trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
162 benefits of coronavirus
by bfinn — 2020-05-12T11:19:43.289Z

[More added: now 183]

WHILE THE HUGE harms of coronavirus are well-known – death, illness, lockdowns, unemployment, recession, etc. – less attention has understandably been paid to the benefits.

Even clouds this dark have silver linings. Crises produce opportunities, innovation, and long-overdue reforms. 2020 will contain an extra year’s worth of mortality – but also a decade’s worth of progress, a leap into the future.

This post lists many benefits that could arise, so readers can consider how to maximize them, not just minimize harms. They cover a wide range of consequences. For example, lockdown has made many people (even drug gangsters) reassess their lives. Working from home has suddenly become normal, with less commuting, less cost, and more time for leisure and sleep. So people may move from cities to cheaper, more pleasant areas, or indeed countries.

Above all, coronavirus is a wake-up call - it could have been far worse. Better preparation for the next pandemic will reduce existential risk, potentially saving billions, or even trillions, of future lives.

Experiment & evolve

Lockdowns have created an experiment, making people and organisations re-think how - and why - they do things. Some activities become impossible and are abandoned, e.g. travel. For others, alternatives are tried, e.g. video calls for meetings and doctor’s appointments; or innovations, such as businesses sharing employees. This experimentation will continue well beyond lockdown, as the new reality emerges.

Many of these changes will turn out to be improvements, and will stick. Others, e.g. government-funded furloughing and virtual horse races, are temporary fixes which will go - as will changes that didn’t work. And things that were dropped as unnecessary, e.g. pointless meetings and regulations, will stay dropped.

All of this involves prioritizing: deciding what outcomes matter, and which solutions now work best. Many things will modernize, simplify, and become more efficient. Cost-effectiveness is key, as incomes will shrink for a while.

Finally, lessons will be learned from what went badly in the pandemic, and steps taken to improve resilience and prepare for future crises.

We can also view the situation in terms of evolution. The world has been struck by a metaphorical meteor, threatening not just lives, but ways of life. Those organ...
COVID-19 estimated test detection windows for IgG, IgM and nasal PCR tests
by nonzerosum — 2020-05-11T22:39:54.707Z

I spent a while looking for this information online and found it hard to come by, so I've compiled my research conclusions. These numbers are based on the best information I could find, but please comment with any critique or improvements.

Background info

There are two types of COVID tests. Molecular tests and serological tests.

Molecular tests are the nasal swab tests, also referred to as PCR tests.

Serological tests are the antibody tests, which can be done by a blood drop or a draw of blood.

How soon would you test positive for covid? How soon after exposure would a covid test be positive?

Nasal swab PCR test: you'd likely test positive around 3-4 days after you catch it (but can be anywhere from 1-12 days after)
Antibody IgG test: 10-28 days after catching it (i.e. wait till 28 days after expected exposure to be more confident)
Antibody IgM test: 7-14 days after catching it

Will you test positive for covid if you're asymptomatic?

You can test positive for covid while being asymptomatic.
If you caught it, on average you'd develop symptoms 5 days after exposure, but it can be anywhere from 2 days to never.
You'd most likely test positive via nasal swab 3-4 days after getting it.

Overall (average) timeline

Say you're exposed to COVID-19 on day 0.
You'd become contagious on day 2.
You'd test positive via nasal swab on day 3 or day 4 (but can be anywhere from day 1-12).
You'd develop symptoms on day 4 (but can be anywhere from 3-14 days or never).
You'd test positive on an IgM antibody test on day 10 (can be anywhere from 7-14 days).
You'd test positive on an IgG antibody test on day 21 (but can be 10-28 days).
Your symptoms would likely last a total of 1-2 weeks in a mild case, or 6+ weeks in a more severe case.
You'd no longer be contagious 10-14 days after your last symptom resolves.

