Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# What are the best arguments and/or plans for doing work in "AI policy"?

I'm looking to get oriented in the space of "AI policy": interventions that involve world governments (particularly the US government) and existential risk from strong AI.

When I hear people talk about "AI policy", my initial reaction is skepticism, because (so far) I can think of very few actions that governments could take that seem to help with the core problems of AI ex-risk. However, I haven't read much about this area, and I don't know what actual policy recommendations people have in mind.

So what should I read to start? Can people link to plans and proposals in AI policy space?

Research papers, general interest web pages, and one's own models, are all admissible.

Thanks.
# Long Bets by Confidence Level

If you want to make a [long-term bet](https://www.jefftk.com/p/long-term-bets) one of your options is to register your bet with the Long Now Foundation as a Long Bet. They have some rules, which are [roughly](http://longbets.org/rules/):

*   Both parties put up the same amount, at least $200/each.
*   Long Bets effectively runs a donor-advised fund (DAF).
*   When the bet concludes the winner chooses a charity to receive the money.
*   The charity gets the initial stakes, plus half the investment income.

While people have all sorts of reasons why they might want to use Long Bets, one question is: how confident do you need to be for placing a long bet to result in more money going to your preferred charity than just putting the money in a DAF now?

Let's say I claim we'll have talking horses ten years from now, and you're skeptical. You consider betting $1000 against my $1000 via Long Bets. If you win you'll get your $1000 back, my $1000, and half the investment income which (figuring the stock market returns a nominal 7%) will be ~$967, for a total of ~$2967. On the other hand, if you had just put your $1000 in a DAF you'd have ~$1967. Is this a good deal?

Provided putting the money in a DAF for at least that long would otherwise be your best option, if you're 100% confident that (a) you'll win and (b) Long Bets will still be around, then it's a solid deal. You're up about 50%. On the other hand, the less confident you are the worse the deal looks:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/long-bets-outcome-by-year-and-confidence.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/long-bets-outcome-by-year-and-confidence-big.png)  
([sheet you can copy and play with](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ekaudUUsG95L73mjtMu4RIDsW9aC-XKMX-Ey66S8uDo/edit#gid=0))

For example, at 60% confidence you're neutral at 6 years, and negative after that. At 75% you're down to neutral at 16 years. At 90%, 32 years. At 99%, 75 years. For an organization trying to promote long-term thinking, it's surprising they would choose a fee structure that penalizes long-term bets so heavily.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100126083294902)*
# Applications of Economic Models to Physiology?

Applying economic models to physiology seems really obvious. For instance:

*   Surely the body uses price signals to match production to consumption of various metabolites. [Insulin as a price signal for glucose](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bNXdnRTpSXk9p4zmi/book-review-design-principles-of-biological-circuits) is one example.
*   Presumably such price signals coordinate between spatially-separated organs with specialized roles in various physiological "supply chains". That should lead to general equilibrium models, and questions of convexity and stability.
*   Can we back out an implied discount rate for the body's long-term energy stores?

Yet when I run a google search for the obvious phrase "econophysiology", I get back five results, most of which appear to be misspellings. (I feel like I ought to write something right now just to call dibs on the name.)

Does anyone know of sources on this sort of thing? Is there a name for it?
# Generalizing Experimental Results by Leveraging Knowledge of Mechanisms

In a [recent post (and papers)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wwbrvumMWhDfeo652), Anders Huitfeldt and co-authors have discussed ways of achieving external validity in the presence of “effect heterogeneity.” These results are not immediately inferable using a standard (non-parametric) selection diagram, which has led them to conclude that selection diagrams may not be helpful for  "thinking more closely about effect heterogeneity" and, thus, might be "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

Taking a closer look at the analysis of Anders and co-authors, and using their very same examples, we came to quite different conclusions. In those cases, transportability is not immediately inferable in a fully nonparametric structural model for a simple reason: it relies on _functional constraints_ on the structural equation of the outcome. Once these constraints are properly incorporated in the analysis, all results flow naturally from the structural model, and selection diagrams prove to be indispensable for thinking about heterogeneity, for extrapolating results across populations, and for protecting analysts from unwarranted generalizations.  [See details in the note we post here for discussion](http://causality.cs.ucla.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cinelli_pearl_generalizing_experimental_results.pdf).
# A Re-Interpretation of the Normative Foundations of Majority Rule

This is a working paper on group rationality by Mahendra Prasad, who has previously published, among other things, "Social Choice and the Value Alignment Problem" in _Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security_, edited by Roman V. Yampolskiy. He's provided me with this summary to share:

Resolving Majority Rule’s Irrationality
---------------------------------------

Since the 1950s, majority rule has been interpreted as majority preference. But this has led to problems. For example, suppose there are three voters and three candidates. Suppose:

The first voter prefers: x over y over z

The second voter prefers: y over z over x

The third voter prefers: z over x over y

Notice, a majority (i.e., the first and third voters) prefer x over y. A majority (i.e., the first and second voters) prefer y over x. Thus, by transitivity, since a majority prefers x over y, and y over z, then we should expect a majority prefers x over z.

