Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# No, really, can "dead" time be salvaged?

About a month ago, [/u/batislu](https://www.reddit.com/user/batislu/) on [/r/SlateStarCodex](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/) posted the question ["How do you spend your "dead" time productively?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/pw7j9d/how_do_you_spend_your_dead_time_productively/). I read this thread, and found myself relieved (because of the admonitions to chill out), but also frustrated (because of the lack of real answers to the question).

With the urgency entailed by extinction risks etc., "just chilling" during dead time can (for many of us) feel undoable. Or, at least, undoable *some* of the time.

Assume, for many of us, our day job / school does little to *directly* help, at the highest levels, with the kinds of important problems discussed here. (This is a good time to remind everyone that these opinions are both hypothetical, and solely my own (not my employer's).)

Then the questions become:

- What, if anything, can be done in the tired "between-time" after work?
- Can it help with any of the following?:
  - Directly helping work on AI safety / global risks.
  - Upskilling quickly enough to contribute substantially to the previous thing.
  - Improving one's health/intelligence/financial independence enough to be in a better position (in the *near term*, like less than a year) to help with the first thing.

Some answers of the format and specificity being looked for here:

- "Join this org's Discord and critique their ideas, if you find argument/feedback a relaxing/low-stress activity."
- "Do 1 small unit of this easily-spit-uppable low-chance-of-getting-stuck MOOC per day."
- "Find a type of exercise, like X Y or Z, that you find fun, and do that once per day."
- "Here's a list of activities many people I know find productive and relaxing, see if any apply to you: ..."

Note that the goal is *not* to replace *all* of one's dead time with something productive (unless it's possible to do without crashing and burning lol).

The goal is to *keep moving forward* at things that would realistically help solve important problems. (Then our guilt/anxiety will be assuaged enough to *actually* enjoy/recharge the rest of our dead time.)
# Leadership

The worst part of being President of the United States is visiting hospitals. What is President Obama supposed to say to a paralyzed infrantryman's pregnant wife? The President's advisors told him he shouldn't visit hospitals because it would misalign the President's priorities. The Commander-in-Chief disagreed.

Leadership isn't about titles. It's not about management. It's not about authority or power. Those things are ancillary. Being a leader means taking responsibility for something beyond yourself.

The Boy Scouts of America is a youth leadership training organization. My troop had about twenty scouts. We elected a Senior Patrol Leader to lead us. The job sucked. No boy ever ran for Senior Patrol Leader again after completing his[^1] first term.

[^1]: At the time, girls were not allowed in Boy Scouts.

Responsibility is non-zero-sum. Suppose the Senior Patrol Leader tells a Patrol Leader to bring firewood and the Patrol Leader tells a Tenderfoot to bring firewood and the Tenderfoot forgets. Who is responsible?

:::spoiler
The Senior Patrol Leader, the Patrol Leader and the Tenderfoot are responsible.
:::

When I was in Boy Scouts, I had a reputation for giving away my equipment. Did a scout forget to bring a spatula? He could use mine. What about me? I'd make do with the resources available. I whittled a lot of chopsticks.

![](https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/www.lsusr.com/lesswrong/cold-leadership.png)

My favorite boss was a woman who ran a small business providing entertainment to corporate events and the occasional Bar Mitzvah. Many of us employees didn't have cars. This was before Uber and Lyft but we couldn't have afforded them even if they were available. The parties ended late, long after public transportation stopped running. My boss organized carpools in order to made sure her employees always had a ride home. On the rare occasions carpooling didn't work out, she drove me home herself.
# Naval Ravikant and Chris Dixon Didn't Explain Any Web3 Use Cases

This is a followup to [Chris Dixon's Crypto Claims Are Logically Flimsy](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PwPjCxqjcXjWtXmAr/chris-dixon-s-crypto-claims-are-logically-flimsy).

It's becoming popular for thought leaders in the investing and crypto world to make bold claims that aren't backed up by any specific examples. The latest person to prominently do this is Naval Ravikant on Tim Ferriss's podcast.

Naval Ravikant is the founder of [AngelList](https://angel.co) and writes very interesting [books](https://www.navalmanack.com/) and [blogs](https://nav.al/archive). He and Chris Dixon (a partner at Andreessen Horowitz) are now deploying many $millions of capital into crypto projects, and encouraging others to do so.

I think it's worthwhile to document how far people can go without having their abstract claims tested with a request for specificity. But it feels a bit surreal observing that my industry's top investors and thought leaders seem to be making decisions on mental models full of holes that they aren't flagging as holes.
# Unlock the Door

*Related: [A Pattern Language](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K2AWPo7sMsvrrofsM/book-review-a-pattern-language-by-christopher-alexander)*  
*Epistemic status: Strong Anecdotal*

I'm designing co-housing/co-living communities. The greatest benefit of living near your friends is that you can see each other all the time in low-stakes ways.

