All of DiamondSolstice's Comments + Replies

I'd like to know: what are the main questions a rational person would ask? (Also what are some better ways to phrase what I have?)

I've been thinking something like

  • What will happen in the future?
  • What is my best course of action regardless of what all other people are doing? (Asked in moderation)
2jmh
I think perhaps a first one might be: On what evidence do I conclude what I think is know is correct/factual/true and how strong is that evidence? To what extent have I verified that view and just how extensively should I verify the evidence? After that might be a similar approach to the implications or outcomes of applying actions based on what one holds as truth/fact. I tend to think of rationality as a process rather than endpoint. Which isn't to say that the destination is not important but clearly without the journey the destination is just a thought or dream. That first of a thousand steps thing.
4Screwtape
There's a triad of paired questions I sometimes run through. * What do you think you know and how do you think you know it? * Do you know what you are doing, and why you are doing it? * What are you about to do and what do you think will happen next? They're suited for slightly different circumstances, but I think each is foundational in its own way.
gilch102

What we'd ask depends on the context. In general, not all rationalist teachings are in the form of a question, but many could probably be phrased that way.

"Do I desire to believe X if X is the case and not-X if X is not the case?" (For whatever X in question.) This is the fundamental lesson of epistemic rationality. If you don't want to lie to yourself, the rest will help you get better at that. But if you do, you'll lie to yourself anyway and all your acquired cleverness will be used to defeat itself.

"Am I winning?" This is the fundamental lesson of instr... (read more)

5. One General FES (from each side) is ChatGPT

6. There will be an hour when each General cannot say anything on any channel, regardless of all circumstances. (Everybody can talk for the first hour)

Ideas for next year:

  1. One General from each side is a defector. He wants the other side to win. If he is figured out, he will become a civilian.
    1. Possible additions:
      1. Once this happens, a random civilian will be chosen as the next general (if they agree).
      2. Once this happens, a random civilian will be chosen as next general (if they agree) AND a random general will be chosen as the next defector.
  2. One General from each side has to actively STOP nukes from getting launched (possible explanation: his overzealous men are pro-nuke, and he must send hourly (?) commands to
... (read more)
2DiamondSolstice
5. One General FES (from each side) is ChatGPT 6. There will be an hour when each General cannot say anything on any channel, regardless of all circumstances. (Everybody can talk for the first hour)

Last year, I checked Less wrong on the 27th, and found a message that told me that nobody, in fact, had pressed the red button. 

When I saw the red button today, it took me about five minutes to convince myself to press it. The "join the Petrov Game" message gave me confidence and after I pressed it, there was no bright red message with the words "you nuked it all"

So no, not a trap. At least not in that sense - it adds you to a bigger trap, because once pressed the button cannot be unpressed.

"Is me creating an opportunity for someone to commit a crime constitute my doing something bad to the commons or is it on the actual criminals?"

"It's on both"

 These situations seem to be very extreme, but I have this less dark example: Say I go swimming in a place where the lifeguard can't see me. Is it my fault I drowned or the lifeguards? The lifeguard is supposed to watch everyone... but I put myself in that situation in the first place. (After typing this out I realized it's still pretty dark, oh well)
 

"Of course, you can argue "if they didn'... (read more)

1Jiro
The issue is not whose fault it is for the crime, but whose fault it is for the using up the extra resources to prevent the crime, which is not an issue in the lifeguard example. And that itself is a specific case of "how much more than average do you have to use the commons before you can be blamed for overusing the commons". Which is partly a matter of degree and depends on things like how much you use it, what people's expectations are, what reasonable expectations are, and what the intentions are of the people providing the resources. I've done that myself (for busses to Atlantic City). Since the owner can change the price freely, and can change it incrementally or for specific customers, I'd generally not consider it to be overusing the commons if there is a price. In the case of loss-leader trips, it's also very hard to overuse the trips anyway, as opposed to just using them more than average--you probably couldn't use more than one trip every couple of days. If stores in Taiwan charged for use of bathrooms, and the government rented out spaces for homeless on the ground, and charged a "homeless stay tax" which covers the costs of police and such, I would agree that it would be okay to go homeless and use them at the given prices. (If there is a two tier price where the homeless are charged more, the homeless tourist would have to pay the homeless tier price, and not cheat even if it isn't enforced well.)

What's the difference between a virus that preferentially infects cancer cells and a virus that kills infected cancer cells directly?

  • Does "preferentially" mean that the virus also attacks non-cancer cells? Or does it mean that it just doesn't hit cancer cells as hard?
  • "A virus that kills infected cancer cells": does this mean the virus kills cells infected with the virus mentioned in the first part of the question or is this just badly phrased?

