574 Comments

Why isn't there a political movement against the tactics of the IRS?

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I don't understand pedestrian crossing lights. Why do you have to push a button to make them work? As far as I can tell, it doesn't extend your crossing time, which makes me think it's about conserving energy: why make the pedestrian crossing lights work when there are no pedestrians? Except that, when there are no pedestrians, the light stays "Don't Walk". Does that somehow conserve energy?

Pushing a pedestrian crossing button to get the sign to work seems stupid, but I'm going to take Chesterton's advice and assume there must be or have been a good reason for them. But what is it?

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Pete Davidson canceled his trip into space? I don’t think he realizes how a thing that could make him more interesting to women. Why his romantic life would probably just take right off. No more lonely nights with something like that on his CV!

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Zvi in his most recent Covidpost mentioned that he couldn't find a video because it was pulled from YouTube. I found the video by putting the YouTube URL into the Wayback Machine - I didn't actually think the Wayback Machine worked on videos, but apparently it does.

http://web.archive.org/web/20220106042900/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8knn6U5Igs

Posted in case anyone here read said Covidpost and is interested in the video, or in case someone here can get it to Zvi/is Zvi (I don't know any way to tell Zvi things other than making a commenter account on one of his blogs), or in case anyone here doesn't know that the Wayback Machine works on YouTube (which is a pretty big deal considering how much stuff YouTube burns).

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Mar 17, 2022·edited Mar 17, 2022

As a guy who is getting old and no longer in the market, thought I would offer some dating advice since I see guys here sometimes asking for it.

One thing I learned over the course of decades is that women reject you for two main reasons: because you are too in a hurry to get laid or because you are too in a hurry to have a serious relationship. It's easy to mistake a type 1 rejection for a type 2 rejection and vice versa. Maybe that seems obvious, but it didn't seem obvious to me when i was younger so I doubt it seems obvious to every young guy reading this.

An important take-away, I think, is to realize that when a women rejects you it is often for the opposite reason that you imagine. You could learn this from reading Proust, but I'm going to try to keep this shorter than Proust did. (Proust may have been gay, but he understood romantic relationships and sex better than most, straight gay or otherwise.)

If you think a woman rejects you because you aren't attractive enough, that probably isn't the reason. It's more likely because you seem either too interested in getting laid or too interesting in having a long term relationship. Meaning, if you get rejected often, you should change your strategy. If you are trying to get laid, don't. Work on signaling that you are interested in a relationship. OTOH, if you are mainly interested in a relationship, don't. Just try to get laid.

Either way, women are going to figure out what you are really interested in pretty quickly, so don't worry about sending the wrong signals. Do everything you can to counter-signal, because that will send a more balanced signal in the short run. Sending a balanced signal is what most women find attractive.

EDIT: And don't make the mistake of thinking "but THIS WOMAN I am interested in isn't MOST WOMEN". You can't read minds.

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Mar 16, 2022·edited Mar 16, 2022

Today's post-secondary institutions are expensive and backward. How can we do better?

Idea for accreditation system based on accrediting students rather than institutions:

1. An accreditation company (nonprofit foundation? PBC?) produces standardized tests to measure student knowledge & abilities. Tests are broken down into a set of mini-tests, and each mini-test tests a small amount of knowledge and ability. The company charges money to an institution whose students take a test, or to a person who takes a test independently, and revenues are used to produce more tests (and to prepare defenses against cheating). Students earn diplomas from the company according to some set of rules to be determined. Much like TripleByte, the accreditation company earns reputation by verifying ability correctly, and it can increase prices as its reputation increases (but if it's a nonprofit or PBC, prices should hopefully not rise without limit.) IMO students should take tests on the same topic twice, at least 8 months apart (to verify knowledge retention and discourage cram-based learning), but that's not my call to make.

