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All of immasix's Comments + Replies

LessWrong Community Weekend 2024 [applications closed]
immasix
*1612

EAGx is happening the same weekend

 

This is a quite conflict :(.

There is only one LessWrong Community Weekend. But you might have the opportunity to attend another EAGx in Europe this year: EAGx Nordics on 26-28 April or EAGx Utrecht on 5-7 July.

I attended previous LWCW and EAGx events, and no, I guess it would be a really bad idea to attend both in the same weekend. Both are intense and extremely interesting, and 100 percent of EAGx overlaps with LWCW.

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What would you like from Microcovid.org? How valuable would it be to you?
immasix
*2216

I used microcovid a lot but less so in recent months, because it is not useful for omicron and because it does not include rapid tests. Also I have become less careful after vaccination. I’ve also had the feeling microCOVID was a bit conservative. Does the risk estimate take into account that a part of infectious people deliberately stay at home and you are less likely to meet them?

Updates I would suggest (in addition to other update mentioned in other comments)

  • adjustment of the risk for people who tested negative on a rapid test. Rapid tests are popular i
... (read more)
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5gwillen
One thing I'm surprised I haven't seen listed yet: Adjustment for boosters (and generally updating the vaccine adjustments, which I think are almost certainly too generous for 1- and 2-dose vaccination, once Omicron is circulating.) Lately, I have mostly been using Microcovid as a guide for training my intuition about how important the various factors are. I don't have a lot of confidence in the actual output of the model overall right now, since it doesn't account for boosters, or for Omicron. I also have a general distrust of some of the model's simplifying assumptions about how factors interact, although I don't have anything better to substitute, other than my own intuitive judgement.
3Stephen Bennett
One way of bounding the risk would be to estimate the risk from the maskless and masked independently and then add their risk together. For instance, if you're using their "going to work" scenario, you could decompose that profile into the various sub-activities that it's made up of, which might be "going to work" with 1 person within 15 feet wearing an N95 and silent, 2 people within 15 feet wearing a cloth mask snugly, and 1 person within 15 feet wearing no mask and yelling at the conductor. That gives 3.5 + 14 + 450 microcovids, for an approximate total of 470. This particular example is designed to illustrate a way of arriving at a reasonable estimate of this risk without going through each individual component, which is that the largest risk tends to dominate. Zvi summarizes this as "Risks Follow Power Laws", which is just as true when evaluating the decomposed risks of a single activity as it is for evaluating a set of distinct activities. Not all activities will follow this pattern of a single dominant risk component since it's very possible to have many components which each contribute a fairly inconsequential risk but in aggregate the risk is enough to matter. However, starting with the biggest risk factor lets you come to a decent estimate quickly. This is especially convenient when you have a clear decision criteria (e.g. "I'll take the bus if the risk is 10 microcovids or less, and drive otherwise"), since if the highest risk factor is above this then you're done. If it's quite a bit below, you're also done, since the other factors are unlikely to get you there (e.g. if you mentally decompose the activity into 3 parts, and the one you expect to be the biggest risk is 1 microcovid, then you'd also be done unless your mental model of risk is way off).
3Nels Nelson
Agree with adjustment for rapid tests. Otherwise, the results are overly conservative.
Different kinds of language proficiency
immasix
40

I have similar experiences as those described in the post and in the other comments.

I speak Dutch, English and German, all of them to an advanced level and all of them currently in use. I learned each language in a different way and use each language in a different situation. But they are closely related languages and the differences are subtile. My vocabularies in each language do not fully overlap, and knowing three languages gives me access to a wider range of words and phrases - which I unfortunately cannot share with most conversation partners.

Dutch i... (read more)

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Meetup : Effective Altruism Netherlands, cancelled
immasix
00

Unfortunately, this meetup has been cancelled. I'm sorry for this.

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Meetup : Utrecht: Debiasing techniques
immasix
10

Edit: this meetup is on 21 September and not on 20 September, because we decided to have our meetups on Sundays (biweekly) from then on.

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Meetup : Utrecht: Debiasing techniques
immasix
10

We will put a more detailed description later at meetup.com: http://www.meetup.com/LWEANL/events/200065632/ You can also ask Sören. (LW username SoerenMind)

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Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)
immasix
00

Thank you for your reply. I hope I will have time to go through the sequences, there is now some ethics stuff on my reading list.

Our meetups will be announced on LW as well and I invite everyone to come! (If you live far away it might not be worth the travel cost, but you're welcome anyway)

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Meetup : Cognitive Biases
immasix
00

Address

Filmcafé OSKAR Slachtstraat 5 (bij De Neude) 3512 BC UTRECHT

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Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)
immasix
70

I'm Imma, recently graduated from university (mix of physics and chemistry) and I self-identify as effective altruist . I'm not very familiar with LW material but want to gradually improve my rationality. I consider attending the CFAR workshop but have to prioritize this to donating the money to effective charities.

I'm involved in a combined EA/LW meetup group in Utrecht (Netherlands). We have biweekly events which I'm planning to announce on LW as well.

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3[anonymous]
Hello and welcome to LessWrong! Sounds like you're already getting your feet wet! That's great. Always glad to have new members who actively participate in the real world (helps with the "effective" part of "effective altruism.") If you ever do get a chance to attend a CFAR workshop, you'll have plenty of people here to talk with about the lessons and ideas you come across. The CFAR and LW communities are strongly connected (as you can guess), so there's plenty of cross pollination of ideas. So you're already part of a meetup? Awesome! Feel free to list it on the meetup page. It never hurts to spread the word about your local meetups, and some LWers may not even realize they live right down the road from an active group. If you're interested in checking out some LW materials, the Sequences make for some good reading. Since improving yourself interests you, consider reading Alicorn's Living Luminously or lukeprog's The Science of Winning at Life. Both cover some useful ideas for self improvement and instrumental rationality. Given your background and the steps you're already taking to get involved, I'm sure you'll have some very interesting things to share with the community before too long. Glad you've decided to join! Hope you enjoy your time and come away better than you were before.