All of jobe_smith's Comments + Replies

When you say that it pays off, is the main benefit just the pleasure you get from having lots of friends and social interactions, or are there actually substantial tangible benefits? Do you think you could reproduce all the tangible benefits with an extra $10K/year of income, or is it worth a lot more than that? I am curious because I have often felt like people who are good with people and know a lot of people should have a substantial advantage over someone like me, who is terrible with people. But then in practice I don't really see it.

I have suffered from social anxiety continuously and depression off and on since childhood. I've sought treatment that included talk therapy and medication. Currently I am doing EMDR therapy which may or may not end up being helpful, but I don't expect it to work miracles. Everyone in my immediate family has had similar issues throughout their lives. I feel your pain. Despite not being perfect and being in therapy, I feel like my life is going pretty well. Here is what has worked for me:

Acceptance: Not everyone can be or should be the life of the party. Be... (read more)

I think that LWers assign a much higher probability to a FOOM scenario that most people. Most people probably wouldn't assign much value to an AI that just seeks to maximize the number of paperclips in the universe, and continuously attempts to improve its ability to make that goal happen. Someone could build something like that expecting that its abilities would level off pretty quickly, and be badly wrong.

Another idea: One of the great anti-utilitarian movements of our time has been the anti-vaccine movement. In that vain, how about setting up an anti-bed net advocacy group to argue that the children of Africa are being poisoned by chemical laden bed nets, and a charity that will collect and dispose of bed nets that are currently in use in Africa. I'm sure there must be a celebrity that would endorse such a charity. Snookie hasn't been doing much lately!

3Punoxysm
I love/hate this one. The anti-vaccine movement combines pseudoscientific drivel with public harm. Could a $1 million anti-net organization reverse far more than $1 million of the Gate's foundations resources in this top effective altruism area? But I don't know if there's fertile ground for such a concept. Is there any nascent suspicion and skepticism or nets the way there is for vaccines? A very strong contender for the crown!

I have to say i don't get why so many of the comments on this are negative. Surely, if there was a completely legal way to inflict great harm on humanity for only $1Million then there are a ton of people/groups with the desire and resources to do those things. The idea that anyone with the desire to implement these things will learn about them first on LessWrong seems ludicrous to me.

Anyway, here is an idea:

  1. Offer a $1Million prize for a working self-improving paper-clip maximizing AI. I think that this is very unlikely to produce anything, but since it
... (read more)
0DanielLC
If they have to succeed to get the million, why would they care about the prize? If they make a friendly AI they won't need the million, and if they have an unfriendly one, the also won't need it, but for different reasons. Even if it's just a human-level AI, it would be worth orders of magnitude more than that.
3roystgnr
Are you sure? Who? The people who do inflict great harm on humanity aren't cartoon monsters. They're commonly either unethically selfish, foolishly utopian, or terroristic. The selfish ones will only care about an idea for doing harm if the harm is a byproduct of an idea for getting something they want. The utopians don't try to do harm, they just create unintended consequences when trying to do good. Neither kind of person is going to be at all interested in an idea whose sole purpose is to do great harm. Even terrorism is typically either a negotiating point for demands, a provocation to overreaction, or at worst a pure act of revenge; here they actually have a desire to do harm, but targeted harm, not generic "harm on humanity". Unless an efficient act of anti-altruism happens to affect only a subset of humanity that's contained within a set of terrorist targets, it's not even going to interest them!
0ChristianKl
There are legal ways that you get by playing off laws of different legislations against each other that are not trivial to see. Take pre-2013 Wikileaks. Immune to being sued in the City of London for defamation because Wikileaks and Julian himself have no fixed residence towards which to deliver post. Being registered in Sweden to into account their Whistblower protection laws. Having server in yet another country to profit from additional set of laws. Neither desire nor monetary resources alone are enough to come up with such a scheme. It need people with high intelligence. LW is a forum with educated people with a very high base IQ. Wikileaks was well intentioned but I think you could find a bunch of people that argue that it produced significant damage in the world for a cost of less than 1 million dollar. Bitcoin with it's enabling of payment transfer for illegal services might also produce a lot of harm for far less of 1 million dollar in initial development costs. Ideas like Bitcoin or Wikileaks aren't expensive but they require deep thought.

Gold mining. Adding marginal ounces of gold to world supply adds very little utility because gold can be pretty much endlessly reused and there is plenty of it around that has already been mined. Central banks of fiat currencies sit on many years supply for no particularly good reason. Meanwhile, the industry consumes $billions annually of real resources (like fossil fuels and capital equipment) and produce pollution and environmental damage.