2. Educational institutions (e.g. MOOCs) teach students, who pay tuition as usual. The institution chooses what (and how) to teach in each of its courses, and at regular intervals, offers a test from the accreditation company. A test will typically be composed of two to twenty mini-tests chosen according to the material that was taught in the course. The institution earns revenue equal to the difference between tuition fees and test costs. The accreditation company tracks which mini-tests each student has passed; if a student moves between institutions, the gaps and overlaps between courses at the two institutions are tracked exactly. And of course, some people (Sal Kahn?) will offer completely free courses.

This type of system bypasses traditional accreditation boards run by encumbent institutions, which have an incentive to avoid accrediting new entrants. Thus it should produce a competitive online market with low prices, while still giving students a meaningful diploma that they can tout to employers.

Now, surely I'm not the first to think of this, so why hasn't this kind of system become popular?

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What's the textbook example of how to tactically use tanks in warfare? I'm thinking a WW2 battle or something were tanks saved the day, did lots of the special tanks things that can't be done by artillery or motorized infantry or whatever, and then some colonel wrote the book on it.

I'm hearing a lot from armchair generals on how to not use tanks ("Don't use them against other tanks", "Don't use them in urban areas", "Don't use them without infantry support" etc.), but I don't hear much about how they are supposed to be used, thus my question.

If you want to ague that tanks are obsolete in modern warfare this is your spot as well I guess.

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This is a random place to post this but I asked a question like this before on an open thread and Scott responded. Any help appreciated from anyone with relevant medical industry knowledge.

I am certain I have ADHD. It hugely affects my job performance and I'm constantly worried about getting fired. I'm hoping to get prescribed adderall. I'm wondering what the chances are with my current planned process:

-I have made an appointment with a telehealth psychiatrist through some large online group.

-This site specifically says they themselves do not prescribe drugs like Xanax and adderall, but that if they think it's necessary they can fax your PCP to have them make a prescription.

-I have made an appointment to see someone as a PCP next week, two days before the psychiatry appointment.

-This appointment is my first time meeting them and I said I wanted to talk about ADHD in an office visit

-But they are a Nurse Practitioner, so I have no idea if they're allowed to prescribe anything/more hesitant.

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Mar 16, 2022·edited Mar 16, 2022

The authors of Meta-analysis studies should be required to present a table listing the included studies and excluded studies along with the exclusion criteria that each of the excluded studies failed to meet. That is all.

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Should I be concerned about endocrine disruptors from microwaveable plastic bags of vegetables e.g. steamfresh?

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McDonalds leaves Russia?

Pravda web site says good riddance.

‘ McDonald's sells "food” that is absolutely impervious to rot and decay. You can buy one of their hamburgers, put in on a shelf in your living room and just leave it there. After a year the burger will still look and smell the same. None of the rodents that you unwittingly share your house with will have deigned to touch it. Nor will any insect, no fly no wasp, nothing. Even bacteria will stay away from McDonald's products. This will give you an idea of the quality of American fast food. KFC specializes in products made from bio-engineered, hormone and antibiotics-fed chickens growing so fast they never learn to walk. The meat from such creatures will probably help accelerate your transition from "cisgender” to anything in the LGBTQ spectrum, whether you want it or not. Starbuck's specializes in something it dares to call coffee but that anyone who really knows and likes coffee will shun.’

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What percentage of people who regularly attend KKK meetings probably have diagnosable mental illnesses?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfjZgdQsr6s&ab_channel=RogerJamesHamilton

From 2020-- predicts the invasion of Ukraine. Assumes that dictatorships can play a long game, and win. That part might be wrong.

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I have a friend who's in the market for a dating coach. He's in the general Astral Codex Ten audience demographics - about 30 years old, tech professional, generally liberal. He has been unable to find a good option with experience working in those demographics. Does anyone have a person to refer him to?

