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All of Ivy Mazzola's Comments + Replies

Abuse in LessWrong and rationalist communities in Bloomberg News
Ivy Mazzola83

Thank you so much for understanding, and sticking with my lengthy comment long enough to understand

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Abuse in LessWrong and rationalist communities in Bloomberg News
Ivy Mazzola41

I reject a norm that I ought to be epistemically brave and criticise the piece in any detail.

Fine. It's fine to say nothing and just downvote, sure. Also fine to have said, "this looks like it should go on the EA Forum too". 

It.. did find a better reception on EA Forum... I do think that that there is a difference between what is appropriate to post here and what is appropriate to post on the EA Forum.

Sigh. I suspect you have missed my point or you are missing understanding of what EA forum really is. The EA Forum is where people can ask questions and... (read more)

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8Søren Elverlin
I strongly support your efforts to improve the EA Forum, and I can see your point that using upvotes as a proxy for appropriateness fails when there is a deliberate effort to push the forum in a better direction.
Abuse in LessWrong and rationalist communities in Bloomberg News
Ivy Mazzola*118

As an EA, please don't try and pin this on us. The claims are more relevant to the rationality community than the EA community. On the other hand, if you think the piece is irrelevant or poorly written and doesn't belong anywhere, then be epistemically brave and say that. You are totally allowed to think and express that, but don't try and push it off on the EA Forum. If this piece doesn't belong here, it doesn't belong there.

(fwiw as things stand it's already crossposted there!)

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2Kenny
Please don't pin the actions of others on me!
6Søren Elverlin
It was crossposted after I commented, and did find a better reception on EA Forum. I did not mean my comment to imply that the community here does not need to be less wrong. However, I do think that that there is a difference between what is appropriate to post here and what is appropriate to post on the EA Forum. I reject a norm that I ought to be epistemically brave and criticise the piece in any detail. It is totally appropriate to just downvote bad posts and move on. Writing a helpful meta-comment to the poster is a non-obligatory prosocial action.
Enemies vs Malefactors
Ivy Mazzola2-1

I don't think it does invoke a political frame if you use it right but perhaps I have too much confidence in how I've used the term

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I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month
Ivy Mazzola34

Because it is inappropriate to intentionally be doing things that bring you sexual arousal at work: 

  • To be in a sexually aroused state is very distracting, and she intentionally chose to boost that state at lease somewhat. Not good for workplace productivity
  • It is also a bit threatening given he can statistically assume she has sexual interest toward men and is sitting right behind him in an aroused state which she in some sense intentionally chose to be in. Whether or not she would plausibly do anything sexual, it's totally normal that it would raise t
... (read more)
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I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month
Ivy Mazzola40

How do you think it would compare to being on a constant screensharing call with a friend/remote assistant, so they can always check your screen? Say you know for a fact that your screen is up at all times on their extra monitor? Been considering doing this. 

(I don't know how screensharing works for ultra-wide displays like yours though, and which I also want, to whatever possibly-crappy extra monitor a friend might have. Fingers crossed it would display the whole thing, rather than cropping it. I suppose you could always buy a big screen for the remote assistant though)

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1Portia
With all these things, I think perfect is the enemy of good. You want the surveillance as a support, as a reminder of your own values by seeing yourself mirrored in the eyes of another person, and reminding yourself who you want them to see. You do not want to set up an inescapable system. Else, you are making your mind think that you do not want to work, that you are trapped, and that if only you can find a trick out, you can read crap. That is not a good subconscious message. E.g. I would see worrying implications from OP setting up such comprehensive surveillance over such long time periods, and then noticing his behaviour drastically changed when surveillance failed. That sounds like he was not training intrinsic behaviour, but establishing that the motivation for his work is extrinsic, only. I also doubt if 16 h workdays in the long run are productive or healthy.
2Portia
I've found simply having a video call where they see me at my desk already helps to keep me accountable, and the researcher I do this with has also said it helps her a lot. Is also strangely helpful for anxiety-inducing tasks, as you feel less alone. And like I said above, we combine it with telling each other what we intend to do today, why we are doing that and not something else, and how we will start, which is inherently helpful. Personally, someone actually seeing my screen would stress me out and give me writer's block and make me feel insecure when calculating, I think. Even if you do want to share screen, I do not think you would need to share the whole huge screen, depending on what you are working on. If there is a core program you should be using a lot, and in which you should be making visible progress, sharing that might suffice to make it transparent that you are stalling. Or just a particular monitor? When I work with multiple virtual monitors, I often have one that is basically an overview, where I have e.g. my todo app, in which I track what I am working on, and notes on how to break it down into substeps, so seeing that would give a birdseye view of whether I have gotten further, and let them see what I should be working on and whether I have officially task switched when I said I was not going to. And one monitor that essentially has the result on it, e.g. a particular writing project, with other monitors for materials and background search. If you shared the background search monitor, that is plausibly the only one where you are likely to get sucked into online crap.
LessWrong readers are invited to apply to the Lurkshop
Ivy Mazzola51

Sure. Maybe it is cuz I am more in EA than LW that this is all normal to me. There are frequent retreats and workshops for different career niches and groups including student groups. Plus there are the EAG(x) conferences that, as tidy weekend events people fly in and get lodging reimbursed for, I'd say are comparable to this, and they happen at a scale 10-50x this one which has probably shaped my perception that this one is well within bounds of normal.

Examples: I am checking this on mobile so sorry for formatting and not precise examples. But you can use... (read more)

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LessWrong readers are invited to apply to the Lurkshop
Ivy Mazzola51

I just want to say that this didn't raise alarm bells as expensive or weird for me. It is last minute. Arranging things around the holidays sucks. Basically they can either rush to get it done or wait til mid-January at earliest. And, once organizers already know they want to do it, doing it earlier means value of information can be usable sooner too (eg, they can repeat it sooner or put people in contact with opportunities that crop up in January), it most likely makes it worth a good portion of dough to get it done ASAP.

Also, the referrals are basically ... (read more)

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2Dagon
I don't know what a good baseline is for expenses-paid workshops is - this is the first I'd seen.  All workshops, and even last-minute workshops is the wrong comparison class - those are all attendee-paid (for travel and expenses, at least). It really is unusual in my experience to see announcements of expense-paid attendance for this kind of events.  If I'm wrong and they're actually super-common, please link a few examples and I'll update accordingly.  Also, I look forward to posts here after the event, and I will update strongly on those.
LessWrong readers are invited to apply to the Lurkshop
Ivy Mazzola21

Any chance you will record this? I think the section on getting stuff done would be especially helpful. Makes it semi-easily replicable by people in other places too, like local EA or LW groups.

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What's the Least Impressive Thing GPT-4 Won't be Able to Do
Ivy Mazzola20

Wait actually, this is interesting. Because I bet GPT-4 could probably convince many (most?) people to brush their own teeth.

Even with actuators, you need a compliant human subject, eg, someone who has been convinced to have their teeth brushed by a robot. So "convincingness" is always a determing factor in the result. Convincing the person to do it themselves is then, basically the same thing. Yano, like AI convincing its way out of the box.

Except in this case, unlike the box hypothetical, people universally already want their teeth to be brushed (they ju... (read more)

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1tailcalled
I was thinking with a willing human that just stands still.