blogospheroid

Karma: 861

blogospheroid 5 Nov 2014 13:45 UTC
31 points
on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Done. Foof that was long…

blogospheroid 19 Oct 2014 4:56 UTC
1 point
in reply to: DavidLS’s comment on: Fixing Moral Hazards In Business Science
I have been thinking of a lot of incentivized networks and was almost coming to the same conclusion, that the extra cost and the questionable legality in certain jurisdictions may not be worth the payoff, and then the Nielsen scandal showed up on my newsfeed. I think there is a niche, just not sure where would it be most profitable. Incidentally Steve Waldman also had a recent post on this - social science data being maintained in a neutral blockchain.

About the shipping of products and placebos to people, I see a physical way of doing it, but it is definitely not scalable.

Let’s say there is a typical batch of identical products to be tested. They’ve been moved to the final inventory sub-inventory, but not yet to the staging area where they are to be shipped out. The people from the testing service arrive with a bunch of duplicate labels for the batch and the placebos and replace ¹⁄₂ the quantity with placebo. Now, only the testing service knows which item is placebo and which is product.

This requires 2 things from the system—the ability to trace individual products and the ability to print duplicate labels. the latter should be common except for places which might have some legal issues for continuous numbering. Ability to trace individual products is there in a lot of discrete mfg. but a whole lot of process manufacturing industries have only traceability by batch/lot.

blogospheroid 19 Oct 2014 2:45 UTC
3 points
on: Fixing Moral Hazards In Business Science
Hi David,

This is a worthwhile initiative. All the very best to you.

I would advise that this data be maintained on a blockchain like data structure. It will be highly redundant and very difficult to corrupt, which I think is one of the primary concerns here.

http://storj.io, http://metadisk.org/

blogospheroid 10 Oct 2014 6:17 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Contrarian LW views and their economic implications
Yes, I think so. Something I won’t be able to do as a non-US investor.

blogospheroid 9 Oct 2014 11:36 UTC
8 points
on: Contrarian LW views and their economic implications
Invest in Quixey when they go in for the next round of funding, perhaps.

blogospheroid 8 Oct 2014 5:51 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Toby_Ord’s comment on: A possible tax efficient swap mechanism for charity
Thanks, Toby. I expected that the legal risks would be quite an issue. Point noted. I had not expected this to be a new idea as well, after all it seemed too simple. I guess a more informal means is good for now. Hope the EA forum has such a place to make this discussion.

blogospheroid 5 Oct 2014 19:17 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: A possible tax efficient swap mechanism for charity
I think most charities are tax deductible only in their own countries. Oxford’s cross country deductiblity is more the exception than the rule. To be specific, I’ll not get a tax deduction in India if I contributed to fhi. But if I swap with an englishman who wanted to contribute to the ramakrishna mission or child relief and you (indian charities) then we both benefit.

I agree on potential regulatory issues. That’s why I wanted more opinions.

A possible tax efficient swap mechanism for charity

blogospheroid5 Oct 2014 12:21 UTC

12 points

15 comments2 min readLW link

blogospheroid 30 Aug 2014 11:34 UTC
2 points
on: The Great Filter is early, or AI is hard
I’d like to repeat the comment I had made at “outside in” for the same topic, the great filter.

I think our knowledge of all levels – physics, chemistry, biology, praxeology, sociology is nowhere near the level where we should be worrying too much about the fermi paradox.

Our physics has openly acknowledged broad gaps in our knowledge by postulating dark matter, dark energy, and a bunch of stuff that is filler for – “I don’t know”. We don’t have physics theories that explain the smallest to the largest.

Coming to chemistry and biology, we’ve still not demonstrated abiogenesis. We have not created any new base of life other than the twisty strands mother nature already prepared and gave us everywhere. We don’t know the causes of our mutations to predict them to any extent. We simply don’t know enough to fill in these gaps.

Coming to basic sustenance, we don’t know what are the minimum requirements for a self-contained multi generational habitat. The biosphere experiments were not complete in any manner.

We don’t know the code for intelligence. We don’t know the code for preventing our own bodily degradation.

We don’t know how to balance new knowledge acquisition and sustainability run a society. Our best centres of knowledge acquisition are IQ shredders (a term meant to highlight the fact that the most successful cities attract the highest IQ people and reduce their fertility compared to if they had remained back in small towns/rural areas) and not sustainable environmentally either. Patriarchy and castes work great in in static societies. We don’t know their equivalent in a growing knowledge society.

