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All of philh's Comments + Replies

I'm inclined to agree, but a thing that gives me pause is something like... if society decides it's okay to yell at cogs when the machine wrongs you, I don't trust society to judge correctly whether or not the machine wronged a person?

Like if there are three worlds

"Civilized people" simply don't yell at gate attendants. Anyone who does is considered gauche, and "civilized people" avoid them.
"Civilized people" are allowed to yell at gate attendants when and only when the airline is implementing a shitty policy. If the airline is implementing a very reasonab

... (read more)

2Dweomite6h

I think we already live in a world where, if you are dealing with a small business, and the owner talks to you directly, it's considered acceptable to yell at them if they wrong you. This does occasionally result in people yelling at small business owners for bad reasons, but I think I like it better than the world where you're not allowed to yell at them at all. The main checks on this are (a) bystanders may judge you if they don't like your reasons, and (b) the business can refuse to do any more business with you. If society decides that it's OK to yell at a company's designated representative when the company wrongs you, I expect those checks to function roughly equally well, though with a bit of degradation for all the normal reasons things degrade whenever you delegate. (The company will probably ask their low-level employees to take more crap than the owners would be willing to take in their place, but similarly, someone who hires mercenaries will probably ask those mercenaries to take more risk than the employer would take, and the mercenaries should be pricing that in.)

philh's Shortform

philh4d60

Are ads externalities? In the sense of, imposed upon people who don't get a say in the matter?

My initial reaction was roughly: "web/TV/magazine ads no, you can just not visit/watch/read. Billboards on the side of the road yes". But you can also just not take that road. Like, if someone built a new road and put up a billboard there, and specifically said "I'm funding the cost of this road with the billboard, take it or leave it", that doesn't feel like an externality. Why is it different if they build a road and then later add a billboard?

But if we go that ... (read more)

2Viliam2d

I wonder how efficient the ads actually are. And I realize that the ad companies have absolutely no incentive to tell the truth. When you watch ads, you pay in two ways. First, by having your time and attention wasted, and possibly being annoyed a lot. This part is a pure loss for you; it doesn't benefit the companies paying for ads in any way. Second (assuming that the ads really work as advertised), by sometimes, as a consequence of watching an ad, buying something you wouldn't have bought otherwise -- most likely, because you don't actually need it. The things you buy as a consequence of having watched the ad... in theory it could be something useful that you didn't know about, so the ad really made you a service by telling you about it... yeah, that's what people working for the advertising agencies will tell you (and you should trust them about as much as you trust people working for tobacco companies when they tell you about the benefits of smoking, or rather vaping these days). But we all know that most ads are not like that. Many of them actually about things you already know about; it's just an ongoing work to keep a specific brand firmly implanted in your mind. Also, on internet, many ads are outright scams. I would say that you are 10x or 100x more likely to see a scam ad, than an ad for something that is really useful, that you didn't know before, that comes at a reasonable price. So, it seems to me that if we analyze the proposal "instead of money, you can pay by watching a few ads", well, either the ads work -- in which case, as a user, you save some money, but then lose a lot of time and attention and emotional energy... and ultimately, as a result of successful manipulation spend money on something you otherwise wouldn't buy, so... perhaps paying for the service would have been cheaper, even from the strictly financial perspective -- or maybe the ads don't work, and this all is just an elaborate ritual to scam companies out of their money (most of

Accountability Sinks

philh10d171

Absolutely. In adversarial setting (XZ backdoor) there's no point in relaxing accountability.

Well, but you don't necessarily know if a setting is adversarial, right? And a process that starts by assuming everyone had good intentions probably isn't the most reliable way to find out.

it's exactly the case when one would expect blameless postmortems to work: The employer and the employee are aligned - neither of them wants the plane to crash and so the assumption of no ill intent should hold.

Not necessarily fully aligned, since e.g. the captain might benefit f... (read more)

5Martin Sustrik10d

Absolutely agree with everything you've said. The problem of balancing accountability and blamelessness is hard. All I can say is, let's look at how it plays out in the real word. Here, I think, few general trends can be observed as to when less rigid process and less accountability is used: 1. In highly complex areas (professors, researchers) 2. When creativity is at a premium (dtto, art?) 3. When unpredictability is high (emergency medicine, SRE, rescue, flight control, military?) 4. When the incentives at the high and low level are aligned (e.g. procurement requires more rigid process, because incentives to prefer friends/family are just too high) Few examples: When working at an assembly line, the environment is deliberately crafted to be predictable, creativity hurts rather than helps. The process is rigid, there's no leeway. At Google, there are both SREs and software engineers. The former are working in a highly unpredictable environment, the latter are not. From my observation, the former have both much less rigid processes and are blamed much less when things go awry. Military is an interesting example which I would one day like to look more deeply into... As far as I understand the modern western system of units having their own agency instead of blindly following orders can be tracked back to Prussia trying to cope with the defeat by Napoleon. The idea is that a unit gets an goal without the instructions of how to accomplish it. The unit can then act creatively. But while that's the theory, it's hard to implement even to this day. It does not work at all for low-trust armies (Russian army), but even where trust is higher, there tend to be hick-ups. (I've also heard that the OKR system in business management may be descended from this framework, but again, more investigation would be needed.)

