LESSWRONG
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All of ShemTealeaf's Comments + Replies

Don't Sell Your Soul
ShemTealeaf240

Unless you're really desperate, it just seems like a bad idea to sign any kind of non-standard contract for $10. There's always a chance that you're misunderstanding the terms, or that the contract gets challenged at some point, or even that your signature on the contract is used as blackmail. Maybe you're trying to run for office or get a job at some point in the future, and the fact that you've sold your soul is used against you. The actual contract that Jacob references is long enough that even taking the time to read and understand it is worth signific... (read more)

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4TurnTrout
Yeah, I think these are good points.
Defending the non-central fallacy
ShemTealeaf10

France's 2015 taxes of 75% made rich people secede, so we can take that as a supremum on the minimal tax burden that can make people secede. Of course - France's rich didn't have to go live in the woods - they had the option to go to other countries. Also, they did not have the option to not go to any country, because all the land on earth is divided between the countries.

 

Right, but they're presumably moving to another country where they're still paying taxes and participating in the state. If they had the option, do you think that they would prefer ... (read more)

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Defending the non-central fallacy
ShemTealeaf10

I agree in theory; I just don't think that the hypothetical bears much resemblance to reality. The tax burden of the richest individuals in the US is just a tiny rounding error in the federal budget. Even if you could stop the tax payments of every billionaire in the country, the federal government would barely notice the difference. You'd have to stop the tax payments of millions of people before it would start having a noticeable impact on the government ability to enforce its will.

Also, on a practical level, I think that the downside of losing membershi... (read more)

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1Idan Arye
France's 2015 taxes of 75% made rich people secede, so we can take that as a supremum on the minimal tax burden that can make people secede. Of course - France's rich didn't have to go live in the woods - they had the option to go to other countries. Also, they did not have the option to not go to any country, because all the land on earth is divided between the countries. I agree that the main benefits for the rich to remain in under the state's rule and pay taxes is to be able to do business with its citizens. And of course - to be able to pass through the land - otherwise they won't be able to physically do said business. So the core question is: Does the state have the right to prevent its citizens from doing business with whoever they want? They practice that power - that's a fact. They send the police to stop business that's not licensed by the state. But should this be considered an act of violence, or as an act of protecting their property?
Defending the non-central fallacy
ShemTealeaf10

That's fair; maybe I didn't understand the hypothetical. If the person is so rich that they are providing 100% of the funding for the government, my criticism doesn't apply. If you can fund the services that a government would provide on your own, I can see the case for opting out. In practice, I don't think that applies to more than a handful of people. If the argument is that the top 0.01% richest people and a few loners in the woods are being unjustly prevented from opting out of taxation, I'm willing to concede that point. I don't think it changes the ... (read more)

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1Idan Arye
I think there is some academic merit in taking this example to the extreme and assuming that the rich person is responsible to 100% of the community's resources, and they alone can fund the its entire activity, and if they secede alone the community is left with nothing. They can't protect people in their streets because they can't afford a police. They can't punish criminals because they can't afford a prison. They may be left with their old roads, but without maintenance they quickly wear out while the rich person can build new ones. Their permission to do business means nothing because they have no means to enforce it (no police) - they can't even make a credible embargo because the rich person is the only one you can offer jobs and the only one who has goods to sell, so the incentive to break the embargo is huge. The rich person has all the power and zero incentive to give in to the community which will take it away and give their "fair share" of 1100 of it in return. Of course - this extreme scenario never happens in real life, because in real life there are always alternatives. There are more rich people, to begin with, so no single rich person can hold all the power. People can start their own business, breaking the 100% dependency on the rich class from our example. And - maybe most importantly - modern society has a huge middle class that holds (as a socioeconomic class) a considerable share of the power. So, a real life rich person cannot have a full Shapley value like our hypothetical rich person, and the poor people's Shapley value is more than zero. Still - a rich person's Shapley value is much much higher than a poor person's, and therefore there is a point where taxation is heavy enough to make it worthwhile for them to secede.
Defending the non-central fallacy
ShemTealeaf20

