Harley-ml/lesswrong huggingface dataset:
# Makeshift face touch warner

![montage of face touch warners](https://rmoehn.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/montage.jpg)

If you strap this device to your forearm, it vibrates when you raise your arm to
touch your face. Useful? Not sure, because one gets many false positives. Cheap? Yes. Applicable everywhere? Yes.

Update 2020-03-19: I've been using it all day while working at my desk and it has warned me of touching my face several times. I got rid of false alarms while typing, mousing or handwriting by pointing the tilt switch slightly towards the outside (ulnar side) of my arm.

It consists of three main components (available from Amazon and other online retailers):

- tilt switch
- vibration motor
- 3 V battery

Plus some cardboard and tape. No soldering required. For holding this to your arm, you can use a sweat wristband or the elastic part of an old sock. Or rubber bands if you're hard up.

If you want to know details of how to build it, let me know and I will improve the design and post instructions here. (People coming from the outside can email me: <given name of President Nixon>.moehn@posteo.de)


## Alternatives

- [Instructables: Don't Touch
  Face](https://www.instructables.com/id/Dont-Touch-Face/) – This is where I got the idea. It's bigger and requires more equipment.
- [Do Not Touch Your Face](https://donottouchyourface.com/) and [DontTouchFace.com](https://www.donttouchface.com/) web apps. – Only
  work when you sit at your computer.
- [Immutouch](https://immutouch.com/) – Probably fewer false positives. Takes
  longer to ship. More expensive if you disregard the cost of your time.
- surgical mask/respirator
# Can we use Variolation to deal with the Coronavirus?

Credit for the original idea comes from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/fk5au8/corona_variolation/

The idea is to use [variolation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation) to innoculate young people and build up herd immunity to the virus. Perhaps with an infected scratch to the shin.

I imagine this would be completely politically infeasible, but ignoring that, can anyone weigh in on whether this would work or not? I thought I read somewhere that getting infected with the virus through the eyes was far less lethal than getting infected through the lungs, but I can't find the source ATM.
# Request for Comments on Online LessWrong/SSC Meetup--Rump Session

**EDIT: We're doing it!**

**[See here for meetup announcement](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/krn3Et4RYHwpqT9Ym/online-fun-lw-ssc-meetup-march-24).**

  

\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-

Anyone interested in an online LessWrong/SlateStarCodex meetup?

We'd start with personal introductions for some sociability, and then do a Rump Session, where anyone can step up and give a four minute talk; then, if you want to keep talking, the audience votes on whether to go another three minutes. Talks can be spontaneous rather than prepared, and on any subject that you'd like: Science topics, poetry readings, or anything else.

At LessWrong Israel, we've found this to be a lot of fun--no risk of being bored or boring, as talks are so short.

As it would be online, people from anywhere could join as timezones allow.

If you think you'd like such a thing, please upvote and/or comment.
# Does the 14-month vaccine safety test make sense for COVID-19?

I was first wondering why, if we keep hearing about teams rapidly generating vaccines for COVID-19, the common wisdom is that it will take 18 months to start vaccinating at a large scale.

Turns out that the scaling up takes a few months, but the real blocker is the Phase 1 trial, which requires monitoring patient health for 14 months after vaccination.

Doesn't it seem like the cost-benefit analysis changes a bit if we're in the midst of a pandemic? Wouldn't it be worth cutting it down to e.g. 3 months before at least vaccinating the highest-risk populations? Is anyone official even thinking about this?
# March 17th: Daily Coronavirus Links

As part of the LessWrong Coronavirus Link Database, Ben, Elizabeth and I are publishing daily update posts with all the new links we are adding each day that we ranked a 3 or above in our importance rankings. Here are all the top links that we added yesterday (March 17th), by topic.

Aggregators
-----------

[**Notion board aggregating mostly project-related news**](https://covidbase.com/)

The goal of COVIDbase is to link people who have skills to relevant projects and to inspire new ideas.

Dashboards
----------

[**Wolfram's tools and data for C19 visualization**](https://wolfr.am/coronavirus)

Collection of Wolfram resources relating to C19, including data visualization and mining tools and datasets to run them on

DIY
---

[**Discussion: are cloth masks useful?**](https://www.facebook.com/rothosphere/posts/10163163771340324?hc_location=ufi)

Do masks made from typical clothes do enough to be worth the convenience? Hrothgar concludes they do

Guides/FAQs/Intros
------------------

[**Intro to basic science of C19 and treatment/prevention**](https://emcrit.org/ibcc/covid19/)

Gentle guide to the basic science of C19, diagnostics, the course of the disease, and types of treatment one might receive

