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A very good post on Ribbonfarm recently: From Cognitive Biases to Institutional Decay.
In totally unrelated news, distributed autonomous economic agents are becoming a Real Thing with Market Capitalization.
In response to
Google may be trying to take over the world
Peter Norvig is at least in principle aware of some of the issues; see e.g. this article about the current edition of Norvig&Russell's AIAMA (which mentions a few distinct way in which AI could have very bad consequences and cites Yudkowsky and Omohundro).
I don't know what Google's attitude is to these things, but if it's bad then either they aren't listening to Peter Norvig or they have what they think are strong counterarguments, and in either case an outsider having a polite word is unlikely to make a big difference.
Peter Norving was a resident at Hacker School while I was there, and we had a brief discussion about existential risks from AI. He basically told me that he predicts AI won't surpass humans in intelligence by so much that we won't be able to coerce it into not ruining everything. It was pretty surprising, if that is what he actually believes.
(keeps sarcasm sign lifted): Yeah, well, you can't win all the time right? If you happen to be curious not in general, but about the very few things that actually help you make money, then maybe, if you are lucky, over the long run, this may end up helping you make some money. Now think about the things you are curious when you are 15, or things you'd be curious even if you had 13 million dollars... Most people would take no interest in the things that would provide money to them if they didn't have the 13 million. If you are one of the exceptions, as maybe Buffet (a notable exceptional human being in general) try to focus on the other things, and you'll be able to not make money in no time! Finally consider this basic argument against making money, which may help you in your quest: For things that enough people know about and want to do badly enough (going to waterfalls, bikeriding, reading great fiction, taking the subway) there is no incentive to pay people to do it. Money is invested to make sure people are coerced into doing something they would not have done otherwise. Wages are the way in which we coerce people to do things that not enough others were willing to do, but need being done by someone. Because humans share much of their historic, cultural and genetic profiles, and thus interests, it is very likely that the sort of thing people would pay John Smith to do does not coincide with the sort of thing John Smith would be doing without the finantial coercion. If there was a twin earth in which this trend is reversed, where I would be paid to read intellectually stimulating stuff like LessWrong, date the most incredible people, design the coolest projects and have others implement them, hike to waterfalls where the sun is perfect and the water fresh. If such place existed, then maybe I'd be writing a "how to make money" internet blog post, like is everyone else in this universe. But who'd find the irony there?
Most people are primarily interested in things that won't go very far in making money, and basically everyone likes to do a lot of things they won't ever get paid for; both are undeniable. "Be interested only in things that do nothing to increase your ability to earn money" is a very good way, indeed just about the best way, to not make money.
Your sarcasm is appreciated :-)
In response to
How Not to Make Money
Many of these seem false to me, generally the ones that claim understanding things and curiosity will help you not make money. I think more than half of my free-time reading in the last several years has increased my money-making ability in my expected career (software) to some extent, and a sizable portion of that was probably pretty close to optimal among things I could realistically be doing with that time (admittedly, that is a factor in what I choose to read; practicality appeals to me). My infovorism has made me a good technical communicator, and my exposure to decision sciences and cognitive biases right here on LessWrong over the past few years seem to make up a sizable portion of what people learn in an MBA (granted, those are more about signaling and contacts than knowledge), to say nothing of all the computer science and software engineering and statistics knowledge I've accumulated.
One notable counterexample who is not me: Warren Buffett, currently the third wealthiest human.
Warren Buffett says, "I just sit in my office and read all day."
What does that mean? He estimates that he spends 80 percent of his working day reading and thinking.
"You could hardly find a partnership in which two people settle on reading more hours of the day than in ours," Charlie Munger commented.
When asked how to get smarter, Buffett once held up stacks of paper and said he "read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge builds up, like compound interest."
Basically, a lot of your advice is heavily dependent on your interests. You might accidentally find that you have a ton of valuable technical skills and are an effective communicator with surprisingly good decision-making ability if you read the wrong things for too long.
Self-perceived physical attractiveness on the 1-10 scale Self-perceived holistic attractiveness on the 1-10 scale
While I don't remember the precise level, I would note that there are studies suggesting a rather surprisingly low level of correlation between self perceived attractiveness and attractiveness as perceived by others, and if we could induce a sufficient sample of participants to submit images of themselves to be rated by others (possibly in a context where they would not themselves find out the rating they received,) I think the comparison of those two values would be much more interesting than self-perceived attractiveness alone.
That's kind of the idea. I'm more interested in correlations involving self-perceived attractiveness, particularly the holistic one, than correlations involving measured physical attractiveness. It's a nice proxy for self-esteem.
Anonymity is a bit of a problem, though I suppose a pool of people that are as likely as your average human to know anyone who uses LW could be wrangled with some effort.
Have you attempted and stuck with the recording of personal data for >1 month for any reason? (Y/N)
Having a calendar with time of when you do what actions is recording of personal data and for most people for timeframes longer than a month.
Anyone who uses Anki gets automated backround data recording of how many minutes per day he uses Anki.
I might be willing to call either of those self-quantifying activities. Definitely the first one, if you actually put most activities you do on there rather than just the ones that aren't habit or important enough to definitely not forget. I think the question could be modified to capture the intent. Let's see...
Have you ever made an effort to record personal data for future analysis and stuck with it for >1 month? (Y/N)
Quantified Self-related activities
I thought quite a bit about this and couldn't decide on many good questions.
The Anki question is sort of a result of this desire.
I thought of asking about pedometer usage such as Fitbit/Nike Plus etc but I'm not sure if the amount of people is enough to warrant the question.
Which specific questions would you want?
Social media use
By what metric? Total time investment? Few people can give you an accurate answer to that question.
Asking good questions isn't easy.
Self-perceived physical attractiveness on the 1-10 scale
I personally don't think that term is very meaningful. I do have hotornot pictures that scored a 9, but what does that mean? The last time I used tinder I click through a lot of female images and very few liked me back. But I haven't yet isolated factors or know about average success rates for guy's using Tinder.
Recreational drug use
There interested in not gathering data that would cause someone to admit criminal behavior. A person might be findable if you know there stances on a few questions. There also the issue of possible outsiders being able to say: "30% of LW participants are criminals!"
Personal computer's operating system
I agree, that would be nice question.
Quantified Self examples:
- Have you attempted and stuck with the recording of personal data for >1 month for any reason? (Y/N)
- If so, did you find it useful? (Y/N)
Social media example:
- How many hours per week do you think you spend on social media?
Asking about self-perceived attractiveness tells us little about how attractive a person is, but quite a bit about how they see themselves, and I want to learn how that's correlated with answers to all these other questions.
Maybe the recreational drug use question(s) could be stripped from the public data?
In response to
2013 Survey Results
Next survey, I'd be interested in seeing statistics involving:
- Recreational drug use
- Quantified Self-related activities
- Social media use
- Self-perceived physical attractiveness on the 1-10 scale
- Self-perceived holistic attractiveness on the 1-10 scale
- Personal computer's operating system
Excellent write-up and I look forward to next year's.
Hacker School is totally free (with living expenses paid if you're a woman). I believe five rationalists including myself have done it. Unlike most bootcamps it has basically no official structure--you and all the other hackers/aspiring hackers think of cool stuff to do and then do it. They will help you become a better programmer and find a job. The community is great.
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What does brevity offer you that makes it worthwhile, even when it impedes communication?
Predicting how communication will fail is generally Really Hard, but it's a good opportunity to refine your models of specific people and groups of people.