drethelin

Karma: 8,097

drethelin Mar 13, 2019, 6:47 AM
42 points
1
on: You Have About Five Words
Walmart coordinates 2.2 million people directly and millions more indirectly.
Even the boy scouts coordinates 2.7 million.
Religions coordinate, to a greater or lesser extent, far more.
The key to coordination is to not consider yourself as an individual measuring out a ration of words you can force x number of people to read. Most people never read the bible.

drethelin Oct 13, 2018, 3:45 PM
4 points
on: Nyoom
The sensation of new ‘vistas’ of options and subjective preferences opening up is a very familiar one to me in a similar way from a combination of a) getting actually good socks and shoes and b) lifting sufficient weights that my legs are strong enough to lift me up stairs/hills easily. Doing a bunch of squats once a week means that if people happen to be walking together and we go up a hill i’m no longer suffering, I’m doing fine, and this similarly means that a lot more things which would be terrible are fine journeys.
To people in general I strongly recommend getting your feet measured in width and height as well a length, and shopping around for shoes that actually fit if you can, as this makes a huge difference in how long you can walk before your feet start to hurt. In addition, things that you don’t really think about like sole thickness and material and sock materials can make a surprisingly large difference.

drethelin Oct 11, 2018, 8:07 PM
12 points
on: Anti-social Punishment
I think an under-appreciated aspect is suspicion of Officially Altruistic behavior. A ton of things people do even in countries that weren’t run by communists that appear to be altruistic are actually self-enriching, and in addition a ton of things people do to help the less fortunate actually end up hurting them. I would yell at a lot of people if they started ostentatiously saying they were sacrificing for my benefit when I had never asked them to, and you could easily frame that as “anti-social punishment” if you BELIEVE that they’re actually helping, but from a suspicious perspective they’re both probably not actually helping me and they’re also helping themselves.

drethelin Oct 10, 2018, 4:19 PM
16 points
on: The Rocket Alignment Problem
I liked this at first, but about 6-7 paragraphs of back-and-forth in I got really tired, started skimming, and then realized it went on for way more pages.
I get that your internal experience of trying to talk to people about AI risk feels like going on and on in this sort of “humble and correct person argues with smugly incorrect person forever” way but I don’t think that’s a good format for actually convincing people.

drethelin Sep 13, 2018, 3:19 AM
2 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Open Thread September 2018
Something I’ve been thinking of doing is asking a lot of specific people I like who else would have to move somewhere before they would move and seeing if there’s a smallish cluster

drethelin Sep 12, 2018, 10:14 PM
24 points
on: Open Thread September 2018
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where I want to live long-term. I’m currently in Madison Wi, which is really nice, but kinda small and has an unfortunately hot/humid summer. Financially I can live pretty much anywhere I want, except maybe Monaco.
Things I want, not in order of importance:
1. A nice house. In an ideal world, the house would house several of my closest friends, be walkable to parks, shops, and restaurants, and be close enough to other friends that they drop by regularly. I am also very interested in running a public space or a semi-public space adjacent or close to the house, possibly a makerspace, possibly a cafe, or something else. This is one of the reasons it’s not instantly obvious that I should move to Berkeley or Manhattan or something. I’m financially well-off but there’s like, an order of magnitude in difference in cost of having a nice big place to live. On the other hand, I’m also pretty flexible about living in apartment or something, but for the long term I much prefer having a space I own and can modify and build up to become better and better over the years.
2. People. My best friend and one of my partners lives in Madison at the moment, but most everyone else I like to spend time with or who wants to spend time with me seems to live on one of the coasts or are scattered elsewhere. This is the aspect for which Berkeley is the most obvious winner: I know a ton of rationalists, like meeting new ones and rat-adjacents, and in general like having social situations that I don’t personally have to seek out or plan. In the Bay Area, there are tons of regular events that I can go to without having to do the leg-work myself. In addition, there are millions of other people in places like the bay area and NYC of varying kinds and personalities.
3. Climate: I’m big, and while I’m losing weight I still get hot and sweaty very easily. My ideal place in terms of year round climate is the Faroe Islands, where it stays between 33 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit year round in the capitol city. I’d like a place where I can walk around without wanting to die for much of the year. The Bay Area is pretty good for this, but still tends to make me sweaty in the afternoons, especially if I’m walking around the hilly parts of San Francisco. At this point I’m pretty resigned to this, but it’s still a factor in where-to-live tradeoffs. I also really enjoy having Seasons, love Autumn and Spring, so places that are as similar all year round as the bay are less preferable in that respect.
4. Walkability/transitability. This one is pretty standard. I like being able to go cool places without having to spend hours in traffic or hassle hugely to park my car.
5. Culture: I like living in a place that has lots of little cafes and bookstores and restaurants that are around, as well as museums and bars and live music and stuff. To a lesser extent I care about the culture of the kinds of people who live in the city, but in practice I’m going to end up mostly hanging out with small subcultures anyway.
6. Something one could summarize as Coolness/Importance: I like the idea of being involved in Big, World-changing Things, despite being very lazy. Places like Manhattan, Hollywood, SF, etc. are attractive at least partially because I can see and potentially participate in important cultural events and shifts. This is one of the things I could conceivably do in Madison but, like assembling a friend group of like-minded people from eg grad students, would be a lot of work.
7. The classic things like low-crime and not too smelly/loud would be good but I can mitigate most of these by living in nicer parts of places. Still, not a zero-factor.
8. I like the idea of being a locally medium-to-high status person whose place people like to visit and who people talk to when they want introductions, as a sort of community nexus type thing. This obviously trades off against moving to places where such people already exist.
One of the options I’m considering is buying a big house in Madison and setting it up something like REACH or the Blackpool EA hotel, and trying to lure rationalists to come live here, as well as making it an outreachy type place for local potential rats. The plus side is I’d get to stay in the city I know like, the downside is it would be a lot more work and potentially not even achieve the kind of life I want. But if I succeed in creating a mini-hub, I’ll get to have pretty much all I want for like, ¹⁄₁₀ the cost of moving to SF. Another option is to nominally stay in Madison, but travel 2-3 months out of the year, probably in deepest winter/summer.
I’m looking for input like: direct recommendations for specific cities in ways I probably haven’t considered, people who specifically like me commenting that they want me to live in their city, case studies/reports of people who have moved and think they’re similar enough to me to give me good input, comparisons from people who have lived in multiple Big Cities as to which are Better, and whatever else people feel like mentioning. Also I want horror stories of living in Manhattan, SF, Berkeley, LA, and Seattle (this is my current shortlist).
Thanks in advance!

