Aspirin was found to have an effect on 15-year-mortality significant only at the .05 level, and aspirin was found not to have a significant effect 20-year-mortality, so take it with a grain of salt.

Can you provide your reference for this? I looked at the meta-analysis and what I assume is the 20-year follow-up of five RCTs (the citations seem to be paywalled), and both mention 20-year reduction in mortality without mentioning 15-year reductions or lack thereof.

Edit: Never mind, I found it, followed immediately by

the effect on post-trial deaths was diluted by a transient increase in risk of vascular death in the aspirin groups during the first year after completion of the trials (75 observed vs 46 expected, OR 1·69, 1·08–2·62, p=0·02), presumably due to withdrawal of trial aspirin.

I'd like to see 20-year numbers for people who maintained the trial (and am baffled that they didn't randomly select such a subgroup).

There's also paracetamol (secret identity: acetaminophen (secret secret identity: tylenol)), which is not an NSAID, but I would guess you've tried it too. Fun snacks and/or facts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol

Until 2010 paracetamol was believed to be safe in pregnancy (as it does not affect the closure of the fetal ductus arteriosus as other NSAIDs can.) However, in a study published in October 2010 it has been linked to infertility in the posterior adult life of the unborn.

recent research show some evidence that paracetamol can ease psychological pain

ETA: I just remembered two important contraindications: Don't take more than 2g/day if you drink alcohol, and consider not taking more than 650mg at a time, since that's the FDA's revised recommendation after the old max dosage was shown to alter liver function in some healthy adults.

I didn't actually do much research; I just went through several pages of hits for aspirin alcohol and low-dose aspirin moderate alcohol. I saw consistent enough information to convince me:

• never to take them at the same time, sample:

  In a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in the Bronx found that taking aspirin one hour before drinking significantly increases the concentration of alcohol in the blood.

• that the nasty interactions only seemed to happen at 21+ drinks per week, sample:

  There is no proof that mild to moderate alcohol use significantly increases the risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding in patients taking aspirin, especially if the aspirin is taken only as needed. However, people who consumed at least 3-5 drinks daily and who regularly took more than 325 mg of aspirin did have a high risk of bleeding.

That, in conjunction with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, was enough to convince me to combine 81mg of aspirin in the morning with 0-3 US standard drinks in the evening at an average of 1.0/day. I'd like more information, but I haven't had time to dig it up yet and combining them seemed like a lower-risk provisional decision than inaction.

I recommend you do your own research and talk to your doctor, but maybe someone will find that information to be a helpful starting point.

I'm talking about publishing a technical design of Friendliness that's conserved under self-improving optimization without also publishing (in math and code) exactly what is meant by self-improving optimization. CEV is a good first step, but a programmatically reusable solution it is not.

On doing the impossible:

Before you the terrible blank wall stretches up and up and up, unimaginably far out of reach. And there is also the need to solve it, really solve it, not "try your best".

It's a good first step.

If we take those probabilities as a given, they strongly encourage a strategy that increases the chance that the first seed AI is Friendly.

jsalvatier already had a suggestion along those lines:

I wonder if SIAI could publicly discuss the values part of the AI without discussing the optimization part.

A public Friendly design could draw funding, benefit from technical collaboration, and hopefully end up used in whichever seed AI wins. Unfortunately, you'd have to decouple the F and AI parts, which is impossible.

SIAI seems to be paying the minimum amount that leaves each worker effective instead of scrambling to reduce expenses or find other sources of income. Presumably, SIAI has a maximum that it judges each worker to be worth, and Eliezer and Michael are both under their maximums. That leaves the question of where these salaries fall in that range.

I believe Michael and Eliezer are both being paid near their minimums because they know SIAI is financially constrained and very much want to see it succeed, and because their salaries seem consistent with at-cost living in the Bay Area.

I'm speculating on limited data, but the most likely explanation for the salary disparity is that Eliezer's minimum is higher, possibly because Michael's household has other sources of income. I don't think marriage factors into the question.

$52k/yr is in line with Eliezer's salary if it's only covering one person instead of two, and judging from these comments, Eliezer's salary is reasonable.

It reminded me of one of my formative childhood books:

What is the probability there is some form of life on Titan? We apply the principle of indifference and answer 1/2. What is the probability of no simple plant life on Titan? Again, we answer 1/2. Of no one-celled animal life? Again, 1/2.

--Martin Gardner, Aha! Gotcha

He goes on to demonstrate the obvious contradiction, and points out some related fallacies. The whole book is great, as is its companion Aha! Insight. (They're bundled into a book called Aha! now.)

Or in this case, evaporative freezing.