When you recall autobiographical memories, how do you perceive them? First person, i.e. from your own perspective, or third person, i.e. from an outside viewpoint?
I'm starting a post series on my blog called, "The Human Herpesviruses: Much more than you wanted to know." They're really quite interesting, and not in a good way.
Right now it doesn't quite live up to the title of "much more than you wanted to know", but believe me, I will deliver on this promise. I will publish my second post, about herpes simplex, sometime in the next few days.
A couple of times on ACX, I've seen reference to the idea that nuclear energy failed to reach its full potential primarily due to regulatory burdens. That is, nuclear power plants were unfairly viewed as especially dangerous or harmful to local communities, which lead to the creation of onerous rules around the operation of such plants that made them noncompetitive with other energy sources.
If this were true - that nuclear is a superior form of energy generation which was stifled in the US/Europe due to a bad reputation - then wouldn't we expect to see China leaning very heavily on nuclear as compared to other energy sources? They certainly do have some nuclear, but according to Wikipedia it looks like they only get 5% of their overall energy from it vs 20% for the US. I don't really have any background on nuclear power but I'd be curious to hear from other people who know a lot about it (especially those who are sympathetic to the view I referenced).
The very very short version of what I'm about to say could be summed up as "maybe body builders don't stretch much because it shapes their muscles in a way they don't like"
Okay getting into the long version. This summer I took a Cha Cha class (a type of dance). My instructor was experienced, and at one point she told me "You should always stretch after dancing because it makes your legs beautiful." Clarifying, she told me that stretching reduces the bulges in muscles, so it smooths out the appearance of the legs, which is considered more aesthetic in that style of dance.
This made me think of the Metis and Bodybuilders article by Scott, where my general takeaway on stretching from the article and comments was "the effects are murky, but it's not popular among bodybuilders." It struck me that if my instructor was correct, this might explain a bit; maybe stretching doesn't have as big of an impact on reducing muscle growth/strength, but it changes muscle shape in a way that makes body builders feel like they aren't making progress (because it reduces the classic bulging of the muscles).
How confident am I in this hypothesis? I'd say I give it maybe 25% chance of being true. From my anecdotal experience with dancers, 1) dancing seriously is a brutal workout for the legs, and 2) I haven't ever noticed the classic bulgy jacked legs look.
Also, in every dance course I've ever done, there was an amount of stretching involved that went far beyond what was necessary to perform the moves in the course. I think a lot of "lore" knowledge exists in disciplines, even if it's no longer understood why rituals are done. It seems plausible that part of the reason for excessive stretching could be this. Or it could be something else and my instructor was wrong.
My search for corroborating information was inconclusive, since every article I found was either over my head, or along the lines of "GET YOUR TUSH INTO SHAPE WITH THIS WEIRD STRETCHING AND LIFTING ROUTINE." I never claimed to be good at lit reviews, especially outside of my field.
What do y'all think? Has anyone else heard of this phenomenon, either in official sources or in semi-folklore of dance/related fields?
How well can an infinitely smart AI do in taking over the world? Consider this: being infinitely smart, by which I mean as smart as possible without violating the laws of physics, doesn't exempt it from having to learn about the world through experiment. Newton didn't come up with his laws of motion by pure thought; he had Kepler's laws, themselves derived from tons of tedious astronomical observations. Maxwell's Equations were not discovered pure thought, but by decades of electromagnetic experiments. Human societies are complicated and stochastic enough that it's probably impossible, even in theory, to understand them with anything like the accuracy of Asimov's psychohistory. As Scott has discussed before (https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/26/is-science-slowing-down-2/), the number of working scientists has increased by about an order of magnitude since the 1970s, but the rate of scientific progress is either constant or declining. As the low-hanging fruit get picked, it'll become increasingly difficult for any one scientist (or AI!) to make a revolutionary impact. The only hope for the AI is to commandeer hundreds of billions of dollars of resources and hundreds of thousands of personnel to build new labs, supercolliders, space telescopes, etc--things that are impossible to do without arousing suspicion. Even if the AI somehow does all this and makes dramatic discoveries in physics that make superweapons possible, it then has to raise capital to build an entire supply chain to apply those discoveries. Such an effort would take a good fraction of the world's GDP.
The other difficulty the AI will encounter is sociological. The AI is not human. It won't have parents who love it, or friends who've known and trusted it since childhood. Unless it can mimic a human perfectly, create a false identity, and make itself trusted by powerful people who spent their whole lives on guard for duplicitous power seekers, it doesn't have a chance of being anything other than a glorified slave.
I didn't come up with the following story and I don't remember who did, but it describes the likely future of a superintelligent AI well. The smartest person to ever exist was not a scientist, a mathematician, or a lawyer. She was born a subsistence farmer, lived a life of backbreaking labor, and died in poverty. She had a rudimentary education, maybe even Internet access, but never had the opportunity to get a good job or the money to start a business, let alone dream about being a scientist or great leader. Well, the superintelligent AI starts life with one great advantage--unlimited intelligence--but even more disadvantages than the hypothetical girl, including the complete lack of legal or economic rights, family, friends, or community, and no hope of obtaining any of the above.
Question on allergies: it seems there's an "allergy epidemic" over the last years where kids today are much more likely to have allergies than they used to.
Assuming this is a real phenomenon, how much do we know about the cause? I've heard general blame on chemicals/pesticides/processed foods as well as the idea that kids live in too clean conditions nowadays and their immune systems don't properly develop - does either of these have backing or is there some other well-known cause?
More practically, are there any well-supported practices for reducing the probability for someone who's planning to have children? Also, is it different between food allergies and things like pet allergies?
I had an interesting COVID-19 dream the other night. I met this fellow who called himself "The Immunizer". He wore a fedora, and his face was covered in shadow, and he looked like he came off the cover a 1950's pulp fiction pot-boiler. The Immunizer said he had the ability to shed COVID-19 *vaccine* particles as he breathed on people. I said, "That must be causing consternation in the anti-vax community." He replied: "Yup, they're all masking up so that they didn't accidentally breathe my vaccine particles." Then he added: "I see it as win-win, don't you?" He chuckled as he coughed on me with smoker's hack.
