greylag

Karma: 237

greylag Nov 1, 2019, 7:51 PM
1 point
in reply to: philh’s comment on: How to Improve Your Sleep
My common-sense understanding: if you have sex and then aren’t sleepy, get up.
I assume “beds are for sexual activity and sleep”, rather than just for sleep, is a concession to practicality and comfort. Similarly, prohibiting masturbation in bed would seem counterproductive.
(I’d imagine some people would be unhappy to forego reading in bed, also, but that’s different)

greylag Sep 13, 2019, 6:48 AM
3 points
on: Specificity: Your Brain’s Superpower
The ladder of abstraction goes up as well as down.

We spend a lot of time trying to descend it, being more specific (especially if we’re Paul Graham), but at times its better to be more abstract! Canonical example: Newton. The apple falling from the tree, and the Earth orbiting the sun, are specific examples, but the genius is identifying that the same forces are manipulating them on vastly different scales. (It’s also vital not to get stuck believing that the apple is flat, but that’s not important right now).

Dan Dennett has the idea of “greedy reductionism”. Dennett claims, more or less, that people have souls but the souls are made of tiny robots, ie. “neurons” and “souls” are both legitimate concepts. “Souls are JUST tiny robots and don’t really exist” he calls greedy reductionism: proverbially, not seeing the forest for the trees.

Trying to argue better, as in “ladder of inference” or double crux, is very likely to involve moving up and down the ladder of abstraction, between general concepts and specific observations.

greylag Sep 12, 2019, 8:46 PM
1 point
in reply to: Liron’s comment on: The Power to Solve Climate Change
“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe” — H. G. Wells

greylag Sep 12, 2019, 8:45 PM
8 points
in reply to: Liron’s comment on: The Power to Solve Climate Change

cultural norm shift → … meeting Paris Agreement target

I don’t think this chain of causes and effect can be ruled out a priori.

Before the Copenhagen agreement banned CFCs, there were activists boycotting aerosol cans! Tesla (and, before them, Toyota, makers of the Prius) benefitted greatly from buyers’ guilty consciences! (And that’s a good thing!) Wind energy was expensive and countercultural in the 70s; hippies did early R&D!

greylag Sep 12, 2019, 8:38 PM
4 points
on: The Power to Solve Climate Change
(Epistemic status: guess, gut reaction) Most of what makes this article good does not come from specificity.

greylag Sep 12, 2019, 8:30 PM
3 points
in reply to: Richard_Ngo’s comment on: The Power to Solve Climate Change

me flying less or eating less meat quite plausibly increases prices

That does not sound very plausible, but what DOES is if you then find yourself in the market for long distance rail travel, or meat substitutes (vegetarian meals in restaurants) (because the market for low impact substitutes is smaller than the conventional market, so your effect there is greater).

greylag Sep 12, 2019, 8:25 PM
6 points
on: The Power to Solve Climate Change
What you want, as someone taking action against climate change, is … to be applying pressure somewhere it will have an effect. I want to say “leverage”, but I’m not sure that’s the right concept—let me give an example: funding renewable energy sources that are on a steep segment of their learning curve. The fact that I did this makes the next person who does this’s action more effective.

I think this article mostly implies, rather than flat out states, that there is a coordination problem here, which means, in approximate order: a) political action b) if you’re taking personal action (what you buy, who you work for, …) you want to be pushing down a steep and oiled learning curve for maximum effect

I think a lot of activist discourse about climate avoids talking about coordination simply because of the likelihood that the reader feels powerless and becomes apathetic. (“Don’t go over there, you’ll fall into the despair event horizon!”)

greylag Aug 7, 2019, 6:18 PM
2 points
in reply to: ryan_b’s comment on: Can we really prevent all warming for less than 10B$ with the mostly side-effect free geoengineering technique of Marine Cloud Brightening?
Large projects behave similarly regardless of whether we are talking civil infrastructure, oil & gas, energy, mining, aerospace...
The industrial aspect of MCB seems to be “numerous, autonomous boats spraying water”. Building a lot of adequately-reliable boats doesn’t sound like your typical megaproject, but more of an assembly-line job, something like liberty ships. Adequately developing the process of managing large numbers of drone ships might be a pre-requisite, and doubtless has other military and civil applications.
(Of course, whether MCB affects the climate as hoped is another question altogether).

greylag Aug 7, 2019, 6:22 AM
1 point
in reply to: mako yass’s comment on: Can we really prevent all warming for less than 10B$ with the mostly side-effect free geoengineering technique of Marine Cloud Brightening?

why did you post this in the answers section?

