All of BrassLion's Comments + Replies

This is my favorite exchange I have ever read on LessWrong.

I read it, it's a summary of a weekly challenge in Opus Magnum by the author of the challenge, detailing how people managed to beat the author's cycles score and get reasonably close to the theoretical minimum cycles.  As someone who only got about halfway through Opus Magnum, the puzzle and solutions there are wildly complex.

That's definitely not Zachtronics, at least any of the games I've played.  If that game exists it would be pretty awesome - although probably even more niche than Zachtronics games (which weren't too niche to support the makers for a decade+, granted).

Thanks for the answer.  Sad that you never get an answer, although this sort of thing (organizational/personnel changes at the client makes them drop your work / never give feedback) is not uncommon in tech in my experience.

I have the luxury of reading this years after it was posted (going through the D&D.Sci archives and this was linked there), so you may actually have an answer to this question: did the model work?  That is, did your client use it and save/ make money?

You're correct.  I wish we had any sort of tradition that let people with a minor dispute go before some neutral party without expense or bureaucracy - less in the sense of court of extremely small claims, and more that people should be more willing to say to a trusted friend, "hey, resolve this dispute for us and we'll buy you dinner."  Then again, this requires you to both trust the same person, and for neither person to be acting in such bad faith that they refuse the process.  If there's a default place people can go, with very low costs... (read more)

I've seen a bit of this in some organizations I've been part of.  The most important part I see missing is enforcement powers.  If you have a group of excellent and sage judges who can impartially consider the facts but all they can do is issue advisory opinions, all you have is another social bloc taking one side or the other in an interpersonal debate.  You have gossip and the whisper network cosplaying a court of law.  You have nothing.

I have not the first clue how to handle this outside of a formal organization, but solving this in ... (read more)

I want to say that I don't play these, but I love reading them and reading other people play them.

Huh, cool.  Good to have at least one anecdote that you can de (re?) transition and it's just not a huge deal.

I wonder if a proper study of people who took hormones and transitioned socially but de-transitioned fully voluntarily - not because of a medical complication, outside pressure, running out of money etc. but could have fully chosen to continue hormones and didn't - would find this is common.  I wouldn't be surprised, "I tried something for a year or two and it didn't work out" is not uncommon in life.

I am deeply, truly envious that you are able to put "career" in the Yes column for "does it make me happy".  Most people can't. My chart looks more like 50% in important, happy and 40% in important, unhappy, merely by the necessity of making a living.
That 0% in the bottom right corner might be the most important part of the chart, though - getting that number down improves your life for no cost, and a lot of people seem to have numbers there in double digits.

Thanks for posting and explaining the code - that's an interesting, subtle bug.

I think we learn more from Petrov Day when the site goes down than we would if it stayed up, although nothing is ever going to beat the year someone tricked someone into pressing the button by saying they had to press the button to keep the site up.  That was great.

Good point - I'm not sure how to handle that off hand but people have been involved in business ventures where they have put in different amounts of capital for centuries, people could probably figure it out.

If you're, say, roommates in a house that has solar panels, you can do what most people do and split the electricity bill evenly - it's just that, some months, your electricity bill will negative and you'll all get a payout.  If you're in a condo or other situation where you share ownership of the roof and the solar panels with a household with another electrical meter, you'd have to work out sharing the profits/ cost reduction, but you could do it if you wanted to.

>>I haven't seen any mainstream person offer a gear-model that explain why the flu vaccine results in nearly nobody being ill the next day, the COVID-19 vaccines manage to make nearly half ill the next day.
This is actually a really interesting question in its own right!  I think you're both underestimating flu vaccine side effects and overestimating COVID vaccine side effects, but there certainly seems to be more and worse side effects based on a quick search (of popular, not peer reviewed, sources - it was a quick search).  The vaccines ar... (read more)

I will say that lesserwrong is already useful to me, and I'm poking around reading a few things. I haven't been on LessWrong (this site) in a long time before just now, and only got here because I was wondering where this "LesserWrong" site came from. So, at the very least, your efforts are reaching people like me who often read and sometimes change their behavior based on posts, but rarely post themselves. Thanks for the all work you did - the UX end of the new site is much, much better.

This is exactly how conscientiousness feels to me - not wanting to do something but doing so because it's the Correct Action For This Situation. Generally, this applies to things that don't give me a direct, immediate benefit to do, like cleaning up after myself in a common space.

