This is a special post for quick takes by plex. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
plex's Shortform
22nd Nov 2020
13plex
6niplav
9plex
7ChristianKl
2plex
1cSkeleton
6 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 1:55 PM
Life is Nanomachines
In every leaf of every tree
If you could look, if you could see
You would observe machinery
Unparalleled intricacy
In every bird and flower and bee
Twisting, churning, biochemistry
Sustains all life, including we
Who watch this dance, and know this key
A couple of months ago I did some research into the impact of quantum computing on cryptocurrencies, seems maybe significant, and a decent number of LWers hold cryptocurrency. I'm not sure if this is the kind of content that's wanted, but I could write up a post on it.
Thinking about some things I may write. If any of them sound interesting to you let me know and I'll probably be much more motivated to create it. If you're up for reviewing drafts and/or having a video call to test ideas that would be even better.
- Memetics mini-sequence (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/memetics has a few good things, but no introduction to what seems like a very useful set of concepts for world-modelling)
- Book Review: The Meme Machine (focused on general principles and memetic pressures toward altruism)
- Meme-Gene and Meme-Meme co-evolution (focused on memeplexes and memetic defences/filters, could be just a part of the first post if both end up shortish)
- The Memetic Tower of Generate and Test (a set of ideas about the specific memetic processes not present in genetic evolution, inspired by Dennet's tower of generate and test)
- (?) Moloch in the Memes (even if we have an omnibenevolent AI god looking out for sentient well-being, things maybe get weird in the long term as ideas become more competent replicators/persisters if the overseer is focusing on the good and freedom of individuals rather than memes. I probably won't actually write this, because I don't have much more than some handwavey ideas about a situation that is really hard to think about.)
- Unusual Artefacts of Communication (some rare and possibly good ways of sharing ideas, e.g. Conversation Menu, CYOA, Arbital Paths, call for ideas. Maybe best as a question with a few pre-written answers?)
Hi, did you ever go anywhere with Conversation Menu? I'm thinking of doing something like this related to AI risk to try to quickly get people to the arguments around their initial reaction and if helping with something like this is the kind of thing you had in mind with Conversation Menu I'm interested to hear any more thoughts you have around this. (Note, I'm thinking of fading in buttons more than a typical menu.) Thanks!