Today’s Europe, by contrast, has a significant advantage: many Europeans, especially younger ones, can communicate in English, a lingua franca far more widespread than standard German or Italian ever were in the XIX. century.

I think this paints too optimistic picture. There is a difference between speaking English and "speaking English". All my classmates had the same English lessons at school as me. But in my first job (where a few of my former classmates became my colleagues), when it was necessary to write something in English, it was always my task, because I was the only one who could do a decent job at producing English text that actually sounded English (as opposed to taking a Slovak sentence and mechanically replacing word by word with their English equivalents from an online dictionary). The others could read technical documentation, but I can't imagine them reading fiction in English in their free time and enjoying it. At my current work, which is a branch of an international company, we have many managers at my age who kinda can compose a sentence in mostly-English, but if we have an online meeting with our colleagues from other branches, they arrange a subsequent private meeting with Slovak participants only, asking us what did those foreigners say at the previous meeting.

So the fraction of Slovakia's population that could e.g. read Scott Alexander's article on ACX to the end, and actually understand what it was about, is... maybe 5%? (Please challenge me if you have a different impression.) This can be easy to miss if you are in a hyper-intelligent, hyper-educated bubble.

I don't know what the other EU countries are like in this aspect. Hopefully better, but I would need some data. But if they are in a similar, or only slightly better situation, then what we actually have here is 5% or maybe 10% of population which can participate in some meaningful pan-European dialog. The rest is isolated -- and exposed to Russian propaganda, which is delivered to each nation properly translated. Fuck, if we all spoke the same language, at least the Russians would have a harder work creating a narrative that sounds good to everyone. Instead, they can simply give each country a version tailored specifically for them, and most of us can't even compare notes to see how they are telling everyone exactly the thing he wants to hear ("your country is the best in the EU, you should tell those other losers to fuck off, and instead focus on cooperation with Russia that loves you most"). Uh, I digress...

Anyway, what we have here is some elites that speak a common language, and the plebs that is suspicious and resentful. That doesn't feel like a politically sustainable situation.

And, you know, the ability to talk the same language is not the same as actually discussing the same topics, which would be necessary to have some meaningful unity. Like, maybe someone in France could write a blog in English, where he could describe how the French people see... the entire situation we are in, the EU and stuff. And I could read that blog, and get some idea about them. And maybe I could write a blog in English about how people in Slovakia see our common cultural space, and they could read it. In theory! But in practice, these things simply do not happen. If I read blogs in English, they are usually written by Americans. And when I want to blog about things in Slovakia, I blog in Slovak language. I use the English to communicate with fellow rationalists, or to write programming tutorials. I have virtually zero knowledge about France. And the French have zero knowledge about Slovakia. And maybe it is about me being especially ignorant, but I don't think that this is the case.

To compare...

Imagine a parallel Everett branch where the International Association of Academies in 1907 adopted the proposal of using Esperanto as everyone's second language, and it was gradually implemented in education; two years of Esperanto replacing the previously taught Latin and Greek across the whole Europe. (And somehow WW2 did not interrupt this effort.)

Well, in that Everett branch, the citizens of EU could watch the same television these days. Not because they specifically want to learn about the other EU countries, but simply because the kids want to watch cartoons, and the adults want to watch sport or soap operas, and there are enough viewers speaking the common language to make that kind of television profitable. There would be an Esperanto version of Substack, with readers and writers from all over Europe. Perhaps a clone of LessWrong, too.

That is the thing we don't have.

apparently he thinks that in many species you only have the appearances of suffering, and not the experience itself

What would be the evolutionary advantage of the appearances of suffering, in a world before humans?

Also, wouldn't that be an argument in favor of p-zombies? I mean, if appearances of qualia can evolve...

we try to operate on simulacra level 1 (genuinely saying what we mean) and it turns out that that is by far the weakest of the four.

Level 1 allows you to work on something alone. So if you can't find other people who would cooperate with you (e.g. because you are a little autistic), level 1 is the only one you can work at. Your options are to work at level 1 alone, or serve other people, or fail.

Which I suspect might have also been Scott Adams' problem. He could see that the other levels work better, but he couldn't work at them efficiently. So he just kept writing about how cool those levels are; sometimes impressing people who were at the same skill level as him. But he has never achieved those levels himself.

Elon Musk... I am not very familiar with him. I suspect that he is sufficiently non-autistic to be able to use the higher levels efficiently, and yet he radiates enough nerd vibes (naturally? or is that an image cultivated on purpose?) to convince the nerds that he is one of them, so they keep simping for him and working for him.

I agree. The question is when to start being lazy about what.

The idea seems correct. If you identify as X, and an authority that you respect says "all true X believe Y", you are more likely to accept Y uncritically. Especially if other Xs around you accept it; that creates social pressure.