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I grew up in Russia (but left to the US as a teenager, on my father's H1B visa). This means I still know a number of people in Russia who are disproportionately techy, and statistically I'd expect some of them to be interested in no longer being in Russia right now. (Some will have left already, some will want to stay no matter what.) Is there a more effective way to look for jobs that might sponsor them than "ask your company if they'll sponsor a visa, ask your friends to ask their companies if they'll sponsor a visa, etc."? Also, consider yourself asked :)

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Scott, thank you for helping set me on the path towards effective altruism. Your writing was deeply influential to me in high school and early college, and I think it was a really big part of why I got into EA (where I get a lot of self-esteem from these days). Since I think its relevant, I'm a senior software engineer at a FAANG and I donate around 30% of my pre-tax income, so include some fraction of that in your total impact!

[Context, I'm reading through 'What got you here won't get you there'. It recommends thanking the top 25 folks most influential in your professional life. Scott handily qualifies for me.]

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A Harvard Business Review reports that 'study after study puts the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions somewhere between 70% and 90%' (https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-big-idea-the-new-ma-playbook).

Has anyone seen studies citing a failure rate of one country invading another country? It seems like this might help forecasters take the outside view of Russia-Ukraine. I can't figure out the right search terms.

I expect a wider range than the 70%-90% for M&A failure. One reason is the difficulty of identifying invasions due to proxy warfare. (Should the Bay of Pigs landing by anti-Castro Cuban exiles be classified as the US invading Cuba by proxy, or an abortive civil war?) Another reason is the difficulty of defining failure, since political goals are harder to evaluate than corporate profits/losses.

The rates probably vary by technological era, as new weapons make offense or defense easier.

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Mar 14, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022

What are your favorite pieces of fiction from Scott?

Personally -- even though it seems crazy to pick this one since I'm sure it was low-effort compared to many other stories -- I would have to say [and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/). I think the ending is something like the greatest thing ever. Also very fond of [Sort by Controversial](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/) and of course UNSONG.

Looking at the [#fiction tag on SlateStarCodex](https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/fiction/), I also realize that there are some I haven't even read yet.

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A correspondent on the ground reports that Elon Musk has challenged Vladimir Putin to single-combat. https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1503392910267531271

This is, of course, lunacy.

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I ran across this the other day. The wonderfully weird pigeon guided bomb project run by B F Skinner.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon

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Is heavy meat eating in humans an adaptation for famine resistance?

There are periodic droughts, blights, etc that hurt crop yields. If the crops that are grown all go to feeding people, then any drop in yield means someone goes hungry. Meat eating provides resilience.

1.) Some animal feed (corn, turnips, etc) is also edible by people. In times of famine, humans can eat this. Animals go hungry (or production decreased) instead of people or switch to non-human edible food (like grass).

2.) Animals can be slaughtered during times of famine. By killing animals early or killing animals kept for eggs or dairy, additional calories can be gained in the present.

Right now we overproduce food (as measured by calories) and invest the excess in producing meat/dairy/eggs. As society moves towards less animal based food, are we going to get rid of our safety margin? Are we going to become more vulnerable to famine?

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A subtitled version of the relevant portion of Nevzorov's video (linked in 3.) can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutvYSl_TLc

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Where do you go for book recommendations? Looking for e.g. empirically-minded bloggers who discuss the quality of new books often such as marginalrevolution.

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author
Mar 14, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022Author

During 9/11, there was concern about backlash against innocent Arab-Americans. During COVID, there was concern about backlash against innocent Chinese-Americans. I haven't heard anyone worry about backlash against Russian-Americans now. Sure, people are cancelling Tchaikovsky concerts or whatever, and some people with Russian citizenship are having hard times, but no hate crimes against second-generation Russian immigrants or whatever.

Are we ignoring these now, were we over-panicking before, or is there some interesting difference between this situation and the others?

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We are doing another South Bay meetup on Sunday, March 27th, 3806 Williams Rd., San Jose, CA 5117, starting at 2:00. Details at:http://www.daviddfriedman.com/SSC%20Meetups%20announcement.html

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Mar 14, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022

Alexey Arestovich, advisor to Zelensky, predicted the war back in 2019 almost exactly play-by-play https://youtu.be/H50ho9Dlrms?t=434 (in Russian, no subs unfortunately)

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Very vague question: How we can estimate my real-world impact when betting on a prediction market?