But that expectation is incorrect. A majority (i.e., the second and third voters) prefer z over x. In other words, the majority prefers x over y over z over x. This is akin to saying 3 > 2 > 1 > 3. Just as such an intransitivity makes the idea of a largest integer in a finite set of integers meaningless, majority preference’s intransitivity makes the notion of a best or winning candidate meaningless.

This paradox, known as Condorcet’s paradox, has been considered so fatal, many serious political philosophers have argued that majority rule and voting are meaningless.

In the linked paper below, Mahendra Prasad argues that by adopting a “consent of the majority” interpretation of majority rule, which we can see in the works of philosophers such as John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Nicolas de Condorcet, and John Rawls, we can overcome Condorcet’s paradox. Specifically, Prasad takes the standard normative arguments for majority rule on two candidates (i.e., May’s theorem, Condorcet’s jury theorem, the Rae-Taylor theorem, and maximization of the number of self-determined individuals) and generalizes them to multiple candidates using consent of the majority (e.g., approval voting) without falling to Condorcet’s paradox.

The main takeaway from this paper should not be that approval voting is \*the\* correct way to interpret majority rule; rather it should be that there exists some interpretation of majority rule, which is not majority preference, which fully generalizes the standard normative arguments for majority rule to multiple candidates. Thus, we should not restrict our interpretation of majority rule to just majority preference, but be open to treating majority rule as a non-primitive open to multiple interpretations (e.g., mean rank maximization \[Borda count\], median rank maximization \[Bucklin method\], majority preference \[Condorcet methods\], first preference maximization \[plurality voting\], etc.) that should be explored and researched. Doing so can improve the rationality and effectiveness of group decision making.

[Read more](https://preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/article-details/5d7f0a9093d9fe0012e1a1c2)
# CHAI Internship applications are due by 12/15

Hi everyone,

I'm the Assistant Director at [CHAI](https://humancompatible.ai/) and as some of you may know, CHAI is currently accepting applications for our 2020 internship program.

The application closes at 11:59pm PST on 12/15 (this upcoming Sunday). If you are an undergrad or grad student interested in technical AI safety research, then please apply! We also rely on word of mouth so if you know anyone who is interested, please share the application with them.

You can find more information and the application itself [here](https://boards.greenhouse.io/centerforhumancompatibleartificialintelligence/jobs/4358062002)

Please e-mail me at [chai-admin@berkeley.edu](chai-admin@berkeley.edu) if you have any questions!
# [Link] "Doing being rational: polymerase chain reaction" by David Chapman

This is a link post for:

 - [Doing being rational: polymerase chain reaction | Meaningness](https://meaningness.com/metablog/rational-pcr)

I'm not going to quote the content at the link itself. [Should I?]

David Chapman – the author of the linked post – claims that "meta-rational" methods are necessary to 'reason reasonably'. I, and I think a lot of other people broadly part of the greater rationalist community, have objected to that general distinction. I still stand by that objection, at least *terminologically*.

But with this post and other previous recent posts/'pages' that he's posted at his site Meaningness, I think I'm better understanding the points he was gesturing or hinting at with what he describes as meta-rationality and I think that's because 'rationality', in his understanding, is *grounded* in the actual behavior people perform. The notion that Richard Feynman is quoted as insisting on of having to "work on paper", or the idea of 'repair' are almost certainly real and important facts about how we actually reason.

I think there's less and less object-level disagreement between him and myself, even about something like 'Bayesian reasoning'. His recent writing has crystalized the notion in me that he's really on to something and dispelled the notion that we shared some kind of fundamental disagreement. It seems relatively unimportant whether I or others subsume 'meta-rationality' within 'rationality' (or not).

I'm less sure how much of this applies to arbitrary reasoners or artificial intelligence, e.g. an AI could maintain a checklist 'internally' instead of relying on an external physical device to perform the same function, but the ideas he's discussing seem to be insightful and true to me about our own rational practices nonetheless.
# Book Recommendations for social skill development?

I have come to a realisation a bit later than I should have. Although I am still quite young and definitely have time to act on this realisation now, I wish I had started sooner.

I am studying to become a teacher, and I hope to go into education policy later, with quite some large ambition in mind. And yet, my social skills are quite poor, and I have hardly any charisma. I seek to change this. I know that much of the cause of my poor social skills is never having created or found opportunities to develop them in the natural developmental path of a child/teenager.

And so I take to reading books in order to learn, and then apply what I read in life. I suppose I could just sit and think and figure out what to improve, but in the name of efficiency I want to at least start with the guidance of someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

So, any book recommendations that explicitly teach social skills and charisma? I've started working through Just Listen by Mark Goulston, which so far seems quite valuable.
# [Personal Experiment] One Year without Junk Media

I wrote in a [previous post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/koa48Qio5LP48xMM2/mediums-overpower-messages) how my life is better when I avoid certain kinds of media.  It increases my happiness, lowers my stress and makes me smarter.