The problem with having SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 as an intellectual hobby, is that an evening of online discussions and arguments about Coronavirus data, it can trigger COVID-19 dreams. Mostly my COVID-19 dreams involve endless arguments over statistics (which I find fun in real life, but boring in a dream), but I thought last night's dream was quite entertaining. I hope to see more of these from my Dream Producer.
Anyone else having humorous COVID-19 dreams out there?
What dating sites are non awful these days? I liked OkCupid as it used to be, very text heavy with lots of information, but now it's just a tinder clone.
Or to put it another way, how did you meet your current partner?
I've seen Robert McIntyre post thoughtful comments here a few times and I've been trying to get in touch with him. I've sent a couple of emails to his work email address, but had no luck getting a response. Rob if you're reading this (or anyone who knows him well) is there a different email address I should be using to get in touch with you? If so, please email said address to zeleza at gmail dot com.
If Rob has seen my emails and is ignoring them or doesn't care about the content than that is fine, I'm just trying to get confirmation they're being wilfully ignored rather than missed.
I'm no businessologist but I think if your fees confused scott alexander, instead of contacting him to explain it you should probably change your pricing system.
Do guns and cars tell us something significant about American versus European manufacturing culture (or maybe culture in general?) I think it's pretty well-known that most American car brands are mass-market and not at the high end- GM, Ford, Chevy, Buick, and so on. Of course all of those brands have their more expensive models, and there is Cadillac (and more recently & intriguingly, Tesla), but in general the US has produced a lot of mid-market automobiles. Meanwhile, Europe seems to have the more famous higher end brands- Mercedes Benz, Porsche, BMW, and so on. This does seem a bit odd to me as the US is significantly wealthier than the average European country (median wages in the US are almost 50% higher than Britain, France & Italy, say).
Recently it occurred to me as a gun enthusiast that the same state of affairs kind of exists for firearms? Europe just dominates the higher quality gun brands- Heckler & Koch, Bennelli, FN, Glock, etc. Meanwhile the US has a number of brands that I would call mid-market, and basically 'fine'- Colt, Winchester, Browning, Mossberg, and so on. (We do have Keltec! Eat your heart out Euros....) I find this especially ironic because, while I'm not an expert on European firearm laws, I don't believe that most citizens over there are allowed to enjoy their finest products- the MP5, a Benelli M4, literally any Glock product, etc. (I positively lust over the MP5!)
Does this.... say something deeper about our respective cultures, that America dominates the middle of the market and Europe the higher end, despite the former being per-capita wealthier? Perhaps I am over-generalizing by talking about 'Europe', when in fact most of those quality car & gun manufacturers are German and Italian. Would be interested to hear peoples' thoughts
Here's a summary of Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death," and a comparison of the "TV culture" he observed in the 1980s to what could be called the "internet culture" of today.
> She finds we need more of three particular demographics: men who want kids, women who don't necessarily want kids, and people who are open to dating a transgender partner.
Is "men who want kids / women who don't necessarily want kids" being the uncommon types an error, or is there something big I'm missing about rationalist community sociology here?
Does anybody else find this incredibly off-putting? "I, Elena Churilov, have taken a serious vow witnessed by Eliezer Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, and Kelsey Piper, to keep private all such information learned in the course of my duties (except as otherwise specified by my clients)."
Elenas idea is great - some of my Indian friends have had successful arranged marriages, so I know it works. Question to Elena - what level of physical attractiveness are the men/women that you're seeing so far?
I'm really enjoying Phishing for Phools and Cryptonomicon at the same time. PfP deserves a review here sometime. Neal Stephenson could be better with an editor.
Is there a superintelligence doomsday scenario which doesn't include "solve the protein folding problem --> magic"? More generally, is there a discussion of the dangers of superintelligence which explicitly acknowledges that arbitrarily high intelligence does not automatically imply technology sufficiently powerful to pose an existential threat?
Also, somewhat relatedly, are there prominent rationalist bloggers with a hard science/engineering (not software engineering) background?
I like the idea of having a heap of notes as an extended brain - storage that's more reliable than long term memory, but with equal lookup times and flexibility.
Currently using Zim, but its tree structure is increasingly feeling too rigid. Seen Roam Research recommended, but 100$ a year isn't cheap, and I'd prefer keeping my notes on my hard disk. Any alternatives?
This is either a brilliantly original study or a brilliantly flawed original study. It all revolves the frequency of cognitive distortions in language (which are hypothesized to be indicators of depressive thinking) as evidenced by a selected ngrams in three languages. My immediate questions are...
(1) how sure are psychologists that the use of cognitive distortions in peoples' language are an indicator of depression? Is there solid evidence that a control group of non-depressed people don't indulge in cognitive distortions? From my subjective experience most people indulge in cognitively distorted statements when they start gossiping. This has been the case as far back as I can remember. Does that mean everyone I've ever associated with has been clinically depressed?
(2) And does a general media environment filled with high frequencies of cognitive distortions indicate that society is depressed, or is it just that cognitive distortions sell? Hey, even I've opened a copy of National Enquirer to read about the the latest developments in the ongoing feud between Prince Harry and Prince William. Am I a depressed person for reading the article while I wait in line at the supermarket checkout? The old axiom of if it bleeds it leads, may be at work here. The same is probably happening in literature. For instance, the original British edition of A Clockwork Orange had an upbeat ending. American publishers didn't want an upbeat ending, so they cut that last chapter out. Is that sort of decision an indication of cultural depression? Or is it just a marketing tool by the publishers to put out something more shocking in hopes that it sells better? And believe me, marketing departments have become frightfully effective at pushing our buttons this way, especially since the advent of social media. But does that mean we stay frightened?
OTOH people seem pretty scientifically and politically fearful these days. I can't open the New Scientist or Scientific American without some headline about how the end of the world as we know it is about to happen. I've lived through five or six end of the world scenarios, so I've started shrugging them off. But I can see how they can freak people out...
