I notice I am confused. 60 times more than all other computers combined would imply that >98% of human compute capacity is tied up in the bitcoin network. That seems...unlikely.
Error
Karma: 3,314
For my part, it was one part trivial inconveniences, one part that it read like woo. I was aware it existed through other avenues (I wasn’t a Less Wronger then), and aware of what it was trying to do, and I had the technical acumen to get in on it if I had so chosen. Given that, I’m a little bitter that I didn’t do so. I could retire today if I had. I could get into it today, of course, but now that everybody knows it’s a magic money making machine I suspect a bubble is well underway. I don’t want to be in when it breaks.
I’m a little worried about Bitcoin’s externalities. The mining process consumes more and more energy, and professional miners are driving up hardware costs. Which might be fine if most transactions were, well, transactions, i.e. if we’re getting human value out of the work. But I get the impression that the vast majority of the network’s effort goes towards playing musical chairs with money, and that seems bad.
Bitcoin doesn’t feel woo-ish, anymore, but it’s starting to feel paperclippy instead.
Re: dynamism and lag, one thing that really makes me suspicious is the cycling of the tab title. Something is looping in the background after the page is done loading. I’m no web developer (I do python cantrips, mostly) but I might poke around myself. What do you use for profiling?
By topbar I think I mean the app bar. The one across the top. I would prefer if, on widescreens, it were placed along the side (where the foldout menu appears, perhaps) in order to maximize available vertical space. That’s an aesthetic preference, though. I do really like that it doesn’t chase my scrolling down the page, or pop up whenever I scroll back, like some sites I could name. Thank you for that.
Is there a documented API for the site, by the way? Is it in principle possible to develop a native client?
My own four cents:
Visually this is a noticeable improvement. Cleaner design. Larger body text with reasonable max-width. Less UI “noise”. I haven’t messed around much with the interface; there are probably other positives. Only significant visual regression is the lack of alternating colors on comments.
(a few people have noted that the new visual scheme isn’t all that site-distinctive; I’m not sure if I like it that way or not)
I see posts from names I haven’t seen on LW proper in a while, which is a good sign. Content is king.
That said, some preferences the new site violates:
Lag. I get it mostly when scrolling or doing text input, rather than loading. I am not sure how much of that is the site’s fault or my machine. I am tempted to blame it on the site, because...
Overly dynamic interface. I don’t know what your performance bottlenecks are (I assume you’re profiling and know better than me), but I see elements that could easily be static sidebars turned into foldouts, or the popup formatting overlay, or whatever it is that’s making the titles on my tabs change, and...well, it smells like lagbait. Code that doesn’t run can’t cause performance problems, and none of that stuff is necessary. (also I don’t like it stylistically, but I admit my tastes are technologically ascetic.)
Speaking of the formatting overlay: I see no way to compose in plain text with markup...any form of markup. I favor markdown, but the specific format is irrelevant, any of the modern LMLs will do. I want to not be fighting the editor (right now I’m fighting the list detection and undo), if I am thinking about the editor I am not thinking about my post, and I want the option of composing nontrivial posts in my editor of choice. If I can’t copy-paste marked-up text into the posting interface, it will be either enraging (if I use it) or useless (if I don’t).
There should be no topbar or bottombar, at least not on widescreen displays. I appreciate that the topbar here isn’t nearly as obstructive as many other sites. I can actually see the body text without scrolling first! But horizontal space is practically free and vertical space is priceless. UI chrome should eat the former, not the latter.
Sometimes you have to clear rubble before you can build, and I know that’s what this project is all about, so I’m not complaining too hard about regressions. The only dealbreaker for me right now is the editor. If I can’t compose in plain text without interference, I probably won’t be posting at all.
Thanks, that’s the one.
I’m looking for an anecdote about sunk costs. Two executives were discussing some bad business situation, one of them asks “look, suppose the board were to fire us and bring new execs in. What would those guys do?” “Get us out of the X business” “Then what’s to stop us from leaving the room, coming back in, and doing exactly that?”
...but all my google-fu can’t turn up the original source. Does it sound familiar to anyone here?
Honestly, mostly phone calls. It sounds silly, but I have a paralytic fear of calling strangers, and that leads me to procrastinate far more than is normal even for me. Making someone else do things like (for today’s example) call around to find someone who will take a couch I’m trying to donate ensures that it doesn’t stay in the middle of the spare room for 6-12 months while I dither.
A qualifier: If you’re going to do this, make sure it’s a class where the other people in the class actually want to be there. Otherwise the social reinforcement will be misdirected. This is an obvious failure mode of grade school and a less-obvious failure mode for the sort of extracurriculars where the students are there mostly by parental insistence.
(also, make sure you actually want to be there too. Otherwise you’ll be the one screwing it up.)
Not all tail risk is created equal. Assume your remaining natural lifespan is L years, and revival tech will be invented R years after that. Refusing to kill yourself is effectively betting that no inescapable worse-than-death future will occur in the next L years; refusing cryonics is effectively betting the same, but for the next L + R years.
