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All of JohnofCharleston's Comments + Replies

Fort Meade – ACX Meetups Everywhere Spring 2024
JohnofCharleston10

Believe this time is wrong, should be Noon EST per the ACX post:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/spring-meetups-everywhere-2024

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LessWrong readers are invited to apply to the Lurkshop
JohnofCharleston1110

Thank you for the update. I passed this listing on with my endorsement to several people in the DC community who applied and heard nothing back. Having the event fall through like this is discouraging.

In the future I'd urge you to share bad news sooner, it doesn't get better with time.

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4Liron
Thanks for the update. Ya not communicating earlier to help applicants set expectations for an upcoming high-coordination event on a certain date is a pretty large demonstration of poor judgment that generally makes one want to lower expectations on every other aspect. But it’s a good idea/initiative and sometimes smart people make isolated mistakes. Hoping for the best in Jan.
ACX Montreal Meetup October 15 2022
JohnofCharleston10

As a counter-argument, Dominic Cummings's argument that it is ~impossible to reform bureaucracies. The only plausible path to improvement is replacing moribund institutions with new startups, explicitly with different institutional cultures.
https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/regime-change-2-a-plea-to-silicon

Not endorsed, but worth grappling with.

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1the gears to ascension
biology agrees somewhat; it's much much harder to repair a body into immortality than to simply have offspring with newly built bodies
ACX Montreal Meetup October 15 2022
JohnofCharleston10

Potentially relevant extra-credit reading, Scott Alexander's Book Review of Seeing Like a State by James Scott:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/

This perspective is foundational to my understanding of bureaucracies and other large institutions. 

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1JohnofCharleston
As a counter-argument, Dominic Cummings's argument that it is ~impossible to reform bureaucracies. The only plausible path to improvement is replacing moribund institutions with new startups, explicitly with different institutional cultures. https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/regime-change-2-a-plea-to-silicon Not endorsed, but worth grappling with.
Covid 10/28: An Unexpected Victory
JohnofCharleston50

Something doesn’t add up with the Private Sector Vaccine Mandate section.

The claim is:
“US companies firing fully vaccinated people who don’t have the *right* US vaccines. Or people who even if unvaccinated have no way to get a US-approved vaccine in their own country.”

…I don’t buy it. I simply do not believe American firms are firing ALL THEIR WORKERS in countries that do not have access to Pfizer, Moderna, or J&J. We would know about that. I don’t even believe that companies are firing significant fractions of their workforce in countries like the UK,... (read more)

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4Zvi
Removed (btw: If you're giving me a comment like this, best place is at DWATV, no need to post it twice). 
4Daniel_Eth
Yeah, that also triggered my "probably false or very misleading" alarm. People are making all sorts of wild claims about covid online for political points, and I don't even know who the random person on twitter making that claim was.
Y Couchinator
JohnofCharleston180

Be very careful about introducing an expectation to pay. Payment, even contingent future payment, will fundamentally change the nature of the endeavor. People are very motivated by social norms in most situations, but introducing money buys your way out of those norms. The classic treatment of this is is that daycare centers that fine parents for tardiness and making the staff stay late have much more tardiness than those who just disapprove.

See https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomics.html

To the extent that this practice stays with... (read more)

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2Adam Zerner
Interesting point. My main thought is that it is a hypothesis to test, and that I don't feel strongly about how people would react to the contingent future payment. I could definitely see some people being turned off by it, as well as others turned on, but I don't have a good sense for what the results would be on balance.