Comment author: ChristianKl 08 August 2016 10:40:52AM *  6 points [-]

I don't think that gene drives are the best technology when you account for the politics and indeed the post by Luke that you link doesn't use the term. SIT seems to be effective enough from a cost-benefit analysis and can be used in a very controlled way.

I look a while ago into the issue and wrote an LW post about it. I think there's a fair chance that pushing for gene drives mosquitos to be released will mean that mosquito elemintion will happen later rather than sooner.

Oxitec has today the technology that produes "sterile mosquitio" sterile for them means that the mosquitos die when they are larves. That means they compete in the early larve stage against other mosquito larves. Oxitec also inserts color coding genes to be able to proof that all of the offspring of the mosquitos they produce really dies and the genes that they produce really die.

It would be worthwhile if people think of mosquito erradication as being about release sterile mosquitos and not about releasing mutant GMO mosquitos.

If you actively want to do something on the PR front I think it would be worthwhile to contact someone at Oxitec and ask them what they think would be helpful. Maybe invite someone from Oxitec for your podcast and have a discussion with them about the strategic implications?

It's worthwhile to remember that the Obama administration was very effective about reducing Mercury pollution but not very effective about reducing CO2 pollution. More publish attention isn't always worthwhile to getting policy passed. Especially the scenario where a Republican Trump advocates a gene drive might mean that you get opposition from liberals who are currently against GMO's on the topic that prevents real action from happening.

Comment author: Vaniver 08 August 2016 09:39:22PM 1 point [-]

It would be worthwhile if people think of mosquito erradication as being about release sterile mosquitos and not about releasing mutant GMO mosquitos.

The sterile insect approach is, at best, a population control measure, rather than an extinction measure. Some may hope that if you do population control long enough, they eventually go extinct, but I think the evidence for that is pretty low. (Cynically, the sterile insect approach is something that has to be done repeatedly to be effective, which makes it more of a utility than a one-off project.)

I think it's worth giving this the smallpox treatment--that is, there's a heroic scientific project involving the permanent elimination of a scourge on the human race, and stressing the importance of permanent solutions to the problem. Yes, smallpox required vaccination approaches that are similar to the sterile insect approach, but that doesn't work well with mosquitoes, so we'll use the tool that works well.

Comment author: turchin 03 August 2016 11:58:42AM 0 points [-]

Any thoughts? "Musk-backed startup that wants to give away its artificial intelligence research, also wants to make sure AI isn’t used for nefarious purposes. That’s why it wants to create a new kind of police force: call them the AI cops."

http://www.wired.com/2016/08/openai-calling-techie-cops-battle-code-gone-rogue/

Comment author: Vaniver 03 August 2016 05:53:04PM 0 points [-]

Previous LW discussion of OpenAI here (which, I think, doesn't include any mention of the AI cops idea).

Comment author: James_Miller 01 August 2016 03:51:43AM 1 point [-]

I think we are entering an interesting political equilibrium where we have a significant number of voters who either (a) are not truth-oriented and care mostly about the emotional vibe coming from candidates or (b) believe that candidates would be foolish to tell the truth when it would disadvantage them with type (a) voters. The more voters who fall into types (a) and (b) the less worried candidates will be about telling the truth and the eventual equilibrium is where almost all voters are (a) or (b).

Comment author: Vaniver 02 August 2016 02:25:14PM 2 points [-]

I suspect we're returning to such a dynamic? That is, this seems like the emotional variant of corrupt patronage systems from previous days.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 July 2016 03:26:26PM *  2 points [-]

There are two lists of moderators, one for Discussion and one general LW list. Only difference is that Alexei doesn't appear as a "Discussion" moderator. It's hard to know who on the list is actually active in moderating - site policy seems to be very hands off except in truly exceptional circumstances, and most of the people listed are no longer active here.

Moderators to lesswrong

Moderators to discussion

edited to add: Of those listed, only EY and Elo display the tag "Editor" when user profile is displayed (under the total/monthly karma listing)

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open thread, Jul. 25 - Jul. 31, 2016
Comment author: Vaniver 27 July 2016 07:16:52PM 0 points [-]

edited to add: Of those listed, only EY and Elo display the tag "Editor" when user profile is displayed (under the total/monthly karma listing)

Right, but they're not the only ones. (Check out my profile.)

You might think that the editors list would contain Elo or myself, but it doesn't.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 27 July 2016 01:16:30PM 1 point [-]

Who are the moderators here, again? I don't see where to find that information. It's not on the sidebar or About page, and search doesn't yield anything for 'moderator'.

Comment author: Vaniver 27 July 2016 02:10:31PM 1 point [-]

There's an out of date page that's not linked anywhere. It's unclear to me why it isn't automatically generated.

