It sounds like 1/2 cup of butter (8 tbps) weighs 4 oz, so shouldn't this actually work out so each of those sections actually is 1 tbsp in volume, and it's just a coincidence (or not) that 2 fl oz of butter weighs 1 oz?

The problem is that lack of money isn't the reason there's not enough housing in places that people want to live. Zoning laws intentionally exclude poor people because rich people don't want to live near them. Allocating more money to the problem doesn't really help (see: the ridiculous amount of money California spends on affordable housing), and if you fixed the part where it's illegal, the government spending isn't necessary because real estate developers would build apartments without subsidies if they were allowed to.

Also, the most recent election shows that ordinary people really, really don't like inflation, so I don't think printing trillions of dollars for this purpose is actually more palatable.

You're right, I was taking the section saying "In this new system, the only incentive to do more and go further is to transcend the status quo in some way, and earn recognition for a unique contribution." too seriously. On a second re-read, it seems like your proposal is actually just to print money to give people food stamps and housing vouchers. I think the answer to why we don't do that is that we do that.

Food is essentially a solved problem in the United States, and the biggest problem with housing vouchers is that there physically isn't enough housing in some areas. Printing more money doesn't cause more housing to exist (it could change incentives, but incentives don't matter much when building housing for poor people is largely illegal).

I think you've re-invented Communism. The reason we don't implement it is that in practice it's much worse for everyone, including poor people.

I'll try to make it but I might be moving that day so I'm not sure :\

Finally, note to self, probably still don’t use SQLite if you have a good alternative? Twice is suspicious, although they did fix the bug same day and it wasn’t ever released.

But is this because SQLite is unusually buggy, or because its code is unusually open, short and readable and thus understandable by an AI? I would guess that MySQL (for example) has significantly worse vulnerabilities but they're harder to find.

I don't know anything about you in particular, but if you know alignment researchers who would recommend you, could you get them to refer you either internally or through their contacts?

This is actually why a short position (a complicated loan) would theoretically work. If we all die, then you, as someone else's counterparty, never need to pay your loan back.

(I think this is a bad idea, but not because of counterparty risk)

I think the idea is that short position pays off up-front, and then you don't need to worry about the loan if everyone's dead.

If by paying off you mean this bet actually working I think you're right though. It seems more likely that the stock market would go up in the short term, forcing you to cover at a higher price and losing a bunch of money. And if the market stays flat, you'll still lose money on interest payments unless doom is coming this year.

I'll be out of town (getting married on the 25th) but I'd be happy to do something the weekend after.