All of sapphire's Comments + Replies

Nothing is obviously wrong with it. I'm not sure what probability to assign it. Its sort of "out of sample". But it seems very plausible to me we are in a simulation. It is really hard to justify probabilities or even settle on them. But when I look inside myself the numbers that come to mind are 25-30%.

This is also obvious but Quantum Wave Function Collapse SURE DOES look like this universe is only being simulated at a certain fidelity. 

Nothing is obviously wrong with it. I'm not sure what probability to assign it. Its sort of "out of sample". But it seems very plausible to me we are in a simulation. It is really hard to justify probabilities or even settle on them. But when I look inside myself the numbers that come to mind are 25-30%.

7% of income tax returns in the USA include rental income. Most of that 7% can't live off just the rents. But I would say more than 1% of the USA can easily live off of land rents. 

I have spent weeks where pretty much all I did was:
-- have sex with my partner, hours per day
-- watch anime with my partner
-- eat food and ambiently hang with my partner

No work. Not much seeing other people. Of course given the amount of sex mundane situations were quite sexually charged. I'm not actually sure if it gets old on any human timeline. You also improve at having fun together. However this was not very good for our practical. But post singularity I probably wont need to worry about practical goals. 

In general I think you underestimate the s... (read more)

Lots of people already form romantic and sexual attachments to AI, despite the fact that most large models try to limit this behavior. The technology is already pretty good. Nevermind if your AI GF/BF could have a body and actually fuck you. I already "enjoy" the current tech. 

I will say I was literally going to post "Why would I play status games when I can fuck my AI GF" before I read the content of the post, as opposed to just the title. I think this is what most people want to do. Not that this is going to sound better than "status games" to a lot of rationalists.

2keltan
Sex is fun and awesome. Though it doesn’t feel fun and awesome to have sex all day everyday. You could probably do transhuman meth and make sex fun all the time. But a Pleasure Cube/Super Happy scenario makes me sad. I’m also wondering who you’re talking about when you say “most people” here? I have the opposite model of most people.

 

It feels to me like the hairs of the nobility are doing amazingly well. That is more than enough money to support a lifestyle of leisure. Such a lifestyle is not available to the vast majority of people. So it seems like they mostly did secure a superior existence for their heirs.

2Richard Horvath
This is only true if you restrict "nobility" to Great Britain and if you only count "nobles" those who are considered such in our current day. This is a confusion of the current British noble title (specifically members of "Peerage of Great Britain") with "land owning rentier class that existed before the industrial revolution". For our discussion, we need to look at the second one. I do not have specific numbers of UK, but quoting for Europe from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobility#Europe): "The countries with the highest proportion of nobles were Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (15% of an 18th-century population of 800,000[citation needed]), Castile (probably 10%), Spain (722,000 in 1768 which was 7–8% of the entire population) and other countries with lower percentages, such as Russia in 1760 with 500,000–600,000 nobles (2–3% of the entire population), and pre-revolutionary France where there were no more than 300,000 prior to 1789, which was 1% of the population (although some scholars believe this figure is an overestimate). In 1718 Sweden had between 10,000 and 15,000 nobles, which was 0.5% of the population. In Germany it was 0.01%.[46] In the Kingdom of Hungary nobles made up 5% of the population.[47] All the nobles in 18th-century Europe numbered perhaps 3–4 million out of a total of 170–190 million inhabitants.[48][49] By contrast, in 1707, when England and Scotland united into Great Britain, there were only 168 English peers, and 154 Scottish ones, though their immediate families were recognised as noble." Based on above, I think expecting 1% to be landed rentier is a conservative estimate for 18th century for whole Europe. Even if we go with one tenth of this, expecting 0.1% of the population to retain this (which would imply that their population dropped while all other classes increased dramatically), would mean about 68 thousand people in the UK, and over 700 000 in whole Europe. AND they are expected to live off from rents of land. I

The heirs of European nobility are still very rich on average. So I feel like the main example goes the other way.

1Richard Horvath
Not fully. Most of the nobility is gone. Only like 0.01% remains maybe what could be called "rentier", or even less compared to what had been before.

I have done a lot of thinking. At this point timelines are so short I would recommend:

Individual with no special connections:

-- Avoid tying up capital in illiquid plans. One exception is housing since 'land on Holy Terra' still seems quite valuable in many scenarios.