If the rich person is giving up the ability to use public resources and have the protection of the community's laws, are they still going to opt out? Sure, they'll have more money, but they'll have to use that money to hire bodyguards, since the other members of the community are now free to rob or kill them. They'd also have to make sure they have some way of enforcing the contract with the bodyguards, since they can't use the community's court system. Presumably the rich person has some source of income that is making them rich; will they be able to main... (read more)

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1Idan Arye
In this hypothetical scenario, the rich person was the sole source of funding for the community's services. Once they opt out, the community will no longer be able to pay the police, and since all the police salaries came from the rich person's pockets - the rich person will be able to use the same amount of money previously used to pay the police force to finance their own private security. Same for all the other services the community was providing. Of course, the community will still have all the infrastructure and equipment that was purchased with the rich person's taxes in the past, and the rich person will start with nothing - but this is just a temporary setback. In a few years the rich person will build new infrastructure and the community's infrastructure will not hold for long if they keep using it without being able to afford its maintenance. This leaves us with the core community service the rich person was enjoying. The only service that does not (directly) cost money to provide. Social norms. As you said - once the rich person opts out of the community, the members of the community is no longer obliged to refrain from robbing or kill them. And they have an incentive to do so. They may no longer be able to pay their police in the long run, but it'll take some time for all the cops to quit and it'll take some time for the rich person to build their own security force (unless they have prepared it in advance? They probably did), so if they act quick enough they can launch an attack and have a good chance at winning. And even if they get delayed and the balance of armed forces swifts - large enough masses of poor people can take down the rich with their armed guards. So this is what's going to stop the rich person from opting out. The threat of violence if they do so. In that light - can we still say they are allowed to opt out?
Covid 2/11: As Expected
ShemTealeaf20

I have one correction on the obesity/overweight numbers, unless I misunderstood the claim being made. In most contexts, including the NCHS numbers cited above, the cutoff for overweight is a BMI of 25, not 30. The cutoff for the vaccine is a BMI of 30, so only ~40% of people qualify, not ~70%.

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5Zvi
I swear I checked this multiple times before and saw people explicitly say it was 30 that was the second threshold and that 35 was severe obesity, but now I look and it seems you're right. So still outrageous, but not quite as completely patently absurd.
Covid 1/14: To Launch a Thousand Shipments
ShemTealeaf10

I'm curious if someone more knowledgeable can help me understand how to think about a vaccine that is 80% effective. Is the idea that each person will have a high chance of being essentially immune, and a low chance of having minimal protection? Alternatively, does it offer approximately 80% protection to everyone, the way that masks and social distancing would?

If it's the latter, it seems like risk compensation could largely undo the effects of an 80% effective vaccine. If I see my family once a week without a mask, and I start going back to the gym, I could easily increase my risk by a factor of 4-5x.

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3Zvi
No one knows the mix of those two, and it would be great if anyone could give us a straight answer with any confidence, but so far, no luck. My guess it's mostly you're either immune or mostly immune, or you're not, but I'd really like higher confidence.
2Daniel V
It's between-subjects, these aren't real probabilities for individuals. But from a Bayesian standpoint it gives you useful base rates with which to assess risk.
A dozen habits that work for me
ShemTealeaf00

Fair enough; thanks for the advice!

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A dozen habits that work for me
ShemTealeaf10

Interesting; I will give that a try. Any particular type or brand that you recommend?

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1mike_hawke
Nah, I haven't been able to settle on Breathe Right™ vs CVS generics.
A dozen habits that work for me
ShemTealeaf10

How long did it take you to adapt to the CPAP? I have mild sleep apnea and tried to use a CPAP for a bit, but I absolutely could not sleep with the mask on.

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2Viliam
Depending on the cause of sleep apnea, a removable wire in mouth may help. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions; I got sleep apnea from being fat and having a narrow throat, and this helps. I like that it's purely mechanical, no electric power needed.
1Stuart Anderson
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A dozen habits that work for me
ShemTealeaf30

Are nasal strips useful for something other than preventing snoring? I already use earplugs, and I'm always on the lookout for more improvements to sleep quality.

