All of goose000's Comments + Replies

No problem. Looks like that will be the soonest I'll be able to make it as well.

Looks like SSC meetups are still ongoing: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/ifsZbNmHwxhCm7F4n/slate-star-codex-meetup?commentId=ZccQoDDQY2skHDsAY#ZccQoDDQY2skHDsAY

This whole time? Man, I haven't been looking hard enough. What's the algorithm, 2d Saturdays at 1900?

Ahh, I think I did not think through what "rationality enhancement" might mean; perhaps my own recent search and the AI context of Yudkowsky's original intent skewed me a little. I was thinking of something like "understanding and applying concepts of rationality" in a way that might include "anticipating misaligned AI" or "anticipating AI-human feedback responses". 

I like the way you've framed what's probably the useful question. I'll need to think about that a bit more.

Cool, thanks for sharing.

I posted about my academic research interest here, do you know their research well enough to give input on whether my interests would be compatible? I would love to find a way to do my PhD in Europe, but especially Germany.

Cool, that sounds like a pretty useful combination.

I'd love to. The soonest I'd be available in August would be at the end of the month. I'm sure we can find somewhere public that would work. What will you be studying?

A few observations.

First, it seems likely that the increase in positivity can be explained by fewer precautionary tests: fewer people are getting tested "just to be sure", fewer people are being required by work/travel/etc. to get tested. Therefore fewer negative tests.

Second, it seems likely to me that the "93%, 93%, 91%" numbers are calculated independently from each other. I.e. 93% less likely to contract than unvaccinated, 93% less likely to hospitalize than unvaccinated, and the vaccinated group was 91% less likely to die than the unvaccinated group. ... (read more)

I've started formalizing my research proposal, so I now have:
I intend to use computational game theory, system modeling, cognitive science, causal inference, and operations research methods to explore the ways in which AI systems can produce unintended consequences and develop better methods to anticipate outer alignment failures. 

Can anyone point me to existing university research along these lines? I've made some progress after finding this thread, and I'm now planning to contact FHI about their Research Scholar's Programme, but I'm still finding it... (read more)

Wait, isn't that an example of efficiency of scale being dependent on investment? You have to get a 1-foot rope and scissors, but once you have, you can create two 1/2 foot ropes? I think the "given a 1-foot rope" is doing more work than you realize, because when I try to apply your example to the world above, I keep getting hung up on "but in the imaginary world above, when we account for economy of scale, if you just needed one 1/2 foot rope, you would just create a 1/2 foot rope, and that would take you 1/2 the time as creating 1 foot of rope." And for ... (read more)

Hmm. I feel like it's relevant that your example relies on trade, which we're trying to eliminate. Therefore, if all of the other reasons for trade go away, this example would be irrelevant.

But can we recreate it elsewhere? Perhaps there is some task which is time sensitive, but cannot be done by one person (in their remaining marginal time) at a speed which does not decrease marginal gains. Information sharing comes to mind, but that seems to have already been accomplished by the society outlined above.

Yeah, I think we’re in agreement. I can’t think why there would ever be a minimum, except to exceed the break-even point on fixed costs. 

Any chance this will be resuming any time soon?

Looking through the comments, it seems like most of my thoughts have been captured (economy of scale, collaboration producing non-linear accumulation, etc) But some of the others (risk management, the time axis of logistics) helped me come up with a new one: perishability. When we combine some of the other factors (especially risk) people will at times have a perishable surplus. At these times they would seek to convert this surplus to something non-perishable or some other thing that they need at the time. If we had a society as described above plus uniform starting conditions and everyone used the same dice-rolls (i.e. everyone had the same good/bad corn year), I believe this reason for trade would cease to exist

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I agree with both, but claim that they are, in a sense, the same problem: if you solve the economy of scale issue, along with the parameters above, people would simply produce the amount desired with no diminishing marginal return problem on consumption.

Isn't 2 just a product of 1? If 1 were not true, couldn't you just get started at small scale? This may be understood, but if not, it seems useful to point out the entanglement.