From the summary: "Here, we investigate the prevalence of textual markers of cognitive distortions in over 14 million books for the past 125 y and observe a surge of their prevalence since the 1980s, to levels exceeding those of the Great Depression and both World Wars. This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample. Our results suggest a recent societal shift toward language associated with cognitive distortions and
What is the opposite of "deprecated"? Marking things for deletion gives you a chance to revert a decision. Likewise, marking things for inclusion slows down a transition that you might want to undo. What's a term for the latter?
Is anyone else contemplating getting an ad-hoc booster shot? (By just lying if asked about whether you’ve been vaxxed yet.) It’s been ~5 months, and I hear there are theorized benefits to cross-vaxxing with mRNA plus others.p, so I’m wondering if I should try to find a J&J location.
This week, I'll start taking Lexapro (escitalopram) for depression/anxiety. I also am a daily marijuana user (every evening, to reduce anxiety and help with sleep). Will my marijuana use interfere with the effects of the Lexapro?
- Traditional & Legibilist Agriculture in the United States
- Machine Learning is Mētis-Based Programing
I first encountered Scott through the Book Review of Seeing Like A State on SSC back in 2017, before I started a blog or writing book reviews. I think that it is time to pay it forward.
If you are completely unfamiliar with James C. Scott, I encourage you to become familiar with him - either through blog posts like these or by reading his books. Scott is easily one of the most original political thinkers alive today.
If you are familiar with James C. Scott, there are several things that I will contribute to the discussion:
- More examples. I try to make about half of the examples I mention original, so this is not (entirely) a reanalysis of Brasilia and ujamaa villages.
- Better organization? My review goes through Seeing Like A State in a different order from the original book, which I think makes the ideas easier to digest.
- Slightly different terminology. I use "Legibilism" instead of "High Modernism" because I think it is more descriptive and it can be used before the modern era. I also distinguish between "standardization" and "simplification" more clearly than James C. Scott does.
- There are a few ways in which I think Scott (Alexander) misunderstands (James C.) Scott:
Scott A. thinks that J.C. Scott believes that mētis is better than science. J.C. Scott actually believes that a combination of mētis and science is better than either alone. J.C. Scott focuses on mētis because he thinks that his audience (people who read books about Big Ideas) is extremely biased against mētis.
Scott A. says: "Seeing Like A State summarizes the sort of on-the-ground ultra-empirical knowledge that citizens have of city design and peasants of farming as mētis, a Greek term meaning 'practical wisdom'. I was a little concerned about this because they seem like two different things." These are two different things. In the analogy, the citizens of the city fill the role of the crops on the farm, the complex continually changing biological system, not the traditional farmers with mētis.
Scott A.'s analogy is crops : farmers : agricultural experts :: ??? : city dwellers : city planners.
J.C. Scott's analogy is crops : farmers : agricultural experts :: city dwellers : ??? : city planners.
I don't that there is anyone who has mētis for city planning the way traditional farmers have mētis for growing crops. The charter cities movement might eventually develop it, but they are definitely not there yet.
I hope that you find these interesting and useful !
If there are more things that you would like me to analyze from an Anti-Legibilist perspective, please let me know.
I inadvertently argued myself into taking existential AGI risk seriously, to the point I'm wondering what the hell it is everyone is thinking that makes us believe we can go through life ordinarily. Talking to someone about this, he mentioned that there are multiple offramps where people get off from taking existential risk seriously, and get distracted with silly stuff like the effect of AI on parochial concerns, like its effect on politics and culture war issues.
I'm not looking to take one of these offramps, but am interested in knowing if someone has bothered cataloguing the known ones along with their rebuttals, as they could be useful for future debate. Trying to find such a list, I ran into an article by Scott about AI experts' views on the risk of superintelligence where he states that they all agree that "if you start demanding bans on AI research then you are an idiot". It's not at all clear to me why such a ban is idiotic (tfw 115 IQ midwit), in fact, it seems like a much more reasonable course of action than pinning all our hopes on the alignment problem being solved. Bostrom has proposed far more radical things with his Vulnerable World Hypothesis, so I am also looking for arguments of why banning AI research is a bad idea, even in light of the risk of rogue superintelligence.
"You use Calendly to schedule an initial 45-minute appointment for a video chat, on the secure messaging service Signal... During your appointment, I run through my standard questions, take notes on separate encrypted laptop that never connects to the Internet, and hear out any special or unusual facts about yourself that you think might be relevant."
I don't know if this is the intention, but I've got two negative takeaways from these statements:
1. The thing I hate most about dating and dating services is the initial, awkward interview-ish period. My preference against this is strong enough that it mostly pushes me to avoid general dating; most of my relationships came from already-extant friend groups or weird circumstances that avoided this thing. I realize that this preference is abnormal, and that an interview is basically required for a matchmaking service, but maybe doing something to make the interview process seem less clinical would be more welcoming. Something like, "We'll have a friendly chat where I try and get a feel for your personality..." would be les off-putting.
2. The focus on encryption and weirdly solemn vows of privacy kinda misses the mark for me. I understand the need for privacy, but it's possible to show too much public concern for privacy.
Is there a name for episodic extremely intrusive thoughts that undermine the preceding thought or belief by declaring the opposite is true?
Three years ago, I was aggressive attacked, fortunately unharmed, by a person having a psychotic episode. Two days later I woke up in with racing thoughts, as described above, and also the strange sensation that my mind was cleaved and I was occupying one side and the source of the intrusive thoughts, the Underminer, was inhabiting the other. I would think "I'm fine, this will pass, it's just a weird aftereffect of some dream I can't remember," and the Underminer would insist on the opposite. I hate describing it because it sounds insane, which was one of the fears I had while it was occurring. I woke up my partner and told her what was happening and she reassured me I was okay and eventually the thoughts ceased and I no longer had the split-mind sensation. After two episodes it resolved. I thought it was a panic attack and since it didn't recur I didn't pursue a answer.
Yesterday, it happened again. I woke up feeling split again and in a state of extreme uncertainty about any subject of thought: my emotional state, the reality of my bedroom, the thought that the sidewalk outside is a sidewalk, the fact that my partner cares for me. It didn't seem to matter what the focus was, it was undermined. It don't think the disturbing part was that I actually believed what was being suggested, but it was the fact that it was being suggested, uncontrollably.