If you're living in the same house, this is very easy: you just hang out in the common area and say hi to everyone who goes through. If someone has time to chat then it's an easy way to get a little conversation, but it's not awkward if they are too busy. 

This default doesn't really work well in a place where people don't live in the same house or share the same common space. I've spent time in communities where very close friends literally lived on the same block, but they didn't see each other more often than once a week or so, and all interactions require advance planning, because nobody is hanging out in a space where their friends cross through.

To avoid this failure mode, take the biggest or most welcoming house and make part of its common space a true community space. Unlock the door or gate, and let everyone nearby know that it's always ok to come hang out in that space, even if nobody is there. Ensure that you regularly pass through that space. Greet everyone who comes to it warmly.

Follow the [intimacy gradient pattern](http://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl127.htm): the unlocked space should be the most public area of that house, nearest the entrance. Try not to monopolize the entire common area of that house -- the people who live there need their own, more-private spaces when they aren't feeling as much like socializing.

You don't need to leave the door unlocked all the time. You should probably lock it while people are asleep. But I emphasize that any barrier against people coming over and hanging out whenever they feel like it will tend to make them dramatically less likely to do so -- subtle signals matter a lot here. 

If you don't want to unlock it all the time, you can tell the community about the code to get in, or otherwise allow them to unlock the door on their own somehow. 

This might take a while to start working. Some things you could try to go quicker:
- make a very warm announcement that everyone is super welcome at any time of day or night, no really we mean it, we love you all
- create a weekly hangout event, so people get used to coming over to the house regularly
- create an every-day super casual coworking or happy hour: a few people agree to spend at least 1 hour a day in the common space, even to work on their laptop alone if nobody else is there; quickly people will realize that there are always people around at this time, and it will be self-reinforcing.
- offer free beer or coffee :)
# Start with a Title

Some writers start with a title and then write the article. Other writers start with the article and then write a title. The writers who start with a title end up with better titles. The writers who start with a title tend to write better articles too.

Good writing conveys a single point. Titles keep your writing from meandering. Sometimes these meanderings lend themselves to new titles. That's fine. Titles are allowed to change. If a digression do not lend itself to a new title that means your writing has become disjointed. A title constrains your writing in a good way.

I was once hired to help another blogger create better titles for his blog posts. He is a good writer and a knowledgable person but his articles lacked punch. They felt aimless. I invented good titles for his articles. But the titles didn't work immediately. The blogger had to remove and rewrite large chunks of the articles that weren't germane to my titles. It would have been more efficient if he had just started with a good title in the first place. Also, his articles took longer to get to the point than they would have if he had started with a title.
# How Much is a Sweet?

For about two years our system has been that the kids get one sweet before dinner and one sweet after dinner. They like to divide their allocation up ("can I have pancakes with half a sweet of chocolate chips?"), and this has been a good opportunity for [teaching fractions](https://www.jefftk.com/p/fractional-sweets). But how much is a sweet?

Initially, we would just eyeball it, but a few months ago Julia pointed out that my sense of how much sugar is in various foods wasn't very reliable, and we didn't have a good sense of how much sugar they should be having anyway.

The general recommendation is that at most 10% ([pdf](https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/Dietary_Guidelines_for_Americans_2020-2025.pdf#page=31)) of your calories come from sugar. The kids are eating probably about 1,000 calories per day, and at four calories per gram that would be 25g sugar. Since they get two "sweets" per day, this is 12.5g/sweet. This looks like:

12.5g table sugar (1T):

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-sugar.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-sugar-big.jpg)

Three marshmallows:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-marshmallows.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-marshmallows-big.jpg)

21g Nutella (1T):

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-nutella.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-nutella-big.jpg)

58g ice cream (~1/2C):

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-ice-cream.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-ice-cream-big.jpg)

17g sprinkles (1.5T):

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-sprinkles.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-sprinkles-big.jpg)

23g chocolate chips (~32 chips):

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-chocolate.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-chocolate-big.jpg)

Eight chocolate-chip pancakes (no sugar in the batter, 32 chocolate chips):

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-pancakes.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/one-sweet-pancakes-big.jpg)

We don't count the sugar in fruit (which is generally pretty low and comes with lots of other things we would like the kids to be eating more of) but we would count it in juice. We also don't count the sugar in other things that are mostly not sugar even if they do have a bit, like breakfast cereal or peanut butter.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100233382755922)*
# Nate Soares on the Ultimate Newcomb's Problem

