What would it be like for people to not be poor?

I reply:  You wouldn't see people working 60-hour weeks, at jobs where they have to smile and bear it when their bosses abuse them.

I appreciate the concrete, illustrative examples used in this discussion, but I also want to recognize that they are only the beginnings of a "real" answer to the question of what it would be like to not be poor.

In other words, in an attempt to describe what he sees as poverty, I think Eliezer has taken the strategy of pointing to a few points in Thingspace and saying "here are some points; the stuff over here around these points is roughly what I'm trying to gesture at". He hasn't taken too much of a stab at drawing the boundaries. I'd like to take a small stab at drawing some boundaries.

It seems to me that poverty is about QALYs. Let's wave our hands a bit and say that QALYs are a function of 1) the "cards you're dealt" and 2) how you "play your hand". With that, I think that we can think about poverty as happening when someone is dealt cards that make it "difficult" for them to have "enough" QALYs.

This happens in our world when you have to spend 40 hours a week smiling and bearing it. It happens in Anoxan when you take shallow breaths to conserve oxygen for your kids. And it happened to hunter-gatherers in times of scarcity.

There are many circumstances that can make it difficult to live a happy life. And as Eliezer calls out, it is quite possible for one "bad apple circumstance", like an Anoxan resident not having enough oxygen, to spoil the bunch.

Note that I don't think this dynamic needs to be very conscious on anyone's part. I think that humans instinctively execute good game theory because evolution selected for it, even if the human executing just feels a wordless pull to that kind of behavior.

Yup, exactly. It makes me think back to The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. It's been a while since I read it so take what follows with a grain of salt, because I could be butchering some stuff, but that book makes the argument that this sort of thing goes beyond friendship and into all types of emotions and moral feelings.

Like if you're at the grocery store and someone just cuts you in line for no reason, one way of looking at it is that the cost to you is negligible -- you just need to wait an additional 45 seconds for them to check out -- and so the rational thing would be to just let it happen. You could confront them, but what exactly would you have to gain? Suppose you are traveling and will never see any of the people in the area ever again.

But we have evolved such that this situation would evoke some strong emotions regarding unfairness, and these emotions would often drive you to confront the person who cut you in line. I forget if this stuff is more at the individual level or the cultural level.

Why? Because extra information could help me impress them.

I've always been pretty against the idea of trying to impress people on dates.

It risks false positives. Ie. it risks a situation where you succeed at impressing them, go on more dates or have a longer relationship than you otherwise would, and then realize that you aren't compatible and break up. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but I think it is more often than not.

Impressing your date also reduces the risk of false negatives, which is a good thing. Ie. it helps avoid the scenario where someone who you're compatible with rejects you. Maybe this is too starry-eyed, but I like to think that if you just bring your true self to the table, are open-minded, and push yourself to be a little vulnerable, the risk of such false negatives is pretty low.

I think this is especially relevant because I think the emotionally healthy person heuristic probably says to try to impress your date.

Hm yeah, I feel the same way. Good point.

America's response to covid seems like one example of this.

If I'm remembering correctly from Zvi's blog posts, he criticized the US's policy for being a sort of worst of both worlds middle ground. A strong, decisive requirement to enforce things like masking and distancing might have actually eradicated the virus and thus been worthwhile. But if you're not going to take an aggressive enough stance, you should just forget it: half-hearted mitigation policies don't do enough to "complete the bridge" and so aren't worth the economic and social costs.

It's not a perfect example. The "unfinished bridge" here provides positive value, not zero value. But I think the amount of positive value is low enough that it would be useful to round it down to zero. The important thing is that you get a big jump in value once you cross some threshold of progress.

I think a lot of philanthropic causes are probably in a similar boat.

When there are lots of small groups spread around making very marginal progress on a bunch of different goals, it's as if they're building a bunch of unfinished bridges. This too isn't a perfect example because the "unfinished bridges" provide some value, but like the covid example, I think the amount of value is small enough that we can just round it to zero.

On the other hand, when people get a little barbaric and rally around a single cause, there might be enough concentration of force to complete the bridge.