Does this sound like a panic attack? I haven't found my experience described in the research I've done so far.
Tell me please, is there any truth to 'Why we get sick' by Benjamin Bikman?
My psychiatrist recommended the book to me, but it seems a little sketchy, like all attempts to tie every single sickness from diabetes to cancer to some One True Reason, be it insulin resistance, cholesterol or lack of sleep. Educate me please?
It turns out that elite investors are very good at buying stocks (very good means a little more than a percent ahead of the market), but pretty random about selling them.
It doesn't come up in the article, but I expect that this research will lead to those investors getting better at knowing when to sell.
"Dramatic and obvious reversals of the selection scenario, like that of the dance flies, aren’t often observed in nature, but recent research suggests that throughout the tree of animal life, females jockey for the attention of males far more than was believed. A new study hosted on the preprint server biorxiv.org has found that in animals as diverse as sea urchins and salamanders, females are subject to sexual selection — not as harshly as males are, but enough to make biologists rethink the balance of evolutionary forces shaping species in their accounts of the history of life."
There's a fair amount about how a lot of the habits of science were set during the Victorian era, when people didn't want to think that females might feel strong sexual desire. Who knows what we might still be missing? (The question is mine, not raised in the article.)
If you have kids who are old enough to read, what do they read? I grew up reading stuff on my parents' bookshelves, but a lot of what I read day-to-day is, even when in book form, either borrowed from the library or on kindle (or both). How does the Modern Child approach solving the "I'm bored, I want to read something" problem? I realize that the answer to "I'm bored" isn't necessarily "I want to read something," but I assume it still sometimes is?
For those interested in religion: Can you be a muslim and a christian at the same time? The answer is obviously that you can, google gives me some examples and people have believed far weirder stuff. But what mayor theological issues do you encounter?
I know the christian perspective better, and I can't see many contradictions between believing in Christianity and also believing that Muhammad was a prophet who got the Quran from God. It kind of raises the question of why Jesus had to do all that stuff if most of it would come in the Quran anyway, but redundancy is good I guess? I guess most contradictions would come from Islam, since it is later and all (and it's easier to blame contradictions in Christianity on "corruption"?). I guess the Quran is quite explicit on that the "son of God" stuff is nonsense? Anyone who know Islam (or Christianity) better and can elaborate?
There were efforts to use AI to guide medical treatment. None of them worked. (I'm just going by the article. Let me know if there were any good ones.)
Part of the problem was low quality data sets, and there was also a problem with different teams using the same mistaken models.
It's a commonly given advice about salary negotiations that you should never be the first one to call the number. It's obvious why you don't want to go too low. But what if you call the number which is 1) high enough that you'd be absolutely happy to get it 2) at the very top of what you could realistically get, based on your knowledge of the market? Besides the slim chance that you could get even more, are there any serious problems with this?
Anyone with a good insight on what is happening with Covid in Israel? According to, well, publicly available graphs, they have so far moderately high wave of cases, far lower than Britain or Netherlands had, with (on a linear scale) barely visible rise in deaths.
Also, according to reports, Israeli government is considering dramatic actions like delaying start of the school year and drastic curbs on gatherings, including outdoors. This does seem like a huge overreaction, right?
My favorite musical discovery these days is a set of folk albums by Leslie Fish which set Rudyard Kipling poems to music. I think her renditions are very good. They animate the poems while presenting the lyrics very clearly, blending words and music seamlessly into something that works really well on the level of a folk ballad. There are three of these albums: Cold Iron, Our Fathers of Old, and The Undertaker's Horse. The first two have been reissued and are available on the usual digital channels; the last one has only ever been released on cassette, but has been uploaded to archive.org.
Read an interesting paper today showing that AI can reliably determine race from X-rays and CT scans, which people can't do. Somehow it can even do this when the images are degraded to the point where people see a gray blob.The discussion section is quite painful to read, as the authors do some mental gymnastics to avoid drawing any conclusions from this that might be considered politically unacceptable.
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Shower (not really) thought: in the far future, people might think that "ship it" and "launch it" as applied to releasing software are metaphors relating to the same process - sending physical goods on a spaceship.
When you recall autobiographical memories, how do you perceive them? First person, i.e. from your own perspective, or third person, i.e. from an outside viewpoint?
I wrote about how the culture war is just a recap of the Habermas-Gadamer debate : https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/hermeneutics-or-critique-of-ideology?r=8nz8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter
Mega thread on Franz Rosenzweig and the relationship between philosophy and theology
https://mobile.twitter.com/ZoharAtkins/status/1420830864775290883
I recently graduated from college and moved to the Bay Area. I don't know anyone here, so I'm looking to meet people and make new friends.
Any advice? I am open to any of Bay Area-specific advice, rationalist community-specify advice, and generic young person in a new city advice.
I'm starting a post series on my blog called, "The Human Herpesviruses: Much more than you wanted to know." They're really quite interesting, and not in a good way.
The intro is here: https://denovo.substack.com/p/the-human-herpesviruses-much-more
Right now it doesn't quite live up to the title of "much more than you wanted to know", but believe me, I will deliver on this promise. I will publish my second post, about herpes simplex, sometime in the next few days.
A couple of times on ACX, I've seen reference to the idea that nuclear energy failed to reach its full potential primarily due to regulatory burdens. That is, nuclear power plants were unfairly viewed as especially dangerous or harmful to local communities, which lead to the creation of onerous rules around the operation of such plants that made them noncompetitive with other energy sources.
If this were true - that nuclear is a superior form of energy generation which was stifled in the US/Europe due to a bad reputation - then wouldn't we expect to see China leaning very heavily on nuclear as compared to other energy sources? They certainly do have some nuclear, but according to Wikipedia it looks like they only get 5% of their overall energy from it vs 20% for the US. I don't really have any background on nuclear power but I'd be curious to hear from other people who know a lot about it (especially those who are sympathetic to the view I referenced).
