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Comments (284)
The United States green card lottery is one of the best lotteries in the world. The payoff is huge (green cards would probably sell for six figures if they were on the market), the cost of entry is minimal ($0 and 30 minutes) and the odds of winning are low, but not astronomically low. If you meet the eligibility criterion and are even a little interested in moving to America, you should enter the lottery this October.
Anything remotely like this for EU countries?
It is not a lottery as the green card lottery but if you are of European descent there is the chance you can apply for citizenship. Look out for Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Irish ancestors in particular.
Edit: This scheme is ridiculously complicated in the EU and I know of no coherent source. If anyone is specifically interested in having the right of abode to work in the EU, contact me with a hint to family history and we can work something out. In the interest of the community I urge you to do this publicly.
I don't think you can resell green cards so their open market price should be irrelevant.
I think that was just a way of saying how coveted the prize of this lottery is.
Having entered the lottery may make it harder to receive nonimmigrant visas in the future, however.
Since this cost and the payoff of the original lottery are in like units, could someone compute whether it's still worth it to enter?
The cost is a completely qualitative claim, so, no, no one can do this computation.
Oh, whoops, misread as "immigrant visa" rather than "nonimmigrant visa". Disregard.
Well, it's true that they aren't quite the same units, but I was ignoring that. The cost is that the State Department pays attention and applies a penalty to the highly nontransparent visa process. These are qualitative claims. In principle they could be measured by outside observers. In fact, my best measurement is zero: they don't pay attention nor penalize nonimmigrant visas.
This reminds me of another pretty decent lottery that some U.S. residents can take advantage of. Many major cities, including NYC, have affordable housing programs in brand new buildings. The cost to apply is $0, the payoff of is paying 20% - 25% of market rate of housing in that area. No, it's not for poor people, there are other programs for that, the income requirements vary but in general is set to qualify the working residents of the city (maybe 50k - 95k).
Some of the most desirable and stunning locations in the city, where rents are 4k for 600 sq/f, can go for $700. Just Google the city you live in to see the specific requirements.
Anybody else taking the Coursera / Johns Hopkins Data Science 1 course?
Yes, I am taking that course - I did the previous version of it, but started late so didn't complete the requirements.
It is a short course focused mainly on getting your development environment setup with github
Are you also taking the R programming course then? Based on your experience, would it be fine to take both courses simultaneously?
I took the R programming course last year - it was a good short course if you already have some programming background, though I wouldn't have wanted to do it as a complete beginner.
It didn't feel like a normal course though - more like one of those week long corporate training modules. Useful, but I imagine doing the complete Data Science specialization in short blocks would leave some people with a patchy result.
What is the meaning and use of (total) GDP, adjusted PPP?
I cannot think of a single use for it (unlike nominal total GDP or PPP GDP per capita).
Well, PPP has meaning only in the context of multiple currencies, so presumably you're trying to get a handle on some country's nominal GDP expressed in a different currency. This means you need a foreign exchange rate, a multiplier to convert units to different units.
At this point things start getting murkier. Sometimes there's a market FX rate. Sometimes there is an official FX rate (and a different black market one). Sometimes there is no reasonable FX rate at all.
The PPP rate is just one of the possibilities. Depending on the circumstances it might be more or less appropriate.
The crude meaning of GDP converted at PPP rate is "how much stuff at local prices does this country produce/consume".
That's not true. One does not use a uniform conversion factor across the Eurozone.
Why would you ever want this?
It is true. If your nominal GDP of, say, Germany is different from the PPP-based GDP then you're measuring the same GDP in two different units. One of them is the standard Euro, what is the other unit?
I don't understand the question. For example, I find it useful to know that China's GDP using the official rate is very different from the same GDP using the PPP rate. It gives me better understanding of the Chinese economy and its place in the world.
Perhaps one could talk about the units of PPP by talking about converting Greek GDP from "Greek Euros" to "German Euros." But that doesn't mean that the "Greek Euro" is a different currency.
It is useful to know that the cost of living in Greece is lower than the cost of living in Germany. That is, it is useful to know the PPP conversion factor. It is useful to think about GDP per capita in both nominal and PPP terms, to understand what life is like for the average individual. But what use is total GDP in PPP terms? Merely knowing that it differs from nominal GDP is a roundabout way of finding the PPP conversion factor. That's like saying that BMI is useful because, with height, it allows me to compute weight.
What's the use of nominal total GDP? I would expect the argument for PPP total GDP to be that it's a more accurate measure of the same thing, but I'm not actually seeing what the use is.
Yes, total GDP is problematic. For utilitarian purposes PPP is better, but why do it one country at a time? (aside from making utility linear in money)
My comment was triggered by the announcement that China is now "the biggest economy" in PPP terms. One thing "the biggest economy" does is set prices. China can afford to buy more steel than India, so much that it drives the world price of steel. But the fact that there is a world price is closely related to the fact China pays for steel in dollars, not Chungking haircuts or Szechuan real estate. So that's what total nominal GDP is good for.
Recently I've been trying to catch up in math, with a goal of trying to get to calculus as soon as possible. (I want to study Data Science, and calculus / linear algebra seems to be necessary for that kind of study.) I found someone on LW who agreed to provide me with some deadlines, minor incentives, and help if I need it (similar to this proposal), although I'm not sure how well such a setup will end up working.
Originally the plan was that I'd study the Art of Problem Solving Intermediate Algebra book, but I found that many of the concepts were a little advanced for me, so I switched to the middle of the Introduction to Algebra book instead.
The Art of Problem Solving books deliberately make you think a lot, and a lot of the problems are quite difficult. That's great, but I've found that after 2-3 hours of heavy thinking my brain often feels completely shot and that ruins my studying for the rest of the day. It also doesn't help that my available study time usually runs from about 10am-2pm, but I often only start to really wake up around noon. (Yes, I get enough sleep usually. I also use a light box. But I still often only wake up around noon.)
One solution I've been thinking of would be to take the studying slower: I'd study math only from 12-2, and before that I'd study something else, like programming. The only problem with that is that cutting my study time in half means it'll take twice as long to get through the material. At that rate I estimate it'll take approximately a year, perhaps a bit more, before I can even start Calculus. Maybe that's what's needed, but I was hoping to get on with studying data science sooner than that.
