Super Awesome Co-Op for Rationality, Organic Farming, Programming, Meditation, and Other Cool Stuff!
To be honest it’d be pretty awesome… we could live in yerts somewhere in Northern California and get by on self-sufficient power generation via solar panels and farming, and make additional money by giving seminars about rationality, meditation, programming, anything we were good at. We’d have tons of time to teach each other things and read text books and stuff. Sooooo cultish but so awesome. But I think the cultishness factor means it would be damaging to the rationality and Singularity memes, even if we never overtly discussed the Singularity.
get by on self-sufficient power generation via solar panels
That’s too first-order hipster. Too “hippie environmentalist cult” (that’s, like, so relatively mainstream, man). Much more fun to signal “technophile libertarian sci-fi cult”. Can we could build a miniature liquid fluoride thorium reactor instead?
Is there any way to go more meta-contrarian? Like, by eating liquid fluoride thorium instead and generating power with genetically modified giant venus flytraps? Fuck it, let’s generate power with chocobos and get all our nutrition from LSD.
Can we could build a miniature liquid fluoride thorium reactor instead?
I’m pretty sure that the smallest designs for nuclear electricity systems produce far more power than is needed for a commune and cost far too much. Even if the cost per kilo-watt is one tenth as much, if you have a small community of people who are attempting to get by without working, you probably can’t service the higher capital costs. Please don’t let being cool get in the way of being practical.
(Comment also a reply to Will Newsome, whose comment I found too indirect to actually show what’s wrong here)
I’m pretty sure there are ways to turn a bit of seed capital (~10 million) and ~150 people into money in Northern California. If you can nucleate a community, and especially if you can put some software start ups in it, you can probably triple the value of some farm land.
Simpler than a physical space is collaborating online. We already have an online community so we get that for low complexity cost, all we have to do is filter out the people who are interested.
The simplest legal structure (I think) is each of us being in business for ourselves, and just cooperatiing with information of some kind. This might not work well with some businesses, or it might be cheaper/safer to incorporate.
Single programmers can make profitable projects in a weekend, we just need to find something we can systematically win at.
Also, a small group of people should be able to follow any of the suggestions in this thread with substantially more force and reliability than all individually. Bidding on writing or programming jobs, even networking.
If we work together effectively, we can bid on bigger jobs with tighter deadlines, or small jobs with confidence that life interference won’t mess with the account’s reputation. We can specialize so we are each contributing to jobs that we don’t know how to complete alone.
But I think the cultishness factor means it would be damaging to the rationality and Singularity memes, even if we never overtly discussed the Singularity.
A study of social dynamics might suggest ways to get around this. Lets at least keep it in the back of our minds.
Social dynamics would probably be less of a worry than getting funding. Also, internet access. Satellite internet sounds kinda sucky.This looks a tad unbelievable. Or is the internet overrated anyway? I wonder how difficult farming really is. There are probably more efficient and lazier ways to get food. (Which isn’t necessarily good.)
One possibly cool thing about it would be a community blog. I bet such a blog could get really popular, and then Hacker News and Silicon Valley people might show up, which could lead to cool things happening.
Added: DUDE.) You can fly around in an airplane without a license or anything. We need a fleet of these things, and people could pay to get training or use them. Instant profit.
I added a \ to the code you were using to create the link. I added it between the ‘s’ and the first ‘)’. This escapes the ‘)’ so that it is just considered a character rather than the message to markdown that the address has finished. Then there is another ‘)’ which does not have the \ escape character.
Reason I hate coding number 7: I think I tried every possible permutation except that one, and that happens every time. Okay, not really, I just hate feeling dumb.
Feeling dumb does suck. It may have sucked even more if we just told you to RTFM instead of explaining. In fact, not liking looking stupid is probably one of the reasons I have the manual bookmarked. ;)
Hm, I bet this recurring problem generalizes. What heuristics should I have used to find the manual? I would have guessed ‘reddit commenting markdown’.
