Where can one find information on the underlying causes of phenomena? I have noticed that most educational resources discuss superficial occurrences and trends but not their underlying causes. For example, this Wikipedia article discusses the happenings in the Somali Civil War but hardly discusses the underlying motivations of each side and why the war turned out how it did. Of course, such discussions are often opinionated and have no clear-cut answers, perhaps making Wikipedia a sub-optimal place for them.

I know LW might not be the best place to ask this, but my intuition suggests that LWers may care more about this deeper-level understanding, so may be able to suggest resources.

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.

Perhaps the endowment effect evolved because placing high value on an object you own signals to others that the object is valuable, which signals that you are wealthy, which can increase social status, which can increase mating prospects. I have not seen this idea mentioned previously, but I only skimmed parts of the literature.

Is there anything that can't somehow be spun into increasing existential risk? The biggest existential risk is being alive at all in the first place.

Where exactly is the logical prior being used in the decision procedure? It doesn't seem like it would be used for calculating U, as U was implied to be computable. I don't see why it would be needed for p, as p could be computed from the complexity of the program, perhaps via kolmogorov complexity. Also, what is the purpose of us? Can't the procedure just set us to be whatever U outputs?

I don't have much social confidence, but social confidence need not be related to credence calibration. I still end up giving somewhat overconfident answers on CFAR's credence calibration game, despite being shy. My above comment could have been clearer: the bit about "my perception of the quality of certain things that I have written" has more to do with my self-worth, and less to do with my ability to judge the quality of my own writing.

Thanks; this comment made me happy. Part of the answer is that I generally have low self-esteem, which negatively affects my perception of the quality of certain things that I have written. Another part of the answer was that I wrote this with the very specific goal of estimating values of the "years of life added vs. age at castration" curve at different points in mind, which seems much more narrow than the goal of doing basic science work, which is most of what journals publish.

Additionally, many journals have publication fees, which I would have to pay out of pocket. Others charge readers access fees; I'd rather people be able to access my work freely. As things currently stand, I might still be able to mention this work during interviews as an example of a time when I noticed others didn't seem to be working on a certain problem and took action myself, if the interviewer didn't seem to be prejudiced against transhumanist or LGBT folks.

many journals have publication fees, which I would have to pay out of pocket. Others charge readers access fees

A short summary of what is wrong with science, as done today. :(

Possible solution: Create an "amateur science foundation" which would review articles for free, and if they are good, would publish them in open-access journals. (To prevent flooding by crackpots, if a person submits an obviously stupid article, they get a warning, and after three warnings they are blacklisted.)

Good job. Why hasn't this been published in a journal?

One of the stronger factors influencing the frequency of wars is the ratio of young men to older men. Life extension would change that ratio to imply fewer wars. See http://earthops.org/immigration/Mesquida_Wiener99.pdf.

Stable regimes seem to have less need for oppression than unstable ones. So while I see some risk that mild oppression will be more common with life extension, I find it hard to see how that would increase existential risks.