stoat

Karma: 117

stoat 23 Oct 2020 18:23 UTC
1 point
in reply to: youzicha’s comment on: Stupid Questions October 2020
Really neat paper, thank you!

stoat 22 Oct 2020 15:32 UTC
4 points
in reply to: David Gross’s comment on: Stupid Questions October 2020
This seems like a great question to me and I’m bummed I can’t answer it. But here’s a toy model that might help a bit.
Take a 2-dimensional spacetime shaped like the surface of a vertical cylinder, with space being the 1-dimensional equatorial circles, and time going vertically. Some of the straight lines in this space are slanted lines just going around and around the cylinder forever, and objects following those as world lines would sort of appear to oscillate around a point traveling along an exact vertical world line.
Anyway that model’s only 2-dimensional, and the bigger problem is it’s not the right type of geometry (it’s Riemannian not Lorentzian). Also the cylinder is flat, not curved. But maybe it still helps.

stoat 4 Oct 2020 18:55 UTC
4 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: ChristianKl’s Shortform
For what’s actually ideal, I would suggest (if you find it interesting) reading about technical clothing for mountaineering and winter camping and adapting that to city fashion—but if you want some helpful more affordable tips, what works for me is many layers.
For example, long sleeve undershirt and long underwear from Walmart. T-shirt over the undershirt, cheap sweatshirt hoodie over that. Thin pajama style pants over the long underwear. For me anyway, this can be completely comfortable under an outer layer of only jeans and just an autumn jacket up to maybe −15C or −20C.
Thin cotton gloves under big mitts or heavier gloves. Thin socks under heavy socks. For items where it’s more difficult to layer, such as a toque or scarf (or socks if shoes limit the room), wool is pretty good and is affordable, thick, and sturdy at Army Surplus stores, at least here in Canada.
I would also suggest, don’t neglect extremities or any body parts. For example, I remember once my thighs being very cold wearing only jeans (no long underwear), even though I had an extremely warm parka and was walking briskly.
I’ve found personally that even fairly thin pajama type pants, if you have say two layers under jeans, can keep you pretty comfortable even up to maybe −30C. Since you have in mind a meetup, I feel that even for example students on a budget, could get extremely adequate winter clothing this way at a Walmart in Canada that would enable them to stand outside inactively for 3-4 hours at up to −25C, say.

stoat 22 Sep 2020 19:29 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: Engaging Seriously with Short Timelines
Thanks! FWIW your high opinion of the project counts for a lot with me; I will allocate more attention to it and seriously consider donating.

stoat 2 Aug 2020 19:08 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Alexei’s comment on: Dissolving the “Is the Efficient Market Hypothesis Dead?” Question
Definitely interested, especially if there are more details you can give about the options bets you mentioned in this comment.

I’m only vaguely informed about options with no experience buying them, so I likely need to learn more before I can ask useful questions about this, but I don’t want to miss the opportunity to say I’d definitely be interested in any thoughts you might be considering posting, since I’m interested in this type of general bet on AI progress.

Anyway, I know you can’t give investment advice and don’t expect you to teach me how options work, so I guess I’m just hoping for details that help figure out if I’m thinking about this correctly, specifically with respect to using options to bet on certain short AI timeline scenarios.
(For concreteness, my general understanding is something like: say I decide the bet to make is on GOOG stock. So I set aside $X per month to buy “long call” options on GOOG as you indicate in this comment. And I should be prepared to typically lose all of that $X each month, unless the bet pays off.)

stoat 1 Aug 2020 2:59 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: Engaging Seriously with Short Timelines
I happened upon this website once previously and couldn’t quickly come to an assessment of the project, before moving on. I assume from your comment you feel this is a worthwhile project? I’d be interested to hear your take on it.

stoat 23 May 2020 12:12 UTC
4 points
in reply to: gilch’s comment on: The EMH Aten’t Dead
I think The Economic Consequences of Noise Traders is one of those papers.

stoat 4 May 2020 12:42 UTC
3 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Generalized Efficient Markets and Academia
In the book Mere Thermodynamics by Don S. Lemons published in 2009, I was quite surprised to read: “While the caloric theory of heat is plausible and to this day remains useful in limited circumstances …”
This is the only book on thermodynamics I’ve ever read, so I can’t really elaborate on those limited circumstances, unfortunately.

stoat 13 Apr 2020 19:42 UTC
1 point
on: Are there any naturally occurring heat pumps?
I wonder if I’m understanding this correctly: is something like sweating an example of refrigeration, since it keeps the low temperature thing from heating up? And heat pumps are different, they keep a hot thing from cooling down, but otherwise the underlying thermodynamic processes are similar?
If I’ve got that straight, is any evaporative cooling an example of refrigeration, but the question here is specifically wondering about heat pumps not refrigerators?

stoat 5 Apr 2020 23:21 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Pattern’s comment on: Life as metaphor for everything else.
On occasion I’ve reflected about whether I care about a beautiful statue no one would ever see. Let’s say it’s in a hole somewhere. I don’t know whether I care or not, but it seems possible to care.
You can modify the question a bit. What about a statue not just that no one would ever see, but that no one would ever know about. Or what about a statue that’s impossible to ever even know about, like in a separate universe or something.
I’ve got nothing concrete to add about that, just that your point 1. made me think of these questions I’ve asked myself.

stoat 10 Mar 2019 18:17 UTC
4 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Ideas for an action coordination website
I agree that the type of action needed to address the parenteral nutrition example would be very unlikely to arise from a hypothetical online crowd action platform.

