While I am generally for lowering the bar to posting, I would consider this post lacking both content and context even if it were a comment.

Downvoted.

I'm sure the engineers knew exactly what would happen. It doesn't tell us much about the control problem that we didn't already know.

OTOH, if this wasn't an intentional PR stunt, that means management didn't think this would happen even though the engineers presumably knew. That definitely has unsettling implications.

You're downvoting an explanation of a downvote because you don't like the reasons given? So am I to interpret this to mean that next time I shouldn't give an explanation, and should just downvote the post, rather than giving anybody an opportunity to voice disagreement and debate the relative merits of a given post?

Nice community norms, there. Shame if something were to... happen to them.

The actual effectiveness of MIRI

MealSquares (the company I'm starting with fellow LW user RomeoStevens) is searching for nutrition experts to join our advisory team. The ideal person has a combination of formally recognized nutrition expertise & also at least a casual interest in things like study methodology and effect sizes (this unfortunately seems to be a rare combination). Advising us will be an opportunity to improve the diets of many people, it should not be much work, you'll get a small stake in our company, and you'll help us earn money for effective giving. Please get in touch with us (ideally using this page) if you or someone you know might be interested!

What happened in 1970 that poverty started sharply declining?

You can't know which. You can only infer from the overall effect I'd guess.

Ha!

"In this paper, I take the position that a large portion of contemporary academic work is an appalling waste of human intelligence that cannot be justified under any mainstream normative ethics."

Out of Harvard, no less.

Well, the obvious objection is that clearly not everybody's going to do what you do, so your hypothetical scenario is often going to be irrelevant. Furthermore, I'd think that

"If everyone here always smoked, they'd install a powerful ventilation system, so I'd be okay" is exactly what you should think. Of course, you should factor in the cost of the ventilation system, but that those costs exist isn't any reason to assume that the marginal change in utility you effect by your actions is going to stay constant when multiplied by seven billion.

I've just noticed that I'm confused, and that's because your comments on the second error seem to be saying that you should shut up and sum utilities, which kind of renders your comments on the first (and my reply) obsolete. Oh well.

I'll just point out that if you could measure utilities well enough to actually shut up and multiply, you wouldn't need this kind of heuristic.

Also, this heuristic fails miserably in the face of any kind of conflict. Of course unilateral disarmament works if everybody does it at the same time. While I understand that your heuristic isn't supposed to be used in such cases, you'll find actual situations without underlying conflicts are rather difficult to find.

Finally, your grammar is mostly fine and certainly no significant obstacle to communication.

A p=np approach to learning

Very interested in this one.