Project idea: virtual water coolers for LessWrong

Previous: Virtual water coolers

Here's an idea: what if there was a virtual water cooler for LessWrong?

• There'd be Zoom chats with three people per chat. Each chat is a virtual water cooler.
• The user journey would begin by the user expressing that they'd like to join a virtual water cooler.
• Once they do, they'd be invited to join one.
• I think it'd make sense to restrict access to users based on karma. Maybe only 100+ karma users are allowed.
• To start, that could be it. In the future you could do some investigation into things like how many people there should be per chat.

Seems like an experiment that is both cheap and worthwhile.

If there is interest I'd be happy to create a MVP.

(Related: it could be interesting to abstract this and build a sort of "virtual water cooler platform builder" such that eg. LessWrong could use the builder to build a virtual water cooler platform for LessWrong and OtherCommunity could use the builder to build a virtual water cooler platform for their community.)

Update: I tried a few doses of Adderall, up to 15mg. I didn't notice anything.

I was envisioning that you can organize a festival incrementally, investing more time and money into it as you receive more and more validation, and that taking this approach would de-risk it to the point where overall, it's "not that risky".

For example, to start off you can email or message a handful of potential attendees. If they aren't excited by the idea you can stop there, but if they are then you can proceed to start looking into things like cost and logistics. I'm not sure how pragmatic this iterative approach actually is though. What do you think?

Also, it seems to me that you wouldn't have to actually risk losing any of your own money. I'd imagine that you'd 1) talk to the hostel, agree on a price, have them "hold the spot" for you, 2) get sign ups, 3) pay using the money you get from attendees.

Although now that I think about it I'm realizing that it probably isn't that simple. For example, the hostel cost ~$5k and maybe the money from the attendees would have covered it all but maybe less attendees signed up than you were expecting and the organizers ended up having to pay out of pocket.

On the other hand, maybe there is funding available for situations like these.

Virtual watercoolers

As I mentioned in some recent Shortform posts, I recently listened to the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast's episode on the LessOnline festival and it got me thinking.

One thing I think is cool is that Ben Pace was saying how the valuable thing about these festivals isn't the presentations, it's the time spent mingling in between the presentations, and so they decided with LessOnline to just ditch the presentations and make it all about mingling. Which got me thinking about mingling.

It seems plausible to me that such mingling can and should happen more online. And I wonder whether an important thing about mingling in the physical world is that, how do I say this, you're just in the same physical space, next to each other, with nothing else you're supposed to be doing, and in fact what you're supposed to be doing is talking to one another.

Well, I guess you're not supposed to be talking to one another. It's also cool if you just want to hang out and sip on a drink or something. It's similar to the office water cooler: it's cool if you're just hanging out drinking some water, but it's also normal to chit chat with your coworkers.

I wonder whether it'd be good to design a virtual watercooler. A digital place that mimicks aspects of the situations I've been describing (festivals, office watercoolers).

1. By being available in the virtual watercooler it's implied that you're pretty available to chit chat with, but it's also cool if you're just hanging out doing something low key like sipping a drink.
2. You shouldn't be doing something more substantial though.
3. The virtual watercooler should be organized around a certain theme. It should attract a certain group of people and filter out people who don't fit in. Just like festivals and office water coolers.

In particular, this feels to me like something that might be worth exploring for LessWrong.

Note: I know that there are various Slack and Discord groups but they don't meet conditions (1) or (2).

More dakka with festivals

In the rationality community people are currently excited about the LessOnline festival. Furthermore, my impression is that similar festivals are generally quite successful: people enjoy them, have stimulating discussions, form new relationships, are exposed to new and interesting ideas, express that they got a lot out of it, etc.

So then, this feels to me like a situation where More Dakka applies. Organize more festivals!

How? Who? I dunno, but these seem like questions worth discussing.

Some initial thoughts:

1. Assurance contracts seem like quite the promising tool.
2. You probably don't need a hero license to go out and organize a festival.
3. Trying to organize a festival probably isn't risky. It doesn't seem like it'd involve too much time or money.