winstonBosan

Karma: 272

winstonBosan Oct 18, 2024, 2:33 PM
4 points
2
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Arithmetic is an underrated world-modeling technology
Stephen puts it elegantly. Though for me who is more of a code monkey, I’d like to think of it as “Runtime Non-Zero cost type safety through some const generics”.

winstonBosan Sep 30, 2024, 8:42 PM
6 points
0
in reply to: Annapurna’s comment on: Point of Failure: Semiconductor-Grade Quartz
I can see how the article can be convincing. But it is worth it to keep in mind that Hunterbrook is also a hedge fund that trades on their own news—an obvious case of potential alignment failure if there ever was one. Though I am not sure if they are shorting this one.

Perhaps more damningly:

Jiangsu Pacific Quartz Co., Ltd. (SHA: 603688) produces HPQ in China. Earlier this year, state legislators evaluated North Carolina House Bill 385, which could ban ownership of local quartz mines by foreign entities from countries designated as adversarial to the U.S., such as China.

Per the Hunterbrook article.

PS: It is likely critical, but I am more uncertain about it being a single point. Unless we are limiting ourselves to the allegorical West.

winstonBosan Sep 30, 2024, 8:22 PM
23 points
2
on: Point of Failure: Semiconductor-Grade Quartz
A quick sanity check on the Chinese side of the web had revealed a couple of manufacturers for semi-conductor grade quartz, allegedly with manufacturing and processing centres in Jiangsu, CN.

My prior on this product type actually being a critical single point of failure is low.

See below: http://www.quartzpacific.com/api/upload/uploadService/dowloadEx?fileId=1113&tenantId=147391 ^Product spec (one of many semiconductor grade product shape) http://zj.people.com.cn/BIG5/n2/2023/0316/c186327-40338436.html ^investment news on new sites and manufacturing capacity

winstonBosan Aug 30, 2024, 9:12 PM
11 points
7
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Nursing doubts
It doesn’t seem like you are arguing that breastfeeding is universally more convenient than formula. But breast feeding can be very inconvenient:
1. It is often painful
2. Elevated chance of inflammation
3. Public spaces are not setup for mothers to breast feed; some may not value it, but a lot of people value privacy.
Formula’s convenience lays in enabling asynchronous feeding of the baby—by separating the role of the producer and the role of the feeder, the other partner can take care of the baby whilst the mother sleeps.

Another compromise to make is store breast milk and reheating it on demand!

winstonBosan Jun 12, 2024, 6:01 PM
3 points
2
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Open Thread Summer 2024
On Lesswrong being a dispersed internet community:

If the ACX survey is informative here, discussing local policy works surprisingly well here! I’d say a significant chunk of people are in the Bay Area at large and Boston/NYC/DC area—it should be enough of a cluster to support discussions of local policy. And policies in California/DC has an oversized effect on things we care about as well.

winstonBosan Apr 7, 2024, 2:18 AM
4 points
0
on: “Fractal Strategy” workshop report
I am curious, what were other “visions” of this workshop that you generated in the pre-planning stage?
And now that you have done the workshop, which part of the previous visions might you incorporate into later workshops?

winstonBosan Apr 1, 2024, 8:40 PM
2 points
1
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Habryka’s Shortform Feed
I hope the partial unveiling of a your user_id hash will not doom us all, somehow.

winstonBosan Mar 29, 2024, 1:17 AM
3 points
0
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
I am not everyone else, but the reason I downvoted on the second axis is because:
- I still don’t really understand the avoidant/non-avoidant taxonomy. I am confused when avoidant is both “introverted… and prefer to be alone” while “avoidants… being disturbing to others” when Scott never intended to disturb Metz’s life? And Scott doesn’t owe anyone anything—avoidant or not. And the claim about Scott being low conscientious? Gwern being low conscientious? If it “varying from person to person” so much, is it even descriptive?
- Making a claim of Gwern being avoidant, and Gwern said that Gwern is not. It might be the case that Gwern is lying. But that seems far stretched and not yet substantiated. But it seemed confusing enough that Gwern also couldn’t tell how wide the concept applies.

winstonBosan Mar 24, 2024, 10:55 PM
3 points
0
in reply to: sudo’s comment on: sudo -i’s Shortform
There is some good stuff here! And i think it is accurate that some of these are controversial. But it also seems like a strange mix of good and “reverse-stupidity is not necessarily intelligence” ideas.

