Open thread, July 21-27, 2014

Against all odds, it turns out I'm a grown-up now. If I die, go missing, or am rendered incapable of looking after myself, significant sums of money become available to my next-of-kin. I've started assembling a document for them to hold onto in case of these eventualities.

I have two questions to throw at LWers who may have dealt with this sort of thing before:

1) The whole process of making a will seems a bit excessive to my needs. I don't have a complicated estate or children or anything, and trust my next-of-kin to respect my wishes or act in my best interests if it becomes necessary. Solicitor's fees seem like an unnecessary expense. I just want to collect all the salient details into one location for convenience. Are there any good reasons why I might want to revise this judgement?

2) The basic document so far consists of a list of bank accounts, financial assets, insurance policy numbers, contact numbers for my GP, workplace, etc., and miscellaneous other details that might prove useful. Are there any sensible bits of information I might want to bundle up with this that I probably haven't thought about?

6[anonymous]10y

Regarding your first point: if your immediate next-of-kin is unable to take care of things, do you trust whoever is next-nearest to respect your wishes? How confident are you that this will still be the case after time (t) has passed? My experience with a few friends and relatives: often such informal estate planning is done as a one-off, in a moment of forward thinking, and then left as is, sometimes for years. Unexpected changes in the views of the next of kin (in my family's case, various religious conversions) led to all kinds of family disputes related to different opinions about what the desires and intentions of the deceased might have been - and whether they are even relevant if none were formally expressed.

4Alsadius10y

1) Your local jurisdiction will have some manner of default will - a piece of legislation somewhere that says who gets what in the event that you die intestate. Look up a summary online. If its provisions bug you, you should probably get a will. If you're cool with it, then you don't necessarily need one. However, if you have an estate big enough that your relatives will sue each other for a piece of it(>$100k USD net worth, say), an estate that is somehow complex(trust funds, assets you want to go somewhere in particular, scumbag relatives you want to cut out, etc.), or children, I would advise getting one regardless. I know some estate lawyers, and the stories they tell are hair-curling. I know that's a biased source, because they don't see much of the simple cases, but it's an insurance policy I plan to get as soon as I have enough assets to be worth paying for it. Also, when you're getting one, get a power of attorney set up. Most people don't do that even when they do get a will done, and it's a pretty ugly oversight if something goes wrong.

2sixes_and_sevens10y

This comment was helpful. I still don't think I need a will right now (too few relatives and assets), but I've adjusted down my estimate of when I might.

4Viliam_Bur10y

What would happen if the document gets stolen?

3sixes_and_sevens10y

Identity theft and general info-sec is obviously a concern, but the way I see it, I either trust someone to safeguard these details or I don't. I can try and minimise the chances of the document being compromised. I briefly considered some sort of encrypted flash drive business, but I figure a hard-copy subject to physical security measures is probably a lot safer than something that can be drag-and-dropped onto a Windows Vista desktop. I can also minimise the amount of personally-identifying information in the document, so anyone obtaining the document without context wouldn't know who these various assets and policies applied to. My plan is to produce two physical documents and give them to two geographically-disparate immediate family members for safekeeping.

1VAuroch10y

A safe deposit box is probably worth the cost.

0Alsadius10y

It's far more expensive than the will that he felt wasn't worth paying for.

0VAuroch10y

Safe deposit boxes also store a number of other documents securely, such as passports, title deeds to property, birth certificates, etc. In addition to any jewelry or whatever with large cash value, if you have any.

4Alsadius10y

But if he has too low a net worth to make a will worthwhile, what are the odds he has anything safety-deposit-box-worthy? Spending fifty bucks a year to hold your passport seems terribly inefficient - it's not so valuable that an occasional replacement will be worse.

2Lumifer10y

Nowadays most paper documents are just a convenience (or an inconvenience). What really matters is the proper entry in some database in the cloud. Replacing a missing passport, title deed, etc. is neither hard nor expensive.

[-]Kaj_Sotala10y90

The Ethereum pre-sale has begun.

Given that Ethereum is explicitly designed as a platform for distributed decentralized applications, it seems to me like it could be the next big cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. I'm not terribly confident in this assessment, however. Do people here have an opinion on how likely it is that it'd be the "next tech gold rush"?

5wedrifid10y

I notice that the smallest denomination of the ethereum currency is the "Wei". Is that named in honor of Wei Dai for his foundational work in the same vein as the "Satoshi"?

1[anonymous]10y

It's a pre-pre-mine. Ethereum will never succeed if they go through with this.

0wedrifid10y

Curious observation about the incentives for buying ethereum during the pre-sale: The issuance model will be as follows: Ether will be sold in a Mastercoin-style fundraiser at the price of 1 ether for 0.0001 BTC. Suppose that X ether gets collected in this way. 0.25X ether will be given to the founders. 0.25X ether will be given to the Ethereum organization as a reserve pool to pay expenses in ETH such as ETH salaries or bounties for those developers who want part or all of their compensation to be in this form 0.5X ether will be mined per year forever after that point (ie. permanent linear inflation) This is similar to a tragedy of the commons problem. The value given to the investors is their relative contribution and the total contribution of bitcoins makes no direct difference (except for positive PR). Of course, apart from the participants in the sale being human (rather than ideal UDT agents) the ideal solution (of token purchases in proportion to what the players "would have" bought if they could not cooperate) is modified somewhat because the Etherium founders have an incentive to inflate the price away from a cooperative solution. Regarding the value transfer represented (the Etherium organisation + the founders thereof) end up with: * All of the bitcoin spent. * 1/3 of the Etherium currency. That probably could be worse, given how such currencies tend to be launched. It is worth taking into consideration that the currency has permanent linear inflation. That means the inflation will be trivial in the future but relatively huge to begin with. The currency purchased in the initial sale will represent 25% of the currency after 5 years.

[-]tetronian210y80

Sometime in the near future, I will be running an iterated prisoner's dilemma tournament in which bots can access their opponents' source code, similar to the IPD tournament that was held last year. This tournament will be open to the Internet at large (i.e. not just LW) and will probably include some Hacker News folks and some folks from my real-life social network, who are primarily programmers and people in the finance world. Once everything is officially announced, there will be a large window (a month?) in which users can submit entries before the tou... (read more)

3[anonymous]10y

The code in the github repo doesn't actually give bots access to each other's source, just the ability to run each other. It's also lacking handling for bots that run forever.

0tetronian210y

Thanks for the feedback. I agree on both points; I will probably change the wording to what you suggested.

0Oscar_Cunningham10y

IIRC last time the winners were programs that had some random element in their code and "got lucky" (in the sense that if the tournament had been run multiple times and the results averaged, they would not have won). So maybe you should guard against this by performing sufficiently many copies of the tournament.

