All of Filipe Marchesini's Comments + Replies

Jesus once said: "Simply let your "yes" mean yes, and your "no" mean no, because anything beyond that comes from evil".

Will Russia invade only eastern Ukraine or the rest of Ukraine as well?

4Vaniver
Military installations and airports thruout Ukraine have been attacked.

Zvi, I would love to see you making an analysis of Brazil and I'd compare it to my own thinking and calibrate myself on my own predictions. I strongly believe you are currently the best at what you're doing and I would be grateful if you spent at least some time reasoning about our situation here and making some predictions.

I would like to see different voting systems on different posts, so we could try them out and report back on how each one allows us to express what we think about those posts.

I don't like a single 5-star rating system, but I would love multiple 5-stars in different categories. For example, we could choose to give 5 stars for each of these categories you pointed out: clarity, interestingness, validity/correctness, informativeness, friendliness.

If we had a single 5-star rating system, and suppose I read a post that was completely clear and interesting, but w... (read more)

1Raelifin
If you have multiple quality metrics then you need a way to aggregate them (barring more radical proposals). Let’s say you sum them (the specifics of how they combine are irrelevant here). What has been created is essentially a 25-star system with a more explicit breakdown. This is essentially what I was suggesting. Rate each post on 5 dimensions from 0 to 2, add the values together, and divide by two (min 0.5), and you have my proposed system. Perhaps you think the interface should clarify the distinct dimensions of quality, but I think UI simplicity is pretty important, and am wary of suggesting having to click 5+ times to rate a post. I addressed the issue of overcompensating in an edit: if the weighting is a median then users are incentivized to select their true rating. Good thought. ☺️ Thanks for your support and feedback!

After reading this post, I decided to send a message to Gurkenglas.
This was the best decision I made. I have been developing a mobile software for the last 120 days, and this is my first experience developing something this big. Sharing my screen on Discord, he was able to:
- Completely change my debugging workflow, which is likely to save me hundreds of hours in the long-term
- Teach me a new testing ritual
- Make it easier to identify useless pieces of code
- Refactor hundreds of lines with simple intuitions and good regex
- Teach me dozens of useful keyboard... (read more)

lsusr180

I had a similar experience. Gurkenglas is legit.

Hey younger version of me, start reading LW now, start programming now, study more statistics, go deeper on math.

2Pattern
Is there a specific kind of math you find really useful?

lol, your first paragraph described exactly the discussion I had with a friend less than one month ago... and you wrote the exact question he made me. 

“So you want people to sit at home all day and collect free money?”

On my mind, I had "Yes. I want this. For everyone. Not just money. I want to give everyone all the resources they need to fulfill their lives. I'm trying to discover how"

I wonder why ended up dodging the question; yes, +1 for star-manning. I like the concept.

3Chris_Leong
I didn't write the linked post.

Please, I love this discussion, I super upvoted and if you have any new thoughts about NFTs I would like to hear you talking about. Did you get any new information or have you updated your thoughts about NFTs? I am completely fascinated on how this is even possible, people caring so much about useless maps, and the territory has become "it is super valuable to have a map that tells which of the two perfect copies of a territory arrived first", or people are just pretending for the sake of playing the game in which allows you to speculate on the value of us... (read more)

2supposedlyfun
This comment captures both the substance and the style of my reaction to the story.

I really like the approach from Tournesol and I was wondering a way to improve the rating system. 
Not only I would like to rate a video, but sometimes I would like to dispute the rating given by another user. 

Suppose I am a seller on AliExpress. I have been selling a 4.8 star product for a year. 
Suddenly I receive a new and rare one star rating. The rating goes like this:

"User123: I waiting the product to arrive, can't wait to see it. When it arrives I will update the rating"

This is not uncommon. A good proportion of ratings happen without a... (read more)

5Lê Nguyên Hoang
Thanks for the interesting comment. Perhaps to clarify, our current algorithms are by no means a final solution. In fact, our hope is to collect an interesting database to then encourage research on better algorithms that will factor, e.g., the comments on the videos. Also, in the "settings" of the rating page, we have a functionality that allows contributors to input both their judgments and their confidence in their judgments, on a scale from 0 to 3 stars (default is 2). One idea could be to demand comments when the contributor claims a 3-star confidence judgment. This can allow disputes in the comment section.

