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My Favorite Theorems
1just_browsing's Shortform
5y
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Everywhere I Look, I See Kat Woods
just_browsing6mo60

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. The post is both venting for the fun of it (which, clearly, landed with absolutely nobody here) and earnestly questioning whether the content is net positive (which, clearly, very few interpreted as being earnest): 

But honestly, is this content for the greater good? Are the clickbait titles causing people to earnestly engage? Are peoples’ minds being changed? Are people thinking thoughtfully about the facts and ideas being presented?

I don’t know. It seems like Kat Woods is spending a lot of time making these posts. Maybe, in true EA spirit, she’s also put effort into quantifying her impact. I want to give Kat Woods the person the benefit of the doubt here. [...] Certainly, personally, her content feels bad for my brain. 

There is precedent for brands and/or causes making bad memes and suffering backlash. I mention PETA in the post. Another example is this Pepsi commercial. There is also specifically precedent for memes getting backlash because they are dated, e.g. this Wendy's commercial. You might say that for brands all press is good press, but this seems less true to me when it comes to causes. 

I don't know a lot about PETA and whether their animal activism is considered net positive. On the one hand a cursory google seems to say they caused some vegetarian options at fast food restaurants to exist. On the other hand it wouldn't be surprising if they shifted public sentiment negatively towards vegetarianism or veganism. That's what most people think of when they think of PETA.

Anyway, you could imagine something similar happening with AI safety, where sufficiently bad memes cause people to not take it seriously. 

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Everywhere I Look, I See Kat Woods
just_browsing6mo85

Well put and I agree.

Karma is tricky as a measure because subreddits are non-stationary. In particular, I feel like the "vibes" of all the subreddits I listed were different 6+ months ago, and they are becoming more homogenous (in part due to power users such as Kat Woods). I don't know of a way to view what the "hot" page of any given subreddit would have looked like at some previous point in time, so it's hard to find data to understand subreddit culture drift. Anyway, the high karma is also consistent with selection effects, where the users who do not like this content bounce off, and only the users that do stick around those subreddits in the long term. 

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Everywhere I Look, I See Kat Woods
just_browsing6mo1-8

Typically I agree with the underlying facts behind her memes! For example I also think AI safety is a pressing issue. If her memes were funny I would instead be writing a post about how awesome it is that Kat Woods is everywhere. My main objection is that I do not like the packaging of the ideas she is spreading. For example the memes are not funny. (See the outline of this post: content, vibes, conduct.) 

You asked for an example of Kat Woods content that aims to convince rather than educate. Here is one recent example. I feel like the packaging of this meme conveys: "all of the objections you might have to the idea of X-risk via AI can actually be easily be debunked, therefore you would be stupid to not believe X-risk via AI". 

In reality, questions regarding likelihood of x-risk via AI are really tricky. Many thoughtful people have thought about these problems at great length and declared them to be hard and full of uncertainty. I feel like this meme doesn't convey this at all. Therefore, I'm not sure whether it is good for peoples' brains to consume this content. I will certainly say it's not good for my brain to consume this content.

Reply3
A transcript of the TED talk by Eliezer Yudkowsky
just_browsing2y41

Suggestion: could you also transcribe the Q&A? 4 out of the 10 minutes of content is Q&A. 

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What is the literature on long term water fasts?
Answer by just_browsingMay 16, 202321

Here I cite reddit posts, not literature, because /r/fasting has a lot of good anecdotal data, and many weight loss studies are limited in scope. 

The answers to any of these questions will likely depend on your starting weight. 

On Question 2: In theory this is just a function of your BMR (basal metabolic rate) and TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). For example, if you are large enough to have a TDEE of 3000kcal, then you will lose 1lb of body mass per day (how much is muscle vs fat unclear). 

In practice this is a bit of an overestimate. For anecdotal success stories you could go to /r/fasting. On Top All I see:

  • 104lbs lost in "4 months" (14 day fasts followed by 5 days keto at a slight deficit) = 104lbs in 90ish days of fasting  (morbidly obese man)
  • 90lbs lost in a 40 day water fast (morbidly obese man)
  • Many (often smaller) people doing OMAD, rolling 48, etc

Searching for "14 day" I see: (keep in mind, about 10+lbs of this is water weight)

  • 23lbs in 14 days
  • 30lbs in 14 days
  • 25lbs in 14 days

Common wisdom on this subreddit is you get 0.5lbs/day of "real fat loss" during an extended fast. 

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How to become more articulate?
just_browsing2y10

Retrospective: This comment was helpful

Write in order to organize your thoughts [...] then record yourself giving a short explanation of what you've learned about the topic [...] Watch the recording and process the emotions/discomforts with your speaking that come up

Haven't done the "record yourself" part but I have since started deliberately practicing explaining particular concepts. Typically I will practice it 5 times in a row, and after each time think carefully about what went well/poorly. Multiple comments suggested practice but I think this one resonated with me best (even though I'm not into focusing stuff) 

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How to become more articulate?
just_browsing2y10

Retrospective: I found this particularly helpful

Watch podcast interviews. Pay attention to how the host asks questions.

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How to become more articulate?
just_browsing2y20

Retrospective: I found this particularly helpful 

The best way to sound smart is to spend hours preparing something and present it as if you made it up on the spot. Really smart people will have a ton of prepared phrases, so many that they can talk on a wide variety of topics by saying something they already know how to say and just modifying it a little.

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A Brief Defense of Athleticism
just_browsing2y1610

I think you can 80/20 all this stuff by being "moderately active" instead of "an athlete". 

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On not getting contaminated by the wrong obesity ideas
just_browsing2y74

Average BMI in the United States increased from 25.2 in 1975 to 28.9 in 2014, so a 3 point increase. Compare an average 1975 person with an average 2014 person. It's far more likely that the 3 point increase is due to overeating, rather than other explanations like packing on muscle (3 whole points of muscle is a lot) or variation in bone mass (this is likely negligible). Overeating is the path of least resistance in wealthy Western countries. So yes, technically BMI is not the same thing as fatness, but they are highly correlated. 

Also as Rockenots points out, the direction of your height claim is going in the wrong way. BMI is an underestimate for fatness for very tall people. For example, a healthy weight 6'2" man's BMI might be 17 or 18, which according to the standard BMI scale is underweight. That's why measures like better BMI exist.

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