[-][anonymous]10y80

MIRI's Summer Fundraiser is underway: https://intelligence.org/donate/

2Stabilizer10y

If someone from MIRI is reading this: Having the upper-limit of the donation progress-bar truncate in the middle of the blue box is confusing. It makes one feel that you've reached $200K, and that you have to go the rest of the distance of the blue box to actually reach your goal. I suggest moving <# of Donors> to below the progress-bar (as opposed to where it currently is, which is to the right of the progress bar) and scaling the progress-bar to fit the width of box.

[-]Anders_H10y60

I have written a set of course notes for a course in applied causal inference. I am thinking about adapting these notes to a Less Wrong sequence.

This is not intended to be a rigorous treatment of causal inference for mathematicians, computer scientists or theorists. However, I hope my sequence may help improve people's intuition about what causal inference is, and serve as a simplified epistemology for applied scientists and readers of correlation studies.

If anyone has time to read the drafts before I publish, please send me a private message and I'll send you the link!

[-]bramflakes10y50

I'm always fascinated at the ginormous arguments that this picture is guaranteed to cause, and I wonder at what kind of experiments you could do with it to investigate people's different intuitions of physics.

4Squark10y

I think the answer B makes more sense. There's no reason this portal configuration should conserve momentum since it breaks space translation symmetry. On the other hand, if you're looking at the object from the exit portal then you expect its trajectory to be smooth. More formally, the portal can be implemented by making space into an appropriate Riemannian manifold (with singularity at portal edges) and mechanics with the usual Lagrangian leads to B.

2[anonymous]10y

I'm confused. Both trajectories are smooth. Well, yes, but I think the question is concerned with the peculiar implementation of portals in the game, which apparently conserves momentum.

2Squark10y

If you're looking from the exit portal you see the object coming towards you. Therefore, when it crosses the portal you expect it to keep moving with the same velocity rather than suddenly stopping (I assume that the portal is a smooth geometric surgery of space and nothing singular is happening at the boundary except at the edge). I have no idea about the game (never played it). I'm just saying what seems more natural from the POV of physics.

2gwern10y

(It's A, right?) To some extent, 'folk physics' has already been studied a fair bit. For example, see the links at the end of http://lesswrong.com/lw/khd/confound_it_correlation_is_usually_not_causation/ about a quiz designed to measure how well people understand Newtonian mechanics and to what extent they succumb to incorrect folk physics beliefs.

0bramflakes10y

If you do it in the Portal 2 engine (Portal 1 doesn't support moving portals) it seems to be A but with a slight push (google for videos). The point is, I don't think the topology of the portals even allows for things like "conservation of momentum" to make sense (anyone can correct me here).

0A1987dM10y

That's what I immediately thought, but on further thought I think it might, if you assume portals move things through some kind of force rather than by folding space itself, though something yadda yadda Dirac delta function yadda yadda, but we can assume the portals are very much heavier than the object so... Well, I'd have to work it out.

0A1987dM10y

Yes, I think it can work, if when the object passes the portals the portals gets displaced by -m/M times their distance, where m is the mass of the object and M is the combined mass of the portals. (By “work” I mean it doesn't need there to be a privileged frame of reference for it to be described.) (I'm assuming Galilean relativity; I'm not sure it can be made to work in special relativity as well.)

0Nornagest10y

The link to Halloun & Hestenes 1985 no longer seems to be valid, although the 1992 paper still seems to be good. Is this the same paper?

0gwern10y

That was fast. But no, that seems to be an earlier paper, I meant http://generative.edb.utexas.edu/classes/knl2011fall/Halloun_Hestenes_FCI.pdf

0[anonymous]10y

Yes, assuming portals conserve momentum (which I believe they do in the Portal canon).

1Lumifer10y

Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out :-D

0A1987dM10y

My intuition agrees with Squark's, but I've never played the game either.

[-][anonymous]10y50

Do we have a "How Have You Helped Save the World" thread and, if not, why not?

We have the Group Rationality Diary, which is very useful for personal accountability, and the Bragging Thread, which helps encourage brag-worthy behaviors, but as far as I am aware, we do not have a "How You've Helped Save the World" thread.

Does this seem useful? A way to encourage people to recognize how their actions make the world a better place. Not every post need be about "invented friendly AI," "cured an illness," "created a ... (read more)

3ChristianKl10y

I think there little cost to starting such a thread. Afterwards you can see whether the thread produces useful discussion.

0somervta10y

I would put such things in the bragging thread - why the separation?

1[anonymous]10y

The bragging thread encourages a focus on personal accomplishments and personal improvement. It becomes easy to assume that the only things of worth are self-focused actions. Not a bad thing when you want to focus on self-improvement, but it does not demonstrate any connection with saving the world at large. A "Saving the World" thread encourages considering large scale actions and effects. At least this is my opinion. As Christian said, we would just have to see what the reception is. Might be unnecessary, might be helpful.

[-]btrettel10y50

Can someone point me to an argument or evidence supporting the suggestion that short polyphasic sleep allows most people to decrease their sleep requirements without negative cognitive, physical, or health consequences?

I'm a long sleeper (my sleep requirements are on the higher side), and I am interested in reducing my sleep requirements. I encountered the idea of polyphasic sleep after learning quite a bit about sleep. Polyphasic sleep is often touted as a way to decrease sleep need, via making your body quickly go into REM sleep. Quickly going into REM w... (read more)

2ChristianKl10y

I still stand by what I wrote in the answer to the Skeptic Stack Exchange question that you linked to. I don't think there good reason to assume that polyphasic sleep is very useful. At the same time it's an interesting topic for research. If I understand right puredoxyk wants to do some group research at the moment. I would also be interested in the current conclusions of those Leverage Research folks who started polyphasic sleep a while ago. I while ago I did meet a girl via PlentyOfFish who claimed to have been for a year on 1 hour of sleep per day without doing any kind of polyphasic schedule or other personal development tricks and that's without her knowing about my interests in the subject. It didn't kill her but it probably wasn't healthy either. Phrases like "work okay" have a fairly broad meaning. There are plenty of people who think they are highly functioning but who could function a lot better. If I remember right puredoxyk was depressed when she wrote the post. She was depressed before she even started polyphasic sleep, but that doesn't set the bar for "being okay" very high.