Some references: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/if-youve-been-exposed-to-the-coronavirus, https://notadoctor.substack.com/p/are-covid-19-symptoms-changing-and, https://allcarefamilymed.com/covid19-antibody-test, https://jcm.asm.org/content/early/2020/05/07/JCM.00941-20
Avoiding coronavirus spread from family members, roommates, extended family and close friends
by nonzerosum — 2020-05-11T22:38:11.683Z

Mostly based on this article https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

The key variables: how many people are in a space, how much airflow is around me, and how long will you be in the environment?
"Anyone you spend greater than 10 minutes with in a face-to-face situation is potentially infected."
"Anyone who shares a space with you (say an office) for an extended period is potentially infected."
Social distancing doesn't work indoors for non-brief encounters. If you're in the same room with someone for a while and they're infected, you can get exposed just via the droplets they expel when sneezing, coughing, singing, laughing, yelling, or even just breathing.
Avoiding handshakes, hugs, and social distancing doesn't seem to prevent COVID from spreading if you're in an indoors area with someone who is infected. But if you're outside, avoiding hugs and handshakes and keeping good distance could very well prevent you from getting COVID from someone who has it. Outdoor, brief (less than a few minutes) interactions that are six or more feet apart seem very low risk.
Singing is a particularly risky activity. This includes many types of praying.
Risky events are indoors with people hanging out relatively close, with lots of talking, singing or yelling.
Social distancing doesn't work in indoor spaces where you spend a lot of time.
Social distancing helps with brief exposures or outdoor exposures.

In short, it seems very difficult to avoid spreading COVID between people that you share a living space with, or where you're spending hours inside their house. Family and friend dinners indoors are highly likely to spread the virus if someone at the dinner has the virus. Social distancing is unlikely to protect you if you're indoors with someone for an extended (10+ minutes) period of time.
Help improve reasoning evaluation in intelligence organisations
by LThorburn — 2020-05-11T20:26:13.634Z

Cross-posted from the EA Forum.

TL;DR - My research group at the University of Melbourne is working to improve methods for evaluating quality of reasoning, particularly for use within government intelligence organisations. We’re conducting a study to compare a new evaluation method with the method currently used by intelligence agencies in the US. By participating, you get access to training materials in both the existing and proposed methods. You can sign up here.

Study Motivation

It is important that conclusions reached by analysts working in professional intelligence organisations are accurate so that resulting decisions made by governments and other decision-makers are grounded in reality. Historically, failures of intelligence have contributed to decisions or oversights that wasted resources and often caused significant harm. Prominent examples from US history include the attack on Pearl Harbour, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, 9/11, and the Iraq War.

Such events are at least partly the result of institutional decisions made based on poor reasoning. To reduce the risk of such events, it is important that the analysis informing those decisions is well reasoned. We use the phrase well reasoned to mean that the arguments articulated establish the stated conclusion. (If the arguments fail to establish the stated conclusion, we say the analysis is poorly reasoned.)

The ‘industry standard’ method for evaluating quality of reasoning (QoR) amongst intelligence organisations in the US is the IC Rating Scale, a rubric based on a set of Analytic Standards issued by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2015. There are significant question marks over the extent to which the IC Rating Scale is (and can be) operationalised to improve the QoR in intelligence organisations. See here for a detailed summary, but in brief:

Inter-rater reliability of the Rating Scale between individual raters is poor. (Though reliability between aggregated ratings - constructed by averaging the ratings of multiple raters - is better.)
Information is lacking on whether or not the Rating Scale is valid (whether it in fact measures QoR, as intended).
Ambiguities in the specification of the Rating Scale can make it difficult for raters to apply.
The Rating Scale can be overly prescriptive and detailed, making it difficult to quickly distinguish well reason

...
Setting up a new Mac
by jefftk — 2020-05-11T11:50:02.712Z

I've had somewhat bad luck with computers lately. In late January my
work computer stopped charging, and they replaced it with a used model
because they were having supply issues. Its replacement had a broken
webcam and, as expected for a butterfly mac, inconsistent keyboard.
In April the WiFi stopped working, and while I had just

run a cable to my

desk we replaced it again.
The supply issues have gotten worse, and my current laptop has some
minor issues: inconsistent keyboard, splotchy screen, but otherwise
good.