I should follow my own advice. I hereby commit myself to abstaining from junk media for one year.

There's a long list of rules, definitions and exceptions but the basic idea is I'll avoid videogames, news, Reddit, web surfing, Hot Network Questions and similar mindless media feeds. YouTube is special case. Music and dance videos are okay so I created a new YouTube account and trained the recommendation algorithm to recommend only these kinds of videos.

I've been abstaining from junk media for increasingly long periods of time. My record is around two months. Now's finally the time to pull the trigger and go a whole year.

New Years resolutions usually fail so instead I'm starting this resolution on the 317th anniversary of the 47 Ronin.

万歳！
# Is the term mesa optimizer too narrow?

In the [post introducing mesa optimization](https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/r9tYkB2a8Fp4DN8yB/p/FkgsxrGf3QxhfLWHG), the authors defined an _optimizer_ as

> a system \[that is\] internally searching through a search space (consisting of possible outputs, policies, plans, strategies, or similar) looking for those elements that score high according to some objective function that is explicitly represented within the system.

The paper continues by defining a mesa optimizer as an optimizer that was selected by a base optimizer.

However, there are a number of issues with this definition, as some have [already](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/FkgsxrGf3QxhfLWHG/risks-from-learned-optimization-introduction#74NoviQFfy6adFuxp) pointed out.

First, I think by this definition humans are clearly not mesa optimizers. Most optimization we do is implicit. Yet, humans are the supposed to be the prototypical examples of mesa optimizers, which appears be a contradiction.

Second, the definition excludes perfectly legitimate examples of inner alignment failures. To see why, consider a simple feedforward neural network trained by deep reinforcement learning to navigate [my Chests and Keys environment](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/AFdRGfYDWQqmkdhFq/a-simple-environment-for-showing-mesa-misalignment). Since "go to the nearest key" is a good proxy for getting the reward, the neural network simply returns the action, that when given the board state, results in the agent getting closer to the nearest key.

Is the feedforward neural network optimizing anything here? Hardly, it's just applying a heuristic. Note that you don't need to do anything like an internal A* search to find keys in a maze, because in many environments, [following a wall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_solving_algorithm#Wall_follower) until the key is within sight, and then performing a very shallow search (which doesn't have to be explicit) could work fairly well.

As far as I can tell, Hjalmar Wijk [introduced](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zCcmJzbenAXu6qugS/tabooing-agent-for-prosaic-alignment) the term "malign generalization" to describe the failure mode that I think is most worth worrying about here. In particular, malign generalization happens when you trained a system with objective function X, that at deployment has the actual outcome of doing Y, where Y is so bad that we'd prefer the system to fail completely. To me at least, this seems like a far more intuitive and less theory-laden way of framing inner alignment failures.

This way of reframing the issue allows us to keep the old terminology that we are concerned with [capability robustness without alignment robustness](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2mhFMgtAjFJesaSYR/2-d-robustness), but drops all unnecessary references to mesa optimization.

Mesa optimizers could still form a natural class of things that are prone to malign generalization. But if even humans are not mesa optimizers, why should we expect mesa optimizers to be the primary real world examples of such inner alignment failures?
# When would an agent do something different as a result of believing the many worlds theory?

One of the things impeding the many worlds vs wavefunction-collapse dialogue is that nobody seems to be able to point to a situation in which the difference clearly matters, where we would make a different decision depending on which theory we believe. If there aren't any, pragmatism would instruct us to write the question off as meaningless.

Has anyone tried to pose a compelling thought experiment in which the difference matters?
# Taxi Industry Regulation, Deregulation, and Reregulation: The Paradox of Market Failure

([from the March 2018 Gwern.net newsletter](https://www.gwern.net/newsletter/2018/03))

Uber/Lyft are disrupting the near-total regulatory capture of the taxi industry. But why does that regulatory mess exist in the first place? As it turns out, the regulations are trying to solve a bunch of specific market failures in the legacy taxi industry, and this paper thoroughly explains what those failures are.
# A parable in the style of Invisible Cities

Cities & Belief: Goreme
=======================

The city of Goreme hides a terrible secret. At first, innocent visitor, you will admire the old bridge over the river, the colorful graffiti on alley walls, and the flags waving prettily in the public square. You will be impressed and humbled by how passionate and well-informed the locals are, and you will sign up to attend one of their protest-rallies.