-- Make whatever spiritual preparations you can, whatever spirituality means to you. If you are inclined to Buddhism meditate. Practice loving kindness. Go to church if you are Christian. Talk to your loved ones. Even if you are atheist you need to prepare your metaphorical spirit for what may ... (read more)

6Jeremiah England
My current take on land/housing: 1. The value of your house may depreciate very quickly as materials and labor become cheap due to automation. 2. Residential land gets almost all of its value from the infrastructure built around it and being near a city where people have jobs to get to. If there are large migrations, the land your house is on may lose most of its value even though land in general should go up as a hard asset. I wrote more about it here.

I will note the rationalist and EA communities ahve committed multiple ideological murders

Substantiate? I down- and disagree-voted because of this un-evidenced very grave accusation.

8kairos_
Assuming short timelines, I wonder how much NVIDIA's stock will increase and if anywhere near a 100x return is possible. The further out and higher strike price NVIDIA call I could find is at 290$ SP, dated Jan 15 2027, at $13.25. If NVIDIA goes to a 10T market cap I get an 8x return on investment, if the company goes to a 15T market cap I get a ~20x return on investment.  I'm not sure how realistic it is for NVIDIA to increase past a 15 Trillion Market cap. Plus, increased government intervention seems like it would negatively impact profits.

Donating to the LTFF seems good.

6Nikola Jurkovic
Thanks for your comment. It prompted me to add a section on adaptability and resilience to the post.

Thoroughly agree except for what to do with money. I expect that throwing money at orgs that are trying to slow down AI progress (eg PauseAI, or better if someone makes something better) gets you more utility per dollar than nvidia (and also it's more ethical).

Edit: to be clear, I mean actual utility in your utility function. Even if you're fully self-interested and not altruistic at all, I still think your interests are better served by donating to PauseAI-type orgs than investing in nvidia.

Excellent comment, spells out a lot of thoughts I'd been dancing around for a while better than I had.

-- Avoid tying up capital in illiquid plans. One exception is housing since 'land on Holy Terra' still seems quite valuable in many scenarios.

This is the step I'm on. Just bought land after saving up for several years while being nomadic, planning on building a small house soon in such a way that I can quickly make myself minimally dependent on outside resources if I need to. In any AI scenario that respects property rights, this seems valuable to me.

-- Ma

... (read more)

I was still hoping for a sort of normal life. At least for a decade or maybe more. But that just doesn't seem possible anymore. This is a rough night.

I recovered from surgery alone.

I had extensive facial feminization surgery. My jaw was drilled down. Same with brow ridge. Nose broken, reshaped packed. No solid go d for months.

Recovery was challenging alone but I was certain I could manage it myself. I spared myself begging for help. The horror of noticing I was pissing off my friend by needing help.

No regrets. I'm quite recovered now. That was very interesting month alone.

The truth should be rewarded. Even if it's obvious. Everyday this post is more blatantly correct.

I don't think he is directly responsible. But recent events are imo further evidence his methods are bad. If I said some dangerous teacher was Buddhist I would not be implicating the Buddha directly. Though it would be some evidence for the Buddha failing as a teacher.

6ChristianKl
What kind of student teacher relationship did Vassar and Olivia had and for what amount of time did they have it?

Is the hoody gonna be good? Hoodies are often really shitty quality and texture. If you make a good one I will pay the 1K. 

5habryka
If we do a merch store, I would definitely want things to be high quality. Slightly ironically I can't guarantee as much for the donation tiers (since we already promised the t-shirts at least and we might not find a good manufacturer), but I will definitely still try to make it good. I can't really guarantee it in advance, based on my experiences with the stuff.

The Local Vasserite has directly stated "i purposefully induce mania in people, as taught by Michael Vassar". Seems like the connection to michael Vassar is not very tenuous. At least that is my judgement. Others can disagree. Vassar does not have to personally administer the method or be currently supportive of his former student. 

I honestly have no idea what you mean. I am not even sure why "(self) statements you hear while on psychedelics are just like normal statements" would be a counterpoint to someone being in a very credulous state. Normal statements can also be accepted credulously. 

Perhaps you are right but the sense of self required is rare. Practical most people are empirically credulous on psychedellics.

