All of kjz's Comments + Replies

Donated $100. Thanks for everything you do!

I could imagine this turning into a flexible system of alliances similar to the conference system in NCAA college football and other sports (see here for a nice illustrated history of the many changes over time). Just as conferences and schools negotiate membership based on the changing quality of their sports programs, ability to generate revenue, and so on, states could form coalitions that could be renegotiated based on changing populations or voter preferences.

Thinking from that perspective, one potential Schelling point could be a "Northwest" coalitio... (read more)

I was thinking more that the acidic environment of the stomach could break down the aggregates to the protein monomers. This step wouldn't be reliant on proteases, although proteases might then be able to further break down the monomers. But I haven't looked into whether this has been studied.

I'm not convinced that eating prion-contaminated tissue is a major factor in transmitting prion diseases. Prions are still proteins, which are broken down to amino acids very readily by the digestive system. Even if prions are more stable than most proteins because they have formed these crystalline-like oligomers, such large molecules would have little chance of being absorbed intact into the bloodstream. Instead, I would imagine they would pass through the digestive system and be excreted in feces.

The Wikipedia article on kuru proposes an alternate mecha... (read more)

Should we humans broadcast more explicitly to future AGIs that we greatly prefer the future where we engage in mutually beneficial trade with them to the future where we are destroyed?

(I am making an assumption here that most, if not all, people would agree with this preference. It seems fairly overdetermined to me. But if I'm missing something where this could somehow lead to unintended consequences, please feel free to point that out.)

Sorry, I thought that would be more commonly understood. As Carl said, it stands for Contract Research Organization. Hiring one is a way to get additional resources to perform specific tasks without having them be part of your organization, understand your corporate strategy, or even know what project you're working on. For example, a pharma company can hire a CRO to synthesize a specific set of potential drug compounds, without telling them what the biological target is or what disease they are trying to treat. Or think of the scenario where a rogue AGI h... (read more)

Maybe it's better to model the army of ants as a CRO you would hire instead of an employee? And by extension, I would much prefer to be part of an AGI's CRO than be extinct.

I often use the heuristic that if two sources with opposing Narratives both claim that a certain fact is true, it is strong evidence that the fact is indeed true. Are there cases where this heuristic fails? E.g. where both sides claim a fact is true (likely with different motives), but it is actually false?

If you have hierarchy in a company, regardless of whether people are "middle managers" per se, there's a tendency for people to come to care about advancing in the hierarchy. It's a natural thing to want to do.

I would take this a step further and say that once maze levels are high enough, it essentially becomes a requirement to care (or at least pretend to care) about advancing in the hierarchy. Instead of advancement being something that some employees might want and others might not want, it becomes almost an axiom within the organization that everyone m... (read more)

Another potential assumption/limitation of the EMH:

• Socially acceptable to trade: It must be socially acceptable for people who have enough financial resources to noticeably affect market prices to trade based on the new information.

I initially proposed this idea to try to explain the market's slow response to the early warning signs of Covid in this comment. Similar dynamics may come into play with respect to the social acceptability of ESG vs anti-ESG investing based on political affiliation, although in this case I don't think there is enough anti-ESG mo... (read more)

Maybe the market is predicting that R0 will be >1, but isolation and contact tracing will be enough to prevent a wider outbreak?

What about the combo: a tic-tac-toe board position, a tic-tac-toe board position with X winning, and a tic-tac-toe board position with O winning. Would it give realistic positions matching the descriptions?

That's fair. Maybe I was more trying to get at the chances that current live orgs will develop this know-how, or if it would require new orgs designed with that purpose.

Does an organization's ability to execute a "pivotal act" overlap with Samo Burja's idea of organizations as "live players"? How many are there, and are there any orgs that you would place in one category and not the other?

Do you prefer D over E? I do.

Is this backwards? Seems like it should be E over D.

Galeev mentions Navalny in his newest thread about power dynamics and how they might change in response to the current crisis. It's a long thread so you'll need to scroll down quite a bit to see the section on Navalny. Galeev doesn't portray him in a very positive manner.

Yeah, I like his prediction that if Europe stops buying Russian energy it could force Russia into greater economic dependence on China. I'm wondering how likely Europe is to actually move away from Russian energy though. It sounds like the obvious thing to do, but I don't know from a practical standpoint how easy it would be without causing a lot of disruption in the short to medium term. I doubt they can just flip a switch and convert to new energy sources overnight, especially in Eastern Europe which is heavily reliant on Russian supply.

I think the longe... (read more)

There is also the consideration that the earlier you pick a partner, you get to enjoy the benefits of having a partner for longer.

Thanks for the link. I found it well thought out and plausible, but it seems strongly based on the assumption that Russia will remain isolated from the global financial system for the next 5-20 year timeframe discussed in the article. Is that a reasonable assumption? Although Russia is a pariah now, once the hostilities have ended I would guess the sanctions will be lifted over time, since they are also expensive for the West to maintain.

