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All of eye96458's Comments + Replies

eye9645830

Quantum mechanics is pretty well established, and we may suppose that it describes everything (at least, in low gravitational fields). Given that, pointing at a thing and saying "quantum mechanics!" adds no new information.

Are you making this argument?

  • P1: Quantum mechanics is well established.
  • P2: Quantum mechanics describes everything in low gravitational fields.
  • C1: So, calling a thing a “quantum system” doesn’t convey any information.
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2Richard_Kennaway
I wouldn't state P1 and P2 as dogmatically as that, but rounding the uncertainty off to zero, yes. If everything is known to be described by quantum mechanics, pointing at something and saying "this is described by quantum mechanics" adds no new information.
eye9645830

First of all, if everything is mathematically equivalent to an EU maximizer, then saying that something is an EU maximizer no longer represents meaningful knowledge, since it no longer distinguishes between fiction and reality.

I’m confused about your claim. For example, I can model (nearly?) everything with quantum mechanics, so then does calling something a quantum mechanical system not confer meaningful knowledge?

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3[anonymous]
There are physical models which are not based on Quantum Mechanics, and are in fact incompatible with it. For example, to a physicist in the 19th century, a world that functioned on the basis of (very slight modifications of) Newtonian Mechanics and Classical E&M would have seemed very plausible. The fact that reality turned out not to be this way does not imply the physical theory was internally inconsistent, but rather that it was incompatible with empirical observations that eventually led to the creation of the QM theory. So the point is that you cannot actually model nearly everything in conceptspace with QM, it's just that reality turns out to be well-approximated by it, while (realistic) fiction like Newtonian Mechanics is not (for example, at the atomic & subatomic level). This is what makes calling something a QM system an example of meaningful knowledge: it approximates reality better than it does something that is not real, exactly part of Your Strength as a Rationalist. By contrast, whatever story I give you, true or not, can be viewed as flowing from the Texas Sharpshooter Utility Function in exactly the same way that you said reality does: So the fact that you "know" something is an EU maximizer, under OP's definition of that term (which, as I mentioned above, is confused and confusing), does not constrain your expectations in any meaningful way because it does not rule out future world-states (because both true and false predictions are equally compatible with the EU process, as described). By contrast, knowing something follows QM principles does constrain expectations significantly, as we can design self-consistent models and imagined future world-states which do not follow it (as I mentioned above). For example, the quantization of energy levels, the photoelectric effect, quantum tunneling, quantum entanglement, the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, specific predictions about the spectra of atoms and molecules, etc., are all prediction
2Richard_Kennaway
Actually no. Quantum mechanics is pretty well established, and we may suppose that it describes everything (at least, in low gravitational fields). Given that, pointing at a thing and saying "quantum mechanics!" adds no new information. That is not a model. An actual model would allow making predictions about the thing, or at least calculating (not merely fitting to) known properties. There aren't all that many systems we can do that for. The successes of quantum mechanics, which are many, are found in the systems simple enough that we can.
Thought Experiments Website
eye9645840

There is also this (incredibly well known?) website where (among other things) you can try to stay alive on a trip to Mars.

edit: And there is also No Vehicles in the Park.

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1minmi_drover
Thanks, I'll add these to the More page!
quila's Shortform
eye9645820

Does the preference forming process count as thinking?  If so, then I suspect that my desire to communicate that I am deep/unique/interesting to my peers is a major force in my preference for fringe and unpopular musical artists over Beyonce/Justin Bieber/Taylor Swift/etc.  It's not the only factor, but it is a significant one AFAICT.

And I've also noticed that if I'm in a social context and I'm considering whether or not to use a narcotic (eg, alcohol), then I'm extremely concerned about what the other people around me will think about me abstain... (read more)

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Lucius Bushnaq's Shortform
eye9645832

I think the way LLMs work might not be well described as having key internal gears or having an at-all illuminating python code sketch.

What motivates your believing that?

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eye96458's Shortform
eye9645800

Would anyone like to have a conversation where we can intentionally practice pursuit of truth? (eg, ensure that we can pass eachother ITTs, avoid strawmanning, look for cruxes, etc)

I'm open to considering a wide range of propositions and questions, for example:

  • What speech, if any, should be prohibited in high schools?
  • Why don't universities do more explicit rationality training?
  • Is death a harm?
  • Under what conditions are centrally planned economies better than market economies?
  • Is monarchy superior to democracy?
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80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly)
eye9645810

I'd define "genuine safety role" as "any qualified person will increase safety faster that capabilities in the role". I put ~0 likelihood that OAI has such a position. The best you could hope for is being a marginal support for a safety-based coup (which has already been attempted, and failed).