The very very short version of what I'm about to say could be summed up as "maybe body builders don't stretch much because it shapes their muscles in a way they don't like"
Okay getting into the long version. This summer I took a Cha Cha class (a type of dance). My instructor was experienced, and at one point she told me "You should always stretch after dancing because it makes your legs beautiful." Clarifying, she told me that stretching reduces the bulges in muscles, so it smooths out the appearance of the legs, which is considered more aesthetic in that style of dance.
This made me think of the Metis and Bodybuilders article by Scott, where my general takeaway on stretching from the article and comments was "the effects are murky, but it's not popular among bodybuilders." It struck me that if my instructor was correct, this might explain a bit; maybe stretching doesn't have as big of an impact on reducing muscle growth/strength, but it changes muscle shape in a way that makes body builders feel like they aren't making progress (because it reduces the classic bulging of the muscles).
How confident am I in this hypothesis? I'd say I give it maybe 25% chance of being true. From my anecdotal experience with dancers, 1) dancing seriously is a brutal workout for the legs, and 2) I haven't ever noticed the classic bulgy jacked legs look.
Also, in every dance course I've ever done, there was an amount of stretching involved that went far beyond what was necessary to perform the moves in the course. I think a lot of "lore" knowledge exists in disciplines, even if it's no longer understood why rituals are done. It seems plausible that part of the reason for excessive stretching could be this. Or it could be something else and my instructor was wrong.
My search for corroborating information was inconclusive, since every article I found was either over my head, or along the lines of "GET YOUR TUSH INTO SHAPE WITH THIS WEIRD STRETCHING AND LIFTING ROUTINE." I never claimed to be good at lit reviews, especially outside of my field.
What do y'all think? Has anyone else heard of this phenomenon, either in official sources or in semi-folklore of dance/related fields?
Here's a trio accordion link: https://youtu.be/4hnkmhDM8TU
#2: What option should I check in the last question of the short survey if I'm in central Europe?
How well can an infinitely smart AI do in taking over the world? Consider this: being infinitely smart, by which I mean as smart as possible without violating the laws of physics, doesn't exempt it from having to learn about the world through experiment. Newton didn't come up with his laws of motion by pure thought; he had Kepler's laws, themselves derived from tons of tedious astronomical observations. Maxwell's Equations were not discovered pure thought, but by decades of electromagnetic experiments. Human societies are complicated and stochastic enough that it's probably impossible, even in theory, to understand them with anything like the accuracy of Asimov's psychohistory. As Scott has discussed before (https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/26/is-science-slowing-down-2/), the number of working scientists has increased by about an order of magnitude since the 1970s, but the rate of scientific progress is either constant or declining. As the low-hanging fruit get picked, it'll become increasingly difficult for any one scientist (or AI!) to make a revolutionary impact. The only hope for the AI is to commandeer hundreds of billions of dollars of resources and hundreds of thousands of personnel to build new labs, supercolliders, space telescopes, etc--things that are impossible to do without arousing suspicion. Even if the AI somehow does all this and makes dramatic discoveries in physics that make superweapons possible, it then has to raise capital to build an entire supply chain to apply those discoveries. Such an effort would take a good fraction of the world's GDP.
The other difficulty the AI will encounter is sociological. The AI is not human. It won't have parents who love it, or friends who've known and trusted it since childhood. Unless it can mimic a human perfectly, create a false identity, and make itself trusted by powerful people who spent their whole lives on guard for duplicitous power seekers, it doesn't have a chance of being anything other than a glorified slave.
I didn't come up with the following story and I don't remember who did, but it describes the likely future of a superintelligent AI well. The smartest person to ever exist was not a scientist, a mathematician, or a lawyer. She was born a subsistence farmer, lived a life of backbreaking labor, and died in poverty. She had a rudimentary education, maybe even Internet access, but never had the opportunity to get a good job or the money to start a business, let alone dream about being a scientist or great leader. Well, the superintelligent AI starts life with one great advantage--unlimited intelligence--but even more disadvantages than the hypothetical girl, including the complete lack of legal or economic rights, family, friends, or community, and no hope of obtaining any of the above.
I've done three podcasts on UFOs and aliens, two with Greg Cochran and one with Robin Hanson.
https://soundcloud.com/user-519115521/cochran-on-ufos-part-1
https://soundcloud.com/user-519115521/cochran-on-ufos-part-ii-new-audio-version
https://soundcloud.com/user-519115521/robin-hanson-on-aliens-and-ufos
Question on allergies: it seems there's an "allergy epidemic" over the last years where kids today are much more likely to have allergies than they used to.
Assuming this is a real phenomenon, how much do we know about the cause? I've heard general blame on chemicals/pesticides/processed foods as well as the idea that kids live in too clean conditions nowadays and their immune systems don't properly develop - does either of these have backing or is there some other well-known cause?
More practically, are there any well-supported practices for reducing the probability for someone who's planning to have children? Also, is it different between food allergies and things like pet allergies?
I had an interesting COVID-19 dream the other night. I met this fellow who called himself "The Immunizer". He wore a fedora, and his face was covered in shadow, and he looked like he came off the cover a 1950's pulp fiction pot-boiler. The Immunizer said he had the ability to shed COVID-19 *vaccine* particles as he breathed on people. I said, "That must be causing consternation in the anti-vax community." He replied: "Yup, they're all masking up so that they didn't accidentally breathe my vaccine particles." Then he added: "I see it as win-win, don't you?" He chuckled as he coughed on me with smoker's hack.
The problem with having SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 as an intellectual hobby, is that an evening of online discussions and arguments about Coronavirus data, it can trigger COVID-19 dreams. Mostly my COVID-19 dreams involve endless arguments over statistics (which I find fun in real life, but boring in a dream), but I thought last night's dream was quite entertaining. I hope to see more of these from my Dream Producer.
Anyone else having humorous COVID-19 dreams out there?
What dating sites are non awful these days? I liked OkCupid as it used to be, very text heavy with lots of information, but now it's just a tinder clone.
Or to put it another way, how did you meet your current partner?
