Why is it cheaper for individuals to install some amount of cheap solar power for themselves than for the grid to install it and then deliver it to them, with economies of scale in the construction and maintenance? Transmission cost?

I agree that one person isn't very much evidence, but in general, the fact that there are many talented young chess players all up and down the distribution of chess ability, does seem like good evidence that children can become the intellectual peers of adults if they are put into a position to spend lots of time doing so.

For example, if you took the student population of a magnet school and put it up against the population of some random Google department, and gave them all three months to prepare for a chess tournament, I wouldn't consider the magnet school to be underdogs.

Great stuff, I was quite surprised that current models can solve this now. I predicted they would not.

I appreciate your urge to put the edit at the top but I think it's better to move it to the bottom, so it doesn't spoil people trying to guess whether the models can solve it.

I don't have anything special to say about this, but this direction excites me, so I am leaving a comment. Thanks for running it and writing up these thought-provoking ideas.

Looks like LLM content.

There's another blogger, Nathan Tankus, who is also reporting accounts directly from his sources within the BFS. He wears his bias on his sleeve and goes wild with the hyperbole, but he is a prolific public intellectual of some sort so he may be accurately reporting the basic facts. He also did an interview on Odd Lots but it didn't really have anything new.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this looks substantially LLM-written.

I would be surprised if it were ethically important for you to donate that much. LW has made a pretty big difference to my life (e.g. my career, marriage, and a big chunk of my bank account are causally downstream of LW existing) and I estimated that there are probably something like $100m dollars worth of people for whom it was similarly impactful as me, and then a long tail of more people for whom it was somewhat less impactful, so I owed on the order of 1% of my net worth, such that if everyone like me who saw this fundraiser did the same then it would have enough money to thrive.

So unless LW was really important to you or unless you are sure that you will be a millionaire in the future and you are just donating in advance, I don't think you owe $1000. But if you want to donate it, then do.

Thanks for this elaboration. One reason I would be more hopeful than in the case of private airplanes (less so potable water) is that it seems like, while providing me a private airplane may mostly only benefit me and my family by making my life more leisurely, providing me or my children genetic enhancement may be very socially productive, at least improving our productivity and making us consume less healthcare resources. So it would seem possible to end up with an arrangement where it's socially financed and the surplus is shared.

It's interesting that you describe humans as remaining "equal in the biological lottery". Of course, to the humans, when the lottery is decided before they are born, and they are given only one life to live, it doesn't feel very equal when some of them win it and others lose. It's not obvious to me that inequality based on who spends money to enhance themselves or their family's biology is worse than inequality based on random chance. It seems like effects on social cohesion or group conflict may result either way regardless of the source of the inequality.

Do you have any suggestions for how genetic enhancement technology could hypothetically be developed in a better way so that the majority is not left behind? Or in your view would it be best for it to never be developed at all?