Nate Soares's distilled exposition of the [Ultimate Newcomb's Problem](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RAh4fekdiRhZxb2Kw/the-ultimate-newcomb-s-problem), plus a quick analysis of how different decision theories perform, copied over from a recent email exchange (with Nate-revisions):

* * *

> You might be interested in Eliezer's "Ultimate Newcomb's Problem", which is a rare decision problem where EDT and CDT agree, but disagree with FDT. In this variant, the small box contains $1k, and the big box is transparent and contains a number X whose primality you are unsure of. Omega will pay you $1M if the number in the big box is prime, and put a prime number in that box iff they predicted you will take only the big box. Meanwhile, a third actor Omicron chooses a number at random each day, and will pay you $2M if their randomly-selected number is composite, and today they happen to have selected the number X.
> 
> The causal decision theorist takes both boxes, reasoning that all they can control is whether they get an extra $1k, so they might as well. The evidential decision theorist takes both boxes, reasoning that this makes X composite, which pays more than making X prime by taking one box (the extra $1k being inconsequential). The functional decision theorist takes one box, reasoning that on days that they're going to get paid by Omicron the number in the big box and the number chosen by Omicron will not coincide, but recognizing that their decision about whether or not to one-box has no effect on the probability that Omicron pays them.
> 
> As for who performs better, for clarity assume that Omega makes the number in the big box coincide with the number chosen by Omicron whenever possible, and write $p$ for the probability that Omicron chooses a composite number. Then CDT will always see a composite number (and it will match Omicron's in the $p$ fraction of the time when Omicron's is also composite); EDT will see a number with the same primality as Omicron's number (that matches in the $p$ fraction of cases where Omicron's number is composite, and differs in the ($1 - p$) fraction of cases where Omicron's number is prime); FDT will always see a prime number (that matches Omicron's in the ($1 - p$) fraction where Omicron's is prime). The payouts, then, will be $(\$2000000 * p) + \$1000$ for CDT; $(\$2000000 * p) + (\$1000 * p) + (\$1000000 * (1-p))$ for EDT; and $(\$2000000 * p) + \$1000000$ for FDT; a clear victory in terms of expected utility for FDT. (Exercise: a similar ranking holds when Omega only sometimes matches Omicron's number conditional on that being possible.)
# Open & Welcome Thread November 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 [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).
# EfficientZero: human ALE sample-efficiency w/MuZero+self-supervised

["Mastering Atari Games with Limited Data"](https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.00210), Ye et al 2021:

> Reinforcement learning has achieved great success in many applications. However, sample efficiency remains a key challenge, with prominent methods requiring millions (or even billions) of environment steps to train. Recently, there has been significant progress in sample efficient image-based RL algorithms; however, consistent human-level performance on the Atari game benchmark remains an elusive goal. 
>
> We propose a sample efficient model-based visual RL algorithm built on [MuZero](https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08265#deepmind), which we name **EfficientZero**. Our method achieves 190.4% mean human performance and 116.0% median performance on the Atari 100k benchmark with only two hours of real-time game experience and outperforms the state SAC in some tasks on the DMControl 100k benchmark. This is the first time an algorithm achieves super-human performance on Atari games with such little data. EfficientZero's performance is also close to DQN's performance at 200 million frames while we consume 500 times less data.
>
> EfficientZero's low sample complexity and high performance can bring RL closer to real-world applicability. We implement our algorithm in an easy-to-understand manner and it is available at [this https URL](https://github.com/YeWR/EfficientZero). We hope it will accelerate the research of MCTS-based RL algorithms in the wider community. 
> 
> This work is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, the 2030 Innovation Megaprojects “Program on New Generation Artificial Intelligence” (Grant No. 2021AAA0150000).

Some have said that poor sample-efficiency on ALE has been a reason to downplay DRL progress or implications. The primary boost in EfficientZero ([table 3](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.00210.pdf#page=9)), pushing it past the human benchmark, is some simple self-supervised learning ([SimSiam](https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.10566) on predicted vs actual observations).
# Can homo-sapiens sustain an economy parallel to AI's?

In a world where taxis and trucks drive themselves, code writes itself etc. there's several ways humans can fit into such picture.  
Perhaps they'll get rich by owning shares, perhaps UBI will be introduced, perhaps they'll move to jobs higher-in-abstraction-ladder using AI as tools, perhaps we'll just serve as testers/aligners/goal-setters.  
But there's a possibility we'll have nothing to offer to such "[ascended economy](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/30/ascended-economy/)", or perhaps big part of a society will not be needed, while some other small part will benefit (Elyzium-style).  
 