Medical System
--------------

[**Small RCT shows promise for chloroquine, w/ or w/o azithromycin**](https://www.caducee.net/actualite-medicale/14783/coronavirus-le-traitement-a-la-chloroquine-reduit-la-charge-virale-a-6-jours-pour-75-des-patients-selon-le-pr-raoult.html?fbclid=IwAR0-mcmtjhUQL1LElXMyMPpTyCk7KOnUvSKblbml9wQ-f_K1lJqMjlVyNkk)

(FRENCH) N=24 study showed patients recovering several days faster with chloroquine, and even faster with azithromycin

[**Characteristics of 140 Wuhan patients**](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/all.14238)

Fever (91.7%), cough (75.0%), fatigue (75.0%), and gastrointestinal symptoms (39.6%) were the most common clinical manifestations, hypertension (30.0%) and diabetes mellitus (12.1%) were the most common comorbidities. Drug hypersensitivity (11.4%) and urticaria (1.4%) were self-reported by several patients. Asthma or other allergic diseases were not reported by any of the patients. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, 1.4%) patients and current smokers (1.4%) were rare. `

[**Paper: study of C19 protease for possible drug targets**](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.07.981928v1)

Scientists testesd C19 M-pro protease to determine its preferences, using a large number of both natural and unnatural amino acides.

[Link to Database](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aXBq5edfzvOz22rot6JvMeKD0tRF9-w4fF500fIrvcs/edit#gid=1069546931)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Is the coronavirus the most important thing to be focusing on right now?

LessWrong has been and [is planning to](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wFTRgeaq5wceEfb2X/lesswrong-coronavirus-agenda) devote a significant amount of attention to the coronavirus. But is that what we should be focused on? Is it more important than things like existential risk reduction and malaria treatments?
# What are good ways of convincing someone to rethink an impossible dream?

I sometimes get pitches from people who have grandiose plans.

Think of the term "physics crank," but applied to conceptual companies rather than perpetual motion machines. Two prominent examples (but far from the only ones):

*   A calligrapher and accountant with no entrepreneurial experience who wanted to create an electronic journal that would allow people to "quantify their states of mind," as part of the greatest productivity/creativity enhancement system the world had ever seen. We were friends when I was in college, and this was my first exposure to the type. At first I lumped him in with other friends who were starting companies; he'd drawn up a logo and printed business cards and it all seemed very convincing. But after a few "meetings" that mostly involved scribbling [Danielewski-esque](https://lithub.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/MZD-16.jpg) charts in a notebook, I realized that all of his research and passion weren't actually going anywhere.
*   Someone who reached out to me recently about creating a new form of social cryptocurrency that would allow people to collectively vote on corporate actions, to be enforced by threat of boycott. They sent me a 50-page PDF which contained no information on any practical steps to establish or test the currency, but a lot of musings on rising inequality and the will of the people. It was obvious that the document (which included dozens of charts) had taken weeks to produce. The author mentioned having reached out to many people to ask questions about getting attention from funders (I seem to be the only person who responded).

In both cases, a self-educated person with an altruistic mindset got their mind snagged on a project that had no clear way of manifesting in reality, and they couldn't unsnag themselves.

I don't feel any qualms about breaking off situations like this early on with a polite "no," but they still fill me with intense [clueyness](https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/05/clueyness-a-weird-kind-of-sad.html).

I wish there were a story I could tell these people that would help them understand the way businesses actually work (and, more broadly, the means by which new useful things can actually be introduced to the world). But I've found it difficult to penetrate the mindset of:

"I have a big idea, just like \[_insert charismatic tech billionaire_\], and I just need one good break to make it happen. The world is ready for this!"

Asking about how they plan to test their idea sometimes helps a bit, but what I really want is a message that serves as a sledgehammer of "that's not a business and will never be a business and you are only going to be disappointed if you keep this up."

\*\*\*\*

Has anyone reading this had experience with similar situations before? If you managed to bring the afflicted person to their senses, how did you do it?

(Examples don't just have to be startups; other big projects seem equally relevant.)
# Is the Covid-19 crisis a good time for x-risk outreach?

With what's happening with the coronavirus, I'd think that people would be particularly receptive to the ideas that:

1) We need to be prepared for long term risks.

2) Things with exponential growth are super scary.

3) We should [trust](https://xkcd.com/2278/) the professionals who predict these sorts of things.

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

I wouldn't expect anyone to be willing to open their wallets right now, but it could be a good time to "plant the seed".
# Robin Hanson on whether governments can squash COVID-19

Summary: Hanson argues that Western governments are unlikely to be competent enough to both squash COVID-19 and prevent new cases from entering from neighbouring lax countries. Final two paragraphs:

> Before we all jump off this cliff together, can we at least collect and publish some honest estimates of our chances of success? Such as perhaps via conditional betting markets? If you aren’t willing to exactly copy the whole China policy, or have them manage it, how serious could you really be about succeess?
>
> Look, this is like starting a war. Its not enough to ask “would it be nice to win such a war”, we need to ask “can we actually win?” Don’t start what you can’t finish.
# Online Fun LW/SSC Meetup

In this online video-chat, we'll start with personal introductions for some sociability, and then do a Rump Session: That's where anyone can step up and give a four minute talk; then, if you want to keep talking, the audience votes on whether to permit another three minutes.