This article by Tomas Pueyo looks at Russia from a historical and geographical perspective. It makes the case that much of Russia's foreign policy is based on the need to protect Moscow, which is in the middle of the vast Eurasian plain with no natural barriers for defense, and so is vulnerable to attack from all directions. So Russia's strategy has been to expand as much as possible, to either control directly the land where invasions might have otherwise come from (e.g. Siberia), or failing that, to at least create predictably controllable buffer states ... (read more)

#21's response that "If a pill form was available... I would" might be related to needle phobia, although not explicitly stated.

When I've asked my Red Tribe friends their thoughts about the vaccines, they've generally given similar answers to your survey how they don't trust the government, media, big pharma, etc. But I think the main underlying reason is just signaling which tribe they belong to. Early in the pandemic, Trump's messaging was that covid was no big deal, just the flu, it will go away soon, etc. and this became the party line. For relatively young, healthy people, choosing to get the vaccine might be seen as disloyal to the tribe. So when they weighed these social cos... (read more)

This seems consistent with Zvi's concept of Asymmetric Justice.

I'm not a lawyer, but their newest Terms of Service imply otherwise:

USE OF A VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK (“VPN”) TO CIRCUMVENT THE RESTRICTIONS SET FORTH HEREIN IS PROHIBITED.

Not sure how willing and able they would be to enforce such a regulation, but that's a different question. (Not legal advice!)

Any thoughts on if/when Polymarket might be available again in the US? I found their Compliance Update which says they are still looking to build a US product, but given the recent CFTC settlement it's hard to tell how likely this is to happen.

Of course, one pleasingly meta way to get at this question would be to create a new prediction market asking "Will Polymarket be available in the US on [date]", but I wonder if Polymarket would be willing to put up a market like this, since the regulators they are dealing with might not find it amusing.

I agree that attending large events is a type of risk compensation, and we may be referring to similar behavior patterns using different words here. But I'm trying to distinguish between these two types of infection:

1. Infections resulting from people going about their daily activities (e.g. getting exposed at work, in a store or restaurant, other small gatherings, etc.) Here, individuals might indeed change their behavior based on their own vaccination status and risk tolerance. But since Omicron is so widespread at this point, the probability that an infect

That may contribute as well, but I think Peter was implying that if enough cases overall take place during superspreader events where ~all of the attendees were vaccinated, vaccinated people may be more likely to test positive just because they were substantially more likely to be attending those superspreader events than unvaccinated people.

I also strongly upvoted for the same reasons. Very much looking forward to the results of the ELISA mucus test!

Bitcoin can only go as low as $0. Bitcoin could, in theory, go up not only to $100k but to $1 million or more.

I'm confused. In theory, $50k currently invested in VTI could also go to any of those values. Is there something I'm missing about the relative likelihood of different outcomes that would make Bitcoin the more attractive investment? I feel like there's some Econ 101 lesson I'm forgetting here.

There’s no trade, since (as many people reminded me) Metaculus is not a prediction market and you can’t trade on its values, but there’s still a big contradic

Welcome, and thanks for making your first comment!

As a fellow scientist with decades of experience in the industry, I disagree with several of your claims.

First, you will never know if it really works until you run blinded clinical trials against a placebo. This is the only way to tell and that is why it's required for any new drug/vaccine to be launched on the market. 

Clinical trials are helpful for understanding whether a drug/vaccine works on the population level. But on the individual level, clinical trials are not the only way to tell. For exampl... (read more)

Good question. I hadn't defined it in any more detail in my mind. But my basic thought is that someone should be able to build an online presence under a pseudonym (from the beginning, without having revealed their real name publicly like Scott had) as long as they comply with the rules of the communities they choose to join, without legal obligation to declare their real name. I would imagine some exceptions would have to apply (for example, in the case of a legally enforceable warrant) but others, including journalists, would refer to the pseudonym if they wanted to report on such a person.

But of course there could be unintended consequences of this sort of rule that I haven't considered.

Strongly agree with your analysis.

I also think a lesson to take away here is that, assuming we agree pseudonymity is generally considered a desirable option to have available, it falls on us to assert the right to it. 

I agree this is an important topic for discussion, and I hope others will continue to weigh in with their thoughts. I'm sure this won't be the last time a journalist writes/is interested in writing an article about this community, and it would be good to coordinate around some norms here.

• Scott was told that the way to get ahead of damaging journalism is to reveal everything they might want to find out. For those of us writing under a pseudonym, should we all just be revealing our real names, and letting friends, family members, and colleagues (where approp

Agree with John, thank you so much!