(I'm assuming the "progressive" part of the world is not hostile, just doesn't need the "traditional" part - in particular they respect their property rights)

Assuming this later scenario: is it possible that "traditional people" form some kind of closed system in which they still trade with each other, ignoring the outside progress?  
In particular, would it require some strong coordination between them to refrain from buying/selling to the outside, or would it rather be the most natural and selfish thing for them to do try to trade locally?

Has it ever happened in the history, that a tribe has successfully walled off (without an active help from the outside to protect their customs)?
# Vaccine Requirements, Age, and Fairness

In talking about [potentially](https://www.jefftk.com/p/comparing-options-for-safer-events) [resuming](https://www.jefftk.com/p/indoor-dancing-is-safe-enough) contra dancing, with a vaccination requirement, one reaction I've received from several people is that it's not fair to start until everyone can get vaccinated. The idea is that since some people are younger than the current limit, or have children who are younger, it would not be appropriately inclusive to resume.

I do really like that contra dancing is so open. I started dancing at [NEFFA](https://www.neffa.org/) when I was very little, and have brought my kids with me to all sorts of dances. They've danced at [family dances](https://www.jefftk.com/p/bida-family-dance-timing) and in a carrier at regular dances, and come with me when organizing local dances, [playing dance weekends](https://www.jefftk.com/p/playing-dances-with-a-kid), and [on tour](https://www.jefftk.com/p/scattered-tour-thoughts). Including children in our community is very important to me.

On the other hand, if this means we can't hold dances until all ages can get vaccinated, we're going to be waiting a long time. While we are now frustratingly close to allowing vaccination for kids 5-11 (FDA approved [last week](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-authorizes-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-emergency-use-children-5-through-11-years-age), CDC is meeting [today](https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/planning/children.html)), the 2-4 cohort is not expected until 2022 at the earliest, with younger children even later. Which means for the next few months at minimum, if we are going to require vaccination (no one has been pushing for allowing unvaccinated children), the choice is between a dance for adults and older children, or no dance.

The feedback from both the [spontaneous Porchfest dance](https://www.jefftk.com/p/porchfest-2021) and the [outdoor contra](https://www.jefftk.com/davis) was really positive: this is something a lot of people have really been missing. While I would much prefer it if all ages could safely be included, given a choice between (a) dances for ~98% of regular participants now and everyone later and (b) nothing now, everyone later, I think we should go with (a).

(Asking other parents (n=5), I haven't found anyone who thinks dances need to hold off for age fairness reasons; I've only heard this from non-parents (n=4). I then asked Lily (7y) and Anna (5y) what they thought, and they both said that until everyone could get vaccinated it wasn't fair to resume, even if that takes a very long time. I asked what they would think if they could get vaccinated but Nora (4m) still couldn't, and Anna said yes while Lily said she couldn't decide.)

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100233676118022)*
# What's the difference between newer Atari-playing AI and the older Deepmind one (from 2014)?

My impression was that thing that put Deepmind on the map was an AI that could play multiple Atari games. Lately there's been new Atari-playing AI (both from Deepmind and other companies) that are making the news. Are they doing basically the same thing 2014 Deepmind was doing but better? Are they doing a fundamentally different thing? Can someone explain the diff like I'm five?
# Pair debugging

Pair debugging is a staple of applied rationality. Humans aren't really all that smart on their own. Our intelligence is distributed. You don't get very far by thinking by yourself.

Before we start, I'll teach a rationality technique. These techniques can be used explicitly as a structured conversation, or they can be applied freestyle whenever.

Minimum prep: bring a bugs list! This is a list of n things that you would like to improve about your life. Here's some examples:

\- "I often don't fall asleep quickly enough on evenings before workdays"  
\- "I want to work for an early phase startup for my next job, but I don't know how to get in contact with startups in that phase"  
\- "Despite being poly I seem to have a mental block around flirting even when there is clear interest from the other side"  
\- etc

Optional prep: read some of the CFAR handbook at https://www.rationality.org/resources/handbook

Rough schedule:

16:00 - welcome  
± 17:00 - introduction  
± 17:15 - meditation session  
± 17:30 - instruction & practice  
± 18:30 - done  
± 19:30 - grab some dinner together  
± ??:?? \- closing
# The Opt-Out Clause

*(*[*cross-posted from my blog*](https://raymonddouglas.co.uk/the-opt-out-clause/)*)*

Let me propose a thought experiment with three conditions.

**First**, you're in a simulation, and a really good one at that. Before you went in, the simulators extracted and stored all of your memories, and they went to great lengths to make sure that the simulation is completely faultless.

