BlueSun

Karma: 375

BlueSun Jul 25, 2013, 3:42 PM
8 points
on: Useful Questions Repository
Some variation of “What is the other person’s actual objective?” Or “Why did they do that?” or “What are they actually asking me?”

I started this habit in chess where it’s always useful to ask ‘why did my opponent make their last move?’ (and then see if there are answers past the obvious one). But I’ve also found it useful in other areas. Several times at work I’ve gone through iterations of something with someone because I answered exactly what they said instead of what they actually wanted. I now try to stop and ask them what their actual purpose is and it often saves me a bit of work.

BlueSun Jul 23, 2013, 10:08 PM
2 points
on: Why Eat Less Meat?
A question I have is how to evaluate the morality of the two options:
- A) Make it so that an animal is born, then later cause it considerable suffering
- B) Change the conditions so that the animal never exists
If everyone went vegetarian, the animal population would likely be greatly diminished and it isn’t obvious to me that I’d choose option B over option A if I were on the menu. Are there some standard objections to the idea that option A is better than option B?

One quick objection might be that it proves too much. If John Beatmykids told me he wouldn’t have kids unless he was permitted to beat them, I wouldn’t give him a pass to beat any future children. Another objection might be that there’s always a choice C, but here I don’t see another option as realistic.

BlueSun Jun 17, 2013, 8:03 PM
5 points
in reply to: Houshalter’s comment on: After critical event W happens, they still won’t believe you
I was going to point that out too as I think it demonstrates an important lesson. They were still wrong.

Almost all of their thought processes were correct, but they still got to the wrong result because they looked at solutions too narrowly. It’s quite possible that many of the objections to AI, rejuvenation, cryonics, are correct but if there’s another path they’re not considering, we could still end up with the same result. Just like a Chess program doesn’t think like a human, but can still beat one and an airplane doesn’t fly like a bird, but can still fly.

BlueSun Jun 7, 2013, 6:36 PM
3 points
in reply to: joshkaufman’s comment on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
I was writing an article and trying to refer to www.worstargumentintheworld.com but it appears to be down. Is the registration still valid and/or going to be renewed?

BlueSun Jun 4, 2013, 8:35 PM
0 points
in reply to: Decius’s comment on: Why economics is not a morality tale
An easy way to do it would be to charge the “correct” marginal cost for all kWh and have a separate fixed fee. My water bill is something like $50 fixed and then a small amount for the water I use after it; the electric bill could work the same. Ronald Coase argued that here

Commercial meters have priced kW for a long time and I think the reason residential didn’t was more along the lines of they’re more homogeneous than the meter costs. But either way, it seems everyone is getting smart meters now and you could match it up to theory exactly if it were politically feasible.

BlueSun Jun 4, 2013, 6:18 PM
0 points
in reply to: drnickbone’s comment on: Why economics is not a morality tale

This doesn’t apply in all countries. In UK for instance, it is common to have a standing charge (flat fee per day) as well as a usage charge (fee per kWh). Or some utilities charge a high price for the first few kWh, and then a lower price for subsequent kWh, which has a similar effect. See here for some details.

My perspective is US-centric, but from what I’m aware the per kWh price in most countries for most people is well above the marginal costs. Many places do have a daily or monthly charge but that tends to be $10 or less—not even close to high enough to recover all the fixed costs associated with a customer. Looking through some of the Scottish Power rates that you linked to, the daily charge doesn’t get much higher than 30p. That helps mitigate the issue a bit, but it’s still there. In that case, retail kWh prices—after the standing charge—is still over 10p / kWh. Wholesale rates look like they’re 4.5p in the UK (which should be a good proxy for short run marginal costs) so there’s still a big gap.

Even where there is a single price (a price per kWh) it is not true that the “correct” market price is just the marginal cost...

As far as I’m aware, economic theory says the “correct” price for electric utilities is lower than where the actual price is. It’s probably easier to visualize on a graph like this one. (I’m saying the difference between Pf and Pr, at least in some cases, may be higher than the externality, which is a real-life example of what the op is talking about). If that’s not standard economic theory though let me know as it’s an area of interest to me.

