A Google search for "using world quality as a free variable when optimizing for other purposes" yields... 0 results.
Though a search for "I don't care about the world" yields a respectable 58,600,000. If -cup is introduced in the search query, the result drops by 10,000,000 or so.
In somewhat related news, I'm starting to doubt my own heuristic.
A Google search for "save the world" yields 11,000,000 results. A search for "harm the world" yields 242,000. Also, the top results for the latter are framed as cautionary tales, rather than normative instructions, or communities for how to accomplish the malignant goal.
Saving the world is a very commonly expressed sentiment, which is why compiling a list of people who want to save the world seems a little redundant to me. A list about people who have saved the world might be a tad more useful.
As far as I know, an infinitesimal amount ...
Darwin lived before Darwin too. Or before Darwinism, at any rate. An epistemic rationalist should explore and be prepared to question even the most established premises.
Obviousness? Exposure to at least one person who has declared their disinclination to save the world?
Point taken. The list likely won't include everyone. :-)
I interpreted the original statement as "the list won't include a significant majority", because of the context it was given in. Perhaps Giles can chip in and say whether I was mistaken.
But equally clearly, the list [of people who want to save the world] will not include everyone.
What are you basing this claim on?
Looks like if you want to save the world, you've gotta accept that you're going to lose some karma.
Seems like the stakes have lessened somewhat. Socrates lost his life doing similar things.
There are domains that I've found through trial and error (mostly error) that I really have no aptitude for.
How long did you try and err while testing out these domains? K. Anders Ericsson, known as the world's foremost expert on expertise, has come up with the benchmark of 10 000 hours, or 10 years, which is said to be the time it takes to achieve world-class expertise in many domains.
I suspect that so-called aptitude refers mainly to habits and skills picked up during early childhood, perhaps accidentally, which we don't remember learning, as early ch...
I think your modesty is unwarranted. :-)
Meetups have the potential to lead to a lot of updating, positive feedback loops, and other real benefits for the attendees. I suspect that very few comments on this site, even the higher rated ones, can match them in that regard.
A little positive feedback and appreciation for the organizers has the potential to go a long way, so that they have some additional payoff for continuing to deal with the tedious logistics.
Plus, karma stands for a thousand different things already. Adding one more meaning to the list doesn't make much of a difference with such a conflated concept.
You would be right if the people at SIAI were so much cleverer than me than I would have literally nothing to contribute to their cause except money. I don't believe this is the case.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by cleverness, but the folks at SIAI probably have more expertise than you in the "saving the world" domain, at least for now, if your own activities thus far have been limited to donating. Of course, there may be things that you haven't told us yet.
But even if your expertise is currently limited in this particular domain, this d...
Declaring your intention to do good is an excellent way to start. However, I'd like to know what "good" means to you, and whether it reconciles with my conception of "good", before I formally declare my allegiance. I'm looking forward to hearing more in subsequent posts.
One possible path towards improving the world may be to identify people who have already accomplished that goal within their lifetimes, examine their approach, and possibly improve on it. What people would meet this criteria for you?
This issue was indirectly addressed before by Emile, and commented on specifically in a reply to the previous by jwhendy. But it's probably an important enough usability problem to warrant its own top-level comment.
Currently the parent should have at least +6 extra upvotes going by that second link, possibly more, assuming the same people didn't upvote both. (I rescinded my vote from before, and I am now upvoting this.)
Provide optional notification of nested comment replies to the parent comment's author (beyond the initial reply).
Currently, if there is a reply to one of my comments, I receive a notice. However, if there is a reply to the reply, and so on, I don't. These grandchildren replies are often still relevant and of interest to me, however. Having the option of being notified of them would be nice.
(Alternately, this suggestion would solve the problem also, though that solution would require an additional step from the author.)
Ability to disable images in comments.
But our brains can do amazing things if we let them, and are mostly not very good at math.
I think math is the most amazing thing my brain can do. Granted, it's not very good at it, but I bet it can improve with practice.
I think I'll lose a lot of friends here if I pollute the main LW board with my particular agenda ;-)
If figuring out how to save the world is your agenda, then I suspect it is a more common one than you think around these parts. Looking forward to your post.
Not a big fan of this. Seems like you could replace the word "think" with many different adjectives, and it would sound good or bad depending on whether I think the adjective agrees with what I consider my virtue. For instance, replace "think" with "exercise", and I would like if I'm a regular exerciser, but if I'm not I'd wonder why I would want to waste my life exercising.
The cognitive faculties are what makes humans distinct from other species, not any particular proclivity for exercise or any other such feats. A person ...
One of my suggestions seems to be a subset of this one. So, whoever keeps track of these things might want to mentally add any upvotes that one gets to the parent, if they agree.
I think this would be a really neat addition, if done right. It would also lengthen the lifespan of some of the discussion threads, as they wouldn't constantly be pushed back by new, potentially irrelevant ones. (I, for one, rarely navigate beyond the first page, and there are only a few topics that I am interested in.)
This doesn't have to replace the main discussion area, by the w...
A kind of "favourite users" already exists, under the guise of "friends". (Click on PREFERENCES, then click FRIENDS on the re-rendered navigation bar.)
But it sounds like what you're suggesting is a more fine-grained personal ranking of posters. This could be useful, and it could be dangerous. It sounds like it could reinforce confirmation bias, for one.
This might be good for newbies on their first visit, but if retention is the ultimate goal, it would quickly become redundant for the regulars to click through a static front page to get to the new content.
The ABOUT link under the header already serves the purpose you suggest.
There's an upcoming Toronto meetup on May 24th that didn't make the list.