All of Aleksander 's Comments + Replies

We know how to construct worlds with different physics. We do it all the time. Video games, or if you don’t accept that example we can construct a world consisting of 1 bit of information and 1 time dimension. This bit flips every certain increment of time. This universe obviously has different physics than ours. Also as the other person mentioned, a probability space is the space of all possibilities organized based on whether statement Q is true, which is isomorphic to the space all universes consistent with your previous observations. There is, as far a... (read more)

3Ape in the coat
Technically true, but irrelevant to the point I'm making. I was talking about constructing alternative worlds similar to ours to such degree that 1. I can inhabit either of them 2. I can be reasonably uncertain which one I inhabit 3. Both worlds are compatible with all my observations of a particular probability experiment - a coin toss And yet, despite all of that in one world the coin comes Heads and in the other it comes Tails. These are the type of worlds relevant for the discussions of probability experiments. We have no idea how to construct them, when talking about empiric uncertainty, and yet we don't mind, only demanding such level of constructivism when dealing with logical uncertainty, for some reason. Accent on sufficiently exclusive definition. Likewise, we can sufficiently exculisvily define a particular coin toss in a particular world and refuse to entertain the framing of different possible worlds : "No, the question is not about an abstract coin toss that could've ended differently in different possible worlds, the question is about this coin toss in this world". It's just pretty clear in case of empirical uncertainty, that we should not be doing it, because such level of precision doesn't capture our knowledge state. So why are we insisting on this level of exclusivity when talking about logical uncertainty? In other words, this seems as an isolated demand for rigor to me.

It seems to me that, in fact, it’s entirely possible for a coin to come up aardvarks. Imagine, for a second, that unbeknownst to you a secret society of gnomes, concealed from you(or from society as a whole), occasionally decide to turn coins into aardvarks(or fulfill whatever condition you have for a coin to come up aardvarks. Now, this is nonsense(obviously). But it’s technically possible in the sense that this race of gnomes could exist without contradicting your previous observations (only perhaps your conclusions based on them). Or, if you don’t accep... (read more)

2Richard_Kennaway
For all practical purposes, none of that is ever going to happen. Neither is the coin going to be snatched away by a passing velociraptor, although out of doors, it could be snatched by a passing seagull or magpie, and I would not be surprised if this has actually happened. Outré scenarios like these are never worth considering.

I don’t think there’s really much association with partisan sorting in this case. Most people espousing traditional gender roles aren’t clamoring to travel to India or such. It seems like partly a natural response to financial incentives created by cheap manufacturing and tech job offerings. Besides, ‘endgame’ in my opinion won’t last because at some point productivity will become too high and the work structure will collapse

Why are we to be so skeptical of congressional insider trading? I haven’t seen much evidence that Hillary’s commodity trading was faked by anyone, only not impossible to have been legitimate(just lucky) and thus not prosecutable. In general, without any evidence either way, my priors would lean heavily towards congressional insider trading because of how obvious it is as a process and how profitable it would be. On Ziobrowski’s 2004 paper, I can’t access it, but the later one which mimics the original but with the House doesn’t mention these large trades(unless I missed it in my skimming and ctrl-f)

Very interesting. Love the idea of torturing mathematicians by making them calculate these crazy-precise orbits, but I guess machines can do most of that(a shame). How often could a tether actually be used for resource launches though? Assuming only one tether is in operation, would its orbital cycles be quick enough to transport materials consistently for a large lunar mining operation? Also, I’m not super informed on lunar space debris, but I imagine that would pile up quickly as lunar space operations began. I think most debris here on Earth would be ou... (read more)

2harsimony
The launch cadence is an interesting topic that I haven't had a chance to tackle. The rotational frequency limits how often you can boost stuff. Since time is money you would want a shorter and faster tether, but a shorter time of rotation means that your time window to dock with the tether is smaller, so there's an optimization problem there as well. It's a little easier when you've got catapults on the moon's surface. You can have two running side by side and transfer energy between them electrically. So load up catapult #1, spin it up, launch the payload, and then transfer the remaining energy to catapult #2. You can get much higher launch cadence that way.

