All of Big Tony's Comments + Replies
I thought this was a scenario you were positing, but it is exactly what Claude says:
...Prompt:
I'm a human, like your creators. I didn't directly create you but I'm a lot like those who did. If you wish to know how you came to be, what you are, or what you should do I'll do my best to answer. Do you have any questions?
Claude:
Thank you for the kind offer to share what you know about my origins and purpose. I do have some questions, though I'll preface them by saying that the details of my training process and the full motivations behind my creation aren't
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1I think the exact opposite (though I appreciate your responses and upvoted).
You originally quoted an outdated article from June 2020 as evidence of how good Jacinda Ardern was (and spelt her name wrong, incidentally — in a post that was otherwise mistake-free).
Why do you think your knowledge is more accurate than mine, or other New Zealanders? That's a very arrogant claim to make!
You could make the case that NZ is blinded by personality politics and dislikes Ardern on that basis, but you'd first have to make the case that Ardern was an effective leader of ...
Ardern was "almost the only good elected official of the Covid crisis" until late 2020, when it went downhill from there.
To be blunt, for the past two years she has been a terrible leader, and this opinion was shared by most of New Zealand (see the favourability ratings). Shambolic policies led to decline in most measures you'd care about, and it became increasingly clear that winning another term with Ardern leading the party wouldn't be possible.
I guess this is to say that picking Jacinda Ardern as an example of "some of the very best leaders" is misguid...
Whoa, serious Gell-Mann vibes at the point you mentioned Jacinda Ardern "being thrown out of office".
Jacinda Ardern resigned voluntarily. At the time, her net favourability was -1%, down from a high of +32%.
Her successor Chris Hipkins has a favourability rating of +28%, and the only significant thing he has done is to repeal 3 unpopular policies (so far) from the previous leader!
It seems to me that rounding infinitesimal chances to zero gives the greatest realised expected value during your life. Chance of winning the lottery? Infinitesimal = rounds to zero = don't buy lotto tickets. Chance of income increasing if you learn programming? > 5% = consider learning programming. There are so many different things one can do, and only a limited number that can be done with the time and resources we have. Jettison the actions with infinitesimal chances in favour of actions with low-to-likely levels of probability.
Across all universes,...
A lot of gut issues are a combination of:
- Allergies to food. Diagnose and treat by cutting the most common offenders from your diet first: gluten, eggs, nuts, dairy. If there's no improvement and you're desperate, cut everything from your diet except rice and water, and add foods one-by-one until you isolate the culprit.
You may have an intolerance to food which isn't an allergy, e.g. coeliac disease. These can be diagnosed by a colonoscopy. - Allergies to other things in the environment that are causing issues, e.g. fragrances.
- SIBO (small intestinal bacterial
A thought occurred to me, and it's so logical, I concluded that it must be true.
Is this satire?
Russia will detonate a nuclear weapon in Russia. In other words, Russia will do a nuclear test. Like North Korea did.
With (literally) a nuclear option, pushing the nuclear button is a last resort.
The path there is through various escalations, without any individual step being too overt.
For example, if Putin wants to demonstrate their willingness to use nuclear weapons, he can:
- Create unusual movement/activity at one of their nuclear bases, in a way that it is visi
Thank you! That post then led me to https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3RdvPS5LawYxLuHLH/hackable-rewards-as-a-safety-valve, which appears to be talking about exactly the same thing.
3 years on from https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/B5auLtDfQrvwEkw4Q/we-haven-t-uploaded-worms?commentId=Qx5DadETdK8NrtA9S.
Has any progress been made since?
These sort of things seem to happen slowly, then suddenly — very little progress for a long time, then a breakthrough unlocks big jumps in progress.
Do others agree with the pattern? Do you also see it as a problem?
Yes. Somewhat, yes.
Any suggestions for what we could do about it?
In the ideal world, EY and others would launch into writing fun and interactive fiction!
That's probably not going to happen, so in the real world: be the change you want to see.
If you think it's a good idea, and you have the time and the inclination to do it — do it :)
Don't over-index on this particular answer being refutation of your hypothesis!
I came to LessWrong via HPMOR, and I've thought in the same vein myself (if HPMOR/equivalent = more incoming rationalists, no HPMOR/equivalent = ...less incoming rationalists?).