3CronoDAS
Isn't the underlying problem gold hoarding, then, and not gold mining? (If gold were as cheap as copper, what would we do with it that we don't do already?)

That's a good question. What if it turned out that laughing maniacally after committing an act of villainy was the healthiest of all? Would that change people's views about altruism?

2TheOtherDave
I don't know if it's healthy, but I find maniacal laughter quite satisfying. Fortunately, I do enough theatre and similar performance that I have many opportunities for it.
0CCC
Hmmm. It would be sufficient for the maniacal laughter to take place; technically, the villainy is unnecessary, as long as the necessary parts of the brain can be fooled. One way to do this would be with a computer game; playing civilisation (for example), betraying your computer-player allies, and then laughing maniacally about it. Alternatively, for more of a challenge (in case overcoming difficult opposition turns out to be a necessary element), one could play a game against human players (Diplomacy might work well here) and laugh maniacally if one achieves victory. (Since the game is structured in such a way that at least one player must eventually achieve victory, someone will have the opportunity to gain the health benefits of the maniacal laughter; one may have additional opportunities during the game to laugh maniacally as well).

Like actually for free? Not many. Almost everything either requires me to be exposed to ads or to purchase something to be able to consume it. There is a free newspaper where I live, but that has ads. To access the internet I need to buy some sort of device and then pay someone for access to the internet. I can get internet for free in certain businesses or public places (libraries I guess), but in the case of libraries they are supported by tax dollars and the cost is part of GDP. For businesses, providing free wifi is a good way to get people in the door... (read more)

0Desrtopa
If we're going to treat being exposed to ads as a sufficient condition for "not free," then I'd think that any experience which presents even trivial inconveniences would have to be classified as not free, regardless of whether it costs any money. Seeing ads doesn't actually induce an obligation to buy anything. Personally, I have never bought anything that I have received online ads for (I know that people tend to be very bad at remembering how ads influence their buying behavior, but ads tend to invoke in me a very strong contrarian response which actively prevents me from buying the products.) Also, some things have cost in the sense that they're supported by tax dollars or other communal funds, but these things are generally paid for whether you use them or not, so you incur no additional expense by using them.
2Luke_A_Somers
Yes, point made - "free isn't". Now, how relevant is it to the point you made above? You were doing econometrics, and this stuff isn't absolutely invisible, but it's much lighter-weight. I can read books and watch movies and send letters and get the news and publish stories for a very modest (0 marginal) monthly fee and watching some ads which, since this isn't the boom days of the 90s, isn't even all that much money behind the scenes. In the old days, so much less of that would have happened, and it was great value - but because it's so cheap, it's discounted. Basically: does the CPI (or whatever inflation measure you're using) incorporate the (marginal) price of renting a video? ... on Youtube? Does it include the price of getting a book? ... from an author who put it on the net? If people had and did all the things we do for each other now, but without any additional money flying around began putting up beautiful artwork everywhere that made everyone's life an utter joy... the economic indicators wouldn't notice.

But the flush toilet can only be invented once. We might have access to talking super toilets with multi-coloured fountains - but all the bells and whistles are less useful that the original flushing toilet aspect.

how about a teleporter combined with a toilet. It could sit somewhere in your house, scanning your bladder and colon periodically, and then removing accumulated waste without you having to do anything. While it is doing that it could also remove any viral particles or unhealthy bacteria from your bloodstream, excess ear wax, unwanted body hair, tumors, arterial plaques, unpleasant memories, etc. THAT would be a real innovation!

3Armok_GoB
... excess fat, misconceptions, bad ideas, unpleasant emotions, character flaws ...

The argument that innovation has slowed is pretty simple. In the developed world, per capita output has to be driven by innovation. To some extent people can work harder, but that's pretty limited. We can see that by the best measures we have, growth of per capita output has been slowing since the 70s and especially since 2000. That means that innovation is slowing. The counter argument is that the best methods of measuring output aren't good enough, and that the newer forms of innovations are not captured as well as older forms of innovation. I guess that's possible, but its not obvious. After all a lot of tech companies are worth a lot of money.

3Luke_A_Somers
Not obvious? How many really amazing things can you get for free these days?

I think that most people are able to at least implicitly bite the bullet of continuous personal change. And that is why they apply some reasonable temporal discounting. Here is an SMBC that explains the basic concept. One of the very weird things about LWers is their aversion to discounting. Eliezer even wrote an emotional post about it once. Normal people can discount the preferences of their futures selves, current others and future others in a way that saves them a lot of ethical/philosophical headaches.