Eventually, however, you will see the demons. A local guide will casually pull one out of his ear and offer it to you, or a dinner party host will unwrap a boxful. Picture it! With supernatural speed the tiny, squirmy yellow creatures clamber up your leg and perch on your shoulder. They whisper to you, and try to enter your ear canal. You wipe them off in disgust, but your local friends assure you the things are harmless—all they do is talk, and they are quite helpful. There are good demons and bad demons, your friends explain, and the good ones help you resist the bad. The bad ones have infected other people in the city—selfish people, hateful people, and also people who just don't know any better. The bad demons want power; they lie and deceive their hosts so that they can multiply and spread to more people. Demons are very persuasive, very clever. This is why the good demons are so helpful, your friends say. The good demons care about humans; they can help you identify bad demons inside other people, and they'll provide facts and arguments to counter enemy misinformation.

Does this story disturb you, traveller? Are you suspicious of these good demons? Good. You should be. Most visitors to Goreme are, at least at first. Eventually, though, everyone lets at least a few demons into their head. Hard to believe, but I assure you it is true. The demons are very persuasive, especially when all your friends agree with them. All in all, it isn't so bad. The city of Goreme is run by warring tribes of demons, yes, but they run it pretty much just like any other city.

This brings me back to the beginning: I said that Goreme hides a terrible secret. You are probably thinking the demons are the secret. No. The secret is this: The difference between Goreme and every other city is that in Goreme the demons are visible.
# Voluntourism

Someone recently asked me what I thought of the idea of using extra vacation days for volunteering, from an effective altruism perspective. Here's what I wrote to them:

In the effective altruism community people tend to be relatively down on this approach. It's relatively common for, say, a church group to raise funds to fly a bunch of people to a poor country for a week or two where they do unskilled manual labor (painting orphanages, picking up trash, building housing). A typical effective altruist response would be something like:

> Poor countries are not lacking in workers!
> 
> The money spent on flying you there would easily have funded several times as much work as you were able to do, and from much more experienced people! Usually it makes more sense to use your job to make things better (through donations or directly valuable work) and use your vacation to make yourself happy.

The idea is, if you're just optimizing for helping others this doesn't make sense.

There are two cases where I see this as more compelling, though:

*   When you're using skills that are undersupplied where you're going to. Things like doctors traveling to work at clinics, structural engineers reviewing building plans, or programmers teaching people to code. The main downside is that this can be similar to regular work, and so not be much of a vacation! And most people's skills aren't a good fit for this.
    
*   When you mostly want to take a vacation but would enjoy helping some along the way. If you compare voluntourism to regular tourism it looks decent!
    

So, why is this common? Some guesses:

*   Traveling together and working hard together is really good for building community. So church groups that organize this kind of trip are likely to be stronger, more stable, and expand more.
    
*   Not only do these build community, they build committment and motivation. People who've been on these trips are more likely to want to help others go on them, and, I suspect, are more likely to volunteer in ways that make their local community go better.
    
*   They also build connection. People who help make beds at a clinic for a week might be more hassle than they're worth on average, but if a few of them develop a personal connection to the clinic and donate to it over the years it could easily be worth it for the clinic to try to attract a lot of them.
    

Possibly these are strong enough considerations that EAs shouldn't be against voluntourism at all, and we should be organizing trips that are clearly ineffective on their face but do make sense once you take into account the effect on community, commitment, and connection?

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127419871392)*
# "You can't possibly succeed without [My Pet Issue]"

There's a particular conversational move that I've noticed people making over the past couple years. I've also noticed *myself* making it. The move goes:

> "You can't *possibly* succeed without X", where X is whatever principle the person is arguing for. 

(Where "succeed" means "have a functioning rationality community / have a functioning organization / solve friendly AI / etc")

This is not always false. But, I am pretty suspicious of this move. 

(I've seen it from people from a variety of worldviews. This is not a dig on any one particular faction from local-politics. And again, I do this myself).

When *I* do the move, my current introspective TAP goes something like: "Hmm. Okay, is this actually true? Is it *impossible* to succeed without my pet-issue-of-the-day? Upon reflection, obviously not. I legit think it's *harder.* There's a reason I started caring about my pet-issue in the first place. But 'impossible' is a word that was clearly generated by my political rationalization mind. How *much* harder is it, exactly? Why do I believe that?")

In general, there are incentives (and cognitive biases) to exaggerate the importance of your plans. I think this is partly for political reasons, and partly for [motivational reasons](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/st7DiQP23YQSxumCt/on-doing-the-improbable) – it's hard to get excited enough about your *own* plans if you don't believe they'll have outsized effects. (A smaller version of this, common on my web development team, is someone saying "if we just implemented Feature X we're get a 20% improvement on Metric Y", and the actual answer was we got, like, a 2% improvement, and it was worth it. But, like, the 20% figure was clearly ridiculous).