Talks can be spontaneous rather than prepared, and on any subject that turns you on: Science topics, poetry readings, history tidbits, or anything else (except for COVID-19--that's strictly out!).

At LessWrong Israel, we've found this to be a lot of fun--no risk of being bored or boring, as talks are so short.

If you are going a bit stircrazy and want to meet people worldwide who have the same set of LW/SSC interests, this is for you.

Sponsored by LessWrong Israel and inviting the worldwide LW/SSC community.

The meetup is at 19:00 IST which is 17:00 UTC.

Please sign up [at this form](https://forms.gle/GyNAHafuoPfE1A5HA) by 18:00 IST so we can send you an invitation.
# How to optimize my time fighting COVID-19?

Hi all, I could use some advice. I care a lot about having a positive impact on the world through my work, and over the past few years, I've tried hard to put myself in a position to be of service in a moment when our institutions are struggling to make effective decisions that carry huge consequences in the face of great uncertainty. And yet now that such a moment has arrived, I find myself feeling incredibly frustrated at how little I am capable of helping, because this crisis seems almost surgically designed to immobilize parents of small children (of which I have two). We are all healthy and safe for the time being, but with no third-party caretakers to lean on I am lucky if I can manage even three hours of concentrated work time a day, and that is with my wife still on maternity leave from her job. In addition, while I have access to several meaningful assets (see below), I don't have a lot of relevant domain expertise or connections to public health decision-makers. So I am struggling both with very limited time and bandwidth to work on this and a lack of clarity around how best to prioritize the time I do have.

**Here are some assets I am theoretically able to bring to the table**:

*   General intelligence and strong strategic thinking capabilities
*   Direct or second-degree connections to a wide network of decision-makers at important institutions, especially among US foundations
*   Expertise in synthesizing research (with the caveat that my knowledge of biomedical research is limited)
*   Expertise in coaching or otherwise assisting teams to integrate evidence into their decision-making
*   Expertise in modeling risk and policy decisions
*   A prominent voice in a small community of do-gooding young adults with time and smarts on their hands

**I would welcome any thoughts or suggestions relating to the following**:

*   How to think about balancing my responsibility to the world (huge scope, but widely distributed burden of care) against my responsibility to my children (tiny scope, but burden of care almost entirely concentrated on me and my wife)
*   Strategies to create more time for work without harming my kids' health, mental wellbeing, or socio-emotional development, particularly my adult-attention-craving 5-year-old
*   Strategies to mobilize the communities where I have credibility in ways that are extremely time-efficient and likely to lead to good outcomes
*   Problems that are especially important right now that could benefit from my expertise or other assets I list above, even after taking time constraints into account
*   How to judge when I am in danger of overstretching my ability to give people smart advice or take effective action in the absence of deep knowledge of epidemiology and public health

Note that when it comes to the first two items above, I'm mostly (but not exclusively) interested in hearing perspectives from fellow parents. If you offer an opinion on these items, please say whether you are speaking from experience. Thanks!
# Cost of a COVID-19 test that uses shotgun RNA sequencing?

We seem to have sub-1000 Euro DNA sequencing. From my reading an emergency room visit in the US can cost over 1000 Euro for a person who thinks they have COVID-19. How expensive would it be do to shutgun RNA sequencing the way we use nucliodtide sequencing for DNA when we want to diagnosize RNA viruses like SARS-COV-2?
# Sarah Constantin: Oxygen Supplementation 101

New post by Sarah on oxygen supplementation. Excerpt: 

> COVID-19 causes shortness of breath and in severe cases requires artificial ventilation. There is a shortage of mechanical ventilators in hospitals, and a shortage of medical personnel to treat patients with severe COVID-19, so there’s widespread interest in contributing to open source ventilation projects. For these efforts to be effective, though, we need to understand what COVID-19 patients need in terms of ventilators and other supplemental oxygen sources.
> 
> **COVID-19 Symptoms and Clinical Guidelines**
> 
> Most patients who go to a hospital for COVID-19 have pneumonia or infection of the lungs, which is visible on a chest X-ray.  A large fraction (41.3%) receive supplemental oxygen therapy; a smaller fraction (5%) needed to be admitted to the ICU, and 6.1% needed mechanical ventilation.\[1\] 
> 
> **ARDS**  Severe cases of COVID-19 result in developing Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). Fluid builds up in the lungs; the lungs may collapse; blood oxygen drops; and mechanical ventilation is required. Merely providing air with a higher oxygen content than room air isn’t enough; pressure needs to be administered to keep the alveoli open.
# What information, apart from the connectome, is necessary to simulate a brain?