3btrettel10y

I had not realized the Stack Exchange post was yours. Good work. New research into short polyphasic sleep is not so interesting to me. I think it is plausible that a polyphasic schedule could modestly reduce sleep requirements (perhaps around 1 hour at most) by reducing the duration of lighter stages of sleep (but not eliminating; it's not clear these stages are unimportant). But that's not what people interested in polyphasic sleep are testing. Instead, they try very short schedules that don't make sense. I skimmed through puredoxyk's original post on polyphasic sleep and it seems she decided 2 hours total was right because that was about as much REM sleep as she was getting before. This goes back to problems mentioned elsewhere: REM is not the only important sleep stage and nap-type sleep schedules don't produce purely REM sleep. I'd like to see a change in research direction among polyphasic sleep proponents towards longer schedules. I agree. I think many people who maintain short polyphasic sleep don't recognize how impaired they are. I wasn't trying to set the bar low. I was responding to the suggestion that I must think everyone who claims success is lying. I do think lying and exaggeration play a role, but here are some other easy justifications I can offer: acclimation (short polyphasic sleepers get used to being sleep deprived), placebo sleep effect (they think it works, minimizing the tiredness), positive publication bias (might explain why the Leverage Research folks haven't followed up), and wishful thinking. These explanations are in addition to the self-selection effect for short sleepers that I previously mentioned. There are a number of other ways to potentially reduce your sleep need that I believe are more plausible than polyphasic sleep. I'll detail a few I am aware of. I've read that some people with delayed sleep phase disorder find that they can sleep at times not aligned with their circadian rhythms, but the sleep is not restorative. Align

1ChristianKl10y

To be fair, the same goes also for most people who aren't on polyphasic sleep schedules. There are also other effects. Polyphasic sleep is like a commitment contract to do time planning. If you don't do time planning while on Uberman you are very screwed. As a result the schedule forces the user to plan his time and therefore the user might be more productive. Acupuncture and homeopathy are subjects which are investigated by a lot of people and where a lot of knowledge is available about various experiments that people did about the subject. Polyphasic sleep is a subject where very little information is available. You are very fast in a realm outside of what's studied in mainstream academia. That makes the topic interesting while both acupuncture and homeopathy are fairly boring topics. Polyphasic sleep as such also doesn't violate any laws of how reality is supposed to work in the way homeopathy does. The reasons of why humans have to sleep the amount of time that they do aren't very clear. As far as I understand the normal person can reach 4 hours of sleep per day via modafinil and uphold that schedule for months. On the other hand I'm not sure whether that healthy for a period over multiple years.

4btrettel10y

While I don't think polyphasic sleep is as obviously wrong as homeopathy, it is clear that many of the claims short polyphasic sleep proponents make conflict with things known about sleep. A polyphasic schedule that ignores the circadian rhythm requires sleep deprivation (a bad thing) for some of the naps to happen. Circadian rhythms seem quite rigid for many people. For example, orally taken melatonin is often prescribed in an attempt to shift the circadian rhythm of a patient with delayed sleep phase disorder. The longest study I could find on the subject suggested that melatonin does not work long-term for delayed sleep phase disorder (added 2015-06-30: jacob_cannell pointed out that I misread the study, so I retract this sentence). Indeed, a recommendation I've seen for people with delayed sleep phase disorder has been to not fight their circadian rhythm if they don't have to, and sleep offset from most other people. Based on what I've read from polyphasic sleepers, it seems to me that they usually can't fight their circadian rhythm either, as schedules with a "core" night sleep tend to be more successful (though most people still can not adapt). Polyphasic sleep proponents also make many assumptions and false claims regarding sleep architecture. To summarize points already made, common claims from short polyphasic sleep proponents include that REM is all you need or the more sophisticated argument that light sleep can be skipped. More than REM is important, in fact, there are a few studies (e.g.) that correlate objective measurements of sleep architecture with subjective measurements of sleep quality, and they consistently find that SWS/deep sleep is the most important. It's also not clear that the lighter stages of sleep are necessarily unimportant (e.g., the K-complex that occurs in stage 2 sleep may play a role in memory formation). Certainly, if someone gets too much light sleep they could benefit from reducing that, but it's not clear to me that polyphas

1ChristianKl10y

Schedules with the core sleep don't seem to equate that being awake for 6 hours in a row completely screws you up for a day. That's why they are a lot more practical than Uberman if Uberman works as advertised. While that's certainly claimed by some polyphasic sleep advocates there are others who read a bit and who therefore don't make that false claim and still advocate polyphasic sleep. Even more, those people who do make the claim don't know that they claim something that in conflict with the academic literature on sleep. That's quite different from the case of homeopathy where the conflict is obvious. That makes a difference for the spread of memes, if you are interested in why the meme spreads. Quite rigid doesn't tell you at all what you need to do to mess with them and reprogram the brain to do something different. It's theoretically possible that you can change some mental patterns if you exert strong enough stress. People are certainly possible to switch up their circadian rhythms after having jet lag produced through a intercontinental flight. There one theory not yet covered in our discussion. It possible to imaging sleep as a garbage collection process. After N hours of being awake the body needs N/2 hours of sleep to get sort through all the information stored while being awake. It's also possible that it needs (N^2)/32 hours of sleep to sort through all the information. Both formula suggest a monophasic sleep schedule of 8 hours for a 24 hour day but the second one also allows Uberman sleep to work. I'm not aware that the academic sleep literature proves that the relevant formula is linear and not quadratic.

1A1987dM10y

Based on my experience the couple times I stayed awake for more than 24 hours in a row, I think it's very unlikely to be quadratic, at least for large N. BTW, does anybody know of anyone who's tried http://xkcd.com/320/ for more than a few weeks in a row?

0Lumifer10y

:-D

0ChristianKl10y

So you are saying you did spent something like 36 hours awake in a row without negative side effects?

3Lumifer10y

I've spent more than 36 hours without sleep and while there are side effects, the point is that when you finally get to sleep, how much you sleep isn't a quadratic function of of how many hours you were awake.

0ChristianKl10y

I'm taking about stable schedules that don't have negative side effects. How much you sleep and how much sleep would be good for you are also two distinct issues.

0A1987dM10y

Yes, there were negative side effects, but these didn't include having to sleep 36^2/32 hours in a row to catch up. (Edit: what happened is I slept six-ish hours in a row as soon as I hit a bed, waking up in the afternoon, then I reverted to my ordinary sleep schedule except the first couple nights I went to bed about an hour earlier than usual.

-2ChristianKl10y

Then that's not directly relevant to what I'm arguing. I'm speaking about the amount of sleep in a stable schedule that you need to feel alright. I'm not sure that your brain processed all the experiences during that longer awake period in a healthy way and formed memories for those that should stay in memory.