drethelin Jun 26, 2018, 6:50 AM
17 points
2
in reply to: abramdemski’s comment on: Worrying about the Vase: Whitelisting
I think most hard engineering problems are made up of a lot of smaller solutions and especially made up of the lessons learned attempting to implement small solutions, so I think it’s incorrect to think of something that’s useful but incomplete as being competitive to the true solution rather than actually being a part of the path to it.

drethelin Jun 26, 2018, 5:15 AM
7 points
on: CFAR Reunion
I’m gonna be looking for rides to/from Berkeley if, anyone is planning on driving and has space in their car.

drethelin Jun 21, 2018, 6:47 PM
6 points
on: Prisoners’ Dilemma with Costs to Modeling
I always like Game Theory that has simple advice applicable to real life: If you want people to cooperate with you, Be Comprehensible!

drethelin Jun 20, 2018, 4:53 PM
21 points
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Wirehead your Chickens
People have values other than suffering/non-suffering, such as autonomy. You may say “animals don’t suffer from lack of autonomy” or “I don’t care about animal autonomy” but you need to make that case rather than saying people are just being dumb.

drethelin Jun 7, 2018, 5:45 AM
14 points
on: Hufflepuff Leadership and Fighting Entropy
I feel like asking people to do a favor for you is a lot more credible/enjoyable/smooth* if you’re also doing them a favor or have done them favors in the past, or have been seen doing favors for others. This is a lot easier in certain environments, eg if a bunch of people are helping put a large structure** together, it becomes second nature to offer to hold something for someone briefly, or to ask someone to hand you a tool or a piece of the structure. Environments that are less goal-oriented have a harder time with this because the tasks that need to be done are less immediately seen as for a specific person or needed by a specific person.
*in the sense that gears turning is smooth
**perhaps a geodesic dome

drethelin Jun 2, 2018, 6:29 AM
7 points
on: Beta-Test: Strong Votes
I think you should give more time for the current multipliers to play out. In addition, I think having a separate button for super up-voting is better than click and holding, especially for mobile use and compatibility with different interfaces.
edit—also we ALREADY have a system for Chosen Ones to super-upvote or super-downvote things by promoting them or moderating them out of existence, I’m not sure why we need to add an extra form of super-multiplier effect.

drethelin May 12, 2018, 3:09 AM
6 points
on: Negative Status: Should I Stop Posting Here?
this is the only post of yours I’ve seen and it’s meta whining, and long for that. My guess is the rest of your posts take a long time to say stuff people don’t want to read.

drethelin Apr 7, 2018, 5:40 PM
0 points
in reply to: Elo’s comment on: Open Thread (April 2018)
what? Why? As far as I can tell my thread was posted before that one?

drethelin Mar 19, 2018, 4:44 AM
7 points
on: Dragon Army Retrospective
The main thing I want to say is that it’s a huge error to leave something as a coordination problem when it doesn’t have to be. The way stag hunts work IRL is by people going “Hey, who wants to go on a Stag Hunt?” and if sufficient people to capture a stag sign up, then the hunt happens. If they don’t, there’s no situation where a bunch of people waste their time on an impossible stag hunt. You can also do this in the Dragon Army sense by commanding a stag hunt take place as the lord, but either option is better than there being some important, valuable task that has a chance of failing based entirely on individual judgments of whether other individuals will participate.

drethelin Mar 5, 2018, 12:30 AM
8 points
on: Inconvenience Is Qualitatively Bad
Sometimes I feel like we lose out on a lot of potential human energy by not having good social or work systems for distributing tasks to people for whom they don’t feel like inconveniences

drethelin Mar 5, 2018, 12:22 AM
2 points
on: Sacred Cash
I like this but the main thing I think is missing is the concept of capital. Money making money, leading to a surplus in the future. There’s also a big difference between spending your interest and spending your principle.

drethelin Jan 18, 2018, 8:18 AM
4 points
on: Capturing the Catalyst
I think a relevant factor is that people are fully capable of switching the frame from counting up to counting down depending on how they want to spin something. It’s not just a case of “People have personalities where they naturally count up/down”, but more that people can (if unreliably) acccess either viewpoint when convenient.

drethelin Jan 17, 2018, 7:25 AM
4 points
on: The Solitaire Principle: Game Theory for One
This is a neat idea but too long and repetitive. You use a ton of examples when the message gets across after 2 or 3.

drethelin Aug 15, 2017, 3:39 PM
5 points
in reply to: username2’s comment on: Open thread, August 14 - August 20, 2017
There aren’t that many people, so the benefits would be minor. Once you’ve swiped a couple thousand times you’re probably through most of the tinder users within your demographic preferences.