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I took the survey, and wanted it to be longer.
In response to
How habits work and how you may control them
I'm confused. I thought that the contents of this post would be generally considered immensely valuable, and many people in my social networks where I shared the link to this post seem to agree. But here at LW it currently sits at mere 12 upvotes, over 24 hours after being posted. What am I missing?
I wanted to love this post, but stylistic issues got in the way.
It read too much like a gwern essay: certainly interesting, but in need of a summary and a guide for how it is practically applicable. A string of highlights and commentary with no clear underlying organization and conclusion is not optimally useful.
That being said, I appreciate you taking the time to create this post, as well as your call for constructive criticism.
In response to
Yet more "stupid" questions
What fiction should I read first?
I have read pretty much nothing but MoR and books I didn't like for school, so I don't really know what my preferences are. I am a mathematician and a Bayesianist with an emphasis on the more theoretical side of rationality. I like smart characters that win. I looked at some recommendations on other topics, but there are too many options. If you suggest more than one, please describe a decision procedure that uses information that I have and you don't to narrow it down.
It's not specifically rationalist, but Dune is what first comes to mind for "smart characters that win", at least in the first book.
In response to
High Challenge
On the subject of computer games (an underrated area for the study of psychology, economy and even AI, IMO):
During the last 3 years, I have spent just over 1000 hours playing World of Warcraft. Why did I choose to spend (some, incl my wife, might say waste) my time on this? I am fairly wealthy and quite fit - just about any fun activity is open to me. So why do I like WoW? And why 10 million people around the world do the same?
Some important reasons why the game is so pleasurable seem to be:
a) the ultimate goals are pretty clear (so unlike real life...)
b) the "measures of progress" are likewise clear - and there is only one way to go, namely "up"! (again, so unlike real life, apart from possibly "youth" - is that what makes "youth" so good?)
c) the rewards are clear - and are earned so progressively that playing the game seems akin to wireheading (the trickle of XPs, "gold" and new items continuously stimulates some pleasure centre or other).
(Good play involves fairly sophisticated analysis, strategy and tactics, which maintains intetrest... but is beside the point I want to make. The game is attractive to good and poor players.)
With this on the table, I would like to offer the following for comments:
1) Can the 3 items above (clarity of goals, clear measures of achievement, progressive rewards) be mapped onto real life in a way that makes life more, um, fun? There are some mechanisms like that already - money most clearly, yet pursuit of money as a goal is not considered that worthwhile.
2) this is a bit out of left field, but: Is a setting like World of Warcraft a good medium for development of AI? Clear goals, clear measures of progress, sufficient complexity to provide an indication of when important insights are achieved, and a safe environment (in the sense that the path to paperclip AI seems unlikely)...?
(For Robin Hanson: have you heard about the economic studies carried out in WoW setting?)
OK, duty calls... I have more to say on this when time permits.
D. Alex
In response to
Rationality Quotes September 2013
"Not being able to get the future exactly right doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about it."
--Peter Thiel
ne is that individual circumstances might also matter in these calculations. For example, my risk of dying in a car accident is much lowered by not driving and only rarely riding in cars
Yes I totally agree. Similarly your chances of being murdered are probably a lot lower than the average if you live in an affluent neighborhood and have a spouse who has never assaulted you.
Suicide is an interesting issue -- I would like to think that my chances of committing suicide are far lower than average but painful experience has taught me that it's very easy to be overconfident in predicting one's own actions.
There may also be financial considerations. Cancer almost certainly and often heart disease and stroke take time to kill. If you were paying for cryonics out-of-pocket, this wouldn't matter, but if you were paying with life insurance the cost of the policy would go up, perhaps dramatically, if you were to wait until the onset of serious illness to make your arrangements, as life insurance companies are not fond of pre-existing condtions
Yes, but there is an easy way around this: Just buy life insurance while you are still reasonably healthy.
Actually this is what got me thinking about the issue: I was recently buying life insurance to protect my family. When I got the policy, I noticed that it had an "accelerated death benefit rider," i.e. if you are certifiably terminally ill, you can get a $100k advance on the policy proceeds. When you think about it, that's not the only way to raise substantial money in such a situation. For example, if you were terminally ill, your spouse probably wouldn't mind if you borrowed $200k against the house for cryopreservation if she knew that when you finally kicked the bucket she would get a check for a million from the insurance company.