Let's say I raise a fund of 100 mln$, and then go all-in for "No" on "Will Putin resign by 1 April 2022?"

Should I expect some of his friends say to him: "You gonna resign anyway, let's at least make some money on the way out". They bet a few grand on a "Yes", announce resignation – PROFIT.

I lose my 100 mln$ (mostly), but this way I "buy" my future. (Literally buying "futures").

Sounds too naive, I know. Are there examples where this worked, in a brief history of low-liqudity prediction markets?

P.S. Idea stolen from "Assassination Politics", but I wanted to take a wholesome spin on that.

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Mar 14, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022

Are any Trumpists admitting they were wrong about Trump, given Trump's positive views on Putin?

This isn't an attempt at point scoring. Most right-wingers here still like to talk about Russia-Gate and how that was fake. Whereas it's pretty clear that Trump was a Russian asset, maybe not in the John Le Carre sense but in the literal sense that he was an asset to Russia.

It's relevant because it was obvious to many that Trump's admiration for the clearly evil dictator Putin was abominable -- it was a main cause of so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome.

How about some ex-Trumpists now admitting they had shit-brains for judgment about these matters?

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Are there any practical models for how to run a flexible, competent authoritarian government? Like in political science, organizational structure, etc. I'm not pro-authoritarianism (I swear!), I'm just sort of interested as to how across countries and cultures they keep running into the same problems- inability to deliver bad news up the command structure, lots of inefficient corruption, very suboptimal ways to transfer power when the strongman dies, unmeritocratic because loyalty is rewarded over competence, and worst of all, rigidity and inability to change over the decades as needed in a changing world. There's a reason all of the per capita wealthiest countries are democracies. This is meant not as a moralizing analysis, but just as a practical one- this kind of thing is not the optimal way to run a country! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucEs0nBuowE

Do you.... have a council of various elites serving as like a board of directors, with a strongman chief? Is that the way? It seems like you'd want some sort of constitutional system where say the above intelligence chief serves at the pleasure of the board, hopefully so they can get better intel and not just groveling out of him. How can you ensure a meritocracy, so that whoever rises to the top of the military or an agency is actually intelligent and not just a lacky? Fascist and/or right-wing models tend to leave existing private business in place- could those owners get any say in society as an organized interest group, to prevent the strongman from going off on destructive whims or something? Could a feudal structure (hierarchy of various nobles) actually work in a 21st century country? (Maybe Moldbug has written about this, I don't know)

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I’m looking for examples in science fiction literature of human-AI melding being portrayed in a way that is especially clever, interesting or convincing. Here are some examples of the kind of thing I mean by “melding”:

-In one W. Gibson novel, there was a being named I think Idoru who only existed online, and appeared there as a beautiful woman. She and a human character had fallen in love, and were trying to figure out how to make human/AI love work.

-In another Gibson novel, characters had moving tattoos of extinct animals implanted in their skin, animation accomplished by some kind of nanotech integrated into skin cells.

-In a Vonnegut novel, a robot with human-level intelligence dismantles itself in despair, I believe because it realizes it is a robot.

-In some random scifi I read long ago, vehicles traveling through interstellar space were guided by pilots who had the ability to experience the space & its various suns, planets, hazards, wormholes etc. as an earth-like landscape: From the pilot's point of view they were piloting a vehicle across mountains, forests, rivers, through storms, around volcanos etc — but all the terrestrial features somehow mapped one-to-one with features of interstellar space, and the pilot’s navigating of terrestrial features and dangers guided the ship through their interstellar equivalents.

Anyhow, it would be useful to hear of writers who are good at this, but even better would be to get some descriptions of AI/human connection or hybrids that impressed you.

