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author: niplav, created: 2019-09-09, modified: 2024-02-16, language: english, status: notes, importance: 2, confidence: log

Notes and ideas for texts & programs & startups & projects & libraries & factories & technologies that will be started decades in the future, as well as music.

Todo

In einer Ecke des Zimmers lag auf dem Fußboden all das in einem Haufen, was von gröberer Art und nicht würdig war, auf den Tischen zu liegen. Was sich aber in dem Haufen befand, war schwer zu bestimmen, denn er war mit solch einem Übermaß von Staub bedeckt, daß die Hände eines jeden, der ihn berührte, sich wie mit Handschuhen überzogen hätten; mehr als anderes fielen ein abgebrochenes Stück von einem Holzspaten, das dort hervorragte, und eine alte Stiefelsohle auf.

—Nikolai Googol, “Die toten Seelen”, 1842

Site

• Add tooltips to links (Title of Text)
• Find out how to make the site more inclusive
• (a) link for archives?
• Get rid of "we", use "I" instead.
• Improve citation (both to wikipedia and to papers)
• Make all scripted programs banged
• Description of images in italics below
• Move from Python2 to Python3
• Add two targets for make: offline and online
• Convert all the expensive image generating scripts into single ones that only run once, with multiple outputs
  • Done:
    • Range and Forecasting Accuracy
    • Daygame Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Switch to MathJax 3?
• Edit texts:
  • Considerations on Cryonics
    • Mainly done
• Flashcards:
  • Add tags for chapters/sort by chapters
  • Prune flagged cards?
• Add content tables to pages?
• Maybe a dark mode?
• Add RSS feed (ugh)
  • https://www.interglacial.com/tpj/26/
  • https://github.com/html2rss/html2rss
  • http://fetchrss.com/
  • https://www.linux.com/news/building-command-line-generator-rss-feeds-0/
  • https://lynxbee.com/bash-script-to-generate-rss-feed-compatible-xml-using-unique-urls-of-a-website/#.Yl_EYlxBxH5
  • https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-create-an-rss-feed-for-your-site-from-scratch/
  • https://florian-dahlitz.de/articles/create-feeds-for-your-blog
• Add metadata to hosted PDFs/videos
• List of writings by importance/finishedness
  • List of texts by year/author
• Replace
  • “” quotes by "" quotes, “” is for quotes within quotes
  • '*' in math formulas by '·'
• Improve linting
  • Incorporate https://www.gwern.net/static/build/markdown-lint.sh
  • https://www.html-tidy.org/
  • https://github.com/amperser/proselint/
• Find for a way to allow for LaTeX in code blocks that doesn't break everything immediately
• Pre-render LaTeX:
  • https://www.gwern.net/docs/www/joa.sh/290f53c78d4b287be8059260f613988a8abda677.html
  • https://github.com/pkra/mathjax-node-page/
• Maybe collapsable sections?
• Title is not JS-added
• Reading ruler (?)
• Move from $\mapsto$ to $\rightarrow$
• Move text_reviews.md to reviews.md

Existing Texts

• Range and Forecasting Accuracy
  • Find Muehlhauser email with additional source
  • Extend the analysis to more datapoints
    • Extend to more datasets
      • https://www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-data/real-time-data-research/survey-of-professional-forecasters
  • Add a literature review
    • https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/how-does-forecast-quantity-impact-forecast-quality-on-metaculus
    • https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/an-analysis-of-metaculus-predictions-of-future-ea-resources
    • https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/an-examination-of-metaculus-resolved-ai-predictions
    • https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/potentially-great-ways-forecasting-can-improve-the-longterm-future
    • https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/why-short-range-forecasting-can-be-useful-for-longtermism
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Scott_Armstrong#Forecasting
    • http://foresightr.com/2016/05/06/a-brief-history-of-forecasting
    • https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/risa.12127
    • Prediction: The long and short of it (Anthony Millner/Daniel Heyen, 2020)
    • https://www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-data/real-time-data-research/survey-of-professional-forecasters
    • https://www.edge.org/conversation/philip_tetlock-edge-master-class-2015-a-short-course-in-superforecasting-class-ii
  • Estimate with latent variable/instrumental variable
• Considerations on Cryonics
  • Add a literature review
    • https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01459741003715391
    • https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2016.1167576
    • https://books.google.de/books?id=9C0ABAAAQBAJ&pg=PA281&lpg=PA281&dq=Cryonics+cost+benefit+calculation&source=bl&ots=IIIVQtzzXt&sig=ACfU3U3KMGKCBWhP1tvegvKvHTyCLtZNGA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjc_O6v743qAhUKYcAKHXFVDsUQ6AEwDXoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=Cryonics%20cost%20benefit%20calculation&f=false
  • Think about incorporating the Metaculus questions on Cryonics into the probability
    • Revival
      • https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3330/will-any-person-that-has-been-cryopreserved-for-more-than-1-year-be-resuscitated-or-emulated-before-2200/
      • https://www.metaculus.com/questions/1626/before-1-january-2050-will-any-human-cryonically-preserved-for-at-least-1-year-be-successfully-revived/
      • https://www.metaculus.com/questions/455/if-you-die-today-and-get-cryonically-frozen-will-you-wake-up/https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3332/will-james-bedford-be-revived-or-emulated-before-2200/
      • https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3331/when-will-the-first-person-that-has-been-cryopreserved-for-more-than-1-year-be-resuscitated-or-uploaded/
      • https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3382/what-will-the-earliest-preservation-date-of-any-resuscitated-cryonics-patient-be/
    • Preservation:
      • https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3333/when-will-the-number-of-people-in-cryopreservation-preserved-before-2019-fall-to-less-than-50-of-the-current-value/
    • Signup:
      • https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3478/how-many-patients-will-be-in-cryonic-suspension-at-the-cryonics-institute-in-2030/
      • https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4052/if-cryonics-is-at-some-point-offered-for-free-what-percentage-of-americans-will-be-signed-up-within-10-years/
  • Different value of money at different ages?
  • Why not a Pascal's mugging?
    • No adversary
    • Probability not that low
    • Here assumed rather low bound on payoff to prevent
  • Update to new Alcor payment structure
  • Extend to other options/providers
    • Full-body presveration
    • Cryonics Institute
    • Oregon Cryonics
    • Tomorrow Biostasis
    • Southern Cryonics
    • Kriorus (maybe not though, after the recent debacle)
      • Expand the section on the Guesstimate model
  • Make interactive calculator
  • Add net-present value
• Abstinence from Masturbation and Success from Cold Approach
  • Test
    • This is a likert scale, so read that Wikipedia article first
      • Then change the statistical test
    • Instead of Student's t-test a survival analysis?
      • Such as a Kaplan-Meyer method & log-rank test?
      • Or a one-sided test?
    • Cox-regression (proportional hazard).
    • Will the data sets be normally distributed?
      • → If not, use Mann-Whitney U-Test.
  • What about abstinence ←→ masturbation ←→ pornography?
  • Pre-register
    • PredictionBook
    • Reddit
  • Change so that in the male case, there's nothing beyond collecting contact info (no date invite/date)
  • Elaborate on asking for contact info/date process
  • Literature review
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography
    • /usr/local/doc/unread/blackpill/physical_attractiveness_research_adams_1977.pdf
    • /usr/local/doc/unread/sexual_activity_is_inversely_related_to_womens_perceptions_of_male_facial_attractiveness_hess_et_al_2007.pdf
• Daygame Cost-Benefit Analysis
  • Incorporate new daygame stats from blogs
  • Adjust curve to fit Roy Walker & Thomas Crown data better
    • use scipy.optimize.curve_fit
  • different diminishing returns in code, make all logarithmic/radical/hyperbolic?
  • Expand or axe Fixed Costs & Variable Costs section
  • Create & explain Guesstimate Models
  • Upload data to Appendix C
• Turning
  • Enumerating different ways of collapsing graphs representing inconsistent preferences into consistent preferences
    • E.g. a>b>c>a must be cut in one place, pretty much indifferent about where to cut?
    • Or merge DAGs into a path graph
    • Continuous case: vector field over the probability simplex of options
    • In the 2-option probability simplex, continuity is violated if at some point the vector field "turns around"
    • Make consistent by rotating vectors so that the integral over vector strength/volume/degree of rotation is minimal
    • Nontransitivity is probably maximal curl at some point in the vector field
    • Also look at:
      • Graphon
      • Dense graph
      • Extremal graph theory
    • This also feels relevant to Ontological crises/shifts: Is there a canonical way to map from the human preference simplex to the AI preference simplex, if we know the concept equivalences? (A is just 30% B and 70% C, so we can split the simplex into another dimension here…)
• BCIs and Alignment
  • Data for scaling laws from BCIs

Texts

Forecasting

• Comparing Forecasting Accuracy Between the Good Judgment Project and Metaculus
  • https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/forecasting-covid-19-pandemic
  • https://pandemic.metaculus.com/questions/
• The "At-the-time best possible forecast"
  • Not literally best possible forecast
  • But for humans at the time with the available information