Knowing a brain's connectome tells you which neurons can pass signals to other neurons, but presumably neurons differ in how they process that information. What are the most important things to know about an individual neuron in order to predict how it would fire given certain input signals? And to what extent is that information preserved when a brain is cryonically stored?
# Online Fun LW/SSC Meetup, March 24

In this online video-chat, we'll start with personal introductions for some sociability, and then do a Rump Session: That's where anyone can step up and give a four minute talk; then, if you want to keep talking, the audience votes on whether to permit another three minutes.

Talks can be spontaneous rather than prepared, and on any subject that turns you on: Science topics, poetry readings, history tidbits, or anything else (except for COVID-19--that's strictly out!).

At LessWrong Israel, we've found this to be a lot of fun--no risk of being bored or boring, as talks are so short.

If you are going a bit stircrazy and want to meet people worldwide who have the same set of LW/SSC interests, this is for you.

Sponsored by LessWrong Israel and inviting the worldwide LW/SSC community.

The meetup is March 24, 2020, at 19:00 IST, which is 17:00 UTC.

Please sign up [at this form](https://forms.gle/GyNAHafuoPfE1A5HA) by 18:00 IST so we can send you an invitation.

  

\-\-\-

(P.S. In coordination with the LW admins, I am posting this duplicate of the original [event post](https://www.lesswrong.com/events/524eREsi56JLuJMBB/online-fun-lw-ssc-meetup), as it is difficult to make non-geographical event posts.)
# SARS-CoV-2 pool-testing algorithm puzzle

According to [this article](https://www.timesofisrael.com/to-ease-global-virus-test-bottleneck-israeli-scientists-suggest-pooling-samples/), it's possible to test a pool of up to (at least) 64 people for SARS-CoV-2 at once, and the test will say whether *at least one* person in the pool is positive. So, here's the puzzle:

We have a large number N of people that need to be tested. Each has SARS-CoV-2 with probability P. (The cases of interest are P<5%, maybe even P<1%, see [comment](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pjLgE2efAozz82JmR/sars-cov-2-pool-testing-algorithm-puzzle?commentId=G8YJeetk7gQ3wtACz).) We can test any subset of the N (or maybe up to a maximum pool size S), with the test returning positive if at least person in the subset is positive. (Bonus: allow that the tests are imperfect, with a per-test false positive rate FPR and false negative rate FNR.)

Your mission is to develop a testing protocol, i.e. an algorithm for what tests to run in what order. The simplest example (proposed in that article linked above) would be: Test non-overlapping groups, and if the test is positive, test each individual within the group. But is there a better way?

Score your algorithm's success on some combination of: (1) minimal total expected number of tests, (2) trying not to ask people for too many samples (lower priority on this one I think^[The swabbing process is [mildly unpleasant](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/getting-a-coronavirus-test-like-being-stabbed-in-the-brain.html), so other things equal, better to not require lots of swabs. I don't know whether or not it's possible to split the sample one swab and put it into multiple test-pools.]), (3) false positive and false negative rates for individuals, (4) minimal serial time (i.e., minimal number of steps where we need results from step N to figure out what tests to run in step N+1).

(I'm not sure how to combine these criteria into a single score that reflects practical goals; if anyone knows, please comment. Or tell me if I'm leaving something out.)

Bonus: What if we have prior information, in the form of a N×N correlation matrix? (This could reflect the fact that for cohabitants / colleagues / neighbors, it's likelier that both or neither have it.)
# The Hammer and the Dance

I'm currently running the [Effective Altruism Coronavirus Discussion](https://www.facebook.com/groups/4147495108609573/) FB group. I saw a large number of posts each day, but [this](https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56) seems like the most important post for people to read at the moment because in order to know what to do, we need to have an idea of the end-game. Now obviously we need to discuss this post and consider possible flaws, ideally receiving input from epidemiologists, but I think this looks pretty promising.
# Mediation From a Distance

Suppose we have an electronic circuit with two pieces: combinational logic and memory. The combinational logic is designed to behave as memoryless input/output logic gates - it has only short-term state, and computes some function. The memory reads the output of the combinational logic once per clock cycle, stores it, and feeds it back into the combinational logic as input during the next clock cycle. The causal diagram looks something like this:

![](https://docs.google.com/drawings/u/0/d/sWGAZXupfWBGCc25guOYLdA/image?w=445&h=622&rev=97&ac=1&parent=1ZL2JCgOa8XSpNd0O0C5AiebKkqiWTc-FrfSeM0yL3LA)

Key point: even though there’s a path from the combinational logic state at the start of one clock cycle to its state at the start of the next cycle, that path has approximately-zero causal influence. We could intervene on the logic state right after the cycle starts:

![](https://docs.google.com/drawings/u/0/d/sxFH8JooUPuCjTxBE-Q5AXA/image?w=445&h=622&rev=4&ac=1&parent=1ZL2JCgOa8XSpNd0O0C5AiebKkqiWTc-FrfSeM0yL3LA)

… and the state at the start of the next cycle would not change at all.