So the upshot is that from a selfish perspective, there is a lot to be said for taking a "wait and see" approach.
(There's another issue I thought of: Like most life insurance policies, the ones I bought are good only for 20 years. There is a pretty good chance that I will live for those 20 years but in the meantime develop a serious health condition which makes it almost impossible to buy more insurance. What then?)
So again, the key here is determining how strongly you value your continued existence.
I agree with this to an extent.
Hmmm. You do have some interesting ideas regarding cryonics funding that do sound promising, but to be safe I would talk to Alcor, specifically Diane Cremeens, about them directly to ensure ahead of time that they'll work for them.
Thank you for your response; I suppose one would need to estimate the probability of dying in such a way that having previously joined Alcor would make a difference.
Perusing Ben Best's web site and using some common sense, it seems that the most likely causes of death for a reasonably healthy middle aged man are cancer, stroke, heart attack, accident, suicide, and homicide. We need to estimate the probability of sudden serious loss of faculties followed by death.
It seems that for cancer, that probability is extremely small. For stroke, heart attack, and accidents, one could look it up but just guesstimating a number based on general observations, I would guess roughly 10 to 15 percent. Suicide and homicide are special cases -- I imagine that in those cases I would be autopsied so there would be much less chance of cryopreservation even if I had already joined Alcor.
Of course even if you pre-joined Alcor, there is still a decent chance that for whatever reason they would not be able to preserve you after, for example, a fatal accident which killed you a few days later.
So all told, my rough estimate is that the improvement in my chances of being cryopreserved upon death if I joined Alcor now as opposed to taking a wait and see approach is 5% at best.
Does that sound about right?
That does sound about right, but with two potential caveats: one is that individual circumstances might also matter in these calculations. For example, my risk of dying in a car accident is much lowered by not driving and only rarely riding in cars. However, my risk of dying of heart disease is raised by a strong family history.
There may also be financial considerations. Cancer almost certainly and often heart disease and stroke take time to kill. If you were paying for cryonics out-of-pocket, this wouldn't matter, but if you were paying with life insurance the cost of the policy would go up, perhaps dramatically, if you were to wait until the onset of serious illness to make your arrangements, as life insurance companies are not fond of pre-existing condtions. It might be worth noting that age alone also increases the cost of life insurance.
That being said, it's also fair to say that even a successful cryopreservation has a (roughly) 10-20% chance of preserving your life, taking most factors into account.
So again, the key here is determining how strongly you value your continued existence. If you could come up with a roughly estimated monetary value of your life, taking the probability of radical life extension into account, that may clarify matters considerably. There at values at which that (roughly) 5% chance is too little, or close to the line, or plenty sufficient, or way more than sufficient; it's quite a spectrum.
In response to
Open thread, August 19-25, 2013
Sorry if this has been asked before, but can someone explain to me if there is any selfish reason to join Alcor while one is in good health? If I die suddenly, it will be too late to have joined, but even if I had joined it seems unlikely that they would get to me in time.
The only reason I can think of is to support Alcor.
I don't think it's been asked before on Less Wrong, and it's an interesting question.
It depends on how much you value not dying. If you value it very strongly, the risk of sudden, terminal, but not immediately fatal injuries or illnesses, as mentioned by paper-machine, might be unacceptable to you, and would point toward joining Alcor sooner rather than later.
The marginal increase your support would add to the probability of Alcor surviving as an institution might also matter to you selfishly, since this would increase the probability that there will exist a stronger Alcor when you are older and will likely need it more than you do now.
Additionally, while it's true that it's unlikely that Alcor would reach you in time if you were to die suddenly, compare this risk to the chance of your survival if alternately you don't join Alcor soon enough, and, after your hypothetical fatal car crash, you end up rotting in the ground.
And hey, if you really want selfish reasons: signing up for cryonics is high-status in certain subcultures, including this one.
There are also altruistic reasons to join Alcor, but that's a separate issue.
In response to
August 2013 Media Thread
Meta Thread
I just want to mention how much I appreciate these threads: this is my most trusted source of media recommendations! Thank you to all involved.
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Taken. Wasn't bothered by the length -- could be even longer next time.