Population

• Antinatalism and Consent
• Wither Humanity? (Alternatively, “Ponderings on Population”)
  • Would a bigger humanity be a good idea?
  • Against:
    • Coordination
    • Resources
    • Safety from Malthusian Trap
  • For:
    • Growth
      • Specialization
    • Aggregative Arguments
• About Longtermist's Children
  • Disclaimer:
    • If people want to have children for egoistic reasons, it is not useful to argue against
    • Trying to convince people to not do things they deeply desire is bad, even under consequentialist reasoning
  • People argue that effective altruists (and especially longtermists) ought to have children
    • Most arguments for having children are bad
  • However:
    • Children are expensive, opportunity cost
      • Perhaps better: invest time/energy into life-extension tech
        • Or spreading ones memes
          • Memes under heavy selective pressure too, though
    • Traits we like are only moderately heritable, and will be washed out in a few generations (especially under selective pressure)
      • On each EA-related trait 50% heritability → very likely not EA (seems like specific combination of personality characteristics)
    • Parents seem to have relatively little influence on the values of their children (Is this true?)
    • Humanity will very likely not die out due to people stopping to breed
      • Indeed, It seems to me much more likely that if we wait long enough, we fall back into the malthusian trap
  • Why I Dislike This Argument
    • It comes from the genre of "Let's outbreed the other/bad people", which is very molochian
    • It leads to a malthusian trap/pure replicator hell with no value and no option to get out (in the long run)
  • However, maybe in the medium run this makes sense (not short enough for the really important stuff to happen during our lifetimes, not long enough for us to worry about malthusian traps)
    • Even then, however, just trying to build better institutions is more useful?
  • Would people prefer procreating to indefinite longevity?
• Modelling the Dream-Time (Population will probably start growing again)
  • How likely is another malthusian trap, how much time do we have got?
  • What kinds of scenarios lead to malthusian condition?
    • Base case biological humans
    • Base case without aging
    • Em case
  • What can be done against?
    • Population control
    • Monitoring
  • Reasons against worrying
    • Too far in the future
    • Number of children not heritable
      • But it is!
• Population Ethics Test Suite
  • Look at comments on “An Impossibility Theorem for Welfarist Axiologies” (Arrhenius 2000)
• Three-level population ethics
  • Symmetrical critical level
  • If any life below -critlevel, level 3
  • If all lifes above critlevel, level 1
  • Otherwise level 2
  • Average in Level 2, total in Level 1/3?
  • Prevents hijacking through efficient just-positive lives
  • Violates Mere Addition Principle
  • Has a symmetry (critlevel & -critlevel are symmetric), but also 2 discontinuities
  • Also somewhat counter-intuitive: Adding a person with critlevel-ε can make a populations welfare infinitely worse
  • Of course, still repugnant conclusion with critlevel+ε, but that's okay
  • But also many -critlevel+ε lives infinitely better than one life -critlevel-ε (actively repugnant conclusion)
  • And also one person with critlevel+ε infinitely better than many with critlevel-ε
  • tlpe::{:[(&/x)<-cl;+/x:|(-cl)<(&/x)<cl;ω++/x;(2*ω)++/x}
• Semi-Natalism
  • If I reason out that I am not the type of agent that would have children otherwise, I should have children
  • If I indeed reason out that I am the type of agent that would have children, I should not have children
  • Reasoning: If propensity to have children is heritable, this kind of decision will prevent my ancestors from becoming pure replicators
  • It is slightly paradoxical, though

Alignment

• Impact Measures Depend on, Rather Than Specify, Inaction Baselines
• Requirements for AI Safety via Debate
• Thoughts About Reward Hacking
• Faster algorithm for ontology mapping, first described in de Blanc 2011
• Implement the project described in Environmental Goals
• GPT for STEM data?
• Scaling laws for debate
  • AI safety via debate (Geoffrey Irving/Paul Christiano/Dario Amodei, 2018) test debate on an MNIST classifier with depths 4 and 6, what are the scaling laws for the depth and size of models?
• Import reddit post about nuclear & ai worries
• Overlapping Concerns for AI X-Risk and the Social Left
  • Interpretability
    • Useful for detecting & removing algorithmic bias
    • More understandable models can be more "democratic" and subject to regulations
  • Compute governance
    • Models requiring large amounts of compute are only available to big corporations
      • increase oligopolies
      • increased corporate vs. state capacity
        • companies pull away capable researchers to work on private projects
    • Large amounts of compute generate CO₂ (or, in the case of using green energy, counterfactually increase the price of green energy, leading to people (in expectation) purchasing more non-green energy)
  • More generally Overlap between Effective Altruism and the Social Left?
• Scaling Laws Under Different Activation Functions
  • What are the scaling laws for ReLUs vs. sigmoids?
  • Another datapoint on slow/fast takeoff
• Repurposing honeypots for AI safety?
• Kitchen sink versus integrated AI alignment
• The Relation Between Corrigibility and Impact Measures
• Distilling Debate Progress
  • https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PJLABqQ962hZEqhdB/debate-update-obfuscated-arguments-problem
• Umeshisms for Low Impact
  • If the future optimization trajectory along a dimension in the limit moves the value of that dimension to the maximum/minimum, don't do that.
  • The optimal amount of anything is not the most extreme amount
• Capable Artificial Alignment Theorists Appear Plausible
• Goal Misgeneralization along Ontological Shifts
  • Shard Theory and the Indirect Realist Turn is a subcase
  • Diamond turns into Diamond#1 and Diamond#2, latent and directly observed diamond. Which to generalize to?
  • Shard Theory and Ontological Crises
• Money-Pumping: A Computational-Complexity-theoretic Approach
• Establishing a Theory of Establishing Coherence
• Value- and Concept-Ladenness
• AI Alignment problems in pictures
  • See here
• Training LLMs on similarity to human thought
  • Achievable via EEG data?
  • Check paper Pope mentioned again
  • Problem with type signature
• Convergent Intervention Avoidanceⁿ
  • Check twitter thread on this
• Language Models Remain Bad at Judgmental Forecasting

Pick Up

• In Praise of Encouragement
• Game Seems to be a Middle-Class Phenomenon
• Don't Give Out Your Contact Information, Take Hers
• On the Importance of Pick Up
  • Combines Near (Sex) with Far (Abstract thinking)
• Women actually enjoy getting chatted up, or are indifferent to it
• Not masturbating for a while really improved my eye contact
  • Caveat though
• Yad Stop Flag
• Wild and Unsupported Conjecture: Learning Pickup is Mostly Rewriting Your Life-History Strategy

Time Experience

• Subjective time experience for advanced meditators
  • Wittmann & Schmidt 2013
• Interventions to Slow Down the Age-Related Speedup of Subjective Time
  • That theoryengine post
  • Slowing the Speedup of Subjective Time With Age
    • Meditation
    • New experiences
    • Drugs?
• Lit review

Philosophy

Ethics

• Creating Utility Monsters or Repugnant Beings
  • Marginal returns of investment on the well-being of single persons are probably monotonically increasing/decreasing
  • If so, we end up with utility monsters or in a repugnant conclusion
  • If not, we are lucky
• Separating Arguments From Inconsistency and Questions About Inconsistency
  • The thing Hanson does when arguing about ethics

Consciousness

• Matter is Philosophically Unnecessary
  • The matter/mind duality is an artifact of how our minds classify the world
• The Hard Problem of Consciousness Is Not About Matter
• Panpsychism is a Class of Theories of Consciousness, not a Theory of Consciousness
• Intentional vs. Non-Intentional Consciousness
  • The reason why, even if, strictly speaking, trees are "conscious", we don't have to worry about damaging them as much as we have to worry about damaging animals
• State some of position on consciousness

Meditation

• Brain Stimulation for Meditation Enhancement
  • Ultrasound
  • Magnetic stimulation
  • Electrical stimulation
• 52 Weeks of Meditation Techniques
  • Concentration of the Breath
  • Concentration on Sound
  • Concentration on Heartbeat
  • Fast Noting
  • Slow Labelling
  • Metta
  • Bodyscanning
  • Kasina on Candle Flame
  • Kasina on Colored Disk
  • Kasina on Water
  • Open Monitoring
    • Clear the desk, just watch out for pre-thoughts
  • Do Nothing
  • Zen stuff?
  • Mantra stuff?
  • Transcendental meditation stuff?
  • Chanting?
  • Visualization?
  • Yogic stuff? (Mudra)
• Survey on entry time to first jhana
• Technological Meditation Enhancement
  • https://www.jhourney.io/
  • https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/video/2021/jun/29/hacking-enlightenment-can-ultrasound-help-you-transcend-reality?CMP=twt_b-gdnvideo
  • https://www.wired.co.uk/article/consciousness-hacking-silicon-valley-enlightenment-brain
  • maybe https://www.vielight.com/
• Guided Meditations Are Not to be Overdone

Quantified Self

• Does exercise affect spaced repetition ability?
• Does masturbation affect spaced repetition ability?
• Does meditation affect my happiness?
• Do blood donations reduce my cognitive function?
• Does asking for affirmative consent turn women off?
• What effect did COVID-19 vaccinations have on my Anki scores?
• What is the effect of fasting on my, well, everything?
  • Especially meditation though
• Relation between
  • Exercise
  • Daygame
  • Meditation
  • Flashcards
  • Happiness
  • Masturbation
  • Substances
• Find easy ways to track
  • Computer usage
    • Fix awitt
  • Personal forecast accuracy?
  • Air pollution
  • CO₂ levels
  • Fasts
  • Brightness
• Muse headband for data collection?
• Scott Alexander CO₂ and wordgame performance
• Testing self-conditioning via nicotine as reward
  • https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909122052.htm
• Do I have better naps when I listen to fast audio of people talking?
• Instant food blind trial
  • Huel
  • Queal
  • Soylent
  • Jimmy Joy's (?)
  • Others?
• The General Algorithm For Self-Blinded Experiments
• Does music decrease my productivity?
  • randomize, awitt & check
• Does water in my mouth really make me cry less while cutting onions?
• Test CFAR handbook on GPT-4 written fake chapters
• Self-blinded RCTs with:
  • Nicotine (Examine summary, research)
  • Modafinil (Examine summary, research (here for Adrafinil, the Modafinil page isn't reachable?)
  • Adderall
  • Diet Coke
    • Aspartame
    • Phenylalanine (https://www.aaronbergman.net/p/contra-dynomight-contra-me-but-also)
  • Oxytocin
  • Testosterone
  • Vitamin C?
  • Lion's Mane
  • Take inspiration from Gwern, of course
• (Ro)accutane literature review
• Air with more O₂/less CO₂ content experiment
  • https://twitter.com/benwr/status/1706054091281412584
• Pomodoro Experiment
  • Apparently pomodoro technique has not been investigated empirically‽
  • See Attention Span (Mark 2023) p. 66

