All of toner's Comments + Replies

It can’t get through metal, but this fentanyl-detecting machine can detect fentanyl in packages:

You might want to rethink the definition of "hardest problem" because I wouldn't expect the IMO committee to care particularly much that their problems are hard for machines as well as humans.

For example, if you look at the 2005 IMO, but suppose that problem 6 was geometry, so that the problem 3 was the "hardest", then you're in trouble. Problem 3 has a one-line proof "by sum_of_squares", assuming that someone has written a sum-of-squares tactic in time and that the sum-of-squares certificate is small enough to find within the time limit.

Alternatively, the... (read more)

Data from NSW, Australia. Delta was stable at 150-300 cases/day, so recent spike is likely omicron. 93% of people aged 16 or over are double-vaccinated. https://covidlive.com.au/report/daily-cases/nsw

Re. the NBA study, say I go get my antibody levels tested (which is easy here in Australia), do we know what counts as a high result?

Reusable respirator guide

• In scope: information about half-facepiece reusable respirators. Out of scope: whether you should wear a mask, etc.
• Reasons to prefer a reusable respirator over a disposable one: they're (i) more comfortable and (ii) prosocial, preserving disposable masks for medical personnel.
• You need to buy two components: the mask and filters.
• The mask. The wirecutter recommends 3M's 6500 series. I have the next model up, from the 7500 series. The 7500 comes in three sizes, small (7501), medium (7502) and large (7503). I think the idea o

Thank you very much for producing these. As someone who's rather time poor but trying to become more informed, they are very helpful.

Here is some alternative code for building an HN clone: https://github.com/jcs/lobsters (see https://lobste.rs/about for differences to HN).

It's also one night before full moon (which is at 4:50am on June 15), which should make the sky quite bright.

On a related note, consider what the moon looks like one night before it's full. Would you describe this as "over three-quarters full"? While that's technically correct, I wouldn't. I'd maybe describe a June 11-12 moon as "over three-quarters full" but I'd say a June 13-14 moon is "almost full". So we should up the probability that we're in a story/simulation/mirror.

Observation: If the purpose of this exercise is to run an AI box experiment, with EY as gatekeeper and the internet hivemind as the AI, then the ability to speak in parseltongue is problematic: It appears to make the game easier for the AI, thereby preventing the results from being generalized to a standard AI box experiment.

So why did Eliezer include the parseltongue constraint?

Maybe parseltongue is meant to introduce the concept of provability in a way that everyone can understand. To speak in parseltongue in real life, you just speak in logic statements... (read more)

Here's a flawed solution, but maybe someone can fix it.

Harry performs partial transfiguration on his brain, to transform it into a state where he thinks that he's booby-trapped the universe (for example, by transfiguring some strangelets along with a confinement field that will expire before the strangelets do). Then he just explains honestly to Voldemort why the universe will end if he dies.

The mirror and efficient simulation

Until the mirror appeared, the HPMOR universe could be simulated efficiently, at least as far as we knew. Time travel is limited to a six-hour cache; you can't transfigure arbitrary things, and Harry's attempts to use time travel to solve computational problems failed. This is likely to be deliberate.

So, how does the mirror exist? According to the inscription on the back, the mirror shows the actor's coherent extrapolated volition (CEV). Is this possible to compute efficiently from an actor's source code? I would guess no... (read more)

This will be the last meetup at my apartment.

I sadly can't make this one.

We plan to discuss metaethics. It might be useful to narrow this down.

Yes. My house, but I won't be there until late.

And upvote Richard's comment too, to thank him for hosting!

I can't make it to this one.

The workshop was invigorating because nearly everyone seemed confused.

John Preskill

Paleo + intermittent fasting + read Kevin's posts on supplements.

Let me expand on my comment from the Hacker News thread.

I went to the July workshop. I think it was probably the most useful week of my life in terms of exposure to things I could be doing to be more productive and effective. Since then, I've mainly been trying to incorporate the low-hanging fruit---the obviously good simple ideas---into my life. Some examples:

• At work, I realized I wasn't doing anywhere near enough planning. My employees were spending time on the wrong things because I hadn't planned things out in enough detail to make it clear what was

We'll organize something. I'll talk to people about it at this coming meetup. There are some other non-local Less Wrong people in Melbourne right now too.

We could do! Will you be here? We'll at least repeat this meetup on December 21.

Notes from discussion about finding better metrics to measure CfAR's effectiveness

[Discussion about what CfAR is trying to teach.]

