Contrarian LW views and their economic implications
LW readers have unusual views on many subjects. Efficient Market Hypothesis notwithstanding, many of these are probably alien to most people in finance. So it's plausible they might have implications that are not yet fully integrated into current asset prices. And if you rightfully believe something that most people do not believe, you should be able to make money off that.
Here's an example for a different group. Feminists believe that women are paid less than men for no good economic reason. If this is the case, feminists should invest in companies that hire many women, and short those which hire few women, to take advantage of the cheaper labour costs. And I can think of examples for groups like Socialists, Neoreactionaries, etc. - cases where their positive beliefs have strong implications for economic predictions. But I struggle to think of such ones for LessWrong, which is why I am asking you. Can you think of any unusual LW-type beliefs that have strong economic implications (say over the next 1-3 years)?
Wei Dai has previously commented on a similar phenomena, but I'm interested in a wider class of phenomena.
edit: formatting
Confirmation Bias Presentation
On Monday I need to give a presentation to a group of 6-15 finance professionals on Confirmation Bias. I intend to use the 2-4-6 task to demonstrate it.
Do people have any advise on how to make this work well? Do people tend to fall for it? Does it help them understand afterwards?
(In ages gone by I would have made this post longer, or in the Open Thread, or not at all. But I gather LW has been seeing a drop-off in volume, so I decided I'd lower the bar I set myself)
Meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
Come one, come all! Yes, that's right, the third Princeton LW meetup is here, a mere month or two after it was promised. That's four years less procrastination than I did on cryonics!
Here's the plan:
1) Chatting and socialising 2) Discussion of Reason as Memetic Immune Disorder. You don't have to have read the article to attend the meetup though! 3) Some sort of fun rationality game! We did paranoid debating last time, but am open to other games this time.
As ever, everyone is welcome.
Discussion article for the meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
Meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
We're going to have the second ever Princeton NJ meetup! Even better than the first! Feel free to come whether or not you came to the first.
A bunch of people game me their emails after the first one, but we made the mistake of going handwritten, so I suspect many people never got my email. In any case, there is to be a second meetup!
Planned events:
- Paranoid debating. If you'd like, feel free to pick a numerical quantity for the rest of us to try and estimate.
- Discussion of this arbitrarily chosen high-scoring post that I like.
- Misc. delights.
- Planning for future meetups, including a proper email list.
As such, we hereby precommit to being at Small World Coffee on Witherspoon from 1pm to 3pm. I realize that people suggested better venues last time but I forgot, and the first duty of dictators is to do something when anything is better than nothing.
By the sign of the paperclip so shall ye know us.
Discussion article for the meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
Meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
My girlfriend and I have just moved to Princeton, and would like to meet any LessWrong readers who go to the university or live in the area. I used to co-run the Oxford meetups a long time ago, and it'd be good to do something similar again. All welcome! We don't have any particular topics in mind, but we're A) willing to discuss anything LW-ey, as well as just socialise, and B) capable of coming up with conversation topics, so don't feel you have to have anything clever to say to be welcome! As such, we hereby precommit to being at Small World Coffe* from 1pm to 3pm. By the sign of the paperclip so shall ye know us. If you prefer a different time/place, please let me know, either by PM or in the comments. *unless people recommend a better option before October 31st. At that point the time and date are fixed.
Discussion article for the meetup : Princeton NJ Meetup
Giving What We Can September Internship
Summary: advert for students to do charity cost-effectiveness research at Giving What We Can.
Do you want to join the fight against global poverty and gain experience of research or communications at one of the world's handful of organisations dedicated to improving the world as efficiently as possible? Giving What We Can is running a summer internship programme for students interested in promoting effective charitable giving. On the two-week programme (16th-27th September 2013) interns will gain training and experience in the area of their choice; either Cost-Effectiveness Research, Communications or Operations.
The date is cunningly placed sufficiently late in the year that students can do an internship with another company and then come to us afterwards; this is what I did last year.
The intership will take place in Oxford, UK. Housing and living expenses will be provided.
To apply
Please send us an email at internship@givingwhatwecan.org with your CV. The deadline for applications is 12:00 GMT on the 20th March 2013.
Roles availableResearch into charity cost-effectiveness
Giving What We Can conducts research to help people find the most cost effective charities to donate to, lead by our director of research, Overcoming Bias co-blogger Robert Wiblin. You can get a sense of the research here and see a full list of current projects here. Some sample areas of interest are:
Evaluations of how effective particular charities or programmes are.