I believe that many people will take COVID to their relatives during Christmas and the New Year, and I'm seriously thinking about starting some campaign to make people aware that they should at least this time consider wearing a mask for the next weeks and also stop socializing without a mask during this period in order to protect their relatives during the traditional holidays. I started developing a mobile app today to be released by December 12 and another (also related to COVID) to be released by December 20, I don't know what impact this will have on ... (read more)

I haven't exercised regularly in years, and last week I started thinking about how bad the consequences can be for me. I decided to do something, I wasn't in the mood, I thought "well, I'll do 10 push-ups. Maybe it's not much, but it's better than nothing". And I made it. You said "make it ridiculously easy", and now I just made 15 push-ups. Interesting. This is really easy. And I will do it again. Just a little more on the next time.

4adamShimi
Awesome! Just a caveat that I ran into myself: you'll probably reach a day where you cannot do a little more than you did the previous day/week; either because you reached some limits or because it's a shitty or busy day. And when that happens, if you have built-in the expectation of improvement every time, you'll be frustrated. In my experience, it's better to have a ridiculously easy baseline (say 10 push-ups for you), while trying to go further when in the mood. But the point is to be satisfied even on bad days where you only do the baseline. That's my take on it, at least.

Epistemic status: babble all the way down, not pruning. But I believe my approach is better than most of other answers here.

The error from other LWers  is not separating the evaluation of lessons to the evaluation of tests. 

Students should be allowed to give good teachers a bonus. For each lesson, in any moment of the lesson, the students should have the possibility to rate the teacher's performance on some metrics. Think on a mobile application that does that. Do you know when you take a ride with an Uber and immediately after finishing the ride... (read more)

I don't think so. For example, follow these instructions:

  1. Say you are a poor guy on a poor country
  2. Say you luckily got a computer when you were a child
  3. Say while you were studying AI, you found LW.
  4. Say bad events happen to you/your family, and now you are in urgent need.

Now you can see, although most LW readers are not like this guy, this guy is among LW readers. My point is that we should financially support this guy, independently if he belongs to LW or not. I would say it is easy to help him and we have a reason to support him, and the fact he reads LW does... (read more)

2ChristianKl
There's plenty of EA thought about how to donate to help the global poor. The question here is about whether you believe that the donation to one individual is more or less impactful then a donation to a GiveWell recommended charity.

Why would they?

Sometimes non needy people want to help other people in need. If you were looking to maximize happiness points across the world, for example, you would gain more points helping those members in need. 

Considering that LW readers are mostly rich Americans

There are non-zero members suffering financially, that's why I asked that. It would be too easy for some people here to make this number go to zero.

3remizidae
>If you were looking to maximize happiness points across the world, for example, you would gain more points helping those members in need.  Wouldn't that only be true if we thought LW readers are the most needy across the world, or perhaps most easily helped? 

My question was really stupid, actually I was thinking "I would like to spend at least 200 hours on this project, but it seems I won't get any money from it, maybe I could ask LW members if they want to support it financially". 
A better question is "Can I ask you money to help me to build a software that may help you?", or "it is inappropriate to ask for money on LW, the platform discourages this".

Disclaimer: I am still not sure if this is the correct question. Anyway, I am developing some helper tools, and although I won't monetize them directly, it would be good to get some money from it, because I am not the guy who has enough money to not need any money from the community anymore.

Fundraising requests have been in the past posted on LessWrong: Berkeley REACH would be one example, the Grants & Fundraising Opportunities tag has plenty of other examples. If you want to ask for money I would recommend that you read through a bunch of the existing fundraising posts. They will likely both show you how to format a request and what kind of projects this community values. 

In general you will likely come to the conclusion that while people are willing to fund promising projects, it needs more then just "helping a fellow community mem... (read more)

Should LW members support each other financially?

Dagon110

This question has a weird implication of mutuality.  What I think you mean to ask is "should some LW members support other LW members financially?".  

My answer is "yes, if the donors think that's a good use of their financial resources."

