What's your budget?

How much hard drive space are you using currently?

Update: I've provisionally ordered a Dell XPS 13.

Based on that, it seems like it's best to get one with only a solid-state drive and no magnetic drive. Is that accurate?

Not necessarily. Most laptops nowadays are equipped with anti shock hard drive mounts and the hard drives are specially designed to be resistant to shock. The advantages for an SSD are speed, not reliability.

This reliability report (with this caveat) indicates that Samsung is the most reliable brand on the market for now. I've always considered Lenovo and ASUS to be high quality, with ASUS generally having cheaper and more powerful computers (and a trade off in actually figuring out which one you want, that website is terrible).

Check out /r/suggestalaptop?

General comments: SSDs are generally faster than magnetic drives, but often fail much sooner.

If you're not positive you want to replace it altogether: You might be able to fix your heat/slowness issues just by taking a can of compressed air to it. And you could probably buy a new battery. Replacing it might still be a better proposition overall, though...

What does it mean for "you" to not be doing exactly what you "want"? Do you downplay or ignore your not-conscious thought processes?

How long have you been doing this, and have you noticed any effects?

9: If I'm not doing exactly what I want to be doing, why?

That's the hardest of them all, still searching for answers.

Identical twins aren't perfectly identical

That there are differences between identical twins is known, but the article goes into detail about the types of difference, including effects which are in play before birth.

Found the actual papers the coverage is based on.

How it was done: removing T cells (the cells which kill body cells infected with viruses directly, unlike B cells which secrete antibody proteins) and using replication-incapable viruses to put in a chimeric gene composed of part of a mouse antibody against human B-cell antigens, part of the human T-cell receptor that activates the T cell when it binds to something, and an extra activation domain to make the T-cell activation and proliferation particularly strong. Cells were reinjected, and they proliferated over 1000-fold, killed off all the cancerous leukemia cells they could detect in most patients, and the T-cells are sticking around as a permanent part of the patients immune systems. Relapse rates have been pretty low (but not zero).

This type of cancer (B-cell originating leukemia) is uniquely extraordinarily well suited for this kind of intervention for two reasons. One, there is an antigen on B cells and B-cell derived cancers that can be targeted without destroying anything else important in the body other than normal B cells. Two, since the modded T cells destroy both normal B cells carrying this antigen and the cancerous B cells, the patients have a permanent lack of antibodies after treatment which makes sure their immune system has a hard time reacting against the modified receptors present on the modded T cells, which has been a problem in other studies. Fortunately people can live without B cells if they are careful - it's living without T cells you cannot do. They also suspect that pre-treating with chemotherapy majorly helped these immune cells go after the weakened cancer cell population.

You can repeat this with T-cells tuned against any protein you want, but you had better watch out for autoimmune effects or the patient's immune system going after the chimeric protein you add and eliminating the modded population. And watch out ten years down the line for any T-cell originating lymphomas derived from wonky viral insertion sites in the modded cells - though these days there are 'gentler' viral agents than in the old days with a far lower rate of such problems, and CRISPR might make modding cells in a dish even more reliable soon.

Another thing in the toolkit. No silver bullets. Still pretty darn cool.

A glass of wine (or two (or three)) or a beer after a workout have noticeably improved how I feel the next day. I didn't believe this post either, but it appears to have panned out.

As usual, examine.com has some information related to this.

The next step is TR-0 "bullbaiting" where the partner says things to the indoctrinee to get them to react. This is called finding a person's "buttons". When the person does react, he is told "flunk" and what he did to flunk and then the phrase that got him to react is repeated until the person no longer reacts. This is very effective as a behavior control method to get the person to blank out when someone starts saying negative things about Scientology.

Hm, this actually sounds like it could be useful...

I wonder if it would be valuable to get partway in to Scientology, then quit, just to observe the power of peer pressure, groupthink, and whatnot.

Interesting. Reminds me of Orwell's "crimestop":

Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

Why does a human care about if a monkey cares about whether a human can crush leaves? For things like us primates, sometimes these things are their own reward.

It might simply be an interesting activity to teach a human how to crush leaves.

Do the monkeys ever crush leaves like that for themselves? Otherwise I think that it is more likely giving him a gift, hoping that he will reciprocate by giving the monkey a treat, or maybe just pet it. The leaves just happen to be what the monkey has most easily available at the time.

I've heard it said that, when cats present a kill to their owners, it's a form of trying to teach the owner to hunt. I can only assume that some mammals will treat animals from other species as part of their tribe/pack/pride/etc if they get along well enough.