Arguments

• Why Still Choose C?
  • Long-term reliability/stability
  • Performance
  • Portability
  • → Caveat: Only portable if very reliably/portably written
    • I.e. stick to the standard, no GNUisms
• Unix is Not About Reimplementing Unix
  • Examples for claim:
    • Node JS
    • The Internet
    • Vim
    • https://gist.github.com/rjsteinert/f3823f3cdc9971779c17
  • "Do one thing, and do it well. Use text streams, since that is the universal interface"
  • Most systems reimplement unix ("Those who don't understand unix are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.")
• Libertarianism is too Simple
  • Libertarianism is a very simple method of organising society, so it must have been tried in the history of societies. However, none of those societies have survived, which makes it an unsuccessful way of structuring societies
  • Counter-argument: Humans are consistently biased against liberty
  • Counter-argument: Libertarianism is very well suited for modern (capitalist, technological) societies, which haven't existed for very long
• Limit “Philosophy” and “Art”
• Against Advertising
  • Strong claim: Advertising is always bad
  • Weak claim: Advertising in public spaces is bad
  • Does this hold up to a good consequentialist calculation?
• Against News
  • Priming → News+Wikipedia≤Wikipedia
• On the Importance of
  • Qualia Engineering
  • Track Records, Forecasting and Prediction Markets
  • The Difference in Sexual Behavior Between Men and Women
• Missing the Movement
  • "Most Hedonists end up sad!"
  • "Utilitarianism leads to bad results!"
  • "Rationalism leads to believing wrong things!"
  • Related text: Incremental Progress and the Valley
• In Favor of Gish-Gallop
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
• The Hedonic Treadmill and Politics
  • Inequality
  • Pareto Improvements
  • Hedonic Treadmill
  • Progress
  • Easterlin Paradox
  • Status Games
• In Praise of Cost-Benefit Analyses
• Reflections on Pseudonymity
  • “You don't know the pseudonyms I assume, you don't know the pseudonyms I assume…for you. Are you happier now \ About the gods who are dying \ What do you dream of \ Festing with omniscient beer” (?) (text from Bite Hard by Franz Ferdinand)
• In Non-Adversarial Universes, Systematic Trying Dominates Other Approaches
  • In short: trying to think better/act better can expected to yield monotonically increasing results with effort put in
  • Result: Utilitarianism works by its own standards, rationalism works by its own standards
  • (The Taoist Assumption)
  • Examples: Dating, basic math research without priorization is useful because muh number theory in cryptography
• The Overlap Argument for Learning Latin does not Hold
• The Existing-Uranium Argument Against Nuclear Waste Skepticism
• Why Mars' Moons Should Be Destroyed
• Why We Need New Anthems
  • Most national anthems suck, let's make some more original ones
    • Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_anthems
• Models With Huge Error Bars are Better Than No Models At All
• Some Epistemic Warning Signs in the Effective Altruism and Rationality Communities
  • People are Friends
  • People Date Each Other
    • Why a norm against this would be good
      • Opportunity to display a costly signal of deep belief in EA principles (cf Geeks, MOPs and Psychopaths & A Tale of Marriage Among the Gebusi)
  • Very Few People have Public Epistemic Track Records
  • Hot Messes
    • Leverage
    • Zizians
    • Psychotic Breaks in Berkeley
• Do Things Together
• Some Useful Rationality Concepts
  • Option Value
  • The Is-Ought Distinction
• The C Standard Library is Bad
• In The Dark Forest, Peace is Brittle And Hiding Is Easy
  • Eternity in Six Hours and unstable equilibria make the dark forest hypothesis unlikely
• Creating Positives versus Removing Negatives
  • Examples:
    • Epistemics: Removing Disinformation versus Writing Wikipedia Pages on Causal Inference
    • Climate Change: Protesting to Institute Carbon Taxes versus Doing a PhD on Plasma Physics for Fusion
    • Blockchain: Regulating Blockchain versus Trying to Find Pro-Social Uses of Blockchain (can proof-of-work be used to solve NP-hard problems from industry? If not, maybe it can be used to fixate CO₂ from the atmosphere? What about experiments for governance via DAOs?)
    • AI Alignment: Convincing AI capabilities researchers to stop working versus running experiments on alignment via debate
    • Economics: Reducing inequality versus supporting policy for economic growth (or funding a company)
    • Factory farming
    • General: Outlawing/regulating the Thing versus working on Thing safety
  • Left-long tails (removing negatives), right-long tails (creating positives), and symmetrically long tails (both are important)
  • Psychologically
    • Removing negatives probably coincides with Health/Purity
    • Removing negatives is more zero-sum, adding positives is more positive-sum (people in a negative-sum mindset don't really try to improve anything, I think)
  • Distinction between removing negatives/adding positives in method and in topic selection ("How can I solve this thing?" versus "What should I focus on?") (see negative versus positive utilitarianism)
  • See also upwing versus downwing (hat-tip FM-2030 via. John David Pressman)
• Given No Singularity, Mars Colonization Soon is Unlikely, but Asteroid Mining Looks Promising
• In Nearly Complete Defense of The Last Jedi
• The Anti-Myopia argument for the dignity prior depends on myopia never being the right course of action
  • Or, shorter: The Anti-Myopia Argument For The Dignity Prior Has A Questionable Premise
  • Better arguments come from semi-open-source game theory and ethical injunctions
• Overy violent vs. overly sexual examples
  • Sex & violence & maybe children weirdness in our culture
  • Why are we so okay with violence in movies & series, and so cucked about sex & sexuality?
    • Isn't sex good & violence bad‽
• Bitcoin maximalism is not even wrong
• Forecasting Track Records: Still Underrated
  • Argument: Metrics can be Goodharted. Answer: "A solution is technical if it is precise enough to be Goodharted and social if it is imprecise enough to be used to coalitionally extract value"
• E/acc in a Bathtub-Sized Nutshell
• An Anti E/acc FAQ
• Why Not Prepping?

lcamtuf 2018 distinguishes between three different kinds of disaster scenarios: small-scale events, mass calamities, and the "zombie apocalypse".

Contra

• Contra Yudkowsky on Axelrodian Tolerance
• In Favor of Selling Glee/Contra Alexander on Hedonic Acquisitions
  • Pointing out problems with the ideas in The Price Of Glee In China
  • General idea: When you find out that making people wealthier doesn't make them happier, you start thinking about how to make them happier instead of trying to find reasons why making them wealthier is still a good idea.
  • Read the post carefully
  • Read up on the research
  • Perhaps re-emphasize as "Easterlin Paradox"?
• Contra Morse on Fame
  • https://210ethan.github.io/thoughts/famous.html
• Contra Morse on Modern Life
  • https://210ethan.github.io/thoughts/modern.html
• Contra Alexander on Epistemic Minor Leagues
  • https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/epistemic-minor-leagues?s=r
  • Reality is really f***ing high-dimensional, so there's a bunch of nooks and crannies nobody has explored before
• Refactoring Rational Feelings
  • Relation between emotions, goals, strategy/planning, moral development etc.
• Scope Neglect is Not a Bias
  • or, Contra Desvouges and Kahnemann and Yudkowsky and Soares and Alexander on Oily Birds
  • Not necessarily dynamically inconsistent
  • I can want there to be ≥80 birds saved, but be indifferent about larger numbers
  • This does not hold if we include probabilities, though