I would solicit bids from the two groups. I imagine that the 3^^^3 people would be able to pay more to save their lives than the 1 person would be able to pay to avoid infinite torture. Plus, once I make the decision, if I sentence the 1 person to infinite torture I only have to worry about their friends/family and I have 3^^^3 allies who will help defend me against retribution. Otherwise, the situation is reversed and I think its likely I'll be murdered or imprisoned if I kill that many people. Of course, if the scenario is different, like the 3^^^3 peopl... (read more)

In general, picking the highest EV option makes sense, but in the context of what sounds like a stupid/lazy economics experiment, you have a moral duty to do the wrong thing. Perhaps you could have flipped a coin twice to choose among the first 4 options? That way you are providing crappy/useless data and they have to pay you for it!

0fluchess
Why do I have a moral duty to do wrong thing? Shouldn't I act in my own self interest to maximise the amount of money I make?

Do you trade your own capital or 100% firm capital?

I trade 100% firm capital, not my own. I've heard of bright and places like that but there are lots of real prop trading firms, that actually make their money from trading. Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:

  • Getco
  • Virtu
  • DRW
  • Allston
  • Ronin
  • HTG
  • Chopper
  • Sun
  • Optiver
  • Tower Research
  • Teza
  • Wolverine
  • Marquette Partners
  • Jump
  • Eagle 7
  • Peak 6

etc.

I think you are correct about what prop trading firms do, but I am not so pessimistic about the prognosis for retail investors. I don't think retail investors can compete with professional prop traders at what they do, but I think that they can do better than just sticking their money in index funds, at least on a risk adjusted basis.

I have a few thoughts on this:

  1. The way to get into finance is to go to a top college and major in either business, economics a hard science or engineering discipline. There are people who take other paths, but that's the main way to go. Financial firms are typically not overly concerned about specific college majors. I personally did Physics + Econ, but Comp Sci + Econ would have worked just as well. The point is that you can pick a major that is valuable outside of finance and still pursue a job in finance. That way, if finance doesn't work out you wil

... (read more)
  • More than 100% of my profit's are from market making. Overall, I lose money on my positions. For the firm as a whole, position trading might be slightly profitable.

  • I have a basic strategy that works, and I run a couple variants on that strategy on a decent number of products. I am always trying to tweak the strategy to make it better, and add more products to trade. I also put some effort into developing new ideas. Most of the time, new ideas are a waste of time. There just aren't that many fundamentally different strategies that work, and that provide

... (read more)
0niceguyanon
Thanks for the response. This is exactly why I tell everyone who thinks they should dabble in trading to stop it. The regular person who thinks they can beat the stock market for alpha has huge odds stacked against them. Real professionals that work at true proprietary trading firms: * Are not paying stupid amounts of money on retail commission. * Have direct access to exchanges via having a seat at the exchange, no middle broker. * Are using true HFT (not just automated trading ) with collocated servers at these exchanges. * Market making for tiny tiny spreads - it's how most trading outfits make their money, not on positional trades, (real data is hard to come by but anecdotal evidence is abundant on this) Since you are the expert, is my assessment mostly accurate?

High frequency trading is a candidate for a sector of finance that makes money through buying and selling stocks a little bit faster than others, without contributing much social value.

I think that this is a bit of a misunderstanding of what HFT does. A lot of HFT firms spend significant resources trying to be fast, but they do that because a lot of other HFT firms are also spending significant resources to be fast, and are pursuing very similar strategies. Speed is all about competing with the other trading firms, not about being quicker than end users... (read more)

0JonahS
Thanks! I don't have subject matter knowledge here, so this is helpful.

I've worked as a trader/quant/developer for coming up on 12 years. Joe Mela's post at 80,000 hours basically matches my experience. I'll also point out that a large portion of trading firms are in Chicago, where the cost of living is really not too bad.

2JonahS
Thanks!

Seems reasonable for general elections but what about primaries? A lot of people changed their mind about Rick Perry after his debate performances in the 2012 republican primaries. If better debates during the primaries produced better candidates from both parties, that seems like it would be a win.

0ThisSpaceAvailable
But was that because of substantive policy issues, or was it because of Perry's lack of public speaking skills?
2[anonymous]
This is a good point. My argument is kind of specific to high-profile elections with very-well-defined tribes.

For a particular use of time to have zero opportunity cost.