Oh. By accident—sorry! Ah, there is a “move to comments” button. I will press it.

greylag Aug 6, 2019, 12:34 PM
2 points
on: Can we really prevent all warming for less than 10B$ with the mostly side-effect free geoengineering technique of Marine Cloud Brightening?
Is there such a thing as “EA, but for carbon offsetting”? I can imagine an organisation that would invest in a weighted mix of direct carbon capture, lobbying, geoengineering, funding renewable energy, research, …

greylag Aug 6, 2019, 12:32 PM
3 points
on: Can we really prevent all warming for less than 10B$ with the mostly side-effect free geoengineering technique of Marine Cloud Brightening?

… public support for any sort of emission control will evaporate the moment geoengineering is realised as a tolerable alternative. Once the public believe, there will never be a quorum of voters willing to sacrifice anything of their own to reduce emissions

More precisely, public support for emission control that requires personal sacrifice. Energy efficiency measures have been estimated to cost “substantially less than the cost of meeting electricity needs with new power plants”, for example.

greylag Aug 6, 2019, 6:34 AM
3 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Is there a user’s manual to using the internet more efficiently?
I think the more practical ideas in it (custom RSS readers?) are outdated.

greylag Aug 5, 2019, 5:51 AM
1 point
on: Is there a user’s manual to using the internet more efficiently?
Sound a bit like Howard Rheingold’s Net Smart.

greylag Jul 31, 2019, 7:05 AM
1 point
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Will autonomous cars be more economical/efficient as shared urban transit than busses or trains, and by how much? What’s some good research on this?
Autonomy can allow for higher density by:
1) at worst, reducing, at best, eliminating, the headway between vehicles that’s needed to allow human drivers to react (@shminux’s “zooming in all directions”)
2) in busy times and locations, aggregate multiple journeys into multiple-occupancy vehicles running ad-hoc routes. (I think that’s what the OECD “shared mobility liveable cities” study is proposing; UberPool is similar; Citymapper’s “smart buses” are similar (though all with human drivers))

greylag Jul 31, 2019, 7:00 AM
2 points
on: Will autonomous cars be more economical/efficient as shared urban transit than busses or trains, and by how much? What’s some good research on this?
@makoyass I think you would be interested in The End of Traffic and the Future of Access . I haven’t read it, though I have read some of Levinson’s other work; it’s a bit on the dry-and-wonkish side, but I expect you would prefer that to “rabid conflict-theorist”, and it’s covering the right sort of ground.

greylag Jul 8, 2019, 7:53 PM
1 point
in reply to: Alexei’s comment on: Black hole narratives
In that case, I have completely misunderstood.

greylag Jul 8, 2019, 7:21 AM
3 points
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Black hole narratives
(Epistemic status: improvising wildly)

You are being outdebated because you are arguing with a memeplex evolved for dragging people into paroxysms of ambiguous guilt. (More prosaically, you can be outargued by, say, a car salesman; if they have convinced you to spend much more money than you intended and there is this really good offer available right now, this means they are better at this than you, which is their job).

I suspect the ambiguity is important. As Said said, equivocation; Motte and Bailey is similar.

My problem with all this: sometimes intense guilt IS the appropriate response. There may be an aspect from which your behaviour is, in fact, reprehensible! This seems to rule out hard and fast “well, don’t let people make you feel guilty” heuristics.

In passing, taboo “narrative”. It has least two distinct meanings: a particular story (usually linear), or something more like a worldview, ideology or doctrine.

greylag Jul 8, 2019, 6:59 AM
4 points
on: Black hole narratives
(Epistemic status: snowclone in the style of Scott Alexander) “Haters gonna hate,” said Taylor, Swiftly

greylag Jul 4, 2019, 6:02 AM
3 points
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Self-consciousness wants to make everything about itself

Calvinism resembles abusive parenting more than any sort of ethical principle.

I think this might be an important distinction:

“We are all flawed/evil and have to somehow make the best of it” (Calvinism, interpreted charitably)

vs

“YOU are evil/worthless” said to a child by a parent who believes it (abusive parenting, interpreted uncharitably, painted orange and with a bulls eye painted on it)

greylag Jul 4, 2019, 5:55 AM
1 point
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Self-consciousness wants to make everything about itself
I think you get similar answers whether consequentialist or deontological.

Consequentialist: the consequences end up terrible irrespective of your actions.

Deontological: the set of rules and duties is contradictory (as you suggest) or requires superhuman control over your environment/society, or your subconscious mind.