I imagine that different political parties have different views on what the government should do about existential risk
Actually, no, I don't think it is true. I suspect that at the moment the views of all political parties on existential risk are somewhere between "WTF is that?" and "Can I use it to influence my voters?"
That may (or may not) eventually change, but at the moment the answer is a clear "No".
Some parties may be more likely to accelerate scientific progress than others, and those who do could decrease existential risk by decreasing the time spent in high-risk states, for example the period when there are dangerous nano-technological weapons but other astronomical objects have not be colonized. This probably is not enough to justify voting, but I thought I would just let you know.
Thinking of the prisoners-dilemma-with-access-to-sourcecode, an obvious strategy would be to allocate negentropy to agents that would employ the same strategy in proportion to the probability that they would have ended up in the position to allocate the universe's negentropy.
Presumably "employ the same strategy" should be interpreted loosely, as it seems problematic to give no consideration to agents who would use a slightly different allocation strategy.
Thanks for the idea. I will look into it.
What literature is available on who will be given moral consideration in a superintelligence's coherent extrapolated volition (CEV) and how much weight each agent will be given?
Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence mentions that it is an open problem as to whether AIs, non-human animals, currently deceased people, etc should be given moral consideration, and whether the values of those who aid in creating the superintelligence should be given more weight than that of others. However, Bostrom does not actually answer these questions, other than slightly advocating everyone being given equal weight in the CEV. The abstracts of other papers on CEV don't mention this topic, so I am doubtful on the usefulness of reading their entireties.
(This is a repost.)
Is it okay to re-ask questions on open threads if they were not answered the last time the were ask on it? I had asked this question but received no answer, and I am concerened it would be spammy to re-ask.
I sent the Crasche folks an email asking for data documenting the performance of their product. I received the following results as part of a brochure:
LACROSSE CROSS-IMPACT TEST RESULTS (these appear to be stick-to-head):
Sample # Impact Location Cross Velocity (MPH) Severity Index Peak G
Bare Headform Side 38.19 1051 188
Size Small Side 39.94 68 49
Size Large Side 38.64 8 24
LACROSSE BALL IMPACT TEST RESULTS (these appear to be ball-to-head):
Sample # Impact Location Ball Velocity (MPH) Severity Index Peak G
Crosse BXX 1 68.34 278 179
Crosse BXX 2 69.3 208 146
Crosse BXX 3 70.75 294 186
The following sentence was also included in the reply: "Note - these tests are for impact coming onto the head. In a drop test, which simulates a head on collision, a 9 mph event showed an impact reduction of about 25 %."
For reference, I remember reading somewhere that football helmets tend to increase impact duration from about 3 ms to about 8 ms. Assuming uniform force distribution over the duration of the impact, this amounts to ~60% reduction in peak acceleration (over whatever force domain that acceleration is correct for.) Crasche seems to guard effectively against forces similar to that of a lacrosse stick being swung at the head. Unfortunately, the results of the second test don't really tell much about the usefulness of the hat, as the Crasche folks seemed to be satisfied with concluding that it's effective based on seeing a Severity Index (I assume this is based on the head injury criterion?) <300 when taking a lacrosse ball to the head, despite the huge accelerations.
Regarding the drop test - 9 mph gives around 137-82g of acceleration against a hard surface, assuming impact duration of 3-5ms. So we're looking at 6700-4000N (human head weighs around 5kg). In this domain, we can compare the 25% advertised reduction against the ~60% ballparked estimate for force reduction due to a football helmet.
In summary, the performance appears to be inferior (in terms of pure linear acceleration reduction) to a sports helmet, as one would expect. The hat appears to be more effective against object-to-head impacts (involving smaller forces) relative to impacts that result in the head being brought to a halt from motion (involving larger forces) - perhaps the crushable elements providing the resistance are crushed by the larger forces? My gut says that the performance in a vehicle collision will probably bring the head to a halt against a relatively immobile object, so the hat won't do much of anything as the crushable bits are crushed too fast to be effective.
My gut says that the performance in a vehicle collision will probably bring the head to a halt against a relatively immobile object, so the hat won't do much of anything as the crushable bits are crushed too fast to be effective.
I don't see how the latter clause follows from the former. You said that in the drop test, the impact reduction was roughly 25%. This isn't huge, but I can't say it "won't do much of anything." Were you thinking of something else to support your claim?
What literature is available on who will be given moral consideration in a superintelligence's coherent extrapolated volition (CEV), and how much weight each agent will be given?
Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence mentions that it is an open problem as to whether AIs, non-human animals, currently deceased people, etc should be given moral consideration, and whether the values of those who aid in creating the superintelligence should be given more weight than that of others. However, Bostrom does not actually answer these questions, other than slightly advocating everyone being given equal weight in the CEV. The abstracts of other papers on CEV don't mention this topic, so I am doubtful on the usefulness of reading their entireties.
What are you trying to do?
There are a lot of gotchas w/ causality. Lots of wikipedia info is wrong, etc.
If your thought process is "I want to learn about causes of things, but this seems like an awful lot of math..." consider that you may need to internalize some (not all!) of this math before you can talk about causes properly at all. It's like physics. Physics is handy, but there's some math. It's probably a good idea to learn a bit of physics if you are interested in the physical world, even if you aren't interested in doing original physics research.
I can generally point you in the right direction, but this will take some work from you, also.
Don't worry, I don't mind math. Alas, I mainly have difficulty understanding why people act how they do, so I doubt mathematics will help much with that. I think I'm going to take the suggestion someone gave of reading more textbooks. A psychology course should also help.
I sent the Crasche folks an email asking for data documenting the performance of their product. I received the following results as part of a brochure:
LACROSSE CROSS-IMPACT TEST RESULTS (these appear to be stick-to-head):
Sample # Impact Location Cross Velocity (MPH) Severity Index Peak G
Bare Headform Side 38.19 1051 188
Size Small Side 39.94 68 49
Size Large Side 38.64 8 24
LACROSSE BALL IMPACT TEST RESULTS (these appear to be ball-to-head):
Sample # Impact Location Ball Velocity (MPH) Severity Index Peak G
Crosse BXX 1 68.34 278 179
Crosse BXX 2 69.3 208 146
Crosse BXX 3 70.75 294 186
The following sentence was also included in the reply: "Note - these tests are for impact coming onto the head. In a drop test, which simulates a head on collision, a 9 mph event showed an impact reduction of about 25 %."
For reference, I remember reading somewhere that football helmets tend to increase impact duration from about 3 ms to about 8 ms. Assuming uniform force distribution over the duration of the impact, this amounts to ~60% reduction in peak acceleration (over whatever force domain that acceleration is correct for.) Crasche seems to guard effectively against forces similar to that of a lacrosse stick being swung at the head. Unfortunately, the results of the second test don't really tell much about the usefulness of the hat, as the Crasche folks seemed to be satisfied with concluding that it's effective based on seeing a Severity Index (I assume this is based on the head injury criterion?) <300 when taking a lacrosse ball to the head, despite the huge accelerations.
Regarding the drop test - 9 mph gives around 137-82g of acceleration against a hard surface, assuming impact duration of 3-5ms. So we're looking at 6700-4000N (human head weighs around 5kg). In this domain, we can compare the 25% advertised reduction against the ~60% ballparked estimate for force reduction due to a football helmet.
In summary, the performance appears to be inferior (in terms of pure linear acceleration reduction) to a sports helmet, as one would expect. The hat appears to be more effective against object-to-head impacts (involving smaller forces) relative to impacts that result in the head being brought to a halt from motion (involving larger forces) - perhaps the crushable elements providing the resistance are crushed by the larger forces? My gut says that the performance in a vehicle collision will probably bring the head to a halt against a relatively immobile object, so the hat won't do much of anything as the crushable bits are crushed too fast to be effective.
Severity Index (I assume this is based on the head injury criterion?)
Actually, in an email they said the head of NOCSAE did the test, so presumably the NOCSAE Severity Index was used. An NOCSAE article says, "There is no measurable difference in safety of helmets with scores below the 1200 SI threshold." So in other words, in the test the hats did not protect against any significant damage, because no significant damage was done even without the hat. Despite this, the webpage said said that, "The Crasche hat reduces the severity of blunt force impact by 94%." I count this deceptive marketing as a strike against the product.
That said, given the low cost of purchasing and wearing the hat, it seems worthwhile for a transhumanist to purchase, simply due the vast gains to be had from a slight reduction in risk of death.
Read about causal inference.
I don't see how this would really help unless I am trying to do original research.
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
The online services Betterment and WealthFront explicitly state they hold the efficient markets hypothesis is true and invest exclusively in broad-market index funds. I consider their approach to be an alternative to using Vanguard, which is to say, they offer an excellent service and many people would be well to use them, but I believe more optimal investing is possible. In my opinion it is not really possible to scale a market-inefficiency-exploiting strategy to the level that Betterment and WealthFront are after.
What exactly do you suggest using to invest, then?