Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Car Seats Three Across

When I [posted](https://www.jefftk.com/p/car-thoughts) about how we were thinking of getting a car, and specifically that we were thinking of having three kids in car seats across the back of a hatchback, several people told me they wouldn't fit. This is a common enough view that there's an econ paper about it: [Car Seats as Contraception](https://privpapers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046) (which I [disagreed with](https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats)). When we decided to [share](https://www.jefftk.com/p/sharing-a-car) a 2013 Honda Fit I was pretty confident it would work since I knew how wide the seats were, how wide the space was, and I had done something similar with a different collection of car seats. But I hadn't actually tried our particular seats in this particular car.

With the baby getting closer, about a month out, I put the seats in for practice. I tried two different ways:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/three-across-5y-0y-7y.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/three-across-5y-0y-7y-big.jpg)

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/three-across-5y-7y-0y.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/three-across-5y-7y-0y-big.jpg)

The version with the baby in the middle fits the easiest, with enough room to use the wide booster. On the other hand, that requires getting the baby plus carrier farther in, which could be awkward? The version with the baby on the side does work, but you do need to use quite a narrow booster seat in the middle.

These three car seats are ones we chose for being narrow, but there are still many options at this size. This is a 17" infant seat, 17" convertible, and either a 17" booster (baby in the middle) or 13" booster (booster in the middle).
# [Linkpost] Teaching Paradox, Europa Univeralis IV, Part I: State of Play

> I particularly wanted to discuss Paradox’s games, as compared to other historically rooted games, because I think Paradox’s oeuvre is a particularly rich vein to mine. I have already heard from multiple college-level instructors that they have students coming into their classes specifically to learn the history behind these games, which in turn means that these games are serving to shape those student’s understanding of history before they even enter the classroom. Moreover, and we’ll get deeper into this as we go along, the very *presentation* of Paradox’s games, which use their efforts at historical accuracy as a key selling point, encourages players to think about them as exercises in history rather than just games.
> 
> But more than that, more than most historically set games, Paradox games are interesting because they are built with what I think is a detectable theory of history. [Unlike other games which blunder through historical eras thoughtlessly](https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/), **Paradox games, intentionally or not** (in the event, I think it is clear from speaking with a couple of their developers, there is quite a lot that is intentional) **have something to say about history**. As we’ll see, some of that I’ll agree with and some of it I will disagree with, but the great value of Paradox’s games is that **there is an ample theory of history** ***to*** **agree or disagree with**.
> 
> \[...\]
> 
> So we are going to approach this question from two related frames, **first, what should the** ***student*** **of history be thinking about when playing Paradox’s games;** what unspoken assumptions should they be aware of, or even forewarned about? And what of those assumptions are grounded in real arguments among historians (or, put another way, where does Paradox have its feet firmly in the scholarship in crafting its games)? And second, **what ought** ***teachers*** **of history know about these games and take into account if they find themselves teaching students for whom Paradox is the historical ‘mother tongue’** and actual history only a second language?

A linkpost to the great blog [A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry](https://acoup.blog/) is long overdue. The author, a historian, examines pop culture through the lens of history, as well as some more direct historical topics from time to time. It's great, fascinating, and quite different from the other blogs and websites I usually follow.

This specific link is to a series that started this week, looking at a franchise of historical games and how they portray history. The first post focuses on questions of legibility and how perspective frame our understanding history. Exactly the kind of good stuff people around here should enjoy.
# [Weekly Event] Alignment Researcher Coffee Time (in Walled Garden)

I'm organizing a weekly one hour coffee time for alignment researchers to talk about their research and what they're interested about, every Monday starting tomorrow. The time (9pm CEST, see [here](https://everytimezone.com/s/0d39d311) for your timezone) was decided after I polled a number of people, to allow timezones from PT to IDT (sorry for people in Asia and Australia).

It will happen in the Walled Garden, in the central house which is directly up when you pop up in the Garden. The link of the event is public, although the event is by default reserved for AF members and people invited by them.

Here is the [link](https://www.lesswrong.com/walledGardenPortal/?code=C622&event=alignment-researcher-coffee-time).

Some basic infos:

*   The restriction to AF members and invitees is mostly so that we don't have to reexplain AI Risk 101 every time. This is not the point of this event. If you're genuinely interested in alignment, and if you've read some of the posts in the AF and are starting to form an image of the field, then by all means come discuss.
*   No obligation to come everytime. The goal is mostly that if you want to talk to a relatively broad range of people instead of having one-on-one calls, you can do so the next week instead of waiting for the next big event.
*   By default there is no talk planned, but if attendees feel like shaking the structure a bit, that's fine.
# The Neuralink Monkey Demo

The Neuralink [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLt4d8cACHzrVvAz9gtaARA) channel (which is apparently a thing that exists) released a [demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCul1sp4hQ) of their technology using Pager, a nine year old [Macaque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaque) monkey. 