0btrettel10y

See part 1 here. I was unclear. There are a number of ways to influence your circadian rhythm. These do allow you to change time zones, etc. It is not clear that these can be taken advantage of for short polyphasic sleep. However, speculation is not necessary, as Dr. Stampi addresses this point in his book (p. 174-175): The data available verifies my view that a successful polyphasic schedule must respect the circadian drive. Schedules like Uberman seem much less plausible, and other schedules with a "core" period more plausible, but unlikely to be better than monophasic or biphasic (long night sleep with afternoon nap), as those schedules respect the circadian rhythm by their nature. This is an intriguing suggestion. Stampi discusses this possibility as well (p. 18-19): First, I am not aware of any work in the academic sleep literature that directly addresses this question aside from the few studies into short polyphasic sleep. Based on my quick reading of a few sections of Stampi's book, these studies seem to have a number of methodological problems, mainly that they had small sample sizes, but I highlight another major one later in this post (sleep inertia). I'm happy to see others mention a counterexample (that staying awake for a long period of time requires proportionally less sleep to recover) I was detailing as well. I'll agree that this is not so convincing, as it necessarily involves sleep deprivation. However, it does show that sleep can be more recuperative under certain circumstances, which may be good or bad for proponents of short polyphasic sleep. Stampi discusses a few other factors in his book that must be factored in. These include the minimum amount of time required for sleep to have any recuperative value, sleep inertia (post-nap grogginess), and the time to fall asleep. It is possible that whatever process that occurs during sleep could be made more efficient in some sense by breaking sleep into multiple instances. That is speculation, ho

0btrettel10y

I'm really glad we're having this discussion, as it's causing me to hash out my thoughts in more detail and research more than I would have if I were merely writing a note to myself. I broke this up into two comments. While perhaps excusable, I don't think the ignorance of some short polyphasic sleep proponents is a point in their favor. There are many proponents of short polyphasic sleep who are aware that more than REM is necessary. Take the Polyphasic Society as an example. They make the more argument that polyphasic sleep is more efficient because it reduces time spent in light sleep, but maintains time spent in deep and REM sleep (they even mention the K-complex in stage 2 sleep!). At first, this struck me as plausible, but I see that Stampi has something to say on the subject of sleep architecture on a short polyphasic schedule (p. 172-173): The claim that short polyphasic schedules reduce light sleep but don't reduce deep sleep (SWS) and REM is false. And this book isn't unknown among polyphasic sleep proponents. I'm having a hard time believing that they didn't read it, but it seems they have not. At this point, I don't know of any mechanism by which short polyphasic sleep could work, but I'd accept that it works if I saw empirical evidence suggesting so. I am somewhat floored by this, to be honest. I want to note that I haven't read Stampi's book in much detail due to time constraints, but I'm not finding anything other than this conclusion in there. For those with the book, please point out if I've highlighted an opportunistic passage, as I am not trying to cherry pick; I just have not read the book as fully as I'd like. I'll detail a few other major problems with one other claim the Polyphasic Society makes. I have not verified all of their other claims, but I became aware of this when investigating long sleep. They cite a study that suggests people who sleep less live longer. There are a number of such studies, and they appear to be confounded by de

1ChristianKl10y

There are two distinct questions: 1) How does it come that a bunch of rationalist people advocate polyphasic sleep? 2) Does polyphasic sleep work? Both are interesting questions. I think falling asleep fast is a learned skill. It's just about switching from one mental state into another. I do think that doable to build anchors in hypnosis that instantly allow people to switch off consciousness and go into a state similar to stage 1 or stage 2 sleep. There are people who can fall asleep in an act of will and wakeup at a predestined time with +-5 minutes whether it's 3 or 7 hours after getting to sleep. Don't underrate the effect that determined decisions can make. Yes, your average Westerner might need to be tired to fall asleep but that's simply because he's not much in control over what his brain is doing. I would be surprised is the leverage research people who attempted polyphasic sleep think all naps during polyphasic sleep are completely REM and that's a good thing. I also don't think that puredoxyk believes it these days. I don't like the word "naturally" in this context. Part of sleep is regenerating the body. If someone has a depression that puts stress on the body. It then makes sense that the body needs more time in regeneration mode. There a claim where I don't know whether it's true, that switching from a normal diet to a vegetarian diet reduces sleep needs by roughly 30 minutes. It's certainly possible that a body that doesn't has to digest animal protein requires less protein. I also want to iterate, that it might be a bad idea to think of sleep needs as a one dimensional thing. The amount of time you sleep without an alarm clock is not the same thing as the amount of sleep that you need to not feel tired. I don't think either of those is the amount of time you need to not have reduced performance on reaction time test. Memory consolidation is a fourth thing. It's certainly possible that there are interventions that solve most dimensions tha

0btrettel10y

Do you have any more information about this ability and how one can develop it? I'm interested in trying the same in reverse (i.e., making myself wake up faster).

1ChristianKl10y

What do you mean with "wake up faster"? Reducing the amount of time between waking up and getting out of bed? That's a different issue than waking up at a predefined point in time. As far as I understand a good way to go about it is to have a specific routine of getting up out of bed, that you do the same way every time. You shouldn't have to think while in bed about whether you first dress yourself or first put toast into the toaster. The routine should be clear. Steve Pavlina suggests doing dry practicing of the routine. When you have some time at the weekend you train the routine. You lay down in bed with an alarm clock that rings after 15 minutes and then you do your first 5 minutes of the morning routine. You do that a bunch of time to train automatic conditioning. I have only anecdotal evidence for that method working and it sounds straightforward and low risk to me. You might also look at motivation issues. If you aren't motivated to get up to do something, you will have a harder time. Sleep deprivation can also make it harder to get up. Personally for me my first priority is that my body has the time to do it's regeneration processes. I think it makes more sense to first fix the needs of the body. As far as developing the skill to wake up at a specific period of time, that more complicated. There's some evidence that well educated people have a harder time. It takes interacting with your intuition. I have encountered normal people without much training having the ability. Self hypnosis is one way to get there, but I have no idea what kind of time investment it would be to learn the skill to a sufficient degree.

0btrettel10y

Ah, I was unclear. By "wake up" I mean "feel fully alert". I do not have much difficulty getting out of bed. And I do find the idea of waking up at a prescribe time to be interesting and perhaps useful for myself. I'll investigate the latter further. I have a morning routine, but the issue is that I often don't feel fully alert at the end of it. This is likely due to inadequate sleep duration and/or delayed sleep phase disorder, and it may be difficult to use conditioning to counteract either effect.

1ChristianKl10y

In that case the mainstream response would be: Go to bed earlier so that you get enough sleep. The second question would be: Do you do enough sports? Have you tried doing sports in your morning routine? Showering both warm and cold would be options.