1dirk
Normal statements actually can't be accepted credulously if you exercise your reason instead of choosing to believe everything you hear (edit, some people lack this capacity due to tragic psychological issues such as having an extremely weak sense of self, hence my reference to same); so too with statements heard on psychedelics, and it's not even appreciably harder.

When you take psychedelics you are in an extremely vulnerable and credulous position. It is absolutely unsafe to take psychedelics in the presence of anyone who is going to confidently expound in the nature of truth and society. Michael Vassar, Jessica Taylor and other are extremely confident and aggressive about asserting their point of view. It is debatable how ok that is under normal circumstances. It is absolutely dangerous if someone is on psychedelics.

Even a single trip can be quite damaging.

2ChristianKl
How do you know that Michael Vassar or Jessica Taylor have been aggressive about asserting their point of view in the presence of people who take psychedelics?
-1dirk
Disagree, if you have a strong sense of self statements you hear while on psychedelics are just like normal statements.
1AprilSR
Yeah, I'm not meaning to actively suggest taking psychedelics with any of them.

I consulted multiple people to make sure my impression was accurate .Every person, except you, agree you are much more schizophrenic than before the events. My personal opinion is you currently fit the diagnosis criteria. I do not accept that people are the unique authority on whether they have developed schizophrenia.

5AprilSR
I agree I am "more schizophrenic", that's obvious. (Edit: Though I'd argue I'm less paranoid, and beforehand was somewhat in denial about how much paranoia I did have.) I very clearly do not fit the diagnosis criteria. Even if you set aside the six months requirement, the only symptom I even arguably have is delusions and you need multiple.

Yes you are the second person observed to have a schizophrenic event. In your case I doubt long lasting.

Events are recent and to some extent ongoing. Though the 'now they are literally schizophrenic' event occurred some months ago. Pacific northwest. This incident has not been written up in public afaik.

A second person has now had a schizophrenic episode. This occurred a few days ago. Though I do not think the second person will end up persistently schizophrenic.

I am not talking about any of the more well known cases.

The idea that people would do these things in the 'rationalist' community is truly horrifying to me. I am a believer in doing somewhat innovative or risky things. But you are supposed to do them somewhat safely. 

....is the second person me? You can say it is if it's me, I don't think it's an inaccurate description. Edit: thought about it a bit more and yeah it is probably me

Don't Induce psychosis intentionally. Don't take psychedelics while someone probes your beliefs. Don't let anyone associated with Michael Vasser anywhere near you during an altered state.

Edit: here is a different report from three years ago with the same person administering the methods: 

Mike Vasser followers practice intentionally inducing psychosis via psychedelic drugs. Inducing psychosis is a verbatim self report of what they are doing. I would say they practice drug induced brain washing. TBC they would dispute the term brain washing and probably... (read more)

Reply5211

As one of what I believe to have been the targets/victims of “the local Vassarite” (though multiple people reviewing my initial draft have asked me to mention that Michael Vassar and this person are not actually on good terms), it seems reasonable for me to be the one to reveal the name and give concrete details, so that no one is harmed in the future the way I was nearly harmed. The person being referenced is Olivia Schaefer (known usernames: 4confusedemoji, liv.bsky.social, Taygetea), and this is a brief, roughly chronological account of some concer... (read more)

4Hazard
For the record, I associate with Michael, and thus am very spooky. If anyone wants to make sure I'm not around them during an altered state hit me up and we can coordinate.
8viemccoy
the girl in question who you claim is a "vassarite" is not on good terms with michael, and they likely haven't spoken in years. claiming this is downstream of michael feels like vaguely defamatory and basically baseless.
4Viliam
I think that technically makes you a participant in the coverup.
1tailcalled
Is this someone who has a parasocial relationship with Vassar, or a more direct relationship? I was under the impression that the idea that Michael Vassar supports this sort of thing was a malicious lie spread by rationalist leaders in order to purge the Vassarites from the community. That seems more like something someone in a parasocial relationship would mimic than like something a core Vassarite would do. I would highlight that the Vassarite's official stance is that privacy is a collusion mechanism created to protect misdoers, and so they can't consistently oppose you sharing what they know.

But I have observed this all directly. 

This post feels like it's written on an unnecessarily high level of abstraction. What are the actual events you observed directly? What did you see with your own eyes or hear with your own ears?