With setting up these two Macs, and a third one for music, all within a short time,
I think I now have complete list of the changes I need to make before
I'm happy using a Mac. Here's the big list, roughly in the order I'd
go through them:

System Preferences:

Trackpad > secondary click > bottom right corner

Keyboard:

Key Repeat: Fast

Delay Until Repeat: Shorter

Modifier Keys > Caps Lock Key: Control

Customize Touch Bar > remove Siri

Touch ID: add fingerprints, and enable fingerprint unlock

Displays > Arrangement > Mirror Displays (keeps me
from bending my neck down at my laptop screen by making it
redundant)

Notifications > Do Not Disturb > uncheck "When
Mirroring to TVs and Projectors (makse my notifications still show
up with a mirrored display)

Sound > Output > Internal Speakers (keeps it
from trying to send audio to my speakerless monitor)

Web Browser:

Use Safari to install Chrome

Sign into Chrome with my personal account

If this is a work laptop, make a second profile for work
account

Backup and Sync:

Install Google
Backup and Sync and tell it to sync my dotfiles directory
only (slow).

When that finishes, set up symlinks for each
dotfile (ex: ln -s ~/Google\ Drive/dotfiles/_emacs
~/.emacs)

When that finishes, let Backup and Sync copy down
everything else (very slow).

Terminal:

Preferences > Profiles > Keyboard > Use
Option as Meta key

defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES

Colors: set terminal to black background, and set this as the default

Iterm2:

Install

Profiles > Keys > Left Optio: Esc+

Profiles > Text > Monaco Regular 10pt non-antial

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Book report: Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (von Neumann & Morgenstern)
by Nisan — 2020-05-11T09:47:00.773Z

I finally read a game theory textbook. Von Neumann and Morgenstern's "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior" basically started the field of game theory. I'll summarize the main ideas and my opinions.

This was also the book that introduced the VNM theorem about decision-theoretic utility. They presented it as an improvement on "indifference curves", which apparently was how economists thought about preferences back then.

2-player zero-sum games

We start with 2-player zero-sum games, where the payoffs to the players sum to 0 in every outcome. (We could just as well consider constant-sum games, where the sum of payoffs is the same in every outcome.) Maximizing your reward is the same as minimizing your opponent's reward. An example is Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Suppose player 1 moves first, and then player 2 moves with, and then the players get their rewards R, −R. Then player 2 should play argminyR(x,y) and player 1 should play argmaxxminyR(x,y). If instead player 2 moves first, then player 1 should play argmaxxR(x,y) and player 2 should play argminymaxxR(x,y).

The payoff to player 1 will be the "maximin" or "minimax" value, depending on whether they move first or second. And moving second is better:

maxxminyR(x,y)≤minymaxxR(x,y)

If the action space is finite and we allow mixed strategies, then by the Kakutani fixed point theorem equality obtains. (The book proves this with elementary linear algebra instead.) In Rock, Paper, Scissors, the maximin value is 0, which you get by playing randomly.

VNM then argue that if both players must move simultaneously, they should play the maximin/minimax strategy. Their argument is kind of sketchy: They say that since player 1 can secure at least the maximin reward for themselves, and since player 2 can prevent player 1 from getting more than the maximin reward, it's rational for player 1 to play the strategy that guarantees them the maximin reward (17.8.2). They claim they aren't assuming knowledge of rationality of all players, but I think they're smuggling it in.

Also, the minimax strategies form a Nash equilibrium (which they call a "saddle point"). But their argument for playing minimax doesn't rely on this fact directly.

Despite the sketchiness I agree that you should play maximin in 2-player zero-sum games, unless you have reason to believe your opponent won't play maximin.

n-player zero-sum games

Next we move on to n-player zero

...
A hierarchy of truth
by aelwood — 2020-05-11T09:23:56.181Z
Link: https://pursuingreality.com/2020/05/09/categories-of-truth/

In this article I want to offer a framework for thinking about truth. I’m not offering a metaphysical theory - I’ll leave that to academic philosophers - but a useful way of relating to the different truth claims people make in everyday life.