0btrettel10y

Getting more sleep is easier said than done in my case. I'm working on it. I suspect I have a mild case of delayed sleep phase disorder, so it's not as simple as going to bed earlier. If I did sleep then, it's not likely to be very restorative. Instead, I'm going to try starting sleeping at a later time this fall and see if that helps. In terms of physical activity, I commute by bike and run. I'm probably at the 95th percentile or higher in terms of duration of moderate or high intensity physical activity. I do think this helps, but it does not help enough. Not sure showering has ever made much of a difference either way.

1ChristianKl10y

There are three things that you could experiment with before going to sleep: 1) Progressive relaxation/hypnosis MP3 to induce sleep in an healthy way. 2) Some form of breathing meditation. 3) Feldenkrais exercises right before going to sleep (Book: Awareness through Movement - Moshé Feldenkrais)

1Douglas_Knight10y

But only people with excessive daytime sleepiness are tested for quickly going into REM, so the fact that they do doesn't tell so much. Anecdotally, I find that people with narcolepsy went quickly into REM before they developed the excessive daytime sleepiness. They seem to function quite well, until they develop full-blown narcolepsy. So I don't think it is reasonable to associate quick REM with narcolepsy. Sleep deprivation is another matter.

0btrettel10y

Yes, what I wrote was too restrictive. Sleep-onset REM periods (SOREMPs) are definitely a part of normal experience. If they occur regularly in an individual, that's a symptom of narcolepsy (or sleep deprivation; the two are similar). There could be possibilities that I am not aware of, as well. I know people who have claimed to have SOREMPs sometimes who don't have narcolepsy and were not sleep deprived. I was not arguing that SOREMPs are necessarily bad, just that what is known about them is not good, which set off a red flag for me.

[-]Wei Dai10y50

Can anyone suggest a good book, article, or discussion thread about office politics? (Someone keeps coming to me for advice, even though I told them I haven't worked in an office since 2002 and I didn't pay any attention to interpersonal relationships when I did work. I want to try to avoid disappointing them on the powers of rationality and general intelligence, if possible. :)

5Viliam_Bur10y

This blog provides a cynical view on the workplace: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/ I like the cynicism, but I don't know how realistic it is. Also, there is Stack Exchange: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/

5Adele_L10y

IMO, michaelochurch behaves in a way which predictably will cause his unfortunate experiences. I think if you give proper respect to those with the relevant authority, you will have a very different experience.

2Douglas_Knight10y

Could you elaborate?

1Alsadius10y

I'm a fan of The Gervais Principle series - http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ is the first entry. I've largely avoided political jobs, so I can't speak to how well it works in practice, however.

[-]Thomas10y50

I have devised a software which is able (among other things) to construct 3D crosswords.

I don't consider it AI, but "stupid".

Even so, (English) 3D crosswords without black fields are currently very rare, to nonexistent.

http://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/woshi-power/

[-]Lumifer10y40

Fighting procrastination -- the Victor Hugo edition.

[-]MrMind10y40

If I wanted to learn about, and understand correctly, UDT, where should I look / who should I ask?
Publicly available information is terribly scattered and outdated.

[-]ShardPhoenix10y30

Good article about existential risks in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/21/five-biggest-threats-human-existence

0Document10y

The URL contains "commentisfree". Doesn't that mean that it's a user blog rather than an article?

2ShardPhoenix10y

Seems like an op/ed thing.

0satt10y

Yup, just so.

[-]JQuinton10y20

Question about Bayesian updates.

Say Jane goes to get a cancer screening. 5% prior of having cancer, the machine has a success rate of 80% and a false positive rate of 9%. Jane gets a positive on the test and so she now has a ~30% chance of having cancer.

Jane goes to get a second opinion across the country. A second cancer screening (same success/false positive rates) says she doesn't have cancer. What is her probability for having cancer now?

8polymathwannabe10y

According to your percentages, out of every 10,000 women, 5% = 500 have cancer and 95% = 9,500 do not. Of those 500 women with cancer, 80% = 400 will get a positive test and 20% = 100 will get a negative one. Out of those 9,500 women without cancer, 9% = 855 will get a positive test and 91% = 8,645 will get a negative one. After taking the first test, Jane belongs to the group of 1,255 women out of every 10,000 who have a positive test. Of those 1,255 women, 400 have cancer. Jane's likelihood of having cancer is 400/1,255 = 31.87%. If we take those 1,255 women to a second test, 80% = 320 of the 400 women with cancer will get a positive test and 20% = 80 will get a negative test. Of those same 1,255 women with a first positive test, 9% = 77 of the 855 women without cancer will get a positive test and 91% = 778 will get a negative test. After taking the second test, Jane belongs to the group of 858 women out of every 10,000 with one positive and one negative test. Of those 858 women, 80 have cancer. Now Jane's likelihood of having cancer is 80/858 = 9.32%.

7Scott Garrabrant10y

Are we assuming the two tests are independent? If so, the original cancer rate was 5:95. Multiply that by 80:9 for the likelihood ratio of getting a positive to get 400:855, which is ~30% as you said. Then, you multiply by the likelihood ratio of getting the second negative 20:91, to get 8000:77805, which as a probability is 8000/(8000+77805)~9.3%.

4Unnamed10y

(Assuming that two tests are independent, which is a rather unrealistic assumption in this case) If you know how to calculate the ~30% answer to the first part of the question, then this problem is pretty straightforward to solve. Just use Bayes' rule again, treating the posterior from your first calculation (~30%) as your prior for the next calculation. If Kim came from a population that had a ~30% prior of having cancer and took one test which came out negative, then her probability after that one test would be the same as Jane's probability after both tests.

3Manfred10y

Doing this with probabilities is a bit more complicated than what Coscott did, but to illustrate it anyhow... where A is cancer and and C are the two test results, P(A|BC)=P(A) P(BC|A) / P(BC). P(A) is our prior of 5%. Because B and C are independent, P(BC|A) is just 0.8 * 0.2. P(BC) is where using probabilities is more complicated than using odds, because it's not the probability of false positives, it's the total prior probability of seeing B and then C. Using the product rule, P(BC) = P(B)*P(C|B). Then splitting the possibilities up into cancer and not-cancer, this becomes (P(AB)+P(¬A B))*(P(AC|B)+P(¬A C|B)). Because B and C are independent, the second part becomes (product rule) P(A|B)*P(C|A)+P(¬A|B)*P(C|¬A) - note that even when we added both pieces of evidence at once, we still have to calculate the intermediate probability P(A|B)! Stupid non-time-saving grumble grumble. Anyhow, if you plug in the numbers, it's ~0.094.

2ChristianKl10y

What does "success rate" mean?

2polymathwannabe10y

Accurately detecting a cancer that does exist.