Related, here is something Yudkowsky wrote three years ago:

I'm about ready to propose a group norm against having any subgroups or leaders who tell other people they should take psychedelics.  Maybe they have individually motivated uses - though I get the impression that this is, at best, a high-variance bet with significantly negative expectation.  But the track record of "rationalist-adjacent" subgroups that push the practice internally and would-be leaders who suggest to other people that they do them seems just way too bad.

I'm also about read

... (read more)

I think I know (80% confidence) the identity of this "local Vassarite" you are referring to, and I think I should reveal it, but, y'know, Unilateralist's Curse, so if anyone gives me a good enough reason not to reveal this person's name, I won't. Otherwise, I probably will, because right now I think people really should be warned about them.

4Mateusz Bagiński
Why do you think there are cover-ups? More specifically, do you mean that people-in-the-know are not willing to report it or that there is some active silencing or [discouragement of those who would like to bring attention to it] going on? There was one community alert about Zizians 2y ago here. Before that, there was a discussion of Jessica Taylor's situation being downstream from Vassar's influence but as far as I remember Scott Alexander eventually retracted his claims about this. In any case, I think this kind of stuff deserves a top-level alert post, like the one about Ziz.
6Fiora Sunshine
my view is that this particular vassarite is probably a fair amount more harmful than most, though i don't actually know any others very closely

I'm familiar with the events that Sapph refers to, and for the most part agree with the general description of them as well as the recommendations. If you don't want to become psychotic, don't do the things that are famously associated with becoming psychotic.

9AprilSR
I don't actually want to litigate the details here, but I think describing me as "literally schizophrenic" is taking things a bit far.
5TsviBT
Can you give whatever more information you can, e.g. to help people know whether you're referring to the same or different events that they already know about? E.g., are you talking about this that have already been mentioned on the public internet? What time period/s did the events you're talking about happen in?

The market isnt efficient. Which isn't to say it is easy to beat. Your friends strategies don't sound promising. It also seems strange to me he is obsessed with crypto and thinks it will do well but isn't a crypto investor. Sounds pretty inconsistent with his beliefs.

It's worth remembering many versions of ',,the market is efficient' are almost or totally unfalsifiable.

1AhmedNeedsATherapist
It's illegal, as mentioned in the post. Why? The market being mostly efficient relative to my friend seems easily falsifiable, if he makes a bunch of money trading on the stock market. Then, well hooray! theory falsified. On the other hand, if my theory is that the market is inefficient relative to my friend, I have no way of falsifying this, any failed attempt to get money from the market does not falsify the conclusion that the market is inefficient (but it does provide evidence against the hypothesis).

I was a miserable child. When I was nine years old I remember watching one and thinking "I have almost a decade left to serve. This is a long sentence for an adult and im just a kid. But at least I will get out one day".

I was eventually set free. But until my freedom came all I could really do was bide my time and try to cope with the torture. And I most certainly consider it torture in retrospect. I was physically assaulted by my dad and I was horribly, horribly sleep deprived. But I managed to keep some of my sanity and pick up some MTG cards I later sold at a large profit. It could have been a lot worse for future me.

5Raemon
A thing I am interested in but can't tell from this comment is whether, as that kid, reading this post would have been helpful or harmful (I'd guess harmful, but not overwhelmingly)

Love is true if you will fight for it. Not destroy yourself, not commit suicide but fight bravely. 

The 'Food' and the 'Drug' parts behave very differently. By default food products are allowed. There may be purity requirements or restaurant regulations but you don't need to run studies or get approvals to serve an edible product or a new combination. By default drugs are banned. 

I think the FDA is under zealous about heavy metals and other contaminants.  But the FDA does a decent job of regulating food. However the 'drug' side is a nightmare. But the two situations are de facto handled in very, very different ways. So its not obvious why an argument would cover both of them.

I'm sending my funds/votes to lighthaven. It's a very well run venue and afaik needs funding. It should eventually be profitable or break even but needs some help getting started. Really useful and important to support well executed projects.

"The far left is censorious" and "Republicans are censorious" are in no way incompatible claims :-)

You can make make people/entities actually equal. You can also remove the need for the weaker entity to get the stronger entities permission. Either go more egalitarian or less authoritarian or both. Its worth noting that if you dont want to be authoritarian its important to blin yourself to information about the weaker party. The ebst way to not be overbearing is to not know what behavior they are getting up to. This is why children's privacy is so important. Its much easier to never known than to resist your urge to meddle.