"~0 likelihood" means that you are nearly certain that OAI does not have such a position (ie, your usage of "likelihood" has the same meaning as "degree of certainty" or "strength of belief")?  I'm being pedantic because I'm not a probability expert and AFAIK "l... (read more)

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1Elizabeth
  The cheap answer here is 0, because I don't think there is any position where that level of skill and belief in AIXR has a 90% chance of increasing net safety. Ability to do meaningful work in this field is rarer than that. So the real question is how does OpenAI compare to other possibilities? To be specific, let's say being an LTFF-funded solo researcher, academia, and working at Anthropic. Working at OpenAI seems much more likely to boost capabilities than solo research and probably academia. Some of that is because they're both less likely to do anything. But that's because they face OOM less pressure to produce anything, which is an advantage in this case. LTFF is not a pressure- or fad-free zone, but they have nothing near the leverage of paying someone millions of dollars, or providing tens of hours each week surrounded by people who are also paid millions of dollars  to believe they're doing safe work.  I feel less certain about Anthropic. It doesn't have any of terrible signs OpenAI did (like the repeated safety exoduses, the board coup, and clawbacks on employee equity), but we didn't know about most of those a year ago. If we're talking about a generic skilled and concerned person, probably the most valuable thing they can do is support someone with good research vision. My impression is that these people are more abundant at Anthropic than OpenAI, especially after the latest exodus, but I could be wrong. This isn't a crux for me for the 80k board[1] but it is a crux for how much good could be done in the role. Some additional bits of my model: * I doubt OpenAI is going to tell a dedicated safetyist they're off the safety team and on direct capabilities. But the distinction is not always obvious, and employees will be very motivated to not fight OpenAI on marginal cases. * You know those people who stand too close, so you back away, and then they move closer? Your choices in that situation are to steel yourself for an intense battle, accept t
80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly)
eye9645810

Can I request tabooing the phrase "genuine safety role" in favor of more detailed description of the work that's done?

I suspect that would provide some value, but did you mean to respond to @Elizabeth?

I was just trying to use the term as a synonym for "actual safety role" as @Elizabeth used it in her original comment.

There's broad disagreement about which kinds of research are (or should count as) "AI safety", and what's required for that to succeed. 

This part of your comment seems accurate to me, but I'm not a domain expert.

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80,000 hours should remove OpenAI from the Job Board (and similar EA orgs should do similarly)
eye9645821

Can you clarify what you mean by "completely unjustified"?  For example, if OpenAI says "This role is a safety role.", then in your opinion, what is the probability that the role is a genuine safety role?

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3Buck
IMO "this role is a safety role" isn't that strong evidence of the role involving research aimed at catastrophic AI risk, but the rest of the description of a particular role probably does provide pretty strong evidence.
Elizabeth114

I'd define "genuine safety role" as "any qualified person will increase safety faster that capabilities in the role". I put ~0 likelihood that OAI has such a position. The best you could hope for is being a marginal support for a safety-based coup (which has already been attempted, and failed).

There's a different question of "could a strategic person advance net safety by working at OpenAI, more so than any other option?". I believe people like that exist, but they don't need 80k to tell them about OpenAI. 

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2Eli Tyre
Hm. Can I request tabooing the phrase "genuine safety role" in favor of more detailed description of the work that's done? There's broad disagreement about which kinds of research are (or should count as) "AI safety", and what's required for that to succeed. 
Honest science is spirituality
eye9645810

I don't think science is a good framework for non-scientific things. If you wrap spirituality in science, you kill whatever substance you had by reducing it to something mundane and mechanical.

I find it somewhat difficult to understand exactly what you mean here and in the rest of the comment.  Could you maybe define the terms "science", "spirituality" and "non-scientific things" as you are using them here?

What you seek is joy, fulfillment and wisdom, so why not aim at that directly? Using science to fix the problems that science caused feels a bit li

... (read more)
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1StartAtTheEnd
I think that science is a way of thinking and a way of doing things, as well as a way of encoding something else. If I were to describe a beautiful painting just in writing alone, then I would have encoded the image in text, reducing something visual to something linguistic. But in that process, the image would be completely destroyed, so this "encoding" is impossible. Likewise, if I define science, the definition would be a pointer at best, and not science itself. My understanding of spirituality is something like psychological well-being and tacit knowledge and wisdom. This is rather vague perhaps, but communicating wisdom is inherently difficult, and the text is only, at best, a pointer. If you replace your intuition of substance (like your personal experience of love) with your scientific understanding (that love is 'merely' chemical reactions), your brain might lose faith in its own experience, regard it as empty, or destroy the subjective value associated with it. What I'm describing here is how the mind relate to its own sensory inputs, ideas and associations, which are all more fundamental to your brain than your conscious beliefs (for instance, even if you believe that a phobia of yours is irrational, your mind may still believe it). I think science can be used to the extent that it can help, but that people often consider science to be universal, or attempt to "encode" everything as science so that they feel at home working with the problem (when the only tool you have is a hammer... ). If your aim is well-being, then well-being should have a higher priority than science. Too often, I see that people are unhappy, unfulfilled, and unwise because their perspective on life is too objective, too logical, and too rigid. These characteristics apply to logic and math and scientific thought, but not to human life. You may miss this if you think that math and logic are more fundamental than life, or that things are only "real" if they can be encoded and reasoned
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645850

This is most homeless!  Most people who are homeless are not homeless long.  The majority, the vast majority, are on the come up.  Never forget it.

