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Gondolinian comments on Harper's Magazine article on LW/MIRI/CFAR and Ethereum - Less Wrong Discussion

44 Post author: gwern 12 December 2014 08:34PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 13 December 2014 12:18:09AM *  3 points [-]

But how can you take issue with our insistence [Edit: more like strong encouragement!] that people use hand sanitizer at a 4-day retreat with 40 people sharing food and close quarters?

So, I have noticed that I am overhygienic relative to the general population (when it comes to health; not necessarily when it comes to appearance), and I think that's standard for LWers. I think this is related to taking numbers and risk seriously; to use dubious leftovers as an example, my father's approach to food poisoning is "eh, you can eat that, it's probably okay" and my approach to food poisoning is "that's only 99.999% likely to be okay, no way is eating that worth 10 micromorts!"

Comment author: Gondolinian 13 December 2014 01:33:12AM *  5 points [-]

micromorts

Nitpick: Isn't food poisoning non-fatal a vast majority of the time? Or were you using a broad definition of "okay?"

Comment author: Vaniver 13 December 2014 01:48:41AM 3 points [-]

Isn't food poisoning non-fatal a vast majority of the time? Or were you using a broad definition of "okay?"

Yeah; obviously missing a day or two to just getting ill is a significant cost worth avoiding, but if you expect to live a long while the chance of death typically ends up being more important in terms of total cost (because it's worse than it is rarer, I believe).

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