Another possible solution would be to try an easier course of study than the AoPS books. I've had some good experiences with MOOCs, so perhaps that might be a good route to take. To that end I've tentatively signed up to this math refresher course, although I don't really know anything about it. Or perhaps I could just CliffNotes my way through Algebra II and Precalculus, and then take a Calculus MOOC. I wouldn't get the material nearly as well, of course, but at least I'd be able to get to Calculus and move on with my data science studies from there. I could even do one of these alternatives while also doing the AoPS books at a slower pace. That way I could get to data science studying as soon as possible, and I'd also eventually get a more thorough familiarity with the material through the AoPS books.
What would you suggest?
One of my professors once mentioned that there's an upper limit to how much learning you can do in a sleep cycle [citation needed]. This is congruent with my experience, both before and after he mentioned that, so I tend to believe it. Personally, I tend to max out around 3-4 hours, so the times you're talking about seem reasonable. If you can restructure your work times, napping is a good strategy; I've talked to a few people who report getting through grad school by napping once they'd saturated their brain's capacity to learn new stuff.
Interleaved practice is good. This study had subjects practice finding the volume of unconventional geometric solids. One group clustered their practice; they found the volumes of a bunch of wedges, then a bunch of spheroids, etc. The other group had their practice problems mixed. On a final test, the former group got 20% right, and the latter group got 63% right. citation.
What this suggests is you should perhaps study programming and algebra at the same time, switching between the two fairly frequently. It feels like you're going slower, but, as the authors of the book emphasize, you're trading the illusion of learning for more durable learning.
The AoPS textbooks are really, really good. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're the only good algebra textbooks you're going to find, unless you count abstract or linear algebra; most textbooks at that level are mediocre. As luke_prog has mentioned, good textbooks are the usually the quickest and best way to learn new material. Quality learning takes time, and you're doing yourself no favors by spending that time looking for faster alternatives.
Be very very careful of studying beyond the level you think is comfortable. My experience has been that you cannot push yourself to learn difficult things, especially math, faster than a certain pace. Sure, your limit may be 20% higher than what you think it is, but it's not 200% higher. Spending more time on a task when you just don't feel up to it is useless, because instead of thinking you'll just be spending more time staring at the page and having your mind drift off.
I've found that the various methods of 'productivity boosting' (pomodoros, etc) are largely useless and do one of two things: Either decrease your productivity, or momentarily increase it at the expense of a huge decrease later on (anything from 'feeling fuzzy for a couple of days' to 'total burnout for 3 weeks'). Unless you have a mental illness, your brain is already a finely-tuned machine for learning and doing. Don't fool yourself into thinking you can improve it just by some clever schedule rearrangement.
The point to all of this is that you should refrain from 'planning ahead' when it comes to learning. Sure, you should have some general overall sketch of what you want to learn, but at each particular moment in time, the best strategy is to simply pick some topic and try to learn it as best you can, until you get tired. Then rest until you feel you can go at it again. And avoid internet distractions that use up your mental energy but don't cause you to learn anything.
Does this by extension imply that the type of instrumental rationality training advocated by LW is useless? Why, why not?
The general rule of thumb for raw intelligence probably applies, you can damage it with unwise actions (like eating lead paint or taking up boxing), but there aren't really any good ways to boost it beyond its natural unimpeded baseline. Good instrumental rationality can help you look out for and avoid self-sabotaging behavior, like overworking your way into burnout.
Decreasing work-load when you feel tired - the thing you naturally want to do - is also a reliable way to avoid burnout.
Largely, but not entirely. There are cases where evolution optimises for something different from what you want. And there are cases where the environment has changed faster than evolution can track.
Evolution always optimizes for the same thing :-/
If you want something different, that's your problem :-D
Is it time to restart the "Read the Sequences" meme?
Specifically: The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
Well, at least read the wiki entry.
If some particular method of learning can be shown, through evidence, to be an improvement long-term, then by all means go for it. But until then, your prior belief has to be that it isn't.
There is a lot of interest in prediction markets in the Less Wrong community. However, the prediction markets that we have are currently only available in meatspace, they have very low volume, and the rules are not ideal (You cannot leave positions by selling your shares, and only the column with the final outcome contributes to your score)
I was wondering if there would be interest in a prediction market linked to the Less Wrong account? The idea is that we use essentially the same structure as Intrade / Ipredict. We use play money - this can either be Karma or a new "currency" where everyone is assigned the same starting value. If we use a currency other than Karma, your balance would be publicly linked to your account, as an indicator of your predictive skills.
Perhaps participants would have to reach a specified level of Karma before they are allowed to participate, to avoid users setting up puppet accounts to transfer points to their actual accounts
I think such a prediction market would act as a tax on bullshit, it would help aggregate information, it would help us identify the best predictors in the community, and it would be a lot of fun.
I think it's a very good idea. I also like the "tax on bs" metaphor. I like the idea of bullshitters getting punished! :)
I think it should be remembered, though, that wrt many predictions, luck is as least as important as skill/knowledge. Of course if you have many question the luck/noise element is reduced and the signal/skill element is strengthened, but it nevertheless is something to consider.
Why would LWers use such a prediction market more than PredictionBook?
Because karma?
I don't think karma matters as much as people think it does, but if that's the only reason, LW could be programmed to look on PB.com for a matching username and increase karma based on the scores or something, much more easily than an entire prediction market written.
That has the problem that people can inflate their scores by repeatedly predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Karma is even more easily - and invisibly - gameable.
Up vote.
Good point . I actually didn't know about PredictionBook. Now that it has been pointed out to me, I see that there is already a decent option, so my suggestion would be less valuable. However, I still think it would be useful to have a prediction market that operates with Intrade rules. Whether that is worth writing the code is another matter..
I would personally allow free account creation but give people an ingame salary of currency for every day in which they engage into trades.
Developing a good prediction market that's people actually want to use is a bigger problem. PredictionBook sort of works but it could work better than it works at the moment.
