Replying toA whirlwind tour of Ethereum finance

Doesn't matter until the switch is done.

I am into something that can be called "meta-politics": institutional reform. That is, crafting decisionmaking algorithms to have good characteristics — incentives, participation, etc. — independent of the object-level goals of politics. I think this is "meta" in a different way than what you're talking about in this article; in short, it's prescriptive meta, not descriptive meta. And I think that makes it "OK"; that is, largely exempt from the criticisms in this article.

Would you agree?

Replying toA whirlwind tour of Ethereum finance

Jameson Quinn5y

A whirlwind tour of Ethereum finance

I believe that Bitcoin is a substantial net negative for the world. I think that blockchain itself, even without proof of work, is problematic as a concept — with some real potential upsides, but also real possibly-intrinsic downsides even apart from proof of work. I'd like a world where all PoW-centric cryptocurrency was not a thing (with possible room for PoW as a minor ingredient for things like initial bootstrapping), and crypto in general was more an area of research than investment for now. I think that as long as >>90% of crypto is PoW, it's better (for me, at least) to stay away entirely rather than trying to invest in some upstart PoS coin.

Replying toA whirlwind tour of Ethereum finance

Jameson Quinn5y

A whirlwind tour of Ethereum finance

#2. Note that even if ETH does switch in the future, investing in ETH today is still investing in proof-of-work. Also, as long as BTC remains larger and doesn't switch, I suspect there's likely to be spillover between ETH and BTC such that it would be difficult to put energy into ETH without to some degree propping up the BTC ecosystem.

Replying toA whirlwind tour of Ethereum finance

Jameson Quinn5y

A whirlwind tour of Ethereum finance

I feel it's worth pointing out that all proof-of-work cryptocurrency is based on literally burning use-value to create exchange-value, and that this is not a sustainable long-term plan. And as far as I can tell, non-proof-of-work cryptocurrency is mostly a mirage or even a deliberate red herring / bait-and-switch.

I'm not an expert, but I choose not to participate on moral grounds. YMMV.

I realize that what I'm saying here is probably not a new idea to most people reading, but it seems clearly enough true to me that it bears repeating anyway.

If anyone wants links to further arguments in this regard, from me rather than Google, I'd be happy to provide.

Replying toExcerpt from Arbital Solomonoff induction dialogue

Jameson Quinn5y

Excerpt from Arbital Solomonoff induction dialogue

If we're positing a Grahamputer, then "yeah but it's essentially the same if you're not worried about agents of equal size" seems too loose.

In other words, with great compute power, comes great compute responsibility.

Replying toWhat is going on in the world?

Jameson Quinn5y

What is going on in the world?

Thanks for pointing that out. My arguments above do not apply.

I'm still skeptical. I buy anthropic reasoning as valid in cases where we share an observation across subjects and time (eg, "we live on a planet orbiting a G2V-type star", "we inhabit a universe that appears to run on quantum mechanics"), but not in cases where each observation is unique (eg, "it's the year 2021, and there have been about 107,123,456,789 (plus or minus a lot) people like me ever"). I am far less confident of this than I stated for the arguments above, but I'm still reasonably confident, and my expertise does still apply (I've thought about it more than just what you see here).

Replying toWhat is going on in the world?

Jameson Quinn5y

What is going on in the world?

Our sense-experiences are "unitary" (in some sense which I hope we can agree on without defining rigorously), so of course we use unitary measure to predict them. Branching worlds are not unitary in that sense, so carrying over unitarity from the former to the latter seems an entirely arbitrary assumption.

A finite number (say, the number of particles in the known universe), raised to a finite number (say, the number of Planck time intervals before dark energy tears the universe apart), gives a finite number. No need for divergence. (I think both of those are severe overestimates for the actual possible branching, but they are reasonable as handwavy demonstrations of the existence of finite upper bounds)

Replying toWhat is going on in the world?

Jameson Quinn5y

What is going on in the world?

I don't think the point you were arguing against is the same as the one I'm making here, though I understand why you think so.

My understanding of your model is that, simplifying relativistic issues so that "simultaneous" has a single unambiguous meaning, total measure across quantum branches of a simultaneous time slice is preserved; and your argument is that, otherwise, we'd have to assign equal measure to each unique moment of consciousness, which would lead to ridiculous "Bolzmann brain" scenarios. I'd agree that your argument is convincing that different simultaneous branches have different weight according to the rules of QM, but that does not at all imply that total weight across branches is constant across time.