The market correction mechanism you described works for most industries but electric utilities are typically treated as natural monopolies, the optimal number of suppliers is one. But even if that ’s not true (i.e. it’s not actually optimal), in many places regulation only allows one supplier so the market forces described couldn’t work. The result is that the average /kWh price customers pay is higher than the average marginal costs (optimal society price) and it continues indefinitely because new firms can’t come into the market. There isn’t large profits made though because they’re pricing at the regulated price (at the average total cost) and not at the monopoly price (again, easier to visualize on the graph linked to above).

BlueSun Jun 4, 2013, 4:00 PM
16 points
on: Why economics is not a morality tale
The real life example here is electric utilities. The way they’re regulated they charge a kWh price roughly equal to the average total cost (let’s say about 12 cents). The proper way to price would be at the marginal cost (at around 4 cents). The fact that marginal costs are below average total costs are what makes them a natural monopoly.

The somewhat obvious better solution would be to charge marginal cost for each kWh and then have some other method to collect the massive fixed costs. But for whatever historic reasons, we don’t do that and most (all?) utilities price each kWh at about the average total cost. This means that as a society our quantity demanded kWh is way below where economic theory says it should be.

However, there is probably a fairly substantial pollution/CO2 externality to producing electricity. Without some analysis it isn’t obvious whether we’re producing too much electricity or too little.

I did try once to look at estimates of the size of the externality to see if it made up for the pricing way above marginal cost issue and the preliminary results were that the externality was smaller (meaning, global warming considered, we’re still not using enough electricity). However, there were a couple of points I’d need to get into deeper.
- 1) The pricing above marginal cost issue is greatest for residential rates and smallest for industrial rates. I was looking at residential rates. Using the same cursory analysis on industrial rates would mean that we’re over using electricity in industrial sectors.
- 2) The carbon externality number I used from the EPA seemed to be derived by figuring out how high the price of electricity would need to be to get usage down to the level they wanted. Under correctly priced utility rates (i.e., priced at the marginal costs), their analysis may have had a much higher $ / kWh externality number. But at the same time, I’m a little suspect of that method of calculating the externality as it would indicate if the cost of production halved it wouldn’t be optimal for society to produce more. So I’d need to do some more research to make sure I’m using good pollution/CO2 numbers.
I haven’t seen this issue discussed by people like Mankiw when they talk about the Pigou Club and I think it probably should be. If there’s interest I could probably write this up a bit more formally and make it a post.

BlueSun Jun 3, 2013, 5:50 PM
14 points
on: The Use of Many Independent Lines of Evidence: The Basel Problem
Great article, I have a particular fondness for this line of reasoning as it helped me leave my religious roots behind. I ended up reasoning that despite assurances that revelation was 100% accurate and to rely on it over any and all scientific evidences because they’re just “theories”, there was a x% chance that the revelation model was wrong. And for any x% larger than something like 0.001%, the multiple independent pieces of scientific, historic, and archaeological evidences would crush it. I then found examples of where revelation was wrong and it became clear that x% was close to what you’d expect from “educated guess.” And yes, I did actually work out all the probabilities with Bayes theorem.

BlueSun Apr 3, 2013, 4:20 PM
32 points
on: Rationality Quotes April 2013
Something a Chess Master told me as a child has stuck with me:

How did you get so good?

I’ve lost more games than you’ve ever played.

-- Robert Tanner

BlueSun Feb 6, 2013, 2:53 PM
5 points
in reply to: RomeoStevens’s comment on: Rationality Quotes February 2013
I’d like to see a study result on that.

In Art History class I learned that a common way for great artists to learn to paint was by copying the work of the masters. I then asked the art teacher why it was a rule that we couldn’t copy other famous historical paintings. I can’t remember her exact answer but the times I haven’t followed her advice and went and copied a great painting, I seem to have learned more. But again, I’d like to see a study result.

BlueSun Jan 30, 2013, 9:14 PM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Meetup : Love and Sex in Salt Lake City
I think the subtitle creates some interesting imagery when contrasted with the typical stereotypes of SLC.

BlueSun Jan 30, 2013, 9:08 PM
26 points
on: The Zeroth Skillset
I don’t mean to be rude but as an FYI:

At times, this evidence can be of critical importance. I can attest that I have personally saved the lives of friends on two occasions thanks to good situational awareness, and have saved myself from serious injury or death many times more.