Analyses

• Dumpster Diving
• Hitch Hiking
• Table Diving
• Walking Barefoot
• Keyboards
  • Hardware
    • Hands too near each other
    • Staggered keys maybe increase learning time, possibly increase typing time (sqr(2) instead of 1 movement distance)
  • Software
    • Layouts are a problem
    • Two modes: key position on keyboard & character presented by key
• Actuarial tables for dictators
• Ideology Transition Graphs
  • When people move along ideologies, which paths do they take?
  • How long do they stay at certain ideologies?
  • What are the overall transition probabilities, what are the "sinks" (look up on markov chains)
  • Survey on /r/CapitalismVSocialism
  • One part with selected ideologies:
    • Centrism, Apolitical
    • Social Democracy, Socialism, Communism
    • Liberalism, Left Liberalism, Anarchism
    • Libertarianism, Minarchism, Anarcho-Capitalism
    • Conservativism, Alt-Right, National Socialism, Fascism
  • One part with freely choosable ideologies
• Dice Chains
  • Throw n dice as long as the sum of their values is higher than the previous throw. What is the probability distribution on the length of the run?
  • Simulation from ../prog/dicechain/dicechain.lua
• Algorithm for distributing production of goods among different producers according to comparative advantage
  • producers: {2,n}
  • products: {2,n}
  • transformation curves: {linear, marginal, any}
  • indifference curves: {linear, fixed number, any}
• Building A Big Tower
  • 500 years, ~\$1t, stable technology, build a tower as big as possible
  • considerations
    • location
      • some mountains nearby for material
      • very stable ground (tower doesn't sink into the ground)
    • energy production
      • nuclear, probably
  • base of the tower probably square
    • length 5-10 km
  • pyramid shaped
    • 100 m for every layer, 20-50m distance to the edge of the last layer
  • big blocks
    • use lava to form them, from pulverized mountains
      • pump up powder/sand/little stones or magma?
      • in the former case, one also needs electricity at the top
• Nuking the Amazon Cost-Benefit Analysis
• How Strong is the Gender Difference In Sex Drive?
  • /usr/local/doc/unread/blackpill/is_there_a_gender_difference_in_strength_of_sex_drive_baumeister_et_al_2001.pdf
  • /usr/local/doc/unread/blackpill/in_heterosexual_relationships_men_masturbate_more_than_women_waterink_2014.pdf
• Do eggs burst when they're not poked before boiling?
  • Blinded, person needs to poke & write down, but not tell
  • Student's t-test
  • N=200
  • Pre-register
• Precommit to Enlightenment
  • precommit to performing the steps from TMI & MCTB2 for 10000 hours over 10 years (~2h every day on average, plus 2 retreats a year), then report back what the effects were
  • frame as experiment (is that actually legit?)
• Proposed Solutions to Pascal's Mugging
  • Bite the Bullet
  • Abandon Utility-Maximization
  • Bounded Probability
  • Bounded Utility
  • Abstain From Assigning Probabilities to Some Events
    • Probability of X is undefined
  • Maxipok
  • Links to relevant texts here:
    • https://gwern.net/mugging
    • https://gwern.net/Mugging-DP
    • https://nintil.com/pascals-mugging/
    • https://nickbostrom.com/papers/pascal.pdf
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging
    • https://patrickjuli.us/2019/11/10/pascals-mugging/
    • https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9WZAqFzNJ4KrhsqJ7/pascal-s-mugging-solved
    • https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gjyvXPqvCZPEtCKLB/tactics-against-pascal-s-mugging
    • https://risingentropy.com/pascals-mugging/
    • https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging
    • https://wmbriggs.com/post/20492/
    • https://medium.com/@SunBurntSky/pascals-mugging-787c37e76bc3
    • https://utilitarianism.fandom.com/wiki/Pascal%27s_Mugging
    • https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ap4KfkHyxjYPDiqh2/pascal-s-muggle-infinitesimal-priors-and-strong-evidence
    • https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KDzXTWSTg8ArwbhRR/pascal-s-muggle-short-version
    • https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CaPgNwxEFHh3Ahvf7/pascal-s-muggle-pays
    • https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8FRzErffqEW9gDCCW/against-the-linear-utility-hypothesis-and-the-leverage
    • https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NoYXhJLtoKpLoZhRf/pascal-s-mugging-finite-or-unbounded-resources
    • In defence of fanaticism (Hayden Wilkinson, 2020)
• Survey advanced meditators about their attainments and their monetary worth
  • That is, how much is your meditative attainment worth to you?
    • https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/comments/su8f1j/to_seek_or_to_not_seek_enlightenment/hx995y6/?context=3
    • https://www.shinzen.org/the-dark-night/
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmaZ6am_KIQ&lc=UgyhA5CfJXShZN9loVd4AaABAg.9DWh5Ao7Klk9DXRaKBauqZ
• Masturbation Spacing
  • Space masturbation to make it more enjoyable
  • Form:
    • Spacing between 2 and 12 days
    • 10 spacings
    • Between changing spacing, 1 or 2 1-day spacings
    • Record:
      • Spacing [2..12]
      • Enjoyment of orgasm [-5..5]
      • Counterfactual experience during everyday life [-5..5]
      • Type of pornography {none,text,audio,image,video}
  • Precommit to:
    • n: 6 9 11 8 3 10 5 12 7 4 2
    • i: 11 4 5 7 12 6 3 2 10 9 8
    • v: 12 9 8 11 7 2 4 6 10 3 5
    • t: 10 4 7 3 8 9 5 11 2 6 12
    • a: 4 2 3 8 9 11 10 7 12 6 5
  • set k 0; for i in 4 2 3 8 9 11 10 7 12 6 5; for j in (seq 1 10); set k (echo "\$k+\$i" | bc); date -I'date' -d "2028-11-17 +$k days"; end; end | xsel -psb
• Ingredients to Moloch
  • Tragedy of the Commons
  • Nash Equilibria
  • Unilateralist's Curse
  • Pure Replicator Hell
  • Convergent Instrumental Goals
• Egoistic Cost-Benefit Analysis of focusing on AI alignment
• Voting Cost-Benefit Analysis
  • Altruistic, egoistic
• Timeline of the Odyssee
• Roomba Cost-Benefit Analysis
• A History of the Term “Rationalist”
• Wireheading
  • Electrical Brain Stimulation
  • Wireheading
  • Brain Stimulation Reward
  • Questions:
    • How much wireheading research has been/is being done?
    • Why is there so little wireheading research/why is it not very prominent?
    • Do animals (especially humans) develop tolerance to intracranial stimulation?
    • Do animals (especially humans) develop an addiction to intracranial stimulation?
    • Is wireheading reversible? (in principle, in practice so far)
    • How long can one wirehead until it leads to negative health outcomes (in principle, in practice)
    • How good does intracranial stimulation feel? (compared to other positive experiences)
    • Is wireheading actually pleasurable or just compelling? (in the sense that one wants to continue being wireheaded although it doesn't strictly "feel good")
    • How does intracranial stimulation work?
  • Desiderata:
    • Reversibility
    • Non-adaption
    • Non-addiction
    • Safety
    • Ability preservation
    • Anti-slipperiness
• Describe and write some code for the n-polytopal conjecture
  • Just generalise Pollock's polyhedral conjecture for n-dimensional polytopes
  • Also try to prove the case for triangular numbers first to get a feel for it?
• Try to find subway pollution levels in LOCAL_CITY
• Expected value of plastic surgery for men (jaw augmentation)
  • Daygame test! Daygame test!
  • Also with google surveys for attractiveness before & after
    • Include decoy lizard question
• Test computationally whether causal networks have more correlations or causations, project from here
• Find Polygenic scores for subjective well-being and run them through Gwerns Embryo Selection Analysis
  • See this section
• Testing CFARs techniques and anti-procrastination techniques
  • Use:
    • CFAR handbook
    • Hammertime & others
    • Lesswrong post about anti-procrastination techniques
• Universe good or bad calculation
• More Heinz Ketchup than cum
  • Probably not, through animals
• Recycling cost-benefit calculation
• A History of the Effective Altruism/Bayesian Rationality cluster
  • For example, why poly?
• Pareto improvements and equity/equality
• Marinelli Beaker Analytical Solution
• Weighted by frequency, do female names
  • End more often in 'a'
  • Contain more vowels than male names, controlling for the above
• Predicting voice from face or vice versa
• Bihacking/polyhacking case studies collection
• Post-mortem on liquid democracy in the real world
• Investigate this post empirically via information from forecasting datasets
• Ethics survey

Ideas

• Ends of Discussions
  • Dissolving the question
    • Discussion about the meaning of a word
    • Disagreement about an arbitrary category (morality/aethetics)
  • Bet
  • Agreement
  • Related to "Varieties of Argumentative Experience"
• The End of History Fallacy
• The “If Everyone Just” Argument
  • The argument just assumes one of the biggest problems away: coordination and cooperation
  • Related: Malthusianisms
  • Related: https://squareallworthy.tumblr.com/post/163790039847/everyone-will-not-just
• Information and Markets:
  • Explanation
    • Information as a non-scarce good
  • Existing solution
    • Copyright
    • Patents
  • Problems with patents/copyright
    • creates a temporary monopoly
    • → all regular problems with monopolies as result
      • no competition
      • therefore, less/no innovation
      • higher prices
      • prevention of further work based on the innovation
      • copying is inherent to (all but quantum) information, preventing it is theoretically (and for the most part also practically) impossible
      • possible overcompensation: some people get a lot more money than appropriate for the work they put in, some get nothing
      • it's ontologically confused
  • Possible solutions:
    • Pay for production
      • Patreon
      • Kickstarter
    • Premium models
    • Advertising
      • Problem: getting harder the more products come into the information domain
    • Open-source model: free work
  • This is essentially a discussion about how to finance public goods
• Æsthematics
  • Infinite Fractal Meta Recursion
    • This is possibly just the ordinal numbers
  • Mendeljew Operator
  • Supersymmetric Copying
• Preference Frustration Auctions
• The Tyranny of the Mill
  • The Hedonic Treadmill is very good & very bad
• Writing system based on all binary trees with maximal height 2
  • no 's' sounds
• Moving the Lever Closer
  • Due to an asymmetry in human decision making, making somebody causally more responsible for a negative action makes them less likely to take that action
  • Related: The bystander effect
• Salty fries
  • Buy something, that creates a need for something else (software <-> support, salty fries <-> drinks)
• Running Away from Your Problems
  • Examples
    • Anti-biotics
    • de Grey anti-aging proposal
• Cryptographic Agreement on Bribing
• Encoding Conditionals Using Modulo
• Auras as synesthesia between visual perception and emotional perception
  • Maybe a survey?
• Yang Wenli and Reinhard von Lohengramm—Taoism and Confucianism?
  • Yang's "Win without fighting" is Wu Wei
• The Argument from Explanation of Intuition
  • When you explain an intuition by its causal origin (e.g. a moral one by evolutionary psychology), it often loses its bite
• Sitting in X
  • You analyze everything under light of X
  • You believe that everyone else also intuitively analyzes everything under the light of X
• The Generalized Concept of Addiction
• Implications of Attainable Utility Preservation on practical rationality
  • Further argument why death is bad:
    • Removes many degrees of freedom for action
  • Preserve option value, avoid irreversible actions
    • Be conservative:
      • Preserve humans, ecosystems, language, culture (losing them is really bad, perhaps)
  • These are especially important for humans since our values change, in somewhat forseeable ways
• An Unreasonable Proposal
  • Merge India and the European Union
• Writing Notes
  • Concatenating Different Explanations
• $k$ grass-cutting robots on $n$-dimensional manifolds
• Improving Coordination Over Time is a Longtermist Crux
  • Solution: If coordination is eventually easy with a non-negligible probability, it's not a problem
• Should the EA Community Buy Large AI Labs?
  • Use the Rocket Squid quote from Erogamer
• Clanishness vs. tribalism and relatedness in Dunbars number sized groups
• Upwing and downwing as new political fronts
  • Hat-grab at John David Pressman
• EA Cause Area Idea: Buy 0-day exploits and inform the companies
• European vs. American Intervention Intuitions
  • Europeans (esp germans) seem to have very different intuitions than Americans on foreign interventions. This might be because of the the two world wars taking place on european, but mostly not on american soil
• fMRI scans for enhancing brain preservation through cryonics
• Society free-rides on a lot of altruism, this has consequences
  • The Fragile Blessing of Unrewarded Altruism
  • Implications for Open Borders
• The General Societal Problem of Matching Things
  • Friends
  • Romantic Partners
  • Jobs to Workers
  • Living Locations to Tenants
• Lesser known causal graphs
  • Mathematical art with causal graphs where edges can point to (or inhibit) other edges
  • Not to be taken seriously
• For two function $f$, $a$, define how Goodharting optimizing for $a$ is when the outcome should be $f$
• Attack versus Defense in the Long Run
  • Investigate empirically from game data at different levels of capability