If so, I'd predict this happens more often in more social animals. So yes to lions and monkeys, no to bears and hamsters. This would suggest we'd see similar behavior from dogs, though, and I can't think of examples of dogs trying to teach humans any skills. This is particularly damning for my hypothesis, since dogs are known for their cooperation with humans.

Because enjoying teaching useful stuff to people you get along with is a trait that got selected for?

If a hypothetical bothers you, maybe you should hold off proposing solutions and instead investigate whether it is a real problem.

If you know English and Mandarin, you might make an academic career out of writing meta analysis of topics discussed in Mandarin research papers.

The plural of "corpus" is "corpora". I don't say this to be pedantic, but because the word is quite lovely, and deserves to be used more.

Some time ago someone linked a paper indicating that there are benefits to fragmentation of academia by language barriers as less people are exposed to some kind of dominant view allowing them to come up with new ideas. One cited example was anthropology which had a Russian and an Anglosphere tradition.

I'd assume there not to be any major translation efforts as being a translator isn't as effective as publishing something of your own by far.

I recommend trying loving-kindness meditation.

I also want to learn how to be kinder. The sticking point, for me, is better prediction about what makes people feel good.

I was very ill a year ago, and at that time learned a great deal about how comforting it is to be taken care of by someone who is compassionate and knowledgeable about my condition. But for me, unless I'm very familiar with that exact situation, I have trouble anticipating what will make someone feel better.

This is also true in everyday situations. I work on figuring out how to make guests feel better in my home and how to make a host feel better when I'm the guest. (I already know that my naturally overly-analytic, overly-accommodating manner is not most effective.) I observe other people carefully, but it all seems very complex and I consider myself learning and a 'beginner' -- far behind someone who is more natural at this.

In addition to seconding nonviolent communication, cognitive behavior therapy techniques are pretty good - basically mindfulness exercises and introspection. If you want to change how you respond to certain situations (e.g. times when you get angry, or times when you have an opportunity to do something nice), you can start by practicing awareness of those situations, e.g. by keeping a pencil and piece of paper in your pocket and making a check mark when the situation occurs.

I'd recommend Nonviolent Communication for this. It contains specific techniques for how to frame interactions that I've found useful for creating mutual empathy. How To Win Friends And Influence People is also a good source, although IIRC it's more focused on what to do than on how to do it. (And of course, if you read the books, you have to actually practice to get good at the techniques.)

What is your reason for wanting to?

Sounds like somebody is trying to purchase status...

Would anyone else be interested in pooling donations to take advantage of the 3:1 deal?

This post and reading "why our kind cannot cooperate" kicked me off my ass to donate. Thanks Tuxedage for posting.

You sir, are awesome.

Interesting.

I have been convinced that people donating should publicly brag about it to attract other donors

It certainly seems to make sense for the sake of the cause for (especially large, well-informed) donors to make their donations public. The only downside seems to be a potentially conflicting signal on behalf of the giver.

instead of remaining silent about their donation which leads to a false impression of the amount of support MIRI has.

I'm not sure this is true. Doesn't MIRI publish its total receipts? Don't most organizations that ask for donations?

Growing up Evangelical, it was taught that we should give secretly to charities (including, mostly, the church).

I wonder why? The official Sunday School answer is so that you remain humble as the giver, etc. I wonder if there is some other mechanism whereby it made sense for Christians to propogate that concept (secret giving) among followers?

Neither. CEV is supposed to look at what humanity would want if they were smarter, faster, and more the people they wished they were. It finds the end of the evolution of how we change if we are controlled by ourselves, not by the blind idiot god.

CEV is supposed to refer to the values of current humans. However, this does not necessarily imply that an FAI would prevent the creation of non-human entities. I'd expect that many humans (including me) would assign some value to the existence of interesting entities with somewhat different (though not drastically different) values than ours, and the satisfaction of those values. Thus a CEV would likely assign some value to the preferences of a possible human successor species by proxy through our values.

What does the Red Queen hypothesis have to do with value change?

.i'enai

What you're referring to is a problem I've been thinking about and chipping away at for some time; I've even had some discussions about it here and people have generally been receptive. Maybe the reason you're being downvoted is that you're using the word 'human' to mean 'good'.

The core issue is that humans have empathy, and by this we mean that other people's utility function matters to us. More concisely, our perception of other people's utility forms a part of our utility which is conditionally independent of the direct benefits to us.

Our empathy not only extends to other humans, but also animals and perhaps even robots.