"It's impossible" is an easier yellow-flag to notice than "my numbers are bigger than what other people think are reasonable". But in both cases, I think it's a useful thing to train yourself to notice, and I think "try to build an explicit quantitative model" is a good immune response. Sometimes the thing *is* actually impossible, and your model checks out. But I'm willing to bet if you're bringing this up in a social context where you think an abstract principle is at stake, it's probably wrong.
# One Million Dollars

On Giving Tuesday, Julia and I [donated](https://www.jefftk.com/donations) our millionth dollar to [GiveWell's top charities](https://www.jefftk.com/p/my-effective-altruism-timeline) and [growing](https://www.jefftk.com/p/more-meta-funding-thoughts) the Effective Altruism movement. It was more dramatic than you might have guessed, since we were trying to donate as close as possible to 8:00:00 to get the [FB donation match](https://www.jefftk.com/p/getting-ready-for-the-fb-donation-match).

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/cumulative-donations-2019.png)](https://www.jefftk.com/cumulative-donations-2019-big.png)

I remember when we were starting out thinking that if we kept at this $1M might be [a good lifetime goal](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11950843); it's really exciting that we've gotten there within ten years! More than that, however, what I really didn't expect was how much of a community there now is around EA. In September 2011 we hosted our first EA meetup; now we're having them about once a month. Most of the universities around us have [EA student groups](https://www.benkuhn.net/studentgroup), and some of the students come to our meetups. There are EA conferences, which Julia helps organize, and I went to ones in [2015](https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-global-poverty), [2016](https://www.jefftk.com/p/earning-to-give-transcript), and 2017. The [EA Forum](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/) has a lot of interesting discussion, and I've met many good friends via talking about EA ideas.

I don't know whether I'll keep earning to give long term. It's a good fit for my situation now, but the question of [giving vs doing](https://www.jefftk.com/p/more-giving-vs-doing) is still a really important one. So while I'm tempted to set a new long-term goal, I think that would risk pushing a future me towards staying in earning to give even if that started making less sense.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127748872072)*
# We run the Center for Applied Rationality, AMA

CFAR recently launched its 2019 [fundraiser](https://rationality.org/fundraiser), and to coincide with that, we wanted to give folks a chance to ask us about our mission, plans, and strategy. Ask any questions you like; we’ll respond to as many as we can from 10am PST on 12/20 until 10am PST the following day (12/21).

Topics that may be interesting include (but are not limited to):

*   Why we think there should be a CFAR;
*   Whether we should change our name to be less general;
*   How running mainline CFAR workshops does/doesn't relate to running "AI Risk for Computer Scientist" type workshops. Why we both do a lot of recruiting/education for AI alignment research and wouldn't be happy doing only that.
*   How our curriculum has evolved. How it relates to and differs from the Less Wrong Sequences. Where we hope to go with our curriculum over the next year, and why.

Several CFAR staff members will be answering questions, including: me, Tim Telleen-Lawton, Adam Scholl, and probably various others who work at CFAR. However, we will try to answer with our own individual views (because individual speech is often more interesting than institutional speech, and certainly easier to do in a non-bureaucratic way on the fly), and we may give more than one answer to questions where our individual viewpoints differ from one another's!

(You might also want to check out our [2019 Progress Report and Future Plans](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vj6CYLuDPw3ieCB4A/cfar-progress-report-and-future-plans-1). And we'll have some other posts out across the remainder of the fundraiser, from now til Jan 10.)

**\[Edit: We're out of time, and we've allocated most of the reply-energy we have for now, but some of us are likely to continue slowly dribbling out answers from now til Jan 2 or so (maybe especially to replies, but also to some of the q's that we didn't get to yet). Thanks to everyone who participated; I really appreciate it.\]**
# Causal Abstraction Intro

I haven't been terribly satisfied by the first few posts in this sequence; they don't do a very good job introducing things. I think part of the problem is the format, so I [decided to invest in a high-end studio](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KzAG4yWQJosmEjHe2/blatant-lies-are-the-best-kind) and try making a video instead.

It's about 10 minutes, covers similar material to the [first](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/ehnG4mseKF6xALmQy/p/wuJpYLcMEBz4kcgAn) [few](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/ehnG4mseKF6xALmQy/p/S8WZ2rav9BqFAZoRM) [posts](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/ehnG4mseKF6xALmQy/p/Expvyb6nndbjqigRL), but IMO does a better job communicating what's going on.

[![Causal Abstraction Intro](https://img.youtube.com/vi/isvJKGz4Gfw/0.jpg)](https://youtu.be/isvJKGz4Gfw)

Feedback on the format is appreciated (including "didn't watch the video but would have read a normal post" or vice versa). So far I think the video provides better explanation per-unit-effort, and I lean toward doing more of them. Obviously both the setup and the postprocessing were pretty low-investment on this one; I'll probably put a bit more effort into production if I'm going to do this regularly.
# Should We Still Fly?

I've seen a lot of discussion about plane travel from a climate perspective lately, with people arguing that we should try to restructure our lives to fly much less. Avoid business travel, vacation closer to home, visit relatives less, etc. After looking at the numbers, though, I think this mostly doesn't make sense.