Replying toD&D.Sci II Evaluation and Ruleset

Jameson Quinn5y

D&D.Sci II Evaluation and Ruleset

I didn't do this problem, but I can imagine I might have been tripped up by the fact that "hammer" and "axe" are tools and not weapons. In standard DnD terminology, these are often considered "simple weapons"; distinct from "martial weapons" like warhammer and battleaxe, but still within the category of "weapons".

I guess that the "toolish" abstractions might have tipped me off, though. And even if I had made this mistake, it would only have mattered for "simple-weapon" tools with a modifier.

Practical post on 4 #ProRep methods (Proportional Representation)

Jameson Quinn

Context

I have written a series of longer posts about voting theory: a general primer, single-winner pathologies, multi-winner method building blocks, and a longer, harder-to-read piece where I struggled through to a metric for multi-winner methods.

I believe that I should write a simpler, (relatively) shorter piece on proportional multi-winner methods. This is partly because my own thinking has evolved and sharpened, and partly because I think that current events in the US, Canada, and UK make these ideas more timely:

In the US, the Democratic party is poised to have the trifecta they'd need to pass Federal laws, and they seem to be motivated to look at fundamental political reforms due to such events

... (read 3205 more words →)

How should I back up and redo, in a publicly-edited article?

Jameson Quinn

I've been working on the article https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rh8v4ba9w5KTb6onD/ongoing-thoughts-on-proportional-voting-methods for some time now. From the beginning, I was driving towards defining a metric for proportional voting method quality that could be connected through some chain of reasoning and approximations to utilitarianism. I have now achieved such a definition, and am beginning to apply my metric to real-world voting scenarios.

And I am realizing that the connection to utilitarianism is too tenuous and abstract to ever hope to get ordinary people to even understand it exists. Even though I'm no stranger to explaining difficult and abstract concepts in simple concrete terms, this is just too much of a stretch.

I'd like to use the same building blocks... (read more)

[not ongoing] Thoughts on Proportional voting methods

Jameson Quinn

About this post

This post was a work-in-progress, I (Jameson) updated it over the course of weeks/months, and the reposted it when it got substantial updates. I have now decided to leave it as it is for historical interest, as the next step would be a ground-up rewrite. I'm not sure when I'll have the time to finish that ground-up rewrite but I'd say there's a >80% chance something like that will happen within the next year; that is, before September 2021.

Status

I think I'm going to stop making large edits to the article as it stands. I'll add a longer "post-mortem" at the end. In sum: I think that the process of writing... (read 13732 more words →)

What should be the topic of my LW mini-talk this Sunday (July 18th)?

Jameson Quinn

I have signed up to give a LW mini-talk. I could in theory talk about various topics in Bayesian statistics and MCMC, but what I am actually interested in discussing right now are the ideas in this post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rh8v4ba9w5KTb6onD/ongoing-thoughts-on-proportional-voting-methods

If you have read that post, what topic there do you think would be best? It should be something that's not common knowledge or "obvious" to the audience, but also doesn't require too much setup. Assume that I am able to do a decent job of structuring my talk — that is, a substantially better job of setting up and exploring a single idea in a 5-minute chunk than I've done in that essay which is not intended to be a 5-minute chunk.

Feel free to post "answers" here which are general advice and not specific topic suggestions.

(answered: yes) Has anyone written up a consideration of Downs's "Paradox of Voting" from the perspective of MIRI-ish decision theories (UDT, FDT, or even just EDT)?

Jameson Quinn

The Paradox of Voting, simply stated, is that voting in a large election almost certainly isn't worth your time (unless you think it's the most fun thing you could be doing). The guaranteed opportunity cost of going to vote will in most cases easily and predictably outweigh the expected benefits — the chance that your vote (along with everyone else's) would be pivotal because the margin was 1 vote, multiplied by your expected marginal utility payoff from your chosen candidate winning.

There are various well-known responses to this issue, listed in the Wikipedia article linked above. But to me, one of the obvious responses is to see this as just another instance of... (read more)

Is voting theory important? An attempt to check my bias.