In other words: in this model, the memory state mediates the influence of the logic state during one cycle on logic states during future cycles. This is not a property of the graph structure alone - it happens because the combinational logic does not have any long-term memory of its own.

Key problem for causal abstraction: how can we algorithmically detect situations like this?

One obvious answer is to probe the circuit experimentally. Counterfactual queries are particularly handy for this: we fix the random noise, then check which nodes would be changed by a counterfactual intervention on the logic state at some time. Try this for a bunch of different samples, and look for long-range mediation in the results.

One problem with this approach: we often want an abstraction which works on all possible “input values” of some variables. There may be exponentially many such values, and we’d have to check all of them to verify that the abstraction works.

An example: consider a ripple-carry adder (i.e. the electronic circuit version of grade-school long addition). Each stage adds two input bits and a carry bit from the previous stage, then passes its own carry bit to the next stage. We want to abstract from the low-level electronics to some higher-level model.

If we’re using a 64-bit adder, then there are 2^(2*64) possible inputs. For almost all of those (specifically all but about 2^64 of them), flipping one low-order bit will not change the high-order bit. But if we want our adder to work on all possible inputs, then we need to account for the one-in-2^64 possibilities when flipping a low-order bit _does_ change the high-order bit. We won’t catch that just by sampling.

In full generality, the problem is presumably NP-complete - we’re asking whether any possible inputs to an arbitrary circuit result in some variable changing in response to a counterfactual intervention on another variable. Yet we’re able to use abstract models an awful lot in practice, so… what tricks are we using?
# March 19th: Daily Coronavirus Links

*As part of the LessWrong Coronavirus Link Database, Ben, Elizabeth and I are publishing daily update posts with all the new links we are adding each day that we ranked a 3 or above in our importance rankings. Here are all the top links that we added yesterday (March 19th), by topic.*

DIY
---

[**Instructions for making a mask out of HEPA paper**](https://www.zhihu.com/question/367499169/answer/996640281)

Step by step instructions, with pictures, on how to form a mask out of HEPA filters or otherwise unwoven fabric. In Chinese but google translate was perfectly understandable

*(EV):  In Chinese but google translate was perfectly understandable*

Medical System
--------------

[**China's guide to diagnosis and treatment**](http://busan.china-consulate.org/chn/zt/4/P020200310548447287942.pdf)

China's official C19 handbook, translated into English by them

[**Chinese Hospital's C19 guide**](https://video-intl.alicdn.com/Handbook%20of%20COVID-19%20Prevention%20and%20Treatment.pdf?spm=a3c0i.14138300.8102420620.download.5da1647fUkZuXY&file=Handbook%20of%20COVID-19%20Prevention%20and%20Treatment.pdf)

Zhejiang School of Medicine's hospital outlines how to prevent, identify, and treat COVID019

[**Trial using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin**](https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf)

N=20, hyrodxychloroquine was effective, and moreso combined with azithromycin

Science
-------

[**Technical review of diagnosis techniques**](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ra3L84yKwz3TU1xdRgDMQU3A0ZCGZmljeyqCI179KtQ)

Introduction to various categories and molecular methods for diagnosing COVID19, outline companies and academic groups developing diagnostics

Spread & Prevention
-------------------

[**Why does Japan have so few cases**](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/a-coronavirus-explosion-was-expected-in-japan-where-is-it)

Japan has ~900 cases despite being very dense and mostly continuing daily life (with the exception of the school shut down). Why?

*(EV): I wonder what their pneumonia case rate is doing*

[**Why does India have so few cases**](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/quarantine-india-covid-19-coronavirus/)

India has only just had its 3rd C19 death. How did they do so well? Possibly aggressive border action

(EV): I also wonder what their pneumonia case rate is doing

[Full Database Link](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aXBq5edfzvOz22rot6JvMeKD0tRF9-w4fF500fIrvcs/edit#gid=1392924207)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# mRNA vaccine development for COVID-19

  

_Epistemological status:_

_A bunch of sources and a reasoning while reading the source. Go to the sources for the factual claims and reason about claims and say if you think I made a mistake. Join the conversation in the comments._

Between CureVac and BioNTech, two of the three companies that have platforms for mRNA vaccine production are German. It might be faster to develop new vaccines with such mRNA technology then to develop old protein based vaccines. The technology is the hope that we will get a vaccine sooner then we would get a vaccine that's produced the traditional way.

BigPharma giant Johnson & Johnson that uses a more traditional approach to developing vaccines expects to hit clinical trials only in [November](https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/j-j-sets-sights-november-for-covid-19-vaccine-trial).