Consequentialism, where morality is viewed through a lens of what happens due to human actions, is a major part of LessWrong. Utilitarianism specifically, where you judge an act by the results, is a subset of consequentialism and not nearly as widely accepted. Virtue Ethics are generally well liked and it's often said around here that "Consequentialism is what's right, Virtue Ethics are what works." I think that practical guide to virtue ethics would be well received.

I am such a worker, and my immediate boss sits literally right behind me. It's mildly uncomfortable, but not really much more uncomfortable than a traditional set of cubicles. It helps that my boss doesn't care if I'm e.g. reading this site instead of working at any given time, as long as I get my work done overall.

I estimate I would have about a 50% increase in work done if I had an office with a door, no increase if my boss was not in the same building and I had an open plan office, and no increase if I had traditional cubes (open plan offices really do make it easier to talk to people if you need to).

To clarify, the definition of the prisoner's dilemma includes it being a one-time game where defecting generates more utility for the defector than cooperating, no matter what the other player chooses.

"One of the current economys problems is also that advertising and such creates otherwise frivoulous needs that prodeucts can be marketed for. "

This is an excellent summation of a point that gets bandied about a lot in certain circles. Do you mind if I shamelessly steal this?

It does seem like these are two mostly unrelated skills - leadership, teamwork, and time management on one hand, and vision, creativity, and drive on the other. They don't really oppose each other except in the general sense that both sets take a long time to learn to do well. There are enough examples of people that are both, or neither, that these don't seem to be a very useful way of carving up reality.

When I read the phrase "adult man's skill set", I immediately thought about carpentry. Did everyone else think about sex, or are there other people that thought this was going to be a post about practical, traditionally manly things?

I think you are thinking about this the wrong way. People become caffeine tolerant quickly, but tolerance goes away pretty quickly too. You would get more benefit out of the opposite approach - spending most of your time without caffeine, but drinking a cup of coffee rarely, when you really need it. You would effectively be caffeine naive most of the time, with brief breaks for caffeine use, and this never develop much of a tolerance. If it's been a long time since that first cup of coffee that you don't remember it, trust me, the effects of caffeine o... (read more)

Just because it would be good for society if people stayed home when they were sick, doesn't mean legislating that would actually have that effect without any drawbacks. Something between the two states seems to be in order.

I've been watching various colds and winter ailments move through my workplace. While I've been doing my part by trying to convince my co-workers that they ought to stay home if they're sick, people still come in when they're sick maybe half the time. At other places I know of, where workers don't get dedicated use-it-or-lose-it sick... (read more)

I've been following Bitcoin for a while with fascination. Are there are reputable exchanges left, or is trading money for cryptocurrency back to being the wild west?

That is absolutely true, although "reasonably" in this case works for average American household income (about 50k) if you don't live in a very high cost of living area. The same techniques that let a middle to high income household (50k+) retire early only let a 30k household make ends meet and save some money to retire comfortably around the "official" age of 65, but that's still much better than most Americans do. His thoughts on hedonic adaptation are pretty much the same as we talk about here (having probably drawn from the same ... (read more)

Mr. Money Mustache is very US centric. YMMV with the investing advice if you are in a country with different tax codes or a smaller stock market with less international exposure. The advice on how to save money is good no matter where you are.

I am a big fan of his. If you want to retire in ten or fifteen years, and yes that's not only possible, but achievable without any major sacrifices, read him. He is someone who has taken what science knows about happiness and really applied it.

"You can't convince anyone of anything using rational argument" is one of those cached thoughts that makes you sound cool and mature but isn't actually true. Rational argument works a hell of a lot worse than smart people think it does, but it works in certain contexts and with certain people enough of the time that it's worth trying sometimes. Even normal people are swayed by facts from time to time.

The Three Laws of Robotics are normally rendered as regular English words, but in-universe they are defined not by words but by mathematics. Asimov's robots don't have "thou shalt not hurt a human" chiseled into their positronic brain, but instead are built from the ground up to have certain moral precepts, summarized for laypeople as the three laws, so built into their cognition that robots with the three laws taken out or modified don't work right, or at all.

Asimov actually gets the whole idea of making AI ethics being hard more than any other... (read more)

For those of you not familiar with the technology, Python is a programming language not know for speed and the Raspberry Pi is a cheap, low-powered computer smaller than your palm.

For those of you familiar with the technology, this is just another reason why Python is amazing.

I wish I had actually applied myself in studying a foreign language instead of putting in the minimum effort to pass. I wish I had studied computer science, it would had accelerated my career by 5 years and CoSci is fun. I wish other people had taken more English classes, because writing clearly is hard and needs to be taught*.

*My alma mater my be unusual in actually teaching clear writing in English classes. I credit the professors involved.