Have to avoid CfAR just measuring how much people are paying attention in their courses

Beforehand: write down goals

Six months later: measure them against their pre-camp goals

Control group

Just attending a camp might make it feel like you're making more progress towards your goals.

Some goals hard to measure

How much throughput are they expecting? 3 camps/month.

Measuring income: a lot of people might decide during the camp to change... (read more)

Quixey is incredibly successful. Also, LessWrong is still young. Give it time! There may be a bunch of startups out there we haven't heard of yet. For example, I'm doing a startup with 3 other LWers, but we need a little longer before we're successful ;-)

I can come and I'd be happy to do the exercise I suggested last month

http://lesswrong.com/lw/bym/meetup_melbourne_practical_rationality/6gcz

but I'm thinking we'd probably prefer to hear from James and Scott about the minicamp (if they're willing).

Edit: Let's save the updating activity below for another night or for next month, when Aubrey de Grey isn't speaking.

We decided that we'd take it in turns to prepare activities for the practical rationality meetups, and I volunteered for this meetup.

Here's the plan. I have a bunch of trivia questions with numerical answers. For each question: Everyone records either 50% or 90% confidence intervals. Open discussion. Everyone may alter their intervals. Record initial and updated calibration. The aim is to test our calibration (is it true that approximately h... (read more)

You just missed it.

http://lesswrong.com/meetups/8a

It's not a zero-sum game!

Sadly I can't make it tonight. I find myself in the wrong timezone and I'll be asleep.

Thanks for organizing this Adam, I enjoyed it!

There was a strong consensus that we wanted to keep meeting, and I made a google group for us to plan activities, discuss what sorts of things we might like to do in the future, let each other know of interesting events, and so on.

At the moment the group is semi-private, meaning that only members can view content but anyone can join. There is no moderation. We can change this if there is a consensus to do so or as it becomes necessary.

I'll make AdamBell, Patrick (who organized the previous meetups) and matt ad... (read more)

I'll come but will probably be a bit late.

Many jobs, including almost all of those that people would do on a working holiday, have Award rates higher than the minimum wage. Effectively, in Australia the minimum wage depends on the job. $21 is probably the minimum allowed by whatever Award governs shokwave's employment, either the Fast Food Industry Award or KFC might have their own enterprise agreement.

If anyone cares, the place to learn about this is here.

I'll come.

I agree, start with no limit hold'em because there's an awful lot of good learning material about it and the games at low limits are pretty good, but at some point consider switching to pot limit omaha.

I think most online sites are 18+.

Most people use databases and heads-up displays, but to calculate and present statistics about your own and your opponents' play, not to calculate odds (calculating odds is easy). I like Poker Tracker.

Read some of the books published by Two Plus Two for solid beginner information that's mostly a little out of date; then sign up at a video training site (I like Deuces Cracked) for up-to-date information; finally go, e.g., here and accept one of the offers where they give you free money to play with and then use their money to practice at 1 cent/2 cent games.

Also, maybe ask this question at the Two Plus Two forums for a better response.

Go ahead! But it's hard.

I hear that everywhere too. It's a selection effect: most of the population aren't smart and rational enough to be long-term winning players and it's these people you hear complaining, while the good players go on quietly winning.

It's definitely true that the games are getting tougher every year, because the community is learning to play better, so the threshold of ability you need to be a winning player is constantly increasing. But it's not that high yet.

Now let's talk about your two bugbears, bots and collusion.

1. Bots

You never ever have to worry about... (read more)

If you're truly smart, truly rational, and with the goal function you describe in your post, an obvious answer is to play poker on the internet. But beware: if it turns out you're not actually as rational as most of us on Less Wrong think we are, it probably won't work out.

Thank you for organising this. I'll come. It's a good choice of venue.

Surely this is illegal in the US. First you're acting like a bank by taking deposits and paying interest, and probably you have to actually be a bank to do that; second you're setting yourself up as a bookmaker.

Design suggestion:

All the meta stuff associated with a comment, viz.

Posted by: Kaj_Sotala 02 March 2009 09:32:50AM 2 points Vote up | Vote down | Permalink | Parent | Report | Reply

takes up a lot of space and impedes readability of the discussion. Can all this stuff be made smaller and less prominent (maybe more like it is on Hacker News) and perhaps some of the links only be visible when you're in the actual comment's thread (like the "Flag" feature is on Hacker News)? (Also we don't really need to know the exact second that a post is made.)