PredictionBook already exists and is opensource. If you want you could probably write a plugin that adds prediction market functionality on top of what already exists in predictionbook.
According to the principle of enlightened self-interest, you should help other people because this will help you in the long run. I've seen it argued that this is the reason why people have an instinct to help others. I don't think that this would mean helping people the way an Effective Altruist would. It would mean giving the way people instinctually do. You give gifts to friends, give to your community, give to children's hospitals, that sort of thing.
This makes me wonder about what I'm calling enlightened altruism. If you get power from helping people in that way, then you can use the power to help people effectively.
Well, we can use the outside view here. If we look at people who are particularly successful, did they get that way by helping others? What's the proportion relative to poor people?
I don't think this backs up the idea of enlightened self-interest very well. Sure, you have to "play by the rules" to be successful, but going above and beyond doesn't seem to lead to additional success.
Another question we might ask is "where do peoples' instincts for giving come from?" If you believe Dawkins et al., it's the selfishness of genes, which does not have to causally pay of for the organism (instead, the payoff is acausal). This is not the sort of thing where giving according to our instincts will lead to us getting more money.
My point is more about giving the standard amount to the standard charities, rather than earmarking it all for the most efficient one.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Can you give an example?
Suppose I have a gene that makes me cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma with my relatives. This gene benefits me, because now I can cooperate with my cousins and get the better payoff (assuming my cousins also have this gene!). But you know what would be even better? If my cousins cooperated with me but I defected. So from a causal decision theory standpoint, my best route is to ignore my instincts and defect.
But if I had a gene that said "defect with my cousins," that would mean my cousins defect back, and so we all lose. So our instincts be beneficial even when the individual best strategy doesn't line up with them (Because our instincts can be correlated with other humans').
This reasoning assumes that you are special and significantly different from your cousins. If you're not, your cousins follow the same strategy and you all defect, gene or no gene.
That's what acausal benefit means.
Google: No results found for "acausal benefit"
Can you elaborate?
It's mostly limited to this site, and I don't know how much that exact wording is used, but it refers to things like Newcomb's problem, where you can get some benefit from what you do, but you're not actually causing it.
I should add that when I told Manfred, I didn't understand, it was more that I didn't understand how it applied to that situation.
The wiki article on acausal trade may prove helpful.
I'm familiar with the concept of an acausal trade. But I don't understand how it applies to the situation of playing Prisoner's Dilemma with your cousins.
Survivorship bias alert!
He qualified that by "What's the proportion relative to poor people?" thus not just looking at the survivors.
Imagine a planet with one billion people each of whom has $1000, except the 99,999,990 people who played the lottery and lost and now have $990 each and the 10 people who played the lottery and won and now have $1,000,990 each. 100% of the rich people played the lottery whereas only 10% of the poor people did so, but that doesn't mean playing the lottery was a good idea.
Looks like when my current job ends (May 31), I'll have the summer free before my next one starts (Sept). My June is pretty much booked with a big writing project with a looming deadline, but I get to decide how to fill July and August, and I'd appreciate crowdsourced suggestions.
I'm lucky enough to not need to find alternate work to cover living expenses for those two months, so I'm not particularly in the market for short-term work suggestions. I'll be based out of D.C. during this period. Not super interested in travel. I'm considering some self-study but I'm not planning to become a programmer.
Here are some of the things I currently have in mind (not highly optimized, the things that occur immediately when I think "What do I want to do this summer?":
What kinds of things am I not thinking of that might be delightful?
(means "American Sign Language" for the curious like me)
I don't know what falls under 'freelance writing', but have you considered writing fiction?
It's a huge time-sink even if you're deliberately trying to improve your speed, but the skills are also surprisingly applicable - modelling your characters in your head isn't dramatically different from modelling other real people, even if you ignore the skills that merely fall under "knowing how to write". I've had a great deal of fun with that, lately.
You don't necessarily need to immediately jump into original fiction, either. Fanfiction is often considered "training wheels", but that doesn't just mean it's easier - well, it is, but it's also much easier to tell if you're getting characterisation right when there's the original work to compare to (and rabid fans to do the comparison), while the usual "benefit" of writing fanfiction (not needing to invent your own setting) can be trivially set aside if you feel like it.
I've written fanfiction, but I've only enjoyed writing fiction with a writing partner, as I did for those two stories. I get very very bored writing things that aren't dialogue.
I'm currently at a magazine for a journo internship, and have done some freelance book/theatre reviews for pay.
If you're planning to link this account to your real world identity, or already have, you might think twice about linking to those writings. Sorry if this was already obvious and considered.
edit: that said, I'm really enjoying APoF :-)
Glad to hear it! I'm traceable to those writings, but not though easy googling. The nice thing about being a writer with daily blog updates is security through obscurity. It's hard to trawl through to find whatever would be the worst thing ;)
Maybe try doing nothing. For some people that would drive them crazy, but for others a month of rest and peacefulness can be life-changing. Try turning off the computer for a month. Take walks. Read a book under a tree. Smell the flowers. Meditate.
Also, I'm not sure if this counts as travel, but Shenandoah is only about 1:30 from DC. Getting a small cabin or a room in a bed and breakfast for a month is not so expensive. Immersing yourself in a more natural, less hectic environment can itself be extremely restorative. And you can even sew / embroider while you're doing it.
I am definitely in the "would drive them crazy" camp. One of the worst vacations I've taken was to St. John with my family. It's a long way to go just to read on the beach rather than read in a park or a library.
I do have Ignatian retreat on my list, though.
Anyone else doing the course Functional Programming Principles in Scala ? It started last week, but still should be time to join and get the first assignment done.
This was the first Coursera course I took! Highly recommended, if anyone's still on the fence.
OK, I'll try. Signed in, but will look at it deeper on Thursday.
