It's a moral imperative that we must create this.

John Carmack, speaking of the Holodeck/Virtual World concept.

Quoted by David Kushner in Masters of Doom, see also here.

Ok, I have to hold my breath as I ask this, and I'm really not trying to poke any bears, but I trust this community's ability to answer objectively more than other places I can ask, including more than my weak weak Google fu, given all the noise:

Is Sanders actually more than let's say 25% likely to get the nod?

I had written him off early, but I don't get to vote in that primary so I only just started paying attention. I'm probably voting Libertarian anyway, but Trump scares me almost as much as Clinton, so I'd sleep a little better during the meanwhile if it turns out I was wrong.

Thanks in advance. If this violates the Politics Commandment I accept the thumbs, but I'd love to also hear an answer I can trust.

Asian (East Asian): -0.600% 80 3.300%
Asian (Indian subcontinent): +0.300% 60 2.500%

Something I've been curious about for a while is the low proportion of Asian and Indian people in the LWsphere compared to STEM communties in general. Any ideas?

For the media thread, Aeon magazine philosophical article

https://aeon.co/essays/true-ai-is-both-logically-possible-and-utterly-implausible

Which psychological findings have great practical implications, if they are indeed true?

Overjustification comes to mind, as an example.

On a related note: if it is true, does that suggest that, as far as we take the diminishing utility of money for granted, by using extrinsic rewards, we are reducing the number of extreme performers? (in so far as we can't keep giving exponential rewards, and money/tokens/what have you motivates in proportion to their utility) I have seen it argued, that if you are not doing well enough to be expecting a non-interrupted stream of extrinsic rewards, you probably shouldn't be doing that thing. Does that lose any validity in this context?

Still, it seems like whether it's true should have some implications.

A more certain finding seems to be the poor transfer of learning. It SEEMS like this SHOULD have implications for the education system.

What else would? (like, even if stereotype threat existed as a significant force, it seems far less clear to me how that finding could realistically impact any policies or our behaviors)

Part of my worldview is that progress, innovation and competence in all areas of science, technology, and other aspects of civilization are correlated. Societies that are dynamic and competent in one area, such as physics research, will also be dynamic and competent in other areas, such as infrastructure and good governance.

What would the world look like if that hypothesis were false? Well, we could find a country that is not particularly competent overall, but was very competent and innovative in one specific civilizational subfield. As a random example, imagine it turned out that Egypt actually had the world's best research and technology in the field of microbiology. Or we might observe that Indonesia had the best set of laws, courts, and legal knowledge. Such observations would falsify my hypothesis.

If the theory is true, then the fact that the US still seems innovative in CS-related fields is probably a transient anomaly. One obvious thing that could derail American innovation is catastrophic social turmoil.

Optimists could accept the civilizational competence correlation idea, but believe that US competence in areas like infotech is going to "pull up" our performance in other areas, at which we are presently failing abjectly.

On Fox News, Trump said that regarding Muslims in the US, he would do "unthinkable" things, "and certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country". He also said it's impossible to tell with absolute certainty whether a Syrian was Christian or Muslim, so he'd have to assume they're all Muslims. This suggests that telling US officials that I'm a LW transhumanist might not convince them that I have no connection with ISIS. I'm not from Syria, but I have an Arabic name and my family is Muslim.

I've read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, and this might be a generalization from fictional evidence, but I can't help asking: As a foreign student in the US, how likely is Trump to have me tortured for no reason? Should I drop everything and make a break for it before it's too late? Initially, many Germans didn't take Hitler's extremist rhetoric seriously either, right? (If I get deported in a civilized manner, well, no harm done to me as far as I'm concerned.)

I normally assume, as a rule of thumb, that politicians intend to fulfill all their promises. If a politician says he wants to invade Mars, that could be pure rhetoric, but I'd typically assume that he might try it in the worst case scenario. I have observed it is often the case that when we think other people are joking, they are in fact exaggerating their true desires and presenting them in an ironic/humorous light.

Though I enthusiastically endorse the concept of rationality, I often find myself coming to conclusions about Big Picture issues that are quite foreign to the standard LW conclusions. For example, I am not signed up for cryonics even though I accept the theoretical arguments in favor of it, and I am not worried about unfriendly AI even though I accept most of EY's arguments.

I think the main reason is that I am 10x more pessimistic about the health of human civilization than most other rationalists. I'm not a cryonicist because I don't think companies like Alcor can survive the long period of stagnation that humanity is headed towards. I don't worry about UFAI because I don't think our civilization has the capability to achieve AI. It's not that I think AI is spectacularly hard, I just don't think we can do Hard Things anymore.

Now, I don't know whether my pessimism is more rational than others' optimism. LessWrong, and rationalists in general, probably have a blind spot relative to questions of civilizational inadequacy because those questions relate to political issues, and we don't talk about politics. Is there a way we can discuss civilizational issues without becoming mind-killed? Or do we simply have to accept that civilizational issues are going to create a large error bar of uncertainty around our predictions?

Effective careers

One line summary of What is a fulfilling career? (part 1) @ Cambridge University:

• autonomy, clear tasks, feedback and variety --> engaging;
• meaningful;
• do work that helps others;
• good relationships with colleagues and social support;
• fair pay; not long commute; not excessive hours;
• fits with the rest of your life

--> job satisfaction

subject matter of the work (e.g. your passion is sports, something is a non-neutral cause choice) is actually irrelevant!

Systematic reviews

Pubmed recently spat out:

Wildcard search for 'spa*' used only the first 600 variations. Lengthen the root word to search for all endings

So, next time I will learn to search pub-med before other databases. to identify if your wildcards are overly general for my search strategy. Reckon that's a good approach?

Lobbying

World Coal Association says: 'The power of high efficiency coal - The most cost-effective way to mitigate CO2 emissions' here

The World Coal Associationis non-profit so perhaps we shouldn’t fetishise the term non-profit, or the term coal?

BBC News is running a story claiming that the creator of Bitcoin known as Satoshi Nakamoto is an Australian named Craig Wright.