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Speaking of uploading, Clippy, how would you feel about tiling the universe with paperclips that could each be one of two colors and changed color depending on certain algorithms and the behavior of their neighboring paperclips?
this might just be the single greatest comment I've seen on LW.
In response to
Don't call yourself a rationalist.
I say that I hang out with people who are "into hardcore rationality" immediately followed up with "studying reasoning, that sort of thing." I think the nerdishness sound of that balances it out slightly.
If by "I don't know why people care so much" you mean "I don't know why rationalists care that Steve Jobs was killed by dysrationalia", I think the answer is obvious. We live in a terrifyingly insane world, where woo science can claim a genius who should have known better. This is worth regretting.
If he was that bothered by the prospect of dying enough he would have made a more thorough investigation.
I don't think that is true. People aren't automatically rational, and we definitely aren't rational economic agents.
Steve Jobs' death wasn't caused by his disvaluing his life. It was caused by insanity, the kind we all have, and the kind that only rationalists have begun to fight back against. Nobody else realizes how sick they are.
I cut people making decisions before google a lot more slack. If you make a bad a decision because of a lack of info that was on the first page of a google search on the topic I'm not really worried about your shitty outcomes.
I don't know why people care so much. He chose to dramatically increase his risk of dying. If he was that bothered by the prospect of dying enough he would have made a more thorough investigation. Most people obviously choose not to maximize their lifespans as the serious longevity crowd is a tiny niche.
In response to
The self-unfooling problem
For specific, special items, spend a few seconds thinking about the 'right' place for it. Then place the item there. If you ever need to find the item, repeat the same though process and there's a good chance you will again think of the same 'right' place. My problem isn't that I can't think of the place where it should be, but that it is very rare that I actually put it there.
However, I wonder if you were talking specifically about finding lost items, or just the general probIem of finding solutions to "foolish" problems. Then I suspect this will grow to be a long comment since I am simultaneously extremely absent-minded and also energetically solution-oriented, so I spend a lot time developing tailored solutions.
First, I'll discuss general principles of the 'systems' I use to solve these problems:
I invest energy in systems proportional to the degree there needs to be a system (e.g., measured in units of aggravation or resource costs). I don't develop systems just to have systems, since this is a failure mode for me.
Solution development is always a work in progress and I try to be laid-back about that. I'm always open to the possibility that a system is causing more trouble than it is worth. An imperfect system won't be further updated unless the energy expense makes sense (see 1). Sometimes a system seems to work fairly well, but then an extra dose of aggravation will motivate me to improve it.
Every problem might need its own unique solution, fitted for you and your lifestyle. Many systems are very nice in principle, but simply don't work in practice -- usually due to inability of me or family members to maintain the system. That is, a 'good' system is one that actually works.
Next, I'll list some of the solutions that I've found so far or need help with:
Solution: A lockbox for the key. I was always trying to find my keys. Leaving in the morning, usually in a hurry, there were several places I had to look -- in any pair of pants I might have worn, in any jacket pockets, on the actual key ring where they were supposed to be (fat chance), or in the junk drawer where I tend to empty my pockets when I come home. Looking in even just these three spots was too aggravating and there was no solution until I started keeping my keys in a lockbox outside my house. The key always makes it back in the lockbox when I come home, so when I leave in the morning, I can just leave -- no worries about the key! This is greatly helped by the fact that I have security code to open my car, I don't need to carry a key for that either.
Solution needed: I don't have a system yet for ID cards and debit cards. Every once in a while, I end up with two copies of one (for example, if I lose it, get a replacement and then find the old one) and then that system is stable for quite a while because I'll keep one at home and one in the car. However, I never have the cards I need when I'm traveling with my husband or walking somewhere. The only exception is the library card, which I keep in our "book bag".
One day a week for the library. If we go to the library irregularly, we never remember to return books and we ended up paying hundreds of dollars in fines last year. Since this was obviously a significant resource drain, we had to decide if going to the library was important. (For example, we decided renting Redbox movies was not important since we had the same story there.) Since going to the library was important to us, we now go every week on a particular day. Before we go, I walk around the house and collect anything that looks like a library book, and then (fortunately) the library also e-mails me if we miss one and I'll know to spend extra time looking for that one.
Keep children's socks right by the dryer. I have a drawer in the laundry room for my kid's socks. This seems to be the best way to get them in one place. An initial phase of the solution was to begin with very many identical pairs to save time on matching, but then we got too many different kinds of socks from cousins (hand me downs) and I gave up on that.
If your system is 99% 'good' you actually CAN then nudge your behavior via slight modifications. For example floss no longer goes in the bathroom, it stays next to my computer where I see it.
In response to
The self-unfooling problem
Heh, this is pretty much how I live my life really. Coins go in the obvious coin place coz if I put 'em anywhere else I'll never remember where I put 'em.
See also: Proper Pocket Discipline. Everything that goes in pockets has an assigned pocket. No more searching for lighters! No more worry about keys scratching phone screens.
My books are in alphabetical order these days.
I suspect having a system for these things will also leave you better off if/when you go senile. If you've always looked in the same place for your coins for 60 years it'll be more ingraned.
pocket discipline? you mean everyone doesn't do this?! there are people walking around right now with their possessions in random pockets and they themselves might not know what pocket an item is in until they check? MADNESS. brb, accosting strangers.
In response to
First, they must be convinced to play the game
When trying to convince someone of something that is weird we use smaller inference jumps in order to make our argument more watertight. This is perceived as condescension. You aren't going to convince anyone of something weird in a single conversation anyway. Use normal inference jumps and if the topic comes up multiple times you'll eventually have the opportunity to plug any gaps. Also keep in mind that normal people don't require near as high a standard of proof in the first place.
That plus I'd expect a certain amount of sampling bias at HotOrNot. I mean, I could be wrong, but AFAIK it could easily be true that you are in the 43% bracket of HotOrNot (not that I expect their 10-point system actually correlates to this, but anyway...) while still being pretty attractive by real-world mortal human standards.
People's subjective experience of how attractive someone is is heavily influenced by framing. I can't find the relevant study but basically people responded with better ratings when someone was surrounded by less attractive people than when someone was surrounded by people who were around the same or more attractive. Conclusion? The same as Mises: preference rankings are ordinal, not cardinal. The frame of hotornot is looking at a very large group, so all but the most attractive in the set will rank slightly worse than they otherwise would have (real life situations are always much smaller sets).
In addition, as the okcupid article indicates, variance matters a lot. 3 people rating you a 9 or 10 and 7 people rating you 1 or 2 means your overall rating will be low, even though a significant fraction of people think you're the bees knees.
Oh and to quantify: the research I'm familiar with indicates that women should, on average, bump up their estimation of their own attractiveness and men should bump it downward (but a smaller bump than women). But this hides an important dynamic: we don't care what the average person thinks of us. We care about what people whom we find attractive think. A rating of 8 from someone who we rate an 8 is roughly twelve billion times more important than from someone we rate a 2.
I expect radical extension on my natural lifespan given that even currently: "A second, larger study of men in their 70s found that those who avoided smoking, obesity, inactivity, diabetes and high blood pressure greatly improved their chances of living into their 90s. In fact, they had a 54 percent chance of living that long."
and I have several decades of life expectancy continuing to improve just from mundane medical research.
I would be shocked at no brain uploads by 2085.
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Huh? That graph is measuring numbers and percentages of people who don't meet the poverty threshold. That's defined by an estimate that they don't have enough income to meet basic needs such as food and shelter.
the poverty threshold is a much worse metric than looking directly at various parameters for living standards.