It's a convenient test-bed to investigate schemes for building an agent with access to a good universal distribution approximation - which is what we (at least, me) usually assume an LLM is! 

Also see my PR.

One of my current projects builds on "Learning Universal Predictors." It will eventually appear in my scaffolding sequence (trust me, there will be posts in the scaffolding sequence someday, no really I swear...) 

My uncle is a nurse and he named crocks and hoka. However all of these shoes, particularly the crocks, seem to have a similar look. 

Okay, Claddagh rings have already been lowered once, I'll kick them all the way down to Low [SPECULATIVE]. Thanks for the rest, I'll take some time to research and integrate it - for a start, is this the clog? 

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B001EJMZ6S?ots=1&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10055.g.43507106%5Bsrc%7Cwww.google.com%5Bch%7C%5Blt%7C%5Bpid%7C749b9f35-9e80-4755-be0c-ec3fcc47ef9f%5Baxid%7Cd8482e9e-0390-4043-9893-b3b76ee3c71b&linkCode=gg2&tag=goodhousekeeping_auto-append-20&th=1

Neat! This is the first submission that's not discernible from meeting someone in person, so it almost has more of a Bourne/Wick feel than Holmes, but I think I'm here for it! Are there any signs that might remain on the person?

This has got to be low frequency but is still a personal favorite thanks!

Thanks for all the suggestions - it will take some time to research and integrate them!

The task is effectively endless, there's a tradeoff curve between time and insight -> agency increases. I think that (particularly if a well-curated list of reliable rules is available) the average person should spend a few hours studying these matters a couple of times a decade to increase their agency. That means the list could still usefully be a little longer. The task of constructing and curating the list in the first place is more time consuming, which means I should be expected to spend more time than is strictly useful on it.  

In terms of clothing, I included some well-established status symbols that seem to have staying power and linked to further resources for people who are interested - but I don't recommend obsessively following the fashion cycle. 

You're probably right about the side-note, though it seems hard to disentangle. 

Good to know, I'll modify the confidence or perhaps change the statement - it seems that since the supporting data is a survey of Americans, it only justifies inferences about Americans.

I agree with most of this.

I would be modestly surprised, but not very surprised, if an A.G.I. could cause build a Dyson sphere causing the sun to be dimmed by >20% in less than a couple decades (I think a few percent isn't enough to cause crop failure), but within a century is plausible to me.  

I don't think we would be squashed for our potential to build a competitor. I think that a competitor would no longer be a serious threat once an A.G.I. seized all available compute.

I give a little more credence to various "unknown unknowns" about the laws of physics and the priorities of superintelligences implying that an A.G.I. would no longer care to exploit the resources we need.

Overall rationalists are right to worry about being killed by A.G.I. 

1: I already provided several answers to this. 

2: Yes, but once Dyson sphere building tech is available I am not sure dissassembling Earth will be useful on the margin. I think Mercury provides sufficient raw materials to build a Dyson sphere and far more energy can be extracted by optimizing the Dyson sphere or hopping to other stars than grabbing the tiny amount available on Earth. Also, Earth is already home to a lot of well developed infrastructure. To the extent that takeoff looks more Hansonian than Yudkowskian, this infrastructure will become much more valuable during takeoff, and ripping it up for parts may not be wise.

My intuition is that Earth would probably be destroyed, but I think it's worth pointing out that the economic calculation isn't actually trivial. It seems that most rationalists expect an A.G.I. to sort of omnipotently grab all resources in the lightcone, but perhaps it would still face tradeoffs and need to prioritize - and this includes potentially pursuing opportunities we aren't even aware of, which may not interfere with us at all.