Accountability Sinks

philh11d151

Blameless postmortems are a tenet of SRE culture. For a postmortem to be truly blameless, it must focus on identifying the contributing causes of the incident without indicting any individual or team for bad or inappropriate behavior. A blamelessly written postmortem assumes that everyone involved in an incident had good intentions and did the right thing with the information they had. If a culture of finger pointing and shaming individuals or teams for doing the "wrong" thing prevails, people will not bring issues to light for fear of punishment.

This seem... (read more)

Martin Sustrik11d110

Absolutely. In adversarial setting (XZ backdoor) there's no point in relaxing accountability.

The Air Maroc case is interesting though because it's exactly the case when one would expect blameless postmortems to work: The employer and the employee are aligned - neither of them wants the plane to crash and so the assumption of no ill intent should hold.

Reading the article from the point of view of a former SRE... it stinks.

There's something going on there that wasn't investigated. The accident in question is probably just one instance of it, but how did the ... (read more)

Boots theory and Sybil Ramkin

philh2mo42

Huh, thanks for the correction.

Smaller correction - I think you've had her buy an extra pair of boots. At $260 she's already bought one pair, so we apply $x \mapsto 1.07 x - 20$ thirteen times, then multiply by 1.07 again for the final year's interest, and she ends with no boots, so that's $239.41. (Or start with $280 and apply $x \mapsto 1.07 (x - 20)$ fourteen times.)

Not sure why my own result is wrong. Part of it is that I forgot to subtract the money actually spent on boots - I did "the $20 she spends after the first year gets one year's interest, so that's ... (read more)

2Said Achmiz2mo

Ah, true. So, $239.41, at the end. (Of course, this all assumes that the cheap boots don’t get more expensive over the course of 14 years. Siderea does say that she spends $20 each year on boots, but that’s hard to take seriously over a decade-plus period…)

Boots theory and Sybil Ramkin

philh2mo20

Well, I should like to see some examples. So far, our tally of actual examples of this alleged phenomenon seems to still be zero. All the examples proffered thus far… aren’t.

From https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1477942.html:

"These boots," I said gesturing at what I was trying on, on my feet, "cost $200. Given that I typically buy a pair for $20 every year, that means these boots have to last 10 years to recoup the initial investment."

That was on January 17, 2005. They died earlier this month – that is in the first week of December, 2018. So: almost but not

... (read more)

4Said Achmiz2mo

I think that your calculation is a bit off. After a year, she’ll have $258.20 (i.e., ($260 * 1.07) − $20). After two years, $256.27 (i.e., ($258.20 * 1.07) − $20). And so on. After 14 years, she’ll have $219.41. Still better than buying the expensive boots—in purely financial terms. (Inflation-adjustment is another important point, of course. That $200 in 2005 would be $265 in 2018 dollars.) In short, yes, this is indeed a very poor example—ironic, as it’s a real-life version of the original example! This is precisely what made renting come out far ahead, in my aforementioned calculation. (And this is without even considering the time value of money.)

Boots theory and Sybil Ramkin

philh2mo20

Sam Vimes is a copper, and sees poverty lead to precarity, and precarity lead to Bad Things Happening In Bad Neighborhoods.

Hm, does he? It's certainly a reasonable guess, but offhand I don't remember it coming up in the books, and the Thieves and Assassins guilds will change the dynamic compared to what we'd expect on Earth.

HPMOR Anniversary Parties: Coordination, Resources, and Discussion

philh2mo30

We got spam and had to reset the link. To get the new link, append the suffix "BbILI8HzX3zgJF8i" to the prefix "https://chat.whatsapp.com/IUIZc3". Hopefully spambots can't yet do that automatically.