**Second**, you can leave any time you like. All you have to do to end the simulation, regain your memories, and return to reality is recite the opt-out passphrase: "I no longer consent to being in a simulation". Unfortunately, you don't know about the opt-out condition: that would kind of ruin the immersion.

**Third**, although you're never told directly about the opt-out condition, you do get told about indirectly, phrased as a kind of hypothetical thought experiment. Maybe someone poses it to you at a party, maybe you read it on twitter, maybe it's a blog post on some niche internet forum. You're guaranteed to hear about it at least once though, to give you a fair chance of leaving. But it's vague and indirect enough that you can dismiss it if you want, and probably forget about it in a week.

It's not enough to think the opt-out phrase, you have to actually say it or write it. So the question is, hypothetically, would you?
# Baby Sister Numbers

A few days ago, Lily (7y) told me about some [Nora](https://www.norawise.com)-inspired numbers:

*   The largest number is `*Noranoo*`.
    
*   If you try and make any larger number, you still get `*Noranoo*`. For example, `*Noranoo* + 1 = *Noranoo*`, and `*Noranoo* * 2 = *Noranoo*`.
    
*   Otherwise, it behaves normally. You can have `*Noranoo* - 1`, dubbed "`*Norklet*`". This means `*Noranoo* - 1 + 1 = *Noranoo*`, while `*Noranoo* + 1 - 1 = *Norklet*`. This didn't bother her.
    
*   `*Noranoo* * -1` is `*Norahats*`. It is the smallest number, and like `*Noranoo*` any attempt to go lower keeps you at `*Norahats*`.
    
*   These are very large numbers: much bigger than a googol.
    

This is a kind of [saturation arithmetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturation_arithmetic), more of a computersy approach than a mathy one, since you give up associativity, distributivity, the successor function being an injection, and all that.

On the other hand, it's slightly more elegant than a typical computational implementation of saturation, because it is symmetric around zero. Normally, you are using some number of bits, which gives you 2^N distinct values, and so an even number of integers. Typically we set the minimum integer to be one larger, in absolute value, than the maximum one. In this case, though, there are an odd number of integers. I asked whether perhaps `*Norahats* * -1 * -1 * -1` could be `*Norklet*` and not `*Noranoo*`, but Lily insisted that `*Noranoo*` and `*Norahats*` were equal in magnitude.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100233824321022)*
# South Bay LW Pilot Meetup (Sunnyvale)

***Update:** No change of location, meetup will be held as announced.  ~~**Potential Change of Location Notice:**   If the weather is bad, this will instead be held at nearby Ilmarin House. If so I'll update here and email people whose RSVP included an email address on Saturday morning at the latest so it might help to check before you head out.~~*

This is the first South Bay LessWrong meetup in a while! It's a relaxed, unstructured event for meeting friends old and new, talking about things that interest you, letting us know what you'd like future events to be like and having some pastries while you're at it. 

**Location (verbose): **  
On the roundish grassy area in the northeast corner of Washington Park, 840 W Washington Ave. We'll have a dark blue picnic blanket and a LW Meetup sign. – [///island.economies.coach](https://what3words.com////island.economies.coach) (Yes, same place as the September ACX meetup.) 

**Things to maybe bring:**  
It will likely be somewhat chilly so it probably makes sense to wear a sweater or jacket. As mentioned, there is a picnic blanket to sit down on but if you want to make sure you don't have to stand you might want to bring your own or a camping chair.  Some pastries will be available but you're welcome to bring food as well if you're so inclined. 

**More:**  
If you’re reading this, you’re invited! Bring friends if you think they’d enjoy the event. Kids are welcome! Please [RSVP](https://www.lesswrong.com/events/h42B9BsHdbyTZEEx2/south-bay-lw-pilot-meetup-sunnyvale?rsvpDialog=true) if you haven’t already (but if you don’t manage to do that in time we’re happy to have you anyway).   
If you want to register ideas and preferences about time/location/structure/etc. of future South Bay gatherings or have other questions/concerns, please let me know at [svmeetup@protonmail.com](mailto:svmeetup@protonmail.com) or leave a comment.
# Highlighting New Comments

Keeping track of which comments you have already read in an online discussion is a pain. It's not too bad in a flat discussion, because you can scroll up to the last comment you remember reading, but in a threaded discussion it's really easy to miss things. Sites can solve this by highlighting new comments:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/highlighted-comment-jefftk.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/highlighted-comment-jefftk-big.png)

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/highlighted-comment-lesswrong.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/highlighted-comment-lesswrong-big.png)

Why isn't this more common?