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If you liked the ACX grants content, and want to do something like that yourself (on a much bigger scale), consider working for Open Philanthropy!

Our goal is to give as effectively as we can and share our findings openly so that anyone can build on our work. We plan to give more than $500 million in 2022.

Roles differ widely in the level/types of prior experience we want, and I'd guess that many ACX readers would be an excellent fit for one or more of them. Current openings:

Business Operations Lead - Manage the team responsible for making sure Open Philanthropy runs smoothly and efficiently day-to-day. We’re looking for applicants who resonate with Open Philanthropy’s mission and are excited to take ownership of building an excellent business operations function.

Program Officer, Global Health and Wellness Effective Altruism Movement Building - As the first hire and leader of this program, the Program Officer will be responsible for identifying grantees, making grants, and developing our movement-building strategy over time.

The Longtermist Effective Altruism Movement Building team works to increase the amount of attention and resources put towards problems that threaten the future of life and is hiring for four roles: Program Associates, a Projects and Operations Lead, a Program Operations Associate, and people to take on Special Projects. We're looking for candidates at varying degrees of seniority with a strong interest in effective altruism and longtermism.

https://www.openphilanthropy.org/get-involved/working-at-open-phil#open-positions

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SOFTWARE ENGINEER WANTED

We are https://hookelabs.com, a family-owned company (15 years old, ~50 people but growing fast) based in Lawrence MA USA (30 min north of Boston/Cambridge). Our focus is research on autoimmune diseases (multiple sclerosis, colitis, arthritis, etc.), but we’re also branching out into development of scientific equipment.

You’d be the third regular SSC/ACX reader here (that I know about).

About 80% of the work we have now is in Python/NumPy, with another 15% in C (or Rust if you prefer), and 5% “other” including Google Apps Script. You don’t need to be able to do *all* of that.

The Python/NumPy work is on PCs and Raspberry Pi. The C/Rust work is on microcontrollers.

We have a lot of different projects, large and small. These include:

• Image analysis in Python/NumPy

• Embedded systems work on Raspberry Pi and microcontrollers

• Web-based UI development for scientific analytical equipment (mostly image related)

• Act as mentor to other sw developers

We could also use some help with IT stuff – we have a full-time IT person but he’s pretty overloaded. (We run Windows networks.)

This is a good position for a person who gets bored easily - you'll get to juggle projects, to some degree, to your taste, so long as they all move forward at some reasonable rate eventually (we don't have hard deadlines on most things, just stuff that needs to get done).

I don’t really expect one person to be able to do all this stuff, but the more you can do the better.

I’d prefer a full-time, on-site person, but we’ll also consider part-timers and people working from home (part of the time). Hours and most other things are very flexible. We offer all the usual benefits. We pay well and expect high performance.

To apply send a CV to <jobs (at) hookelabs.com>; put “Software Engineer” in the subject line.

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The comment about Saudi Arabia is interesting. I'm used to thinking of Saudi Arabia in its capacity as a petrostate / mideast US ally / repressive regime. Easy to forget that it's also the spiritual center of a major religion and that this has significant consequences for world events.

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Mar 14, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022

Here's a metaculus question: will >=100 Russian troops, under Russian banner, enter Kiev by the end of 2022? https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9459/russian-troops-in-kiev-in-2022/

It's sitting at 99%. That generally means that "this event already happened". But, the question is not resolved or even closed. What's going on? One comment mentions a column entering Obolon [edit: fixed typo], but I have trouble finding images or video that might hint as to the total number of troops.

This question is ranked fairly low on Metaculus's list when you're casually browsing. My first guess was that people who voted on this 3 weeks ago have now just forgotten to update. What obvious fact am I missing?

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Would anyone have recommendations for a psych in the south sydney area or in general if they're willing to do online? Betterhelp gives me like 90 a week estimates for a sub which would be fine if I had some sort of gurantee I'd get something out of this and that it wasn't a thing that I think will probably drag on for a long time.