I have previously bet large sums on elections. Im not currently placing any bets on who will win the election. Seems too unclear to me (note I had a huge bet on biden in 2020, seemed clear then). However there are TONS of mispricings on polymarket and other sites. Things like 'biden will withdraw or lose the nomination @ 23%' is a good example.

4Bohaska
Given that Biden has dropped out, do you believe that the market was accurately priced at the time?
3kairos_
Polymarket has gotten lots of attention in recent months, but I was shocked to find out how much inefficency there really is. There was a market titled "What will Trump say during his RNC speech?" that was up a few days ago. At 7 pm, the transcript for the speech was leaked, and you could easily find it by a google search or looking at the polymarket discord. Trump started his speech at 9:30, and it was immediately that he was using the script. One entire hour into the speech I stumbled onto the transcript on Polymarkets discord. Despite the word "prisons" being in the leaked transcript that Trump was halfway through, Polymarket only gave it a 70% chance of being said. I quickly went to bet and made free money.  To be fair it was a smaller market with 800k in bets, but nonetheless I was shocked on how easy it was to make risk-free money.
6ryan_greenblatt
I don't see how this is relevant to my comment. By "positive EV bets" I meant positive EV with respect to shared values, not with respect to personal gain. Edit: Maybe your view is that leaders should take this bets anyway even though they know they are likely to result in a forced retirement. (E.g. ignoring the disincentive.) I was actually thinking of the disincentive effect as: you are actually a good leader, so you remaining in power would be good, therefore you should avoid actions that result in you losing power for unjustified reasons. Therefore you should avoid making positive EV bets (as making these bets is now overall negative EV as it will result in a forced leadership transition which is bad). More minimally, you strongly select for leaders which don't make such bets.

A serious effective altruism movement with clean house. Everyone who pushed the 'work with AI capabilities company' line should retire or be forced to retire. There is no need to blame anyone for mistakes, the decision makers had reasons. But they chose wrong and should not continue to be leaders.

Do you think that whenever anyone makes a decision that ends up being bad ex-post they should be forced to retire?

Doesn't this strongly disincentivize making positive EV bets which are likely to fail?

Edit: I interpreted this comment as a generic claim about how the EA community should relate to things which went poorly ex-post, I now think this comment was intended to be less generic.

Lumina is incredibly cheap right now. I pre-ordered for 250usd. Even genuinely quite poor people I know don't find the price off-putting (poor in the sense of absolutely poor for the country they live in). I have never met a single person who decided not to try Lumina because the price was high. If they pass its always because they think its risky.

9kave
I think Romeo is thinking of checking a bunch of mediators of risk (like aldehyde levels) as well as of function (like whether the organism stays colonised)

Leftwing point of view:

Its a wealth transfer to younger people. Im fully aware that middle aged people have college debt. 

 

Conversely wealth inequality by age is fairly extreme.

So I remain extremely in favor of student debt cancellation. Note I have never taken on any student debt so I obviously dont have any.

9cata
Why is it bad to have wealth inequality by age? Basically everyone gets to be every age, so there's nothing "unfair" about it.

Many things can be done by the right people. But Idk 'radical honesty' adjacent ideas usually go real bad.

Im a real fan of insane ideas. I literally do Acid every monday. But I gotta say among crazy ideas 'be way way more honest' is well trodden ground and the skulls are numerous. It just really rarely goes well. Im a pretty honest guy and am attracted to the cluster. But if you start doing this you are definitely trying something in a cluster of ideas that usually works terribly. 

If anything I have to constantly tell myself to be less explicit and 'deeply honest'. It just doesnt work well for most people.

Reply3111

Might be an uncharitable read of what's being recommended here. In particular, it might be worth revisiting the section that details what Deep Honesty is not. There's a large contingent of folks online who self-describe as 'borderline autistic', and one of their hallmark characteristics is blunt honesty, specifically the sort that's associated with an inability to pick up on ordinary social cues. My friend group is disproportionately comprised of this sort of person. So I've had a lot of opportunity to observe a few things about how honesty works.

