crl826

Karma: 260

crl826 20 Feb 2023 1:39 UTC
2 points
3
on: Stuff I Recommend You Use
Just ordered some of those laces. thanks for the heads up.

crl826 13 May 2022 3:23 UTC
1 point
on: crl826′s Shortform
Update to this post. Yet another way to look at/think about the three categories of people Rao thinks define corporate life from Erik Dietrich.
- Pragmatists are line-level employees who find value in life outside of work, mainly because the hope of any meaningful advancement and enjoyment of their profession has been taken from them.
- Idealists believe heartily in the meritocratic company (and organizational superiors) as a benevolent steward of their careers because perspective has been taken from them.
- Opportunists refuse to yield hope or perspective and recognize that the only way to win the corporate game is to play by their own rules. In this realization, they give up ethical certainty and human connection – opportunists play a lonely, sad game to get what they get.
I think of them in terms of what the modern corporate structure has done to them:
- Broken the losers
- Tricked the clueless
- And forced the sociopaths into ethical conundrums.
.

crl826 23 Apr 2022 22:51 UTC
1 point
on: Beyond Blame Minimization: Thoughts from the comments
I believe you’ve said it.
If bureaucracies generally do not get shut down, and individuals generally do not lose their jobs, the they can have inconvenient hours at offices in inconvenient locations. They can make lots of rules and forms that make life difficult for the very people that they serve. Even if no bureaucrat maliciously wants to make things difficult for anyone, in the absence of forces that weed out such inconveniences, they will only ever increase in prevalence.
I’ll pull from my comment on your original article (written after you published both of these).
Politicians certainly rail against bureaucracies, but off the top of my head, I’m not aware of any bureaucracy that had its budget or its power cut.
Even the places where “defund the police” got some traction, it was generally accounting tricks. In many cases they ended up having funding restored shortly after or funding simply came from other sources.
My point being, it’s not at all obvious to me that there are actually repercussions for swollen, mis-managed bureaucracies. But I would very much love to be wrong.
If you model bureaucracies as ROI-maximizers (getting the max reward for least effort) that can never be shut down....that seems to explain everything to me.

crl826 23 Apr 2022 22:39 UTC
7 points
in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: Beyond Blame Minimization
a swollen bureaucracy that’s mis-managing its money or power is a ripe target for politicians.
Politicians certainly rail against bureaucracies, but off the top of my head, I’m not aware of any bureaucracy that had its budget or its power cut.
Even the places where “defund the police” got some traction, it was generally accounting tricks. In many cases they ended up having funding restored shortly after or funding simply came from other sources.
My point being, it’s not at all obvious to me that there are actually repercussions for swollen, mis-managed bureaucracies. But I would very much love to be wrong.

crl826 14 Apr 2022 4:22 UTC
1 point
on: Interacting with a Boxed AI
Eliezer has taken some pains to argue that we cannot even talk to the AI:… And he’s provided some compelling arguments that this is the case.
Any chance you have links to those arguments? I know that is his argument and I agree with his intuition, but I’ve never seen anything more fleshed out than that.

crl826 23 Jan 2022 3:45 UTC
4 points
on: Is state a (semi-) rational agent?
The authors of Dictators Handbook would argue that it is rational from the basis of what the leader needs to do to stay the leader.
Good summary here on LW: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N6jeLwEzGpE45ucuS/building-blocks-of-politics-an-overview-of-selectorate

crl826 24 Nov 2021 23:32 UTC
2 points
on: Why do humans want to be less wrong?
As best as I can tell, most human don’t care about being rational. Am I misunderstanding?

crl826 29 Oct 2021 23:15 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Yoav Ravid’s comment on: What currents of thought on LessWrong do you want to see distilled?
I saw it!
The only reason I haven’t read it yet is because I wanted to make sure I had time to read it.
Really appreciate it. I think unwinding how power works will be a huge step forward for rationality.

crl826 17 Jul 2021 15:35 UTC
6 points
on: What are some examples from history where a scientific theory predicted a significant experimental observation in advance?
Along with your black hole example and Jeff’s light bending example, Relativity also predicted time dilation and gravitational waves before they were confirmed experimentally.

crl826 22 Jun 2021 22:56 UTC
0 points
−1
in reply to: ryan_greenblatt’s comment on: (Another) Using a Memory Palace to Memorize a Textbook
I worry I will sound like a jerk. I’m not trying to, but why?
What is the advantage of memorizing a grocery list over writing down a list?

