Or you can choose to subvert the system from the inside, which would justify your being part of it in the first place, which would justify filling out those CVs and striving to get as much influence as possible in order to be more effective at you future plans to make the system less broken. Imagine yourself in a position to hire others and choosing not to fall into the trap. That would be subverting the system for the better, and you won’t get there without getting hired first. Some people would find that motivating enough.
methree
Karma: 62
Fair points made, will take them and ponder.
To me, the idea of eliminating an entire species of insect that is part of a complex system sounds reckless. The consequences cannot be predicted and we continue the trend of destroying rather than adapting. Not to mention that DNA is complex in its own right and we cannot predict the consequences of introducing mutations at a faster rate than “nature” has stabilized coping with.
The objective is not to eliminate malaria, really; it’s to eliminate the disease that is caused by malaria, for which there are many approaches that do not require messing with large ecosystems, such as improving the resistance of victims or keeping mosquitoes at a distance (heck, if we are determined to introduce mutations, why not add one that causes the mosquitoes to dislike a particular smell, for example, and then make towns smell like that? It would be less destructive, although still subject to the unpredictability of messing with DNA).
(Note that even in the article you share about mosquitoes not being ecologically important there is didn’t among the experts)
I have a suspicion the guidelines are violated because “22” is a bullet caliber… a different number would probably work.
Hahaha! Of course. Thank you so much for running suggestions. This is what having young children with incredible artistic skills is like.
Is it ok if I hang the image of “a blog post on less wrong” on my wall? It speaks to my artistic sensibility.
It makes me wonder what 22 bucks in a glass of COVID look like. It also matches pretty well with my experience with dreams, where written words and letters are always fake even though I “know” what they stand for.
More importantly, what does it produce when you ask it to draw the future (maybe in the style of the 70s)?
Okay, seriously, this is a great way to explore how “common sense” differs between humans and this AI and highlight the risks, visually and viscerally, of relying on a technology that is fundamentally alien to humanity. Images are innocuous, but what happens when you apply AI to other objectives?
That is a very interesting proposal indeed, a search engine that doesn’t return links to existing pages but instead generates them on the fly based on the query and the knowledge it has, like an aunt who just must have an answer to everything, even if it’s made up, would be a lot more entertaining and possibly even more useful than existing ones. It would no longer be a search engine, but an answering machine, which certainly fits Google’s goal of making knowledge find-able.
Ok, that’s not what you meant, but I think it has potential.
It is being done, search for inactivated vaccines in https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker . I seem to recall there’s a tiny, tiny, tiny chance of some viruses not being inactive, so I don’t see an advantage. Also, all the adverse reactions of an mRNA vaccine seem to be related to the configuration of the spike protein they produce because it is very similar to the virus’ spike protein, and an inactivated virus vaccine has the actual spike protein, so no gain there either. It is an alternative, though.
Also, there’s no “free lunch” in this pandemic: either one accepts the risks associated with infection without a vaccine, or the risks associated with a vaccine, or sacrifices contact with fellow humans. In that calculation, the more information one has, the better off one is. It would be nice to see more funding in personalized recommendations (i.e. better prior determination of someone’s propensity to permanent or deadly side effects to the virus’and the vaccine), but making health recommendations is very regulated and carries high liability.
I finally got around to fixing the diagrams. It wasn’t an iPad-specific problem, just the way diagrams are “pasted” into the editor when copied directly from PlantUML… apparently, it’s not the image that gets pasted, but the URL to a diagram rendered server-side which has a limited lifetime.
Just a note that this has a very anthropocentric perspective about utility. Humans do not live in isolation, however, and our numbers and behaviours affect the rest of the “system” (essentially, all other macroscopic life forms and plenty of microscopic ones). Taking a step back, human happiness may not be a good indicator, at all, of total utility to the system. There is probably a number of humans that just about maximises total utility and going beyond it only hurts the whole.
I’m not sure everyone thinks death is bad. I mean, it’s been a “feature” of being human since before there were humans and it has worked quite well so far to have a process of death. Messing with a working system is always a dangerous proposition, so I, personally, wonder if it is wise to remove that feature. Therefore, I do nothing about it (maybe I should be more active in opposition? I don’t know).
The whole point of using a model is to explain and predict without the sometimes prohibitive costs of not modelling, but it comes at the price of losing “resolution of reality”. That loss is what leads to uncertainty. Understanding enough about the immune system to know how current vaccines operate in the body and how risks add up differently in different bodies (ecosystems, really) could take several generations of dedicated research… we’ve collectively been at it since before Pasteur, keep making amazing discoveries, and still can’t provide really good answers. So I feel you will only get half-baked guesses in this forum and slightly better ones if you ask COVID experts.
Thanks! I’ve updated the calculation and diagram.
It is great for holding discussions when there are more people involved in a decision.
As for the calculation, can you help me spot the mistake? I can’t find it!
I read studies (seriously, it’s super time-consuming!) and consider the best evidence available. Because of the lag introduced by studies, sometimes hearsay is enough to put in a guesstimate. It’s interesting to play around with the values, however, and see what magnitude change in a single one would lead to a change in the ultimate decision. Sometimes you find out it doesn’t make a difference, and more precise information would be irrelevant, so you can move on.
It’s hard, and I find that I need to update my models every now and then. Practice makes better.
A decision tree for vaccinating children against Covid-19, or how to wisely make a monumental decision
You can reduce the risk of cavities. X-ray technology was invented in Germany, where I live, and they have had a history of regulating its use. I have my teeth checked twice a year and have never been asked to get an x-ray. This is in contrast to my experiences growing up in the American continent, where, despite all the x-rays, I developed a lot of cavities. Using an electric toothbrush, buying toothpaste with a small amount of fluoride and flossing twice a day have been effective for me in drastically reducing the risk of cavities and obviating the need for x-rays (a diet change may have also helped). That despite my teeth being so tightly packed I destroy dental floss. I think I’ve only had a cavity once in the last ten years and it was picked up early during a scheduled check up and dealt with promptly.
The German Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz (yep, there is one) offers this booklet to keep track of your exposures and ensure you do not exceed a threshold: https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/medicine/diagnostics/x-rays/record-card.html . Maybe it will be useful to you
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to at least document random cures? Someone I know used to have problems doctors could not diagnose (lingua geographica was a symptom… one of those things nobody knows much about). Biopsies were made, blood levels were checked, a heroic efforts was put into trying to match the symptoms with something known. They disappeared all at once after a coloscopy, which requires, lo and behold, an intestinal cleansing that seriously disrupts the gut ecosystem. The moment the symptoms disappeared, doctors forgot about the issue. We learned that doctors are there to treat and have no time for research or curiosity. I feel an important bit of information is being left on the table, and it’s not their fault, it’s the system they are trapped in.