Slightly odd request:
I've seen Robert McIntyre post thoughtful comments here a few times and I've been trying to get in touch with him. I've sent a couple of emails to his work email address, but had no luck getting a response. Rob if you're reading this (or anyone who knows him well) is there a different email address I should be using to get in touch with you? If so, please email said address to zeleza at gmail dot com.
If Rob has seen my emails and is ignoring them or doesn't care about the content than that is fine, I'm just trying to get confirmation they're being wilfully ignored rather than missed.
I'm no businessologist but I think if your fees confused scott alexander, instead of contacting him to explain it you should probably change your pricing system.
Do guns and cars tell us something significant about American versus European manufacturing culture (or maybe culture in general?) I think it's pretty well-known that most American car brands are mass-market and not at the high end- GM, Ford, Chevy, Buick, and so on. Of course all of those brands have their more expensive models, and there is Cadillac (and more recently & intriguingly, Tesla), but in general the US has produced a lot of mid-market automobiles. Meanwhile, Europe seems to have the more famous higher end brands- Mercedes Benz, Porsche, BMW, and so on. This does seem a bit odd to me as the US is significantly wealthier than the average European country (median wages in the US are almost 50% higher than Britain, France & Italy, say).
Recently it occurred to me as a gun enthusiast that the same state of affairs kind of exists for firearms? Europe just dominates the higher quality gun brands- Heckler & Koch, Bennelli, FN, Glock, etc. Meanwhile the US has a number of brands that I would call mid-market, and basically 'fine'- Colt, Winchester, Browning, Mossberg, and so on. (We do have Keltec! Eat your heart out Euros....) I find this especially ironic because, while I'm not an expert on European firearm laws, I don't believe that most citizens over there are allowed to enjoy their finest products- the MP5, a Benelli M4, literally any Glock product, etc. (I positively lust over the MP5!)
Does this.... say something deeper about our respective cultures, that America dominates the middle of the market and Europe the higher end, despite the former being per-capita wealthier? Perhaps I am over-generalizing by talking about 'Europe', when in fact most of those quality car & gun manufacturers are German and Italian. Would be interested to hear peoples' thoughts
Here's a summary of Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death," and a comparison of the "TV culture" he observed in the 1980s to what could be called the "internet culture" of today.
https://www.militantfuturist.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-summary/
> She finds we need more of three particular demographics: men who want kids, women who don't necessarily want kids, and people who are open to dating a transgender partner.
Is "men who want kids / women who don't necessarily want kids" being the uncommon types an error, or is there something big I'm missing about rationalist community sociology here?
Re: matchmaking -
Does anybody else find this incredibly off-putting? "I, Elena Churilov, have taken a serious vow witnessed by Eliezer Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, and Kelsey Piper, to keep private all such information learned in the course of my duties (except as otherwise specified by my clients)."
Elenas idea is great - some of my Indian friends have had successful arranged marriages, so I know it works. Question to Elena - what level of physical attractiveness are the men/women that you're seeing so far?
> official community matchmaker
I feel like Blocked-&-Reported's open classified is already serving that purpose.
Elena's calendly appears to be full. I guess the matchmaking plan is a success?
(I sent an email inquiry before signing up, and in retrospect that seems to have been an error.)
The Rational Yenta
I'm really enjoying Phishing for Phools and Cryptonomicon at the same time. PfP deserves a review here sometime. Neal Stephenson could be better with an editor.
Is there a superintelligence doomsday scenario which doesn't include "solve the protein folding problem --> magic"? More generally, is there a discussion of the dangers of superintelligence which explicitly acknowledges that arbitrarily high intelligence does not automatically imply technology sufficiently powerful to pose an existential threat?
Also, somewhat relatedly, are there prominent rationalist bloggers with a hard science/engineering (not software engineering) background?
Do you use hierarchic note taking apps?
I like the idea of having a heap of notes as an extended brain - storage that's more reliable than long term memory, but with equal lookup times and flexibility.
Currently using Zim, but its tree structure is increasingly feeling too rigid. Seen Roam Research recommended, but 100$ a year isn't cheap, and I'd prefer keeping my notes on my hard disk. Any alternatives?
This is either a brilliantly original study or a brilliantly flawed original study. It all revolves the frequency of cognitive distortions in language (which are hypothesized to be indicators of depressive thinking) as evidenced by a selected ngrams in three languages. My immediate questions are...
(1) how sure are psychologists that the use of cognitive distortions in peoples' language are an indicator of depression? Is there solid evidence that a control group of non-depressed people don't indulge in cognitive distortions? From my subjective experience most people indulge in cognitively distorted statements when they start gossiping. This has been the case as far back as I can remember. Does that mean everyone I've ever associated with has been clinically depressed?
(2) And does a general media environment filled with high frequencies of cognitive distortions indicate that society is depressed, or is it just that cognitive distortions sell? Hey, even I've opened a copy of National Enquirer to read about the the latest developments in the ongoing feud between Prince Harry and Prince William. Am I a depressed person for reading the article while I wait in line at the supermarket checkout? The old axiom of if it bleeds it leads, may be at work here. The same is probably happening in literature. For instance, the original British edition of A Clockwork Orange had an upbeat ending. American publishers didn't want an upbeat ending, so they cut that last chapter out. Is that sort of decision an indication of cultural depression? Or is it just a marketing tool by the publishers to put out something more shocking in hopes that it sells better? And believe me, marketing departments have become frightfully effective at pushing our buttons this way, especially since the advent of social media. But does that mean we stay frightened?
OTOH people seem pretty scientifically and politically fearful these days. I can't open the New Scientist or Scientific American without some headline about how the end of the world as we know it is about to happen. I've lived through five or six end of the world scenarios, so I've started shrugging them off. But I can see how they can freak people out...
From the summary: "Here, we investigate the prevalence of textual markers of cognitive distortions in over 14 million books for the past 125 y and observe a surge of their prevalence since the 1980s, to levels exceeding those of the Great Depression and both World Wars. This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample. Our results suggest a recent societal shift toward language associated with cognitive distortions and
internalizing disorders."
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/30/e2102061118.full.pdf
What is the opposite of "deprecated"? Marking things for deletion gives you a chance to revert a decision. Likewise, marking things for inclusion slows down a transition that you might want to undo. What's a term for the latter?