Let's take an example round trip flight from Boston to LA. I've flown this many times for work and to visit relatives, and it's maybe on the long end for a vacation flight. Taking into account that emissions at high altitude are worse than at ground level, that's about 1.3T CO2e \[1\].

The thing is, 1.3T isn't that much! For example, carbon offsets are about $10/T, so this would add just ~$13 to your ~$500 round-trip flight. Or, if you don't trust offsets and would rather use the full social cost of carbon, that's ~$55/T ([Wang et. al. 2019](https://www.jefftk.com/wang2019.pdf)) or ~$72. Or, if you want to go all the way to direct air capture, that's ~$160/T ([Keith et. al. 2018](https://www.jefftk.com/keith2018.pdf)) or ~$210.

If you consider a typical BOS-LAX business trip, with, say, $500 for flights, $500 for lodging, $100 for food, and 14hr time lost to travel, a carbon cost of even $210 is rarely going to make the difference on whether the travel is worth it. Even for a vacation, where people tend to be more price sensitive, it's a factor but not nearly the biggest factor.

Climate change is a real problem, and I'm not saying we shouldn't change anything. I favor a stiff carbon tax, high enough to cover the full social cost of emissions. But even under a high tax, most of the things people fly for today would still be worth flying for.

  
\[1\] I tried [three](https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3) [different](https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=3069295) [calculators](https://www.offsetters.ca/education/calculators/flight-emissions-calculator) and got 1.16T, 1.4T, and 1.36T.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472)*
# Old and New Saw Blades

Five years ago I bought a used Model 77 Skilsaw. I've used it for a [bunch](https://www.jefftk.com/p/adding-a-bathroom) of [house](https://www.jefftk.com/p/built-in-shelves) [projects](https://www.jefftk.com/p/bathroom-construction-framing), and it's very versatile. I noticed that it was starting to be more work to cut things and I was getting some burning and smoking, so I decided to put on a new blade. Here's the last cut with the old blade:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/saw-cut-old.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/saw-cut-old-big.jpg)

And the first cut with the new one:

[![](https://www.jefftk.com/saw-cut-new.jpg)](https://www.jefftk.com/saw-cut-new-big.jpg)

You can see that the old one is much rougher, where the saw has torn its way through the wood. The rings are raised, because the dull blade has torn out more of the soft earlywood the harder latewood. The edges are splintered and there are burn marks. On the other hand, the new one is smooth, because the blade was sharp enough for a clean cut. No burning, minimal splintering. It was also a much quicker and easier cut.

Mostly this is to say, sawblades are not that expensive or difficult to change, and I should have replaced this one sooner!
# Templates and videos for doing annual and daily reviews 

Many individuals and organisations in the rationality community do an "annual review" (a review of the past year and update of future plans).

In the past I couldn't find a ready made document to complete to undertake my own annual review. Alex Vermeer's [stuff](https://alexvermeer.com/8760hours/) was good but not quite ready to use in my opinion.

With that in mind, I am sharing an annual review/planner template that I made in google sheets.

It incorporates Alex Vermeer's questions and a few of my own. I also added some sheets to add goals and track ‘bugs’.

Please feel free to copy, share and modify it.

Annual review template[  
](template
http://bit.ly/2MhHc0W
https://lnkd.in/guY8EDW
)[http://bit.ly/2MhHc0W](http://bit.ly/2MhHc0W)[  
](template
http://bit.ly/2MhHc0W
https://lnkd.in/guY8EDW
)[https://lnkd.in/guY8EDW](https://lnkd.in/guY8EDW)[  
](template
http://bit.ly/2MhHc0W
https://lnkd.in/guY8EDW
)

Over the past year I have also used a 'daily tracker' sheet to help identify and understand patterns of mood and behaviour and to help me to implement and track my goals

Daily tracker template and video[  
](video
http://bit.ly/3rOscb9
https://lnkd.in/gi6aEQk)**[http://bit.ly/3rOscb9](http://bit.ly/3rOscb9)**[  
**https://lnkd.in/gi6aEQk**](video
http://bit.ly/3rOscb9
https://lnkd.in/gi6aEQk)
# Pixel 3a Review

About a month ago I replaced my first-generation Pixel phone with a Pixel 3a, and the 3a is as close to my ideal as I've had:

*   Top-quality camera
*   Solid battery life
*   Near-stock Android
*   Fingerprint sensor
*   Headphone jack
*   Relatively cheap ($300)

Several years ago, phones got good enough at most things that the extra money for a "flagship" phone \[1\] felt like it didn't make sense. What held me back was the camera: I take a lot of [pictures](https://www.jefftk.com/pictures) and really enjoyed how much better phone cameras were getting. The 3a changed this: it has the same excellent camera (and camera software) from the Pixel 3, decoupled from the other choices that made the 3 expensive.