I just googled markdown syntax. If I didn’t know that LW used markdown I would have googled “reddit syntax”. If I didn’t know LW was reddit-like I would have googled “lesswrong syntax”. (All of those worked by the way. Although would have required reading a page then possibly following link or doing another search based on the new information.)
We should gauge interest first, and see what everyone’s needs are. I get the impression that we are aiming for low-but-scalable-hours, high flexibility, high reliability, and relatively low-income. (high income if we can get it of course)
If we know roughly who is involved, we can list out our skills, and start brainstorming things we might be good at collectively. We should make sure to look for non-obvious things.
If we have any confidence that we can act more rationally than normal, we should look for areas in which this could be an advantage. (prediction markets?)
We should look closely at the ethical and existential risk implications of what we’re doing.
We should look closely at the ethical and existential risk implications of what we’re doing.
Making money? It would have to a significantly evil money making scheme for you to increase existential risk by doing it. (In particular I am observing that the market will do similar things anyway and you are just making it incrementally more efficient.)
I guess I’d say you should imagine the most damage a handful of lesswrong readers could do if we were evil, and assume we could do that accidentally if we were not careful. Assume we might innovate. or just make the PR worse.
Really this is true of everyone, and everyone should consider existential risks.
Thanks for posting this! I’m very interested in such advice.
Maybe we don’t have to do it alone? Do people know of ways for groups of us who don’t want to work to band together and get by?
Super Awesome Co-Op for Rationality, Organic Farming, Programming, Meditation, and Other Cool Stuff!
To be honest it’d be pretty awesome… we could live in yerts somewhere in Northern California and get by on self-sufficient power generation via solar panels and farming, and make additional money by giving seminars about rationality, meditation, programming, anything we were good at. We’d have tons of time to teach each other things and read text books and stuff. Sooooo cultish but so awesome. But I think the cultishness factor means it would be damaging to the rationality and Singularity memes, even if we never overtly discussed the Singularity.
That’s too first-order hipster. Too “hippie environmentalist cult” (that’s, like, so relatively mainstream, man). Much more fun to signal “technophile libertarian sci-fi cult”. Can we could build a miniature liquid fluoride thorium reactor instead?
Is there any way to go more meta-contrarian? Like, by eating liquid fluoride thorium instead and generating power with genetically modified giant venus flytraps? Fuck it, let’s generate power with chocobos and get all our nutrition from LSD.
This is in my top 5 funniest comments made on LW.
Which are the other four?
This is my favorite I’ve seen so far.
I’m pretty sure that the smallest designs for nuclear electricity systems produce far more power than is needed for a commune and cost far too much. Even if the cost per kilo-watt is one tenth as much, if you have a small community of people who are attempting to get by without working, you probably can’t service the higher capital costs. Please don’t let being cool get in the way of being practical.
(Comment also a reply to Will Newsome, whose comment I found too indirect to actually show what’s wrong here)
Please don’t let being practical get in the way of jokes.
Edit: Unless it’s a practical joke.
Complete with a lone trail leading to an isolated yurt for those staging an all-out crisis of faith.
I’m pretty sure there are ways to turn a bit of seed capital (~10 million) and ~150 people into money in Northern California. If you can nucleate a community, and especially if you can put some software start ups in it, you can probably triple the value of some farm land.
I am all for a co-op, but a physical space requires many many things to go right.
We should look for the simplest plan that could work.
What is the simplest plan? I can’t think of anything very simple.
Make a product and sell it.
Simpler than a physical space is collaborating online. We already have an online community so we get that for low complexity cost, all we have to do is filter out the people who are interested.
The simplest legal structure (I think) is each of us being in business for ourselves, and just cooperatiing with information of some kind. This might not work well with some businesses, or it might be cheaper/safer to incorporate.
Single programmers can make profitable projects in a weekend, we just need to find something we can systematically win at.