I think much of the purpose here is to brainstorm what the most effective version of such a platform could look like, and thereby also get a picture about what class of problems such a platform might be able to address or help with.

Is your position that that class of problems is small, and/or those problems are better addressed by existing solutions anyway? Maybe that’s right. We are largely brainstorming here to gauge whether a marginal improvement is possible (and probably hoping that a big improvement is).

stoat 22 Feb 2019 3:25 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: If a “Kickstarter for Inadequate Equlibria” was built, do you have a concrete inadequate equilibrium to fix?
Actually Raemon asked specifically about such possible negative outcomes here. I only point it out because I think you make a valuable point and I’d be interested to see any further discussions of it.

stoat 22 Feb 2019 3:07 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Leafcraft’s comment on: Is there an assurance-contract website in work?
Interesting, what’s the connection here? Are you saying that assurance contracts could be implemented using a prediction market? Or were you thinking of something more along the lines of Augur’s distributed voting system for decision outcomes? Anyway I’d be interested to hear what you’re thinking here.

stoat 22 Feb 2019 2:53 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Yoav Ravid’s comment on: Is there an assurance-contract website in work?
Please do!

stoat 22 Feb 2019 2:52 UTC
19 points
on: Is there an assurance-contract website in work?
Is CollAction kind of what you had in mind? Wikipedia also mentions PledgeBank which closed down in 2015 but still has a site with all the archived pledges at www.pledgebank.com. Not sure but I don’t think either of these sites allow versions of assurance contracts that use financial contributions.
I wonder what a good binding mechanism might be for crowdaction sites in general, because once the quorum is reached you still have to get everybody to go ahead and perform the action. Any thoughts?
A site based on dominant assurance contracts would also be interesting. It might be a bit more like Kickstarter, in that maybe the entrepreneur initiating the DAC can market and popularize the action, and be responsible for the action happening when/if the quorum is reached.
What links here?
- If a “Kickstarter for Inadequate Equlibria” was built, do you have a concrete inadequate equilibrium to fix? by Raemon (21 Feb 2019 21:32 UTC; 55 points)

stoat 31 Jan 2019 1:05 UTC
2 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Law without law: from observer states to physics via algorithmic information theory
Does UDASSA include concepts like the “observer graph” and “graph machine” that Muller describes in the paper? Is Muller just filling out details that are inevitable once you have the core UDASSA concept?

stoat 24 Oct 2016 19:20 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Liron’s comment on: What’s the most annoying part of your life/job?
Yes, that’s absolutely an aspect of it.

I’m pretty agnostic about what form a solution to the original needing-to-have-a-job-to-support-myself problem might take. The hourly breakdown thing was just an attempt to ballpark some money amounts, with an emphasis on how high the value might potentially be for me. I suppose other categories of solution along the lines of tiny houses or solar panels or whatever that might ease transition to lower cost of living lifestyles would have very different prices or payment structures probably ending up a lot lower than the scenario I first outlined.

stoat 24 Oct 2016 18:57 UTC
0 points
in reply to: username2’s comment on: What’s the most annoying part of your life/job?
I’m not actually in option A. in real life, sorry if I gave that impression. It’s just an attempt to illustrate how much I might be willing to pay, if hypothetically restricted to those two options. Not suggesting restriction to those two options is realistic or anything, nor do I have any mechanism in mind that might lead to those options.

stoat 24 Oct 2016 12:22 UTC
0 points
in reply to: username2’s comment on: What’s the most annoying part of your life/job?
I do know.

stoat 24 Oct 2016 1:51 UTC
2 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: What’s the most annoying part of your life/job?
Same problem for me. And I agree, seems like it would take a lot of ingenuity to turn a solution to this problem into a viable business. Maybe products aiding rat-race opt-out strategies, coordination tech enabling 20 hour work weeks.… I don’t really have any specific ideas.

But to answer the second question, I feel like I would pay a great deal for something like this. Hard to quantify since solutions offered might be partial, and a total solution might eliminate income, etc.; but just to illustrate (and ignoring things like extreme saving for early retirement, etc.) between the options A. and B. ---
- A. $80,000/year at 40 hours a week
- B. third party company L somehow enables me to earn $40,000/year at 20 hours a week in the same job with the same employer as above, but company L takes a 25% cut of my pay (so $10,000 a year to company L)
--- I’d gratefully choose option B. (which is just to give a sense of my intuitive preference, not saying I’d defend the merits of that choice necessarily).