![Pager eating a banana.](https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/4695a6113e19b624282c06af717813a510564d6a84e374c9.png)

WHO'S A GOOD MONKEY! YES YOU ARE!

Video Overview
--------------

In the video, Pager plays two games using a joystick. For the first, he moves a cursor to an orange square in a grey grid, then moves it to the next square to pop up. For the second, he plays his favorite game, [Pong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong).

While he plays, the Neuralink team have been analyzing the neural activity in his brain using a Neuralink implanted in his brain. They are able to receive data in realtime, and figure out which patterns of activity correspond to each hand movement.

The voiceover states that "After only a few minutes of calibration, we can use the output from the decoder to move the cursor instead of the joystick". The team then unplugs the joystick and has Pager play. Pager is then able to just think about moving his arm, and is able to play Pong using his mind. 

![](https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/114e6633cc53d5563659558f8ee718f493990babac79b3c6.png)

Pager plays MindPong

Implications
------------

First of all, Neuralink was launched 1 year ago, and we already have monkeys playing games with their mind. I predict with 70% confidence that, within a year, Neuralink will be placed in a human and will have basic functionality. If I'm wrong, I think it'll mainly be because of Neuralink not being legally allowed to conduct a human trial, or due to long term safety concerns as opposed to short term ones.$$
# Open and Welcome Thread - May 2021

If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here's a place to put it.

If you are new to LessWrong, here's the place to introduce yourself. Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are invited. This is also the place to discuss feature requests and other ideas you have for the site, if you don't want to write a full top-level post.

If you want to explore the community more, I recommend [reading the Library,](https://www.lesswrong.com/library) [checking recent Curated posts](https://www.lesswrong.com/?view=curated), [seeing if there are any meetups in your area](https://www.lesswrong.com/community), and checking out the [Getting Started](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq-1#Getting_Started) section of the [LessWrong FAQ](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq-1). If you want to orient to the content on the site, you can also check out the new [Concepts section](https://www.lesswrong.com/tags/all).

The Open Thread tag is [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/open-threads?sortedBy=new). The Open Thread sequence is [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/yai5mppkuCHPQmzpN).
# What do the reported levels of protection offered by various vaccines mean?

Pfizer is supposed to be "95% effective".  Does this mean:  
1\. There is a 95% reduction in your odds of getting COVID (as measured by the gold standard, which I believe is aserological test?)  
2\. There is a 95% reduction in your odds of testing positive for COVID  
3\. There is a 95% reduction in your odds of getting symptomatic COVID  
or  
4\. Something else?
# What are the greatest near-future risks or dangers to you as an individual?

What factors do you expect have the highest likelihood of severely compromising your own quality and/or duration of life, within the next 1, 5, or 10 years? How do these risks change your behavior compared to how you expect you'd act if they were less relevant to you?

If those greatest personal risks are not things you categorize as existential risks to all of humanity, how do you divide your risk mitigation efforts between the personal-and-near-term and the global-and-long-term ones? 

(I ask because I keep catching myself trying to generalize about the personal risk profiles of the kinds of people who concern themselves with x-risks, and I'd rather generalize from self-reports of humans in a community which attracts that demographic than from wild guesses inferred by reading a bunch of blogs)
# [link] If something seems unusually hard for you, see if you're missing a minor insight

***Related to*****:** [procedural knowledge gaps](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ka8eveZpT7hXLhRTM/procedural-knowledge-gaps), [trivial inconveniences](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/trivial-inconvenience), [errors vs. bugs](https://celandine13.livejournal.com/33599.html?format=light).

**Summary of the** [**linked post**](https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything)**:** the world is full of all kinds of minor insights about how to do something (either easily or at all): how to open stitched bags, how to mop floors, how to use search engines, the right way to look at a ball in order to catch it, what it means to 'ping' somebody, how the skill of playing sudoku shares useful elements with other things like proving math theorems, how to pass as 'normal', etc. 

For anything that seems unusually hard for you, there's a chance that there's some simple insight that you happen to be missing that would make it easier. You could put a lot of effort into trying to laboriously level up the skill, or you could see if you could acquire that insight by relatively little work.

I particularly like the post for having an extended list of examples of the thing, hopefully making it easier to notice potential applications of this principle when they come up in your own life. (The example that came to my own mind was finding it unexpectedly aversive to vacuum in my current home, when it had felt fine in the previous one, and then only eventually realizing that my former housemate's vacuum cleaner that I'd been using in my previous home was *much* more pleasant to use than my own.)
# What are your favorite examples of adults in and around this community publicly changing their minds? 