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4Stuart Anderson
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2mike_hawke
Yeah, they seem to improve my sleep quality by making it a little easier to breathe.
Covid 12/24: We’re F***ed, It’s Over
ShemTealeaf170

At the moment, the poor person and the rich person are both buying things. If the rich person buys more vaccine, that means they will buy less of the other things, so the poor person will be able to have more of them. So the question is about the ratios of how much the two guys care about the vaccine and how much they care about the other thing... and the answer is the rich guy will pay up for the vaccine when his vaccine:other ratio is higher than the other guys.

This is only true if the rich person is already spending as much money as possible, so an incr... (read more)

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1siclabomines
I think I disagree a bit with both (but what do I know). This doens't seem to me to be the right way to think about it. Short term, the more he spends on Item A will result in lower spending on Item B, or lower investment in his companies, a lower transfer of money from him to someone else (like through lower savings). Or more money being spent overall if he just uses up cash he had hidden in his pillow; which increases prices for everyone (but this will be made up for in some future). Who produces the food and can set the prices? If it's private companies, then they wouldn't sell it to the state for cheaper than to Bezos, so it would be as expensive to the state as giving that same money to the poor and let them outbid Bezos. If the state owns the stuff, then [insert standard anti-socialism arguments]. If the prices are fixed by the state, then its inefficient and there may not enough production for all. If the prices fixed by the state but depend on the person -- or on how many of X you have bought this month or stuff like that -- then that introduces whole new types of messes.
Covid 12/24: We’re F***ed, It’s Over
ShemTealeaf210

Agreed on all points, except for about how clear the author was being about the use of the word "value". Although he does make the reference to willingness to pay, his rhetorical point largely depends on people interpreting value in the colloquial sense. He writes, in the previous post:

If we’re not careful, next thing you know we’ll have an entire economy full of producing useful things and allocating them where they are valued most and can produce the most value. That would be the worst.

Imagine if you alter the phrasing to this, which is roughly equivalen... (read more)

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Covid 12/24: We’re F***ed, It’s Over
ShemTealeaf*730

I said it last week, people righteously said that things are not worth to the customer what the customer will pay for them because poor people have less money than rich people, and no, sorry, that’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works.

It seems easy to construct a scenario where this is untrue, or at least conflicts with an intuitive definition of "value". If I'm trying to auction off a rare food item in a room with Jeff Bezos and a starving person with no money, Bezos can easily win the auction if he has the slightest desire for the food. ... (read more)

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5tlhonmey
The market cares for individuals about as much as evolution does. Yes.  Bezos can bid more for the meal than the hungry drifter.  Why is that the case?  It's because Bezos is instrumental to offering a useful service to literally billions of people and the drifter... isn't. It seems cruel.  It is cruel.  But it's a cruel world we live in.  It is perfectly possible for preventing Bezos from being mildly "hangry" at an inopportune time to alleviate more suffering worldwide than preventing one shiftless vagrant from starving to death. And that's not intuitively obvious because your social instincts are programmed for a world where you know everyone in your entire community personally and can see exactly what they're contributing with your own eyes.   Set the situation in a small tribe where you're choosing between feeding the shaman who knows where the watering holes are and what food is safe to eat and is obviously critical to the survival of everyone,  or feeding the aged cripple who can barely walk unassisted and your social instincts will likely choose correctly.  You'll still be sad, but finite resources often means hard choices. We use markets to decide things like this because they're the most efficient way we know of to deal with the scope of the calculation being far too big for our puny brains to handle all at once.  But that cuts us off from always being able to understand the why of the calculation result.  And so when the market hands down a result that is painful to look at we reflexively want to call it a "market failure" and "correct" it. But there are consequences for doing that.  The fact that the immediate consequences of the market's choice are obvious and the long-term consequences of overriding that choice are invisible (except with great effort) doesn't mean that there are no costs.  There is no free lunch.  Every choice must be paid for.  While you might sometimes "beat the market" and spot the more-optimal solution just the sheer differen
TAG140

I said it last week, people righteously said that things are not worth to the customer what the customer will pay for them because poor people have less money than rich people, and no, sorry, that’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works

I pointed out the error last week, too. I'm disappointed to see it doubled down on.