As a rationalist thinking about truth, I have often found myself stuck on the supremacy of science and mathematics, while being unable to consistently account for the clear benefits of art and spirituality. I have found this hierarchy of truth a useful way to retain non-scientific ‘truths’ for their utility, while still allowing for a fully rational take on the world.

https://pursuingreality.com/2020/05/09/categories-of-truth/
Zoom Technologies, Inc. vs. the Efficient Markets Hypothesis
by Zack_M_Davis — 2020-05-11T06:00:24.836Z

The efficient markets hypothesis (or EMH for short) is the idea "that asset prices reflect all available information". Price changes in a liquid market are understood to be unpredictable—anti-inductive. Suppose some stock has the ticker symbol LW. If you want to buy a hundred shares of LW at $10 per share because you think their price is going to go way up, you need to buy them from someone who's willing to sell at that price—who presumably does not agree that the price is going to go way up. If people know that a share of LW is "really" worth $20 even though the current price is $10, then they should expect to profit by continuing to buy shares from anyone willing to sell them for less than $20, until the market price really is $20. In this way, the market construed as an intelligent system aggregates and processes the information implied by traders' behavior in accordance with the fourth virtue of evenness: "if you knew your destination, you would already be there."

What does it mean for a share of LW to "really" be worth $20? According to the subjective theory of value, there isn't really a fact of the matter over and above what people are willing to pay for it, but we expect there to be some sort of correspondence between the subjective economic value of a thing, and objective facts about the thing in the real physical universe. If I pay $3 for an iced-coffee, it would be circular to say that this is simply because I value an iced-coffee at $3—that doesn't explain anything! Rather, I paid because I expected to enjoy the experience of drinking it, the psychoactive effects of the caffiene, &c., and these actual properties of the coffee were worth more to me than a marginal $3.

The same goes for a share of LW, albeit at a somewhat higher level of abstraction. A fractional "share" of ownership in a business endeavor is valuable not just because we circularly value it, but because the business produces things that are valued (like iced-coffees), and a share of ownership entitles one to a share of that value, in the form of dividend payments, or a claim on the business's assets should it fold, &c. The "randomness" of unpredictable market movements is that of not knowing future information that hasn't already been taken into account, rather than the randomness of a pure random walk, unpredictable but ultimately signifying nothing.

That's why we have conver

...
Covid-19: Comorbidity
by Zvi — 2020-05-10T21:30:01.304Z

We’ve all seen statistics that most people who die of Covid-19 have at least one comorbidity. They also almost all have the particular comorbidity of age. The biggest risk, by far, is being old. The question that I don’t see being properly asked anywhere (I’d love for this post to be unnecessary because there’s a better one) is: What is your chance of death from Covid-19 if infected, conditional on which if any comorbidities you have? Which ones matter and how much? If you don’t have any, how much better off are you than your age group in general?

Thus, most people are looking at the age chart, without adjusting for their health status, unless they have an obvious big issue, in which case they adjust up. Which leads to an incorrect overall answer. That isn’t obviously a bad thing in terms of resulting behavior in practice, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to figure out the answer.

I used New York State’s information on deaths to get the rates of most of the major comorbidity candidates by age, and various Google-fu combined with wild mass approximation and fitting to different age groupings (not guessing, but not fully not guessing either) to get approximate population prevalence data. What matters?

A key question will always be, is this a proxy for something else, such as poverty, general poor health or obesity? Or is it the real problem? Here, we need to use some common sense and physical intuition. This isn’t attempting to be super rigorous, but rather to get an approximation.

Then, once we’ve looked at all of them, I’ll attempt to put them all together, and solve for the risk of someone in good overall health.

Spreadsheet is here, you can look at the numbers in somewhat more detail, and see some of the sources I used, on the Comorbidity tab.