Collections

• Simple Unsolved Math Problems
• Differences Between GNU and POSIX make
• Better Mathematical Notation
  • Mathematical notation is not a planned and systematic endeavour, but the result of a long process of generation and selection of different notations. Here I collect contemporary ideas for better notation, and discuss old & discarded methods of writing mathematics.
  • Discarded Methods
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begriffsschrift
    • https://github.com/prathyvsh/notation
  • New Notations
    • General
      • https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/mathematical-notation-past-future/
      • /usr/local/doc/unread/towards_a_better_notation_for_mathematics_olah_2010.pdf
    • Triangle of Power
      • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULa9Lc4pck
      • https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/30046/alternative-notation-for-exponents-logs-and-roots
      • http://www.solidangl.es/2015/04/a-radical-new-look-for-logarithms.html
  • Read
    • /usr/local/doc/unread/notation/notation_as_a_tool_of_thought_iverson_1986.pdf
  • Substitution of variables in formulas: order is bad & wrong
• Recommendations
  • Activities/Movies/Series/Podcasts/Books/Blogposts
• Notes on a Grand Plan to Learn Everything
  • Exploration
    • Read Wikipedia with this method
    • Read SEP
      • randomly?
  • Learning
    • Reading textbooks (Natural sciences and engineering)
      • Mathematics
        • https://intelligence.org/research-guide/
        • https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm
        • https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html#math
      • Science
        • Physics
          • Feynman Lectures on Physics
          • https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/13/so-you-want-to-learn-physics
          • https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicphys.htm
          • https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html#physics
        • Chemistry
        • Social Sciences
          • Economics
        • Life Sciences
          • Biology
            • https://old.reddit.com/r/biology/wiki/faq#Suggestedtextbooks
            • Campbell Biology
            • Molecular Biology of the Gene
            • Molecular Biology of the Cell
            • Principles of Biochemistry (Leininger)
            • Evolutionary Biology (Futuyma)
            • Zoology
          • Ecology
          • Paleontology
        • Earth Sciences
          • Geology
          • Meteorology
        • Psychology
          • Cognitive Psychology
          • Developmental Psychology
          • Neuropsychology
          • Industrial-Organizational Psychology
          • Social Psychology
          • Forensic Psychology
          • Evolutionary Psychology
            • Evolutionary Psychology (Buss)
      • Engineering
        • Computer Science
          • https://teachyourselfcs.com/
        • Electrical Engineering
        • Mechanical Engineering
        • Chemical Engineering
        • Bioengineering
        • Civil Engineering
        • Geoengineering
        • Medicine
    • Doing the exercises
  • Rehearsal
    • Creating flashcards from the textbooks, rehearsing them
      • Flashcard creation is pretty liberal in what is accepted
      • Use a system that supports images/LaTeX
        • Anki
      • bifot: bifot is flashcards of textbooks
      • pof: pile of facts (from Wikipedia)
      • φf: Philosophy facts (from SEP)
  • Testing
    • Forecasting
      • Metaculus
      • Spend relatively long on each question (15 minutes)
• Anecdotes About the Running Times of Test Suites in the Software Industry
• Ways in which people have misspelled "Kurzgesagt" on the internet
• Ranking, Rating and Reviewing Patricia Taxxon's Music
• Meanings of "so" in German
• Heuristics for Friendly Conversation on the Internet
• Much More Than You Wanted to Know
  • Vandwelling
  • UBI
    • https://www.givedirectly.org/basic-income/
  • Climate Change Impacts
  • Shipping
  • The Uyghurs and China
  • Cryonics in Germany
  • Cryonics in Europe
  • Extremely Long-Lived Institutions
  • Easterlin Paradox
  • Rotwelsch
  • Picoeconomics
  • Cold Showers
• Elon Musk Forecast Correction Function
  • Code: 1.8239233 * (forecasted-forecast_made) + 48.0502205 (days)
  • Original
  • This was done already by Anthony Boyles
• End-of-the-world Bet Calculator
• Auctioning off Your Body
  • https://www.humanmicrobes.org/
  • Kidney
    • See: Gary Becker & Julio Jorge Elías (Summer 2007). "Introducing incentives in the market for live and cadaveric organ donations". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 21 (3): 3–24. doi:10.1257/jep.21.3.3. PMID 19728419.
  • Sperm, Eggs
  • Plasma/Blood
  • Hair
• Nuclear Waste FAQ
• List of three-letter names for Unix related people (dmr, ken, rsc, there are probably others?)
• Heuristics for Long-Term Websites
  • Host images/pdfs/videos/audio files locally (this makes it easier to archive the site via wget!)
  • Use static webpages with minimal javascript, and optimally no external javascript
  • No CMSs, or SquareSpace, or BlogSpot/WordPress/…
  • https://www.gwern.net/Design
  • No dynamically loading images for f*cks sake
• A list of countries with ratings for how open their borders are
• Typology of motivations to get into EA
• Red teaming markets
• Some Reasons to Be Unusually Truth-Oriented
  • Maybe compartmentalization is easy though?
• EPRC Bibliography
• How good are forecasters?
  • How good are prediction markets?
• Reporting Likelihood Ratios: A Practical Tutorial
• Some Problems in Computational Philosophy
  • Metrics for Logical Correlation
    • Between Decision Algorithms and algorithms in general
  • The Python-with-Witch Problem
  • Solomonoff Induction with a Sophistication Prior?
  • Dutch-books for Agents That Implement Incompleteness via Randomization
  • The UTMs-simulate-each-other solution to the Python-with-Witch problem
    • Look up LW shortform comment on this
    • https://nitter.net/RatOrthodox/status/1552618631602663425#m
    • Towards the Best Programming Language for Universal Induction
    • Bayesian Conspiracy episode where this is mentioned
  • Deminatalist utilitarianism pitfalls
  • Humans Are Not Turing Machines Because Nothing Is
    • Apparently critrats believe this?
    • We're finite state machines, I think
  • The Monotonicity-Argument for Occam's Razor, and Its Inapplicability to Kolmogorov Complexity
  • Which Coherence Axioms are Hard to Violate? Which Easy?
  • Metrics for Goodhartability
    • Given a function $f$ and an approximation $a$, how do we measure the Goodhartability of $f$ when maximizing $a$, even in principle?
• Bounded Population Axiology

Notes

• Be Liberal in what you Accept, but Conservative in what you Emit
• Believing Something Doesn't Mean You to Tell it to Everyone
• You Actually Don't Need to Convice Idiots
• Hug the Objective
  • When trying to achieve something, work directly on that thing
  • Related to: yak-shaving
  • "Do the real thing" by Scott Young
  • Buffers by Rollo Tomassi
• No One Knows & No One Can Know
  • This argument infuriates me: did you try to find out what people actually know?
• Sometimes People have the same Credences but Still Disagree
• Teaching Oneself vs. Being Taught
  • Two different mindsets
• Blogging as an Act of Benevolence
  • Mindset of "making a gift"
• Most People Have No Power At All
  • Therefore it's probably not very important what most people think
• Hail Cyclists
  • Positive Externalities: Environment, Attractiveness
• Boo Discord
  • Why on earth did this software become the replacement for forums?
  • Or: Lamentations on Fora
• There is no Continous Probability Distribution without a Mode
• Sharing Beliefs vs. Evidence vs. Models vs. Ontologies
  • With examples:
    • Beliefs: Very common, but no crisp example?
    • Evidence: Most of Metaculus comments, most of Wikipedia
    • Models: Textbooks
    • Ontologies: Grand philosophy books (e.g. The Sequences, the Tao te Ching, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung)
• Growth
  • How long can growth continue if the maximal value of an atom is fixed?
  • Growth might slow to cubic (sphere expanding at constant fraction of c)
• Defining long content
  • Conditions point to a cluster in thingspace
  • Comprehensive: long and detailed, providing sources, visualizations, code, predictions, etc.
  • Optimal: attempts to be a piece of content on the pareto frontier of what it is talking about)
  • Updated: even if it doesn't pertain to current events, the author is either still working on it or had worked on it for a long time
  • Hail Long Content
    • Most Topics are Too Short for Books
  • Hail FAQs
  • Properties of good curations
    • Completeness (everything relevant is there)
    • Order (sorted by importance/relevance)
  • Most problems get solved far too often, create (or maintain, or support) canonical resources
    • wasted motion
  • Long content and its curation
• Tracking of Belief Introduces Overhead
• The Sum Rule Holds for Jacobians and Hessians
• Mastery is Exceedingly Rare

Very few will aspire to real mastery themselves. Very few will take the time to learn even the basics of meditation theory. Even fewer will go on retreats. Of those that do, only a handful will get their concentration strong enough to attain to basic jhanas or ñanas. Of these, only a couple will be able to cross the A&P, handle and investigate the Dark Night, attain Equanimity, and get stream entry. Of those who attain stream entry, a reasonable number will progress to the middle paths, but not many will attain arahantship. Call me cynical, but this was true in the Buddha's time and it remains true today.