Moderna, the third company with such technology, that’s from the US, started their human trials on [16th of March](https://www.modernatx.com/modernas-work-potential-vaccine-against-covid-19). BioNTech, announced a $135 million partnership with Shanghai-based Fosun Pharmaceutical Group to co-develop its COVID-19 vaccine candidate in China. They are going to start clinical trials in [late April](https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/weeks-to-go-to-covid-19-vaccine-trial-biontech-lands-135m-deal-and-advances-pfizer-talks) because they can leverage Fosun’s Chinese “clinical trial, regulatory and commercial capabilities”.

In their conference call CureVac said that [after talking with regulators](https://youtu.be/1ZMWJJyoK7A?t=3138) they will only do their clinical trials in early summer. This gives the impression that the German regulatory bodies prevent them to go as fast as the Moderna trials in Seattle or BioNTech trials in China.

The EU just gave CureVac 80 million Euro funding to scale up their production capacity to be able to produce 1 billion vaccine doses in one campaign. It’s great that they fund production capacity but it would be worthwhile if EU and German regulators would also reduce the red tape so that CureVac can start human trials in other jurisdictions.

This situation looks to me like it would be beneficial if we can push EU/German regulators to cut red tape for CureVac in addition to giving money or another jurisdiction would allow them to run their human trials earlier.

(While researching this post I also created a [Google Sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TssTyeK3pVBstuNMd5tv6eETQNh8w9VxldZw36Izsoo/edit?usp=sharing) that lists more COVID-19 vaccine efforts)
# [Meta] Do you want AIS Webinars?

Ever now and then I talk to someone who tell me that they can not get good feedback on their research (e.g. the they don't get much responses on their alignment forum post), and been thinking about how to solve this? Also, right now is a good time to try out various online solutions.

I am offering to run webinars if enough people are interested.

The format I suggest is that each webinar is 1h 40min and centers around one person presenting their idea or result.

*   5 min introduction
*   30 min presentation
*   30 min of questions and discussion centered around trying to understand and improve idea.
*   30 min of attacking the idea to find out all the ways it can fail.
*   5 min rounding off but the presenter summering what their take away is.

The reason I suggest this structure is

1.  I think a webinar needs a structure to keep on track
2.  It is important to look for weaknesses in an idea, but it is even more important to fist understand it and to make sure you attack the strongest version of that idea.

I am very much open to different format, and would like to experiment a bit if there is enough interest.

**Edit:** Not sure if I should interpret up votes as interest. If this is something you would like to participate in, pleas leave a comment.
# Blog Post Day II

_TL;DR: You are invited to join us_ [_online_](https://discord.com/invite/AHTePn) _on Saturday the 28th of March, to write that blog post you've been thinking about writing but never got around to. This is the second event of this type; [the first one went well](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NpZsCERfyKT7cJN9a/blog-post-day-retrospective). Please comment if you are thinking about joining so I can gauge interest._

The Problem:
------------

Like me, you are too scared and/or lazy to write up this idea you've had. What if it's not good? I started a draft but... Etc.

Alternatively: Coronavirus got you down? Cooped up inside? Looking for something new to do, someone new to talk to? How about you write a blog post?

The Solution:
-------------

**1\. Higher motivation via Time Crunch and Peer Encouragement**

We'll set an official goal of having the post put up by midnight. Also, we'll meet up in a [special-purpose discord channel](https://discord.com/invite/AHTePn) to chat, encourage each other, swap half-finished drafts, etc. If like me you are intending to write the thing one day eventually, well, here's a reason to make that day this day.

**2\. Lower standards via Time Crunch and Safety in Numbers**

Since we have to be done by midnight, we'll all be under time pressure and any errors or imperfections in the posts will be forgivable. Besides, they can always be fixed later via edits. Meanwhile, since a bunch of us will be posting on the same day, writing a sloppy post just means it won't be read much, since everyone will be talking about the handful of posts that turn out to be really good. If you are like me, these thoughts are comforting and encouraging.

Evidence this Works:
--------------------

MIRI Summer Fellows Program had a Blog Post Day towards the end, and it was enormously successful. It worked for me, for example: It squeezed two good posts out of me. (OK, so one of them I finished up early the next morning, so I guess it technically doesn't count. But in spirit it does: It wouldn't have happened at all without Blog Post Day.) More importantly, MSFP keeps doing this every year, even though opportunity cost for them is much higher (probably) than the opportunity cost for you or me. And we did a Blog Post Day on LW last month and it worked great.

Side Benefits:
--------------

It'll be fun!
# How long should someone quarantine to be sure they aren't contagious with Covid?

A key question for people figuring out good longterm isolation practices is "how long do I have to be symptom-free before I'm 'certified safe'?"