I hadn't realized that was the case.  Do you have any good data on this?

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4WalterL
It's mostly anecdotal from my experience, I'm afraid.  That is, my conviction went the 'wrong way'.  When I was poor, that's what I saw, then later articles mostly seemed to agree, rather than the data making me believe something and then experience confirming. I looked up noahpinion's 'everything you know about homelessness is wrong' article, which I remember as basically getting stuff right.  There is a citation link for 'the vast majority of homelessness is temporary and the vast majority of homeless people just need housing', but it is broken.  womp womp. The first link on searching 'homelessness is temporary' on google goes to What Are the Four Types of Homelessness? | Comic Relief US , where they don't give a hard number beyond saying that most homelessness is temporary.  We can get it in reverse, though, in that 'chronic homelessness' is described as 17%, which would make non chronic homelessness 83%. Homing in on 'chronic homelessness' seems worthwhile, if that's the terminology we might find more useful stuff that way. State of Homelessness: 2023 Edition - endhomelessness.org has the hopeful link 'homelessness statistics'.  They cite 421,392 'homeless people' and 127,768 'chronic homeless'. Endhomelessness.org gives us: Chronically Homeless - National Alliance to End Homelessness where they describe chronic homelessness as about 22% of the homeless population. Addressing Chronic Homelessness | The Homeless Hub gives us 2-4% of the homeless being chronically homeless in canada, vs 10% in the US. I tried to google the opposite 'homelessness is permanent', 'homelessness is not temporary', etc, but the verbiage doesn't work that way.  I couldn't find any results for most homeless being forever homeless, but even in a reality where that was true, I'm not sure I would.  
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645812

I think East Asian islands have a combination of 1 and 2.  In Taiwan, the 30-40 year boom saw most people getting a piece of the pie.  Few are desperate enough to resort to violent crimes.  Does this seem reasonable?

It looks to me like here you are saying "Reducing the number of impoverished people causes a reduction in violent crime."  I believe this proposition is at least plausible.  But isn't it a quite different claim from "Reducing the amount of wealth disparity causes a reduction in violent crime."?

Specifically, the number o... (read more)

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The Xerox Parc/ARPA version of the intellectual Turing test: Class 1 vs Class 2 disagreement
eye9645870

Did Taylor have any techniques for trying to increase the number of Type 2 disagreements and decrease the number of Type 1 disagreements among his staff?

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Secondary forces of debt
eye9645840

You should consider attending law school, I guess. 

Sure, that's one option, but requires a lot of time.

There's a LARGE body of contract and debt-collection law and precedent, and relatedly, inheritance and probate law.

I have no doubt that this is true.  Are you aware of a good short introduction?

It's worth reading your credit card or mortgage agreement to get a sense of it.

I agree with you, but I've already done this.

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4jmh
I think you're making a really large ask when one can do a simple google search to get a good start. One could also just access one of the several LLM available online, pose the question and work through some subsequent questions with the LLM. However, in light of being helpful and making positive and not just negative contributions I think you'll find this goole search link of immediate help in getting started on answering your own questions.
Secondary forces of debt
eye9645810

Sorry that I wasn't clear.

I want to know which laws and judicial precedents are most relevant to the situation that you are describing.

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3Dagon
You should consider attending law school, I guess.  There's a LARGE body of contract and debt-collection law and precedent, and relatedly, inheritance and probate law.  It's worth reading your credit card or mortgage agreement to get a sense of it.
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645820

Again, this is a general point. One can bring in additional details to support the claim that the existing outcome is optimal or to support the claim that it is not optimal. But that was the point of my comment. We cannot just start with market outcome and claim success.

You've convinced me that my initial comment was mistaken in another way.  Specifically, if I haven't specified an objective (eg, less than 150 incidents of people shitting in San Francisco streets each year, or, every point in San Francisco is within .25 miles of at least 4 free to use... (read more)

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Secondary forces of debt
eye9645860

In most real-world formal debts, disappearance of the debtor or creditor does not void the debt.  If Bob disappears, Alice collects from Bob's estate.  If Alice disappears, Alice's heirs collect from Bob.

That seems interesting to me.  I presume this is the case in large part because of some combination of laws and judicial precedents.  So, exactly what legal things are involved here?