Related questions you didn't ask, but should have:

  • Should LW support or encourage individuals to ask for or provide financial support?  No.
  • Should LW members ask for such support in DMs to other members? No.
  • Should LW members post their circumstances in hope for financial support? No.
  • Should LW be in any way invo
... (read more)
4ChristianKl
It would help to be more specific about what you mean. There are many different kinds of financial support and there are different things you could mean with "should".  Both CFAR and MIRI get supported by donations that partly come from LW members. 
1remizidae
Why would they? Considering that LW readers are mostly rich Americans, they don't seem particularly needy. 

If my stated and/or revealed preferences are that I don't value joining the elite class very much, is that wrong in either an instrumental or terminal sense?

Considering you haven't miscalculated the value from joining the elite class, I believe it is wrong to spend energy to be labeled as "elite". If you lost something you had to protect while you wasted your time with useless pursuits, like trying to "join the elite" by getting some very specific superior pedigree, then you took a very poor instrumental action. It all depends on what you actually want and... (read more)

Yes, we can hold intellectuals to similar public standards as athletes. Using GPT-4/5 we could use it to create a set of questions to check if the intellectual can answer the questions correctly avoiding every kind of bias already explained here on LW. For each bias already explained before, we can create new questions that show when a human fall on them, assigning a new score to that human. I would like each human to write down all his knowledge with the help of an automatic writing system, we could create a visual tree of all knowledge the system detecte... (read more)

Answer by Filipe Marchesini-10

Yes, jungofthewon, and AI going well will also give all humanity the ability to get adequate quantity of super-delicious green food, making everyone get unlimited access to super-delicious perfectly sustainable healthy and ethical food.

Also, AI going well will provide to humanity the best algorithm to allocate different people in different places, choosing the best place to accommodate  every person on earth. You wouldn't believe that living with this specific set of 7 people on this specific city and in this specific house would give you the maximum ... (read more)

1Jalex Stark
Your first sentence came off as quite patronizing, so I wasn't able to do a good-faith reading of the rest of your post.

Getting an extra $1000/month wouldn't suddenly create a bunch of entrepreneurs and revolutionize the economy

Obviously it will. You are just underestimating the number of people on bullshit jobs because they lack the capital or motivation for anything greater. I will not focus on the obvious justifications for UBI like "the fact that technological unemployment is only going to get worse. Nearly half the population is employed in jobs that could be replaced by automation, and that number will only get higher as time goes on".

Sometimes, people just need help.... (read more)

For me the idea of expansive translations is fantastic. Every time I read a new post in Lesswrong that brings important information to the table, I think about translating it into Portuguese and bringing the information to the members of my tribe. But obviously I don't think about translating literally, word for word, because I can see the loss of information that this would bring. I know exactly how I could write in Portuguese that would bring the sensations desired by the original author of the post, considering all the cultural nuances and inferent... (read more)

3ozziegooen
Thanks so much Filipe, and I'm excited to see your thoughts on the topic. I think this kind of imagining is highly valuable.  I don't have much context about you personally, but from my engineering and entrepreneurial experience, my main piece of feedback would be that I get the sense that you think this might be a whole lot easier than I think it would be. Something like what you propose sounds very interesting, but I think this initial proposal would be challenging to do well without tons of money and time. I've seen my fair share of people start far overambitious projects, totally (though predictably) fail, and be heartbroken as a result. I think it's worthwhile to do the following, but think about them in distinct buckets: 1) Imagine what great systems would be like with near unbounded resources. 2) Figure out what pragmatic steps we can take in the short term to get started. Both of these are valuable. All of my post was in the former camp, and I would suggest that your post mostly is as well. Some thoughts on the comment, in the vein of category (1):   This is a minor point, but I would suggest a system where people rank who good the translation is for individual people (with many defined attributes), instead of trying to bucket things into different categories. Defining the categories is a really messy process that will leave artifacts. This is kind of a classic ML prediction sort of problem.   I think that the current infrastructure for setting up markets in the regular ways are quite mediocre. Another option would be to hire a team of translators working full-time, but monitor and optimize their performance. --- On the topic of obtaining source data, using new content generation would be very expensive, and I could imagine it being difficult to do well. I think the word for "expansive translators" isn't "translator", but "communicator", for instance, so the people to learn from are the popular communicators, not people with translation experience. 

