Could you clarify a bit here. Is Hanson talking about specific cultures or all of the instances of culture?

Thanks that does help clarify the challenges for me.

I was just scrolling through Metaculus and its predictions for the US Elections. I noticed that pretty much every case was a conditional If Trump wins/If doesn't win. Had two thought about the estimates for these. All seem to suggest the outcomes are worse under Trump. But that assessment of the outcome being worse is certainly subject to my own biases, values and preferences. (For example, for US voters is it really a bad outcome if the probability of China attacking Taiwan increases under Trump? I think so but other may well see the costs necessary to reduce the likelihood as high for something that is not something that actually involves the USA.)

So my first though was how much bias should I infer as present in these probability estimates? I'm not sure. But that does relate a bit to my other thought.

In one sense you could naively apply the p, therefore not p is the outcome for the other candidate as only two actually exist. But I think it is also clear that the two probability distributions don't come from the same pool so conceivably you could change the name to Harris and get the exact same estimates.

So I was thinking, what if Metaculus did run the two cases side by side? Would seeing p(Haris) + p(Trump) significantly different than 1 suggest one should have lower confidence in the estimates? I am not sure about that.

What if we see something like p(H) approximately equale to p(T)? does that suggest the selected outcome is poorly chosen as it is largely independant of the elected candidate so the estimates are largely meaninless in terms of election outcomes? I have a stronger sense this is the case.

So my bottome line now is that I should likely not hold a high confidence that the estimates on these outcomes are really meaninful with regards to the election impacts. 

Had something of a similar reaction but the note about far-UV not having the same problems as other UV serilization (i.e., also harmful to humans) I gather the point is about locality. UV in ducks will kill viri in the air system. But the spread of an airborn illness goes host-to-target before it passed through the air system.

As such seems that while the in-duct UV solution would help limit spread, it's not going to do much to clean the air in the room while people are in it exhailing, coughing or sneezing, talking.... 

I suspect it does little to protect the people directly next/in front of a contagious person but probably good for those practicing that old 6 foot rule (or whatever the arbitray distancing rule was).

Just my guess though.

Quick comment regarding research.

If far-UV is really so great, and not that simple, I would assume that any company that would be selling and installing might not be some small Mom and Pop type operation. If that holds, why are the companies that want to promote and sell the systems using them and then collecting the data?

Or is would that type of investment be seen as too costly even for those with a direct interest in producing the results to bolster sales and increase the size of the network/ecosystem?

I think perhaps a first one might be:

On what evidence do I conclude what I think is know is correct/factual/true and how strong is that evidence? To what extent have I verified that view and just how extensively should I verify the evidence?

After that might be a similar approach to the implications or outcomes of applying actions based on what one holds as truth/fact.

I tend to think of rationality as a process rather than endpoint. Which isn't to say that the destination is not important but clearly without the journey the destination is just a thought or dream. That first of a thousand steps thing.

What happens when Bob can be found in or out of the set of bald things at different times or in different situations, but we might not understand (or even be well aware) of the conditions that drive Bob's membership in the set when we're evaluating baldness and Bob?

Can membership in baldness turn out to be some type of quantum state thing?

That might be a basis for separating the concept of fuzzy language and fuzzy truth.But I would agree that if we can identify all possible cases where Bob is or is not in the set of baldness one might claim truth is no longer fuzzy but one needs to then prove that knowledge of all possible states has been established I think.

I really like the observation in your Further Thoughts point. I do think that is a problem people need to look at as I would guess many will view the government involvement from a acting in public interests view rather than acting in either self interest (as problematic as that migh be when the players keep changing) or from a special interest/public choice perspective.

Probably some great historical analysis already written about events in the past that might serve as indicators of the pros and cons here. Any historians in the group here?

Strong upvote based on the first sentence. I often wonder why people think an ASI/AGI will want anything that humans do or even see the same things that biological life sees as resources. But it seems like under the covers of many arguments here that is largely assumed true.

I am a bit confused on point 2. Other than trading or doing it your selfs what other ways are you thinking about getting something?