crl826 25 May 2021 16:06 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Quotes from Moral Mazes
Koch Industries claims that a major piece of social tech they use is compensating managers based on the net present value of the thing they’re managing, rather than whether they’re hitting key targets
I looked but can’t seem to find any information about this. Do you have any idea where I could explore this more?

crl826 25 May 2021 14:26 UTC
2 points
on: Controlling Intelligent Agents The Only Way We Know How: Ideal Bureaucratic Structure (IBS)
Bureaucracy is just as gameable as any other system. Human bad actors are able to use bureaucracies to their own ends, I see no reason to believe that AI couldn’t do the same.
Might be worth checking out the Immoral Mazes sequence and the Gervais Principle to see how that goes down.

crl826 14 May 2021 20:46 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: Deliberately Vague Language is Bullshit
It’s not just bending the truth. Being vague also gives you more discretion in decision making.
If you list objective criteria for a decision, then you don’t have discretion to give things out to your friends or deny things to your enemies.

crl826 14 May 2021 1:02 UTC
3 points
on: crl826′s Shortform
This is a great post exploring academic environment according to the Gervais Principle. Love more stuff like this.
This is mainly just a note to call out two great comments that I think may add to the theory.
- This comment and a reply with new names that I think help talk about the different categories
  - Sociopath = Ruthless
  - Clueless = Believer
  - Loser = Slacker
- This comment also points out the overlap between Rao’s theory and psychologist McClelland’s Needs Theory.
  - Sociopath = Need for Power
  - Clueless = Need for Achievement
  - Loser = Need for Affiliation
What links here?
- crl826's comment on crl826′s Shortform by crl826 (13 May 2022 3:23 UTC; 1 point)

crl826 11 May 2021 22:18 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Dr. Birdbrain’s comment on: Academia as Company Hierarchy
Sometimes people seem clueless just because we don’t understand them, but that doesn’t mean they are in fact clueless.
I suppose you aren’t using his suspect definition of Clueless. But your point is potentially valid either way.
It’s also true that something can seem “excessively cynical, inaccurate” or “counterproductive” doesn’t mean they are, in fact, excessively cynical, inaccurate, or counterproductive.
Does this framework actually explain how diffusion of responsibility works?
The framework alone doesn’t but reading the whole thing does. You can also check out some of my shortforms for some summaries.
You clearly don’t like his advice and certainly don’t have to follow it. I have found it very helpful (at understanding some previously confusing situations and getting promoted). I’m not the only one in this thread either so I humbly suggest it might be worth updating priors on how good or bad the framework is.

crl826 11 May 2021 22:05 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Dr. Birdbrain’s comment on: Academia as Company Hierarchy
I strongly suspect you are incorrect. Having read much of Rao’s work, he pretty explicitly advocates becoming more sociopathic (per his definition). One of his other books is called “Be Slightly Evil”
As far as underperformers getting promoted, Luthans has published work on the difference between successful managers (defined as getting promoted) and effective managers (defined as having high performance teams). The reality is that they do very few of the same things and there is very little overlap between the two. Evidence shows that ‘doing well’ at work is not the best way to get to the top.
https://www.boardoptions.com/successfulversuseffectivemanagers.pdf

crl826 9 May 2021 23:53 UTC
6 points
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Academia as Company Hierarchy
That is explicitly stated in the post.
Losers recognize that being a wage slave IS a bad deal. As a result, they do the minimum necessary to not get fired and keep collecting their paycheck. Again, this is a reasonable thing to do in many cases. For example, you may be a Loser in your day job so you can pursue your real interests nights and weekends.

crl826 16 Apr 2021 22:58 UTC
17 points
0
on: Why has nuclear power been a flop?
I suspect, but can’t prove, that now so many justify wanting something because of climate change that they don’t actually want a solution until and unless they have already got whatever they actually want.

crl826 16 Apr 2021 2:41 UTC
1 point
on: The National Dashboard and Human Progress
I like it. I’d love to pair it with a prediction market so we can find out who best understands what drives these metrics

crl826 14 Apr 2021 0:44 UTC
1 point
on: A New Center? [Politics] [Wishful Thinking]
What values are exclusively centrist?