Also, a small group of people should be able to follow any of the suggestions in this thread with substantially more force and reliability than all individually. Bidding on writing or programming jobs, even networking.
How does a group bid on a writing or programming job more effectively than one? Or at all?
Start a company.
Oh, right. I had forgotten how grownups do this stuff.
If we work together effectively, we can bid on bigger jobs with tighter deadlines, or small jobs with confidence that life interference won’t mess with the account’s reputation. We can specialize so we are each contributing to jobs that we don’t know how to complete alone.
That makes sense. Hmm. I’d be interested in participating in such a system, but I’m not sure in what capacity I could.
I might be very interested in participating in such an endeavor.
This sounds sooooo awesomely amazing.
A study of social dynamics might suggest ways to get around this. Lets at least keep it in the back of our minds.
Social dynamics would probably be less of a worry than getting funding. Also, internet access. Satellite internet sounds kinda sucky. This looks a tad unbelievable. Or is the internet overrated anyway? I wonder how difficult farming really is. There are probably more efficient and lazier ways to get food. (Which isn’t necessarily good.)
One possibly cool thing about it would be a community blog. I bet such a blog could get really popular, and then Hacker News and Silicon Valley people might show up, which could lead to cool things happening.
Added: DUDE.) You can fly around in an airplane without a license or anything. We need a fleet of these things, and people could pay to get training or use them. Instant profit.
That wouldn’t be my expectation. Money is easy. Social dynamics are hard.
This is one of the useful side-effects of learning programming.
Use a backslash before the internal paren.)
Not enough information.
Link)
I added a \ to the code you were using to create the link. I added it between the ‘s’ and the first ‘)’. This escapes the ‘)’ so that it is just considered a character rather than the message to markdown that the address has finished. Then there is another ‘)’ which does not have the \ escape character.
Reason I hate coding number 7: I think I tried every possible permutation except that one, and that happens every time. Okay, not really, I just hate feeling dumb.
Feeling dumb does suck. It may have sucked even more if we just told you to RTFM instead of explaining. In fact, not liking looking stupid is probably one of the reasons I have the manual bookmarked. ;)
Hm, I bet this recurring problem generalizes. What heuristics should I have used to find the manual? I would have guessed ‘reddit commenting markdown’.
I just googled markdown syntax. If I didn’t know that LW used markdown I would have googled “reddit syntax”. If I didn’t know LW was reddit-like I would have googled “lesswrong syntax”. (All of those worked by the way. Although would have required reading a page then possibly following link or doing another search based on the new information.)
Nothing magic then. Thanks.
Google + experiment until you know how to do something. That’s a general tactic that is sufficiently effective that it verges on magical! ;)
(I implicitly assumed that you could see the markup. D’oh.)
Just some thoughts:
We should gauge interest first, and see what everyone’s needs are. I get the impression that we are aiming for low-but-scalable-hours, high flexibility, high reliability, and relatively low-income. (high income if we can get it of course)
If we know roughly who is involved, we can list out our skills, and start brainstorming things we might be good at collectively. We should make sure to look for non-obvious things.
If we have any confidence that we can act more rationally than normal, we should look for areas in which this could be an advantage. (prediction markets?)
We should look closely at the ethical and existential risk implications of what we’re doing.
Making money? It would have to a significantly evil money making scheme for you to increase existential risk by doing it. (In particular I am observing that the market will do similar things anyway and you are just making it incrementally more efficient.)
I guess I’d say you should imagine the most damage a handful of lesswrong readers could do if we were evil, and assume we could do that accidentally if we were not careful. Assume we might innovate. or just make the PR worse.
Really this is true of everyone, and everyone should consider existential risks.
Create an AGI that tiles the universe with molecular SEO?
I’d really rather not find myself as a Boltzmann brain made from SEO rubbing up against itself.
I’ve started a private google group to discuss forming an income earning group of some kind.
Email james.andrix@gmail.com and I’ll add you.
(Edit: This attempt fizzled)