Jameson Quinn

You may have seen either or both of my two prior posts here, in which I first said I'm beginning to seek a grant for some voting theory research after I graduate, and then looked into some of the possible sources of such a grant. In this post, I'll dig into why I think that this research is important. I have plenty of ideas on that issue, and I'm using this writing as an opportunity to get them in order, so you should not expect this to be a well-organized post.

I think that voting theory is important; that is, that it is an area in which further study and the resulting insights... (read 1724 more words →)

EA grants available (to individuals)

Jameson Quinn

I'm considering applying for some kind of a grant from the effective altruism community. A quick sketch of the specifics is here. Raemon replied there with a list of possibilities. In this post, I'll look into each of those possibilities, to make this process easier for whoever comes next. In the order Raemon gave them, those are:

OpenPhil

"Can I apply for a grant?

In general, we expect to identify most giving opportunities via proactive searching and networking. We expect to fund very few proposals that come to us via unsolicited contact. As such, we have no formal process for accepting such proposals and may not respond to inquiries. If you would like to suggest

... (read 861 more words →)

Does the EA community do "basic science" grants? How do I get one?

Jameson Quinn

I'm graduating in either May or August of 2019 with a PhD in statistics. During my studies, I've made progress on several projects related to voting theory. Since these are not directly related to statistics, I haven't managed to finish these up and publish them cleanly. I think that:

Voting theory is relevant to EA, both in immediate terms (better decisionmaking in current real-world settings) and in more speculative terms (philosophical implications for the meaning of "friendly", "coherent volition", etc.)
If I had 6 months post-graduation to work exclusively on this, I could finish several projects. I don't think it's conceited of me to think that these contributions I, specifically, could make would be

... (read more)

A Rationalist Argument for Voting

Jameson Quinn

The argument that voting is irrational is commonplace. From your point of view as a single voter, the chance that your one vote will sway the election are typically miniscule, and the direct effect of your vote is null if it doesn't sway the election. Thus, even if the expected value of your preferred candidate to you is hugely higher than that of the likely winner without your vote, when multiplied by the tiny chance your vote matters, the overall expected value isn't enough to justify the small time and effort of voting. This problem at the heart of democracy has been noted by many — most prominently, Condorcet, Hegel, and Downs.

There... (read 795 more words →)

The Devil's Advocate: when is it right to be wrong?

Jameson Quinn

That's a mighty ambitious title, isn't it? Sorry, I don't actually have an answer to the question though. All I have is an anecdote. Two warnings ahead of time:

This involves politics, so feel free to skip it if you think that's too mind-killing. You can still participate in comments just based on the title above.
In this case I actually think I'm right. The only reason I'm discussing it under the heading above is that on a meta level I think that it would be OK if I were wrong.

So, here's the situation. I believe that the main voting method used in the US, Canada, and the UK is crap. (This method is... (read 587 more words →)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Jameson Quinn

A voting theory primer for rationalists

5 general voting pathologies: lesser names of Moloch

Multi-winner Voting: a question of Alignment

Is voting theory important? An attempt to check my bias.

Jameson Quinn

Practical post on 4 #ProRep methods (Proportional Representation)

How should I back up and redo, in a publicly-edited article?

[not ongoing] Thoughts on Proportional voting methods

What should be the topic of my LW mini-talk this Sunday (July 18th)?

(answered: yes) Has anyone written up a consideration of Downs's "Paradox of Voting" from the perspective of MIRI-ish decision theories (UDT, FDT, or even just EDT)?

Is voting theory important? An attempt to check my bias.

EA grants available (to individuals)

Voting Theory Primer for Rationalists

Jameson Quinn

A voting theory primer for rationalists

5 general voting pathologies: lesser names of Moloch

Multi-winner Voting: a question of Alignment

Is voting theory important? An attempt to check my bias.

Jameson Quinn

Practical post on 4 #ProRep methods (Proportional Representation)

How should I back up and redo, in a publicly-edited article?

[not ongoing] Thoughts on Proportional voting methods

What should be the topic of my LW mini-talk this Sunday (July 18th)?

(answered: yes) Has anyone written up a consideration of Downs's "Paradox of Voting" from the perspective of MIRI-ish decision theories (UDT, FDT, or even just EDT)?

Is voting theory important? An attempt to check my bias.

EA grants available (to individuals)

Voting Theory Primer for Rationalists

Context

About this post

Status

OpenPhil