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2Dagon
I'm not sure I understand your question.  In the modern world, financial debt exists entirely in the world of laws and judicial precedents.  Informal or non-monetary debts probably don't have the legal system at their root, but they almost all will have evolved different ways of handling the "disappear or make your lender disappear" strategy.
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645870

Taking a step back, let me just grant that people shitting in the streets is good evidence that the current price of using a bathroom is too high for some people who would, all else equal, rather use a bathroom than shit in the streets (So, insofar that my original comment suggested that the cost of using the bathroom was cheap enough that anyone who wanted to shit could afford to use a bathroom, I am retracting it.).

And if one's goal is to reduce the amount of shitting in the streets, then reducing the cost of using the bathroom is a good strategy.  ... (read more)

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2jmh
If the lens of public goods is not helpful then perhaps look at positive externalities. The two are fairly closely related with regard to the question you're asking about. Tyler Cowan's blurb (scroll down a littel) on Public Goods and Externalities notes how markets will under produce goods with positive external effects. Again, this is a general point. One can bring in additional details to support the claim that the existing outcome is optimal or to support the claim that it is not optimal. But that was the point of my comment. We cannot just start with market outcome and claim success.
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645820

Okay, I think you've convinced me that there are important ways in which pay toilets might offer a better service than cafe bathrooms.

(I suspect that I was getting myself confused by sort of insisting/thinking "But if everything is exactly the same (, except one of the buildings also sells coffee), then everything is exactly the same!" Which is maybe nearby to some true-ish statements, but gets in the way of thinking about the differences between using a pay toilet and a cafe bathroom.)

(Also, I share your view that bathrooms are excludable and therefore no... (read more)

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I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

I'm following up here after doing some reading about public goods.

Public goods are (broadly speaking) better served through intervention by a central authority such as a government. As such, correctly identifying something as a public good helps explain why the (private) market has not provided a socially optimal quantity of that good.

I'm inclined to believe that bathrooms are excludable (because, for example, an entrepreneur can just put a lock on the bathroom that will only open after a credit card swipe/payment) and so are not public goods.  Am I getting this wrong?

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I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

I want to clarify a few things before trying to respond substantively.

The most obvious one, and perhaps directly revelant here, is the concept of effective demand - in a market setting those without the money to buy goods or services lack any effective demand. I would concede that alone is not sufficient (or necessary) to reject the claim. But it does point to a way markets do fail to allocate resources to arguably valuable ends. But effective demand failures often produce social and governmental incentives to provide the effective demand for those without

... (read more)
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2jmh
While I think you can get to my point with either of the links, a lot more is going on in those links that will confuse and complicate the path. The simple point is that without available resources (typically money) to bid for additionaly output one simply has no way to bid resouces away from other production/uses and increase output of X (here public toilets) in a market. In a pure sense public goods only exist in theory. But there are good that seem to behave a lot like the theoretical good. Looking at a situation through the lens of public goods then provides some useful insights. In this case, the idea of public bathrooms is all about making toilets available to anyone in the area who needs one. In other words it really is not about specific bathroom/toilets but toilet services where one will be available to anyone needing it rather than them needing to use the alley or pay for access.  So if some are shitting in the alleys, and they are not doing so even when they could have used a toilet, then seems the view that current market equalibrium might be off. The two points above just point to reasons why it might be off. Note, that doesn't mean it is, it's generally understood that the social equalibrium is not expected to be a 0 (be it polution, or people shitting on the street) solution. We should not assume what is is what should be. Homeless people may have narrow interests but they have no direct political infulence generally; they cannot do lobbying well and don't represent a concentrated voting block (probably cannot vote at all lacking a home address). The general public is not a narrow, well organized group that wants to eliminate shitting in the alley by providing increased levels of toilet services. So in some way the poltical eonomy equalibrium is some shitting in the alley, and the (to me at least) kind of obvious under provision of some public good (which might be public toilets, cleaner streets and healthier envionments)
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

I think in general it's mostly 1); obviously "infinite perfect bathroom availability everywhere" isn't a realistic goal, so this is about striking a compromise that is however more practical than the current situation.

Then I believe that I understand your previous comment, so I'm going to respond to your proposed solutions.

Now one possible solution would be to have "public bathroom" as a business. Nowadays you could allow entrance with a credit card (note that this doesn't solve the homeless thing, but it addresses most people's need). But IMO this isn't a

... (read more)
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I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645832

Lower wealth disparity also results in lower crime, particularly lower violent crimes. 

Is your claim that reducing wealth disparity causes violent crime reduction, or just that smaller wealth disparity is correlated with lower violent crime rates?  If the former, then I'm quite interested in reading your epistemic justification for it.