In general the tradeoffs on the 3a are ones I'm ok with: it's a bit thicker, the black is plastic (which I cover with a case anyway), it doesn't have wireless charging (which I don't use), it has a slightly slower CPU, it doesn't have an ultra-wide selfie camera (which I wouldn't use), isn't water resistant, and has slightly less fancy glass. On the other side, it has a slightly larger screen, a slightly larger battery, and a headphone jack.

The battery life has probably been the largest immediate improvement for me, but that's mostly just going from a two-year old phon to a new one. Still, it's [pretty great](https://www.jefftk.com/p/rationing-spells-and-battery) having 50%+ battery left at the end of each day.

The other thing I've noticed is a pretty minor UI thing: holding down the camera button takes a video instead of a burst. While I'm not sure what this means for my [kids'](https://www.lilywise.com/) [pages](https://www.annakaufmanwise.com/) it is really convenient when I want to jump right into taking a short video. It's possible that there's also some sort of hardware change that enables this, since I remember previous phones taking longer to get into video mode.

Overall I'm very happy with it, and would recommend it to other people who see the tradeoffs involved the same way I do.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, who makes this phone)

  
\[1\] My past phones, all the cheapest version of the flagship phone from their manufacturer at the time: Galaxy SII, Moto X, Galaxy S6, Pixel.

*Comment via: [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100128217438062)*
# The Towel Census: A Methodology for Identifying Orphaned Objects in Your Home

*Background: I live at Event Horizon, a rationalist house that for much of its history housed so many short-to-medium-term guests that many people thought of it as a rationalist hostel. We've developed a number of useful systems over the years, and while I don't have reason to believe our methods are entirely novel, I've still always thought it would be nice to share them. I'll be doing so in bite-sized posts like this over the coming months.*

In this first post, I introduce a simple and versatile tool: the Towel Census. 

Because we had so many guests using our house towels, and because there were too many of us to keep track of, about once a month we would end up in a state where all the towels were hanging up in the bathroom, dirty, and no one was sure which ones were in use. To solve this, we invented the Towel Census. The steps are simple:

1.  Someone goes around and puts a piece of blue tape on every towel in the house.
2.  The towel census is announced in Slack (which is our central channel for house communications), and a deadline for removing the tape is given (usually 48 or 72 hours out).
3.  Residents remove tape from towels that they are currently using. If out of town, residents can ask via Slack for their tape to be removed.
4.  When the deadline is up, the censor gathers all the towels that still have tape on them, washes them, and puts them away with the guest towels.

On average, we'd do a towel census every two months, and find 10-15 unclaimed towels each time. 

The same process can be used to identify other unclaimed items, such as shoes, jackets, toiletries, and food in the fridge that no one wants anymore.

Variant: Instead of putting tape on every item, just move all of the items, and have people put back the ones that belong to them. This can be better than tape in some cases, e.g. for toiletries since they’re small and likely to get wet. 

* * *

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any questions or confusions :)
# Can fear of the dark bias us more generally?

There was a long-lasting man-made sound outside my home last night. I couldn't come up with a good explanation for what the sound was or why it was outside my house. My brain naturally promoted the hypothesis that a psychopathic murderer was outside my house making the strange noises. I noticed this was absurd, and predicted that, in the morning, I would find this explanation much less concerning. Sure enough, when I woke up, I thought the whole thing was rather goofy. 

Now, supposing there had been a psychopathic murderer outside my house, it wasn't like I was at much more risk at night, since I was planning on staying indoors. This seems like a pretty clear manifestation of [nychtophobia](https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/37725610/Nyctophobia_article.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DNyctophobia_From_imagined_to_realistic_f.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20191222%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20191222T201333Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=78100b25f213dab9e788488847a10e642cd75b1fd5d2a8e05baabac6cd8c6055): fear of the dark magnifying our fears of being attacked or victimized. 

My question is: does this apply more generally? Might we be more risk-averse at night, or otherwise biased?[^1] Suppose I plan to soon leave work and walk home along a dimly lit path. Then suppose I make an unrelated decision - am I more likely to be conservative or fearful in weighing that decision, above and beyond the normal effects of having recently considered something slightly distressing?

[^1]: [One study indicated](https://psychcentral.com/news/2014/04/02/night-owls-are-risk-takers/67976.html) that night owls are actually risk-takers, but there's a lot of confounders there with respect to nychtophobia-related explanations.
# Conversation about whether LW Moderators should express individual opinions about mod policy - 2019/12/22

*Copying over some comments from a different thread so as to continue the conversation here where it's not off-topic.*

\[Some relevant context: [Speaking for myself (re: how the LW2.0 team communicates)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zjnJ6QJnpcpYbkYdj/speaking-for-myself-re-how-the-lw2-0-team-communicates)\]

* * *

[**Bucky** wrote on one of my posts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ExssKjAaXEEYcnzPd/conversational-cultures-combat-vs-nurture#vtQjXos4qTQELmsHg):

> My other worry about including this in the 2018 review is a claim of what the default should be. If the post claims that nurture culture should be the default, does that then seem like this is how LW should be? This counts even more as the post is by a member of the LW team.