Microplastics: Much Less Than You Wanted To Know

philh2mo30

This reddit thread has the claim:

Something related that you CAN do, and that is more likely to make a difference, is not ever to heat up plastic in a microwave, wash it in a dishwasher, or cook with plastic utensils. Basically, the softening agents in a lot of plastics aren't chemically bonded to the rest of the polymers, and heating the plastic makes those chemicals ready to leach into whatever food contacts them. That's a huge class of chemicals, none of which are LD-50-level dangerous, but many of which have been associated with hormonal changes, microb

philh2mo20

One question I have that might be relatively tractable: if I'm using plastic containers for leftovers, how much difference is there between

Store in the container, put on plate to microwave and eat.
Store and microwave in the container, put on plate to eat.
Who needs a plate anyway? Just eat from the container.

The bit about plastic chopping boards kind of hints that (3) might give a lot more microplastics than (2)? But you're probably less violent to the container than the chopping board.

3philh2mo

This reddit thread has the claim: Notably this is about plasticizers, a different thing than microplastics.

Microplastics: Much Less Than You Wanted To Know

philh2mo50

We suggest these low-hanging actions one can take to reduce their quantity exposure:

a. Stop using plastic bottles and plastic food storage containers,

b. Stop using plastic cutting boards,

For people who didn't read the rough notes dumps: it seems like (b) is a way bigger effect size than (a).

1kaleb2mo

Yes; I ordered a) before b) as I thought a) is an easier action, but that is subjective.

On DeepSeek’s r1

philh3mo20

There are 3 people. Each person announces an integer. The smallest unique integer wins: e.g. if your opponents both pick 1, you win with any number. If all 3 pick the same number, the winner is picked randomly

Question: what’s the Nash equilibrium?

(I assume this is meant to be natural numbers or positive ints? Otherwise I don't think there is a nash equilibrium.)

(The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven's big fundraiser

philh4mo20

So it is. Other than that, the remaining details I needed were:

2740 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley
94705
habryka@lightconeinfrastructure.com
Oliver Habryka

(The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven's big fundraiser

philh4mo*120

Assuming all went well, I just donated £5,000 through the Anglo-American charity, which should become about (£5000 * 1.25 * 96% = £6000 ≈ $7300) to lightcone.

I had further questions to their how to give page, so:

You can return the forms by email, no need to post them. (I filled them in with Firefox's native "draw/write on this pdf" feature, handwriting my signature with a mouse.)
If donating by bank transfer, you send the money to "anglo-american charity limited", not "anglo-american charitable foundation".
For lightcone's contact details I asked on LW i

... (read more)

2habryka4mo

Thank you! Reasonable prior, but my phone number is already publicly visible at the top of this post, so feel free to share further.

(The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven's big fundraiser

philh4mo20

not sure if that would be legit for gift aid purposes

Based on https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charities-detailed-guidance-notes/chapter-3-gift-aid#chapter-344-digital-giving-and-social-giving-accounts, doing this the naive way (one person collects money and gives it to the charity, everyone shares the tax rebate) is explicitly forbidden. Which makes sense, or everyone with a high income friend would have access to the 40% savings.

Not clear to me whether it would be allowed if the charity is in on it and everyone fills in their own gift aid de... (read more)

4habryka4mo

I reached out to them and they said pooling isn't possible.

(The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven's big fundraiser

philh4mo20

Thanks - I think GWWC would be fewer steps for me, but if that's not looking likely then one of these is plausible.

(I wonder if it would be worth a few of us pooling money to get both "lower fees" and "less need to deal with orgs who don't just let you click some buttons to say where you want the money to go", but not sure if that would be legit for gift aid purposes.)

2philh4mo

4habryka4mo

Yeah, GWWC has told us no for at least a few months (they are still in the middle of spinning out from Effective Ventures, and so fiscal sponsorship things are impacted by that).

The Field of AI Alignment: A Postmortem, and What To Do About It

philh4mo40

That's not really "concrete" feedback though, right? In the outcome game/consensus game dynamic Stephen's talking about, it seems hard to play an outcome game with that kind of feedback.

9TsviBT4mo

I'm not sure what "concrete" is supposed to mean; for the one or two senses I immediately imagine, no, I would say the feedback is indeed concrete. In terms of consensus/outcome, no, I think the feedback is actually concrete. There is a difficulty, which is that there's a much smaller set of people to whom the outcomes are visible. As an analogy/example: feedback in higher math. It's "nonconcrete" in that it's "just verbal arguments" (and translating those into something much more objective, like a computer proof, is a big separate long undertaking). And there's a much smaller set of people who can tell what statements are true in the domain. There might even be a bunch more people who have opinions, and can say vaguely related things that other non-experts can't distinguish from expert statements, and who therefore form an apparent consensus that's wrong + ungrounded. But one shouldn't conclude from those facts that math is less real, or less truthtracking, or less available for communities to learn about directly.

Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel's Shortform

philh4mo72

Beyond being an unfair and uninformed dismissal

Why do you think it's uninformed? John specifically says that he's taking "this work is trash" as background and not trying to convince anyone who disagrees. It seems like because he doesn't try, you assume he doesn't have an argument?

it risks unnecessarily antagonizing people

I kinda think it was necessary. (In that, the thing ~needed to be written and "you should have written this with a lot less antagonism" is not a reasonable ask.)

Some arguments against a land value tax

philh4mo*40

For instance, if a developer owns multiple adjacent parcels and decides to build housing or infrastructure on one of them, the value of the undeveloped parcels will rise due to their proximity to the improvements.

An implementation detail of LVT would be, how do we decide what counts as one parcel and what counts as two? Depending how we answer that, I could easily imagine LVT causing bad incentives. (Which isn't a knock-down, it doesn't feel worse than the kind of practical difficulty any tax has.)

I wonder if it might not be better to just get rid of the i... (read more)

Some arguments against a land value tax

philh4mo52

I've read/listened about LVT many times and I don't remember "auctions are a key aspect of this" ever coming up. E.g. the four posts by Lars Doucet on ACX only mention the word twice, in one paragraph that doesn't make that claim:

Land Price or Land Value is how much it costs to buy a piece of land. Full Market Value, however, is specifically the land price under "fair" and open market conditions. What are "unfair" conditions? I mean, your dad could sell you a valuable property for $1 as an obvious gift, but if he put it on the open market, it would go for

Answer by philhDec 25, 202490

My girlfriend and I probably wouldn't have got together if not for a conversation at Less Wrong Community Weekend.

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo40

Oh, I think that also means that section is slightly wrong. You want to take insurance if

log (W_{y o u} - P) > p log (W_{y o u} - c) + (1 - p) log (W_{y o u})

and the insurance company wants to offer it if

log (W_{t h e m}) < p log (W_{t h e m} + P - c) + (1 - p) log (W_{t h e m} + P) .

So define

V (W) = log (W - P) - (p log (W - c) + (1 - p) log (W))

as you did above. Appendix B suggests that you'd take insurance if $V (W_{y o u}) > 0$ and they'd offer it if $V (W_{t h e m}) < 0$ . But in fact they'd offer it if $V (W_{t h e m} + P) < 0$ .

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo60

Appendix B: How insurance companies make money

Here's a puzzle about this that took me a while.

When you know the terms of the bet (what probability of winning, and what payoff is offered), the Kelly criterion spits out a fraction of your bankroll to wager. That doesn't support the result "a poor person should want to take one side, while a rich person should want to take the other".

So what's going on here?

Not a correct answer: "you don't get to choose how much to wager. The payoffs on each side are fixed, you either pay in or you don't." True but doesn't... (read more)

4philh4mo

Oh, I think that also means that section is slightly wrong. You want to take insurance if log(Wyou−P)>plog(Wyou−c)+(1−p)log(Wyou) and the insurance company wants to offer it if log(Wthem)<plog(Wthem+P−c)+(1−p)log(Wthem+P). So define V(W)=log(W−P)−(plog(W−c)+(1−p)log(W)) as you did above. Appendix B suggests that you'd take insurance if V(Wyou)>0 and they'd offer it if V(Wthem)<0. But in fact they'd offer it if V(Wthem+P)<0.

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo30

I still disagree with that.

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo23

I've written about this here. Bottom line is, if you actually value money linearly (you don't) you should not bet according to the Kelly criterion.

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo30

I think we're disagreeing about terminology here, not anything substantive, so I mostly feel like shrug. But that feels to me like you're noticing the framework is deficient, stepping outside it, figuring out what's going on, making some adjustment, and then stepping back in.

I don't think you can explain why you made that adjustment from inside the framework. Like, how do you explain "multiple correlated bets are similar to one bigger bet" in a framework where

Bets are offered one at a time and resolved instantly
The bets you get offered don't depend on previous history

1Martin Randall4mo

It feels to me like a natural modeling choice. To apply simple physics to child-on-swing, model the child as a point mass. To apply Kelly to many highly correlated bets, model them as one large bet. To apply Kelly to many weakly correlated bets, model them as many independent bets. And we also need to make some modeling choice to convert insurance policies to a series of independent bets. Maybe you're saying that we need a reason to justify those choices, because bad model choices can give bad results. So we need to "go outside the Kelly framework" to get that justification. If so, I agree.

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo30

This is a synonym for "if money compounds and you want more of it at lower risk".