Here's a comment that I posted in a discussion on Eliezer's FB wall a few days back but didn't receive much of a response there, maybe it'll prompt more discussion here:
--
So this reminds me, I've been thinking for a while that VNM utility might be a hopelessly flawed framework for thinking about human value, but I've had difficulties putting this intuition in words. I'm also pretty unfamiliar with the existing literature around VNM utility, so maybe there is already a standard answer to the problem that I've been thinking about. If so, I'd appreciate a pointer to it. But the theory described in the linked paper seems (based on a quick skim) like it's roughly in the same direction as my thoughts, so maybe there's something to them.
Here my stab at trying to describe what I've been thinking: VNM utility implicitly assumes an agent with "self-contained" preferences, and which is trying to maximize the satisfaction of those preferences. By self-contained, I mean that they are not a function of the environment, though they can and do take inputs from the environment. So an agent could certainly have a preference that made him e.g. want to acquire more money if he had less than $5000, and which made him indifferent to money if he had more than that. But this preference would be conceptualized as something internal to the agent, and essentially unchanging.
That doesn't seem to be how human preferences actually work. For example, suppose that John Doe is currently indifferent between whether to study in college A or college B, so he flips a coin to choose. Unbeknownst to him, if he goes to college A he'll end up doing things together with guy A until they fall in love and get monogamously married; if he goes to college B he'll end up doing things with gal B until they fall in love and get monogamously married. It doesn't seem sensible to ask which choice better satisfies his romantic preferences as they are at the time of the coin flip. Rather, the preference for either person develops as a result of their shared life-histories, and both are equally good in terms of intrinsic preference towards someone (though of course one of them could be better or worse at helping John achieve some other set of preferences).
More generally, rather than having stable goal-oriented preferences, it feels like we acquire different goals as a result of being in different environments: these goals may persist for an extended time, or be entirely transient and vanish as soon as we've left the environment.
As an another example, my preference for "what do I want to do with my life" feels like it has changed at least three times today alone: I started the morning with a fiction-writing inspiration that had carried over from the previous day, so I wished that I could spend my life being a fiction writer; then I read some e-mails on a mailing list devoted to educational games and was reminded of how neat such a career might be; and now this post made me think of how interesting and valuable all the FAI philosophy stuff is, and right now I feel like I'd want to just do that. I don't think that I have any stable preference with regard to this question: rather, I could be happy in any career path as long as there were enough influences in my environment that continued to push me towards that career.
It's as Brian Tomasik wrote at http://reducing-suffering.blogspot.fi/2010/04/salience-and-motivation.html :
If this is the case, then it feels like trying to maximize preference satisfaction is an incoherent idea in the first place. If I'm put in environment A, I will have one set of goals; if I'm put in environment B, I will have another set of goals. There might not be any way of constructing a coherent utility function so that we could compare the utility that we obtain from being put in environment A versus environment B, since our goals and preferences can be completely path- and environment-dependent. Extrapolated meta-preferences don't seem to solve this either, because there seems to be no reason to assume that they'd any less stable or self-contained.
I don't know what we could use in place of VNM utility, though. At it feels like the alternate formalism should include the agent's environment/life history in determining its preferences.
Robin Hanson writes about rank linear utility. This formalism asserts that we value options by their rank in a list of options available at any one time, making it impossible to construct a coherent classical utility function.
Yeah, that was my first link in the comment. :-) Still good that you summarized it, though, since not everyone's going to click on the link.
Oops, I frankly did not see the link. The one time I thought I could contribute ...
Well, like I said, it was probably a good thing to post and briefly summarize anyway. If you missed the link, others probably did too.
I also have lots of objections to using VNM utility to model human preferences. (A comment on your example: if you conceive of an agent as accruing value and making decisions over time, to meaningfully apply the VNM framework you need to think of their preferences as being over world-histories, not over world-states, and of their actions as being plans for the rest of time rather than point actions.) I might write a post about this if there's enough interest.
I would be very interested in that.
I've always thought of it as preferences over world-histories and I don't see any problem with that. I'd be interested in the post if it covers a problem with that formulation
I don't think of things like "what I want to do with my life" as terminal preferences - just instrumental preferences that depend on the niche you find yourself in. Terminal stuff is more likely to be simple/human universal stuff (think Maslow's hierarchy of needs)
I think you'll probably find Kevin Simler's essays on personality interesting, and he does a good job explaining and exploring this idea.
http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personality-the-body-in-society/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personality-an-ecosystems-perspective/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personality-beyond-social-and-beyond-human/
I've been wondering a lot about whether or not I'm acting rationally with regards to the fact that I will never again be as young as I am now.
So I've been trying to make a list of things I can only do while I'm young, so that I do not regret missing the opportunity later (or at least rationally decided to skip it). I'm 27 so I've already missed a lot of the cliche advice aimed at high school students about to enter college, and I'm already happily engaged so that cuts out some other things.
Any thoughts on opportunities only available at a certain age?
One point, just a nitpick: I would suggest not to aim to act "rationally." Aim to win. I may be assuming overmuch about your intended meaning, but remember, if your goal is to do what is rational rather than to do what is best/right/winning, you'll be confused.
That said, I understand what you mean. There are activities I know can done now, in youth, that, while maybe not impossible in my 40s, 50s, or 60s, would be more difficult.
First, your health. Work out, eat right, stay clean. Do everything that can maximize your health NOW and do it to the utmost that you can. If you start working on your health now, the long term payoffs will be exponential rather than linear. The longer you wait to maximize your health, the greater your disadvantage, the less your payoff. EDIT: (As I have no citation to back this claim up, it'd be best not to take my word on this. I would still suggest not delaying improving your health because doing so will result in benefits now, regardless of whether health improvements are exponential or linear with age.)
Second, try everything. We have a whole article on this that spells it out better than I can. And I'll be the first to admit I haven't dove into its methods full force so I can't vouch for them. But, basically, expose yourself to the world. Not in any mean or gross sense, but as a human being, gathering experience. Go to art classes, go to yoga classes, go to MIRI classes, take karate, learn to dance, learn to sing, play an instrument, learn maths, learn history, go to LW meetups.