2ChristianKl10y

The accuracy of a test is generally defined as (Σ True positive + Σ True negative/Σ Total population). That something different then the sensitivity of a test. I think it's useful to use the terms used in the statistical literature when talking about something like this instead of making up vague one on your own.

[-]blogospheroid10y10

This just showed up on my google reader.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/electricity-solarstorms-kemp-idINL6N0PZ5D120140725

My immediate thought was about this storm actually hitting in 2012. The mayan apocalypse was predicted on that year. The civilizational challenge to rebuild would have been substantial. But even more, the epistemic state of the civilization that recovered would almost have been permanently compromised. It would appear to most people that an ancient prophecy of a civilization that was brutally crushed was actually true.

What w... (read more)

3ChristianKl10y

The "Mayan apocalypse" isn't an ancient prophecy. From Wikipedia:

2blogospheroid10y

If a storm like the one described in the link had actually hit, then would people really be concerned with these fine differences?

0ChristianKl10y

I don't see how a good time for partying and apocalypse are only distinguished by a fine difference. Anyone who would put a serious thought and effort into reading and understanding ancient prophecies certainly would be concerned about the difference.

0[anonymous]10y

Not only that, the interpretation of the time as an apocalypse or otherwise major change in the world was literally made up by a guy on several hallucinogens simultaneously...

[-]EphemeralNight10y10

There are a lot of games that can be played with a standard deck of playing cards, but it has occurred to me that I've never heard of a skill-based strategy game that minimizes luck-of-the-draw, meant for ordinary playing cards.

So, I tried my hand at inventing such a game.

Unfortunately, I have no practical way to play-test it, so I'm putting it out there for other people to try.

Suggestions on a name for the game are welcome. I have considered and dismissed "Card Chess" as derivative and inaccurate.

2Qwake10y

While Bridge still relies somewhat on luck it is my opinion mainly skill-based.

[-]VAuroch10y10

If the Born probabilities were ultimately based on the relative Kolmogorov complexities of the possible outcomes, what would that look like? Would we see it break down from the pure randomness we normally see at the macro scale?

This occurred to me, and while it's outlandish and unlikely I'd like to figure out why it's wrong, rather than just dismiss it.

0MrMind10y

The first thing that popped into my mind: equal complexity branches would have equal probability. We know that's totally not how it works: take quantum bits, for example. You can have arbitrary superpositions of both states, and it's very hard to argue that one suddenly acquires a higher complexity than the other.

0VAuroch10y

I haven't fully thought this through, but there is probably some way to include the state transition itself in a way that makes that work. I don't think I know enough physics to figure out whether the concept's generally salvageable.

[-]noxSL10y10

Regarding Kurzweil's claim of the added neocortex mass in humans resulting in a qualitative leap of human abilities, and also that there are levels of abstraction in the neurons. It seems strange to me because 1) humans have had the same brain for tens of thousands of years, yet the brain was completely reliant on per chance technological discoveries. Additional neurons enable addition complexity in signaling, but the signaling comes from the environment, and so it seems to me humans may have just gotten lucky with their environment, especially with things... (read more)

[-]NancyLebovitz10y10

Fear of happiness

Some major cultures and some individuals mistrust happiness (see article for reasons)-- if happiness is not a major value, how does this affect ethics/utilitarianism?

7Viliam_Bur10y

This seems to me like learned helplessness, which is probably a "farmer" adaptation. In my opinion, hapiness is always good for the individual, but sometimes my unhappiness may benefit the rest of the tribe, so there can be a cultural norm against happiness. And if other people punish you for happiness, you will learn that happiness is actually bad for you, and rationalize some wise reasons for it, or the culture will already provide you with ready rationalizations. How is individual happiness bad for society? While people are enjoying sex at their homes, churches and supermarkets are empty.

3NancyLebovitz10y

It's not just that-- I go with Wilhelm Reich in the idea that getting people to give up harmless pleasures is a way of getting more extensive control of them. Getting people to wear uncomfortable clothes or give up sleep for no good reason is also a way of getting them to overwork or get themselves killed for your purposes.

0Viliam_Bur10y

Making people give up sleep is a traditional method of reducing their intelligence, so they are less likely to see through the bullshit or design an escape plan. Every decent cult does this to their new members. But reducing their attention by uncomfortable clothes -- that's subtle! Either way, seems to me this is not about pleasure per se, but rather about reducing mental abilities using unpleasant means. There are also pleasant things that reduce mental abilities, such as singing or praying together, though. It would be interesting to have data about how this correlates with the "ban on happiness" -- whether cultures opposed to happiness consistently oppose both "anti-system" and "pro-system" happiness, or whether the ban on "anti-social" happiness is used as a motivation to engage more in the "pro-system" happiness.

0ShardPhoenix10y

If your first paragraph was true, wouldn't people continue to feel happy but just not show it? I feel like unhappiness must be adaptive (even without considering social effects) at least in some cases.

2NancyLebovitz10y

That gets into Hansen's theories about hypocrisy-- sometimes it's easier to believe the mask one is wearing is one's real self. And this overlaps what Vassar has said (as I understand him) about some people trusting what society says about what a person ought to be, rather than taking the light and flexible approach to language that the majority of people do. (Translation: being a geek can be being a sucker.)

2Viliam_Bur10y

I think that secret happiness is a real thing. Some people take pleasure in complaining, enjoy being passively aggressive about something, etc., but of course they would publicly deny it. On the other hand, I agree that in some situations, unhappiness may be adaptive. Evolution does not care about our values.

2NancyLebovitz10y

There are other categories of secret happiness-- enjoying low status or otherwise deprecated pleasures and schadenfreude about high status people. Either of those could have social support, but sometimes they don't.

0wedrifid10y

We could also say that the rewarded by it. Like most addictions enjoyment doesn't tend to be a part of it (after enough time).

3Toggle10y

Arguably, many consequentialists already fall in to this category. If you are unsettled by the image of a universe composed entirely of undifferentiated orgasmium, then it's a fair bet that happiness is not your (only) terminal value. To return to a common sentiment, "I don't want to maximize my happiness, I want to maximize my awesomeness." That said, happiness is usually of some value to students of ethics. A system in which it had zero value could conceivably still be pretty happy for instrumental reasons, since happiness makes humans more efficient in the pursuit of most things that we can expect to be valued. Once you start creating non-human entities from the ground up, you would expect happiness to become rare, although not necessarily to be replaced with misery. (The paperclipper is such a force.)

0ChristianKl10y

Happiness can mean quite a lot of different things to different people. Even in the a single culture like the US the average 25 year old means something different with the term than the average 50 year old. The article makes it even more worse by conflating joy and happiness. Furthermore translation of words over cultural boundaries is going to add additional challenges.