Speaking ... (read more)

This sounds like a case of the Rule of Equal and Opposite Advice: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-advice-you-hear/ I'm sure for some people more honesty would be harmful, but it does sound like the caveats here make it clear when not to use it. I more agree with questions Tsvi raises in the other thread than with "this is awful advice". I can imagine that you are a person for whom more honesty is bad, although if you followed the caveats above it would be imo quite rare to do it wrong. I think the authors do a good job of outlining many cases where it goes wrong.

John Carmack is a famously honest man. To illustrate this, I'll give you two stories. When Carmack was a kid, he desperately wanted the macs in his schools computer lab. So he and a buddy tried to steal some. They got caught because Carmack's friend was too fat to get through the window. Carmack went to juvie. When the counselor asked him if he wouldn't get caught, would he do it again? Carmack answered yes for this counterfactual.

Later, when working as a young developer, Carmack and his fellow employees would take the company workstations home to code gam... (read more)

Did the students really want to learn?

A few times I de facto taught a course on 'calculus with proofs' to a few students who wanted to learn from someone who seemed smart and motivated. I didn't get any money and they didnt get paid.  We met twice a week. I could give some lectures and they discuss problems for a few hours. There was homework. We all took it very seriously.  It was clearly not a small amount of work but I frankly found it invigorating. Normal classes were usually not invigorating.

I will say I found tutoring much more invigorating... (read more)

1ClareChiaraVincent
Yes, I often thought of this as a potential explanation before, but in this experience the students definitely wanted to learn. It was basically an elective and they're all seniors already on track to graduate, so they were under no pressure. They just wanted to learn! So in this case it wasn't soul crushing because the students weren't properly motivated, they were absolutely motivated, and so was I. In fact, I think it wasn't soul-crushing for the students. But it was still a little soul-crushing for me!  You absolutely should try tutoring! I'm sure you could find some students who are a good match and who would really appreciate it! :) 

Related question - Can you link me a summary of why aircraft weapons are good. I feel like it should be kinda hard to hit an aicraft with a missle or whatever. Aicraft are moving really fast and are not the biggest target. How much faster are missiles? The jet is already moving at a high speed but the missle has to accelerate from zero. Aircraft seem pretty vulnerable to lasers but are those kind of defenses actually deployed at our current tech level?

2Yair Halberstadt
You're intuition is correct when the jet has already passed ahead - those are very hard to catch and shoot down. But usually you detect an aircraft when it's heading towards you, and all the missile has to do is intercept. It doesn't even have to be faster than the jet (unless the jet detected it in time and does a 180).

Strong upvoted. I learned a lot. Seriously interested in what you think is relatively safe and not extremely expensive or difficult to acquire. Some candidates I thought of but im not exactly well informed:
-- Grass fed beef
-- oysters/muscles
-- some whole grains? which?
-- fruit
-- vegetables you somehow know arent contaminated by anti-pest chemicals?

I really need some guidance here.

7RedMan
Unfortunately, I haven't found a solution that scales, and I don't think there is one. I suspect that a clean environment is incompatible with most technological infrastructure.  Microplastics, oilfield brines, combustion products, industrial/agricultural/mining waste, etc all accumulate in the environment and concentrate on the way up the food chain. Even a strip mall generates a ton of pollution in the nearby water table. I've given up on 'pure' and just try to have a clear understanding of how I'm poisoning myself.  The most depressing thing about this is that I've been to absolutely beautiful farms, with happy animals...and in my due diligence discovered that the reason it was affordable to homestead there is because the textile plant closed in the 70s, so all the jobs left...but the PFOAs stuck around. So... I try to know what's going into my body, avoid poison where possible, and do my best to get whatever garbage is accumulating out. That being said, I think the stuff that has done the most damage to my body are medical products.  Read those labels carefully!

I prefer to keep plans private but I'm making big progress on meditation and mental re-wiring. Am working on a way to publicly demonstrate. Public plans just stress me out. I recently set two pretty ambitious goals. I figured I could use psychedelics to turbo-charge progress. The meditation one is coming along FAST.

The other goal is honestly blocked a bit on being super out of shape. Multiple rounds of covid really destroyed my cardio and energy levels. Need to rebuild those before a big push on goal 2.

Im with several other commentators. People know what unconditional love is. Many people have it for their family members, most commonly for their children but often for others. They want that. Sadly this sort of love is rare beyond family.

