Louie

• LouieSep 6, 2012, 1:28 AM

  25 points

  in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: Clean­ing up the “Worst Ar­gu­ment” essay

  I preferred the original version that appeared on your private website.

  Once you sanitized it for LW by making it more abstract and pedantic, it lost many of the most biting, hilarious asides, that made it a fun and entertaining to read.

• LouieMay 14, 2012, 4:41 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Dorikka’s comment on: Alan Carter on the Com­plex­ity of Value

  Nope, I was wrong. It is the case that agents require equal priors for ATT to hold. AAT is like proving that mixing the same two colors of paint will always result in the same shade or that two equal numbers multiplied by another number will still be equal.

  What a worthless theorem!

  I guess when I read that AAT required “common priors” I assumed Aumann must mean known priors or knowledge of each others’ priors, since equal priors would constitute both 1) an asinine assumption and, 2) a result not worth reporting. Hanson’s assumption that humans should have a shared prior by virtue of being evolved together is interesting, but more creative than informative.

  Good thing I don’t rely on ATT for anything. It’s obvious that disagreeing with most people is rational so updating on people’s posteriors without evidence would be pretty unreasonable. I’m not surprised that ATT would turn out to be so meaningless.

• LouieMay 11, 2012, 1:18 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Dorikka’s comment on: Alan Carter on the Com­plex­ity of Value

  They need to have the same priors? Wouldn’t that make AAT trivial and vacuous?

  I thought the requirement was that priors just weren’t pathologically tuned.

• LouieApr 4, 2012, 6:07 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Generic Modafinil sales be­gin?

  Those “generics” you’re talking about are ordered by your friends from overseas. The average American won’t take advantage of Modafinil until they can pay x10 as much to buy it in a pharmacy in their neighborhood.

  People are too risk-averse to try things that work. Hmm… if only there were some sort of drug they could take to make them smarter?

• LouieApr 3, 2012, 6:57 AM

  5 points

  in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: SotW: Be Specific

  I think the bigger difference between CBT and psychoanalysis is something like, CBT: “Your feelings are the residue of your thoughts, many of which are totally wrong and should be countered by your therapist and you because human brains are horribly biased.” vs, Psychoanalysis: “Your feelings are a true reflection of what an awful, corrupt, contemptible, morally bankrupt human being you are. As your therapist, I will agree with and validate anything you believe about yourself since anything you report about yourself must be true by definition.”

  CBT still works with specific past instances of your emotions to chart feelings into thoughts. It’s good to do that so you can see clearly that thoughts always proceeded your feelings about a matter.… and also to see what the content of the thoughts are if they are, sneaky, “automatic” thoughts.

  For example, “Jill made me sad.” might be examined and reframed as “My automatic thought that hearing I was wrong about what day the garbage was picked up made me think: I’m wrong, therefore, I’m stupid, therefore, I’m worthless, therefore I’m sad. Those were all my highly-optimized and compressed thoughts which executed so fast… in such well-worn pathways… that I didn’t even notice them. So my thoughts about that made me feel sad, not Jill.”

• LouieMar 21, 2012, 5:25 AM

  6 points

  on: Send me your pho­tos of LessWrongers hav­ing fun!

  ;)

  http://​​www.facebook.com/​​photo.php?fbid=10100815853330260&set=o.144017955332&type=1&theater

• LouieJan 22, 2012, 12:22 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute is hiring an ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tant near Berkeley

  Thanks for doing the research on this. It actually makes me feel a lot better knowing how low these base rates are.

The Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute is hiring an ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tant near Berkeley

• LouieJan 19, 2012, 7:55 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: lsparrish’s comment on: Level­ing Up in Ra­tion­al­ity: A Per­sonal Journey

  I know lukeprog personally, but I suppose I should call him lukeprog on LW for other people’s benefit. Thanks for the reminder.

• LouieJan 18, 2012, 10:38 PM

  25 points

  on: Level­ing Up in Ra­tion­al­ity: A Per­sonal Journey

  I’m concerned with the overuse of the term “applause light” here.

  An applause light is not as simple as “any statement that pleases an in-group”. The way I read it, a charge of applause lights requires all of the following to hold:

  1) There are no supporting details to provide the statement with any substance.