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1Jiao Bu
"Violent crimes of desperation increase because of greater wealth disparity" seems sensible.  The greater wealth disparity being the cause of the desperation that instigates the crimes.  The OP here is about vast wealth disparity causing social deviance, in some sense. However, "In a situation where wealth is more equitably distributed, there are fewer crimes of desperation" seems like they could both be coming from the same font of "Our society is good and cares about its people and takes good care of them."  The OP of this thread is also about this. "Violent crime is causing greater wealth disparity" makes sense only in places where warlords, drug kingpins, or oligarchic criminals are building empires. I think East Asian islands have a combination of 1 and 2.  In Taiwan, the 30-40 year boom saw most people getting a piece of the pie.  Few are desperate enough to resort to violent crimes.  Does this seem reasonable?  Perhaps especially compared to places like the USA or increasingly Europe where you have a sizable portion of people who do not get their fair share of the pie in exchange for their life's time, with resulting despair, desperation, and etc...
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

Thanks for providing this detailed account of your reasoning.  I understand most of what you are saying, but I'm a little confused about the first two paragraphs.

On one hand, obviously going to the bathroom, sometimes in random circumstances, is an obvious universal necessity. It is all the more pressing for people with certain conditions that make it harder for them to control themselves for long. So it's important that bathrooms are available, quickly accessible, and distributed reasonably well everywhere. I would also argue it's important that they

... (read more)
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2dr_s
I think in general it's mostly 1); obviously "infinite perfect bathroom availability everywhere" isn't a realistic goal, so this is about striking a compromise that is however more practical than the current situation. For things like these honestly I am disinclined to trust private enterprise too much - especially if left completely unregulated - but am willing to concede that it's not my main value. Obviously I wouldn't want the sidewalk to be entirely crowded out by competing paid chemical toilets though, that solves one problem but creates another. Since the discussion here started around homelessness, and homeless people obviously wouldn't be able to pay for private bathrooms (especially if these did the obvious thing for convenience and forgo coins in exchange for some kind of subscription service, payment via app, or such), I think the best solution would be free public bathrooms, and I think they would "pay themselves" in terms of gains in comfort and cleanliness for the people living in the neighborhood. They should be funded locally of course. Absent that though, sure, I think removing some barriers to private suppliers of paid for bathroom services would still be better than this.
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

But it is not the only relevant consideration: often times, people do not reason on the basis of stand-alone monetary considerations, but also in terms of other, more ineffable concepts, such as principles or values.

I roughly agree.  (Although, values are always involved in decision making, right? Or maybe you believe that value, as in, don't steal, and value, as in, I'd rather spend money on XBox games than a jet ski, are different sorts of things and you just mean the first sort here.)

In this specific case, I believe there are a lot of people that w

... (read more)
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I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

By "original comment" are you referring to "This, and how completely unrelated specifically the "buy a coffee" thing is. It makes no sense that to satisfy need A I have to do unrelated thing B."?  I actually took that as to be about the individual problem, so that may explain some of our failure to get on the same page.  But, looking at the comment again now, the rest of it does seem to me to be more about the systematic problem, "The private version of the solution would be bathrooms I can pay to use, and those happen sometimes, but they're not ... (read more)

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I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645800

I do agree that the mere fact "markets" are not providing some quantity of publicly accessable bathrooms is hardly an argument that we have a good equalibrium quantity -- or even a good nominal/social want quantity.

Would you provide your reasoning for this?  I'm interested in understanding it.

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2jmh
[This will not be well detailed but hope provides a sense of why I made the claim.] The most obvious one, and perhaps directly revelant here, is the concept of effective demand - in a market setting those without the money to buy goods or services lack any effective demand. I would concede that alone is not sufficient (or necessary) to reject the claim. But it does point to a way markets do fail to allocate resources to arguably valuable ends. But effective demand failures often produce social and governmental incentives to provide the effective demand for those without resources to pay themselves. I think one can see two lines of though pointing towards under provision when considering social/government responses to the presense of ineffective demand. The standard economic market failure of under provision of public goods. The other is the issue of narrow and broad insterest in how government/public funds get spent. It's not clear to me how strong any narrow interest for increasing public toilets are in terms of driving that spending. I don't think the public good -> under provision (outside some expected range of what a proper market equalibrium should produce) is something one just assumes. Would have to look into things more closely. But the same holds for the "we have markets so it's all good" type argument too. As is generally the case, the devil is in the details and not the general propositions.
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645830

I tried to stipulate that I was not proposing barista tips as a solution to the "on-going and systematic" problem, specifically I said, "And I realize that just you and I tipping instead of buying is entirely insufficient for solving the resource misallocation problem."

warning meta: I am genuinely curious (as I don't get much feedback in day to day life), have you found my comments to be unclear and/or disorganized in this thread?  I'd love to improve my writing so would appreciate any critique, thanks.

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2dr_s
No, sorry, it's not that I didn't find it clear, but I thought it was kind of an irrelevant aside - it's obviously true (though IMO going to a barista and passing a bill while whispering "you didn't see anything" might not necessarily work that well either), but my original comment was about the absurdity of the lack of systemic solutions, so saying there are individual ones doesn't really address the main claim.
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

Why do you disagree with (P1)?  Do you explain it here: ...