Search turns up [a](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/e49D6yNRyoLuiEy3f/have-you-changed-your-mind-lately-on-what) [few](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/W2ZymNJFWbirwctxo/so-you-ve-changed-your-mind) [threads](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HqDGZpNqQJDGKi4Pz/how-to-be-more-confident-that-you-re-wrong) on self-reported personal changes of mind. I'm curious here about the third-person perspective: When have you noticed and remembered peers or colleagues changing their minds [about important things]? I'm particularly interested in examples from the group of people who seem to regard a [book on how to change your mind](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/how-to-actually-change-your-mind) as a cultural touchstone, but stories about those whom such people work with and look up to seem likely to also be relevant.
# Thoughts on Ad Blocking

*Disclosure: I work on ads at Google; this is a personal post.*

In the discussion of [why I work on ads](https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads) people asked whether I use an ad blocker (no) and what I think of them (it's complicated). So, what about ad blockers?

It should be up to you what you see. If you don't want your computer displaying ads, or any other sort of content, you shouldn't have to. At the same time, most sites are offering a trade: you're welcome to our content if you also view our ads.

These are in conflict, but I feel like the resolution could be simple:

1.  You are free to block any ads you want.
2.  Sites can know when ads are blocked.

Sites could choose to respond to ad blocking by showing a message explaining that ads are what fund the site and requiring users to either subscribe or allow ads if they want to proceed. Or not: the marginal cost of serving a page is trivial and perhaps some visitors will share articles they enjoy. Still others might implement something like the first-n-free approach you see with paywalls, or progressively more obnoxious nagging.

This isn't what we have today:

*   Some sites (ex: [Facebook](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46508234)) try to disguise their ads to get them past blockers. A big site that runs their own ads might scramble the names of resources on every page view, while a smaller site might hire an ad-tech company to proxy their site and stitch in ads. When successful, users are seeing content they specifically said they didn't want.
    
*   Some blockers (ex: [uBlock Origin](https://twitter.com/gorhill/status/1072990091625328641) but not [AdBlock](https://help.getadblock.com/support/solutions/articles/6000199143-why-doesn-t-adblock-block-anti-adblock-walls-)) hide "please disable your ad blocker or subscribe" messages. For example, [37%](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues?q=is%3Aissue+anti-adblock) of uBlock Origin issues are people pointing out anti-adblock banners it misses (ex: [#9005](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/9005), [#9006](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/9006), [#9007](https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/9007)). When successful, sites are serving content to users they specifically said they didn't want to serve.
    

I don't have any sort of proposal here; I'm not proposing a browser feature or government regulation. But in thinking about how future decisions might affect ads, I'm going to be most excited about ones that support (1) and (2).
# Why are the websites of major companies so bad at core functionality?

Intuitively, you might think that Amazon cares about people being able to enter their banking details as easily as possible. In reality at least Amazon.de doesn't seem to care.  Instead of instantly validating with Javascript that a entered IBAN is valid the form waits with giving feedback till the user clicks okay. 

I just used Uber the first time and the task of entering street addresses is awful. 

1.  There's no autocomplete for street names that allows me to add the street number.
2.  Berlin is a big city, yet the first hits in the list that was proposed are streets with the same name in other cities.
3.  The suggestions that Uber gives don't include postal code which are important because multiple streets in Berlin share the same street names
4.  There seems to be no obvious way to select a street name and then choose on a map where on the street you want to be picked up. After a bit of searching I do find that I can click on the street name for pickup but the touchable area is very small and could be easily expanded into the empty whitespace above. For the destination it still seems like there's no to add more details to the automated street name
5.  If I write the name of a contact (in my contacts) then I don't get the address shown

How does it come that those companies employ 1000s of software developers yet manage to do badly on the task of providing basic functions to users? What are all those engineers doing?
# Interview with Christine M. Korsgaard: Animal Ethics, Kantianism, Utilitarianism

[Christine M. Korsgaard](http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/) was kind enough to [answer a few questions](https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/interview-with-christine-m-korsgaard-animal-ethics-kantianism-utilitarianism/) of mine. Here's an excerpt:

> ERICH: Many animal welfare advocates seem to be utilitarians, possibly due to the influence of Peter Singer. But you, of course, are not a utilitarian. Why is it not a convincing moral philosophy, in your view?
>
> CHRISTINE: Because I believe that everything that is good must be good-for someone, some creature, I don’t believe it makes sense to aggregate goods across the boundaries between creatures. Of course, if you say “I can do something that’s good for Jack, or I can do something that’s good for Jack and also good for Jill,” everyone thinks that the second option is better, and that makes it look as if aggregation makes sense – the more good, the better. The problem only shows up when you have to do some subtracting in order to maximize the total. If Jack would get more pleasure from owning Jill’s convertible than Jill does, the utilitarian thinks you should take the car away from Jill and give it to Jack. I don’t think that makes things better for everyone. I think it makes it better for Jack and worse for Jill, and that’s all. It doesn’t make it better on the whole.
>
> Of course, behind this there is a deeper problem. Utilitarians think that the value of people and animals derives from the value of the states they are capable of – pleasure and pain, satisfaction and frustration. In fact, in a way it is worse: In utilitarianism, people and animals don’t really matter at all; they are just the place where the valuable things happen. That’s why the boundaries between them do not matter. Kantians think that the value of the states derives from the value of the people and animals. In a Kantian theory, your pleasures and pains matter because you matter, you are an “end in yourself” and your pains and pleasures matter to you.
# Migraine hallucinations, phenomenology, and cognition

I have several times in my life experienced migraine hallucinations. I call them that because they [look](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_(symptom)) exactly like what other people report under that name.

I'll come back to those.

If I look at someone, and hold up my hand so as to block my view of their head, I do not experience looking at a headless person. I experience looking at a normal person, whose head I cannot see, because there is something else in the way.

Why is this? One can instantly talk about Bayesian estimation, prior experience, training of neural nets, constant conjunction, and so on. However, a real explanation must also account for situations in which this filling-in does not occur. One ordinary example is the pictures [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_men). I see these as headless men, not ordinary men whose heads I cannot see.

Migraine hallucinations provide a more interesting example. If you've ever had one, you might already know what I'm going to say, but I do not know if this experience is the same for everyone.

If I superimpose the hallucination on someone's head, they seem to have no head. I don't mean that I cannot see their head (although indeed I can't), but that I seem to be looking at a headless person. If I superimpose it on a part of their head, it is as if that part does not exist. Whatever the blind spot covers, my brain does not fill it in. Whatever my hand covers, my brain does fill in, not at the level of the image (I don't confabulate an image of their face), but at some higher level. I *know* in both cases that they have a head. But at some level below knowing, the *experience* in one case is that they have no head, and in the other, that they do. My *knowledge* that they have a head does nothing to alter the *sensation* that they do not.

It is quite disconcerting to look at myself in a mirror and see half my head missing.

Those who have never had such hallucinations might try experimenting with their ordinary [blind spots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)). I am not sure it will be the same. The brain has had more practice filling those in, and does not have to contend with the jaggies.

From this I cannot draw out much in the way of conclusions about vision and the brain,  but it provides an interesting experience of the separation between two [levels of abstraction](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uej8FbHD22Jnzez2L/consciousness-of-abstraction). When we look at the world and see comprehensible objects in it, our brain did that before it ever came into our subjective experience. When the mechanism develops a fault, it presents conclusions that we know to be false, yet still experience.

This presumably applies to all our senses, including that of introspection.
# The Nuclear Energy Alignment Problem

Berlin, 1938.

"Have you ever thought about the Anthropic principle? Chances are about half the people who have ever lived will die before us and half after. The human population has been growing at an exponential rate. There is probably a disaster waiting just around the corner," said Schumann.

"I bet it's nuclear energy," said Heisenberg.

"There is no way a single machine could destroy the world," said Schumann.

"Shut up and multiply. The Earth has a mass of $M_\oplus=6\times10^{24}$ kilograms and a radius of $R_\oplus=6\times10^6$ meters. Let us treat the Earth as a uniform sphere. The gravitational potential energy is $E_\oplus=\frac{3GM_\oplus^2}{5R_\oplus}=2\times10^{32}$ joules. The total energy necessary to destroy the Earth is thus $2\times10^{32}$ joules," said Heisenberg.

Heisenberg wrote $E=mc^2$ on a sheet of paper.

$$\begin{eqnarray*}
m&=&\frac E{c^2}\\
&=&\frac {2\times10^{32}\text{ joules}}{\left(3\times10^8\frac{\text{m}}{\text{s}}\right)^2}\\
&=&2\times10^{15}\text{ kilograms}
\end{eqnarray*}$$

"How much is that?" said Schumann.

"All the carbon in the terrestrial biosphere," said Heisenberg, "Or half the carbon in all of the Earth's coal."

"No nation on Earth has the industrial capacity to dump that much mass into a single machine. We are safe," said Schumann.

"Not if there is a chain reaction. Suppose a nitrogen atom releases two neutrons when it fissions. It could ignite all the nitrogen in the atmosphere," said Heisenberg.

"Is there more nitrogen in the atmosphere than carbon in the biosphere?" said Schumann.

"It doesn't matter. If we destroy the atmosphere then humanity is doomed whether or not the planet itself technically survives," said Heisenberg.

"We had better invent a theory of ethics to guide the use of nuclear energy. Otherwise someone might accidentally build a bomb," said Schumann.