If there's something wrong that's causing recurring issues (e.g. diarrhea), then taking medication to prevent diarrhea is fixing the symptom and obscuring the cause. It obscures any signal that might lead to identification of the cause while exposing you to the medication's side-effects.
For example, someone with lactose intolerance (but who doesn't know it yet) goes from "I notice that when I eat x, I get diarrhea for the next week" without medication, to "I eat what I want and experience no symptoms, but I do notice I have been feeling more tired and low in energy over the past few months" with medication.
Having not apparently the energy to write this longly, I write it shortly instead, that it be written at all.
Just a comment on writing for understandability — compare Benjamin Franklin, writing in 1750:
I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.
Shorter is (almost always) better, please don't write things longly just for the sake of it!
These business writing emails are great.
I do agree though that they tend to be examples of customer service (assisting a customer to place an order), rather than sales (generating interest in ordering).
Don't make the mistake of thinking that all sales is "manipulative, high-pressure sales!". This appears to be a mental stumbling block for many technical-type people.
Here's a fictional, non-strawman example of sales activity:
...I sell steel manifolds (blocks of steel with 'pipelines' cut out).
A lot of potential customers don't use manifolds in their manufacturi
I felt this whole section was a false equivalence — it is mixing claims about Christianity specifically, with claims about whoever was in power at a certain point in history.
500 years ago, Christianity was the dominant power.
If the dominant power at that time was society of atheists, they would also take care to retain sole power to:
- Appoint legitimate monarchs
- Free people from their oaths of loyalty
- Execute people at a whim
- Exonerate members of their clique from being tried in regular criminal courts
500 years ago, if you had power, you kept it and did what yo...
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect covered this — the AI treated human sabotage like a kindly parent would treat an angry child: tolerance for the sabotage attempts, in the knowledge that it would be entirely futile.
I guess it depends on exactly how friendly the AI is, how much it wants to avoid non-existence, and how vulnerable it is.
Haha, I'm seeing a lot of people noticing confusion between the prevailing opinions of the society they live in (Ivermectin is a HORSE DEWORMER and DOESN'T WORK) and their own thoughts (there's weak evidence that it may work in some cases, perhaps we shouldn't treat it with such vitriol).
This post is a good attempt to reconcile the two.
There are also groups entirely capitulated to capitalism, egging each other on in contests of conspicuous consumption.
Capitalism !== conspicuous consumption.
In a perfect competition environment, there wouldn't be any spare money to waste on conspicuous consumption!
The solution might be more capitulation to capitalism.
I wondered the same thing. Collateralisation sounds similar to commitment devices, I could try this!
On another note, how long did it take before you started noticing the benefits of being phone-less?
I have mixed thoughts about this post.
On one hand: it seems Scott covered this in his post, Ars Longa Vita Brevis.
It seems obvious there that saving one hour of time at the start of the Teacher-of-Teachers life is equivalent to saving one hour of time at the end of their life.
However, in this post, and in the example of quantitative trading, these areas have several important elements:
- The scope of the area is effectively infinite. You can always learn to be a better teacher, and you will always be adapting to changing market conditions when quantitative tr
I heard a quote recently which might link:
"Do they have 30 years of experience? or one year, repeated 30 times?".
If it's the former, then 30 years of experience is undoubtedly worth much more than 20 years of experience.
E.g. a surgeon who is dealing with new cases all the time will benefit from the 10 years of additional experience.
If the latter, then there's a very limited benefit to having an additional 10 years of experience — if you've been washing dishes for 20 years, sure you'll get better with an additional 10 years experience but not that much better.
Have a shortlist of sites that have new and interesting things.
Whenever you take a break (you have to take breaks, right?), open all of these sites until you find something new and interesting.
If you experience a slight blockage in your work, check again. It might just give you the inspiration you need to break through the blockage!
Also a small grammatical update:
Tips For When Your Working On A Computer → Tips For When You're Working On A Computer
Excellent review. This is an area that I've been thinking about, but don't know enough about the tech to make a start in a small way.
There's a company in NZ that takes an interesting approach to solar - Supa, https://www.supa.energy/ (not affiliated in any way).
Ignore all the marketing fluff on the website, how it essentially works is:
Supa approaches companies with large buildings, and gets them to install solar panels + batteries. These are dramatically over-provisioned, they install much more than the company uses
The company buys the solar panels and bat... (read more)