— Daniel Ingram, “Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha”, 2018

Improving your game is really really hard. It may be the hardest thing you ever attempt. I'd estimate only 20% of men are even capable of processing the basic concepts to reach an understanding of Game. Of those men who theoretically "get" the idea of Game, probably only 20% of them will do enough in-field work to become better with women. Of that tiny sample, probably only 10% will actually become Good With Women. This means that only 1 out of 250 men will even reach the intermediate level of Game. Even those odds likely overstate the number of Players in the world.

— Nick Krauser, “Daygame Mastery”, 2014

On Pickup

• Some Thoughts on Game Effectiveness Metrics
  • Wall-clock time vs. time spent doing game vs. number of approaches
• Umeshisms as Shit-Test Responses
  • "If you're not getting stabbed by pretty women you talk to, the women you approach aren't beautiful enough."
  • "The optimal amount of awkwardness is not zero."
• The Jam Session DHV

Reports

• How I organize my information diet
• Becoming Marginally More Productive
  • Follow Alexey Guzey's Advice, Leave the House
  • Internet Abstinence
• Buying Socks of One Kind
• Tracking A Lot
• Chatting Up Random People
  • Asking the Hamming Question, "What is art?", "What is justice?", or simply, "Would you like to hold a conversation?"
• Weekly 1-on-1s
• Kissing Hands as Greeting/Goodbye
• Future:
  • Remembering Names
  • Fixing My Voice
  • Experiments with Butt Stuff
  • Fixing my Posture
• Lessons in Instrumental Rationality from Approaching 600 Women in the Street
  • I Solved a Big Problem in My Life: Not Having Sex
• A Typical Daygame Session
• A Typical Meditation Session
• A 1 Month At-Home Meditation Retreat

Misc

• Evolution as a Tautology
  • Structures that are Better at Self-Replication will Eventually be More Common than the Ones Which are Not
• A Collection of Screenshots from “Legend of the Galactic Heroes”
• Coding Standards
  • General Project Setup
  • C
  • Shell Scripting
• Mistakes
• Open Questions
  • Why Not Nano-Apartments?
  • Why Not Prepping?
  • ~/etc/notes/questions
• Good Ideas
  • Some ideas I've read about & found good
  • Forecasting
    • Track records
    • Prediction platforms
    • Prediction markets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
    • Decision markets
    • Futarchy
  • Voting methods
    • Approval voting
    • Maybe quadratic voting, although I haven't looked into it too much
  • Taxes
    • Pigovian taxes instead of strict rules on damaging public goods
      • How computationally tractable are these?
      • Which computational complexity?
    • Harberger taxes (COST)
      • The thing Glen Weyl is talking about
  • Sokalling
    • Look up tweet by David Chapman
    • Adversarial submitting of fraudulent papers to journals
  • Besides stdin, stdout and stderr, add usrin and usrout as standard unix files: latter is for confirming decisions, status bars etc. I read this proposal a few years back, but can't find it again.
  • Programming languages without operator precedence: APL/K/J. Why? One less detail to keep in mind, structured data flow. Downside: Inconsistency with mathematics, not relevant in languages with little use of operators.
  • Status tags ({prototype, in progress, maintenance, finished, hiatus, abandoned}) for open source projects.
  • Mental tool: How would you solve this if you had a hypercomputer?
    • Unbounded Analysis, problem relaxation as a tactic by TurnTrout on LW
  • Cryonics
  • Daygame
• Cryonics Zine
• The Grand Picture
  • See Sandberg 2021
• Import ~/etc/notes/misc, tweets and toots from schelling.pt and social.freetalklive.net
• Fundamentals

we should be far more explicit about the assumed background against which we intend to communicate.

— John Nerst, “30 Fundamentals”, 2018

Explorables

• For modern methods of causal inference from statistical data (especially Pearl?)

Reviews

• Emily in Paris
• Practical Insight Meditation
• There is No Antimemetics Division
• Worm
• The Machinery of Freedom
• The Big Short
  • An Elegy

Fiction

• A Religion
  • A pseudo-mathematical religion combining several unrelated ideas is presented and explained. Inspired by Unsong
  • Ingredients
    • Timelessness
      • Plotinus
    • Tegmark's Mathematical Universe
      • /usr/local/doc/unread/physics/our_mathematical_universe_tegmark_2014.epub
    • Symmetry Theory of Valence
      • /usr/local/doc/unread/principia_qualia_johnson_2017.pdf
    • Scott Alexander's Solution to Theodicy
      • https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/15/answer-to-job/
  • Explanation
    • Creation
    • God
    • Heaven
      • Compute "path" of mind from existence in the world as a mathematical shape into n-dimensional (72-dimensional?) ball
      • hedonium has maximal symmetry, which should just be the ball, but little information content
      • hold this computation in timelessness so that the mind experiences the path indefinitely long
    • Hell
• Dishwasher Paper Titles
  • Maybe with Abstracts
• Homeless Super-Mathematicians
  • Perhaps in the SCP format?
• Blue Reality
  • Like the Red Reality SCP, but people in there are really well (think MDMA)
• The Intentionality of the Tyrannical Object
  • SCP format
  • Abstract Tyrannical Object as a thing in the real world
  • Has the property of intentionality (except for celibate men?)
  • Text by german early 20th century continental philosopher about this object
  • Fragments by a 11th century german monk about this
• Guten Morgen
  • Brecht-style play about a worker who doesn't answer his boss saying "Guten Morgen" at 5 AM in the factory, and the class conflict erupting over this
• All-Feeler
  • Object that untwists topological boundaries in phenomenological space
• Qui Custodiet?
  • A group of AI alignment researchers by accident stumbles upon cognitive enhancement and willpower direction technologies. Because AGI seems imminent, they reluctanctly start using the technology. They manage to always stay a step or two ahead of the AI systems growing in capability, but continue having to self-modify in order to devise new strategies. The world watches as increasingly unaligned alignment researchers and unaligned artificial intelligence battle for attainable utility…
• A History of Names
• Destructive Uplift Theory of the Boötes Void
• A Fanfiction of Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat, explaining the dangers of hypercomputation
  • If you have a closed timelike curve, you are probably uncleashing computational titans the likes of which you can not fathom, beings that would snack superintelligences like potato chips
  • See also: Causal Noose by qntm, NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality Aaronson 2006, The Hundred-Light-Year Diary
• Fiction about an expedition to the south pole, finding indigenous population
  • schelling.pt thread abt this
• Skalpell Bizeps

11-uhr-luft liegt rauh auf dem parkplatzboden. in den ritzen des asphalt streitet sich krepierender löwenzahn mit ausgeblichenen zigarettenstummeln um platz. abblätternde farbe liegt dazwischen, obwohl die altbauten noch ein paar hundert meter entfernt liegen.

• myzel

moderne kapitalistische verteilung ist weder zentralisiert noch dezentralisiert, sie ist myzelisch, verwaberndes, meist unsichtbares gewebe in einem fruchtbaren umfeld, mit anhäufungen, ballungen und kumulationen von produktionszentren—zur festigkeit verdichtetes gewebe dort fassbar, wo es sich am wenigsten äußert. werden als eine kontingente verschmelzung von fast-sein und konkretheit"

Translations

• Kodomulo Manifesto (translation of “A Hacker Manifesto” into Esperanto)
• Translate Endliche Gruppen I into English

Archiving

• Type up John Nash's Thesis in LaTeX
• Make page explaining "Shoulding at the Universe"
• Make page explaining "Cryptonormativity"
• Make a page explaining "Mental Motions"
  • Find mentions of this, and write up what the term means.
• squid314 dedicated site (only good posts/posts that don't doxx Scott too much, ask him about it)
• Chronological archives of blogs
  • TheRedQuest
  • hbdchick
  • Traditions of Conflict
  • Quanta Magazine
  • Nautilus
• Best of collections from blogs
  • TheRedQuest
  • Overcoming Bias
  • hbdchick
• A wiki for pickup terminology
  • Does http://www.pualingo.com still exist? If not, dig out archived version
• Kiwix versions of LessWrong, Alignment Forum, Effective Altruism Forum

Videos

• Population Axiology
• Causal Inference
• Patricia Taxxon music videos with generated images
  • Hellbulb
  • Alien
  • Cilantro
  • Rawr
• Cool girl video + Death By Glamour
• Alice in Wonderland that scene with Tweedledee and Tweedledum

Data Sets

Collect data on

• Bag Spreading
• Masturbation and Attractiveness
• Subjective Life Expectancy
• Datasets on
  • Sex
• Large STEM Dataset
  • For training large ML models that are less likely to be human models
  • Some dataset on polyamory??