"What does ethics have to do with anything? Keeping the energy contained is a purely technical problem," said Heisenberg.

"We need a theory of ethics so we can coordinate with the Allied powers. It does us no good to hold the moral high ground if the United States accidentally destroys the world," said Schumann.

"Please be serious. There is no way the United States could build a working nuclear machine. Their whole society is run by Jews," said Heisenberg.

"Britain or France might pull it off," said Schumann.

"Do you remember what happened the last time we tried to coordinate with Britain and France?" said Heisenberg.

"Oh right," said Schumann.

"Fortunately, nuclear energy is sixty years away and it always will be," said Heisenberg.

"Not anymore," said Schumann. He had a proposal for the Führer.
#  [Event] Weekly Alignment Research Coffee Time (05/10)

Just like every Monday now, researchers in AI Alignment are invited for a coffee time, to talk about their research and what they're into.

Here is the [link](https://www.lesswrong.com/walledGardenPortal/?code=aWhF&event=alignment-researcher-coffee-time-1). 

And here is the [everytimezone time](https://everytimezone.com/s/5578ec8c).

Small change for this second edition: the link to the walled garden now only works for AF members. Anyone who wants to come but isn't an AF member needs to go by me. I'll broadly apply the following criteria for admission:

*   If working in a AI Alignment lab or funded for independent research, automatic admission
*   If recommended by AF member, automatic admission
*   Otherwise, to my discretion

I prefer to not allow people who might have been interesting but who I'm not sure will not derail the conversation, because this is supposed to be the place where AI Alignment researchers can talk about their current research without having to explain everything.

See you then!
# Peekskill Lyme Incidence

Let's say you're [considering moving your nonprofit](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SgszmZwrDHwG3qurr/miri-location-optimization-and-related-topics-discussion) out of the Bay Area, and are considering somewhere in the Hudson Valley, perhaps near Peekskill NY. Looking at CDC maps it seems like [Lyme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease) is something to consider:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/cdc-lyme-cases-2015.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/cdc-lyme-cases-2015-big.png)

The dots are close enough together in the Northeast, however, that this map implies more uniformity than there actually is. Several years ago I [made a map](https://www.jefftk.com/p/lyme-disease-by-county), coloring each county by Lyme incidence 1992-2011, and the Hudson Valley is really pretty bad:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/lyme-disease-by-county-with-peekskill-ny.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/lyme-disease-by-county-with-peekskill-ny-big.png)

What do things look like with more recent data? I went back to [the CDC site](https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/survfaq.html) and downloaded their public use dataset. It has annual cases by county, 2000-2018. Peekskill is in the far North-West corner of Westchester County, surrounded by Putnam, Orange, and Rockland. Even though it is in Westchester, so much of the Westchester population is farther South that my guess is Putnam is probably a better proxy?

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/peekskill-ny-county-location.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/peekskill-ny-county-location-big.png)

Taking population data from the census, here's the annual rate for each county:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/peekskill-area-lyme-rates-by-county.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/peekskill-area-lyme-rates-by-county-big.png)

Putting these percentages in perspective, a 0.1% annual rate represents 1 in 1,000 people getting it each year, and if you stayed for 20 years you'd [roughly](https://www.jefftk.com/p/shortcuts-with-chained-probabilities) have a 1 in 50 (2%) chance.

Mostly this makes me sad that no one has decided to [manufacture](https://www.jefftk.com/p/produce-lyme-vaccine) the FDA-approved Lyme vaccine LYMErix, whose patent expired in 2014.

(I would like to update my map with this new data, but there are artifacts I need to look into first.)
# Massachusetts Lyme Reporting

In putting together yesterday's post on [Lyme disease prevalence](https://www.jefftk.com/p/peekskill-lyme-incidence) I noticed something very strange with Massachusetts:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-lyme-cases-by-year-suspect.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-lyme-cases-by-year-suspect-big.png)

It's even more striking if you look at a map (2018):

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-lyme-dots-2018.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-lyme-dots-2018-big.png)

There's no way Lyme follows state borders like this; it has to be some sort of data issue.

Looking over several years of CDC maps, the year that Massachusetts starts looking different matches up with the huge drop in the chart above. Compare 2015:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-lyme-dots-2015.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-lyme-dots-2015-big.png)

To 2016:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-lyme-dots-2016.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-lyme-dots-2016-big.png)

The only public explanation there seems to be is this [short news article](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/state-health-leaders-dispute-cdcs-claim-of-drop-in-lyme-cases/1945332/). In 2016 the MA Department of Public Health "stopped spending time and resources trying to track down the clinical information, instead relying solely on positive lab results to give a more accurate estimate of Lyme disease case numbers."