Also, another aspect of the insurance is spoilage: some goods preserve better than others, so it makes sense to convert excess into something stable so that you can "self insure".

Unfortunately, a car is an unavoidable cost for me, I expect that is a large part of the difference.

I do have a car, but I don't even live in the bay area and didn't realize how many of you were in Berkeley. Makes sense now.

I think I underestimated how much of the Rationalist community was in the bay area. That fact alone resolves most of my confusion, thank you.

But most people's miles are in Uber/Lyft

This is interesting to me, as every time I've looked at Uber/Lyft prices in my area it has seemed a bit high for it to be my go-to option. Can you link me to a good discussion regarding why this is the typical Rationalist choice? (I've read a lot of the sequences, etc. but really don't spend hardly any time on the blog itself)

Nevermind, I think I've mostly figured it out: by arbitraging, I'm effectively borrowing against my various positions, so once the question is resolved, those debts must be paid before I can get the difference.
Another question: what is the more general rule in trying to figure out when this can be done? By my math, 14.88 is about 93% of the 16 options, or 99% of 15 options. This leads me to believe that the more general rule is .99*(n-1) where n is the number of options, which would make sense, since you will not get paid for one of your positions. Is this roughly correct?

As someone new to Predictit, I can't help but feeling I'm misunderstanding how predictit pays out. Now that I have completed this, and have ~859 shares of each "No", will I not get payed $1 for each share of "No" which turns out to in fact be "No"? Based on what everyone is saying here, this seems highly unlikely, but I can't figure out how it works otherwise.

Wait a minute, are you Randall Munroe or do you just like the website so much that you adopted the name for your handle? If so, I'm flattered, I love your website.

I like the coin flip idea. I have done something along these lines as a single session with homeschool kids where I gave them two decks of cards and had them stack the deck while I was out. When I came back I used an Excel VBA program I had made to continually reassess the maximum likelihood for the red/black proportion and updated it as I drew cards. Didn't go quite as well as I had hoped, mostly because I didn't emphasize that in order to get quick results they needed to really stack the deck, and they had made it 24 red, 28 black, or something... (read more)

Yes, I agree that doing good science is hard with flash, I've just had everyone telling me that that's what hooks them. Good to know that's not really true.

I'm thinking along the lines heavily leading to/giving the model, not necessarily having them come up with it themselves and then testing it. But part of the reason I'm asking here is to see if anyone has ideas regarding models which are discoverable by kids this age so that they can get there by more of their own processes.

Yes, I suppose I could have been more specific about the number of kids. I will be teaching my own two at a minimum, but could have as many as seven others join.

Thanks for the note about the handbook, I'll check it out.

I like these ideas, and you're right that these KISS type questions are good at getting at the heart of mechanisms and generalizing outside of context.

I'll mention now though, that I've been rightly advised to not disregard the flashy stuff kids like to see, because it is effective at getting them excited about science. Do you have any specific recommendations on how to take some of the classic "experiments for kids!" stuff you can find with a google search and add in a dose of "construct a falsifiable model and attempt to falsify it"? Some way I can keep the flash, but still teach them to the importance of models which allow them to make bold predictions?

Thanks for the link! It gave me his email address, I agree about the Inflection Point curriculum, the task will be to convert it to elementary level.

Found it thanks to the website posted below. duncan@rationality.org

How would I contact him?

Well, my first thought is that I need to spend some actual time on this site (I had to look up most everything you mentioned); Most of my education has simply come from Yudkowsky's book/compilation.

Zendo definitely looks promising, and should definitely be an element of the course as well as something I play with my kids. As I envision the course, however, it would be an element such as a warm up or cash out, not the core curriculum.

My thoughts on Credence Calibration are similar to my thoughts on Zendo with the following modifications: each kid woul... (read more)

I took a look; looks pretty cool and I will definitely get this to play with my kids. Not sure it's quite what I want to build a curriculum around though.

C.S. Lewis addressed the issue of faith in Mere Christianity as follows:

In one sense Faith means simply Belief—accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people—at least it used to puzzle me—is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue, I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue—what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want ... (read more)