All of borntowin's Comments + Replies

Wow, this is such a great news for me. I listen to a lot of lectures and podcasts.

borntowin
340

Took the survey and actually liked it :)

Why didn't Eliezer give a talk?

A guy who works for a book publisher once told me that they pay about 8 euro's per 1000 words to a good translator for books they translate from foreign languages. So by this calculation you can have a 100.000 words text translated in Romanian for 800 euros.

0Kindly
Facing the Singularity is approximately 14000 words. The hypothetical 10-page primers would probably be even shorter, maybe 3000 words, although hoping to get them down to 10 pages might be optimistic. So if translations to other languages are similarly priced, you're looking at around $600 for all four translations of Facing the Singularity, or around $100 for the shorter primers. This doesn't include "checks and improvements by multiple translators", but I imagine those can probably obtained more cheaply than an actual translation, and it seems like $2000 is far too high an estimate for the cost.

Do you really need those 30 minutes of hitting the snooze button? Why not sleep instead and wake up after the first alarm? I tried both and I'm much better off with the latter.

1magfrump
I don't need them, but I often take them if I can and enjoy them, and often find myself feeling significantly better after snoozing.
3Alicorn
I almost never use an actual alarm (when I expect one to go off, it makes me sleep fitfully) but when I've been woken up and don't have to get up yet, I can fall into a light doze which leaves me pleasantly conscious of being comfortable and relaxed in a way that being outright asleep does not. I don't think I'd take a magic pill that caused me to be instantly alert and energetic on waking if I couldn't have that dozing period for at least a few minutes.

I think there is something wrong with your analogy with the fire. The thing is that you cannot accidentally or purposefully burn all the people in the world or the vast majority of them by setting fire to them, but with a virus like the one Luke is talking about you can kill most people.

Yes, both a knife and an atomic bomb can kill 100.000 people. It is just way easier to do it with the atomic bomb. That is why everybody can have a knife but only a handful of people can "have" an atomic bomb. Imagine what the risks would be if we would give virtually everybody who would be interested, all the instructions on how to build a weapon 100 times more dangerous than an atomic bomb (like a highly contagious deadly virus).

3Bugmaster
Actually, you could, if your world consists of just you and your tribe, and you start a forest fire on accident (or on purpose). Once again, I think you are conflating science with technology. I am 100% on board with not giving out atomic bombs for free to anyone who asks for one. However, this does not mean that we should prohibit the study of atomic theory; and, in fact, atomic theory is taught in high school nowadays. When Luke says, "we should decelerate AI research", he's not saying, "let's make sure people don't start build AIs in their garages using well-known technologies". Rather, he's saying, "we currently have no idea how to build an AI, or whether it's even possible, or what principles might be involved, but let's make sure no one figures this out for a long time". This is similar to saying, "these atomic theory and quantum physics things seem like they might lead to all kinds of fascinating discoveries, but let's put a lid on them until we can figure out how to make the world safe from nuclear annihilation". This is a noble sentiment, but, IMO, a misguided one. I am typing these words on a device that's powered by quantum physics, after all.
borntowin
210

I think it is very important to keep in mind that it is not very relevant to judge if someone is good at predicting stuff simply by dividing all the predictions made by the ones that turned out to be correct.

I predict that tomorrow will by Friday. Given that today it is Thursday, that's not so impressive. So my point is that it is more important to look at how difficult to make was that prediction and what the reasoning behind it is.

And I would also look and see if I can find improvements in the predictions that are made, if the person making the predictio... (read more)

This is really helpful if it actually works. Thank you!

Hello there people of LessWrong. I'm a 24 years old dude from a small country called Romania who has been reading stuff on this site since 2010 when Luke Muehlhauser started linking here. I'm a member of Mensa and got a B.A. in Management.

I have to admit that there are more things that interest me than there is time for me to study them so I can't really say I'm an expert in anything, I just know a lot of things better than most other people know them. That's not very impressive I guess but I hope that in 5 years from now there will be at least one think I... (read more)

3Normal_Anomaly
Hello and welcome! I'd love to see a post on how specifically you've been able to win more. Hearing about how people use the info here is always enjoyable.