If you think you will be let go from your current position in the near or mid future, start looking for a new job now. I'm not sure whether you will gain anything by disclosing your condition, vs. having the unexplained gap. Don't lie outright, of course. Can you say that you paused your studies to care for your child, without mentioning exactly what's going on? Your plans to return to grad school are a mark in your favor - that could also be a stated reason to switch jobs (i.e., "I want a job that will support me doing night school/ flexible hour... (read more)

I got the shot (for free via my insurance), and it was completely painless. I looked away from my arm to prevent tensing up, and I literally did not feel the needle go in. There was a little soreness later that day, but not much. Worth keeping in mind - getting the shot is not unpleasant.

American Northeast proof: layers, as other posters have said. My strategy is, from bottom to top: sneakers (I don't have boots at the moment), thick socks, long underwear or pajama bottoms, pants, T-shirt, sweater or sweatshirt, waterproof winter jacket, balaclava, beanie or other warm and flexible hat, hood over the hat. This is enough to get you through the coldest day of the year almost everywhere people live, but since I mostly walk between heated building, this lets me strip down to long pants and a T-shirt if I need to.

More to the point, what are you doing that people both know you're wearing long underwear and care about it to any substantial degree?

As Lumifer said, if you sell stocks (and they're up) you pay taxes on the capital gains - the difference between the price of the stock when you bought it and the price now. If the price now is lower, you get a tax credit for the losses, up to a certain point. Capital gains taxes tend to be lower than regular taxes (in America, at least). Selling shares of an index fund works the same way, where you pay taxes only on the gains, so selling stock to buy what is essentially more stock is pretty much a wash - you don't pay more taxes overall, you just pay t... (read more)

(I'd be remiss if I didn't link this Mr. Money Mustache post on index funds that explains why they are a good idea)

To buy an index fund, you buy shares of a mutual fund. That mutual fund invests in every stock in the chosen index, balanced based on whatever criteria they choose. Each share of the mutual fund is worth a portion of the underlying investment. At no point do you own separate stocks - you own shares of the fund, instead.

Toy example: You have an index fund that invests in every stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The fund invests in... (read more)

The "you're interviewing them too" line is absolutely true if you are in a competitive market and are not desperate for a job. If you are unemployed, your best strategy is to get any job in your field, work there for a few months, then start hunting for another job. If you have a job and skills the market values (and thus expect to be able to get multiple job offers in the course of a few months), you can afford to be selective. This means you should not take a job offer unless it's an improvement from your last job, and it's enough of an impr... (read more)

By the second point, do you literally mean it's legal to conscript soldiers (it is in America at least, although starting a draft would be politically impossible absent an immediate existential threat to America as a state), or do you mean that figuratively, in that if we pay soldiers enough, we'll get more volunteers? I'm not sure what point you're making.

I will see if I can find the data on the poor performance and high cost of mercenaries.

Tell me your rough beliefs and I will pigeonhole you. If you want me to, of course. It might lead you towards a school of political thought you'll agree with, or at least enjoy reading about.

What about the practical effects? Correct me if I'm wrong, but explicit mercenaries (like Blackwater) give worse results for vastly more money than normal volunteer (paid) soldiers.

I am with you on the preference for incentivizing people to go in to the military, rather than using conscription. Not being able to conscript more soldiers limits our ambitions to smaller wars against inferior powers. Then again, America seems to have a really good track record fighting giant military machines and great empires (Germany, Great Britain) and a really bad track... (read more)

I downvoted you because I mostly agree - depending on how broadly you mean broadly. I suspect this is a not uncommon position here, and I would not even be surprised if it were a plurality position.

This sounds great, what's it called?

I've read quite a few people that have bribed themselves with food in this way. I should try it out - I love food really way too much, a few extra calories will be worth it. I wonder if I could bribe myself with (very small amounts of) food to exercise?

EDIT: Spelling fix, post should make sense now.

On the wiki, there's no Cambridge MA information, but there is a Boston MA group listed. I assume either the Wiki or this post is out of date - anyone who goes to the Boston or Cambridge meetup want to collapse this waveform* for us?

*I'm aware most people here who know about physics favor many worlds, but a joke about that isn't as snappy.

I took the survey. Very much awaiting the results, although the last question feels like Tragedy of the Commons rather than pure prisoner's dilemma.

Schelling talks about these sorts of games in The Strategy of Conflict, and the treatment is excellent. He goes into a lot of detail about the use of threats and promises, and how two players can try to coordinate a "fair" solution. Games where one player chooses first are actually called a Schelling game, in his honor.