The general idea is quite old: mail readers have always marked new messages, so a threaded view with highlighted messages goes back at least to the beginning of threading mail readers. I was using this in the early 2000s, but it's surely older: the `In-Reply-To` header goes back to [RFC 680](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc680) (1975) via [RFC 733](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc733) (1977) and [RFC 822](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc822) (1982).

On web forums, Reddit added new comment highlighting [August 2010](https://web.archive.org/web/20140316061916/http://www.redditblog.com/2010/08/feature-out-feature-in.html), but limited it to subscribers (then "Gold", now "Premium"). It used to be a headline feature of Gold (#2 in [2012](https://web.archive.org/web/20121109035956/http://www.reddit.com/gold/about), falling to #4 in [2013](https://web.archive.org/web/20130531163248/http://www.reddit.com/gold/about/)) but was dropped from advertising in the [2018 rebrand to Premium](https://web.archive.org/web/20181001074331/https://www.reddit.com/premium/).

Since I never bought a Reddit subscription, I first saw new comment highlighting on LessWrong, where it was added on [May 2011](https://github.com/bellroy/lesswrong/commit/6a15307ed2c6e9e4d1253c641e8c10b7d35e140b). Some time [before 2015](https://github.com/bakkot/SlateStarComments/commit/3daa8666921b4ba40a1f839ce949823c02dd1f7c) (I think it was early 2014) it was added to SlateStarCodex, and I added it to my commenting system in [August 2014](https://www.jefftk.com/p/mark-new-comments). It survived the LessWrong rewrite, and it's supported by the other deployments of that platform.

From a technical perspective, it is a pretty small change: you can implement it client-side in a dozen lines. Many people have written userscripts to add this functionality to sites that don't have it.

The idea has been around for over ten years, it's very simple to implement, it dramatically improves the experience of returning to a complex discussion, but most comment systems that would benefit from it don't support it. Since at this point the explanation is not going to be that the people who would need to add it to FB/HN/etc haven't heard of it, I think the explanation likely goes back to some form of me (and the LW/EA communities) having unusual preferences? Maybe most people don't return to discussions? Or find it distracting? What's going on?

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100234101755042)*
# How much of the supply-chain issues are due to monetary policy?

The most common explanation I hear for supply chain issues in the economy in the US and Europe is that COVID-19 lockdown measures messed with the supply chains. 

On the other hand there seems to be a story of demand for some products having risen. How much of this is downstream of the FED and EZB printing a lot of new money to stimulate demand?
# ACX/SSC/LW Meetup

Come join a group of people who want to approach complex topics with compassion, nuance and mindfulness.

Because this one is indoors and on private property, I (Sean) will be checking vaccine proof at the door and won't be letting  anyone in who hasn't RSVPed. This rigorous vetting and literal gate-keeping is temporary. We'll head back into the open outdoors once the weather warms up again!

Location: 119 Spadina
# Is there a clearly laid-out write-up of the case to drop Covid precautions? 

Some people are advocating dropping all or most Covid precautions within the rationalist community beyond requiring vaccines. I haven't seen the case for this explicitly laid out anywhere, though. Is there such a write-up anywhere?
# Where did the 5 micron number come from? Nowhere good. [Wired.com]

This article describe's a scientist's attempt to figure out where the 5 micron number, and general belief that most respiratory diseases weren't airborne, came from. She eventually traces it back to a particular number developed for a very different purpose.  
  
 I have not fact checked it extensively, but last winter I did try to look into the general state of knowledge on airborne transmission vs fomites and found it weirdly empty, in ways that are consistent with this article.
# Arguments in parallel vs arguments in series

When arguments are delivered in parallel, their combined strength is no less than the strength of the strongest argument. For example, you might encounter two different people arguing in favor of the same position, one giving an argument that you can easily see doesn't work, and one giving an argument that's harder to refute. Or somebody might give five examples of a phenomenon they say exists, two of which are stretches but three of which work out all right. In both cases, the situation should have at least as much "persuasion power" as it would if the worse arguments did not exist.

When arguments are delivered in series, their combined strength is no greater than the strength of the weakest link. Somebody might begin with premise A, use it to draw intermediate conclusion B, and then use that to draw final conclusion C. If the link from B to C is suspect, then the entire argument is suspect, even if the link from A to B is irrefutable.

I'm guessing most people who will read this post already understand what I'm saying, but I've never seen it presented with the "in parallel" and "in series" phrasing before. I thought it was cute, and maybe useful, so I decided to post it. As usual, be careful not to apply this principle selectively -- your own in-series arguments need complete inspection to be accepted, and others' in-parallel arguments need complete inspection to be rejected.