The CDC gets their information from the states, and in this case requires [both a clinical diagnosis and a positive test](https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nndss/conditions/lyme-disease/case-definition/2017/). MA, apparently uniquely among the states, has decided that when compiling statistics confirming a clinical diagnosis is extra work that doesn't improve accuracy. So MA doesn't generally have the stats it would need to file with the CDC, and instead of marking MA as "no data", the CDC publishes the trickle of reports that it does get from MA.

I don't know whether the CDC or MA is being more unreasonable here, but the effect is pretty bad: user-facing websites like TickCheck [show MA as now having low Lyme levels](https://www.tickcheck.com/stats/state/massachusetts/lyme). The CDC does not even include a note in [their FAQ](https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/survfaq.html) to say MA data shouldn't be trusted.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100216402549392)*
# Yampolskiy on AI Risk Skepticism

Roman Yampolskiy posted a preprint for "AI Risk Skepticism". Here's the abstract:

> In this work, we survey skepticism regarding AI risk and show parallels with other types of scientific skepticism. We start by classifying different types of AI Risk skepticism and analyze their root causes. We conclude by suggesting some intervention approaches, which may be successful in reducing AI risk skepticism, at least amongst artificial intelligence researchers.

Nothing really new in there to anyone familiar with the field, but seems like a potentially useful list of citations for people coming up to speed on AI safety, and perhaps especially AI policy, and a good summary paper you can reference as evidence that not everyone takes AI risks seriously.
# Texas Far-Comers Meetup in Austin

Every so often, we designate a meetup to be the focal point for people to come to the Austin meetup if they have to come a long distance.

This time it will be at [The Brewtorium](https://www.thebrewtorium.com/) ([menu](https://www.thebrewtorium.com/food)), which has large indoor tables, as well as an outside area if you want to go there. Look for the LW/SSC signs.

We will have icebreaker activities.
# Massachusetts Tick-Borne Disease Distribution

As I wrote yesterday, [MA is no longer reporting good data to the CDC on Lyme disease](https://www.jefftk.com/p/massachusetts-lyme-reporting). Starting in 2019, however, MA has been publishing [tick-borne disease reports](https://www.mass.gov/lists/monthly-tickborne-disease-reports). They include this misleading chart:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-tick-exposure-visits-by-population-misleading.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-tick-exposure-visits-by-population-misleading-big.png)

The caption includes "Although there are differences in the rate of patient visits, this shows that people are exposed to ticks throughout all of Massachusetts and should take recommended steps to reduce the chance of being bitten."

One issue is that they've chosen to chart the rate of visits and not the rate of diagnoses, but the main issue is that the scale hides the degree of variation between counties. Pulling the numbers and manually dividing by population estimates, I see:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-tick-borne-disease-by-county.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-tick-borne-disease-by-county-big.png)

The rate in [the Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Islands_(Massachusetts)) (Dukes and Nantucket Counties) is 10 times any other MA county!

(Even though these are also vacation areas, people are categorized by their home county not their infection county.)

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-tick-exposure-visits-by-population-fixed.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/ma-tick-exposure-visits-by-population-fixed-big.png)

Now, I agree with them that taking precautions is worth it when walking through tick-friendly terrain anywhere in the state. But there are still degrees of precautions, from clothes, to tick checks, to choosing different activities, to choosing other counties, and the report should emphasize the difference in risk so people can make good decisions.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100216484195772)*
# Louisiana Gets Vaccine Passports Right

Quietly, with very little fanfare, Louisiana got vaccine passports right.   
  
[https://lawallet.com/covid19/](https://lawallet.com/covid19/)

What's not to like?  
  
First off, let's take a peek at their guiding principles:

![](https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/3ca951a724c1fe4d60dd6599365c9f93c231eb85615081c0.png)

These principles look a lot like what Jeffrey Zients was hinting at when asked at a [White House press briefing](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/03/12/press-briefing-by-white-house-covid-19-response-team-and-public-health-officials-14/) about vaccine passports:

> Our role is to help ensure that any solutions in this area should be simple, free, open source, accessible to people both digitally and on paper, and designed from the start to protect people’s privacy.

I love that they're building on existing infrastructure - digital drivers licenses. When one person scans another person's DDL, they instantly pull up the person's photo from the state's DMV. That all but eliminates the need for forgery.  
  
It's completely optional - no mandates as to exactly how the credential is to be used. Louisiana trusts its citizens to figure out how best to use it. 

A smartphone isn't necessary. The person doing the verification simply needs to scan the barcode on the back of the license. That pulls up the person's official DMV photo, along with their vaccination status, if the cardholder has opted to disclose this..

Sure - it requires a drivers license. But so far every passport requires auxiliary forms of ID.  Otherwise, people can just pass QR codes to one another. Verifiers end up having to check multiple documents. Interrupted workflows are known to be far more error prone and tiring ("alert fatigue").