Directionally good but odd framing: It seems like great advice to offer to people that going straight for the goal (“software programming”) is a good way to approach a seemingly difficult problem. But one does not necessarily need to be mentored—this is only one of many ways. In fact, many programmers started and expanded their curiosity from typing something like ‘man systemctl’ into their shell.

winstonBosan Mar 17, 2024, 1:30 PM
3 points
0
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Ben Pace’s Shortform Feed
It seems like, instead of asking the objective lvl question, asking a probing “What can you tell me about the drive to the conference?” And expanding from there might get you closer to desired result.

winstonBosan Feb 13, 2024, 5:08 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Theories of Applied Rationality
Witty, but I feel like that is not actually true?

It is likely that the rationality oft named is not the true name of the thing. Or “just be a perfect bayesian agent lol” is not practical. But that does actually mean anything legible is immediately false?

winstonBosan Jan 16, 2024, 10:16 PM
2 points
1
on: The impossible problem of due process
TLDR: This is an long metaphor to draw parallels between the Hanseatic League and the broader EA/LW communities. It is OK to not be a {corporation, societas, collegium, universitus} with common/top-down/bottom-up violence-monopolizing system. The price to implement a resolution system people would find satisfactory might be too high.
The fact it is hard to resolve conflict is because it is an integral part of the bargain, not an isolated bug. I personally don’t want us to become a chimera with nine heads—a chimera for the sole purpose so we can utter that “we are a state”.
“the [Efficax Altruismus] is not a societas: (a company) for it knows neither a common ownership of goods nor shared ownership of the good, since in the [Efficax Altruismus] there is no joint ownership; nor is it a company formed for certain commercial transactions, since in the [Efficax Altruismus] each individual makes transactions for himself, and the profit and loss falls on each individual…
It is also not a collegium (a college)….since it is formed from separate [communities]. It is also not a universitas (a corporate body), because…for it is required that it has property, a common treasure, a common seal, a common syndicus and a recognised leader.
“the [Efficax Altruismus] is … a firm alliance of many cities, towns and communities for the purpose of ensuring that enterprises on water and on land have the desired and favourable success and that effective protection is provided against pirates and highwaymen, so that the merchants are not deprived of their goods and valuables by their raids.”—The Hanse in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, I think...

winstonBosan Jan 12, 2024, 3:17 PM
3 points
0
on: What good is G-factor if you’re dumped in the woods? A field report from a camp counselor.
Oh my, I hope your sanity is holding.

In a sort of morbid way, seems like things are working as intended—the “sharp” fella is winning social battles (invented or not) and keep exploiting the ever widening strategy space. Emboldened, he quickly gets to the “this is the line and no further” boundary of his current strategy. But instead of modifying it and keep his old strategy as a tool in his arsenal, he over-exploit it and disrupts the equilibrium so much he gets kicked out.

winstonBosan Jan 4, 2024, 3:23 PM
3 points
0
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Screen-supported Portable Monitor
It is very possible that it works—though I am somewhat doubtful and I don’t have a unit to test it.

A quick way for us to learn more would be to I guess duct tape the screen to the laptop at the angle/height your want—and work with it for a bit. Might be able to get more experimental data than our theory crafting.

winstonBosan Jan 4, 2024, 2:23 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Screen-supported Portable Monitor
Indeed! But these are side loads instead of directly above the hinges.
Imagine this… you are a hinge. You are designed to take loads that roughly matches the motion of opening and closing of the lid + a bit of additional tolerance. But when someone mounts something heavy on the side of the laptop, you are mostly annoyed but OK with it because the side load will try to rip out the hinges out of their respective housing in different directions—the housing is usually plastic on cheaper computers, but perhaps aluminum on macs?