Of course, you will be limited, and should be limited, by circumstances. You aren't a brain with infinite capacity yet, so you can't literally do everything. So, focus on a few things at a time. Set a schedule to try out new activities while continuing old, beneficial ones. For example, you might have three days for working out, two days for programming learning (as a hobby), one for online studying, one for social networking. Replace with whatever activities most interest or most benefit you (and don't be afraid of overlap if you want to double up). I live in a place with very little stimulus, so I double up on audiobooks and exercise and use recreational times (gaming or working out) to listen to audiobooks or expose myself to new music. The point is to jump in with both feet and do whatever you do well.
Ultimately, your youth gives you two real things: health (presumably) and energy. Now, I have seen 60 year old men in better shape and with more pep than me (marathon runners!), but for the average, your health and energy will come easier to you now than later. Use it.
[Citation needed]. That doesn't look true to me.
Hmm, fair enough. I made an assumption given my understanding of the body and the effects of age. Since I'm at work and cannot provide a validation for my claim, I'll strike it for the time being. Thank you.
Is anyone familiar with any effective-altruist work on pushing humanity towards becoming a spacefaring species? Seems relevant given the likely difference between a civilization that develops it vs. one that doesn't.
.. the obvious E-A answer to this question is "Don't do any pushing". - Increased space presence is a nigh-certain consequence of a more generally prospering and peaceful world, and diverting resources towards pushing this above trend is going to have just awful returns in utility per dollar. Space will happen on it's own accord as people find useful things to do there (I figure telescopes will be the main thing, tbh.) but beyond that? People are already mapping the asteroid trajectories, which is the only issue really directly relevant to E-A work. If the world dies, and a remnant lives on in tincans in space, that is.. not actually very helpful.
But arguably still vastly better than everybody dying, particularly if that tincan civilization can eventually rebuild and recolonize habitable planets.
I think it might even have negative return. If you do PR in that regard you are going to encourage misallocation of NASA funds. NASA should spend more resources on tracking near-earth objects and less on PR moves like trying to put a man on Mars. Understanding the climate of our own planet better is also an useful target for NASA spending.
Building human civilisation in Alaska is much easier than doing it on Mars. We don't even get things right in Africa where there fertile ground on which plants grow.
Colonizing Mars will need much better biotech and smarter robots than we have at the moment.
I wonder what you think of the question of the origin of consciousness i. e. "Why do we have internal experiences att all?" and "How can any physical process result in an internal/subjective experience?"
I've read some material on the subject before, and reading the quantum physics and identity sequence got me thinking about this again.
Douglas Hofstadter is the go to, mainstream, "hey I recognize that name" authority, though it obviously should be noted that he is a cognitive scientist, not a biologist, neurologist, or nuero-biologist. So, you couldn't build a brain from reading Godel, Escher, and Bach. The only other material I intimately know that discusses the origin of consciousness is Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden, which, again, is mainstream and pop science. It's fun reading and enjoyable, but you can't build a brain from it. Someone else can probably suggest better sources for more study.
Of course, some components of these questions can be answered by reducing the question to find out more about what you're looking for.
What's the make up of an internal experience? What are its moving parts? How do you build it?
How are subjective experiences not physical processes? If they aren't physical, what are they?
Taboo "internal/subjective experiences." What are you left with to solve? What mechanics remain to be understood?
Since you've read through the quantum physics sequence, I'm sure you've been exposed to these ideas already. I'm not a neuroscientist or a cognitive scientist. I know very little about the brain that wasn't used for blunt symbolism in Neon Genesis or Xenogears. But I'd guess that, whatever mechanism(s) allows for consciousness, it's built using the matter available. No tricks or slight of hand.
Thank you - this is helpful.
My suggestion would be to start with Dennett's Consiousness Explained. It tackles exactly the questions you are interested in, and it is much more entertaining than the average philosophy/neurology book on the topic.
Idea for a question for the next LW survey: Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental disorder? If so, what was it? [either a list of some common ones and an "other" box, or, ideally, a full drop-down of DSM-5 diagnoses. Plus a troll-bait non-disorder and a "prefer not to say", of course]
...and a follow-up question: Have you ever self-diagnosed yourself with a mental disorder?
:-)
Would that be interesting enough as a question to be worth including? I imagine there's a lot of variability in self-diagnosis.
The first interesting point is the one-bit yes/no answer.
I would not expect a majority of the general population to self-diagnose itself with a mental disease at any point in their life. However for certain specific groups this changes. One group of interest is high-IQ reflexive self-doubting people. Another group is freaks, that is, people who are clearly weird/strange/different from those around them for whatever reason. Yet another group is borderline cases, those whose symptoms are not strong or pronounced enough for a clinical diagnosis and yet they are not entirely "normal" anyway. And another group is a variety of neurodiverse people.
Okay, that makes sense. And although it might take some clever structuring, I think it might be interesting to try to determine how frequently those self-diagnoses were accurate... something about "confirmed by a medical professional", perhaps?
This is tricky ground. If you want more follow-up questions, the first probably should be "Have you, of your own will, talked to a mental health professional about an assessment or a diagnosis?". Again, the majority of the general population would answer "no" to this.
Are you sure about that?
I don't have data, but my prior is fairly strong.
There are a lot of (temporarily) depressed teenagers, but it's rarely clinical and they rarely go for a formal evaluation to a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist.
How many people, do you think, go to a doctor and say "I think I'm mentally ill"?
Ah, when you phrase it like that I realize that my estimate is rather low. Near vs. Far mode, I guess. Since it's relatively unlikely that someone would do that if they weren't actually mentally ill, and some mental illness is mild enough that one wouldn't bother, and a lot of the severe ones could prevent someone from consulting a doctor on their own, a pretty low proportion of the population seems reasonable.
Does that line up with your reasoning?
edit: I think that part of what was muddling me was that your original phrasing ("talked to a mental health professional about an assessment or a diagnosis") was sort of unclear, so I resorted to nearby heuristics rather than trying to parse it properly. We might want to fix that up before putting it on the survey.
Well, I meant this in the context of being a follow-up to the previous question about self-diagnosis. So it mostly means "Did you take your self-diagnosis seriously enough to go to a doctor?"