Politics is considered a minefield here, so you would have to write the article carefully, to avoid tribalism. (Basically, do not mix "this is an analysis of how political tribes work" with "this is my favorite political tribe" in the same article.) It would probably be better to use multiple examples from various sides, rather than making it all about e.g. liberals. It would be better to use historical examples, e.g. from Ancient Rome, rather than examples today. With examples today, you risk starting a disagreement: "all Xs believe Y -- no, they don't -- yes they do -- you only say that because you hate Xs -- no, here is a proof that Z, a famous X, says Y -- Z is a fringe guy, most Xs are not like him" etc.

I think it would be better if you could somehow demonstrate that a change happened -- that at some moment in history, most Xs did not believe Y, then someone popular said "all Xs believe Y", and later most Xs believed Y. (With sources for both "previously didn't believe" and "later believed".) Of course, this is a hypothetical ideal, I am not sure whether there is enough information for something like this.

Have you read "A Fable of Science and Politics"? I am thinking specifically about the part:

Society is still divided along Blue and Green lines, and there is a “Blue” and a “Green” position on almost every contemporary issue of political or cultural importance. The Blues advocate taxes on individual incomes, the Greens advocate taxes on merchant sales; the Blues advocate stricter marriage laws, while the Greens wish to make it easier to obtain divorces; the Blues take their support from the heart of city areas, while the more distant farmers and watersellers tend to be Green; the Blues believe that the Earth is a huge spherical rock at the center of the universe, the Greens that it is a huge flat rock circling some other object called a Sun. Not every Blue or every Green citizen takes the “Blue” or “Green” position on every issue, but it would be rare to find a city merchant who believed the sky was blue, and yet advocated an individual tax and freer marriage laws.

What I mean is that it's not surprising if someone who identifies as X adopts an opinion that seems obviously X-ish (e.g. if a Christian believes in the afterlife). It is surprising if most X adopt an opinion that to an outsider would seem unrelated to X (e.g. if Christians believe we need to wage a war on someone, or keep the taxes low). It becomes more obvious when you compare different countries, or different decades in the same country, and see how the opinions change, so at one place it is obvious that "a true X would support Y", while at another place it is obvious that "a true X would oppose Y".

For example, eugenics was considered an obvious left-wing topic before WW2 (the needs of the society outweigh the freedom of the individual, unrestricted reproduction is a religious value, religions are right-wing, social engineering is left-wing), but a right-wing topic after WW2 (it is associated with Nazis, Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, Soviet Union is left-wing, therefore Nazis and eugenics are right-wing). Similarly, from the perspective of Republican Americans, Russia used to be bad, now it's kinda good. Or from the perspective of an anti-racist, colorblindness used to be the ideal ("I have a dream"), now it is considered a form of bigotry. Feminists used to insist there is absolutely no such thing as a male brain or a female brain, now if you say the same thing, you may be accused of transphobia. Socialists used to be strongly pro-technology during the days of Soviet Union and Sputnik, these days they are more likely to oppose technology as a white cishet men's thing and deny that AI could be useful.

...and now, let's consider my previous paragraph. Good, because it provided specific examples. Bad, because it was inbalanced (most examples come from the left, so it may seem like I suggest that the left is more likely to do these things than the right; which I do not actually believe, it's just that it's easier for me to remember the examples from the left), and because it contains sensitive current issues, so if someone disagrees even with one of the example, the person would probably get furious after reading it, and the debate would be about whether this one example is correct or not, rather than about the general principle of "those who can define your identity can define your specific beliefs".

If the note is a burden, I'd say it is a problem of the note-taking system rather than of the note itself.

(That said, I think it is possible that all existing systems suck, and we need to invent something much better.)

Patrick McKenzie reminds you that for best results in professional work you want to adopt the diction and mannerisms of a professional, including when talking to AI.

Can you do that in two steps? Like, in one window ask the AI "here is my question, rephrase it the way a professional would say it", and then copy the result to another window?

Is this an ad?

When I look at the pointy-shaped shoes in shop, I wonder: does anyone actually have feet like that?

Or are people just suffering in the name of fashion? Or do they buy shoes a few numbers larger and keep the pointy end empty?

Just a silly idea: If many people start using LLMs, and as a result of that learn to better translate their intuitions into explicit descriptions... perhaps this could help us solve alignment.

I mean, a problem with alignment is that we have some ideas of good, but can't make them explicit. But maybe the reason is that in the past, we had no incentive to become good at expressing our ideas explicitly... but instead we had an incentive to bullshit. However, when everyone will use LLMs to do things, that will create an incentive to be good at expressing your ideas, so that the LLM can implement them more properly.