All of Amadeus Pagel's Comments + Replies

If I wanted to see a "quick take" I'd check twitter. I'd rather see more articles without having to click "load more".

Status quo bias is a tendency to be skeptical of change, not an outright rejection. I don't see any reason to assume that this tendency is badly calibrated. I don't think the internet had to overcome that much resistance. At least in the US, early legislation like Section 230 was supportive.  There are also technologies where more skepticism would have been appropriate, like leaded gasoline, and arguably even cars.

You've already mentioned cooking as an example and this is definitely something I'd like to imiprove in. I looked up how to crack eggs: 

How to clip nails: https://www.tiktok.com/@jonijawne/video/7212337177772952838?q=cut%20nails&t=1713988543560

How to improve posture:

I was enthusiastic about the title of this post, hoping for something different from the usual lesswrong content, but disappointed by most of the examples. In my view if you take this idea of learning tacit knowledge with video seriously, it shouldn't affect just how you learn, but what you learn, rather then trying to learn book subjects by watching videos.

1Parker Conley
Thanks for the feedback! I'd be curious to hear more about (1) what subjects you're referring to and (2) how learning tacit knowledge with video has changed your learning habits (if your view here is based on your own experience).
2habryka
If you have recommendations, post them! I doubt the author tried to filter the subjects very much by "book subjects" it's just what people seem to have found good ones so far. 

I think charter cities are a questionable idea, even though I'm pro free markets. It seems that the sort of constitional change and stability required for a charter city is no easier to achieve then the kind of constitutional change and stability required for a free market in the entire country. I don't think trying either in developing countries as an outsider is a good use of anyone's resources.

I think the 1st argument proves too much - I don't think we usually expect simulations to never work unless otherwise proven? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point?

We usually use the term simulation to refer to models that are meant to help us understand something, maybe even to make predictions, but not to replace what is supposed to be simulated.

To keep things brief, the human intelligence explosion seems to require open brain surgery to re-arrange neurons, which seems a lot more complicated than flipping bits in RAM.

Yes, this is one of the many differen... (read more)

Then why not choose the 5 year window?

-4trevor
Because we've clearly been heading towards a recession for months, and jumping up and down by 2% has not been an unusual occurrence. Today, the second trading day since the actually massive drop on thursday, it went up by the usual fluctuation; yet WSJ depicted this as a massive turning point away from a recession, which was clearly deliberately dishonest. The point of this post is that news firms lie, it's obvious, and we should stop wishfully thinking that they don't when it's obvious to anyone with basic experience in the area, and increasingly obvious to people without basic experience in the area. Hence, the meme format (for this particular instance).

You've selected the YTD (year to date) tab here. If you look at the 1D (today) tab, you see that the S&P indeed went up today.

4Vaniver
I think the point is "a focus on daily fluctuations obscures slower, more important trends"; i.e. it's not a disagreement about which facts are true but which facts are most relevant.

Meta: Anonymity would make it easier to ask dumb questions.

You can use this and I'll post the question anonymously (just remember to give the context of why you're filling in the form since I use it in other places)

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSca6NOTbFMU9BBQBYHecUfjPsxhGbzzlFO5BNNR1AIXZjpvcw/viewform

Agreed. Humans are constantly optimizing a reward function, but it sort of 'changes' from moment to moment in a near-focal way, so it often looks irrational or self-defeating, but once you know what the reward function is, the goal-directedness is easy to see too.


Doesn't this become tautological? If the reward function changes from moment to moment, then the reward function can just be whatever explains the behaviour.

2mako yass
Since everything can fit into the "agent with utility function" model given a sufficiently crumpled utility function, I guess I'd define "is an agent" as "goal-directed planning is useful for explaining a large enough part of its behavior." This includes humans while discluding bacteria. (Hmm unless, like me, one knows so little about bacteria that it's better to just model them as weak agents. Puzzling.)

Would humans, or organizations of humans, make more progress towards whatever goals they have, if they modified themselves to become a utility maximizer? If so, why don't they? If not, why would an AGI?

What would it mean to modify oneself to become a utility maximizer? What would it mean for the US, for example? The only meaning I can imagine is that one individual - for the sake of argument we assume that this individual is already an utility maximizer - enforces his will on everyone else. Would that help the US make more progress towards its goals? Do countries that are closer to utility maximizers, like North Korea, make more progress towards their goals?

2TAG
Efficiency at utility maximisation , like any other kind of efficiency relates to available resources. One upshot of that an entity might already be doing as well as it realistically can, given its resources. Another is that humans don't necessarily benefit from rationality training...as also suggested by the empirical evidence. Edit: Another is that a resource rich but inefficient entity can beat a small efficient one, so efficiency,.AKA utility maximization , doesn't always win out.
3James_Miller
A human seeking to become a utility maximizer would read LessWrong and try to become more rational.  Groups of people are not utility maximizers as their collective preferences might not even be transitive.  If the goal of North Korea is to keep the Kim family in bother then the country being a utility maximizer does seem to help.