In each case, the “Population X” column attempts to guess the rate at which the population has it. The morbidity column is the rate at which those in NY state that died of Covid-19 had it.

For the first few graphs I fit NY’s data to the groupings in the prevalence data I found. Later I started always using NY’s ranges instead.

Hypertension

Morbidity
Population

Age

Hypertension
Hypertension

18-39

21%
8%

40-59

43%
33%

60+

61%
63%

Hypertension in the young seems to matter. If you are 18-39, your relative chance of dying more than doubles. In your 40s and 50s combined, it’s a jump of about a t...
The Greatest Host
by trentbrick — 2020-05-10T20:28:02.888Z

Hi all, I recently wrote a blog post summarizing some articles I found really fascinating by Stephen Hedrick that leverage evolution and viral ecology to argue:

While our immune system is indeed sophisticated, it doesn’t keep us any more protected from parasites than the more simple immune system of an ant, oak tree or lobster.

Because of the agricultural revolution, domestication of animals, and urbanisation, humans are in fact likely to be the most diseased organisms on the planet with entire classes of parasites that few other organisms face.

I thought this may be of interest to the LessWrong and if this is true, would love to get thoughts, critiques, and engage in discussion.

The original post is here: https://trentbrick.github.io/GreatestHost/ and I have cross posted it below.

I recently finished the excellent introduction to immunology: How the Immune System Works, by Lauren Sompayrac. A major part of the human immune system (and that of all vertebrates) is the adaptive system, which unlike the innate system, is able to mount a defense against almost any parasite[1]. While "How the Immune System Works" does talk about some of the disadvantages of having such a powerful system, the big one being autoimmune disorders, it paints an awe inspiring picture of a highly sophisticated and versatile system crucial to keeping us alive.

However, a series of articles[2] by Stephen Hedrick leverage evolution and viral ecology to make a fascinating argument that, while our immune system is indeed sophisticated, it doesn't keep us any more protected from parasites than the more simple immune system of an ant, oak tree or lobster. Moreover, because of the agricultural revolution, domestication of animals, and urbanisation, humans are in fact likely to be the most diseased organisms on the planet with entire classes of parasites that few other organisms face.

These arguments, which I will be summarizing, present important considerations for immunology, epidemiological modelling, zoonotic spillovers, and viral ecology. More broadly, these pieces have reminded me of the importance of first principles thinking and how crucial it is to account for evolution when thinking about systems, before getting lost in the minutiae. Even more broadly, these pieces are a reminder that we as humans remain stuck on the evolutionary treadmill. It is crucial that we deliberately take a

...
Do nasal decongestants increase risk associated with cardiovascular (and respiratory via second-order effects) symptoms from COVID-19?
by Dorikka — 2020-05-10T19:17:16.584Z

Currently trying to think my way through this one given that I use a topical oxymetazoline spray nightly (else I'm substantially unable to sleep due to being unable to breathe through my nose.) My understanding is that oxymetazoline (and other decongestants) cause vasoconstriction (and are cautioned against for patients with high blood pressure) - further, there appear to be connection between decongestants and stroke, though I'm primarily able to find this only for oral (as opposed to topical) applications, presumably due to greater systemic absorption from oral route of administration. Given that COVID-19 appears to substantially increase clotting tendency (with corresponding risk increase for arterial blockage and stroke), and that respiratory symptoms may also be caused in some part by clotting blocking capillaries required for blood to absorb oxygen from the lungs, I suspect that decongestants in general may increase symptoms from COVID-19 (likely with some impact on mortality rate), with oral decongestants increasing the risk by a significantly greater extant compared to topical ones.

Since oxymetazoline does appear to result in some systemic absorption even when used as a nasal spray, I plan to discontinue use if I do display COVID-19 symptoms (and accept the risk associated with the amount already in my bloodstream from already-administered doses.) Would love to hear any thoughts on this as well as the potential for risk increase associated with decongestants more generally (of potential larger-scale importance for symptom management on a population-level especially as I haven't seen warnings against use of these - even oral decongestants - in people infected with COVID-19.)