a favor gave me a deal on a used bass guitar. I figured since it had four strings it should be easy to learn, but I didn't put that much effort into it. Almost two years later and I never even learned to get a consistent sound out of one note and I'm about to sell it (for a profit of course).
Good point. Others have looked into that.
If higher IQ is almost always better, why the bell curve? Short people persist because height can have costs.
It's not hard to find evidence that IQ can be fitness reducing.
Cool. I tried to do some googling based on first name and possible university but didn't come with anything. Would have been nice of him to have a better last post than one promising content in the future.
Shit, I didn't read this post until 7PM (Chicago time). Oh well, I probably wouldn't have got back in time anyway.
There was a cognitive scientist at Mixing Memory who had a skeptical take of some of Lakoff's views on metaphors and was doing a chapter-by-chapter analysis of one of his books, but then he disappeared off the face of the internet. Still have no idea what happened to him, shame if he died without presumably signing up for cryonics.
Isn't there a rule of Bayesianism that you shouldn't be able to anticipate changing your mind in a predictable manner, but rather you should just update right now?
Perhaps rather than asking will you enter or leave the simulation it might be better to start with a person inside it, remove them from it, and then ask them if they want to go back.
I don't play chess or make art. I suppose there's creativity in programming, but I've just been doing that for work rather than recreationally. Also, I agree with Friendly-HI that an experience machine could replicate those things.