Yes. I believe there is significant (and currently unmet) demand for publicly-accessible bathrooms that do not require the users to purchase some other good or service (such as coffee) that they are not interested in (which a private establishment could, and in many cases does, require).

Okay.  I don't understand your reasoning.  Are you specifically suggesting that there are people who would pay some $X to use the bathroom, but the cheapest item on the cafe menu is $Y where X < Y,... (read more)

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1[anonymous]
This is part of the dynamic, yes. But it is not the only relevant consideration: often times, people do not reason on the basis of stand-alone monetary considerations, but also in terms of other, more ineffable concepts, such as principles or values. In this specific case, I believe there are a lot of people that would hate the idea of having to pay for something they don't care about (again, like coffee) in order to access the bathroom, independently (and in addition to) the fact that they must part with some of their cash. It would be more of a principled, i.e. deontological, objection of sorts, and would increase their desire to be able to access public bathrooms. Well, I don't see what evidence or reasoning we have to single out "heuristics that call for one to immediately render aid to someone else" as worthy of specialized treatment as compared to just "heuristics" more broadly. Public goods are (broadly speaking) better served through intervention by a central authority such as a government. As such, correctly identifying something as a public good helps explain why the (private) market has not provided a socially optimal quantity of that good.
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

I agree that such a tip is roughly a bribe.  But why is that a problem? Maybe you believe it is a problem because many people are inclined not to accept bribes, and so such a move would frequently not work.

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3dr_s
We're discussing whether this is a systemic problem, not whether there are possible individual solutions. We can come up with solutions just fine, in fact most of the times you can just waltz in, go to the bathroom, and no one will notice. But "everyone pays bribes to the barista to go to the bathroom" absolutely makes no sense as a universal rule over "we finally acknowledge this is an issue and thus incorporate it squarely in our ordinary services instead of making up weird and unnecessary work-arounds".
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645840

From your response it seems to me that I've understood your question and position, so I'm responding to it here.

epistemic status: I am a public policy and economics amateur.  I do not have extreme cognitive ability and I thought about the question for < 1 hour.

I'm going to suggest some other possible ways to stop homeless people from shitting in the streets and then I will nominate my current preferred solution.

  1. Remove legal restrictions to running just-bathroom businesses.
  2. Reduce the number of homeless people (by, for example, giving them homes and/
... (read more)
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1edge_retainer
its a public externality, you don't need a government division to run bathrooms, you just need to do 1. + provide a subsidy
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645830

Economically speaking, if to acquire good A (which I need) I also have to acquire good B (which I don't need and is more expensive), thus paying more than I would pay for good A alone, using up resources and labor I didn't need and that were surely better employed elsewhere, that seems to me like a huge market inefficiency.

I had not thought of this until you and gwern pointed it out, so thanks.

I agree that this is a good candidate for a way in which buying-a-cup-of-coffee-that-one-doesn't-want-in-order-to-use-the-bathroom as a common activity within a soci... (read more)

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3dr_s
Tipping the barista is not really sticking to the rules of the business, though. It's bribing the watchman to close an eye, and the watchman must take the bribe (and deem it worthy its risks).
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

I wouldn't expect so, why would you think that?

I explained my reasoning here.  Also note that most people who have demand for using the bathroom are not penniless homeless people.

Why pay extra to dispose of your waste properly if you can get away with dumping it elsewhere?

I agree. A self-interested rational agent would just shit in the streets if they could get away with it.

As a matter of public health, it's better for everyone if this type of waste goes in the sewers and not in the alley, even if the perpetrators can't afford a coffee.

I agree.

How wou

... (read more)
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5dr_s
Here is my reasoning. On one hand, obviously going to the bathroom, sometimes in random circumstances, is an obvious universal necessity. It is all the more pressing for people with certain conditions that make it harder for them to control themselves for long. So it's important that bathrooms are available, quickly accessible, and distributed reasonably well everywhere. I would also argue it's important that they have no barrier to access because sometimes time is critical when using it. In certain train stations I've seen bathrooms that can only be used by paying a small price, which often meant you needed to have and find precise amounts of change to go. Absolutely impractical stuff for bathrooms. On the other, obviously maintaining bathrooms is expensive as it requires labour. You don't want your bathrooms to be completely fouled on the regular, or worse, damaged, and if they happen to be, you need money to fix them. So bathrooms aren't literally "free". Now one possible solution would be to have "public bathroom" as a business. Nowadays you could allow entrance with a credit card (note that this doesn't solve the homeless thing, but it addresses most people's need). But IMO this isn't a particularly high value business, and on its own certainly not a good use of valuable city centre land, which goes directly against the fact that you need bathrooms to be the most where the most people are. So this never really happens. Another solution is to have bathrooms as part of private businesses doing other stuff (serving food/drinks) and have them charge for their use. Which is how it works now. The inadequacy lies into how for some reason these businesses charge you indirectly by asking you to buy something. This is inefficient in a number of ways: it forces you to buy something you don't really want, paying more than you would otherwise, and the provider probably still doesn't get as much as they could if they just asked a bathroom fee since they also need the labo
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

I completely disagree with (P1).

