Froolow

An alarming fact about the anti-aging community

Here is a rough cost-benefit analysis. I found all the numbers before doing any maths and tried to be as optimistic as possible towards your theory to account for people more intelligent than me coming up with better ways to do it if it became standardised.

The cost of freezing a cell is proxied as the cost of freezing your eggs, which is already commercially available. It is £2900 for the initial harvest and £275 for a subsequent year of freezing. This £275 is not discounted because you pay it every year. Source. Let's assume that the clinic are nice and let you freeze as many different organ-cells as you want for the... (read 424 more words →)

Replying toMaybe you want to maximise paperclips too

Maybe you want to maximise paperclips too

I really enjoyed the article, but I think your argument falls down in the following way:

1) Fission / fusion are the best energy sources we know of, but we can't yet do it for all forms of matter

2) A sufficiently clever and motivated intelligence probably could do it for all forms of matter, because it looks to be thermodynamically possible

3) (Implicit premise) In between now and the creation of a galaxy-hopping superintelligence with the physical nouse to fusion / fission at least the majority of matter in its path, there will be no more efficient forms of energy discovered

4) Therefore paperclips (or at least something that looks enough like paperclips that we... (read more)

Replying toWhat are the most common and important trade-offs that decision makers face?

What are the most common and important trade-offs that decision makers face?

They are slightly different, but in practical terms they describe the same error; sensitivity and specificity are properties of a test while Type I and II errors are properties of a system, but both errors are basically saying, "Our test is not perfectly accurate so if we want to catch more people with a disease we need to misdiagnose more people"

To illustrate the distinction, consider a test which is 90% sensitive and 90% specific in a population of 100 where a disease has a 50% prevelance. This means 50 people have the disease, of which the test will identify 45 as having the problem (90% sensitive). 50 people are free of the... (read more)

Replying toOne Year of Goodsearching

I agree with everything you've said, but I would point out that I already allow myself to be tracked by Google, so the true cost is only the difference between the 'badness' of Google and Microsoft.

Replying toOne Year of Goodsearching

Don't worry about the tone, opportunity cost is that hinterland where it is too complicated to explain to someone who doesn't get it in one sentence, but too fundamental not to need to talk about so it is very difficult to judge tone when you're not sure whether you can assume familiarity with economic concepts.

It sounds to me like we basically agree - the cost of switching search engine is ten minutes (assumption) and this pays off about 50 cents a day for forever (assumption). This makes cutting off the analysis at one year arbitrary, which I agree with. You also have to compare the effort you put into searching with anything... (read more)

Replying toOne Year of Goodsearching

Why not? Genuine question, because my job is pretty much nothing but cost-benefit analysis of fixed-cost projects which pay off a small amount every year, and the calculation you describe as 'not how you do cost-benefit analysis' is almost exactly how I would do a cost-benefit analysis of this kind (although I wouldn't phrase it as $1200 / hour because that's clunky, I'd probably talk about a percentage return on investment). I rate the probability that I am wrong here as extremely small, but if I am wrong I really need to hear it, and have the problem explained to me.

If I were totally comitted to getting the most accurate answer I'd... (read more)

Replying toOne Year of Goodsearching

I think there is a problem in how we are using the word 'ineffective'. I think you are using the word to mean 'very small absolute amounts' whereas I am using the word to mean something like 'low opportunity cost : return ratio'. I think looking at the cost : return ratio is fairer, and I also think 'very small absolute amount' is misleading.

I did 46 searches on my work computer yesterday, and probably a handful more on mobile devices. Say 50 for the sake of argument, or $0.50. Over a year this is $130 dollars if I make no searches at weekends. I agree with katydee that it would probably take... (read more)

Replying toOne Year of Goodsearching

I don't understand why you think it is a grossly ineffective way to earn money for charity. Please could you explain why you think this is?

Replying toGaming Democracy

Froolow12y

Gaming Democracy

I think - though I'm not certain - that you are right that in all but the most marginal seats you'd never find a politically unafiliated / passionate about a political issue group large enough to swing a seat. I don't think that implies that you shouldn't try to game democracy though - there are certain known flaws in the democratic system we have which exist (and swing elections) independently of whether people knowingly exploit them or not.

Replying toGaming Democracy

Froolow12y

Gaming Democracy

I think that's certainly an interesting idea - NHS-homeopathy could be even cheaper than what is currently provided (comissioning the services off a private homeopathy provider) because we could do it in bulk - the raw ingredients aren't expensive at all. I'd worry about the indirect cost of moving the Overton Window though - at the moment we STRONGLY advise people not to use homeopathy even for trivial conditions, and we mock those that promote it. Even so, many people still use it and swear by its efficacy. If we moved to a situation where we promoted homeopathy for minor conditions and gave its practitioners the stamp of NHS/Government approval, we would... (read more)

Gaming Democracy

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/24/how-the-kickstarter-model-could-transform-uk-elections

12y

I live in the UK, which has a very similar voting structure to the US for the purposes of this article. Nevertheless, it may differ on the details, for which I am sorry. I also use a couple of real-life political examples which I hope are uncontroversial enough not to break the unofficial rules here. If they are not, I can change them, because this is a discussion of gaming democracy by exploiting swing seats to push rationalist causes.

Cory Doctrow writes in the Guardian about using Kickstarter-like thresholds to encourage voting for minority parties:

He points out that nobody votes for minority parties because nobody else votes for them; if you waste your vote on... (read 1632 more words →)

The Extended Living-Forever Strategy-Space

The Cryonics Strategy Space

12y

I wanted to try and write this like a sequence post with a little story at the beginning because the style is hard to beat if you can pull it off. For those that want to skip to the meat of the argument, scroll down to the section titled ‘The Jealous God of Cryonics’

Bizzaro-Pascal

The year is 1600BC and Moses is scrambling down the slopes of Mount Sinai under the blazing Egyptian sun, with two stone tablets tucked under his arms - strangely small for the enduring impact they will have on the world. Pausing a moment to take a sip of water from his waterskin, he decided to double-check the words on... (read 2438 more words →)

How long will Alcor be around?

12y

In four paragraphs I’m going to claim, “It is highly likely reading this article will increase your chance of living forever”. I’m pretty sure you won’t disagree with me. First, however, I’d like to talk about how much I don’t like Monopoly.

I play a lot of Monopoly, because I am forced into it – against my will – by friends, family, work-related-bonding etc. I understand this is a controversial opinion, but I really, really don’t like Monopoly – there is very little scope for creative play. In fact there is so little scope for create play I spotted that I could win at Monopoly, in a probabilistic sense, by going online and... (read 2255 more words →)