Did you pay the premium version? I am using the free version and I am not sure if the free version is GPT-2 or GPT-3.

3jdfaben
In case you haven't already found out, the free version has been updated to be a smaller version of GPT-3. Confirmed on twitter https://twitter.com/nickwalton00/status/1284842368105975810?s=19
2Kaj_Sotala
The free version appears to be GPT-2, given that they specifically mention having GPT-3 on the premium side (note that you'll have to explicitly enable it in the settings after getting premium): Note that there's a one-week free trial for the premium version.
Answer by Filipe Marchesini10

Welcome Saffron!

Most babble that seems to be "predictions" are actually not predictions and, as pointed by Ericf, they do not reflect the internal confidence of the speaker. Sometimes I hear "I am completely sure my favorite team is going to win the championship", although it is clear that this is not a prediction made by the person, it is his way of saying "I really would like this outcome to happen and that's my way of signal this".

"He is not going to die" doesn't mean "I predict with 90% confidence that he is not... (read more)

Very interesting. When I stopped teaching in person due to pandemics, I started to research the best platform to teach online. When I saw this post comparing the options, and then looked YouTube videos using each one, I became absolutely religious after testing Mozilla Hubs, and started shouting out for all directions that this thing is completely awesome and I was all in. Today, I use this platform every week. The students love it! And now I discovered LessWrong is using it too. It couldn't be different.

"DO YOU CHOOSE TO NULL-BOX EVEN WHEN THERE ARE TEN DELICIOUS HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS JUST WAITING TO BE PURSUED BY YOU?"

"Yes"

"AS A TRICKSTER GOD I WILL REWARD YOU NOW WITH TWO MILLION DOLLARS. ONE FOR EACH BOX YOU CHOSE TO NOT OPEN. THE TRICK IS THAT I NEVER PRESENTED YOU WITH THE BEST OPTION AVAILABLE, BUT YOU STILL GOT THE IDEAL SOLUTION. ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT TRUE THAT I WOULD IMMEDIATELY TERMINATE ALL SIMULATIONS OF YOUR COPIES IN CASE THEY HAD CHOSEN ANOTHER OPTIONS, AS SIMULATIONS ARE VERY CHEAP TO RUN FOR EVER"

The statue became motionless again. Maxwell donates the prize to the priests who promised him salvation, for they had always been right.

8Bridgett Kay
But this was the final trick, for as soon as Maxwell accepted the two million dollars, the simulation ended.
5Yitz
Thanks for the happy ending :)
Answer by Filipe Marchesini40

Problem: Automatic planting

Action space: the agent obtains data from the sensors and decides how to use the actuators (temperature modifiers, humidity, exposure to sunlight/other modifier) to maximize specific crop characteristics

The reward: the agent knows that he is performing better when he minimizes the time needed for the plants to reach specific characteristics. For example, when trying to minimize the time required for three plants to reach a specific height of 0.2m, a higher score would be attributed to the action policy that led the plant to grow

... (read more)

One thing I tried was keeping open tabs infinitely, and I would just close them when I had finished the work on them. Sometimes I have 40 tabs opened, and I feel the pressure to "stop opening new tabs and finish those that are already open". And then, I click on them one by one, sometimes realizing that I already did what should be done and closing them. Sometimes, I keep postponing. After a new check, I think there are tabs that don't add too much and I close them.

When you keep your tabs on mind, but not on the browser (e.g. chromium) you'll eventually lo

... (read more)

I think you are referring to Goodheart's law, because all the measures your examples used as a proxy to achieve some goal were gamified in a way that the proxy stopped working reliably.

3ESRogs
Hmm, this seems a little different from Goodhart's law (or at least it's a particular special case that deserves its own name). This concept, as I understand it, is not about picking the wrong metric to optimize. It's more like picking the wrong metric to satisfice, or putting the bar for satisficing in the wrong place.

Exactly, I am from Brazil and I can't see any option that fit my race.