There are still many known ways in which we can screw up. Lets get all these basics right, repeatedly right and then wonder with our new found knowledge, according to these calculations, there is a X% chance that we should have been contacted. Why are we apparently alone in the universe?

blogospheroid 28 Jul 2014 12:48 UTC
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open thread, July 21-27, 2014
If a storm like the one described in the link had actually hit, then would people really be concerned with these fine differences?

blogospheroid 25 Jul 2014 5:48 UTC
1 point
on: Open thread, July 21-27, 2014
This just showed up on my google reader.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/electricity-solarstorms-kemp-idINL6N0PZ5D120140725

My immediate thought was about this storm actually hitting in 2012. The mayan apocalypse was predicted on that year. The civilizational challenge to rebuild would have been substantial. But even more, the epistemic state of the civilization that recovered would almost have been permanently compromised. It would appear to most people that an ancient prophecy of a civilization that was brutally crushed was actually true.

What would we be thinking then? How would the rationalists in our adjacent universe be updating their priors? How much thought and effort would be put into reading and understanding ancient prophecies? Could you dismiss modern seers and prophets? Who would you trust?

blogospheroid 6 May 2014 12:50 UTC
6 points
on: Calling all MIRI supporters for unique May 6 giving opportunity!
Gave 3 small $10 donations over the last 3 hrs.

Weird question—why is MIRI classified as a > 2M$ charity. Did it actually pull in that much last year? I’m , for some reason, not able to open intelligence.org and check it myself..

blogospheroid 28 Feb 2014 2:48 UTC
4 points
on: [LINK] Joseph Bottum on Politics as the Mindkiller
The points he makes would be familiar to those who’ve read Moldbug.

blogospheroid 13 Jan 2014 7:27 UTC
1 point
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
Haven’t read your book so not sure if you have already answered this.

what is your assessment of miri’s current opinion that increasing the global economic growth rate is a source of existential risk?

How much risk is increased for what increase in growth?

Are there safe paths? (Maybe catch up growth in india and china is safe??)

blogospheroid 6 Jan 2014 6:13 UTC
2 points
in reply to: gothgirl420666’s comment on: [LINK] Why I’m not on the Rationalist Masterlist
I agree with Romeo Steven’s comment that the issues seem orthogonal. As an example, (caveat YMMV), Steve Sailer believes in HBD. However, he frequently cites lower growth in african american wages as a reason to shut the american borders down to low skilled workers.

However, in today’s environment, I’m not sure how many top-rated charities are HBD believing. A neoreactionary charity aiming at improving Africa might do many things differently. And being a relatively new ideology, most policies would not have substantial support of data. Hence, atleast in the current scenario, you would not find many people that were HBD aware and contributed greatly to african charities. However, it is not intellectually inconsistent.

blogospheroid 6 Jan 2014 6:08 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gothgirl420666’s comment on: [LINK] Why I’m not on the Rationalist Masterlist
I agree with Romeo Steven’s comment that the issues seem orthogonal. As an example, (caveat YMMV), Steve Sailer believes in HBD. However, he frequently cites lower growth in african american wages as a reason to shut the american borders down to low skilled workers.

However, in today’s environment, I’m not sure how many top-rated charities are HBD believing. A neoreactionary charity aiming at improving Africa might do many things differently. And being a relatively new ideology, most policies would not have substantial support of data. Hence, atleast in the current scenario, you would not find many people that were HBD aware and contributed greatly to african charities. However, it is not intellectually inconsistent.

blogospheroid 18 Dec 2013 17:32 UTC
25 points
on: MIRI’s Winter 2013 Matching Challenge
Paid 300$ with my employer matching it, but the employers contribution may come in only at around Jan 15. Hope that isn’t too late.

blogospheroid 12 Nov 2013 8:53 UTC
5 points
on: AI Policy?
David Brin believes that high speed trading bots are a high probability route to human indifferent AI. If you agree with him, then laws governing the usage of high speed trading algorithms could be useful. There is a downside in terms of stock liquidity, but how much that will affect overall economic growth is still a research area.

blogospheroid 27 Sep 2013 4:22 UTC
0 points
on: AI ebook cover design brainstorming
Not Exactly a march of progress line, but something like a chimp and einstein on one corner and a server rack on the far end. Similar to the line diagram used in the sequences to illustrate how much of a difference we;re looking at. We are looking at appealing to numerate people, so it should not be overkill to have a graph.

blogospheroid 19 Sep 2013 4:40 UTC
7 points
in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Thought experiment: The transhuman pedophile
Ah.. Now you understand the frustrations of a typical Hindu who believes in re-incarnation. ;)

blogospheroid

A pos­si­ble tax effi­cient swap mechanism for charity

A possible tax efficient swap mechanism for charity