Thinking of trying the UTS student clinic if anyone knows anything about that or has more recommendations like that.

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Any book recommendations on either topic?

A history of Western spies (like, working for the USSR) during the Cold War. I'm much more interested by actually ideologically motivated spies like Kim Philby/the Cambridge Five or the Rosenbergs, than just normal boring non-ideological types who were paid off for info. I find the whole topic fascinating, and it sort of reflects how much the Cold War was really a clash of belief systems. I suspect in order to be good, the book will need to be written by a conservative- while I am not personally politically conservative, I doubt that someone on the left is going to be as rigorous on the topic.

And, a history of Japan's economic rise and fall in the 80s and 90s? I understand the basic outlines of the story (the MITI department running postwar industrial policy to great success, the Plaza Accords, the eventual commercial real estate crash, etc.), I'd just to love learn more, preferably from a source a few intellectual grades above 'airport bookstore business writing' level of thought

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Since nuclear war is (understandably) getting some discussion again, I thought this old comment from John Schilling in a thread about nuclear winter was really interesting: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/11/ot47-openai/#comment-346878

The Wikipedia article on nuclear winter is actually pretty good as well. There's reason to be a bit skeptical of some of the nuclear winter estimates.

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founding

I worry about the Endowment effect applied to the Russian invasion. The more Russia/Putin pour in to the war in blood and treasure, the more urgent it becomes for them to win and the more they will escalate. In turn, the more escalation, the greater the pressure for the US to get involved.

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Mar 13, 2022·edited Mar 13, 2022

Bostrom's simulation argument holds that:

"at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation."

If we believe that humans are unlikely to go extinct and that posthumans are likely to run ancestral simulations but we doubt that we are in a simulation now, then it may be the case that Bostrom's argument is incorrect. People think this is kind of useless, because it doesn't matter but I think it may actually be an extremely important ethical question.

One reason Bostrom's trilemma could be wrong is that it rests on the assumption of substrate-indifference. If you cannot simulate conscious experience on any substrate, then computers may only appear conscious. People may divert a lot of resources toward ensuring ethical treatment of simulations when it is actually not necessary.

However if you can simulate consciousness, the cost of doing so will continue falling until the most effectively charitable thing you can do is run a simulation of happy people. One human death in a developing country wouldn't be morally comparable to 10,000 simulations inside my computer.

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Is there a reason why the US couldn't base its troops out of Kuwait (and Qatar, Bahrain, & UAE) to control Hussein?

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Is immortality good from a utilitarian pov because it means more years to enjoy more hedons or bad bc of the law of diminishing returns (things become boring, less urgent, less meaningful, etc. once I know I’ll live forever or live for much longer)?

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Scott, banal but important question about the Book Review competition.

I submitted my entry last week, and I got a one-line acknowledgement from Google Forms that my "reply had been received". That's it. Should I have expected anything more? Is it going to be possible to know at some stage if an entry has been received or not, and is being considered?

Sorry to bother you.

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Has anyone encountered the writings of E. Fuller Torrey before?

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With things like #1, it's hard not to think about it as the EA movement just hiring a marketing person of sorts. To see what I mean, go to the page and scroll down and read the rules. You will find they've already marked down what they think the most important issues are, the right moral system for approaching them (utilitarianism), and so on. They link from the rules to a site which even cranks down on what kind of writer they want, which is broadly someone who is basically Scott-like in most respects.

I don't actually have a problem with any of this; it seems like "let's pay for more dialogue, especially around this thing we think is great and great for humanity" doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. But you'd still be surprised to find, for instance, that they didn't end up giving it to someone "basically like" Applied divinity studies, perhaps more focused on one of the pet issues.

I could be completely wrong about that - lord knows I don't know the individuals involved. But I still look forward to more people getting into the writer-grant game; right now it's basically this promoting EA, and another one that promotes being a spread-sheet and economics enthusiasts, or nothing. I think whatever minor discomfort I get from stuff like this gets solved as the diversity of grant-payers grows.