Meetup : Welcome Scott Aaronson to Texas

1 Vaniver 25 July 2016 01:27AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Welcome Scott Aaronson to Texas

WHEN: 13 August 2016 06:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE: 4212 Hookbilled Kite Dr Austin, TX 78738

We're having another all-Texas party in Austin. We'll be welcoming Scott Aaronson, who's moved here to teach at UT Austin.

(Previously, we were worried that the time might work, but now it's been confirmed.)

Discussion article for the meetup : Welcome Scott Aaronson to Texas

Comment author: turchin 18 July 2016 09:01:50PM -1 points [-]

But roughly only a half of accidents could be blamed on each car driver, so even safest driver would get only 50 per cent reduction in accident rate. Other reckless drivers could rear-end him or even t-bonned.

Comment author: Vaniver 19 July 2016 01:56:31AM *  2 points [-]

But roughly only a half of accidents could be blamed on each car driver, so even safest driver would get only 50 per cent reduction in accident rate.

Sure, if you include when and where people drive as part of what you blame on them. (Safety conscious people might move to particular places, or spend evenings in, or so on, and so even if they're just as good at avoiding accidents conditioned on condition the total distribution is weighted by conditions, which they have some control over.)

Comment author: turchin 18 July 2016 10:14:26AM 1 point [-]

Why car safety is not advertise as its main quality?

Tesla suffered its first fatal accident in self-driving mode after driving 130 million ml, while the average mileage between fatal accidents in the US is 90 million ml. This is presented as evidence of the safety of Tesla.

However, the safety of cars of different classes of security has 1000 times difference.

Kia Rio has one fatal accident at about 10 million ml, and Subaru Legacy has less than one per billion km (in fact zero).

The latest data on the risks of different car models is here: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates

I did some calculations based on presented data and typical car driving 20 000 ml a year assumption.

Dodge Caravan has the risk of a fatal accident on a 1 to 10 billion miles. (I saw it in similar sheet before.)

These cars are 3-5 times more expensive than the Kia, and due to the greater mass, strength and quality provides great security.

Comment author: Vaniver 18 July 2016 01:26:29PM 6 points [-]

Why car safety is not advertise as its main quality?

I think there's a major selection effect when safety comes into play; that is, there is a sizable fraction of drivers who do prioritize safety, they buy the cars that are reputed to be safest, and then those cars appear even safer in the statistics. (For example, there are some engineering differences about the Subaru compared to other cars, but the differences between Subaru drivers and the drivers of other cars are probably larger.)

Comment author: MrMind 14 July 2016 07:19:26AM 3 points [-]

The problem I see in using the past as evidence is that the further we go from our era, the more what we know is mostly made up.
True, we have documents and evidence and so on, but they only paint a relatively sketchy picture of what the society was, we mostly made up the details in a reasonable manner. Plus we don't get any statistical data on things like happiness, income, etc.
The risk of mistaking noise for signal is so high that it's probably worth throwing it all away, especially when the starting point of the conversation is "People were happier / sadder in xth century, so we should / shouldn't do as they did".
How can you possibly know?

Comment author: Vaniver 14 July 2016 02:21:40PM *  3 points [-]

The problem I see in using the past as evidence is that the further we go from our era, the more what we know is mostly made up.

Sure, quality of data degrades with distance, both in space and time. But I don't think it degrades to the point where it actually is worth throwing it all away.

How can you possibly know?

Is this a serious question, or a statement of anti-epistemology? (That is, all knowledge is uncertain, and so the right question is "how did you get to the level of uncertainty you have" rather than "how do you justify pretending that there is no uncertainty?")

Comment author: MrMind 13 July 2016 12:23:18PM 1 point [-]

I've been reading a slice of Neoreactionary - Anti-Neoreactionary discussions on Slate Star Codex.
A problem I've seen is that people are too hung-up to a positive / negative affiliation with the passage of time. The controversy seems to revolve mostly around "the past was good / the past was bad".
Who cares how the past was?
Just tell me what your values are and what political / social system you think serves them best!
It doesn't matter if it comes from the past, the Bible, Lord of the Rings or utopian literature. Just discuss the model! It's mostly fiction anyway.

(this mini-rant is directed at nobody in particular. I'll likely never have the occasion to discuss with a Neoreactionary)

Comment author: Vaniver 13 July 2016 03:09:16PM 3 points [-]

I think a lot of political questions hinge on what's possible, and also what the consequences of policies are. If someone says "I think we should arrange marriages instead of letting individuals pick," then the immediate questions to settle are 1) will people allow such a policy to be put in place / comply with it, and 2) what will the consequences be?

(There's also the "does this align with principles" deontological question, but this is relatively easy to answer without looking at the past or present so I'll ignore it.)

And the past provides our primary data source to answer those sorts of questions. Yes, we can imagine multiple different causal effects of attempting to arrange marriages, but how those interplay with each other and shake out is hard to know. But other people tried that for us, and so we can investigate their experiments and come to a judgment.

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