And sure, the app costs money (unlike the Excelsior pass). But it's a modest $5.99 and the app both stores your card and verifies other cards. It's "peer to peer." The money is used in part to pay for necessary enforcement (inevitably that means undercover operations). 

  
I'm not sure what it was that put Louisiana at the forefront of digital driver's licenses, but I have some guesses. New Orleans is home to Mardi Gras, so perhaps underage drinking is a common problem. There have been more than a few serious hurricanes - so the state has an interest in digitizing as much as possible, since maintaining paper records can be difficult during floods. Louisiana is far from the most populous state, so it's not as risky to experiment. Whatever the reason - kudos to Louisiana. The rest of us should be taking notes.
# Testing the FLEDGE Prototype

*(I work at Google, but not on Chrome. Speaking only for myself.)*

Chrome has proposed [TURTLEDOVE](https://github.com/WICG/turtledove) to support remarketing ads without sending your browsing history to advertisers. (discussed in [why I work on ads](https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads)). Since the overall proposal is very complicated and requires large changes, they have also proposed an initial version, [FLEDGE](https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/blob/main/FLEDGE.md), that they expect to build and ship this year. They're building it incrementally, and they've now checked in very initial prototype support.

Lots of things are still missing, but if you [download Chrome Canary](https://www.google.com/chrome/canary/) and start it with `--enable-features=FledgeInterestGroupAPI,FledgeInterestGroups` you can play with what they have. For example, on my Mac this looks like:

"/Applications/Google Chrome Canary.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
Canary" --enable-features=FledgeInterestGroupAPI,FledgeInterestGroups

I made a demo:

1.  Visit [auction.html](https://www.jefftk.com/test/td/auction.html). You should see "no turtledove winner" because you are not yet in any turtledove interest groups.
2.  Visit [join.html](https://www.trycontra.com/test/td/join.html). You should see "joined interest group", because it is adding you to an interest group.
3.  Visit [auction.html](https://www.jefftk.com/test/td/auction.html) again. This time, you should see an iframe containing "TC AD 1". This is an ad selected by a turtledove auction.

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/fledge-demo-screenshot.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/fledge-demo-screenshot-big.png)

Things I ran into in setting up the demo:

*   Even though the spec uses `snake_case` the implementation uses `camelCase` ([#156](https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/issues/156))
    
*   DevTools support is still minimal
    
*   You have to send `X-Allow-FLEDGE: true` response headers on anything the FLEDGE API is fetching.
    

Keep in mind that this is a minimal initial implementation, and there are large parts of the spec they haven't gotten to yet. If something that is implemented doesn't work yet, though, it's probably worth [filing a bug](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/entry).

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100216553117652)*
# Personal Advice/Request: Can I be your apprentice?

It has not been very long since I joined LessWrong but I have been truly enjoying the intelligent conversations/debates going on here, whether it is about general rationality, ML/AI, or investment. In the meantime, I find myself thinking Albert Einstein’s famous quote about learning quite frequently. He famously said “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” While being truly amazed by all the fascinating work LessWrong community members have been doing, I realize that I couldn’t do much due to my limited domain knowledge and limited hands on experience. I am inspired and I want to contribute, especially in the fields of ML research. But in reality, as an outlier in my current network (business academia), I am greatly struggling due to lack of guidance and lack of hands on experience. 

After much thinking I decided to mimic Warren Buffett’s move in 1954. So, my question is**: Can I be your free apprentice?** Becoming an apprentice of the best is exactly how I want to learn ML skills: learn from the best and do original research. If you think I need to know X, Y, Z in order to be your apprentice, please list them. I will learn and show you that I am qualified in the shortest time possible.

My background: I have a master’s degree in Statistics and PhD in Operations Research from the United States. I earned my PhD in 2018 and have been working as a business school faculty member in Canada since then. Due to the nature of my job, I have the luxury to dedicate majority of my time throughout the year to research projects I find interesting and inspiring.

Within the business academia community, ML research is somewhat an unconventional territory with lack of originality. That’s why I expanded my horizon to beyond academia. Additionally, recent great advancements in ML/AI research have been from outside academia. 

When Warren Buffett wanted to be Benjamin Graham’s free apprentice, Graham said, “Actually, you’re overpriced, free is overpriced.” But I believe this is a positive-sum game for two parties involved. I have strong desire to contribute to the community by conducting original research. But before that I want to be your apprentice. Message me if you need an apprentice and I can learn from you.

Specific topics/areas I am particularly interested (without order): **deep/reinforcement learning, AI safety, AI alignment, ML/AI applications in healthcare/finance**
# Scott Aaronson at the AstralCodexTen Online Meetup

Professor Scott Aaronson will take your questions. After that, we will socialize online.