Mostly when people talk about opportunity cost, they mean the cost associated with forgoing a different option. So, if you sit on your couch and watch TV you are forgoing working at Jimmy Johns for $8/hour. That's your opportunity cost. It doesn't go to 0 just because you are immortal.

But I think I know you what you mean. You want to feel like you have plenty of time to do everything or nothing. You don't want to feel constrained by a limited lifespan. If that is how you feel, then I think its... (read more)

7RowanE
You can dismiss anything anyone wants or is worried about, as a psychological issue that they can fix by ceasing to worry about or want the thing. It's even true that doing so will improve their circumstances. But it's hardly a better solution than the person actually getting the thing they want or avoiding the thing they're worried about.

I don't understand how P(Simulation) can be so much higher than P(God) and P(Supernatural). Seems to me that "the stuff going on outside the simulation" would have to be supernatural by definition. The beings that created the simulation would be supernatural intelligent entities who created the universe, aka gods. How do people justify giving lower probabilities for supernatural than for simulation?

4TheOtherDave
At least part of it is that a commonly endorsed local definition of "supernatural" would not necessarily include the beings who created a simulation. Similarly, the definition of "god" around here is frequently tied to that definition of supernatural. I am not defending those usages here, just observing that they exist.
0timujin
The word "supernatural" often means "something that is not describable by physics" (ugly definition, I know) or "mental phenomena that is not reducible to non-mental phenomena". Both definitions are such that it is hard to imagine a world in which there exists something they describe. "Simulation" is, on the other hand, at least imaginable.

I've worked in high frequency trading in Chicago as a trader and developer for 11.5 years. I am an expert on that stuff. AMA.

3niceguyanon
* How much of your firms profits are from providing a market (giving liquidity) vs actually taking an outright position in the market? * Are there new strategies being developed constantly or is there just tweaks to an overall proprietary algorithm?

can you explain your basic business model? Also, what is the hardest part of your business and/or the biggest barrier to entry?

2edanm
So, we're what's called a "Professional Services" firm. This term is usually used when talking about e.g. Accountants, Lawyers, etc, but is just as relevant for a Software Consultancy. I'll go a little into the idea behind professional services firms in general, then get back to talking about us in particular. There are many, many different types of Professional Services firms, but the basic business model is usually the same - you're selling your time for money, and people pay because of your expertise and experience in the field. But here's where large firms make their real money: the firm gets projects based on the expertise and experience of the "managing partners", and then a combination of the managing partners and juniors perform the actual work. For example, a law office will win a contract because of their experience and the expertise of its "Name Partners", and they'll charge let's say $500 an hour for an hour of Partner time. But they'll also charge $450 an hour for an Associate lawyer. The firm pays huge salaries for the name partners, so they're basically not making any profit there. But they pay tiny salaried to the Associates, for a large profit. This is called "leverage". This is how a professional services firm grows and makes a profit - leveraging the skills and reputation of key, highly payed employees, to sell the work of lower-payed employees. Most Professional Services firms can be placed on a moving scale as to how much expertise vs. leverage they have. An example of a highly skilled "firm" - a team of brain surgeons. They're basically paid amazingly well, and have minimal leverage. An example of a consultancy with a lot of leverage - a company that builds websites for restaurants. Building a website for a restaurant is 90% repetitive work that can be given to junior employees, with senior employees focused on finding work and growing the reputation of the business. So where do we fit in all this? In our case, as a rather small firm, we'r

Have you become exceptionally good at anything, and if so what and how?

0ephion
Improving skills is about deliberate practice, objective analysis (either by yourself or a teacher), and evaluating and fixing your weaknesses. I've been able to improve every skill I've tried with this method. I consider myself exceptionally good at creating metal music (playing guitar, vocals, recording/mixing/production), and I'm getting pretty good at weight lifting. I am beginning to develop the skill of computer programming, which I expect to take to that level. For most non-career and non-pleasure skills, I generally stop at the point of diminishing returns. I've learned to cook for myself better than most restaurants, but I don't care to invest the time and energy to become a real artist with it.
  1. What are you working on at google?

  2. How much do you earn?

  3. How much do you give, and to where?

What are you working on at google?

ngx_pagespeed and mod_pagespeed. They are open source modules for nginx and apache that rewrite web pages on the fly to make them load faster.

How much do you earn?

$195k/year, all things considered. (That's my total compensation over the last 19 months, annualized. Full details: http://www.jefftk.com/money)

How much do you give, and to where?

Last year Julia and I gave a total of $98,950 to GiveWell's top charities and the Centre for Effective Altruism. (Full details: http://www.jefftk.com/donations)