**Caveat:** When I was getting feedback on this post, somebody pointed out that the presence of two bad examples actually can weaken the case made for the theory if your reasoning process involves evaluating how competent the person presenting it is. If they were 3 for 3 on giving examples, you might trust them more and therefore give more credence to their claims, whereas if they were only 3 for 5, you might trust them less and therefore give less credence. I agree with this. I think the reason it doesn't quite work out perfectly is that, if you're trying to evaluate the competence of the other person, then the five examples they give aren't actually quite parallel arguments, since they also contribute to the shared pool of "how trustworthy is this person?".

But really, the important point about parallel arguments is that you can't pick one of the two bad examples, argue that it's bad, and then ride the momentum from that rejection into a rejection of the whole theory. By the same token, you can't reject a position on the grounds that you thought of a reason why somebody might believe it, and the reason was obviously stupid. The problem with doing that is, that reason exists in parallel alongside an infinitude of other possible reasons to believe the position, and arguments in parallel can't be rejected collectively just because you found a weak argument among them.
# Come for the productivity, stay for the philosophy

There's a large class of things that eventually make you more effective when you've studied them for a while, but which are challenging and seem like they produce no gains while being learned.

Formal logic, for instance, seems that way for a lot of people.

Many of the natural sciences have this characteristic.

Some philosophical concepts have this characteristic.

For this class of thing, I've always found a strategy of "Come for the productivity, stay for the philosophy" to be effective.

In my experience, if people can get real and tangible gains and improvements out of a set of ideas quickly, they're more likely to stick around and be patient with the more abstract things.

Advanced students and practitioners in a domain often forget how expensive their field was to learn originally and how little gain there might seem to be in that field for new people, so they often neglect this.

I don't have a longer post to write. I just think this is really important to think about from time to time and encourage you to do so. It can make teaching and learning much more effective. Give it a try, maybe, next time you're teaching in an abstract domain.

*What tangible results could the person get now so they're more likely to stick around for abstract learnings?*
# What exactly is GPT-3's base objective?

_\[Probably a noob question\]_

I'm thinking about what an inner alignment failure might look like for GPT-3. This would have to involve some deployment context in which GPT-3 performs significantly worse (by the standards of the base objective) than it did in training. (It would involve other things too, such as GPT-3 being a mesa-optimizer.)

_But to say how well GPT-3 performs on some prompt not in the training dataset, we have to have a definition of the base objective that extends beyond the training dataset_. _If the base objective only makes sense in the context of the training dataset, then inner alignment failure is impossible by definition._

Is the base objective "Predict the next word?" Or is it "Predict the next word, supposing what you are reading is typical 2019 Internet text?" Or is it "Predict the next word, supposing what you are reading is a random-with-the-following-weights sample from dataset D? \[where D is the dataset used to train GPT-3\]" The third option is in some sense the best, because it most closely fits what we actually did to train GPT-3. But note that the logical extension of this line of reasoning is to prefer a fourth option: "Predict the next word, supposing what you are reading is a random-with-the-following-weights sample from dataset D' \[where D' is like D except that it doesn't contain any of the bits of text that GPT-3 happened to not see in training, and the randomness weights are chosen to more accurately yield the data points that GPT-3 in fact saw\]."

The problem with these last two answers is that they make it _undefined_ how well GPT-3 performs on the base objective on any prompt that wasn't in D, which then rules out psuedo-alignment by definition.

From the Risks from Learned Optimization paper:

> In such a case, we will use _base objective_ to refer to whatever criterion the base optimizer was using to select between different possible systems and _mesa-objective_ to refer to whatever criterion the mesa-optimizer is using to select between different possible outputs. In reinforcement learning (RL), for example, the base objective is generally the expected return. Because the mesa-objective is not specified by the programmers, mesa-optimization opens up the possibility of a mismatch between the base and mesa- objectives, wherein the mesa-objective might seem to perform well on the training environment but lead to bad performance off the training environment. We will refer to this case as pseudo-alignment below.

Expected return in a particular environment/distribution? Or not? If not, then you may be in a deployment context where you aren't updating the weights anymore and so there is no expected return, or at least it's close to 0 because there's only any return if you can convince people to start updating your weights again!

I worry I am just confused about all this. Hence why I'm asking. **What is GPT-3's base objective?**
# Self-education best practices

I have a degree in a field I no longer wish to pursue in my career (English literature). Without a university and all it comes with (libraries, knowledgeable people, etc.), what are the best ways to self-educate and gain a substantive knowledge base in subjects I have little background in, specifically law, philosophy of language, intellectual property, and ethics? I am looking both for specific book recommendations and tips on how to most productively make my way through the material. I am no longer a student, but I have enough time on my hands to do nearly the amount of "course-work" I was doing in college. Also, are there folks who have covered self-education best practices in a book, podcast, etc? I have listened to Tyler Cowen interview Nassim Taleb on this; are there others offering insight on self-education?
# Using blinders to help you see things for what they are 

In basketball, people are often, well, biased in favor of one player over another. For example:

> There's no way that _Khris Middleton_ is better than Kyrie Irving.