Yes I clicked on this one partly because my brain saw the word cadaver, but I totally expected it be similar to "dissecting the [some dead civilization]"

I, too would like to know about this

Wow. I relate seriously to the first half of your story - the "read lots of books, learn about traps, don't fall in" part. 
But instead of completely ignoring emotions, I had decided to find the source and fix it. But just like you said - a kid doesn't have much power to fix things outside of themselves. But I had another piece of advice from family - it's not the outside that affects your emotions, you affect your emotions. If you're bored, just make yourself feel less bored by doing something (singing, drawing, thinking about what you're going to eat... (read more)

Lass Puppet: the glasses make you act stereotypically female

Pass Puppet: the glasses don't have any text

This post is really important as a lot of other materials on LessWrong (notably AI to Zombies) really berate the idea that trying out things that haven't been tested via the Scientific Method. 
This post explains that some (especially health) conditions may go completely outside the scope of testable-via-scientific-method, and at some point turning to chance is a good idea, reminding us that intuition may be often wrong but it can work wonders when used as a last resort. 
This is something to remember when trying to solve problems that don't seem to have one perfect mathematical solution (yet).

7habryka
This sounds to me like a deep misunderstanding of R:A-Z. The whole point of essays like Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence is that there are tons of valid non-scientific forms of evidence. Posts like Einstein's Arrogance are explicitly about how you can come to high credence in propositions without much scientific evidence.  "berating the idea of trying out things that haven't been tested via the Scientific Method" really sounds like a hilarious strawman of LessWrong, and if anything the opposite of what the culture of this site usually endorses (including the writing in R:A-Z). 

One of the disadvantages of arguing "but it could be dangerous" (which is what you seem to be arguing), is that every new invention is probably dangerous in some way or other. Cars, for example, are an invention that changed life around the world [just like the internet, or nuclear energy, and gunpowder] and have been misused, there have been thousands if not millions of accidents, and yet people view them in a very positive sense. It is true that richer people have cars with price tags over a million, and while cars are nothing in comparison to a human li... (read more)

2Viliam
I agree that it will probably be a net benefit. (No I haven't read anything by Dr. Seuss.)

Personally, I've enjoyed the novella. Not the best I've ever read, but I wanted to learn what comes next, which is a high bar these days. 

The beginning isn't as interesting as it could be. It's not as "hook-y" as most books I find in the library are. But by, say, Chapter 10, I was interested in reading it. 

(I can't believe I'm criticizing AI work. Wow.)

I'm surprised ChatGPT changed the plot of the story with the last DMF message. Is there anything I'm not seeing or did it actually delete the whole last part of the storyline from that one prompt?

1Charlie Sanders
It's verbatim. I think it picked up on the concept of the unreliable narrator from the H.P. Lovecraft reference and incorporated it into the story where it could make it fit - but then, maybe I'm just reading into things. It's only guessing the next word, after all!

What I can't figure out is why BLUE died. She's supposed to be immune to physical dangers? What did she die of?

8gwern
Most people wouldn't consider dying of old age to be a 'physical danger'. It's "physical danger" as in external physical threats, not total immunity from all possible issues external & internal yielding "immortality" or "indestructibility".

Why does the fourth amendment make you feel LESS safe in your homes? Because of the possibility that criminals will not be found out because police can't search THEIR homes?

I'd like to hear your reasoning about "39. Obesity is contagious".
Is it the mental motivation of seeing someone obese to become obese yourself?

I can see what you mean by saying that 'identical to water but not water' is not true, but it's called the 'Twin' planet. Even twins have different fingerprints. Can't a substance act like water, look like water, and anything we do without looking at the molecular structure makes it seem identical to water, yet actually the creatures on that planet discovered a new molecule, that was just the same shape/form as a water molecule and have a different number of electrons?

I don't really understand atom structure, so is this scenario possible?

According to my a-few-classes-of-college-level-chemistry-and-physics level knowledge, no.  There just aren't enough possibilities that are small enough to do that sort of thing that share enough of water's properties, with the notable exception being literal anti-water (water made of antihydrogen and antioxygen).

I have a solution for Harry.

Check the time, send any good occlumens with a time turner back for 6 hours, have them tell another good occlumens with a time turner to go back 6 hours, the time that it was when the first person went back in time, and have them ask yet another good occlumens... 

Do that however many times you need to

Have someone actually film whatever happened, then wait until it is right after the time that the first person went back in time, show everyone the film.

That way:

a) An occlumens will not accidentally give away their secrets
b) Time will not be changed, since they waited
c) You know it's real, since it's on film.

7Arun Johnson
I believe it was established earlier in the series that no chain of time turners can send information back more than 6 hours.

I'm re-reading this chapter for the sixth time

And I just realized

Is the "Black robes falling" italics part a non-Harry point of view of the end of chapter 114?

The word being Harry's spell on Voldemort, and "Black robes, falling" is actually part of the text in that chapter, also in italics, and in parentheses.