  2) The statement is a semantic stopsign.

  3) The statement exists purely to curry favor with an in-group.

  4) No policy recommendations follow from that statement.

  I don’t see a bunch of applause lights when I read this post. I see a post overflowing with supporting details, policy recommendations, and the opposite of semantic stopsigns—Luke actually bent over backwards and went to the trouble of linking to as many useful posts on the topic as he could find. By doing so, he’s giving the curious reader a number of pointers to what others have said about the subject he’s discussing—so that they can go learn more if they’re actually curious.

  Really, what more could he have done? How was he supposed to discuss the massive utility he’s gained from rationality without mentioning rationality? To make his post shorter, Luke had to use several terms that most people around here feel good about. Yay for Luke! He saved me from having to read a longer, less information-dense post by writing it this way. I understand the sanity benefits of guarding yourself against blatant applause lights, but at the same time, it would be rather perverse of me to automatically feel unhappy in response to Luke mentioning something that makes me happy.

  It’s not an affective death spiral for me to feel happy when someone tells me an inspiring life-success story that involves terms that I happen to have a positive affect for. It’s having a reaction that fits the facts. I’m happy Luke is having a good life. It’s relevant for him to tell me about it here on Less Wrong because rationality played a big part in his success. And I’m even more overjoyed and grateful to Luke that he’s leaving a trail of sign-posts behind him, pointing the way forward as he levels up in rationality. Now is the time for him to be documenting this… while it’s still fresh… so that one day when he forgets how he got to where he is, there will still be an overly detailed record to point people to.

• LouieJan 14, 2012, 11:25 PM

  −7 points

  on: The Sav­age the­o­rem and the Ells­berg paradox

  This post has put me to sleep 3 times while trying to read it. I’m done.

• LouieJan 9, 2012, 11:56 PM

  17 points

  in reply to: MinibearRex’s comment on: What Cu­ri­os­ity Looks Like

  Thanks MinibearRex.

  I’ve added ads on Google AdWords that will start coming up for this in a couple days when the new ads get approved so that anyone searching for something even vaguely like “How to think better” or “How to figure out what’s true” will get pointed at Less Wrong. Not as good as owning the top 3 spots in the organic results, but some folks click on ads, especially when it’s in the top spot. And we do need to make landing on the path towards rationality less of a stroke of luck and more a matter of certainty for those who are looking.

• LouieJan 3, 2012, 12:54 AM

  3 points

  in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: The bias shield

  I also thought you meant that Bill O’Reilly had (surprisingly) written the best book ever on the Lincoln shooting when you said “But I was wrong.”

• LouieDec 28, 2011, 9:44 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: HoldenKarnofsky’s comment on: Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute $100,000 end-of-year fundraiser only 20% filled so far

  Thanks for the helpful comments! I was uninformed about all those details above.

  These posts are not about GiveWell’s process.

  One of the posts has the sub-heading “The GiveWell approach” and all of the analysis in both posts use examples of charities you’re comparing. I agree you weren’t just talking about the GiveWell process… you were talking about a larger philosophy of science you have that informs things like the GiveWell process.

  I recognize that you’re making sophisticated arguments for your points. Especially the assumptions that you claim simply must be true to satisfy your intuition that charities should be rewarded for transparency and punished otherwise. Those seem wise from a “getting things done” point of view for an org like GiveWell—even when there is no mathematical reason those assumptions should be true—but only a human-level tit-for-tat shame/​enforcement mechanism you hope eventually makes this circularly “true” through repeated application. Seems fair enough.

  But adding regression adjustments to cancel out the effectiveness of any charity which looks too effective to be believed (based on the common sense of the evaluator) seems like a pretty big finger on the scale. Why do so much analysis in the beginning if the last step of the algorithm is just “re-adjust effectiveness and expected value to equal what feels right”? Your adjustment factor amounts to a kind of Egalitarian Effectiveness Assumption: We are all created equal at turning money into goodness. Or perhaps it’s more of a negative statement, like, “None of us is any better than the best of us at turning money into goodness”—where the upper limit on the best is something like 1000x or whatever the evaluator has encountered in the past. Any claims made above the best limit gets adjusted back down—those guys were trying to Pascal’s Mug us! That’s the way in which there’s a blinding effect. You disbelieve the claims of any groups who claims to be more effective per capita than you think is possible.