Such a question outside of this context needs to be more precisely formulated, I think. As we were discussing with Nornagest, going to a doctor and saying "I can't sleep, life sucks, can you help with that?" is sufficiently common.
I seem to recall something like 30% of the adult American population being in therapy or having been recently. That's not a majority, but it's pretty substantial, and they didn't get there by magic.
My impression is that mostly involves people going to their doctor and saying "Doctor, I feel horrible!". And the good doctor says "Sure, try these antidepressants!" (yes, I know I'm exaggerating).
That's a different thing from "Doctor, I believe I'm mentally ill".
Depression is a mental illness. You might not go to the doctor and ask about depression (though I doubt this is anywhere near as uncommon as you're making it out to be), but going to the doctor and saying "Doc, I can't sleep, feel sad all the time, everything I do seems pointless, etc." is as much asking for a consultation on mental illness as "Doc, I've got this nasty bullseye-shaped rash on my leg and I've got a fever and a bad headache" is asking for a consultation on Lyme disease.
The standards of diagnosis might not be as rigorous, but that's a separate issue.
Yes, if the question were "How many people go to a doctor to complain of symptoms of mental illnesses" then sure, a large chunk of the general American population (still don't know if a majority) would qualify.
However recall the context. We started with the question "Have you ever self-diagnosed yourself with a mental disorder?" and are talking about the follow-up to it. Here the question about going to the doctor means mostly "Did you take your self-diagnosis seriously enough to talk to a medic about it?" And, still within this context, the question is much more like "I think I'm mentally ill, is that so?" than "I can't sleep and life is pointless, how do I fix that?"
Then there's me.
"Doctor, I can't sleep!" "Here, take this Ambien." "Ambien scares the crap out of me; it makes my friend call me up late at night and ramble incoherently at me, and I've heard it makes people have sex and forget it happened." "Eh. Take it anyway, that doesn't happen to most people."
"Doctor, I still can't sleep, I worry all the time, and it's wrecking my motivation at work. And the Ambien works, but it makes me trip out more than I probably should most nights." "You have an anxiety disorder. Here, go to this psychiatrist, Doctor #2. And don't take so much Ambien."
"Doctor #2, I can't sleep, I worry all the time, and it's wrecking my motivation at work. Oh, and Ambien makes me trip out before I fall asleep." "You have anxiety and depression. Here, take these antidepressants, and these benzodiazepines if you need them, plus these folates and vitamin D ... oh, and replace that Ambien with this Lunesta, and come back every week. And let's talk about the work situation, something's messed up there ..."
Anecdotal, sure; and pretty recent. But I didn't start out with the idea "I'm depressed and should seek antidepressants". I thought I had a sleep disorder, but it turns out our reality doesn't issue time machines for those.
There are also people who do have a disorder, but have reasons for not seeing a doctor about it. (Lack of funds, not expecting treatment to help, not needing treatment, etc.)
Do you mean "reasons" or do you mean "rational reasons"?
The opinion of someone who does have a mental disorder on whether treatment will help or is needed, that opinion is... suspect.
In this context, they don't have to be good reasons - my point was that a self diagnosis doesn't necessarily disagree with what a doctor would say if asked.
I think I'd want a second question about the severity of the disorder, including whether person thinks the disorder has some advantages.
Effective parenting advice: Babys names affect life outcomes:
Names Race and Economists on Baby Name Wizard.
I'd guess that means choosing names that are
used in high status circles (sample celebrity babies names)
probably matching your ethnicity
sufficiently popular; best just starting to climb in popularity (not topping or declining)
or altzernatively timeless (e.g. old roman or biblical names)
Also choose multiple names because
it allows to later choose the best fit
allows for easier compromises with your spouse
allows to satisfy more relatives
a high number or surnames indicates higher status in itself
You don't want hollywood celebrities. Low status people name their kids after hollywood celebrities. In Germany given kids Anglosaxon names is a sign of low status. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/leben/studie-kindernamen-und-vorurteile-von-wegen-schall-und-rauch-1.44178
According to that article good names for German children that make teachers think the child is high performing are: "Charlotte, Sophie, Marie, Hannah, Alexander, Maximilian, Simon, Lukas and Jakob". On the other hand bad names are: "Kevin, Chantal, Mandy, Justin and Angelina".
Gunnar said to name children after the children of celebrities, not directly after celebrities. But certainly using foreign celebrities is a very bad idea.
The kind of person who follows magazine that tells them about the name of celebrities still isn't high status.
It's been a while till I researched the topic in more detail. Artists don't wear suits to appear high status and the don't give their children high status names. Royals and aristocrats might be a valid choice if you live in a country that has them.
In the US the way that people who go to Harvard and Yale name their children is what's counts as high status signal.
Yes. Use the childrens names of your local high status people.
I second that. Celebrity is misleading. I wanted to give a concrete example "high status people" is too abstract.
Have you guys noticed that, while the notion of AI x-risk is gaining credibility thanks to some famous physicists, there is no mention of Eliezer and only a passing mention of MIRI? Yet Irving Good, who pointed out the possibility of recursive self-improvement without linking it to x-risk, is right there. Seems like a PR problem to me. Either raising the profile of the issue is not associated with EY/MIRI, or he is considered too low status to speak of publicly. Both possibilities are clearly detrimental to MIRI's fundraising efforts.
I think this is fine. Convincing people that this is a Real Thing and then specifically making them aware of Eliezer and MIRI should be done separately anyway. Doing the second thing too soon may make the first thing harder, while doing the second thing late makes the first thing easier (because then AI x-risk can be put in a mental category other than "that weird thing that those weird people care about").
See also this old post where Robin Hanson basically predicted that this would happen.
So I often find that interesting people live near me. Anyone have tips on asking random people to meet up? Ask them for coffee? I suppose a short email is better than a long one, which may come off creepy? Anyone have friends they met via random emails?
I have a lot of friends who I met through fan mail - people contacting me to tell me they like something about my online footprint. My recommendation is to establish online correspondence for a while, then when they don't send "leave me alone" signals like terse or perfunctory responses you can ask to hang out.
Thanks.