According to Wikipedia, "According to the American census, the Hispanic or Latin category would not include Brazilians or Americans with origins in Brazil, [3] [4] [8] as it is specific to people of "Spanish culture or origin". [3] [4]. Technically speaking, people from Portugal or of Portuguese origin are called Lusitanians. In Portugal, the term "hispanic" refers to something related to ancient Hispania, Spain or the Spanish language and culture [9]. The common modern term for identify

... (read more)
1B Jacobs
I'm from europe so I find both the term and category of 'hispanics' kinda dumb. I only put that there because the previous surveys did. I put central and south america in parentheses so I would choose hispanic in your case even though I agree that that's a messy category.

LessWrong warned me two months before it occurred here. The suggested preparedness was clear and concise, and I felt the power on my hands. I had valuable info no one on my tribe had. I alarmed my mom and she listened me, stayed home and safe, when everyone was partying out (carnival). I long-talked with friends, and explained to them what I believed it was happening and why I believed that. I showed the numbers, the math, the predictions to the next week, next week came, and reality presented its metallic taste. Week after week, the light was getting brig... (read more)

I'm glad you're trying, and am sorry to hear it is so hard; that sounds really hard. You might try the book "How to have Impossible Conversations." I don't endorse every bit of it, but there's some good stuff in there IMO, or at least I got mileage from it.

Answer by Filipe Marchesini110

The people on my personal circle I like the most don't know basic math and are not interested in learning anything about it.

I can't talk with relatives about optimizing anything, because mostly they don't allow me to talk. When I do talk, they don't listen anything. For them, the game is just about status. Or politics. Trash talk all the time. Nothing objective. As time goes on, I talk less and less with them. I don't see any solution for this, and I feel guilty for thinking on giving up on trying to express my thoughts for them.

I feel bad about realizing

... (read more)

Hot sauce:

"[...] insults her cooking and insinuates that she doesn’t know how to cook"

If my girlfriend had said something like that, I think an appropriate solution would be:

[curious] what you mean... [\curious]. [surprised] AHHHH, the hot sauce?? [\surprised]. [empathy] Ohhh, my love. Really sorry for that [\empathy]. [confession ~ lower speaking] I have to tell you something. I am so addicted to hot sauce that I even didn't remember that I shouldn't use it in (clearly exaggerating) every meal I eat. Your meal is [emphasis] really amazing [\emphasis] an

... (read more)

"I was reading your post, but suddenly I had to leave in the middle of it. I would like to say that I agree/liked your intuition (to the point that I read it), and I would like to signal this immediately, because I'm afraid I won't remember to finish the reading in the future, although I would like myself to finish it in the future."

"Although your post seemed to be going in a direction I like, I had to abandon the reading. Forgive me for leaving it and not finishing absorbing a seemingly important message. I hope this reaction hel... (read more)

Thanks for the great effort for bringing a summary that really makes me feel I don't have to continue digging for new information. If this work is going to be continued, I will just wait for your new updates, and then finish looking for local news, as things on my country are largely different from yours. Keep it up!

Got it. I wonder why there aren't discussions about cryptocurrencies here on LW. Like, extensively researching the existing protocols and their characteristics and then naming which one is the best and why, and betting on it. Or even using it on the forum. I would suggest you to research these two cryptos I have cited if you are interested on updating your bets.

35% crypto -- XTZ, BTC, and ETH (and small amounts of LTC, XRP, and BCH)

Why do you bet on cryptos with weak fundamentals like LTC, XRP, and BCH, and not on cryptos with stronger fundamentals like Monero and Nano?

2ESRogs
No super strong reason. I entered those positions a while ago, and was mostly just trying to diversify, paying some attention to market cap weight.

These points really make me update my beliefs on the importance of learning Chinese. Thanks for that.

What am I missing by not speaking Portuguese?

Brazilian speaks with the body, so you are not missing that much. Haha just kidding (although it's true that body language plays a big role here). But there are 250 million total portuguese speakers, and by just knowing Portuguese you will understand Spanish easily, because there is 89% of lexical similarity. I can understand Spanish with no problems and I never studied it. If you know how to search, there i... (read more)

Suppose a dynamic in which a creator announces that wants to complete a task. E.g.:

Creator: "I would like to give a lesson teaching how to remove the background of a photo".

The creator optionally puts a threshold in which, once the users already demonstrated enough interest, the creator starts streaming his job. Let's suppose, e.g., that the last creator have put the threshold: "$50.00".

Users decide to "put money on the table" on the platform, signaling interest in seeing the creator accomplishing the task.