0Aleksander10y

The article makes it even more worse by conflating joy and happiness. Many articles that talk about happiness do that, including the often cited paper about how supposedly the connection between income and happiness breaks down at a certain level.

0ChristianKl10y

Yes, and as far as that argument goes I think the case ifs good that the connection between some forms of happiness breaks down while it doesn't for other forms.

0Metus10y

That people do not value as the sole terminal goal is obvious by the high number of people unwilling to wirebrain themselves, that is to place their brain into a mechanical and chemical device that provides with the maximum pleasure biochemistry allows. As members of this site like to forget: Homo Sapiens is not a rational species but a product of evolution and thus only a program that runs its course.

-8blacktrance10y

[-]Metus10y10

What upcoming MOOCs will you be attending? I ask to get some inspiration and some opinions as the selection can be quite overwhelming.

3[anonymous]10y

The ones I will probably take next are: Game Theory - good course according to reviews Introduction to Logic - I have done a similar course on this but need more practice in this area. and Exploring Neural Data - no idea what this one is like, but seems interesting. You get to play with some data in Python

1zedzed10y

Introduction to Linux. I've been using Linux as my daily driver for almost two years now, but I often feel that I'm not leveraging every tool it comes with, and Linux comes with some really awesome tools.

1[anonymous]10y

Good idea - it is also worth having a scan of the complete list of commands every few years. I did this after a "friend" spent half a day writing a C program to do something that was already an inbuild command - live and learn!

[-][anonymous]10y00

Quick question on karma: why is my score for the past 30 days greater than my total score?

3Viliam_Bur10y

My guess is that the over 200 points you have received recently for writing the article have not yet been added to the "total karma" and an older cached value is displayed instead. If I am correct, then this problem should fix itself in a few days. (My first suspicion was "someone was mass-downvoting your old comments", but the numbers don't allow this interpretation. At this moment, your total karma is 101, 92% positive, which means you lost at most a dozen points by downvoting, which couldn't explain a drop from 245 to 101.)

5[anonymous]10y

I figured out what was going on after making the first comment. I waited a bit to see if it was true. I originally posted my article in Discussion. Before getting moved, it acquired 16 points. Now (at the time of this comment) there are 28 points. So it got 12 points after being moved to Main. I have two comments; the totals are at 19 points. The “regular” points I got are [19 from comments] + [16 from Discussion] = 35. The points from Main are 12 * 10 = 120. Adding these up, the total is [35 regular points] + [120 points from Main] = 155. The Total Karma is indeed 155, whereas the Karma for the last 30 days is 299. This comes from a simple [19 from comments] + [28 * 10 from the post] = 299. So it seems that the Total Karma and the Karma for the last 30 days are handling the case of a moved post differently from one another. Is there a moderator or someone with experience who can confirm or disconfirm?

[-][anonymous]10y00

I have a friend who currently works on toxicology as a grad-student and secretly wants to fight ageing. Are there labs in North America who do that kind of research? Or Europe?

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

0polymathwannabe10y

See "Organizations" in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Life_extension

0[anonymous]10y

Thanks. Upon further investigation, he actually has several labs in mind to apply to.

[-]Aoi10y00

I have a website I plan to launch soon, and I'd like to get some early feedback before I start spreading it around. It's basically a collection of my favorite stuff from around the web.

It's currently accessible from http://chuuni.org. I'm taking suggestions for a better name/domain.

I also want to build a community around it, sort of like how LW is a community built around the Sequences. If anyone can help me with the software side, it would be appreciated.

[-]Viliam_Bur10y180

I like the site. Although I suspect that the goal of the site (saving precious time by not consuming anything but the best) is contradictory to building a community around it.

Look at all the "social networks", they are procrastination maximizers. Rationally people want to save time, but emotionally your heart is where you spend a lot of time. So if someone is saving your time, you will thank them, and then you'll forget them. If someone takes all your free time in a way that is not completely repulsive, they will become your tribe.

Something similar is visible on LW. On one hand, we are complaining that LW is just another shiny toy for procrastination. On the other hand, if there is a week without too many articles (the best time to stop procrastinating and actually do something), we complain that LW is dying because of too much censorship or negativity or whatever. Maybe the best thing for most LWers would be if Eliezer would simply turn off the whole website for a month, and only display a text "stop procrastinating, go out and win; the website will be back on September 1st when all of you are expected to report your progress in a special Thread". But would they hate it? Absolutely. Also, they would simply spend the whole August watching kitten videos on YouTube and refreshing HP:MoR homepage.

The only way to build an online community is to create a site where people can procrastinate.

[-]A1987dM10y100

Maybe the best thing for most LWers would be if Eliezer would simply turn off the whole website for a month, and only display a text "stop procrastinating, go out and win; the website will be back on September 1st when all of you are expected to report your progress in a special Thread". But would they hate it?

I would love that. Eliezer, please do this.

But yeah, I would spend the whole August reading old Unqualified Reservations comment threads or something like that (I don't fancy kitten videos).

2Aoi10y

I understand what you're saying, but there are several reasons why I still think a community would be a good thing. The first is that it will help with my job of selecting content. Currently the process involve myself spending way too much time on sites like Hacker News and Reddit, and having a discussion board where people can post content specifically for the inclusion on the main site would help immensely. Secondly, one of the defining features of the community (hopefully) will be a high signal/noise ratio. The tentative name for it is "Silence" to emphasize that. The main site already features several essays that should help with having the right mentality when participating to keep S/N high. The plan is to have the link to the community portion of the site buried in the Communication section, so that people will already have read a good amount of stuff before finding it, and also explicitly telling them to read that whole page before participating. You said yourself that if LessWrong went offline you would end up procrastinating somewhere else. I think this is true to the extent that there are other things you can do, that you would also be able to justify to yourself the time spent doing. You would never spend as much time watching cat videos as you do reading LessWrong. The problem with sites like LW is that they often give you the illusion that you're getting your time's worth even when you're not. There are many of them, so you'd have to black out all websites like that at the same time, but it would probably be fine to keep the cat sites up. What I'm trying to say is that, given that there are already several websites with the set of characteristics that are needed to make you procrastinate, having one more or one less won't make a difference. So no, I'm not too worried about that. Furthermore, my site features a lot of content that contain that same sentiment of yours. For example the Noise section under Journalism or Confessions of a recovering lifeh

1Viliam_Bur10y

I completely agree with this. For example, before I was spending my time reading LW, I was spending my time reading something else. So while it is true that I use LW mostly to procrastinate, it does not mean that LW made my time use somehow less efficient. (Depending on whether my translation of Sequences can be considered a useful work, LW probably made me a bit more efficient. However, I would prefer to see some increased efficiency also in LW-unrelated stuff.) If I'm going to spend my time reading the web instead of doing something else, I can at least read higher-quality stuff. As a discussion board, I would probably recommend using PHPBB. It is easy to install, and it has a lot of configuration options: using an admin menu you can create new subforums in seconds, make them read-only, or only for members, etc. (It does not have the voting mechanism like Reddit / LessWrong. However, with Reddit / LessWrong software even trivial changes are extremely costly.) Just try PHPBB, and in worst case, you will later delete it and try something else.