After a bit of random googling it seems there are a lot of results about 'saying no to people who want to get coffee/pick your brain' so it seems like reasonably successful people with an internet presence get a lot of these requests.
I imagine different successful people with internet presences have different intersections of request quantity and request tolerance. I don't get people paying attention to me and wanting to hang out with me as often as I'd like yet so that's probably biasing my recommendations.
Dear LW,
I've just this morning been offered funding for a research placement in a British University this summer (I'm 17). I have to contact researchers myself, and it generally has to be in a STEM subject area. I am looking very generally for any recommendations of researchers to contact in areas of Maths, Physics and Computer Science. If you know any people who do research that would be of interest to the average LessWronger, especially in the aforementioned fields, I would appreciate it greatly.
Obviously there are hundreds of possibilities, but the Future of Humanity Institute springs to mind.
I checked them out actually, and it doesn't seem like they normally do that kind of thing. Still, I've sent them an email, and I'll see what they say :)
Added: They've said they're happy I'm interested, but haven't got anything for me at the minute,
Is Less Wrong dying?
Some observations...
About all I look at on LW anymore is the Open Discussion Thread, Rationality Quotes and the link to Slate Star Codex. I noticed CFAR and MIRI's websites gave me the impression they were getting more traction and perhaps making some money.
Has LW run it's course?
I think it's a little early to predict the end, but there's less I'm interested in here, and I'm having trouble thinking of things to write about, though I can still find worthwhile links for open threads.
Is LW being hit by some sort of social problem, or have we simply run out of things to say?
I'd add "Metacontrarianism is on the rise" to your list. Many of the top posts now are contrary to at least the spirit of the sequences, if not the letter, or so it feels to me.
I would say LW is evolving.
The Sequences are and always were the finger that points at the objective, not the objective unto itself. The project of LW is "refining the art of human rationality." But we don't have the defininition of human rationality written on stone tablets, needing only diligence in application to obtain good results. The project of LW is thus a dynamic process of discovery, experimentation, incorporating new data, sometimes backtracking when we update on evidence that isn't as solid was we had thought.
You correctly observe that the style of participation has changed over time. This is probably mostly the result of certain specific high volume contributors moving on to other things. It could also be the result of an aggregated shift in understanding as to what kinds of results can actually be produced by discussing rationality in a vacuum, which may perhaps be why these contributors have moved on. Or maybe they just said all they felt they needed to say, I don't know. I have a 101.1 F fever right now.
I blame Facebook. Many of the discussions that are had there were of the type that used to invigorate these here boards.
Hm. I think you have a much higher level of sophistication in your FB friend group. I get a lot of Tea Party quotes and pictures of peoples' dinner.
It's mostly that Eliezer has taken to disseminating his current work via open Facebook discussions. I can see how that choice makes sense, from his position, but it's still sad for the identity-paranoid and the nostalgic remnants still roaming these forgotten halls. Did I have a purpose once? It's been so long.
Also, it's much harder (impossible?) to find older discussions on FB.
And perhaps harder to grow, at least through the usual means - the Facebook discussions wouldn't show up on Google searches (or at least not highly ranked, I think), and it's a less convenient format to link someone to for an explanation of a concept.
The LW census get's every year more participants. If LW would be dying I would expect the opposite.
I'm not sure total participants is a good metric to use in making that determination. It depends on people's level of participation and engagment, I think.
When it comes to engagement we do have a bunch of in person meetups that we didn't have a few years ago.
There do seem to be more meetups globally, but I'd say the SF Bay Area meetup scene -- where MIRI is based and many prominent contributors live or have lived --- is well off its peaks. This is perhaps an unreasonable time to be saying so, since the South Bay and East Bay meetups have just gone through major shakeups and haven't yet stabilized; but even ignoring that we're well down from two or three years ago in terms of engagement with high-karma users, in terms of number of local meetup groups, and probably in terms of people as well.
It seems to be a common sentiment, actually. I mentioned this a few times on #lesswrong and the regulars there appear to agree. Whether this is a some sort of confirmation bias, I am not sure. Fortunately, there is a way to measure it:
Look at the recent Main entries: http://lesswrong.com/recentposts/
Then look at the entries from about 1 year ago: http://lesswrong.com/recentposts/?count=250&after=t3_gnv
Count interesting articles from each period and compare the numbers.
Maybe it's because the important things have started, and moved to real life, outside of the LW website. There are people writing and publishing papers on Friendly AI, there are people researching and teaching rationality exercises; there are meetups in many countries. -- Although, if this is true, I would expect more reports here about what happens in the real life. (Remember the fundamental rule of bureaucracy: If it ain't documented, it didn't happen.)
Anyway, this is only a guess; it would be interesting to really know what's happening...
Study which finds biological similarity between men and women is spun as evidence of difference in the popular press.
Hi, I wonder how you would use your rationality skills to solve this problem.
I'm very sensitive to cold and have been for at least 2-3 years. (I'm a 25 year old male). This is manageable with (really) warm clothes, but sometimes very inconvenient.
I've seen multiple doctors about this, and the response I've got was basically "our tests indicate there's nothing wrong with you, so there's nothing I can do". I've left multiple blood samples, and all the things that were tested are within normal (well, my trombocyte count is a bit low. Doubt it's related to this).
I'm slightly underweight, and have a history of fatigue and depression.
I'm looking for both practical advice and general rationality advice on how to deal with a confusing health problem.
I'm in a similar situation, and am leaning toward it being a circulation issue. Would you happen to know what your last blood pressure measurements were?
My previous lead candidate was proto-diabetes, but the most recent tests suggest otherwise. The only comment made about my bloodpressure was by the trainee EMT, saying "I wish my bloodpressure was that low!". I've been suspicious that the safe range for bloodpressure might be shifted a bit too far downward, since most people suffer from high bloodpressure-related conditions, but I'll need to refind the evidence that pushed me in that direction.
Anyway, my current strategy is to try and get more/better exercise, fresh air and sunlight. Those are good ideas in general, and should have an impact if it's circulation-related. It's too early and I'm still struggling to get good exercise, and I didn't think to try and quantify changes until... just now, so right now, this solution is experimental on my end.