Users can also... (read more)

Learning a new language (English) was decisive in my life to fill a lot of type 1, type 2 and 3 holes as you presented on this post.

In 2013 "I felt" I should learn English. I didn't have a clear goal on doing it, but "it seemed important on the long-term", but I couldn't explain why it would be important to care about really learn another language.

In 2016 I heard from a YouTuber from my country talking about AI. My goals changed completely, and I could only find real quality discussions about AI or state-of-the-art information in English.

Then it came progr

... (read more)
6lsusr
English is the most important, most useful language to know. It is the language of business, science and technology. It is the closest thing humanity has ever had to a universal language. Chinese is the second most important language in the world to know. It is, in a different sense, the closest thing humanity has ever had to a universal written language. Here are some ideas you might get from learning Chinese. * Your ideas of "center of the world", "civilization" and "humanity" shift from Europe and the Americas to East Asia. This is not the same as a global internationalist perspective. China becomes the hive of humanity everything else revolves around, like how the Earth is the center of the universe. * Non-phonetic writing systems make sense. You realize how little living literary tradition survives in languages written using alphabets because texts become unreadable in mere centuries as the spoken language evolves. You develop an appreciation for calligraphy. You can read more Japanese than most 外人. * You develop an intuitive feel for the clan system, a semi-artificial method of extending family connections. * You realize Western castles were tiny and crude. * You think in longer historical time horizons. * You take it for granted that the natural state of things (historically-speaking) is for China to be the richest and most powerful nation on Earth. * You discover lots of business opportunities. What am I missing by not speaking Portuguese?
2ChristianKl
I see no reason to believe from that post that the security is in a different class then the security of most other tools on the market. Jitsi might be more secure but the first time I tried to have a call with it the server was overloaded. Someone holding a meeting to run a variolation study might need higher security then Zoom provides but the use-cases I have at the moment don't require high levels of security. For normal privacy concerns the inability to hide the background in most Zoom alternatives seems to like a lot more privacy relevant data to other people.

Gautret et al. 2020° shouldn't be considered a study of hydroxychloroquine efficacy. It should be considered a failed attempt at studying hydroxychloroquine efficacy. Here is why I believe that.

4ioannes
Yes, I pointed out some of the limitations in the original link. Should still be included in a lit review though.

WHO I AM: I have 24 years of existence. I give math, chemistry and physics lessons to high school students since 17. I am pretty good at it and I never announced anywhere on planet that I give lessons - all new students appear from recommendations from older students. On the end of 2016 I already had 38 months going to the university, trying to get mechanical engineering credentials. I wasn't interested on the course - I really liked the math and the subjects, but the teachers sucked and the experience was, in general, terrible. I hated my life and wa... (read more)

2TurnTrout
Welcome :)
4habryka
Welcome! Your story sounds exciting and I am looking forward to seeing you around!

Thanks for the suggestion, ESRogs. I'm adding the shortened version now.

TL;DR. If you have (slightly) low PaO2, but no trouble breathing, you probably don't need to go to the hospital. And if you have trouble breathing, you should probably go to the hospital whether or not you have low PaO2. So testing for oxygen saturation doesn't add much.

I had an online conversation with an intensive care physician. I sent him a translated version of juliawise's text and he said he didn't think buying the pulse oximeter would help and then sent me a 5 minute audio explaining why. The following text is his audio translat... (read more)

9Xelaz
According to this NYT article, Covid pneumonia often (in most cases?) initially causes low blood oxygen without obvious respiratory discomfort or shortness of breath ("silent hypoxia"), and early detection of this can be critical. If true, it is a very strong argument in favor of pulse oximeter.
ESRogs140

This comment could maybe use a tl;dr saying:

If you have (slightly) low SpO2, but no trouble breathing, you probably don't need to go to the hospital. And if you have trouble breathing, you should probably go to the hospital whether or not you have low SpO2. So testing for oxygen saturation doesn't add much.

Is there any info the comment was meant to convey that that leaves out?

Should I expect a faster infection rate on my country (Brazil) because most people here use paper money to make trades? Should I recommend people to stop using paper money and instead opt for a contactless card? Most people don't have access to banking services; so is there any option for them?