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I've been thinking about a consequence of increased healthspan. While some people sort of have the same years gain of experience over and over, we can assume that some will continue to learn and to become more skillful at the things they care about.

There's been very little about this in sf-- people would rather write dystopias. Also it's hard to imagine what even as little as an extra 50 years of learning and practice could do for people-- about as hard to write about as an accurate portrayal of increased intelligence.

There are a couple of possibilities. One is a limited longevity-- it turns out that people stall out at a couple of centuries. No matter when you were born, you have a chance to be among the top pianists in the world. You just have to work and wait. Same for something like running a major museum.

The plus side (though it's rough for ambitious younger people) is that the level of skill in the world (probably including skill at teaching) is going up.

The other possibility is that there isn't a limited lifespan any more. People are likely to just keep going on, though there are presumably issues with memory and possibly with boredom.

I assume people will develop new skills and hierarchies to be at the top of.

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Presumably, Vladimir Putin can't cancel Leo Tolstoy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Much_Land_Does_a_Man_Need%3F

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In my anecdotal experience in college, women seem to give themselves a much larger work load then men. This being done usually through having more majors or minors. I frequently would hear from my female friends how busy they were, them majoring in everything from theater to business to chemistry. I would hardly ever hear from my male friends how busy they were and they usually didn't seem to be under as much work load in those same areas.

I've also heard (but have not dug too deeply into) that women make up the majority of graduate degree and PHD earners now as well. Extended schooling brings much more work. I just wonder why women seem to give themselves more work to do in college where I see men not have to do as much. The sex differences could be easily explained away as women are more vocal about the amount of work, but that still doesn't explain why women take on such a heavy workload in the first place. I'm wondering if any of you have noticed the same thing.

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Once upon a time, bean would have posted something like this as a series of comments on slatestarcodex, but now that navalgazing is all grown up I feel like it's worth pointing out the existence of https://www.navalgazing.net/Early-Lessons-from-the-War-in-Ukraine

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I've never really understood what the EA movement is. Can someone explain?

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Mar 13, 2022·edited Mar 13, 2022

A while back, I started working on a Wikipedia page covering David Benatar's "The Human Predicament," a work arguing strongly against bringing more humans into existence. You can read the draft here (I'm around halfway through the synopsis section so far): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:The_Human_Predicament

Would publishing such an article likely be overall net helpful or harmful?

EDIT: Assume this will be published on a private blog, with the actual Wikipedia article either significantly pared down from the current draft, or significantly more external sources added.

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I'm reading the new book by Thomas Insel, the former head of the NIMH, and will review it. Hope Scott does the same.

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> The effective altruist movement is offering $100,000 prizes to each of the top five new EA-aligned blogs this year. If you were thinking of writing a blog that touches on EA topics (x-risk, progress, global development, moral philosophy, AI, etc) now’s a pretty good time.

Sorry, is this for pre-existing blogs (started in the last twelve months) or new blogs that will be judged at some later date this year? The rules are unclear. They hope to award in 2022. They haven't said, for example, if I started a blog today if I'd be ineligible because they're judging on the trailing twelve months. In fact, without your comment I'd assume they were only looking for pre-existing blogs.

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Mar 13, 2022·edited Mar 13, 2022

“ Steven Ehrbar gives a theory I’d never heard before for why US invaded Iraq: to unpin US garrisons in Saudi Arabia.” It’s hard to believe that the Bush Administration was that competent. If they had been, would they have ignored that taking Hussein down pretty much guaranteed Iranian hegemony over Iraq?

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Mar 13, 2022·edited Mar 13, 2022

SSC/ACX got a mention on the Rebel Wisdom interview with Samo Burja. It’s worth a listen. https://youtu.be/Mu19_rlwHgY

I forget the time stamp, but it’s Samo’s response to a question about Scott’s prediction grade.

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PSA there was a post on March 8 that didn't trigger and email notification.

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