I felt some amount of unconditional towards my dad. He was really not a great parent to me. He hit me for fun, was ashamed of me, etc. But we did have some good times. When he was dying of cancer I was still a good son. Was quite supportive. Not out of duty, I just didnt want him to suffer any more than needed. I felt gen... (read more)

Does anyone have high quality analysis of how effective machines are for strength training and building muscles. Not free weights specifically machines. Im not the pickiest on how one operationalizes 'work'. More interested in the quality of the analysis. But some questions:

-- Do users get hurt frequently? Are the injuries chronic? (This is the most important question)

-- Do people who use them consistently gain muscle

-- Can you gain a 'lot' of muscle and strength liek you can with free weights. Or people cap out quickly if they are fit

-- Does strength from... (read more)

Im not particularly against pivotal acts. It seems plausible to me someone will take one. Would not exactly shock me if Sam Altman himself planned to take one to prevent dangerous AGI. He is intelligent and therefore isnt going to openly talk about considering them. But I dont have any serious objection to them being taken if people are reasonable about it.

A rather large fraction of the total words in this document are dedicated to safety warnings. I do not see how its possible to deny I seem quite focus on some sense of safety. I focused on the safety issues I think are genuinely the most pressing (addiction risks, trauma). I genuinely do not think that drug purity issues are the main risk of taking this advice. Certainly not for ketamine sourced in San Fransisco.  Also the service I linked in SF also sends samples to a lab for quite thorough testing and you get results in about four weeks.  You should believe I genuinely disagree with you on what the risks are for the substances mentioned.

I think modafinal is great for a lot of people. But I made the choice to only write up the very best (in terms of expected outcomes) stuff. Given that many substances have risks or legal issues it was much simpler for me to just not mention a lot of stuff. I do not intend any implicit claim that other things aren't useful. But I didn't make a list of 'stuff I've investigated and found less good on average' vs 'stuff I have not investigated'.

Thanks for sharing moda is working that well for you

1Metacelsus
Testosterone will land you in more legal trouble than modafinil.
9SarahNibs
The most common reason I've seen for "modafinil isn't great for me" is trying to use it for something other than * maintaining productivity, * on low amounts of sleep

It feels like bad praxis to punish people for things they got right! 

The circle is by far my favorite solstice song. I like to it all the time. It is definitely the most 'sapph values' part of the performance. I find it beautiful. A ray of pure divine grace. I will say im not exactly bad at being rational in concrete ways. Im fairly successful economically, socially and romantically despite having an abusive childhood. I attribute my success to being methodical and rational about things, at least some of the time. But there is something about rat values that differs from mine. So its very good for my feeling included that the Circle has survived the culls.

If any of my adoring fans, or anyone else, wants to grab lunch/dinner/a drink let me know. Im in SF for a bit. Lots to talk about. Also I try to do an hour plus of walking per day. So happy to walk. Though im not always up for a big hike. Lots to do.

I didn't have time or energy! This shit was going parabolic! Whatever happened to Aumann's agreement theorem!

I will note this is both a cool as fuck project and the token is like 2x+ from when I posted. So idk why im getting downvoted. I guess lesswrong jsut isnt into finance for personal gain or to look at dope stuff.

7Jonas V
I think more like you don't argue why you believe what you believe and instead just assert it's cool, and the whole thing looks a bit sloppy (spelling mistakes, all-caps, etc.)

The lesswrong/EA communities 'inside game' strategy for AI safety is genuinely embarrassing to me as a longtime community member. Quokkas gonna quokka but this is ridiculous.

3greenrd
As one of the people who advocated this strategy early on, I want to point out what I pointed out then: working inside AI capabilities labs probably grants you access to insights about what is going on, how things work, and what is (going to be) important that you wouldn't necessarily get from outside. That said, it's not clear to me that the community's entire strategy is 'inside game'. I know at least one community member who is hostile to OpenAI, I guess Pause AI protesting outside OpenAI counts as those of us who are in Pause AI being hostile to it, and I guess you yourself also count as a community member who is hostile to OpenAI? Is MIRI working with OpenAI or other corporate labs?
5quetzal_rainbow
I downvoted this comment because it's genuinely incomprehensible.
8habryka
Do you have a rough estimate of how much it went up in the last 3 months?
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