Included [in my (**Ruby's**) reply](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ExssKjAaXEEYcnzPd/conversational-cultures-combat-vs-nurture#nteNXbdgSSERbqDeT):

> My own thinking on the topic has been enriched by my much greater participation in LW discussion, including discussion around communication styles. I'd begun typing a paragraph here of some of my current thoughts, but probably it's best to hold off till I've thought more at length and am speaking alongside the rest of team. (An update in recent discussions of moderation and conversation norms is that the team should be careful to not confuse people by [saying different things individually](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zjnJ6QJnpcpYbkYdj/speaking-for-myself-re-how-the-lw2-0-team-communicates).)

To which [**Ben Pace**](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ExssKjAaXEEYcnzPd/conversational-cultures-combat-vs-nurture#6ZBfH72wjayGHvrwQ) responded:

> >but probably it's best to hold off till I've thought more at length and am >speaking alongside the rest of team.
> 
> I was gonna leave a comment reminding you that you should always feel free to speak for yourself, and then I hit
> 
> >(An update in recent discussions of moderation and conversation norms is >that the team should be careful to not confuse people by [saying different >things individually](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zjnJ6QJnpcpYbkYdj/speaking-for-myself-re-how-the-lw2-0-team-communicates).)
> 
> If I read you right, this hasn't been my own update, so I guess I'll tell you to be careful what you say on behalf of the team without checking for consensus ;-) I agree some users have been confused, but the result mustn't be to retreat to only saying consensus things. I might be open to adding more disclaimers or something, but overall I really care that I don't give up the ability to just think for myself out loud on LW on basically all topics relating to LW. 
> 
> I agree writing about moderation in particular is an unusually careful topic where I want to take extra care to signal what is consensus/actionable and what is me just thinking aloud. But I still stand by that you should share your own thoughts, saying "I" everywhere (I just edited this very comment to own all of my thoughts more), is still pretty great and it'd be bad if you felt the general need to get team consensus.
# Autoexperiments

Over the next year I want to try some low-intensity daily experiments to see if they have noticeable and positive effects: Things like cold showers, a gratitude journal, cutting sugar, etc. My working plan is to do one per month for a two-week stretch, to use the other two weeks of the month as the closest I can get to a control, and to track my mood and any other relevant metrics each day. Obviously it's hard to get reliable data from these, but are there ways I could increase the likelihood of extracting good information from the noise?
# 12020: a fine future for these holidays

To celebrate all the possibilities of humanity during these holidays, have a possible calendar of the year 12020 of the human era (link to full calendar [here](https://www.dropbox.com/s/sra7bk230nf2y9f/12020_Calendar.pdf?dl=1)).

Minor fact: in the Gregorian calendar, the days of the week cycle exactly every 400 years, so the non-time-travellers among you can use this for 2020 as well...

(previous holiday specials can be found [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ybp6Wg6yy9DWRcBiR/the-adventure-a-new-utopia-story) and [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sMsvcdxbK2Xqx8EHr/just-another-day-in-utopia))

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i7yjxkvprs49tub/12020_Calendar-01.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnc19t851s51b8d/12020_Calendar-02.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/kf6b2q8on9dslk2/12020_Calendar-03.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9rlz9tpc2r6uybg/12020_Calendar-04.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6kxvt6lhhg33wts/12020_Calendar-05.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/hdybdxnj0fvanre/12020_Calendar-06.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/nsb1fj4uk2uax78/12020_Calendar-07.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/0b9fi9r3t4kxei5/12020_Calendar-08.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6prhnaifglhok0m/12020_Calendar-09.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/nwzf2o7ic53t0l8/12020_Calendar-10.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/46lsw0gcjzrzf8w/12020_Calendar-11.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9o12dlmv8mpfjc/12020_Calendar-12.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2ewu1tgyq3zcl0p/12020_Calendar-13.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/0q1o7d6ok1xdie7/12020_Calendar-14.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/b3flpl2z53jeaeo/12020_Calendar-15.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/asmtakq8pi1o636/12020_Calendar-16.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/jcu82x02s8jcl66/12020_Calendar-17.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/e6vkib3z6w8vs2y/12020_Calendar-18.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/kmsz9mibcxuwm66/12020_Calendar-19.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qlgihoa3wqcsumj/12020_Calendar-20.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/411pyfnl6jxurig/12020_Calendar-21.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/57b7f2lpugmxpnx/12020_Calendar-22.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/w4s79r84otk93be/12020_Calendar-23.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/57scptpirby1jfp/12020_Calendar-24.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2eatjwzhutag7zm/12020_Calendar-25.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6qkeum13xsopiqm/12020_Calendar-26.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2sfi6txy91m906q/12020_Calendar-27.png?raw=1)

![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/mc0yc95ncfajwne/12020_Calendar-28.png?raw=1)