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Comment by TheCookieLab on How can I convince my cryptobro friend that S&P500 is efficient? · 2024-12-04T23:41:24.265Z · LW · GW

“Market efficiency” is a useful model but one shouldn’t confuse it with reality.

Comment by TheCookieLab on Why our politicians aren't Median · 2024-11-03T15:00:53.989Z · LW · GW

“But opinions on these two issues are not uncorrelated. Almost nobody is against abortion, but loves immigration…”

Red flag.

Comment by TheCookieLab on [deleted post] 2024-11-03T12:11:38.319Z

Such is the great irony of our times. Apparently the left must destroy Democracy in order to save it.

Comment by TheCookieLab on Is there a known method to find others who came across the same potential infohazard without spoiling it to the public? · 2024-10-17T12:06:36.242Z · LW · GW

The necessary raw tools (zero knowledge proofs) may already exist, so it’s just up to someone intrepid entrepreneur and engineer(s) to productize it.

Comment by TheCookieLab on Should we abstain from voting? (In nondeterministic elections) · 2024-10-02T12:40:28.630Z · LW · GW

After struggling to decide between the two candidates I've settled on not voting at all. I'm tired of choosing between the least bad option, and I will no longer legitimize this farce of democratic representation we supposedly have. 

Comment by TheCookieLab on Overpopulation FAQs · 2024-08-10T12:27:04.546Z · LW · GW

Didn’t you hear? Overpopulation doomers are so last century.

Comment by TheCookieLab on If Ukraine fails, the world will reap fatal consequences · 2024-03-06T00:41:34.573Z · LW · GW

Some of the worst, most egregious logic I’ve ever seen on this site, including this gem: “How can Russia be threatened when NATO says they are a purely defensive alliance??”

Comment by TheCookieLab on Lack of Spider-Man is evidence against the simulation hypothesis · 2024-01-06T18:28:20.571Z · LW · GW

The lack of Spider-Man in any Sims game is evidence Spider-Man doesn’t exist.

Comment by TheCookieLab on Is the far future inevitably zero sum? · 2023-12-19T02:18:11.968Z · LW · GW

A questionable assumption undergirding this entire line of thought is that the universe can be finitely partitioned. Another assumption that could be considered a coin toss is that agents occupy and compete within a common size, space, and/or time scale. That there is no upper bound on need/“greed” or that there will still be multiple agents may seem a given within the current zeitgeist but again are far from guarantees. There are many other such assumptions but these are a few of the most readily apparent.

Comment by TheCookieLab on The Benevolent Ruler’s Handbook (Part 1): The Policy Problem · 2023-08-12T11:12:32.172Z · LW · GW

I don’t follow why “focus on fixing the current problem” doesn’t work, or at the very least why the anecdote you gave is sufficient to generalize a single failure incident into a universal axiom.

There could have been a variety of reasons why your seemingly reasonable fix wasn’t adopted as policy. Maybe your team didn’t fully understand your explanation, maybe they understood but held a grudge against you for unrelated reasons, etc. People are not perfectly rational which is why being persuasive is a skill in itself. Just because FCCC failed to fix an existing problem that one time doesn’t mean it’s the wrong approach for a benevolent ruler (especially one who has the unquestioning loyalty of his/her followers no?)

Comment by TheCookieLab on The Scientific Approach To Anything and Everything · 2023-03-09T17:36:21.848Z · LW · GW

Regarding the platinum rule where A treats B the way B wants to be treated, where is the interaction with A’s preferences? It seems A’s preferences have no bearing at all here unless I’m missing something.