No it's not. In the real world, money compounds and I want more of it at lower risk. Also, in the real world, "utility = log($)" is false: I do not have a utility function, and if I did it would not be purely a function of money.

1kqr4mo

I agree -- sorry about the sloppy wording. What I tried to say wad that "if you act like someone who maximises compounding money you also act like someone with utility that is log-money."

(The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven's big fundraiser

philh4mo40

Like I don’t expect to miss stuff i really wanted to see on LW, reading the titles of most posts isn’t hard

It's hard for me! I had to give up on trying.

The problem is that if I read the titles of most posts, I end up wanting to read the contents of a significant minority of posts, too many for me to actually read.

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo63

Ah, my "what do you mean" may have been unclear. I think you took it as, like, "what is the thing that Kelly instructs?" But what I meant is "why do you mean when you say that Kelly instructs this?" Like, what is this "Kelly" and why do we care what it says?

That said, I do agree this is a broadly reasonable thing to be doing. I just wouldn't use the word "Kelly", I'd talk about "maximizing expected log money".

But it's not what you're doing in the post. In the post, you say "this is how to mathematically determine if you should buy insurance". But the formula you give assumes bets come one at a time, even though that doesn't describe insurance.

3kqr4mo

Ah, sure. Dear child has many names. Another common name for it is "the E log X strategy" but that tends to not be as recogniseable to people. Ah, I see your point. That is true. I'd argue this isolated E log X approach is still better than vibes, but I'll think about ways to rephrase to not make such a strong claim.

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo50

The probability should be given as 0.03 -- that might reduce your confusion!

Aha! Yes, that explains a lot.

I'm now curious if there's any meaning to the result I got. Like, "how much should I pay to insure against an event that happens with 300% probability" is a wrong question. But if we take the Kelly formula and plug in 300% for the probability we get some answer, and I'm wondering if that answer has any meaning.

I disagree. Kelly instructs us to choose the course of action that maximises log-wealth in period t+1 assuming a particular joint distribution o

... (read more)

1kqr4mo

Kelly allocations only require taking actions that maximise the expectation of the joint distribution of log-wealth. It doesn't matter how many bets are used to construct that joint distribution, nor when during the period they were entered. If you don't know at the start of the period which bets you will enter during the period, you have to make a forecast, as with anything unknown about the future. But this is not a problem within the Kelly optimisation, which assumes the joint distribution of outcomes already exists. This is also how correlated risk is worked into a Kelly-based decision. Simultaneous (correlated or independent) bets are only a problem in so far as we fail to construct a joint distribution of outcomes for those simultaneous bets. Which, yeah, sure, dimensionality makes itself known, but there's no fundamental problem there that isn't solved the same way as in the unidimensional case. Edit: In more laymanny terms, Kelly requires that, for each potential combination of simultaneous bets you are going to enter during the period, you estimate the probability distribution of wealth outcomes (and this probability distribution should account for any correlations) after the period has passed. Given that, Kelly tells you to choose the set of bets (and sizes in each) that maximise the expected log of wealth outcomes. Kelly is a function of actions and their associated probability distributions of outcomes. The actions can be complex compound actions such as entering simultaneous bets -- Kelly does not care, as long as it gets its outcome probability distribution for each action.

When Is Insurance Worth It?

philh4mo*2620

Whether or not to get insurance should have nothing to do with what makes one sleep – again, it is a mathematical decision with a correct answer.

I'm not sure how far in your cheek your tongue was, but I claim this is obviously wrong and I can elaborate if you weren't kidding.

I'm confused by the calculator. I enter wealth 10,000; premium 5,000; probability 3; cost 2,500; and deductible 0. I think that means: I should pay $5000 to get insurance. 97% of the time, it doesn't pay out and I'm down $5000. 3% of the time, a bad thing happens, and instead of paying... (read more)

2Martin Randall4mo

The example of flood vs fire insurance is explainable with the Kelly framework. Offering flood insurance is more like making one large bet. Offering fire insurance is more like offering many small bets. Under Kelly the insurance company needs a larger edge to justify a larger bet. Standard disclaimer about simplified models here.

gwillen4mo2512

Whether or not to get insurance should have nothing to do with what makes one sleep – again, it is a mathematical decision with a correct answer.

I'm not sure how far in your cheek your tongue was, but I claim this is obviously wrong and I can elaborate if you weren't kidding.