So what are examples of human beings who lack empathy? Lacking empathy is basically the definition of psychopathy. And, indeed, some psychopaths (not all, but some) have been violent criminals who e.g. killed babies for money, tortured people for amusement, etc. etc.

So you're essentially right that a game theory where the players do not have models of each other's utility functions shows aspects of psychopathy and 'inhumanity'.

But that doesn't mean game theory is wrong or 'inhuman'! All it means is that you're missing the 'empathy' ingredient. It also means that it would not be a good idea to build an AI without empathy. That's exactly what CEV attempts to solve. CEV is basically a crude attempt at trying to instill empathy in a machine.

Game theory is not like calculus or evolutionary theory--something any alien race smart enough to develop space travel is likely to formulate. It does represent human values.

Immediate consequence the second: Austrian school economics, in its reliance on allowing markets to come to equilibrium on their own, is inhuman.

I suspect all economics is inhuman. I suspect that any complex economy that connects millions or billions of people is going to be incomprehensible and inhuman. By far the best explanation I've heard of this thought is by Cosma Shalizi.

The key bit here is the conclusion:

There is a fundamental level at which Marx's nightmare vision is right: capitalism, the market system, whatever you want to call it, is a product of humanity, but each and every one of us confronts it as an autonomous and deeply alien force. Its ends, to the limited and debatable extent that it can even be understood as having them, are simply inhuman. The ideology of the market tell us that we face not something inhuman but superhuman, tells us to embrace our inner zombie cyborg and lose ourselves in the dance. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry or run screaming.

But, and this is I think something Marx did not sufficiently appreciate, human beings confront all the structures which emerge from our massed interactions in this way. A bureaucracy, or even a thoroughly democratic polity of which one is a citizen, can feel, can be, just as much of a cold monster as the market. We have no choice but to live among these alien powers which we create, and to try to direct them to human ends. It is beyond us, it is even beyond all of us, to find "a human measure, intelligible to all, chosen by all", which says how everyone should go.

not uniquely human does not imply inhuman. Lungs are not uniquely human, hardly inhuman though.

Generally, using loaded, non-factual words like "inhuman" and "monster" and "cthulhu" and "horrifying" and "puny" in a pseudo-logical format is worthy of a preacher exhorting illiterates. But is it helpful here? I"d like to think it isn't, and yet I'd rather discuss game theory in a visible thread than downvote your post.

"Inhuman" has strong connotations of inimical to human values-- your argument looks different if it starts with something like "game theory is a non-human-- it's a simplified version of some aspects of human behavior". In that case, altruism is non-human in the same sense.

Sorry, how did you go from "non human agents use X" (a statement about commonality) to "X is inhuman" (a value judgement) to "if you use X you become a monster" (an even stronger value judgement), to "being a jerk in the style of Cthulhu" (!!!???).

Does this then mean you think using eyesight is monstrous because cephalopodes also have eyes they independently evolved?

Or that maximizing functions is a bad idea because ants have a different function than humans?

Game theory is about strategies, not about values. It tells you which strategy should you use, if your goal is to maximize X. It does not tell you what X is. (Although some X's, such as survival, are instrumental goals for many different terminal goals, so they will be supported by many strategies.)

There is a risk of maximizing some X that looks like a good approximation of human values, but its actual maximization is unFriendly.

Austrian school economics, in its reliance on allowing markets to come to equilibrium on their own, is inhuman

Connotational objection: so is any school of anything; at least unless the problem of Friendliness is solved.

Another benefit for me is reduced mistakes in picking items from the list.

Some people don't use online shopping because they worry pickers may make errors. My experience is that they do, but at a much lower rate than I do when I go myself. I frequently miss minor items off my list on the first circuit through the shop, and don't go back for it because it'd take too long to find. I am also influenced by in-store advertising, product arrangements, "special" offers and tiredness in to purchasing items that I would rather not. It's much easier to whip out a calculator to work out whether an offer really is better when you're sat calmly at your laptop than when you're exhausted towards the end of a long shopping trip.

You'd expect paid pickers to be better at it - they do it all their working hours, I only do it once or twice a month. Also, all the services I've used (in the UK) allow you to reject any mistaken items at your door for a full refund - which you can't do for your own mistakes. The errors pickers make are different to the ones I would, which makes them more salient - but they are no more inconvenient in impact on average.

Regarding food in particular, I'm still wishing Romeo Stevens would commercialize his tasty and nutritious soylent alternative so I could buy it the same way I buy juice from the grocery store.

For those in the community living in the south Bay Area: https://www.google.com/shopping/express/

This makes me wonder: What are some simple ways to save quite some time that the average person does not think of?