0Aoi10y

For flat discussion I've been looking at Discourse. The problem is that most of these software are a pain to get running. Originally I wanted to do everything myself and learn everything in the process, but it has been terribly unproductive and it took way too long to get where I am. That's why I'm asking for some technical assistance.

2ShardPhoenix10y

This comes across as off-puttingly pretentious to me. How are you going to prove that people should care what you recommend? Also, I find the combination of a tiny default font and off-black text to be hard to read.

0Aoi10y

I think this is inevitable. If I want people to read something, I have to tell them that it is good. They can check for themselves if they like what they find and want to keep reading. Was it so off-putting that it made you avoid the site? If yes, then what do you suggest? The site is designed to grab people's interest. If I start acting all humble, I think it would be worse at doing that. Note that while I'm posting here first, the site is not specifically aimed at your average LWer. I want to capture a broader audience (and possibly make them LWers). 14px is a pretty standard size I believe (LW uses 13), and the contrast is good. I know there are people who would prefer if bigger fonts were used, but there are also those of us that dislike them. Given that, I went for an average size. I'll experiment with larger sizes, but I'm not promising anything.

1ShardPhoenix10y

You need to give me a reason to trust you even for that one thing, or I will just go elsewhere. For example, when I was getting into anime I used Gwern's MAL for suggestions (among other sources) because his posting here and on gwern.net convinced me that he was intelligent and reasonably similar to myself. And that worked out well. But for some random guy, I'm not going to place much weight on what he thinks until I have a reason to. Well one thing that put me off a bit is that the Gwern essay you excerpted is actually one of his that I don't agree with - but that presumably wont' affect the average reader. Also all the "Linux is the most important thing ever " stuff comes across as very, for lack of a better term, neck-beardy. Which is an issue if you're going for a broad audience. Like, just having "Linux: Why it's so important" as a top-level heading alongside stuff like "Books" is a really terrible signal to send unless you only want to appeal to people who really like Richard Stallman. I have to Ctrl-+ several times on LW to make it comfortable for me.

0Aoi10y

I'm afraid I don't have anything to show in that regard (also, I want to remain anonymous), and I'm not gonna wait until this changes to publish the site (Actually, I'm not comfortable publishing the site in its current state, but I figured I should follow my own advice). I hope to get some endorsements from other people at some point, which should help a little. I doubt this will be an issue though. I mean, if the content itself is really good, it will attract an audience. I think a lot of people won't agree with the conclusion, but they don't have to as long as they think along the lines of "Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. I should be more picky with my content consumption. Now where do I start?" Good point, though the problem is that it is that important. What I'm going to do is separate it a little, along with harmful, from the other three. And maybe add a short paragraph about the importance of technology in modern society.

1[anonymous]10y

It looks interesting, I saved it to my evernote for future reading. Good luck with that project.

0[anonymous]10y

I've read a few articles on your site, and I figured it might be interesting to you: Privacy is Dead (YouTube)

0TylerJay10y

I like the quote on the main page, but it might be worth adding your explanation from the top of the LIbrary page to better explain what the site is about. For example, LW has its slogan/description on the main page that clearly explains what its purpose is. Also, if you intend to try to create a community around it, it might be a better idea to shift away from the first person personal in your writing.

0Aoi10y

Yeah, I'll see if I write something there. The problem is that I hate writing, so I tend to put quotes everywhere instead. I will. The portions I've written more recently already make use of the editorial We. I'll fix the rest as I find them.

0Emily10y

I saw a potentially off-putting typo on the books page. "Pick" -> "Pique".

0Aoi10y

Fixed. Thanks.

[-]advancedatheist10y-20

Why do transhumanists keep setting arbitrary (and frankly nonsensical) "immortality" dates in this century, like 2045?

One, these dates fall within the life expectancies of people alive in 2014. Plenty of people alive now could survive another 30 years and a few months any way, just through natural maturation and aging; they won't mysteriously "become immortal" by making it to January 1, 2045.

Two, you can't tell if a longevity breakthrough has occurred any faster than the rate at which humans happen to live. You would need institutions ... (read more)

8ChristianKl10y

If you look at the number 2045 you will find that it comes from a roadmap of a Russian billionaire. Making roadmaps can be useful because the can guide action. Especially if a billionaire wants to use his funds in a way that keeps him alive. That's false. The number 2045 comes from a plan to be able to upload humans completely by that point and not be subject to biological concerns anymore. If we don't get things right in this century we won't live in the next. We do have to focus on this century if we want to experience the next. It doesn't make much sense to ask why questions in cases like this without seeing the context in which people make their statements.

7gjm10y

Well, near the start it refers to "an exponential growth of 3 per cent per year, or multiplying by about 10 every 100 years" when in fact 1.03^100 is about 19. At which point I have little confidence that that's the mathematical error; it suggests a level of sloppiness likely to produce others.

4A1987dM10y

Clearly the 3% and 10 figures are given to within one significant digit each. 1.026^100 = 13.02

3NancyLebovitz10y

That's not likely to be true. If people are aging a lot more slowly, you should be able to see the effects in ten years, maybe less. It's hard for me to imagine a method which would lead to much better markers for aging that left people with the same lifespans.

3DanielLC10y

I'd say it's that people like numbers. As a result, a lot of people pull out arbitrary numbers of much higher precision than is reasonable. I don't think there's much point in focusing on that stuff other than entertainment. I guess people think it's more fun to think about how things will improve in a century or so than to try to work out what completely alien world will exist in the distant future. If you do think it will be useful, then you know more about the near future, so you can think about it more productively, you have more time to think about the distant future and you can procrastinate, and thinking about the near future will pay off sooner, so it will better compete with investing.

2gwern10y

What do you think of the recent aging clock work by Horvath?

0Sabiola10y

That is why. On January 1, 2045, I'll be 90 years old, if I make it that far. So if a cure for mortality has been invented and made widely available by then, I could just get to use it. If it's invented in 2060, who cares? I'll be dead.

4JoshuaZ10y

Relevant SMBC.

-3[anonymous]10y

Heheh, exactly.

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