Even if money is an issue, it's not that expensive.

Do you think it would be easier for you to untangle your earphones if the cord had a color gradient? Maybe something like the jack end is violet and the bud end is red, and it goes through the entire visible spectrum along the length of the cord. Could also be something like a grayscale gradient. I imagine it making it easier for me to simulate untangling strategies. Surprisingly there are basically no earphones that look like this even merely for aesthetic reasons.

Also, I'm already aware of ways to prevent tangling.

I've been eagerly waiting for the analysis and conclusion to your Magnesium experiment #2 When will that be out?

AI gets it wrong then well that's it.

Not necessarily, depends on your AI and how god-like it is.

In the XIX century you could probably make the same argument about corporations: once one corporation rises above the rest, it will use its power to squash competition and install itself as the undisputed economic ruler forever and ever. The reality turned out to be rather different and not for the lack of trying.

(1) Given: AI risk comes primarily from AI optimizing for things besides human values.

(2) Given: humans already are optimizing for things besides human values. (or, at least besides our Coherent Extrapolated Volition)

(3) Given: Our world is okay.^[CITATION NEEDED!]

(4) Therefore, imperfect value loading can still result in an okay outcome.

This is, of course, not necessarily always the case for any given imperfect value loading. However, our world serves as a single counterexample to the rule that all imperfect optimization will be disastrous.

(5) Given: A maxipok strategy is optimal. ("Maximize the probability of an okay outcome.")

(6) Given: Partial optimization for human values is easier than total optimization. (Where "partial optimization" is at least close enough to achieve an okay outcome.)

(7) ∴ MIRI should focus on imperfect value loading.

Note that I'm not convinced of several of the givens, so I'm not certain of the conclusion. However, the argument itself looks convincing to me. I’ve also chosen to leave assumptions like “imperfect value loading results in partial optimization” unstated as part of the definitions of those 2 terms. However, I’ll try and add details to any specific areas, if questioned.

Elon Musk almost terminated our simulation.

Simulation is a simulation only if everybody is convinced that they are living real life. Bostrom proved that we are most likely live in a simulation, but not much people know about it. Elon Musk tweeted that we live with probability 1000000 to 1 in simulation. Now everybody knows. I think that it was 1 per cent chance that our simulation will terminate after it. It has not happen this time, but there may be some other threshold after which it will be terminated, like finding more proves that we are in a simulation or creation of an AI.

I have heard repeatedly the argument about "calories in, calories out" (e.g. here). Seems to me that there are a few unspoken assumptions, and I would like to ask how true they are in reality. Here are the assumptions:

a) all calories in the food you put in your mouth are digested;

b) the digested calories are either stored as fat or spent as work; there is nothing else that could happen with them;

and in some more strawmanish forms of the argument:

c) the calories are the whole story about nutrition and metabolism, and all calories are fungible.

If we assume these things to be true, it seems like a law of physics that if you count the calories in the food you put in your mouth, and subtract the amount of exercise you do, the result exactly determines whether you gain or lose fat. Taken literally, if a healthy and thin person starts eating an extra apple a day, or starts taking a somewhat shorter walk to their work, without changing anything else, they will inevitably get fat. On the other hand, any fat person can become thin if they just start eating less and/or exercising more. If you doubt this, you doubt the very laws of physics.

It's easy to see how (c) is wrong: there are other important facts about food besides calories, for example vitamins and minerals. When a person has food containing less than optimal amount of vitamins or minerals per calorie, they don't have a choice between being fat or thin, but between being fat or sick. (Or alternatively, changing the composition of their diet, not just the amount.)

Okay, some proponents of "calories in, calories out" may now say that this is obvious, and that they obviously meant the advice to apply to a healthy diet. However, what if the problem is not with the diet per se, but with a way the individual body processes the food? For example, what if the food contains enough vitamins and minerals per calorie, but the body somehow extracts those vitamins and minerals inefficiently, so it reacts even to the optimal diet as if it was junk food? Could it be that some people are forced to eat large amounts of food just to extract the right amount of vitamins and minerals, and any attempt to eat less will lead to symptoms of malnutrition?

Ignoring the (c), we get a weaker variant of "calories in, calories out", which is, approximately -- maybe you cannot always get thin by eating less calories than you spend working; but if you eat more calories than you spend working, you will inevitably get fat.

But it is possible that some of the "calories in (the mouth)" may pass through the digestive system undigested and later excreted? Could people differ in this aspect, perhaps because of their gut flora?

Also, what if some people burn the stored fat in ways we would not intuitively recognize as work? For example, what if some people simply dress less warmly, and spend more calories heating up their bodies? Are there other such non-work ways of spending calories?

In other words, I don't doubt that the "calories in, calories out" model works perfectly for a spherical cow in a vacuum, but I am curious about how much such approximation applies to the real cases.

But even for the spherical cow in a vacuum, this model predicts that any constant lifestyle, unless perfectly balanced, should either lead to unlimited weight gain (if "calories in" exceed "calories out") or unlimited weight loss (in the opposite case). While reality seems to suggest that most people, both thin and fat, keep their weight stable around some specific value. The weight itself has an impact on how much calories people spend simply moving their own bodies, but I doubt that this is sufficient to balance the whole equation.

I used to worry that dysgenesis was leading us towards a world in which everyone was really dumb. That fear has been at least partially alleviated by new research showing that more educated people are having more kids. But now I worry that dysgenesis is leading us towards a world in which everyone is really sick.

Historically, human reproduction used the following strategy: have 6 or 8 kids, and the healthiest 3 or 4 would make it to adulthood. Now couples have 2 or 3 kids, and they almost all make it to adulthood. But that implies that lots of marginally-healthy children are surviving, thanks to medical technology, and so the gene pool is getting less healthy.

Look around you and count the number of people who have some kind of debilitating allergy, chronic illness, or mental health condition. Does it seem scary to you? What if that percentage goes up dramatically in the future, while the conditions themselves also get worse?

Willing to cooperate seems to be low status signaling. E.g., a low status author of an article may try to get higher status person as a coauthor of his article. But higher status author would not try to get low status author as a coauthor. Higher status people could defect with lower punishment, like not return calls or not keep promises. It results in open willingness to cooperate may be regarded as a signal of low status and some people may deliberately not cooperate to demonstrate their higher status. Any thoughts?

I think it is about the don't break the streak thing. Suppose that you decide to run every day, and you do it in the morning every day from Sunday to Thursday, then sleep in and don't have time for it on Friday. Now on Saturday you can either advance the day before your run and have a one day streak, or you can run twice, once before and once after advancing the day and have a seven day streak.