Please register  [here](https://forms.gle/7GBLuMb1oeNNF3X69?fbclid=IwAR1mhvCae5NZeAs_W581bGueH-DgZg6z5Ztwir---2nm05h3jO1yaxL3Gbk) and we will send you an invitation before the event.

Scott Aaronson is a Professor of computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. His primary areas of research are quantum computing and computational complexity theory. He blogs at [Shtetl Optimized](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/).

This event is Sunday May 23, at 17:30 UTC, 20:30 IDT, and 10:30 PDT
# Zvi's Law of No Evidence

Update: Zvi wrote [his own post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9HoG56Y6KuopSzdn/law-of-no-evidence).

---

> Law of No Evidence: Any claim that there is “no evidence” of something is evidence of bullshit.
>
> ―[*Covid 5/13: Moving On*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Sc8KwbtpZkTG44cbT/covid-5-13-moving-on) by Zvi

> But in probability theory, absence of evidence is always evidence of absence
>
> ―[*Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnS2WYLCGJP2kQkRn/absence-of-evidence-is-evidence-of-absence) by Eliezer Yudkowsky

This is not a contradiction. Zvi and Yudkowsky are both correct.

"No evidence" is a vague term. Consider the phrase "There is no evidence of Bigfoot". It could mean one of two things.
- Explorers looked for Bigfoot and didn't find him. This is evidence Bigfoot doesn't exist.
- Nobody looked for Bigfoot and nobody found him. This is not evidence Bigfoot doesn't exist.

It is true "no evidence" is evidence of absence insofar as "no evidence" means "we ran good experiments and they failed to produce evidence for the hypothesis". But in this case you shouldn't say "no evidence". You should say "evidence of absence".

Inference starts with priors and are then updates them according to evidence. If there is no evidence related to a hypothesis then your beliefs reflect your original priors. If "no evidence" refers to true "absence of evidence" then everyone needs to retreat to their Bayesian priors. But this not what anyone means when they say "no evidence" because your Bayesian priors for one context are informed by transfer learning of evidence from other contexts *e.g.* I have a computer programmer friend who thinks about everything in terms of software metaphors.

If someone deliberately uses vague[^1] language instead of precise language then it is because they are trying to conflate two ideas which should not be conflated. If someone says there is "no evidence" of something then it is because they are trying to pass off "nobody looked for Bigfoot and nobody found him" as "explorers looked for Bigfoot and nobody found him".

[^1]: If someone deliberately uses general language instead of precise language then that is good because general language is easier to falsify than precise language. Vague language is bullshit because it is hard to falsify.

Saying "there is no evidence of UFOs" communicates nothing useful. You must explain why absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence.

[![](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/settled.png)](https://xkcd.com/1235/)

If you want to prove that red light doesn't cause cancer you don't say there is "no evidence". You should explain the frequency dependence of the photoelectric effect.
# Deliberately Vague Language is Bullshit

Bullshit is what comes out of the mouth of someone who values persuasion over truth. Truth is about communicating information. **Vague language** communicates less information than precise language.

It is important to distinguish vague language from general, poetic and simple language.
- Vague language is distinct from **general language**. Vague language communicates less information than regular language. General language communicates more information than regular language. Broader claims are more easily falsifiable than narrow claims. The more falsifiable a claim is the stronger a claim it is. The stronger a claim is the more information it communicates.
- Vague language is distinct from **poetic language**. Poetic language has very high information density. High information density is the opposite of vagueness.
- Vague language is distinct from **simple language**. Simple language is easy to understand. Simple language should be used most of the time because simple language is more convenient than complicated language. In disagreements, simple vague language should be replaced with precise language—even at the cost of some complexity.

**Deliberately vague** language increases vagueness without increasing generality, poetry or simplicity. It obscures the truth.
- ["No evidence"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KA7A3xsM6DgvDk7Yk/zvi-s-law-of-no-evidence) is vaguer than "evidence of absence".
- How many shares of a company you own is vaguer than what percentage you own.

The people with a need to obscure the truth are those with a political or social agenda. Vague language is endemic to [taboo subjects](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/3xKXGh9RXaYTYZYgZ/p/kuXiSi52wvijw3ftR). Deliberately vague language is such a reliable signal of taboo subjects that you can use it to discover hidden taboos. If you find yourself or others using deliberately vague language around a topic it means there is something [you can't say](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html).

The most precise language is numerical. If numbers could be used but aren't then you are dealing with a taboo subject.
- "Smart" is vaguer than IQ thresholds.
- "Fit" is vaguer than BMI and bodyfat percentage.

You can even use vague language to figure out which subjects are bullshit and which people are bullshitters.
- Modern art uses vague language. Drawing manuals like Scott McCloud's *Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art* use precise language.
- Literary theory is notorious for using vague language. Brandon Sanderson's lectures on creative writing use precise language