  What links here?

  • Should we dis­count ex­traor­di­nary im­pli­ca­tions? by XiXiDu (Dec 29, 2011, 2:51 PM; 4 points)

• LouieDec 28, 2011, 8:35 PM

  6 points

  in reply to: Will_Newsome’s comment on: Why We Can’t Take Ex­pected Value Es­ti­mates Liter­ally (Even When They’re Un­bi­ased)

  Your comments are a cruel reminder that I’m in a world where some of the very best people I know are taken from me.

• LouieDec 28, 2011, 5:14 AM

  −9 points

  in reply to: juliawise’s comment on: Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute $100,000 end-of-year fundraiser only 20% filled so far

  A few corrections.

  • I know that Holden interviewed two other supporters of ours… but I don’t think he interviewed 2 other employees. If he did, why did he only publish the unhelpful notes from the one employee he spoke to who didn’t know anything?

  • SIAI didn’t give Jasen to GiveWell to be interviewed—Holden chose him unilaterally—not because he was a good choice, but because Jasen is from New York (just like Holden).

  • I’m unaware of Holden sending his notes to anyone at SIAI prior to publication. Who did he send them to? I never saw them.

  • My guess is Holden sent his notes back to Jasen and called that “sending them to SIAI for feedback”. In other words, no one at SIAI who is a leader, or a board member, or someone who understands the plans/​finances of the organization saw the notes prior to publication. If Holden had sent the notes to any of the board members of Singularity Institute, they would have sent him tons of corrections.

  • To clarify, I didn’t say the interview itself was a lie. I said calling it an interview with SIAI was a lie. I stick by that characterization.

• LouieDec 28, 2011, 3:02 AM

  −6 points

  in reply to: juliawise’s comment on: Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute $100,000 end-of-year fundraiser only 20% filled so far

  I agree with Grognor—that interview is beyond unhelpful. Even calling it an interview of SIAI is incredibly misleading. (I would say a complete lie). Holden interviewed the only visitor at SI who was there last summer who wouldn’t have known anything about the organizations funding needs. Jasen was running a student summer program—not SIAI. I would liken it to Holden interviewing a random boyscout somewhere and then publishing a report complaining that he couldn’t understand the organizational funding needs of Boy Scouts of America.

  Also, keep in mind that GiveWell is certainly a good service (and I support them) but their process is limited and is unable to evaluate the value of research. In fact, if an opportunity to donate as good as Singularity Institute existed, GiveWell’s methodology would blind them to the possibility of discovering it.

  Carl Shulman pointed out how absurd this was: If GiveWell had existed 100 years ago, they would have argued against funding the eradication of smallpox. Their process forces them to reject the possibility that an intervention could be that effective.

  I’m curious about the new GiveWell Labs initiative though. Singularity Institute does meet all of that program’s criteria for inclusion… perhaps that’s why they started this program… so that they aren’t forced to overlook so many extraordinary donation opportunities forever.

Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute $100,000 end-of-year fundraiser only 20% filled so far

• LouieDec 25, 2011, 12:59 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Kevin’s comment on: Spend Money on Ergonomics

  Think I agree. Colemak looks superior. I’ll recommend people learn that in the future.

• LouieDec 23, 2011, 7:48 AM

  9 points

  on: Spend Money on Ergonomics

  While we’re trading good ergonomics secrets, I’ll point out that Mac BreakZ is pretty exceptional as these things go. If you’re banging away on a MacBook every day like me, you should start using this before you get a repetitive stress injury (RSI).

  Also if you already have wrist-strain issues, try typing in Dvorak. Seriously. Due to my past computer usage, I used to have to wear uncomfortable wrist braces every night to prevent my fingers from constantly going numb. After several years of suffering with this and assuming I would one day need carpal tunnel surgery, I switched to Dvorak. A month later, all my symptoms disappeared. I was able to stop wearing the wrist guards. 7 years later and still no problems.

  As far as “the world is mad” and “people don’t even try to optimize stuff”, the fact that anyone still uses Qwerty keyboards when, free, strictly superior layouts have existed since before computers were invented is definitely a canary in the coal mine of rationality.