Why do you disagree with (P1)?  Do you explain it here: "in which case they satisfy the demand from the costumers that are there to purchase the main goods being offered (such as coffee or breakfast etc) but not from the revolving cast of people who are not interested in the main goods (but, as a result, in the current system their 'demand' for the bathrooms does not causally impact the creation of such bathrooms)."?

And I completely grant that I might be mistaken about (P1).  I haven't spent many cycles investigati... (read more)

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1[anonymous]
Yes. I believe there is significant (and currently unmet) demand for publicly-accessible bathrooms that do not require the users to purchase some other good or service (such as coffee) that they are not interested in (which a private establishment could, and in many cases does, require). For the reasons mentioned in my paragraph above, I model these as two different types of goods for our discussion. It seems to carve reality at the joints in a meaningful way. This preference, valid as it may be, cannot be met in practice, at least at a large scale (in terms of number of people).  While individualized assessments contain benefits (such as the use of discretion to take into account specific situations that are not taken care of well by rigid and context-independent rules and heuristics), they also impose significant costs on those who engage in them, namely the increased expenditures of time and mental energy needed to analyze situations on their individual merits (as compared to placing them in one of many mental "boxes" that you had already conceptualized and that you know how to dispose of quickly). Humans have a limited amount of fucks to give, so to say, and (en masse) they won't spend them on topics like these, which are less important from a subjective perspective than stuff like familial relationships, boss-to-underling interactions etc. Well, public bathrooms are approximately public goods, for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning (I said only 'approximately' because there is a small level of short-term rivalry involved due to the fact that someone occupying a bathroom stall physically prevents you from going in during the time they are inside and because such users can temporarily damage the structures there in such a way as to prevent future users from accessing the facilities, until the damages are fixed).
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

Most obviously, so someone can provide just a bathroom, rather than wrapping an entire cafe around it as a pretext to avoid being illegal - a cafe which almost certainly operates only part of the time rather than 24/7/365, one might note, as merely among the many benefits of severing the two. As for another example of the benefits, recall Starbucks's experiences with bathrooms...

First, I want to note some points of agreement. I agree that there are differences between a just bathrooms business and a cafe with bathrooms.  And I agree that having longer... (read more)

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gwern*2113

Second, in my previous post I was trying to ask about whether or not there were any genuine differences as a user when paying $X for a cup of coffee to a cafe in order to use the bathroom versus paying $X to a just bathroom business to use the bathroom. (I was responding to @dr_s saying this: "This, and how completely unrelated specifically the "buy a coffee" thing is. It makes no sense that to satisfy need A I have to do unrelated thing B.")

Even bracketing out all other concerns, I think there is. You don't know what the setup is at any given cafe so ... (read more)

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What distinguishes "early", "mid" and "end" games?
eye9645810

what are some situations in real life, other than "AI takeoff", where the early/mid/late game metaphor seems useful?

I suspect it's easy to find games or situations that have nice-ish three phase maps, for example:

  • Choosing a particular chess move: (I) assess the board, (II) generate some candidates moves, (III) find the best move of the candidates
  • Getting new work as a contractor: (I) get a rough idea of what the potential client wants, (II) create a detailed specification and work plan, (III) finalize financial, ownership, termination, etc details in a cont
... (read more)
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2Raemon
Yes, that was my original frame. But, the whole point of this post is that the Chess example was noticeably different from that, which suggested there might be other lenses that are useful.
I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645843

This, and how completely unrelated specifically the "buy a coffee" thing is. It makes no sense that to satisfy need A I have to do unrelated thing B.

Why is it better to pay an explicit bathroom providing business, then to pay a cafe (in the form of buying a cup of coffee)?  It strikes me as a distinction without real difference, but maybe I'm confused.

The private version of the solution would be bathrooms I can pay to use, and those happen sometimes, but they're not a particularly common business model so I guess maybe the economics don't work out to

... (read more)
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4dr_s
Economically speaking, if to acquire good A (which I need) I also have to acquire good B (which I don't need and is more expensive), thus paying more than I would pay for good A alone, using up resources and labor I didn't need and that were surely better employed elsewhere, that seems to me like a huge market inefficiency. Imagine this happening with anything else. "I want a USB cable." "Oh we don't sell USB cables on their own, that would be ridiculous. But we do include them as part of the chargers in smartphones, so if you want a USB cable, you can buy a smartphone." Would that make sense?
gwern144

Why is it better to pay an explicit bathroom providing business, then to pay a cafe (in the form of buying a cup of coffee)? It strikes me as a distinction without real difference, but maybe I'm confused.