I agree with you, and I think the introduction unfortunately does major damage to what is otherwise a very interesting and valuable article about the mathematics of insurance. I can't recommend this article to anybody, because the introduction comes right out and says: "The thi... (read more)

4kqr4mo

The probability should be given as 0.03 -- that might reduce your confusion! If I understand your point correctly, I disagree. Kelly instructs us to choose the course of action that maximises log-wealth in period t+1 assuming a particular joint distribution of outcomes. This course of action can by all means be a complicated portfolio of simultaneous bets. Of course, the insurance calculator does not offer you the interface to enter a periodful of simultaneous bets! That takes a dedicated tool. The calculator can only tell you the ROI of insurance; it does not compare this ROI to alternative, more complex portfolios which may well outperform the insurance alone. This is where reinsurance and other non-traditional instruments of risk trading enter the picture. Your insurance company can offer flood insurance because they insure their portfolio with reinsurers, or hedge with catastrophy bonds, etc. The net effect of the current practices of the industry is that fire insurance becomes slightly more expensive to pay for flood insurance. I don't think I disagree strongly with much of what you say in that article, although I admit I haven't read it that thoroughly. It seems like you're making three points: * Kelly is not dependent on log utility -- we agree. * Simultaneous, independent bets lower the risk and applying the Kelly criterion properly to that situation results in greater allocations than the common, naive application -- we agree. * If one donates one's winnings then one's bets no longer compound and the expected profit is a better guide then expected log wealth -- we agree.

Lack of Social Grace Is an Epistemic Virtue

philh5mo42

I think the thesis is not "honesty reduces predictability" but "certain formalities, which preclude honesty, increase predictability".

Lack of Social Grace Is an Epistemic Virtue

philh5mo162Review for 2023 Review

I kinda like this post, and I think it's pointing at something worth keeping in mind. But I don't think the thesis is very clear or very well argued, and I currently have it at -1 in the 2023 review.

Some concrete things.

There are lots of forms of social grace, and it's not clear which ones are included. Surely "getting on the train without waiting for others to disembark first" isn't an epistemic virtue. I'd normally think of "distinguishing between map and territory" as an epistemic virtue but not particularly a social grace, but the last two paragraphs m

... (read more)

The 2023 LessWrong Review: The Basic Ask

philh5mo20

Ooh, I didn't see the read filter. (I think I'd have been more likely to if that were separated from the tabs. Maybe like, [Read] | [AI 200] [World Modeling 83] [Rationality 78] ....) With that off it's up to 392 nominated, though still neither of the ones mentioned. Quick review is now down to 193, my current guess is that's "posts that got through to this phase that haven't been reviewed yet"?

Screenshot with the filter off:

and some that only have one positive review:

The 2023 LessWrong Review: The Basic Ask

philh5mo40

Btw, I'm kinda confused by the current review page. A tooltip on advanced voting says

54 have received at least one Nomination Vote
Posts need at least 2 Nomination Votes to proceed to the Review Phase

And indeed there are 54 posts listed and they all have at least one positive vote. But I'm pretty sure this and this both had at least one (probably exactly one) positive vote at the end of the nomination phase and they aren't listed.

Guess: this is actually listing posts which had at least two positive votes at the end of the nomination phase; the posts with on... (read more)

2Raemon5mo

Can you post a screenshot? One confounded: by default it’s filtering to posts you’ve read. Toggle off the read filter to see the entire amount.

[Link] A community alert about Ziz

philh5mo*3026Review for 2023 Review

I think it's good that this post was written, shared to LessWrong, and got a bunch of karma. And (though I haven't fully re-read it) it seems like the author was careful to distinguish observation from inference and to include details in defense of Ziz when relevant. I appreciate that.

I don't think it's a good fit for the 2023 review. Unless Ziz gets back in the news, there's not much reason for someone in 2025 or later to be reading this.

If I was going to recommend it, I think the reason would be some combination of

This is a good example of investigative

... (read more)

3mikbp3mo

Agree. I consider myself a rationalist, but if I were going to recommend this post to anyone, it would be to show how dangerous fanaticism/sectarianism is --and this is not only about Ziz's and Co. actions, also many comments here are kind of scary. It shows how single-thinking and going to the extreme about one's convictions, even if one tries very hard to be correct, often goes extremely badly. We humans are dumb, so just don't take anything too literally or too much to its extreme, take yourself and your thoughts with a bit of salt, be nuanced (at least nuancedly nuanced). No wonder some people hate or are afraid of rationalist when they see stuff like this... and when they see that this is resurfaced after several years with no apparent reason.

strangeloop0103mo242

“Unless Ziz gets back in the news, there's not much reason for someone in 2025 or later to be reading this.” With the recent death of the zizian Ophelia (after shooting a border patrol agent) this post is, unfortunately, relevant again.

