I think you wanted to say standard error of the mean.
I had similar thoughts. And indeed I found funny that a forum of rationalists falls for this.
But this is human nature, and we have finite time and energy to focus on things.
You will find the same for the attention papers written by people at famous institutions get, even if low quality.
Making names, recently, I had a similar feeling when looking at "AI as Normal Technology". I did not know the authors, and I was skimming it because someone talked about it.
It is also a reason for which sometimes celebrities are called to do propaganda.
A strategy would be to make make posts anonymous for a limited amount of time (perhaps with some text randomization that would slightly change the style of the author/s, even though this might affect quality).
First of all, I appreciate your energy and time, and I am not saying all of this is not useful.
Second, I have a feeling that on this forum there is too much rationality going on, and less talk about random chance, human behavior, and so on.
Said this.
Point one
I am not sure how these surveys were done, but if they were done in a naive way they might be wrong (e.g. election polls are biased if you do not frame well questions).
And even if they were true and many people say they are against AI, they probably use it indirectly, as they are consumers of other services.
My point is that people, pro- and against- AI, are using products that are exploiting the power of AI in some way, and hence they are fueling incentives in expanding AI capabilities/applications.
Even DuckDuckgo is using AI. There are too many incentives everywhere to use it.
It is on the end user to deny the application of AI to their everyday life.
Point two
We need to look at this from multiple perspectives. And I tell you why I think this is different wrt biological or nuclear weapons.
AI is becoming/sourcing addiction around people. People are addicted to ChatGPT (e.g. it represents some safe space to them), or to social media scrolling. Go around on trains and buses. Everybody is on their phone. People lost ability to get bored! Moms are not looking anymore at their babies. Friends are constantly interacting on their phone, and AI will become their friend. Crazy.
So, once people become addicted to it, it will be more difficult, on average, to get away from it. And they will fuel more and more the process of self-improving AI systems. They will give big companies opportunities to do work. This attracts money. And money attracts talent (I mean, I would also like to work on something fun that makes me money, and forget about consequences on the very long term).
I would say this sort of addiction is similar to the alcohol one. It is border line. Did the ban of alcohol in US work? Will the ban on AI work? This will depend on the people. If the base is borderline addicted to it, is difficult to do anything.
This is one of the cases that you can not really change someone if they do not change themselves within.
All of this process will come back to Point 1: fueling economical incentives in a greedy system. We need to come back to first principles, and teach people basic principles.
Unfortunately, our current society is one of low self-consciousness, easy to manipulate and steer. We really think we are smarter and better than our ancestors, but truth is we are not.
Being a Nobel prize, head of state, or holding a prestigious stance in society does not mean you understand what you are talking about. And I do not trust much UN (basically a mafia organization that does lots of signaling work and does not even represent the human population).
Also, these international treaties were not proved to work or to be robust to emergency cases.
If it comes, it need to come from the streets and the homes. If random people tomorrow drop AI, I guarantee you things will change. You need to focus on the basics, with a bottom-up approach.
A little bit. But the most important aspects for attraction are the energy and feelings you transmit. I can list so many situations of ugly or poor bad dressed guys dating nice ladies (both at uni and outside).
Also, if you work on your appearance too much you may end up with false positives that waste your time, costing you on the long run; some people focus on status (be partner's looks/money/position/etc...) and if you signal that you might not end up in a nice relationship.
In the long term you need to focus on values, direction in life, and self-confidence. Hitting the gym, having basic grooms is important, but just keep good health and good manners.
In my opinion.
P.S.
I think by the end of the day dating is a bit random.
During uni I had lots of pimples on my face, low self-confidence, but somehow I was attracting beautiful ladies that my friends, well-dressed and behaved, did not.
I heard of normal people having just a high-school degree with PhD girlfriends.
etc....
P.P.S.
Another thing. Focus one person by one person. You really need to be present in the situation. I heard so many people talking about how dating multiple ladies improve relaxation and confidence. But here is the thing. You, and the lady, need to be present in the moment. Like, there is no one else on Earth. Basic steps.
P.P.P.S.
Last thought. In the past, I had ladies rejecting me and changing their minds some time after. So, if you get rejected embrace it and have courage :)
P.P.P.P.S.
If you really have trouble/want alternative ways of meeting people, getting introduced is one of the best ways actually. So, through friends of friends/acquaintances, hobby groups.
You could also use Apps, I have several friends that met their girlfriends there, and the general advice is to show your activities. But I really think real life is the best and most organic way for finding a lady, statistically speaking.
I see no difference between the principles underlying a financial system that builds products to please a few, and a social system that allows anybody to be anything to please a few.
Both serve a relatively small number of people. Both are based on a kind of freedom of expression that puts the individual in the center. One has been proven to be a very unreliable system that has been leading to crises and human suffering. The other one, will just be a matter of time.
There is a proliferation of too much freedom, meaning no freedom.
I think most of the people on LW can not see it. I believe the reason is due to social class. The average poster on LW comes from a relatively privileged economic and social environment that has led them in positions to rule over the others.
The consequence is that few people, mainly due to luck (for a random event that happened in the past), end up setting policies and ways of thinking upon the rest of the people.
As an example, there has been a lot of talk about creating programs that push for more professors/executives from a certain group of people. I can see today that they just ended up pooling from the same middle-upper classes that has been filling universities for years. On the other hand, the people with no voice are still in the same situation. You have no idea of how harsh life is for lots of people.
There seem some sort of air going around that we are a better society compared to the past. People grab random numbers, like the number of people above some poverty line, to say that we know better.
Even if we might have more technology compared to humans that lived one thousands years ago, I doubt that we are wiser.
The are books that have been written and rules that have served humans well, as a society as a whole. There are mistakes that humans have repeatedly done in the past. Why did we forget?
One of the consequences of this kind of thinking in this law-less society is that not everybody is born equal. I am disgusted by the disregard of the ruling class that they know better.
A lot of this is implicit, but I can see this around having interacted with people from privileged and not privileged backgrounds (and everything else in the middle).
We need to come back to fundamental principles. And the first one, is the importance of traditional family values, that see people in the unit of the boat.
If you do not see the catastrophe that is upon us as humans, then I hope you wake up.
Yes, I have tried :) But I still value expert human intuition.
I think at least 50% of the doctors will go away in the future, as they are just trained to give the usual stuff, and if they disappear tomorrow an LLM would still give similar results (actually, even a monkey with just two basic medicines would be a good enough doctor).
Not a proper quick take and perhaps off-topic on this forum. But given that I know some people here are into health I give it a shot.
I would be very grateful if someone could point me to some excellent doctors around Europe, website, or some sort of diet that can be good to improve my health.
I have been having some health issues:
All the doctors that I have met do not have a single clue, and do not seem interested into solving the problem or investigate.[2] I am not even looking for a cure now. Just a diagnosis.
I am not rich so my budget is limited. But life has become so difficult.
With my breathing problems I can do a 10km at around 4:40 km/min, but suddenly not on my top of my game (4:10 km/min).
If it is not an easy ibuprofen or similar, they quickly give up. I have a big suspicion that doctors are not trained well, so they might be all effectively incompetent at dealing with situations that are not solved by the usual medicines they prescribe. I plan one day to write a post, as methods of rationality and AI might help in diagnosing situations.
If a machine passes the standard Turing test, this might be enough to take over humans, even if the machine is not aware of this. So, in principle you do not even need super-intelligence.