[This post on the typical-course-of-COVID-19](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pacxL5yyDsA9dFpgH/what-is-the-typical-course-of-covid-19-what-are-the-variants) provides some studies that inform on the question, but doesn't directly answer it yet.

I recall hearing something like "most cases last less than two weeks", but I'm not sure if two weeks is actually a strong enough upper bound that I'd feel comfortable encouraging lots of people to act on it.

This contains two subquestions:

*   If you get sick with COVID-19, during what period will you be contagious?
*   If you are isolated, and don't appear to have symptoms, how long before you can be confident that you are not a carrier?

(I'm personally most interested in the answer to the second question right now, but both seem important)
# Coronavirus Tech Handbook

The [Coronavirus Tech Handbook](https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/) is a crowdsourced collection of tools, websites and data relating to the coronavirus outbreak.

If you are working on something to prevent or mitigate the Coronavirus pandemic, this might be a good place to share information and find collaborator. There is also a [facebook group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/221979475862484/) for discussions, and a [newsletter](https://mailchi.mp/1c5533dceb5a/coronavirusnewsletter).

I'm not involved in this but I know the people who built the Coronavirus Tech Handbook. I be happy to put you in touch with them, or forward any feedback.

If you know of anything you think should be added to the Coronavirus Tech Handbook, but are to busy/lazy/whatever (no judgement) to add it yourself, pleas tell me and I'll add it for you.

I have not followed the corona related discussion here on LW so I don't know what projects you've been up to here.
# Could we use current AI methods to understand dolphins?

[I am told](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/42YykiTqtGMyJAjDM/alignment-as-translation#knDdAcREkpjh8qsvP) that unsupervised machine translation is a thing. This is amazing. I ask: Could we use it to understand dolphin language? (Or whales, perhaps?)

I don't currently see a convincing reason why not. Maybe dolphins aren't actually that smart or communicative and their clicks are mostly just very simple commands or requests, but that should just make it really easy to do this. Maybe the blocker is that dolphins have such a different set of concepts than English that it would be too hard?
# Reflections on a no content January 2020 experiment

In January 2020 I did a zero content life. This was partly justified by the book “the info diet” but mostly based on a philosophy that proposes,

> _in a lifetime with limited hours, there is a choice to either consume or create. And I’d rather create than consume._

To be honest, the idea for me was born in response to a meme complaining that if you think art should be free, try going without art for a month. This sounded like a fun and interesting idea.

My main sources of content were:

*   Facebook feed
*   Books (paper and TTS audiobook)
*   Some music
*   Youtube videos

I decided to not get fussy about content that I was actively reciprocal in creating. For example a dance form and a conversation are two different types of content that I am engaged in. The difference would be between playing sport and watching sport (I’m allowed to play sport but not watch sport). I wanted to make an exception for live music but I would not usually see live music anyway.

**So how did I go?**

On the 1st of January I rearranged my phone screen to make my content less accessible than my creation pathways. I don’t think I recorded anything, but in the first week I wrote 5000 words with all that time I had. In the silence I noticed my mind go quieter. In the time that I spent not reading, I did thinking. I drove places in silence. I started having phone calls with my friends. I just let myself go with whatever I wanted to go towards.

Without music coming in I started to get earworms appearing in my mind. Without content ideas coming from books I had to start generating my own, or applying my existing methods. Even making my own.

I didn’t realise how badly an entrenched habit of reading (134 books in 2019) could limit my growth. I was doing a good thing adding more information to the parts of me that needed more information and also, now that I’ve slowed down, I’m more balanced.

I probably only needed to do book free for a day to get the benefit but I committed and I wasn’t sure if there was a deepening after more time. There wasn’t but one of the major benefits I retained was that I freely chose to think or read a book or call a friend. This was previously a more compulsive choice to urgently read books.

I spend a lot more time having phone calls and exploring relationally now. For the handful of people that I am talking with, we are growing therapeutically together and healing each other as we reflect on our stuff together.

**Moving forward**

I read less, I talk more, I write more. I consider this experiment a success.
# Are veterans more self-disciplined than non-veterans?

I was having an argument with a friend the other day. It went vaguely like this,

Friend: "I'm not very disciplined. At some point I'm going to buckle down and train myself to be much more disciplined."

Me: "From experience and from what I know about humans, that's not going to work."

Friend: "Why? Motivation can come from within. If you can just train yourself like you're in the army, then you can become just as self disciplined as a soldier."

Me: "Yes, but the reason why people in the military are disciplined is because they have social incentives to be. In order to become disciplined, you need to create an environment for yourself that shapes your motivation. You can't just wake up one day and become a soldier."

Friend: "Sure, you might have to set up some environment like that. But once you've trained yourself, the discipline will stick, and you will be able to self motivate yourself from then on."

Me: "This theory would predict that people who were trained in the military would be much more productive three years after their service, compared to people who were never trained in the military. Do you agree?"