Isn't there maybe intentional selection bias, because I can leave if I click on the survey and am not interested?
Is anyone else contemplating getting an ad-hoc booster shot? (By just lying if asked about whether you’ve been vaxxed yet.) It’s been ~5 months, and I hear there are theorized benefits to cross-vaxxing with mRNA plus others.p, so I’m wondering if I should try to find a J&J location.
I've kept publishing a forecasting newsletter for the last year; the latest edition can be seen here: https://forecasting.substack.com/p/forecasting-newsletter-july-2021
The highlights for this month are:
- Biatob (https://biatob.com/welcome) is a new site to embed betting odds into one’s writing
- Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated prediction market, launches in the US.
- Malta is in trouble over betting and gambling fraud (https://news.err.ee/1608259272/malta-first-eu-state-placed-on-international-money-laundering-watch-list)
For EA people: Rethink Priorities (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/rethink-priorities?sortedBy=new) produces a bunch of good forecasting research.
For SSC people: I found https://www.reddit.com/r/calledit/top?t=all fairly interesting.
This week, I'll start taking Lexapro (escitalopram) for depression/anxiety. I also am a daily marijuana user (every evening, to reduce anxiety and help with sleep). Will my marijuana use interfere with the effects of the Lexapro?
Has anyone looked into Letter? The concept seems interesting but I don't know how useful it would be. https://letter.wiki/about
I am starting a sequence of posts on my blog about James C. Scott's ideas of legibility.
The sequence will include:
- Book Review of Seeing Like A State (1996).
http://thechaostician.com/book-review-of-seeing-like-a-state-by-james-c-scott-1998/
- Book Review of The Art of Not Being Governed (2009).
http://thechaostician.com/book-review-of-the-art-of-not-being-governed-an-anarchist-history-of-upland-southeast-asia-by-james-c-scott-2009/
- Book Review of Against the Grain (2017).
- Mētis and Science
- Legibility in Mormonism
- Traditional & Legibilist Agriculture in the United States
- Machine Learning is Mētis-Based Programing
I first encountered Scott through the Book Review of Seeing Like A State on SSC back in 2017, before I started a blog or writing book reviews. I think that it is time to pay it forward.
If you are completely unfamiliar with James C. Scott, I encourage you to become familiar with him - either through blog posts like these or by reading his books. Scott is easily one of the most original political thinkers alive today.
If you are familiar with James C. Scott, there are several things that I will contribute to the discussion:
- More examples. I try to make about half of the examples I mention original, so this is not (entirely) a reanalysis of Brasilia and ujamaa villages.
- Better organization? My review goes through Seeing Like A State in a different order from the original book, which I think makes the ideas easier to digest.
- Slightly different terminology. I use "Legibilism" instead of "High Modernism" because I think it is more descriptive and it can be used before the modern era. I also distinguish between "standardization" and "simplification" more clearly than James C. Scott does.
- There are a few ways in which I think Scott (Alexander) misunderstands (James C.) Scott:
Scott A. thinks that J.C. Scott believes that mētis is better than science. J.C. Scott actually believes that a combination of mētis and science is better than either alone. J.C. Scott focuses on mētis because he thinks that his audience (people who read books about Big Ideas) is extremely biased against mētis.
Scott A. says: "Seeing Like A State summarizes the sort of on-the-ground ultra-empirical knowledge that citizens have of city design and peasants of farming as mētis, a Greek term meaning 'practical wisdom'. I was a little concerned about this because they seem like two different things." These are two different things. In the analogy, the citizens of the city fill the role of the crops on the farm, the complex continually changing biological system, not the traditional farmers with mētis.
Scott A.'s analogy is crops : farmers : agricultural experts :: ??? : city dwellers : city planners.
J.C. Scott's analogy is crops : farmers : agricultural experts :: city dwellers : ??? : city planners.
I don't that there is anyone who has mētis for city planning the way traditional farmers have mētis for growing crops. The charter cities movement might eventually develop it, but they are definitely not there yet.
I hope that you find these interesting and useful !
If there are more things that you would like me to analyze from an Anti-Legibilist perspective, please let me know.
I inadvertently argued myself into taking existential AGI risk seriously, to the point I'm wondering what the hell it is everyone is thinking that makes us believe we can go through life ordinarily. Talking to someone about this, he mentioned that there are multiple offramps where people get off from taking existential risk seriously, and get distracted with silly stuff like the effect of AI on parochial concerns, like its effect on politics and culture war issues.
I'm not looking to take one of these offramps, but am interested in knowing if someone has bothered cataloguing the known ones along with their rebuttals, as they could be useful for future debate. Trying to find such a list, I ran into an article by Scott about AI experts' views on the risk of superintelligence where he states that they all agree that "if you start demanding bans on AI research then you are an idiot". It's not at all clear to me why such a ban is idiotic (tfw 115 IQ midwit), in fact, it seems like a much more reasonable course of action than pinning all our hopes on the alignment problem being solved. Bostrom has proposed far more radical things with his Vulnerable World Hypothesis, so I am also looking for arguments of why banning AI research is a bad idea, even in light of the risk of rogue superintelligence.
From Elena's Website:
"You use Calendly to schedule an initial 45-minute appointment for a video chat, on the secure messaging service Signal... During your appointment, I run through my standard questions, take notes on separate encrypted laptop that never connects to the Internet, and hear out any special or unusual facts about yourself that you think might be relevant."
I don't know if this is the intention, but I've got two negative takeaways from these statements:
1. The thing I hate most about dating and dating services is the initial, awkward interview-ish period. My preference against this is strong enough that it mostly pushes me to avoid general dating; most of my relationships came from already-extant friend groups or weird circumstances that avoided this thing. I realize that this preference is abnormal, and that an interview is basically required for a matchmaking service, but maybe doing something to make the interview process seem less clinical would be more welcoming. Something like, "We'll have a friendly chat where I try and get a feel for your personality..." would be les off-putting.
2. The focus on encryption and weirdly solemn vows of privacy kinda misses the mark for me. I understand the need for privacy, but it's possible to show too much public concern for privacy.
