All of GradientDissenter's Comments + Replies

I assume "let's think step by step" is a joke/on purpose. The "first" and "not so fast" on their own don't seem that egregious to me.

Humanity has only ever eradicated two diseases (and one of those, rinderpest, is only in cattle not humans). The next disease on the list is probably Guinea worm (though polio is also tantalizingly close).

At its peak Guinea worm infected ~900k people a year. In 2024 we so far only know of 7 cases. The disease isn't deadly, but it causes significant pain for 1-3 weeks (as a worm burrows out of your skin!) and in ~30% of cases that pain persists afterwards for about a year. In .5% of cases the worm burrows through important ligaments and leaves you permanent... (read more)

Update: we sent out decisions to everyone who applied to the upcoming program, which is now Jan 6-8!

The fact that these decisions were so delayed and communication was poor and the program got postponed is all my fault and I would like to apologize. I understand that my being unresponsive created costs for you and makes planning harder. It also eats into a valuable resource of trust that makes people more suspicious of other events and generally makes coordination difficult.

This happened because I didn't set firm enough deadlines or loop my collaborators i... (read more)

Everyone who applied to the upcoming program should have heard back now! (Decisions were sent out shortly after you posted your comment.) People who said they couldn't make the upcoming program but wanted to be considered for future programs we might run haven't been notified, since we don't know what those events will look like yet or if they'll happen.

Sure, if people prefer getting money up front I'm happy to do that.

Thanks Eric! I'll be sure to reach out if/when I run something like this in the future! I hope you recover well.

1. Lodging is on-site. It's at a renovated former sorority house. Everyone should get their own bedroom, and if getting a private bathroom is a crux for doing we can make sure you get that too, though by default bathrooms will be shared.
2. You'd submit a reimbursement request for expenses. If that poses a challenge, we can work something else out. I expect the only significant expense you'd need reimbursement for to be travel -- we'll provide food and lodging.
3. I expect 20 people, but it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be significantly more or fewer. In general, it will be small.

Here's the tentative schedule! (Also added to the post).

We're pretty unsure what the quality of the applications will be. My 85% CI is that we accept 5-50% of people who just read this post and apply.

Another point related to the above: if I had content I wanted LessWrong readers to know that was easy to transmit in written form, I'd just post it on LessWrong. I'm trying to make the most of the opportunity have interactions that can't easily happen over the forum (and I think there's a lot of important interactions of that class!).

Hiya! I'm the co-organizer Jonas mentioned.

This is partially an un-conference style event. The point is not that we the staff have something we want to present to the participants; the point is if we get these people together, we think something worthwhile will happen. (My personal prediction is that at least two participants’ lives will majorly shift because of this program.)

Most of the most valuable events I’ve been to had excellent people and ~no scheduled content. For the most valuable events I’ve been to with content, the content wasn’t the thing... (read more)