Yes, I think we are all in agreement on the topic. On my first reading, seeing the isolated quote between the other two examples of poor vaccine responses made me think this was another example of a poor response, and the quote itself can be interpreted that way if read alone (i.e. We think only vaccinating 75-year-olds is the correct policy, and it's hard but necessary work to enforce it).

The loss of life and health of innocent people who got suckered into a political issue without considering the ramifications?

By now, everyone has had a year to consider the ramifications of their decisions. People are free to make their own choices about the vaccine and their response to covid in general. If they make their choices based on their political affiliation or in-group signaling, so be it.

But with these numbers (death rate, long term health conditions, effectiveness of vaccines) around are you seriously suggesting trying to help them is not cost

I believe the quote in the Janelle Nanos tweet (after "Meanwhile, in Boston, priorities are straight:") was taken out of context here. The full article shows how Dr. Ivers was trying to point out the inefficiency of the state's rigid system and offer improvements:

For weeks, Dr. Louise Ivers has been advocating for Massachusetts to speed-up the pace of its COVID-19 vaccinations. But it’s not just the slowness of the rollout that is causing the Boston doctor consternation when it comes to the state’s vaccine push. 

The executive director of Massachusetts

I also notice that there is a large part of me that thinks, once it’s easily and widely available, you know what? Straight up, just f*** ‘em if they don’t want the vaccine.

This is how I was planning to act at that point, and basically as soon as I'm able to get an official vaccine. Once it's readily available I'll feel no guilt about continued cases (assuming no major vaccine escape, that would be a different story). Even once I've gotten the official vaccine, I'll want to propagate the norm that vaccinated people should live their lives as if they were, you know, vaccinated, so I intend to act that way, unless there's a reason I'm not considering.

Is this something that can be done at home with readily available and affordable equipment? If so, would you be willing to share more details of how someone might get started? I think a lot of readers would be interested in hearing more about this - it could even be its own post.

Maintaining 4 °C sounds doable with a good fridge and a data logging thermometer. -20 °C is more tricky - maybe use a home freezer (*** is specced at ≤ -18 °C) and add a data logger. If it then turns out that it can't reach -20 °C, it might be possible to fix that by modding its internal thermostat somehow. Or have access to a lab freezer, or shell out the big bucks (four figures) to buy one.

As someone who has worked in the labs a long time, I wouldn't worry about having to hit exactly -20 °C; that basically just means "freezer temperature". Lab freezers d... (read more)

I didn't know that! OP, you can also highlight the desired text and click the block quote button. You can also add links that way.

Totally agree, and this is pretty much what I had in mind as well. The organizer can also host a Zoom call beforehand where they explain the procedure, answer any questions, and let people sign up for times spaced out by 5-10 minutes to self administer.

Agree neither Sarah or you had explicitly mentioned a clinical trial. I was pushing back more against Sarah's statement “Take a random peptide that has never been tested on any living thing” and your statement "She doesn't explicitly state that this has never been tested on any living thing", which I interpreted as endorsing the claim that this vaccine has never been tested on any living thing. My point is that there is evidence this vaccine has been tested in living things, namely the humans who claim to have self administered it. I have no strong reason ... (read more)

Why would they have to gather in close quarters? One person could make it in their kitchen, then leave the room while others come in one at a time to self administer their dose.

This article from July 2020 claims that George Church and many of his colleagues had already self administered their vaccine at that point. It's almost certainly true that there hasn't been a clinical trial, because nobody has ever had an incentive to run a clinical trial. I don't think their intent was to publicize this widely or profit commercially from it. Rather, they realized they could just do it, went ahead and did it, and wrote up their findings publicly but under the radar, so other like-minded individuals could duplicate their procedure at their ... (read more)

For the average Less Wrong reader, I tend to agree. But a nurse in an area with a strong, vocal anti-vaccine community may face substantial social pressure to (at least publicly) reject commercial vaccines, for the reasons I stated above.

Agree it is extremely unlikely that many nurses have done so, and your probabilities seem quite reasonable. I think the main reason why many nurses have declined the vaccine is social signaling - either to maintain their social status within a mostly anti-vaccine peer group, or to maintain credibility with their anti-vaccine patients, who may be reluctant or outright refuse to be treated by a nurse who has been vaccinated because such a nurse is on "the wrong side" and can no longer be trusted. However, a nurse could self-administer the radvac vaccine and ... (read more)

Crazy thought, and I doubt this is likely on large scale or it would have been in the news, but any chance this could explain the higher than expected percentage of nurses who have rejected getting the vaccine? Perhaps some have already vaccinated themselves under the radar! And therefore have no need to take the "real" one.

Also from nostalgebraist's summary:

Meanwhile, the change which the essay does argue for – towards more legibility – feels only tangentially relevant to the problem.  Yes, designs that are easier to understand are often easier to customize.

For voting systems, I think the key insight is instead: Designs that are easier to understand are easier to trust.