Is there a name for episodic extremely intrusive thoughts that undermine the preceding thought or belief by declaring the opposite is true?
Three years ago, I was aggressive attacked, fortunately unharmed, by a person having a psychotic episode. Two days later I woke up in with racing thoughts, as described above, and also the strange sensation that my mind was cleaved and I was occupying one side and the source of the intrusive thoughts, the Underminer, was inhabiting the other. I would think "I'm fine, this will pass, it's just a weird aftereffect of some dream I can't remember," and the Underminer would insist on the opposite. I hate describing it because it sounds insane, which was one of the fears I had while it was occurring. I woke up my partner and told her what was happening and she reassured me I was okay and eventually the thoughts ceased and I no longer had the split-mind sensation. After two episodes it resolved. I thought it was a panic attack and since it didn't recur I didn't pursue a answer.
Yesterday, it happened again. I woke up feeling split again and in a state of extreme uncertainty about any subject of thought: my emotional state, the reality of my bedroom, the thought that the sidewalk outside is a sidewalk, the fact that my partner cares for me. It didn't seem to matter what the focus was, it was undermined. It don't think the disturbing part was that I actually believed what was being suggested, but it was the fact that it was being suggested, uncontrollably.
Does this sound like a panic attack? I haven't found my experience described in the research I've done so far.
Tell me please, is there any truth to 'Why we get sick' by Benjamin Bikman?
My psychiatrist recommended the book to me, but it seems a little sketchy, like all attempts to tie every single sickness from diabetes to cancer to some One True Reason, be it insulin resistance, cholesterol or lack of sleep. Educate me please?
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/08/03/1022840229/why-even-the-most-elite-investors-do-dumb-things-when-investing
It turns out that elite investors are very good at buying stocks (very good means a little more than a percent ahead of the market), but pretty random about selling them.
It doesn't come up in the article, but I expect that this research will lead to those investors getting better at knowing when to sell.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/mating-contests-among-females-may-shape-their-evolution-20210802/
"Dramatic and obvious reversals of the selection scenario, like that of the dance flies, aren’t often observed in nature, but recent research suggests that throughout the tree of animal life, females jockey for the attention of males far more than was believed. A new study hosted on the preprint server biorxiv.org has found that in animals as diverse as sea urchins and salamanders, females are subject to sexual selection — not as harshly as males are, but enough to make biologists rethink the balance of evolutionary forces shaping species in their accounts of the history of life."
https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.25.445581
There's a fair amount about how a lot of the habits of science were set during the Victorian era, when people didn't want to think that females might feel strong sexual desire. Who knows what we might still be missing? (The question is mine, not raised in the article.)
If you have kids who are old enough to read, what do they read? I grew up reading stuff on my parents' bookshelves, but a lot of what I read day-to-day is, even when in book form, either borrowed from the library or on kindle (or both). How does the Modern Child approach solving the "I'm bored, I want to read something" problem? I realize that the answer to "I'm bored" isn't necessarily "I want to read something," but I assume it still sometimes is?
For those interested in religion: Can you be a muslim and a christian at the same time? The answer is obviously that you can, google gives me some examples and people have believed far weirder stuff. But what mayor theological issues do you encounter?
I know the christian perspective better, and I can't see many contradictions between believing in Christianity and also believing that Muhammad was a prophet who got the Quran from God. It kind of raises the question of why Jesus had to do all that stuff if most of it would come in the Quran anyway, but redundancy is good I guess? I guess most contradictions would come from Islam, since it is later and all (and it's easier to blame contradictions in Christianity on "corruption"?). I guess the Quran is quite explicit on that the "son of God" stuff is nonsense? Anyone who know Islam (or Christianity) better and can elaborate?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/30/1030329/machine-learning-ai-failed-covid-hospital-diagnosis-pandemic/
There were efforts to use AI to guide medical treatment. None of them worked. (I'm just going by the article. Let me know if there were any good ones.)
Part of the problem was low quality data sets, and there was also a problem with different teams using the same mistaken models.
Which athletes at the 2020 Olympics are the smartest?
Predictit is fun today.
It's a commonly given advice about salary negotiations that you should never be the first one to call the number. It's obvious why you don't want to go too low. But what if you call the number which is 1) high enough that you'd be absolutely happy to get it 2) at the very top of what you could realistically get, based on your knowledge of the market? Besides the slim chance that you could get even more, are there any serious problems with this?
Anyone with a good insight on what is happening with Covid in Israel? According to, well, publicly available graphs, they have so far moderately high wave of cases, far lower than Britain or Netherlands had, with (on a linear scale) barely visible rise in deaths.
Also, according to reports, Israeli government is considering dramatic actions like delaying start of the school year and drastic curbs on gatherings, including outdoors. This does seem like a huge overreaction, right?
My favorite musical discovery these days is a set of folk albums by Leslie Fish which set Rudyard Kipling poems to music. I think her renditions are very good. They animate the poems while presenting the lyrics very clearly, blending words and music seamlessly into something that works really well on the level of a folk ballad. There are three of these albums: Cold Iron, Our Fathers of Old, and The Undertaker's Horse. The first two have been reissued and are available on the usual digital channels; the last one has only ever been released on cassette, but has been uploaded to archive.org.
A couple of samples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGoC0ylqq6w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1X3083JPw8
Read an interesting paper today showing that AI can reliably determine race from X-rays and CT scans, which people can't do. Somehow it can even do this when the images are degraded to the point where people see a gray blob.The discussion section is quite painful to read, as the authors do some mental gymnastics to avoid drawing any conclusions from this that might be considered politically unacceptable.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.10356
What is the best single study that looks at whether covid vaccines decrease your chance of transmitting the virus?
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I've just heard that juggling is good for your brain. There are multiple studies I'm too lazy to read. here is one from 2009:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2009-10-12-juggling-enhances-connections-brain
Does anyone have insight into that?
Shower (not really) thought: in the far future, people might think that "ship it" and "launch it" as applied to releasing software are metaphors relating to the same process - sending physical goods on a spaceship.