Ruining an expected-log-money maximizer

philh5mo40Review for 2023 Review

Self review: I really like this post. Combined with the previous one (from 2022), it feels to me like "lots of people are confused about Kelly betting and linear/log utility of money, and this deconfuses the issue using arguments I hadn't seen before (and still haven't seen elsewhere)". It feels like small-but-real intellectual progress. It still feels right to me, and I still point people at this when I want to explain how I think about Kelly.

That's my inside view. I don't know how to square that with the relative lack of attention the post got, and it fe... (read more)

(The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven's big fundraiser

philh5mo50

(At least in the UK, numbers starting 077009 are never assigned. So I've memorized a fake phone number that looks real, that I sometimes give out with no risk of accidentally giving a real phone number.)

(The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven's big fundraiser

philh5mo110

Okay. Make it £5k from me (currently ~$6350), that seems like it'll make it more likely to happen.

(The) Lightcone is nothing without its people: LW + Lighthaven's big fundraiser

philh5mo90

If you can get it set up before March, I'll donate at least £2000.

(Though, um. I should say that at least one time I've been told "the way to donate with gift said is to set up an account with X, tell them to send the money to Y, and Y will pass it on to us", and the first step in the chain there had very high transaction fees and I think might have involved sending an email... historical precedent suggests that if that's the process for me to donate to lightcone, it might not happen.)

Do you know what rough volume you'd need to make it worthwhile?

6habryka5mo

My favorite fiscal sponsorship would be through GWWC: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/inclusion-criteria Their inclusion criteria suggests that they want to see at least $50k of expected donations in the next year. My guess is if we have $10k-$20k expected this month, then that is probably enough, but I am not sure (and it might also not work out for other reasons).

Economics101 predicted the failure of special card payments for refugees, 3 months later whole of Germany wants to adopt it

philh5mo10

I don't know anything about the card. I haven't re-read the post, but I think the point I was making was "you haven't successfully argued that this is good cost-benefit", not "I claim that this is bad cost-benefit". Another possibility is that I was just pointing out that the specific quoted paragraph had an implied bad argument, but I didn't think it said much about the post overall.

Book review: the Iliad

philh5mo40

My guess: [signalling] is why some people read the Iliad, but it's not the main thing that makes it a classic.

Incidentally, there was one reddit comment that pushed me slightly in the direction of "yep, it's just signalling".

This was obviously not the intended point of that comment. But (ignoring how they misunderstood my own writing), the user

Quotes multiple high status people talking about the Iliad;
Tantalizingly hints that they are widely-read enough to be able to talk in detail about the Iliad and the old testament, and compare translations;
Says approx

... (read more)

philh's Shortform

philh6mo20

Complex Systems (31 Oct 2024): From molecule to medicine, with Ross Rheingans-Yoo

When you first do human studies with a new drug, there's something like a 2/3 chance it'll make it to the second round of studies. Then something like half of those make it to the next round; and there's a point where you talk to the FDA and say "we're planning to do this study" and they say "cool, if you do that and get these results you'll probably be approved" and then in that case there's like an 85% chance you'll be approved; and I guess at least one other filter I'm for... (read more)

A basic systems architecture for AI agents that do autonomous research

philh7mo20

Though this particular story for weight exfiltration also seems pretty easy to prevent with standard computer security: there’s no reason for the inference servers to have the permission to create outgoing network connections.

But it might be convenient to have that setting configured through some file stored in Github, which the execution server has access to.

[Completed] The 2024 Petrov Day Scenario

philh7mo20

Yeah, if that was the only consideration I think I would have created the market myself.

[Completed] The 2024 Petrov Day Scenario

philh7mo198

Launching nukes is one thing, but downvoting posts that don't deserve it? I'm not sure I want to retaliate that strongly.

2Daphne_W7mo

Just check their profile for posts that do deserve it that you were previously unaware of. You can even throw a few upvotes at their well-written comments. It's not brigading, it's just a little systemic bias in your duties as a user with upvote-downvote authority.

TsviBT7mo106

4aphyer7mo

Do we fight for the right To a night at the opera now? Have you asked of yourselves What's the price you might pay? Is it simply a game For rich young boys to play?

[Completed] The 2024 Petrov Day Scenario

philh7mo2712

I looked for a manifold market on whether anyone gets nuked, and considered making one when I didn't find it. But:

If the implied probability is high, generals might be more likely to push the button. So someone who wants someone to get nuked can buy YES.
If the implied probability is low, generals can get mana by buying YES and pushing the button. I... don't think any of the generals will be very motivated by that? But not great.

So I decided not to.