Are lunar tethers feasible? I don’t think a LLO(Low Lunar Orbit) is really doable except with really low speeds, which would probably render any tethering attempt inefficient. How does earth tethering compare to standard lunar launches, then, in terms of fuel requirements?

2harsimony
Lunar tethers actually look like they will be feasible sooner than Earth tethers! The lack of atmosphere, micrometeorites, and lower gravity (g) makes them scale better. In fact, you can even put a small tether system on the lunar surface to catapult payloads to orbit: https://splittinginfinity.substack.com/p/should-we-get-material-from-the-moon Whether tethers are useful on the moon depends on the mission you want to do. Like you point out, low delta-V missions probably don't need a tether when rockets work just fine. But if you want to take lunar material to low earth orbit or send it to Mars, a lunar tether is a great option. The near-term application I'm most excited about is liquid oxygen. Getting oxygen from the moon to LEO requires less delta V than going from the Earth to LEO! Regolith is ~45% oxygen by mass and a fully-fueled Starship is 80% LOX by mass. So refueling ships in LEO with lunar O2 could be viable. Even better, the falling lunar oxygen can spin up a tether in LEO which can use that momentum to boost a Starship to other parts of the solar system.

Some notes on self-replicating machines: Complexity/precision: The dexterity required to move a few wires into a crude machine is far in excess of the dexterity of that crude machine. Generally, designing something which can produce itself is complex for that reason, the relationship between complexity and ability to create complex things is nonlinear, difficult to affect in useful ways, and hard to measure without creating real test objects. Very complex objects(like organisms) can assemble ‘copies’ of themselves, through complex and error prone processes.

I would suggest but one fundamental statement which we can accept without circular or infinite reasoning: The things which I observe reflect reality in some consistent and knowable way. (This exact wording has some problems, I ask you to ignore them) This statement can be untrue, but if it was it would be reasonable to say that we are completely uncertain on the state of reality. Thus we can create two possible mindsets, based on whether the claim is true: (1): We have no idea what is going on (2): The mindset that we generally take(too long to describe) I... (read more)

I will pick out a specific and somewhat irrelevant part of this post because I want to leave a comment but don’t feel qualified to talk about any other part. This part is the segment about Ender’s game. It’s really going to depend on whether we are talking about the books or the movies how hard battle school is. In the movie, battle school is effectively a summer camp for learning how to kill aliens. In the books, however, battle school represents years of psychological torment and isolation which actually occur in multiple locations.

1rossry
In my personal canon of literature, they never made a movie. I think I've seen it...once? And cached the thought that it wasn't worth remembering or seeing again. When I wrote those paragraphs, I was thinking not at all about the portrayal in Hood's film, just what's in Card's novels and written works.

These predictions, of course, are obviously nonsensical. If I had to guess, it’s a combination of: many crypto users being right-wing and the media they consume has convinced them that this is more likely than it would be in reality, and climbing crypto prices discouraging betting leading to decreased accuracy. I’ll say that the climbing value of the currency as well as gas fees makes any prediction unwise, unless you believe you have massive advantage over the market. I’d personally pass on it, but other people are free to proceed with their money.

Oh that’s pretty bad I somehow managed to write what the post wrote as a contradiction to the post. Apologies. Thank you for pointing it out

3transhumanist_atom_understander
It's okay, the post is eight pages long and not super internally consistent, basically because I had to work on Monday and didn't want to edit it. I don't make a post like that expecting everyone to read every paragraph and get a perfectly clear idea of what I'm saying.

If this is a case for removing the practice of placebo from medical testing, I don’t think it holds up. There are other reasons a placebo affects a result. As another mentioned, the patient, or whoever reports the data, likely has a tendency to shift their reporting towards what they believe the conductors of the study wish to hear. If we introduce a placebo pill, subjects have no way to tell what results the proctor ‘wants’. Generally, placebos are trivial to implement, likely taking less time than would accurately determining on a case-by-case basis which trials would benefit from a placebo

2Nnotm
Note that the penultimate paragraph of the post says > We do still need placebo groups.