Comparing efforts to reduce climate change to other ways of assisting the world’s poor.
Biomedical research which could offer vaccines or cures for neglected diseases.
Political Advocacy - how worthwhile is it to lobby for better government aid?
Requirements: A quantitative background is strongly preferred, especially in statistics, mathematics and economics.
Communications: Media content creation
Creating infographics, videos and other materials to communicate our message about the power of giving and research on effective charity.
Requirements: experience with appropriate software, such as vector graphics or video editing packages.
Communications: Outreach
Research and reach out to relevant groups, from organisations we could work with to websites and online communities where we could build a reputation and broaden our member base. This will require both research into the most appropriate and receptive places to contact, and establishing a rapport with them before suggesting that a partnership of sorts be made.
Communications: Online outreach
Work with our social media manager to plan and implement social media strategies, and research the most effective way to convey Giving What We Can’s message to other online communities.
Requirements: a good understanding of social media strategy and the dynamic of online communities.
Operations: Legal/financial research
We have many projects in this area, but an example of a major one is reporting on how our activities fit with formally recognised charitable purposes. This will involve working towards the reports we have to file with the Charities Commission. Other projects include registering us as a charity overseas.
Requirements: Having studied law is helpful, but not required.
[minor] Separate Upvotes and Downvotes Implimented
It seems that if you look at the column on the right of the page, you can see upvotes and downvotes separately for recent posts. The same [n, m] format is displayed for recent comments, but it doesn't seem to actually sync with the score displaying on the comment. This feature only seems available on the sidebar: looking at the actual comment or post doesn't give you this information.
Thanks, whoever did this!
[Link]: 80,000 hours blog
Some of you probably aren't aware yet of the rather excellent High Impact Careers / 80,000 hours blog.
It covers topics about how to have the biggest impact with your career, including
- how likely you are to become Prime Minister
- Decision Making under Moral Uncertainty
- Temporal Concerns
- Health vs Education
- Existential Risks
- Startups in the US vs UK
- ... and many more
The contributors include Carl Shuman, Will Crouch, Ben Todd and Katja Grace, with an impressively regular updating schedule at the moment.
The reasoning is obvious in retrospect, but is useful to have written down, especially with the research that's gone into the posts. - much like the Sequences in that regard.
Counterfactual Coalitions
Politics is the mind-killer; our opinions are largely formed on the basis of which tribes we want to affiliate with. What's more, when we first joined a tribe, we probably didn't properly vet the effects it would have on our cognition.
One illustration of this is the apparently contingent nature of actual political coalitions, and the prima facie plausibility of others. For example,
- In the real world, animal rights activists tend to be pro-choice.
- But animal rights & fetus rights seems just as plausible coalition - an expanding sphere of moral worth.
This suggests a de-biasing technique; inventing plausible alternative coalitions of ideas. When considering the counterfactual political argument, each side will have some red positions and some green positions, so hopefully your brain will be forced to evaluate it in a more rational manner.
Obviously, political issues are not all orthogonal; there is mutual information, and you don't want to ignore it. The idea isn't to decide your belief on every issue independently. If taxes on beer, cider and wine are a good idea, taxes on spirits are probably a good idea too. However, I think this is reflected in the "plausible coalitions" game; the most plausible reason I could think of for the political divide to fall between these is lobbying on behalf of distilleries, suggesting that these form a natural cluster in policy-space.
In case the idea can be more clearly grokked by examples, I'll post some in the comments.
Best Intro to LW article for transhumanists
Summary: if you could show a page of LW to a random student who was interested in science, but couldn't otherwise communicate with them, which page would you choose?
The Oxford University Transhumanist Society is a student society who arrange speakers on transhumanist topics - ranging from cognitive enhancement to AI to longevity to high-impact careers to Xrisk to brain-machine interfaces. The audience is a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students, mostly scientists, who are interested in the future of science and technology, but by no means self-describe as transhumanists.
This week we're finally getting organised and producing membership cards. We intend to put a URL in a QR code on them, because people expect cool techy stuff from the Transhumanist society. It'd be nice if the link was something slightly more imaginative than just H+ or the facebook page. Naturally, I thought it should point to LW; but where specifically? The About page, a very good article from the Sequences, something from Eliezer's website, MoR...? A well chosen page, showcasing what LW has to offer, could well draw someone into LW.
Suggestions welcome. One article (or very similar set of articles) per top-level comment please, so people can upvote suggestions in a targetted manner.
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