The problem with have that much weight on the top of your laptop would be… that your hinges would want to close when you don’t want them to—they not designed to be stable while holding onto that much weight + the leverage given to the new screen from being far away from the hinge assembly.

winstonBosan Jan 4, 2024, 2:14 PM
3 points
0
on: Screen-supported Portable Monitor
It might work, but it seems like the main difficulty would be the laptop hinge.
The hinge would be taking way more force than it is intended to take. And from my experience, it is somewhere around 3kg for macbook air 13 (your model is likely different) - so a M156 mounted 35cm above the hinge might produce quite a bit of stress.

winstonBosan Dec 12, 2023, 4:04 PM
18 points
2
in reply to: Wbrom’s comment on: The likely first longevity drug is based on sketchy science. This is bad for science and bad for longevity.
Just going off a hunch, mostly the asymmetry of risk and award?:

Award: Spread the gospel of probabilistic truth, personal intellectual growth potentially

Risk: retaliation (especially if the author is in the field), harassment, threats, law suits, wait… just more kinda of retaliation really. And potentially been seen as some one against the field of anti-aging despite an attempt at doing good science.

winstonBosan Oct 10, 2023, 8:59 AM
9 points
0
on: I’m a Former Israeli Officer. AMA
Hiya Yovel! Q1: How have you been impacted by the recent hostilities? Q2: What do you think are the potential end goals of this newly re-escalated conflict for the Israeli government? (As an naive observer, seems like [occupying Gaza / leave a power vacuum / let the Hamas reorg after] are all rather bad outcomes)
What links here?
- Yonatan Cale's comment on I’m a Former Israeli Officer. AMA by Yovel Rom (EA Forum; Oct 10, 2023, 12:53 PM; 2 points)

winstonBosan Aug 30, 2023, 3:45 PM
4 points
−1
on: Open Call for Research Assistants in Developmental Interpretability
Always welcome more optionality in the opportunity space!
Suggestion: Potential Improvement in Narrative Signalling by lowering the range of RAs to hire (thus increasing pay):
- If I were applying to this, I’d feel confused and slightly underappreciated if I had the right set of ML/Software Engineering skills but to be barely paid subsistence level for my full-time work (in NY).
- It seems like the funding amount is well corresponded to how much the grant is. I am rather naive when it comes to how much ML/engineering talent should be paid in pursuit of alignment goals. But it seems like $70k spread across 4 people at full-time (for half year each) is only slightly above minimal wage in many places.
- Comparisons: At 35k a year, it seems it might be considerably lower than industry equivalent even when compared to other programs
  - Ex: Lightcone has a general policy of paying ~70% market pay for equivalent talent.
    Recalling from memory of LTFF/similar grants that experienced researchers were granted 70k ~ 200k for their individual research.
    A quick glance at 80k job-board for RAs nets me a range of 32,332 ~ 87,000.
- Of course… money is tight: The grant constraint is well acknowledged here. But potentially the number of RAs expected to hire can be further down adjusted as while potentially increasing the submission rate of the candidates that truly fits the requirement of the research program.
- Hiring more might not work as intended: Also, it might come as a surprise that fewer people to manage will turn out to be a blessing rather than a curse—hiring one’s way out of something is tempting but should usually be tempered with caution.
- Thing I might have got wrong:
  - The intended audiences and people of the right skill-set will not be in countries where the salary is barely above subsistence level.
  - The Research Project has decided that people who possesses an instinct for “I’d like to work here, but please give me X because I think I am worth that much and can offer at least that much value” is generally a poor fit for the project.
  - A misunderstanding the salary distribution and the rate of deterioration of the current financial climate within the scene.
Overall, I am glad y’all exist! Good luck :)

winstonBosan Jul 7, 2023, 11:24 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: MrThink’s comment on: Apparently, of the 195 Million the DoD allocated in University Research Funding Awards in 2022, more than half of them concerned AI or compute hardware research
Viktor has a point here—the title is informative, but not well optimized (perhaps intentionally) for attracting eyeballs.

Something akin to:
Military and AI Compute: DoD’s 100 million cheque and what did it get for them?

Might do the trick a bit better.