Friend: "Yes, I think that is likely."

Me: "I disagree. They might be slightly more productive but I'd predict it would be pretty similar."

So who is right?

I haven't been able to find direct research, but this seems like a classic instance where a debate can be settled by simply referencing a high quality experiment.
# What will the economic effects of COVID-19 be?

Obviously there's a lot of potential answers to this and it's hard to comprehensive. That's okay. The goal is to make incremental progress on the broad topic and identify specific points that would benefit from further research.

Note: These questions are intended to provoke more [babble](https://www.lessestwrong.com/posts/i42Dfoh4HtsCAfXxL/babble) than [prune](https://www.lessestwrong.com/s/pC6DYFLPMTCbEwH8W/p/rYJKvagRYeDM8E9Rf). But even the babbliest thing should be presented such that other people can build on it. So if you have a prediction, share the reasoning or data behind it as well.

Note 2: This question has more potential to get political than most. I’m not going to disallow that, because the political process is crucial to what’s going to happen in the next few months, but please tread very very carefully, and I’m going to be fairly aggressive at curbing potential demon threads.

  

Note 3/31/2020: Renamed from "What will the economic effects of a 3 week quarantine be? 3 months?" to current title, which better reflects how we were treating it.
# History's Biggest Natural Experiment

Faced with the threat of COVID-19, most countries in the world are suddenly, dramatically improving their hygiene and infectious disease control. This won't just slow the spread of COVID-19. As a byproduct, it will also suppress almost every other contagious disease. This creates a natural experiment, which answers the question:

What would happen if we fully suppressed influenza, the common cold, and all the other ignored, minor infectious diseases, all at once?

About [13% of cancers worldwide](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(19)30488-7/fulltext#seccestitle130) are attributable to known infectious causes. Many other health problems are suspected to be related to infectious disease, including [chronic fatigue syndrome](https://mecfsroadmap.altervista.org/), [type 1 diabetes](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4828240/), [hypothyroidism](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20625285), [obesity](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4517116/), [Alzheimers disease](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15369), [bipolar disorder](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27856235), and [some](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24291068/) [mechanisms](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2016.1184) of [aging](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5130976/). (And [obesity again but this time it's a bacterium instead of a virus](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/01/15/is_obesity_an_infectious_disease).)

In the coming year, we're going to see large reductions in many diseases we never realized were infectious-disease related. As bad as COVID-19 is, this will be a pretty substantial silver lining.

Most of the diseases won't stay gone; social distancing and citywide lockdowns are costly, and most diseases will retain enough reservoirs to bounce back after we return to normal. What we'll get is a period we can study retrospectively, different in different countries, in which almost no disease transmission occurred.

This will be confounded by COVID-19 itself, of course. People who themselves had COVID-19 will have a lot of health problems, which studies will need to account for. The isolation of social distancing, the anxiety of watching the disaster unfold, and the poverty of job-less and economic decline will leave their mark. In countries where COVID-19 took hold, during the height of the pandemic, cancers and autoimmune disorders and other conditions will have been left undiagnosed due to the shortage of hospitals. We won't easily be able to tell which diseases matched with which health conditions. With clever methodology and access to data in countries which had different outcomes, all of these issues will be possible to work around.

The world's attention is now very focused on the short term. Let's give a little thought to what next year will look like.
# What will be the economic effects of no restrictions

Many advocate against restrictions like travel bans, quarantine, lockdowns, etc., because they think the economic damage from those aren't worth the benefit in fighting the pandemic.

But clearly there's would also be economic impact from not putting down restrictions and letting the virus run its course.

What are they?
# How do you study a math textbook?

My own personal routine:

I start reading, whenever I feel there is a problem presented in the text (mostly theorems and examples but sometimes questions arise in the text itself), I’ll try solving it. I invest time in this endeavor proportionally to my belief that it can be solved in a reasonable amount of time. If this time runs out, I’ll start reading a little of the solution and trying again. I usually postpone the end-of-chapter exercises to “later” because of spaced repetition and lack of time (I have to have studied a certain amount of chapters for exams so I have to prioritize the quantity.). Sometimes interesting ideas/quasi-problems/ways of looking at things come to mind during the study, and I think on them as well.

When I’m solving a problem, I’ll usually walk around and try to solve it mentally, because I have this uncertain belief that if my math needs paper and pencil, then I can hardly use it “at will.” I’m the kind of person who forgets stuff and needs to repeatedly derive them from first principles when needed, and I can’t quite do that if those derivations rely on writing stuff out. (I also hate memorizing theorems. It feels stupid. :D )

By the way, if the solution is not in the text and I’m stumped, I websearch around. I hate the professors who give grades for the text’s problems and thus disincentiviz solution manuals economically and socially. These take-home exercises correlate more with people’s social skills and network than their effort or knowledge. Quizzing people instead is a much better choice.