Flashcards

• Convert Issa Rice's Analysis Flashcards to Anki
• Flashcard sets for:
  • Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
  • Naive Set Theory
  • Reactive Systems
  • Population Genetics
  • Multivariable Calculus
  • Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning
  • The Jazz Piano Book
  • A Primer in Social Choice Theory
  • Parameterized Algorithms

Music

Clarinet

• Clarinet Concerto (Mozart)

Piano

• The People United Will Never be Defeated (Rzewski)
• Das Wohltemperirte Clavier (Bach)
• Beethoven Piano Sonatas (Beethoven)
• Impromptus (Schubert)
• Nocturnes (Chopin)
• Gymnopédies/Gnosiemmes (Satie)
• Rhapsodie in Blue (Gershwin)

Languages to Learn

• French
• Esperanto
• Latin
• Serbocroatian
• Toki Pona
• Lojban
• Ithkuil

Programming

• cap
  • simple language for assembling different files into one. syntax very sed/ed like, mostly like this: [line,]line@file[<|^|>][line,]line[|comm] where line is a regex enclosed in '/' with an optional number suffix or a line number, file is a filename and comm is a shell command in single quotes. the text from each file is inserted into a buffer and printed at the end of the cap script.
• toc
  • time out cat, which prints its input unless there was no input for more than argv[1] seconds (try different versions, settle for the most exact version that is not unbearably slow).
• lvst

  • print levensthein distances of strings

  • option '-f' for the field separator

  • can be used for fuzzy search

  • usage:

    $ lvst "test"
    foo
    3:test:foo
    bar
    4:test:bar
    

• cy
  • A very simple version control system, written in rc. inspiration from put and get, from "the unix programming environment".
  • supports 3 operations
    • init (initialize a repository)
    • put (make a commit)
    • get (go back to a certain commit)
  • tracks changes within files and deletion/creation of files
  • reason: git/hg are good, but way too huge for private, simple, linear, personal repositories.
  • inspiration: svn/rvn/eie
• fle
  • suckless pager
  • commands
    • [f]orwards
    • [b]ackwards
    • [u]p
    • [d]own
    • j
    • k
    • g
    • G
    • [/] for searching
    • [n]ext and [p]revious match
  • support for arbitrary length files, loading lazily, unicode is displayed properly, big lines are dealt with properly.
• recog
  • program that accepts one backus-naur form grammar and checks if it's input or other files match that grammar.
  • BNF -(Convert to Chomsky Normal Form)> CNF -(Cocke-Younger-Kasami algorithm)> Boolean
  • Relevant material:
    • RFC 2234
    • RFC 4234
    • RFC 5234
    • RFC 7405
  • Possible BNF forms:
    • ABNF (RFCs)
    • EBNF
    • naive & simple form (similar to the one used on Wikipedia)
      • <symbol>
      • optionality: '?'
      • repetition: '+'
      • repetition with optionality: '*'
      • alternative symbols: '|'
      • assignment: '::='
      • "string"
• sif
  • simple text processing filter that takes only one instruction
  • (single instruction filter)
  • instruction form:
    • [^]/str/[,[^]/str/]((a|i|c)/str/)|d|p
    • str is a literal string here (no regex)
    • a=>append, i=>insert, c=>change, d=>delete, p=>print
    • '^' means that the following str is excluded from the matched text
  • sif does not do input/output buffering and does treat whitespace as any other character.
  • normally, everything is printed, unless the option '-n' is used.
• pau
  • vis-digraph reads from the terminal input directly and emulates the input of the corresponding character
    • uses table from RFC 1345
      • Seems not extendable, damn
  • if vis-digraph extendable, add:
    • Interrobang ‽ ?!
    • Join ⋈ ><
    • Expected value 𝔼 |E
    • Real numbers ℝ |R
    • Integers ℤ |Z
    • Natural numbers ℕ |N
    • Triple e ≡ 3=
    • Approximately e ≈ ~~
    • Subscript a ₐ _a / as
    • Subscript e ₑ _e / es
    • Subscript h ₕ _h / hs
    • Subscript k ₖ _k / ks
    • Subscript l ₗ _l / ls
    • Subscript m ₘ _m / ms
    • Subscript n ₙ _n / ns
    • Subscript o ₒ _o / os
    • Subscript p ₚ _p / ps
    • Subscript s ₛ _s / ss
    • Subscript t ₜ _t / ts
    • Superscript i ⁱ ^i
    • Superscript n ⁿ ^n
  • daemon that catches such digraphs and emulates them as if they were typed, using vis-digraph
• mtfs
  • plan9 file server for a file that returns the current metric time on read
• libbruch
  • rational numbers with libzahl
  • some functions:
    • badd(bruch a, bruch b, bruch c): a:=b+c
    • bsub(bruch a, bruch b, bruch c): a:=b-c
    • bdiv(bruch a, bruch b, bruch c): a:=b÷c
    • bmul(bruch a, bruch b, bruch c): a:=a⋅c
    • binv(bruch a, bruch b): a=b^(-1)
  • more functions:
    • bset, bseti, bsets, bsetu, bstr, bfloor, bceil, bmod, bcmp, bcmpu, bsqrt, binit, bfree, bsave, bload, bsetup, bunsetup, berror, bperror
• nager
  • sxhkd for the mouse
  • syntax: [MOUSEEVENT] [, MOUSEEVENT] [ /*possibly nested*/ COMMAND ]
• erle
  • rlwrap alternative, takes ideas from the fish shell interactive mode
  • normal readline like behavior (but using something simpler, like linenoise/dietline)
  • history file is loaded during startup
  • <text>[UP] shows the last command containing <text>, again [UP] the one before that, and so on
  • <word1> <word2>[TAB] expands <word2> into the last word (string separated from the others with a newline/space) beginning with <word2>
  • no input for more than half a second/a second shows a suggestion of the last command beginning with the current line.
  • ideas for speeding it up:
    • use char** for storing each history and words
    • benchmark and optimise, of course
• pandeck
  • convert files from different spaced repetition softwares into another
    • fulgurate .crd
    • mnemosyne
    • anki
    • orbit
• unitspheretransform
  • VR application that visualizes the transformation of the unit sphere in 3-dimensional space
  • also unit circle transform
  • color code the original vectors
  • interpolate them?
• hedonium
  • look up different information-processing centric ideas about consciousness
  • combine them with the symmetry theory of valence
  • implement the best approximation of these
• minspantree
  • implement all algorithms for the minimum spanning tree in a functional programming language
  • like sml/ocaml
  • /usr/local/doc/unread/cs/state_of_the_art_algorithms_for_minimum_spanning_trees_eisner_1997.pdf
• nenio
  • a suckless prolog implementation
  • ISO prolog
• rien
  • suckless sml implementation, sml '97
  • maybe build on mosml
• curve
  • C with significant whitespace
  • indentation instead of braces
  • optional semicolons & optional parentheses around for/while/if/switch
• jmp
  • j/z for rc
  • jumps into frecent directories
  • should also work on plan9
• ladder
  • datastructure where key and value are interchangeable
  • two arrays/slice, sorted, where each element has a pointer to the corresponding element in the other list
  • searching has the speed of binary search
  • insertion has the speed of the underlying datastructure, but twice
• openspace
  • Given a rectangle with many inscribed rectangles, what is the biggest open rectangle in there?
  • Seems like a packing problem
• species
  • browsable tree of all currently known biological species
  • starting from the highest classification
• texdown
  • small TeX library that offers basic markdown-like functionality:
    • Numbered lists
    • Unnumbered lists
    • code listings
    • quotes
    • bold/italic text
    • links
    • images
    • paragraph headings
• librule
  • C library for raku rules
  • read about:
    • backtracking
    • regex implementation (swtch.com?)
    • raku rules
  • example program: far (find after rule, grep; but with raku rules)
  • github.com/zorgnax/librx
• nest
  • program dealing with nested data structures
  • similar to lisp, but without execution
  • am I NIHing this?
• noise
  • utility for producing white/pink/brown/&c noise
• spiel
  • utility for logging/visualizing daygame stats
• orakel
  • utility for making/ranking/visualizing forecasts
• dukkha
  • utility for logging/visualizing meditation stats
  • get inspiration from meditavo
• tomate
  • little pomodoro utility
• sent2tex
  • converts a sent presentation to a pdf presentation
• 1on1match: Platform that connects people who'd like to do 1-on-1s, by personality style
• Offline version of guesstimate
• A reddit bot on /r/gonewildstories that does a gender analysis for the writing and posts the result
• choiceworth
  • A small program implementing the method by MacAskill, Ord & Bykvist 2020 in “Moral Uncertainty”
  • Using MEC, variance voting, and the Borda rule
• socialchoice: Library implementing most of the concepts from social choice theory, e.g. (not inclusive):
  • Tournament graphs
  • Top cycle, Banks set, Uncovered set
  • Majority voting, plurality, Borda score, Kemeny rule
  • Methods for checking manipulability, single-peakedness
• interweave
  • A utility that takes a list of files and "interweaves" their lines (or by some other separator)
  • E.g. "a\nb\n" and "1\n2\n3\n4\n" will become "a\n1\n2\nb\n3\n4\n"
• Computing Shapley Values in Klong
  • First argument: the function, second argument: the given values, third argument: the fallback values.
  • shapleyval::{f::x;g::y;d::z;{s::!#g;s::ps(&~s=x)}'!#y}
  • shapleyval({(x@2)+(*x)^x@1};[2 4 4];[1 1 0])
• A distributed issue tracking system
  • See Wellons 2009
  • Why didn't this happen in the first place?
  • Probably just because centralized systems outperform decentralized ones, even when the underlying structure is decentralized, as in git/GitHub, and Github then focused on the issue tracking/continuous builds component
    • Github already had a commoditized complement
  • Check out ditz/cil/ticgit and others (bug from the suckless page?)
• ssam
  • A stream version of sam: ssam : sam :: sed : ed
  • Like, a proper one, not just a thin shell script wrapped around sam
  • Maybe this exists already?
• Dovetail the shortest brainfuck quine, in practice
• EA idea repository
• Open source onlyfans
• dmenu × fzf
• Structural regular expressions library for rust (??), myrddin (??)