Thanks for sharing.
(just posted my blood pressure results in an another comment)
First question: what's your blood pressure?
Second question: did you do a thyroid panel and what did it show?
Third question: did you measure your body temperature in controlled settings (e.g. first thing upon waking up before getting out of bed)?
Common causes of sensitivity to cold are low blood pressure and hypothyroidism.
90/60 mmHg according to what a doctor told me during a measurement a month ago (though my journal says 98/60 for some reason). 105/60 in an another measurement a week before that.
Thyroid panel:
P-TSH mIE/L 1.5 (0.3-4.2)
P-T4, free pmol/L 15 (12-22)
P-T3, free pmol/L 5.2 (3.1-6.8)
S-Ak, (IgG) TPO kIE/L 8 (<34)
The last one is TPO antibodies. The parentheses are the reference ranges at my lab.
All values are within what is considered normal range. I've also had the thyroid physically examined (though palpation) and it appears there are no abnormalities (it's not swollen or enlarged).
I have not measured my body temperature.
Your systolic is low, but I'm sure you're well aware of that.
The thyroid panel looks normal, but there exists a bunch of people (including a few doctors one of whom, I believe, wrote a book) who think that hypothyroidism is seriously underdiagnosed and that it will not necessary show up in the TSH/T3/T4 tests. Google it up. I have no opinion on their claims.
There is also, of course, the non-answer that your thermoregulation set point just happens to be very low :-/
I doubt it's a "thermoregulation set point" issue, since I haven't always felt this way.
Thanks for pointing out the blood pressure thing. I hadn't considered it might be related to cold sensitivity.
I have considered it might be a thyroid issue, and I am familiar with the controversy around thyroid disease. Not completely trusting all the alternative claims - but I think there's enough evidence to believe something might be going on. I think I might try to get a prescription for thyroid hormone medication, and see if it improves my condition. I'll probably try other options first, since there are potential side effects.
Your thermoregulation set point could have moved. In fact, I'd say that's exactly what happened, since I get the impression your temperature is fairly stable. The problem is that it's too low.
Very tentatively-- maybe you should get your hormones checked. This is based on a weak hypothesis that if menopause can send body temperature too high erratically, maybe there's a hormone problem which is keeping yours too low.
If you're male you might also want to check your testosterone levels. And if your doctors and insurance are amenable, run a thorough hormones check in general.
I'm similar. I have found scarves to be both stylish and practical. The neck area is highly sensitive to cold. I've taken to toting a scarf if I am going to bring a jacket.
Long underwear. Even if your legs don't specifically feel cold, adding more insulation there helps the whole body. Your legs are a pair of huge heat exchangers, and there's a limit to how useful it is to pile more layers on your torso if all your body heat can still leak out through your legs.
I've had something like that for the last 35 years or so. I just live with it. I suspect a connection with a serious illness I had back then, but I've never bothered to raise the matter with a doctor, because it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a doctor is likely to have any remedy for. I am also slightly built (BMI 19 to 20) and have occasional attacks of great fatigue, but not depression.
Thick woolly hats are good too. A lot of heat is lost through the head.
Do you do sports?
Not regularly.
I exercise at a gym (upper body strength program, started quite recently).
Did something happen 3 years ago? Maybe a major emotional trauma?
I've had a really bad childhood and experienced a lot of severe emotional trauma throughout my life since then, including at that time.
I do think that what you have can be caused by severe emotional trauma. If that's the case it basically explains why the tests that doctors run come up empty.
There are defense mechanisms that the body can use in cases of trauma that lead to reduced blood circulation which in turn messes up temperature regulation and shows itself as low blood pressure.
That means that the first step would be to move to a safe environment where you aren't constantly exposed to severe emotional trauma. Did you already make that step?
Yes, to the extent it's realistically possible.
My first tactic with confusing health problems is adjusting my diet, but I seem to be more affected by diet than the typical person, so your mileage may vary Taking a very complete multivitamin for a few days and seeing if you feel any different is an easy way to check for nutrition deficiencies, if your blood tests didn't check for that (or only checked for a few usual suspects). If you do feel different, then you at least know you were deficient in something. You could also do an elimination diet for the most common food allergies, but that takes a lot of effort, so it might not be worth it if you and your family don't have a history of food issues.
If you're more sensitive to cold at some times than others, try to notice the fluctuation and see if it correlates with anything (especially stress, based on ChristianKi's comment). Maybe try writing down how cold you felt and what you did that day? (I usually don't write this sort of thing down, even though I know I should.)
I can't figure out who runs the Less Wrong Twitter. Does anyone know?
As per issue #389, I've just pushed a change to meetups. All future meetup posts will be created in /r/meetups to un-clutter /r/discussion a little bit.
Links: Young blood reverses age-related impairments in cognitive function and synaptic plasticity in mice (press release)(paper)
I think the radial arm water maze experiment's results are particularly interesting; it measures learning and memory (see fig 2c which is visible even with the paywall). There's a day one and day two of training and the old mice (18 months) improve somewhat during the first day and then more or less start over on the second day in terms of the errors they are making. This is also true if the old mice are treated with 8 injections of old blood over the course of 3 weeks (the new curves lie pretty much on top of the old curves in supplemental figure 7d). Young mice (3 months) perform better than the old mice (supplemental figure 5d) they learn faster on the first day and retain it when the second day starts (supp 7d).
However, if you give 8 injections of 100 micro liters of blood from 3 month old mice to 18 month old mice, the treated mice perform dramatically better than the old-blood treated old mice (2c) and much more like young mice (this comparison is less certain; I'm comparing one line from 2c to one line from supp. 7d, but that's how it looks by eye).
One factor in the new blood that plays a role is GDF11. From another paper: "we show that GDF11 alone can improve the cerebral vasculature and enhance neurogenesis"
The New York Times gives an overview and other known effects of young blood such as rejuvenating the musculature / heart / vasculature of old mice with young blood. Young Blood May Hold Key to Reversing Aging, e.g. Restoring Systemic GDF11 Levels Reverses Age-Related Dysfunction in Mouse Skeletal Muscle