1Martin Randall7mo

Mana is no longer exchangeable for directed charitable donations, so I would not expect generals to make their decisions based on the potential to win mana. Mana seems less valuable than karma, for example. This concern came up in 2022 and my writeup that year suggested it was unlikely to be a factor.

Martin Randall7mo100

Sometime else created it.

I would have shit in that alley, too

philh8mo31

No they’re not interchangeable. They are all designed with each other in mind, along the spectrum, to maximize profits under constraints, and the reality of rivalrousness is one reason to not simply try to run at 100% capacity every instant.

I can't tell what this paragraph is responding to. What are "they"?

You explained they popped up from the ground. Those are just about the most excludable toilets in existence!

Okay I do feel a bit silly for missing this... but I also still maintain that "allows everyone or no one to use" is a stretch when it comes... (read more)

4flowersformachines4mo

Happy to be disagreed with, but I'm getting the sense that there are two non-overlapping rivalrous qualities to gov-funded publicly-accessible restrooms: capacity and upkeep. It seems obvious to me that restrooms are rivalrous in terms of capacity, though I agree with philh that it's weakly rivalrous. Either way, capacity feels less important re: "what's the cost-benefit on the government building and funding public restrooms?". Even a single, clean stall available in an area would provide a huge QoL improvement for visitors to that area. Sure you can't satisfy all demand with a single self-cleaning stall, but you can satisfy (I predict) 30-50% of demand! That seems like a huge win. Upkeep seems like the actual issue here, which I believe is mostly independent of capacity. People aren't generally getting feces on the walls because there's a long wait time to get into the bathroom. They're doing it for other, predetermined reasons that would be true whether there were one or one hundred stalls in a restroom. My impression is that public restrooms largely don't exist because of the assumption that those restrooms will have unusually high upkeep costs. Restrooms that you pay a quarter to use don't make any meaningful money, the real price you're paying is "proof you can engage literately with the world", which (I predict) would significantly reduce upkeep cost expectations. It seems like focusing on solving upkeep would mitigate the downsides of rivalrousness that make government-funded bathrooms unappealing to the government, and capacity is less important, if getting more gov-funded restrooms built and used is the goal.

I would have shit in that alley, too

philh8mo42

Idk, I think my reaction here is that you're defining terms far more broadly than is actually going to be helpful in practice. Like, excludability and rivalry are spectrums in multiple dimensions, and if we're going to treat them as binaries then sure, we could say anything with a hint of them counts in the "yes" bin, but... I think for most purposes,

"occasionally, someone else arrives at the parking lot at the same time as me, and then I have to spend a minute or so waiting for the pay-and-display meter"

is closer to

"other people using the parking lot does

... (read more)

8gwern8mo

No they're not interchangeable. They are all designed with each other in mind, along the spectrum, to maximize profits under constraints, and the reality of rivalrousness is one reason to not simply try to run at 100% capacity every instant. "Didn't often have that problem" sounds a lot like saying "had that problem sometimes". Like shit-caked walls, how often do you need to have that problem to illustrate why the bathrooms are so overbuilt due to the extreme rivalrousness of their use? As I just said, yes. Bathroom stalls/toilets/urinals are extremely rivalrous and so you have to overbuild massively instead of, say, building exactly 1 unisex toilet for a whole theater. (Which would often be adequate raw capacity, on average; but the statistician drowned crossing the river which was 2 feet deep on average...) Then the rivalry is fine, and the worst-case lines are tamed. Of course you did. You explained they popped up from the ground. Those are just about the most excludable toilets in existence! (I was impressed when I visited London and saw those. Although I didn't actually get to use them, unlike the self-cleaning Parisian ones, so I had to more admire them in the abstract idea of them than the reality: "Wow. That'll keep people out, alright. No half-measures there.") They are the Fort Knox of toilets - every example I've given of toilets being excludable by things like locked doors is way less excludable than your example of fortified telescopic toilets stored in the ground and protected by 10 feet and tons of concrete, rebar, and dirt. If you want to take a leak in a telescopic toilet you are excluded from by being down, you'd better bring either a backhoe or a computer hacker. And you maintain they are not excludable...?

philh's Shortform

philh9mo42

Thing I've been wrong about for a long time: I remembered that the rocket equation "is exponential", but I thought it was exponential in dry mass. It's not, it's linear in dry mass and exponential in Δv.

This explains a lot of times where I've been reading SF and was mildly surprised at how cavalier people seemed to be about payload, like allowing astronauts to have personal items.

5Dagon9mo

I mean, they won't say this out loud to the passengers/astronauts, but with a fairly efficient reaction engine, any "extra" mass is usable for thrust in an emergency.