Assuming revival tech is invented only after you die, the probability of ending up in some variation of hell is strictly greater with cryonics than without it—even if both chances are very small—simply because hell has more time to get started.
It’s debatable how large the difference is between the probabilities, of course. But some risk thresholds legitimately fall between the two.
(upvoting even though I disagree with your conclusion—I think it’s an interesting line of thought)
Typo in the evolutionary psychology chapter: “We compress this gargantuan historicalstatistical macrofact by saying “evolution did it.”
“Historicalstatistical” should have a hyphen in it. Original
That’s the one, thanks!
I’m searching for a quote. It goes something like this:
“In nearly every contest there comes a point where one competitor has decided that they are going to lose. Sometimes it’s near the end; sometimes it’s right at the start. After that point, everything they do will be aimed at bringing that result to pass.”
And then continues in that vein for a bit. I don’t have the wording close enough to correct for Google to get me what I’m looking for, though. And I could swear I’ve seen it quoted here before. Does someone else remember the source?
Do you have a reliable way to distinguish good teams from bad ones, before you sign the paperwork and put in your notice?
I’ve stayed in jobs I wanted to leave a couple of times now, because my team was a reasonably good team and I was afraid that elsewhere I would end up with Dilbert’s boss.
It seems to me that the form of yak shaving you describe is a maintenance problem. The things in your life that are broken, are broken because they require maintenance that hasn’t been performed. Until it suddenly becomes an urgent necessity.
You can fix that by doing all the required yak shaving...maybe. But the most dedicated yak shaving routine will fail if your yak herd has expanded until its maintenance cost exceeds all available time.
Instead, own fewer yaks. Figure out what in your environment requires maintenance. Then automate it, outsource it, or get rid of it. Join a makerspace instead of having your own workbench. Electronicise and (preferably) automate all your bills. Get rid of anything that 1. doesn’t see regular use, and 2. is prone to requiring shaving. Hire a housekeeper. Rent an apartment where management is responsible for things that break instead of you—if you can afford it, rent one that does valet trash and laundry. Get amazon prime and get used to waiting two days for anything you have to buy. Then never go shopping for non-perishables in person again. If you live somewhere that you can get groceries delivered, do that too.
Edit: Use services like Fancyhands for fourth quadrant stuff that you nonetheless still want done.
A great time to do this sort of life-cleaning is when you move—it’s easier to overcome the “but what if I need it?” mental roadblock if you can reply “but if I junk it, it’s that much less I have to pack and unpack.” Make laziness work for you.
(not coincidentally, I am doing literally this right now)
Here’s a thought: Weight votes according to how often the voter votes the same way you do.
It would neuter the effectiveness of serial downvoting, while simultaneously encouraging more participation. Your votes would benefit yourself as well as others, by training the system.
Being reasonable: strong robots and dead walking people
I don’t get the reference, but my first thought: super robots vs. zombies sounds like an awesome anime.
I’d be inclined to suspect closeting too. The better your ability to support yourself, the less you need to worry about repercussions.
Tangential and possibly relevant: I’ve noticed bisexual women appear to be ridiculously common in high-intelligence nerd communities. I don’t know whether I should associate that with the intelligence or the geek/nerd/dork personality cluster, nor do I know which way the causation goes.
I like that name for the phenomenon.
I’m not sure exactly when, but I seem to have developed a five second habit of noticing a noble excuse and thwarting it. That is, my brain will float up some noble rationalization for action X, and I’ll notice it sounds noble, and that seems to be enough for me to stop and say “wait a sec, this probably isn’t the real reason behind my actions.”
Sometimes I can do this before I’ve even offered up an excuse, skip past “I’m late because traffic” and move directly to “yeah, I’m late because I’m insane and don’t develop a sense of urgency about anything until it’s already too late.”
I don’t know exactly how the habit formed, but I think it’s something to do with my social anxiety. My mental model of others says that my excuses are totally transparent, that everybody around me knows perfectly well I’m feeding them bullshit; and that they view it the same way as, say, a teacher views a kid who claims that the dog ate their homework. The image is humiliating, and the only defense is to be totally up front about underlying reasons.
In theory this should lead me to lie to myself about my motivations to make the noble excuse appear true, but that doesn’t seem to happen all the time. The same alief applies; I feel like others will see through the excuse even if I don’t—again, like a kid insisting that what the bullies say on the playground doesn’t matter because “I don’t care what they think.” So I had better get my motivations correct and honest, or else suffer the contempt of anyone who hears my transparently self-serving excuses.
The second step appears to fail more often than the first; I’ve sometimes caught myself in webs of “reasoning” arguing that I have one motivation when the outside view suggests I have another.
The habit is moderately effective and I endorse it, but I’m not sure it’s reproducible for anyone without my specific neuroses.
That wasn’t a great way to put it and probably shouldn’t have been written in haste...but just for the record, I would favor such a policy, at least for the next few months. I don’t want either file of the hate parade getting a foothold here.
Individual incentives to back something collectively terrible seems like textbook Moloch to me.
(which doesn’t imply that you’re wrong, of course)