One listed idea was that you can buy reservations at one website directly from the restaurant, with the price going as a downpayment. The example given was $1,000 for a table for two at Carbone, with others being somewhat less. As is pointed out, that fixes the incentives for booking, but once you show up you are now in all-you-can-eat mode at a place not designed for that.

I've been to several restaurants that do some form of this, from a small booking fee that gets refunded when you check in, to just paying entirely up-front (for restaurants with pre-set menus).

This is built into OpenTable so it's not even that hard. I'm really confused why more restaurants don't do this.

I'm not a video creator, but I wonder if this could be turned into a useful tool that takes the stills from a video and predicts which ones will get the highest engagement.

Also if anyone's interested in the other meetups I mentioned, there's:

• The Millenial Social Club meetup group plays board games every Friday in the food court in Lincoln Tower South in Bellevue. The group is always huge (30+ people). It looks like they started doing it on Sundays recently too. https://meetu.ps/e/Ns6hh/blHm6/i
• There's a Seattle Rationalists reading group that meets on Mondays in Seattle. https://meetu.ps/e/NrycV/blHm6/I
• Seattle Effective Altruists occasionally has social meetups in Redmond but I don't know when the next will be: https://meetu.ps/e/Ns3Gt/blHm6/I

If anyone finds any other social rationalist-adjacent meetups on the east side I'd love to know, since I'm not really into book clubs and getting into Seattle is too hard after work.

In case anyone's wondering, the lights I talked about were these:

https://store.waveformlighting.com/products/centric-daylight-95-cri-t5-led-linear-light-fixture?variant=39433427845222

I have 8 of the 4 ft 5000K version (they're cheaper in 4-packs). I have them plugged into a switched outlet and daisy-chained together, and they're attached at the top of the wall to make it look like light is coming down from all around. They're tedious to setup by worth it in my opinion.

I like the 5000k version but some people might like warmer light like 4000k (or 6500k if you really like blue). https://www.waveformlighting.com/home-residential/which-led-light-color-temperature-should-i-choose

There's probably cheaper similarly-good lights available but Waveform's marketing materials worked on me: https://www.waveformlighting.com/high-cri-led

I have a severely ‘unbalanced’ portfolio of assets for this reason, and even getting rid of the step-up on death would not change that in many cases.

What would be the point of not realizing gains indefinitely if we got rid of the step-on on death?

I don't enjoy PT or exercise, but mostly because it's boring / feels like a waste of time. My peanut butter is to do that involve exercise but where the purpose isn't strictly exercise or where I get some other benefit:

• Biking to work every day takes me about the same amount of time as driving and is more fun. Hills weren't fun so I got an e-bike and with sufficient assist they became fun again. As I get more in shape, I find myself turning the assist down because I don't really need it.
• Biking to restaurants and bars is also fun.
• I like going on walks with friends and talking, so why not do that while walking up a mountain?
• I joined a casual dodgeball league for fun and meeting people, and as a side effect do the cardio equivalent of two hours of jogging every Sunday.
• Indoor rock climbing feels a little bit like exercise, but it's also a group activity that involves a lot of downtime just talking.

(I've yet to find a good way to mix my also-shoulder PT into anything fun, so I just keep exercise bands at my desk at work)

It would be expensive, but it's not a hard constraint. OpenAI could almost certainly raise another $600M per year if they wanted to (they're allegedly already losing $5B per year now).

Also the post only suggests this pay structure for a subset of employees.

For companies that are doing well, money isn't a hard constraint. Founders would rather pay in equity because it's cheaper than cash^[1], but they can sell additional equity and pay cash if they really want to.

1. ^{^}

   Because they usually give their employees a bad deal.

A century ago, it was predicted that by now, people would be working under 20 hours a week.

And this prediction was basically correct, but missed the fact that it's more efficient to work 30-40 hours per week while working and then take weeks or decades off when not working.

The extra time has gone to more leisure, less child labor, more schooling, and earlier retirement (plus support for people who can't work at all).

The Overpopulation FAQs is about overpopulation, not necessarily water scarcity. Water scarcity can contribute to overpopulation, but it is only one of multiple potential causes.

My point is that when LessWrongers see not enough water for a given population, we try to fix the water not the people.

I wrote that EA is mostly misguided because it makes faulty assumptions. And to the contrary, I did praise a few things about EA.

Yes, I read your argument that preventing people from dying of starvation and/or disease is bad:

In some ways, the justification for EA assumes a fallacy of composition since EA believes that people can and should help everyone. [...] To the contrary, I’d argue that a lot of charities that supposedly have the greatest amount of “good” for humanity would contribute to overpopulation, which would negate their benefits in the long run. For example, programs to prevent malaria, provide clean water, and feed starving families in Sub-Saharan Africa would hasten the Earth’s likelihood of becoming overpopulated and exacerbate dysgenics.

So yes, maybe this is my cult programming, but I would rather we do the hard work of supporting a higher population (solar panels, desalination, etc.) than let people starve to death.