Most obviously, so someone can provide just a bathroom, rather than wrapping an entire cafe around it as a pretext to avoid being illegal - a cafe which almost certainly operates only part of the time rather than 24/7/365, one might note, as merely among the many benefits of severing the two. As for another example of the benefits, recall Starbucks's e... (read more)

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I would have shit in that alley, too
eye9645810

Why do we need more public bathrooms?  I'm skeptical because if there was demand for more bathrooms, then I'd expect the market to produce them.

The fact that the market demonstrably hasn't provided this good is little (in fact, practically no) evidence regarding its desirability because the topic of discussion is public bathrooms, meaning precisely the types of goods/services that are created, funded, and taken care of by the government as opposed to private entities. 

I disagree.  My reasoning is as follows.  I believe that (P1) there i... (read more)

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3[anonymous]
I completely disagree with (P1). I think (P2) has a somewhat strange framing, particularly given the fact that 'private bathrooms' can refer to either bathrooms in the homes/dwellings of people, which does not really have much to do with the conversation here, or to auxiliary goods in private establishments, in which case they satisfy the demand from the costumers that are there to purchase the main goods being offered (such as coffee or breakfast etc) but not from the revolving cast of people who are not interested in the main goods (but, as a result, in the current system their 'demand' for the bathrooms does not causally impact the creation of such bathrooms). In any case, going from (P1) and (P2) to (C1) does seem locally valid to a reasonable extent. Yes, that is the general heuristic I am describing, perhaps with the following added requirement: (iv) the person reporting they need it appears genuine and doesn't appear to try to exploit you in a bad-faith manner. I would suspect it means he thinks it is bad in such a clear and manifest manner that it is an instance and a signal of general civilizational inadequacy and insanity. Neither do I, although I suppose I implicitly did back before I studied enough economics to change my view on it.
Value Claims (In Particular) Are Usually Bullshit
eye9645820

I point this out to help locate what your heuristic is really approximating[1]. I.e., two components of something like memetic fitness: (1) a reason to care, (2) low entanglement with other beliefs.

 

By the term "reason to care" do you mean that the claim is relevant to someone's interests/goals?

  • eg, a claim of the form "X is healthy" is probably relevant for someone who highly values not dying
  • eg, a claim of the form "Guillermo del Toro's new movie is on Netflix." is probably not relevant for someone who does not value watching horror films
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I would have shit in that alley, too
eye964581-2

I agree that it is certainly morally wrong to post this if that is the persons real full name.

Because you expect that doing so would cause the person harm?

 

It is less bad, but still dubious, to post someones traumatic life story on the internet even under a pseudonym. 

Why is it dubious? Do you expect that it will cause harm to the person?

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I would have shit in that alley, too
eye96458*4-2

We honestly just need more public bathrooms, or subsidies paid to venues to keep their bathrooms fully public.

Why do we need more public bathrooms?  I'm skeptical because if there was demand for more bathrooms, then I'd expect the market to produce them.

but it's ridiculous even for those who do have the money that you're supposed to buy a coffee or something to take a leak (and then in practice you can often sneak by anyway).

Why is it ridiculous?

edit: There are some problems with this comment.

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6gilch
I wouldn't expect so, why would you think that? Markets have a problem handling unpriced externalities without regulation. (Tragedy of the commons.) Pollution is a notable example of market failure, and the bathrooms issue is a special case of exactly this. Why pay extra to dispose of your waste properly if you can get away with dumping it elsewhere? As a matter of public health, it's better for everyone if this type of waste goes in the sewers and not in the alley, even if the perpetrators can't afford a coffee. How would you propose we stop the pollution? Fining them wouldn't help, even if we could catch them reliably, which would be expensive, because they don't have any money to take. Jailing them would probably cost taxpayers more than maintaining bathrooms would. Taxpayers are already paying for the sewer system (a highly appropriate use of taxation). This is just an expansion of the same.
[anonymous]183

Why do we need more public bathrooms?  I'm skeptical because if there was demand for more bathrooms, then I'd expect the market to produce them.

The fact that the market demonstrably hasn't provided this good is little (in fact, practically no) evidence regarding its desirability because the topic of discussion is public bathrooms, meaning precisely the types of goods/services that are created, funded, and taken care of by the government as opposed to private entities. 

In particular, these are built on public land (where private developers do not ... (read more)

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Adam Smith Meets AI Doomers
eye9645851

The article makes this claim:

Competition propels us towards artificial superintelligence, as any AI firm slowing its pace risks being overtaken by others, and workers understand that refusing to engage in capacity research merely leads to their replacement.

And I agree that even if a worker values his own survival above all else and believes ASI is both near at hand and bad, then plausibly he doesn't make himself better off by quitting his job.  But given that the CEO of an AI firm has more control over the allocation of the firm's resources, if he values survival and believes that ASI is near/bad, then is his best move really to continue steering resources into capabilities development?

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