Klong Libraries

• combin.kg
  • combinatorics library for klong
  • exponentiation
  • tetration
  • n-tation
  • factorial
  • binomial coefficient
  • stirling numbers (1st/2nd kind)
  • eulerian numbers (1st order, 2nd order)
  • catalan numbers
  • counting partitions
• date.kg
  • date/time library for klong: convert different date formats to another
• utf8.kg
  • unicode decoding/encoding library
  • see how myrddin/lua/libutf/plan9 did it
• linalg.kg
  • linear algebra library for klong
  • function for the determinant
  • function for gaussian elimination
  • function for matrix multiplication
  • function for matrix inversion
  • function for the calculation of polynomial division
• statests.kg
  • library for statistical tests

Julia Libraries

• Bandits import fails, fix that
  • In general improve the package I think? Doesn't support my usecase

Contributions

• myrddin
  • documentation: "and modern features with a high cost-benefit ratio"
  • cost/benefit is high? Clarify
• vis
  • add C-a and C-e for beginning of line and end of line in insert mode
  • add C-← and C-→ for jumping words in insert mode (equivalent of b and e)
  • fix syntax highlighting for ocaml with single quotes: 'a takes the whole line
  • MarkDown syntax highlighting not quite right
    • of inline code in markdown is annoying (dark blue background!)
      • Submit pull request for existing fix (which makes it mauve)
    • two asterisks in succession (**) in indented code still make everything bold
• sad
  • implement features that weren't finished
  • care for it
• toxcore
  • maybe
  • single/group
  • chat/audio/video
  • not much more, really
• neo2
  • port neo2 to plan9/9front/Haiku OS
• git
  • Add heatmap flag for git blame (for recency)
• Help administering schelling.pt, it needs it
• klong
  • receiving output of shell commands (maybe via pipe?)
  • self adverb (options are :!, :&, :,, :;, :<, :>, :?)
    • :< and :> should be reserved for something symmetric
    • :; is not fit because ; is not really a verb or adverb
    • :!, :&, :? and :, are the best options
  • support for complex numbers
    • logarithms for complex numbers
  • nplot

    • Support for multiple bargraphs

    • Bargraphs with negative values

    • Logarithmic scales for graphs

    • setrgb doesn't work properly: after setting the color once, it can only be reset to black

    • Example:

      .l("nplot")
      grid([0 100 10];[0 100 10])
      text(250;60;"Foo")
      setrgb(0;0;1)
      text(200;250;"Bar")
      setrgb(1;1;0)
      text(100;100;"Baz")
      draw()
      

  • nstat
    • n% confidence interval
    • polynomial/exponential/logarithmic (?) fit for a dataset
  • Range is extremely slow for anything but integers, why?
  • error with klong: #'s58'!40 returns kg: error: call: type error: [6 :triad %call1 %pop1]
    • bug, report
  • Pivot in the gauss/elim implementations
• fzf
  • Why doesn't fzf cope well with shuffled or repeated letters?
  • 'niiiiiplav' and 'nlapiv' both take me to the wrong directory, they're obviously meant for my home directory
• txtnish
  • add a mentions command
• Mood Patterns
  • Add option to change the notification sound
• Find schelling.pt thread for bugs
• pandas apply to Expanding allows only single float values, not tables
• numpy unique that doesn't require sortability, just comparability
• Anki doesn't let you set the backup directory
• Julia
  • repl only goes back one item in history through keypress up
• Make GNU fmt respect unicode:
  • Formatting "∸∸∸∸∸ ∸∸∸∸ ∸∸∸∸ ∸∸∸∸∸ ∸∸∸∸∸ However, in a sense, maxichoice contraction functions in general produce contractions"

produces

∸∸∸∸∸ ∸∸∸∸ ∸∸∸∸ ∸∸∸∸∸
∸∸∸∸∸ However, in a sense, maxichoice contraction
functions in general produce contractions

• fzf as a server, so that it doesn't have to reload a specific file over and over.
  • Also package that integrates it with vis
  • Specific vis package for Wikipedia titles
    • With sections?

Void Packages

• julia

Languages to Learn

• Myrddin
• Scheme
• SML
• Forth
• Prolog

Wikipedia Articles

Create

• Choice set, choice function, contraction/expansion consistency (all in the context of social choice theory, see Gaertner 2009 p. 7-9)
• Credibility formula (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imdb#Rankings)

Improve

• Patri Friedman site states he considers himself a rationalist, but that links to the page on philosophical rationalism, while I suspect this refers to the LW variety
• Use the definition from “Algorithmic Game Theory” of correlated equilibrium in the article Correlated equilibrium, the current explanation uses (but doesn't introduce) $s_i$
  • Yeah, the current explanation is barely comprehensible
• Bitte bitte
  • Watch the video and provide a better summary
• Average Human Height by Country, missing entries (various tiny European countries):
  • Liechtenstein
  • Monaco
  • Vatican City
  • San Marino
• Razib Khan
  • Those fuckers moved the Criticism into the Publications section again
• Eric Drexler
  • Something like "Since TODO, Drexler has been working at the [[Future of Humanity Institute]] as a TODO, researching risks from advanced artificial intelligence."
  • Huh, this was apparently removed?
• Price of stability/price of anarchy:
  • Collect bounds
• Improve Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols: Add explanation of how to write them in $\LaTeX$
• Add IPA for MECE pronounciation part

Sequences

• EA Forum
  • Cause Area Investigations

Answers

• Answer with rant on https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MrqM9XvJoKvyq6kxT/why-i-m-suss-on-wellbeing-surveys
• Answer https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/u3xpn3/effective_altruists_and_worrying_about_nuclear/i4t4u2p/
• Answer https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/u3xpn3/effective_altruists_and_worrying_about_nuclear/i4sxf5n/
• Answer https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pSdxQfbvC5qBBdehq/what-is-the-most-significant-way-you-have-changed-your-mind?commentId=G97DgBgPvWbugkZEd
• Answer https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aNu3HCGjLCn45EMNp/reward-long-content Nick Whitaker & salonium
  • "“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they fight you half-heartedly, then they’re neutral, then they then they grudgingly say you might have a point even though you’re annoying, then they say on balance you’re mostly right although you ignore some of the most important facets of the issue, then you win.”"
• Answer Nuno on https://nunosempere.com/blog/2023/07/19/better-harder-faster-stronger/
• Answer various comments in reddit inbox https://old.reddit.com/message/inbox/
• Answer https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/WSqLHsuNGoveGXhgz/disentangling-some-important-forecasting-concepts-terms?commentId=daFSthYmxKpCjN4Db
• Comment on Guys don't want to get laid by Red Quest
  • 1. Most guys don't have "get laid a lot with hot chicks" as a life goal because they have no coherent life goals at all
  • 1.1. Long-term goals are far mode (love, abstraction, altruism), and pickup requires long-term thinking, but is in the domain of near mode (sex, pleasure, egoism)
  • 1.2. There could be Hansonian self-deceptive reasons against thinking about sex too strategically
  • 2. Humans are not automatically strategic
  • 2.1. Or rational etc.
  • 3. Cold approach is hard
  • 3.1. The evolutionary argument for approach anxiety is not bad
  • 3.1.1. See hangahiwa wandafunei from The Assassin's Footprint (William Buckner, 2019)
  • 3.2. Most people don't achieve hard valuable things
  • 3.2.1 E.g. jhanas (or insight stages), high physical health, mastery of anything, emotional mastery
  • 3.2.2 Most people don't seem to do the bare minimum (e.g. invest money lying around in the stock market?) Probably due to trivial inconveniences
  • 3.2.3 People are satisficers, and most guys get the odd girlfriend and then drop out
  • 3.2.3.1 Note that many guys in pickup have a history of being quite unsuccessful with women
  • 3.3. Competes with other interests
  • 4. Personal story
  • 4.1 Maybe overestimates how horny guys are

Arbital

• Utility indifference on Arbital contains a few typos

Metaculus Questions

• A question that tries to gauge how much Metaculus forecasters are incentivized by points vs. simply accuracy
• A question about the discovery of a perfect cuboid
• A question about the average temperature in 2050 in central Europe (Gulf Stream reversal)
• A question about SGSS (?) data for virginity/no sex in last year for 2025-2030
• A question about antibiotic resistant strains
• Some questions about the performance of BCIs
• Conditional on China invading Taiwan, will TSMC blow up its factories?
• Question about best performance of homomorphic encryption
• Question about the best performance of indistinguishability obfuscation

Structure

• Top-level:
  • Translations
    • English to Esperanto
  • Music
    • Clarinet
    • Piano

General

• Send typos to people, let them correct them
• Find some drugs that cause short-term memory loss without ~any side effects, for self-blinding in QS, maybe Midalozam?

Memes

• Deep Fried & Bass-Boosted National Anthems
• Effective Altriust Alignment Chart
  • Intent Purist/Intent Neutral/Intent Rebel
  • Effect Purist/Effect Neutral/Effect Rebel
  • IP&EP: Jeff Kaufman
  • IP&EN: Eliezer Yudkowsky
  • IP&ER: Sam Bankman-Fried
  • IN&EP: Katalín Kariko
  • IN&EN: Basically everyone else
  • IN&ER: Fritz Haber
  • IR&EP: The Black Plague
  • IR&EN: Sam Altman
  • IR&ER: Mr. Beast
• Cat with newspaper image, caption "I should read his books"

In-World Projects

• Destroy the moons of Mars
• Found a community of algae farmers that speak a Icelandic-Basque pidgin
• Add Ithkuil script to the UCSUR
• Bring the rest of the Latin super/subscripts into Unicode
  • Probably difficult, see that twitter reply
• Create & maintain rat/postrat/metarat fediverse instance
  • domain name egregome.industries or just revive schelling.pt when it becomes available
• Arrange Slavoj Žižek to be an EAG keynote speaker
• 80,000 hours add German organisations
• Shipping startup
• Backup libgen/scihub/arxiv/biorxiv/psyrxiv
• Start a notebook academic journal (as in Jupyter Notebook)
• Improve harbergertax.com
• Create a .based TLD