TedSanders
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TedSanders has not written any posts yet.
TedSanders has not written any posts yet.
Great post.
I don't think communicating trades is the only issue. Even if we could communicate with ants, e.g. "Please clean this cafeteria floor and we'll give you 5 kg of sugar" "Sure thing, human", I think there are still barriers.
There's a lot to the task of cleaning the cafeteria floor beyond is it mechanically possible for the worker and can the worker speak English well enough to articulate a trade.
A spatial framing:
(1) All objects have positions in space
(2) The desire by people to consume and use objects is not uniform over space (cars are demanded in Los Angeles more than Antarctica)
(3) The productive capacity to create and improve objects is not uniform over space (it's easier to create iron ore from an Australian mine, or a car at a Detroit factory)
(4) Efficiently satisfying the distribution of desires over space by the distribution of productive capacity over space necessarily involves linking separate points in space through transportation of goods
(5) Owning an object is easier when it is near you and harder when it is far from you
Summing up, satisfying preferences requires transportation, and transportation is easier if ownership is transferred along with the physical object. Therefore it is advantageous to trade.
I spent years trading in prediction markets so I can offer some perspective.
If you step back and think about it, the question 'How well can the long-term future be forecasted?' doesn't really have an answer. The reason for this is that it completely depends on the domain of the forecasts. Like, consider all facts about the universe. Some facts are very, very predictable. In 10 years, I predict the Sun will exist with 99.99%+ probability. Some facts are very, very unpredictable. In 10 years, I have no clue whether the coin you flip will come up heads or tails. As a result, you cannot really say the future is predictable or not... (read more)
Rationalists should have mental models of the world that say if aliens/AI were out there, a few rare and poorly documented UFO encounters is not at all how we would find out. These stories are not worth the oxygen it takes to contemplate them.
In general, thinking more rationally can change confidence levels in only two directions: either toward more uncertainty or toward more certainty. Sometimes, rationalism says to open your mind, free yourself of prejudice, and overcome your bias. In these cases, you will be guided toward more uncertainty. Other time, rationalism says, c'mon, use your brain and think about the world in a way that's deeply self-consistent and don't fall for surface-level explanations. In these cases, you will be guided toward more certainty.
In my opinion, this is a case where rationalism should make us more certain, not less. Like, if there were aliens, is this really how we would find out? Obviously no.
My hypothesis: They don't anticipate any benefit.
Personally, I prefer to chat with friends and high-status strangers over internet randos. And I prefer to chat in person, where I can control and anticipate the conversation, rather than asynchronously via text with a bunch of internet randos who can enter and exit the conversation whenever they feel like it.
For me, this is why I rarely post on LessWrong.
Seeding and cultivating a community of high value conversations is difficult. I think the best way to attract high quality contributors is to already have high quality contributors (and perhaps having mechanisms to disincentivize the low quality contributors). It's a bit of a bootstrapping problem. LessWrong is doing well, but no doubt it could do better.
That's my initial reaction, at least. Hope it doesn't offend or come off as too negative. Best wishes to you all.
Observation: I tried to take your survey, but discovered it's only for people who have attended meetups.
Recommendation: Edit your title to be 'If you've attended a LW/SSC meetup, please take the meetups survey!'
Anticipated result: This will save time for non-meetup people who click the survey, start to fill it out, and then realize it wasn't meant for them.
Re: your request for collaboration - I am skeptical of ROI of research on AI X-risk, and I would be happy to help offer insight on that perspective, either as a source or as a giver of feedback. Feel free to email me at {last name}{first name}@gmail.com
I'm not an expert in AI, but I have a PhD in semiconductors (which gives me perspective on hardware) and currently work on machine learning at Netflix (which gives me perspective on software). I also was one of the winners of the SciCast prediction market a few years back, which is evidence that my judgment of near-term tech trends is decently calibrated.
I didn't perceive either of you as hostile.
I think you each used words differently.
For example, you interpret the post as saying, "metoo has never gone too far."
What the post actually said was, "I've heard people complain that it 'goes too far,' but in my experience the cases referred to that way tend to be cases where someone... didn't endure much in the way of additional consequences."
I read that sentence that as much more limited in scope than your interpretation. (And because it says 'tend' and not 'never', supplying a couple of data points isn't enough information, by itself, to challenge the author's conclusion.)
In addition, you interpreted "metoo" as broadly meaning action against... (read more)
If the housekeeper were to earn a wage of 3x rent, 15 other housemates would be required at those price points. That's a lot of cooking and cleaning.
Very cool! Appreciate the time you took to share your findings. I learned something new.