Lowers my confidence of the post. Almost everyone I know has a story about how they almost died except for a moment of abnormal cunning or pure luck; yet I know few people who have died for reasons that would have been avoidable had they or someone around them been more observant. This suggests to me (since not everyone can be above-average observant or lucky) that in most of those stories, they didn’t have as high of a chance of death as they thought they did. It’s certainly possible that it’s not the case with you, but I’d prefer to either see the specific stories or maybe just use a less extreme example in the post. Or maybe it’s just me and no one else is bothered by it.

BlueSun Jan 16, 2013, 7:36 PM
5 points
on: Assessing Kurzweil: the results
I wonder if we could get Pundit Tracker to start tracking him? They’ve mentioned tracking technology pundits in the future.

BlueSun Jan 7, 2013, 2:02 PM
10 points
in reply to: ialdabaoth’s comment on: Morality is Awesome
I’m thinking of it more like Minecraft in real life. I want a castle with a secret staircase because it would be awesome. What I did was spend a day of awesomeness building it myself instead of downloading it and only having five minutes of awesomeness.

BlueSun Dec 13, 2012, 10:12 PM
6 points
on: Math appendix for: “Why you must maximize expected utility”
Just some feedback: I’m probably about average in math skill here (or maybe below average, the most math I’ve done is calculus 10 years ago) and with some work I’m able to get through some of this. When I first looked at it I didn’t understand anything but reading the wikipedia on VNM utility theorem and the always helpful List of Mathematical Symbols I was able to get through most of Lemma 1. I was able to prove it to my satisfaction using the solver in Excel and can follow most of the proof up until “Thus, the result follows”, I don’t see how it follows.

Are there any recommendations for slowly improving math skills other than just trying to work through things like this when time permits? Are people willing to host a Google Hangout where they walk through things such as this for those of us who are curious but have difficulty working it out all on our own (I know I probably could work it all out given enough time, but its hard to be motivated enough to make the time. When I first found the site, I didn’t know about Bayes theorem or any of the probability theory notation, but I saw its importance and so made sure to spend the time so I can follow it and work it out on my own when needed).

BlueSun Nov 4, 2012, 5:00 AM
7 points
on: Analyzing FF.net reviews of ‘Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality’
I really like this analysis a lot. For whatever it adds, Google Trends shows it peaking in July 2011, but mostly holding steady. There might be a small decline in the last six months though.

BlueSun Nov 3, 2012, 11:54 PM
55 points
on: 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey
I took it. Thanks for doing this every year, the results are very interesting.

BlueSun Oct 27, 2012, 12:47 AM
0 points
in reply to: feanor1600’s comment on: Prediction market sequence requested
Good post. Programming would be my vote for higher level subject most useful to individuals. Then economics (given my bias that it’s my area of focus). And really it’s helpful to be proficient in both so you can be a good data analyst.

But I do think you underestimate how important economics is for “how to run a government.” Yes, there are a huge number of near Pareto efficient policies that economists recommend that politicians don’t implement for political reasons, but one of the biggest differences between the wealth of nations is how well they apply the lessons of economics. For the most part, countries have access to the same level of science and technology; some rich countries (Hong Kong) have far less natural resources than many that are much poorer; but some countries do a much better job of implementing a good economic collection of rules and regulations and that’s why they’re so much richer. Teaching economics (especially to the ‘elites’ who will run day run the country) is hugely important for maintaining those policies.

BlueSun Oct 26, 2012, 11:41 PM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Prediction market sequence requested
That’s a good point too. which brings up the question of why they’re not as well accepted. I’ve kind of figured it was because prediction markets are a new(er) idea and “science advances one funeral at a time.” I predict the next wave of economists will all think in terms of prediction markets, p=80%.

BlueSun Oct 26, 2012, 5:24 PM
5 points
on: Prediction market sequence requested
Coming from an Econ background, I’m amazed that people don’t understand how much information a properly functioning price mechanism conveys and how valuable it is. For me, thinking about the implications of I, Pencil was valuable in helping me understand this and I’d recommend it. People need to understand how the invisible hand and profit motive work (and have some confidence that they do) before they can understand how a prediction market can aggregate all the relevant information into a meaningful probability because prediction markets are a logical extension of those ideas.