siclabomines

Karma: 83

siclabomines Jul 13, 2020, 8:31 AM
6 points
on: Six economics misconceptions which I’ve resolved over the last few years
Why is it that riskier investments should give higher expected returns?
I ask not because I don’t get that the avg person would rather invest on something safe than something unsafe, all else being equal. I get that. I ask because I imagine that investors could bring their total risk down through diversification without harming the expected returns, so big money would prefer the higher expected returns even if they are risky, and in doing that, they’d bring down the extra returns from the riskier investments.
Is it because investments options are so correlated that diversification isn’t enough to bring the risk of a portfolio down to acceptable levels? Or some other reason?

siclabomines Jul 6, 2020, 11:50 PM
2 points
on: Causality and its harms
I have the opposite impressions. Science should embrace causality more and do it better. And as a layman term it should be refined so that we stop talking about the causes of any event as a cake where each slice has a name and only one name.

I find it hard to summarize why, at least right now, but my view is sorta similar to Pearl’s (though I don’t totally like how he puts it). Hopefully later I’ll re-read this more attentively and comment something more productive (if no one has done a strictly better job already).

siclabomines Jun 25, 2020, 2:18 AM
2 points
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: [META] Building a whisper network.
I meant hiding just the CWish posts. There’re enough non-CWish posts to attract people that value the way of thinking in general.

Also, it doesn’t sound that bad to attract users through 1 to 1 recommendations only. Or allow unlogged people to read all, but only little by little release the power for new users to interact with the content. Maybe release it all at once if a high karma user vouches for you (they lose it that person gets banned or something). Maybe instead of karma, there could be another value that better reflects how much you are likely to value proper manners and thinking (e.g., it could be obtained by summing karma from different topics i in a way that overvalues breadth of interest $k = (\sum \sqrt{k_{i}})^{2}$ ).

I’m just thinking out loud in real time. My main point one can go a long way just by limiting the rate at which new users can invade and screw with the content.

siclabomines Jun 23, 2020, 11:54 PM
3 points
in reply to: Rudi C’s comment on: [META] Building a whisper network.
I was 80% kidding. I do believe that the type of people that could attack this community are hugely people that can’t tolerate trying to read and understand the kind of content in here; let alone Scott’s 999999 word analytical yet clear essays. They didn’t sign up for real thinking and nuance when they went into activism.

And unlike others, I don’t think mobs are organized. They look like it, but its some sort of emergent behaviour that can be managed by making it boring for the average mob member to attack.

siclabomines Jun 23, 2020, 4:34 PM
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: SlateStarCodex deleted because NYT wants to dox Scott
Fair enough.

siclabomines Jun 23, 2020, 3:18 PM
8 points
in reply to: Matt Goldenberg’s comment on: SlateStarCodex deleted because NYT wants to dox Scott
I still don’t get it. agc asked how is the retaliation NOT at attempt to stifle criticism. TurnTrout answered that it is not: it’s retaliation for a doxing attack, not for criticism. Then wolflow said something that’s “literally” wrong, and metaphorically I didn’t get it; probably TurnTrout didn’t get it too so he answered the literal interpretation. Etc etc.

But the upvotes-downvotes show I’m not seeing something here.

siclabomines Jun 23, 2020, 3:10 PM
3 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: SlateStarCodex deleted because NYT wants to dox Scott
Of course, that was a given. I just assumed that most of us don’t need days of exclusive focus to write an email.

siclabomines Jun 23, 2020, 3:05 PM
7 points
on: [META] Building a whisper network.
Simply requiring log-in to read some posts, and limiting the rate of new users (maybe even make it invite only most of the times, like a private torrent tracker), should go a long way to prevent mob attacks.

siclabomines Jun 23, 2020, 3:03 PM
5 points
on: [META] Building a whisper network.
Make a captcha with GPT-X rationalist content against real rationalist content. If you can’t tell the difference, you are out :P
Also, train GPT-X on content that triggers mobs, and then use it to keep them busy elsewhere :P

siclabomines Jun 23, 2020, 11:20 AM
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: SlateStarCodex deleted because NYT wants to dox Scott
Given the news cycle speed, it makes sense to get ready for the likely scenarios.

siclabomines Jun 10, 2020, 3:22 AM
2 points
on: BBE W1: Personal Notetaking Desiderata Walkthrough
I’ve been mostly using a mix
- vimwiki for the Babble
- TeXMacs for the Prune
- Anki as a bucket for short insights, with very good retrievability (from PC and phone): click “browse”, and search. (I don’t use it as much to memorize, though I really like to just be able to pop something out without noticing the ever growing mess, yet knowing that everything will EVENTUALLY come out. Also, I love to be able to easily set if I want to see the card again sooner or later. Honestly, I wish these kinds of systems weren’t limitted to “memorization apps”, and didn’t try to be so automatic in their scheduling of the pieces of content.)
- Occasionally, Freeplane for mindmaps. jrnl for quick and short date-stamped logs. Probably others...
I am not too satisfied though, so this post will be useful when I have the time to give it another shot.

siclabomines Jun 6, 2020, 4:32 AM
2 points
on: Covid-19: My Current Model
My intuition is that the effect of the most infectious people getting infected first is even bigger than you suspect. It will not be herd immunity what brings this under control. Herd immunity would be if the infected person has a harder time infecting because some are immune already, and that requires some significant % of people being immune (unless it’s juuuuust R=1.04 or something very near 1 but bigger, too much of a coincidence). Yet most countries got it under control at low %s with either lots or little action (even when at first many of the same countries seemed unable to affect the spread with anything short of total lockdown).
It seems much more reasonable that as the virus selectively removes the most susceptible, the R drops below 1 and that’s it. The proportion of removed could be at 1%, 0.5%, 5%, no problem here. Argentina is having a spike despite being in lockdown for months, because they locked down too early, I think because the virus refuses to be tamed until it has eaten up “those” communities.

Regarding the rate being ~1, I share the suspicious attitude, but something doesn’t feel right in suggesting the control mechanism is people’s behaviour. Maybe there’s something else. Or maybe there isn’t even a control mechanism (one that slows the spread if the “next generation of infected is bigger and viceversa”), but the dynamics are is just not behaving naturally like an exponential. Maybe there’s a “cap” of how many peoplee can get infected per 2 weeks because not that many (accidentally?) commit one of the “high-risk” things you suggest. Or the connection graph between people is shaped in a way that tends to this linear thing. I don’t know.

siclabomines May 22, 2020, 11:47 AM
1 point
on: The EMH Aten’t Dead
You write quite entertainingly.
There’s no room for luck in the “realistic” half of your diagram.

siclabomines Feb 1, 2019, 8:47 PM
1 point
on: Why is this utilitarian calculus wrong? Or is it?
I think the calculus is correct, in the “non-iterated” game. The conclusion is correct in the same sense that it would be even better to donate $101 and come back the next day with a black sock on your head and steal a widget.

There’s just something about the iterated exercise of mixing up donations and transactions that you don’t like, and I share that intuition. I think in my case I feel that their strategy of selling at a high price discourages other potential transactions from people that value the widget between $20 and $100 and don’t care about who’s selling it. And I am particularly sensitive about taking advantage of the simple win-win opportunities first. Or maybe I just dislike the lack of transparency of dressing up the donation as a purchase.

In my experience for many people it’s the other way around. Many are much more willing to buy some useless product at a high price, a product that they value less than its producing cost, instead of just donating. I assume it’s because they feel it’s better to pay someone that’s “working” for their money than to incentivize begging.