Kyrie is widely perceived as an ultra-talented superstar, while Middleton is perceived as a nice sidekick, maybe even a very good sidekick, but not a true hero.

> "And then the really smart people," Draco said, his face now serious, "went off and had a little discussion by themselves..."
> 
> — [HPMoR, Chapter 19](http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/19)

In basketball, something the smart people do in these little discussions is pose questions like the following:

> Player A scores 22 points per 75 possessions on +9% efficiency relative to league average.
> 
> Player B scores 26 pp75 on +3% efficiency.
>
> Who's better?

It's a pretty good debiasing technique. It'll often lead to uncomfortable conclusions, like "Middleton is better than Kyrie", or "Ginobili is [better](https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1573442) than McGrady".

I'd like to see this technique used more widely.

It's not quite the same thing, but consider the following.

> The consensus opinion of experts is that there is this event that will happen. They don't know _when_ it is going to happen, but they are in agreement _that_ it is going to happen, _and_ that it is going to lead humanity to either utopia or extinction.
> 
> What is the chance of utopia vs extinction? Maybe 60-40. It's hard to say.
> 
> When do they think it will happen? Maybe between 2030 and 2080. Also hard to say.
> 
> Do they think we can do anything to stop it from happening? Nope. It's pretty much inevitable.
> 
> Do they think we can do anything to, y'know, push us closer to utopia and further from extinction? Yeah, for sure!
> 
> Are we currently doing any of that stuff? Nah, not really. There are a couple of organizations with budgets of a few million dollars, but that's it.

If such a thing were true, how would you expect civilization to react?

I dunno. Maybe some politicians would make a move on it. Not all, but some. Maybe concerned citizens would start Facebook groups. Maybe there'd be documentaries, like we have for climate change. Maybe Vice would write some articles about it. Maybe universities and research groups would be attacking it with some force. Maybe people would spend more mental energy worrying about it than their 401k.

Well, such a thing is true. It's called the [singularity](https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html). And to my knowledge, civilization is not reacting like I would have expected.

Perhaps using that debiasing technique of applying "blinders" would make it more clear how big of a deal the singularity is. Perhaps the fact that it sounds like science fiction is making it hard for us to take it seriously. In the same way that Kyrie's flashiness and Middleton's mundane style makes it hard for us to take seriously the idea that Middleton is a better player.
# Preprint is out! 100,000 lumens to treat seasonal affective disorder

Let’s give people with winter depression (seasonal affective disorder, SAD) LOTS OF LIGHT and see what happens!

Our preprint is out now for our paper “100,000 lumens to treat seasonal affective disorder: A proof of concept RCT of bright, whole-room, all-day (BROAD) light therapy”! We have sent it to a number of professors working in that area and have received very encouraging and helpful feedback, which has made me even more excited about continuing this research.

→ Paper: [https://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2021.10.29.21265530v1](https://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2021.10.29.21265530v1), short summary Twitter thread: [https://twitter.com/FabienneSand/status/1457745472773296128](https://twitter.com/FabienneSand/status/1457745472773296128)   
 

Jan Brauner and I are very thankful to the LessWrong/EA communities, which have inspired this first study (there will be more) and through which we have found funding. In particular, thank you Eliezer Yudkowsky for helping us find funding and for inspiring the study with Inadequate Equilibria, David Chapman for inspiring us with [these](https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens) [two](https://meaningness.com/sad-light-led-lux) posts in the Meaningness blog, Raemon for inspiring us with [this](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/hC2NFsuf5anuGadFm/how-to-build-a-lumenator) LessWrong post and everyone who discussed with us setups they have tried. <3
# [Linkpost] Paul Graham 101

> There’s probably no one who knows more about startups than Paul Graham. Having helped thousands of startups through Y Combinator, the startup accelerator he co-founded, there’s a thing or two to learn from his essays. And Graham’s wisdom isn’t limited to startups either; his essays, read by millions, touch on education, intelligence, writing, society, the human mind, and much more.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Paul Graham 101](https://www.jaakkoj.com/blog/graham) by Jaakko
----------------------------------------------------------------

An alternative on the subject of startups is probably [Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work](https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/). I don't have a third source so it doesn't qualify for [The Best Textbooks on Every Subject](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-textbooks-on-every-subject).