I'm not a programmer, so I have very little idea of how much it costs to, for example, write the code for a website or app. Suppose I wanted to hire someone to design a very simple, secure, and easy to use app - how much should I expect to...
Are there any rationalist judges, or anyone studying with the intention to become a judge? It seems like an area where rationalist thinking could have a broader impact. For example, judges often have some discretion when deciding prison sentences and other punishments. They also have the ability to give detailed...
I could imagine this turning into a flexible system of alliances similar to the conference system in NCAA college football and other sports (see here for a nice illustrated history of the many changes over time). Just as conferences and schools negotiate membership based on the changing quality of their sports programs, ability to generate revenue, and so on, states could form coalitions that could be renegotiated based on changing populations or voter preferences.
Thinking from that perspective, one potential Schelling point could be a "Northwest" coalition of WA/OR/ID/MT/WY/ND/SD/NE. This is quite well-balanced, as these states combined to give 21 EV to each candidate. And although the state populations are higher in WA/OR... (read more)
I was thinking more that the acidic environment of the stomach could break down the aggregates to the protein monomers. This step wouldn't be reliant on proteases, although proteases might then be able to further break down the monomers. But I haven't looked into whether this has been studied.
I'm not convinced that eating prion-contaminated tissue is a major factor in transmitting prion diseases. Prions are still proteins, which are broken down to amino acids very readily by the digestive system. Even if prions are more stable than most proteins because they have formed these crystalline-like oligomers, such large molecules would have little chance of being absorbed intact into the bloodstream. Instead, I would imagine they would pass through the digestive system and be excreted in feces.
The Wikipedia article on kuru proposes an alternate mechanism which seems more plausible to me:
... (read more)the strong possibility exists that it was passed on to women and children more easily because they took on the task
Should we humans broadcast more explicitly to future AGIs that we greatly prefer the future where we engage in mutually beneficial trade with them to the future where we are destroyed?
(I am making an assumption here that most, if not all, people would agree with this preference. It seems fairly overdetermined to me. But if I'm missing something where this could somehow lead to unintended consequences, please feel free to point that out.)
Sorry, I thought that would be more commonly understood. As Carl said, it stands for Contract Research Organization. Hiring one is a way to get additional resources to perform specific tasks without having them be part of your organization, understand your corporate strategy, or even know what project you're working on. For example, a pharma company can hire a CRO to synthesize a specific set of potential drug compounds, without telling them what the biological target is or what disease they are trying to treat. Or think of the scenario where a rogue AGI hires someone to make a DNA sequence which turns out to code for a pathogen that kills all humans. This would likely be done at a CRO.
CRO's are often thought of as being fairly competent at executing the specific task required of them, but less competent at thinking strategically, understanding the big picture, etc. So they are generally only hired for very well-defined trades, as you mentioned above.
Maybe it's better to model the army of ants as a CRO you would hire instead of an employee? And by extension, I would much prefer to be part of an AGI's CRO than be extinct.
I often use the heuristic that if two sources with opposing Narratives both claim that a certain fact is true, it is strong evidence that the fact is indeed true. Are there cases where this heuristic fails? E.g. where both sides claim a fact is true (likely with different motives), but it is actually false?
If you have hierarchy in a company, regardless of whether people are "middle managers" per se, there's a tendency for people to come to care about advancing in the hierarchy. It's a natural thing to want to do.
I would take this a step further and say that once maze levels are high enough, it essentially becomes a requirement to care (or at least pretend to care) about advancing in the hierarchy. Instead of advancement being something that some employees might want and others might not want, it becomes almost an axiom within the organization that everyone must strive for advancement at all times. But although advancement can be a natural thing to... (read more)
Another potential assumption/limitation of the EMH:
I initially proposed this idea to try to explain the market's slow response to the early warning signs of Covid in this comment. Similar dynamics may come into play with respect to the social acceptability of ESG vs anti-ESG investing based on political affiliation, although in this case I don't think there is enough anti-ESG money to affect the prevailing ESG trends much at this point.
Also from nostalgebraist's summary:
Meanwhile, the change which the essay does argue for – towards more legibility – feels only tangentially relevant to the problem. Yes, designs that are easier to understand are often easier to customize.
For voting systems, I think the key insight is instead: Designs that are easier to understand are easier to trust.
I'm not a programmer, so I have very little idea of how much it costs to, for example, write the code for a website or app. Suppose I wanted to hire someone to design a very simple, secure, and easy to use app - how much should I expect to pay in terms of time and money? To work with a concrete and timely example, suppose I wanted an app that would do the following:
Are there any rationalist judges, or anyone studying with the intention to become a judge? It seems like an area where rationalist thinking could have a broader impact. For example, judges often have some discretion when deciding prison sentences and other punishments. They also have the ability to give detailed explanations of their judgements. Could a judge, through wise application of rationalist principles, influence the judicial system in a positive direction?
Maybe others have noticed this as well, but Scott Alexander is now cautiously optimistic about the NYT situation, and has put some recent articles back up on the website.
Donated $100. Thanks for everything you do!