Last year had just below 2% transgender and 4% other. Either a slight increase in the number of trans people or a slightly higher percentage of trans people in the diaspora community than the LW core could explain it.

It's difficult to conclude what that implies. One can tell a story about how high openness means people are more likely to identify as trans, or one can tell a story about how rationality helps one realize those sorts of things, or one can tell a story about how more young people are identifying as some sort of queer and the rationality community skews young.

All right. Someone tell me if this is decent enough, please. I only did the first section: "Rationality and Rationalization".

Dropbox folder

How I did it:

• Created an account at Instapaper and used their bookmarklet individually on each article.

• Used calibre to download the articles from Instapaper and convert them to an ebook (instructions here).

• Edited the title and other metadata in calibre to make the ebook more relevant and presentable and converted it to epub/mobi formats.

Note that I had to use the Instapaper bookmarklet starting from the last article and going backwards because calibre downloads the articles in reverse chronological order.

I don't think this is ideal, though, because the comment sections of some of these articles are good enough to be included in the reading but Instapaper only retrieves the article post, leaving out everything else. If anyone has a better suggestion, do share :)

Twist them the way you're twisted.

Or rather, don't, unless you think they have so much agency that this change in temperament will improve their utility despite massively reducing their level of satisfaction.

Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself.

-- C. S. Lewis

This is interesting. They have been operating iPredict since 2008, but apparently got a "no action" letter from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US to allow US participants in the market (as long as they limited the markets in the same way Iowa University does for the IEM) 4 months ago.

The market isn't particularly efficient. For example, if you bought "No" on all the presidential candidates to win, it would cost $16.16, but would be worth at least $17 for a 5% gain. Of course, after paying the 10% fee on profits and 5% withdrawal fee you would be left with a loss, which is why this opportunity still exists.

One of the most common complaints about the old Sequences was that there was no canonical default order, especially for people who didn't want to read the entire blog archive chronologically.

I was tricked into doing this. Years ago someone posted an ebook claiming to be the Sequences, but was actually just every single Yudkowsky blog post from 2006 to 2010 -_-

It took until noticing that only Yudkowsky's side of the FOOM debate was in there that I realized what had happened

I meant that as a comment to this:

the information less useful than what you'd get by just asking a few questions.

It's easy to lie when answering to questions about your personality on e.g. a dating site. It's harder, more expensive, and sometimes impossible to lie via signaling, such as via appearance. So, even though information obtained by asking questions is likely to be much richer than information obtained from appearances, it is also less likely to be truthful.

..assuming the replies are truthful.

If anyone has the exact wording of the no-AI promise, I'd like to examine it.

And then one year Baba Yaga agreed to teach Battle Magic at Hogwarts, under an old and respected truce." Professor Quirrell looked... angry, a look such as Harry had rarely seen on him. "But she was not trusted, and so there was invoked a curse.

And although Perenelle was new-come into the beauty of her youth, her heart was already blacker than Baba Yaga's own -"

Ah, yes, Perenelle, the beautiful and covetous. Perenelle seduced the Dark Lady over the months, with gentle touches and flirtations and the shy pretense of innocence. The Dark Lady's heart was captured, and they became lovers. And then one night Perenelle whispered how she had heard of Baba Yaga's shape-changing power and how this thought had enflamed her desires; thus Perenelle swayed Baba Yaga to come to her with the Stone in hand, to assume many guises in a single night, for their pleasures. Among other forms Perenelle bid Baba Yaga take the form of a man; and they lay together in the fashion of a man and a woman.

Does anyone else think this reads like Quirrel has an awful lot of emotional connection to and personal memories about this story, almost as if it were Baba Yaga speaking about herself in the 3rd person? Could Riddle or Quirrel have come across a Baba Yaga horcrux? The resurrection stone, perhaps? Earlier than that? Why would Perenelle share these secrets? How would anyone know these details if Baba Yaga was dead and Perenelle had not shared them? No one else would have been present for those private moments.

And what are the odds that a Dark Lady like Baba Yaga did not have a horcrux?

In Ch. 70 Quirrel makes a point during the S.P.H.E.W. confrontation with the headmaster that Dark Ladies are also underrepresented, and that few could name one except Baba Yaga. Self-reference?

She would probably need to be faking the map labelling her (and Harry?) as Tom Riddle, but a sorceress as powerful as Baba Yaga combined with the secrets of Salazar, who created the Hogwarts security system in the first place, could probably accomplish that.

Notice what Quirrel does and doesn't say in parseltongue:

"None of it iss known to me to be falsse," said Professor Quirrell. "Telling a tale implies filling in certain gaps; I was not present to observe when Perenelle seduced Baba Yaga. The bassicss sshould be mosstly correct, I think."