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2Zolmeister
I don't see "value" as a feeling. A freezing person might desire a warm fire, but their value of it is limited by what can be expressed. That said, a person is a complex asset, and so the starving person might trade in their "apparent plight" (e.g. begging). For example, the caring seller of the last sandwich might value alleviating "apparent plight" more than millions of shares of AMZN. Whether they do or don't exactly determines the value of an individuals suffering against some other asset, in terms of the last sandwich.
Larks170

At the moment, the poor person and the rich person are both buying things. If the rich person buys more vaccine, that means they will buy less of the other things, so the poor person will be able to have more of them. So the question is about the ratios of how much the two guys care about the vaccine and how much they care about the other thing... and the answer is the rich guy will pay up for the vaccine when his vaccine:other ratio is higher than the other guys. This is the efficient allocation.

It might be the case that it is separately desirable to redi... (read more)

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Joe Collman120

Agreed. To be fair to Zvi, he did make clear the sense in which he's talking about "value" (those who value them most, as measured by their willingness to pay) [ETA: "their willingness and ability to pay" may have been better], but I fully agree that it's not what most people mean intuitively by value.

I think what people intuitively mean is closer to:
I value X more than you if:
1) I'd pay more for X in my situation than you'd pay for X in my situation.
2) I'd pay more for X in your situation than you'd pay for X in your situation.

(more generally, you co... (read more)

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Covid 9/10: Vitamin D
ShemTealeaf30

I apologize; I made an error in my original comment. I was actually referring to high blood pressure rather than diabetes. 15 out of the 26 people in the control group had high blood pressure, which is greater than the number of people who needed ICU care. Using your (maximally generous) assumptions, we would have zero non-hypertensive patients from either group needing ICU care.

Firstly, two risk factors were more common among the treatment groups: <60 years of age, immunosuppressed & transplanted.

Absolutely true, but the overall risk factor preva... (read more)

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1Tim Liptrot
https://twitter.com/AlvaroDeMenard/status/1304399452816519169/photo/1 - probability of reproduction from one forecaster for DARPA SCORE study. The distribution is bimodal because the lower hump is p=.05 and the upper hump is some lower p-value like p=.01 or something. It looks like even the higher p values have reproduction rates at .8 to .9 . This updates toward Shem's skepticism. Even though the p value is very small, reproduction rate is still stuck at .85 for good studies. Since this study has the problem's shem pointed out, we might expect a reproduction probability lower at like .75. So a likelihood ratio of 3:1. I could imagine people with knowledge of the subject having sufficiently lower priors.
Covid 9/10: Vitamin D
ShemTealeaf90

Regarding the Vitamin D study, it doesn't seem like it was placebo controlled. Given the lack of placebo control, I'm not sure how it could be double blind. There were also a number of risk factors where the treatment and control groups had significant differences, most notably diabetes (present in 2.5x as many patients in the control group). If you combine the differences in the characteristics of the groups with the lack of placebo control and blinding and the "fuzziness" of ICU admission criteria, that could start to explain the effe... (read more)

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Tim Liptrot*110
There were also a number of risk factors where the treatment and control groups had significant differences, most notably diabetes (present in 2.5x as many patients in the control group).

Firstly, two risk factors were more common among the treatment groups: <60 years of age, immunosuppressed & transplanted. Secondly, 3 treatment group patients (6%) were diabetic and 5 control (19.23%) were. Let us take the most generous assumptions for your position, and say that the 3 patients with diabetes in the treatment group did not require ICU and that the... (read more)

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5Mitchell_Porter
"risk factors... notably diabetes" This was my thought - that vitamin D deficiency here might be a proxy for ill health in general, with other conditions being the true risk.