SeñorDingDong

This framing is helpful.

I think the median position in rationalist circles is probably the following: There's no reason to care about heritable IQ gaps, and good reason to not publicly discuss them. E.g., in this comment. 

If one was to survey all the frontpage articles on Lesswrong over the last 6/9 months, how many turn on the heritable IQ gap? Very few, as far as I can tell. 

Showing I am wrong in this assessment (e.g., in a short post collecting 4-5 highly upvoted posts which shows how omitting heritable IQ from their world model has caused confusion or ... (read more)

Interesting post! Personally, I would have liked more soft and hard data. 

For the former, the lack of anecdota or specific examples of residents meant I didn't feel the emotions I normally feel in a town without children. The book Children of Men does this quite well - capturing the spiritual sense of 'what is this all for?' There is something very sombre about 1-2 people left remaining in a town which previously held hundreds and sometimes even thousands. Before-after comparisons show this powerfully. Satellite image comparisons using birthrate proxies? 

F... (read more)

So overall, despite the limitations on the role of philosophy in AI alignment that I discussed above, I do think it’s nevertheless important that our AIs do philosophy in the ways we’d endorse.

I find the tone or vibe of this essay fluctuates. Sometimes the tone is 'powerful AI is coming and we better make sure it wants to do the right kind of philosophy', which imo seems incredibly fraught. The world where the manipulation example is a live problem is absurdly dangerous. 

Other times - especially in section 3, I get the vibe that philosophy is less rel... (read more)

Re: Soft Law. Today, I agree it is mostly wordcel bullshit.

But in the 1950s and 1960s? Quite influential, especially with US + friends, even without the threat of 'bombs.' Many of the moral and legal norms on bioethics are the downstream result of soft-law promulgated in the postwar period. 

To get in this headspace, think of a UN resolution taking up space in the major national newspaper for several weeks, or even months. A world where single books and conferences routinely defined the future of fields and movements (e.g. Silent Spring) because of its relative media undersaturation. 

Very helpful. If you are interested in adding a section about other countries/regions, I have done some research on various regulatory regimes (mainly in Europe). Happy to share. 

I think this might explain the difference in framing? From the quote below, I assumed you were trying to come up with a fully general solution to the problem you specify: 

What I think Wat Do is, figure out how to build a political network that is powerful enough to have leverage, but, is still based on a solid foundation of epistemic trust.

But I see now that you were taking the existence of a community of sane, reasonable, and mostly value-aligned participants as a given, and instead focusing on a framework which could make their interaction with the ... (read more)

Have you ever read Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"? You can have as many checks and balances and clever system frameworks as you want, but at some point you just need people to believe in democracy. That is to say, your model of good government is never going to be complete without some kind of model of culture and shared values. 

Maybe talking about culture - which is fuzzy, historical, symbolic, and social - is outside your wheelhouse. So what? Maybe clever system design and creating good incentive structures is outside my competency - that does... (read more)

Some points:

1. "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." Brevity & elegance =/= low-effort. 

2. Footnotes/endnotes, collapsable boxes, and appendices exist for a reason. Good writing succinctly conveys an idea and withstands deeper scrutiny. The internet is not paper. 

3. Often a few in-depth reads > a million skims. Small group dynamics are potent - e.g., NrX and Mencius Moldbug, or early Tumblr. True for both development of ideas & influence. 

4. "You will never have any control over what random people find inter... (read more)

The practical solution that medieval courts arrived at, and later the British and American admiralty, was the ship itself does.

This is not false, but unhelpfully misleading when compared to corporations. The medieval reference is presumably referring to deodand law, which has little to do legal personhood in the sense most people are interested in. 

The description of the legal personification of the vessel is accurate, but it can hardly be said that ships are 'accorded the rank of person' analogously to a corporation. 

That said, if we are g... (read more)

This post surely cannot be complete without a mention of the Soviet petrol-powered rocket boots. 

If it is of interest, I carried out a highly informal reddit survey on the birthrate in the context of Scotland's TFR being below that of Japan (with a summary here). 

A common reason for not having children was the cost in terms of health, time, stress, freedom to travel, plan holidays, and move house. These are mostly invariant with income (unless you can afford a full-time nanny) and are the natural product of "good parenting" norms/obligations. 

(which, it should be noted, are often reasonable: I think being a good parent does require spending ... (read more)

This is fun (although endless, especially if we include things related to deliberate/semi-deliberate signalling), here are a few: 

(1) Hobby-related examples. Callouses on the palm in the spot where fingers connect to hand (e.g. like weightlifting callouses) , and on the thumb (on the side facing towards the other fingers), is quite commonly due to rowing. E.g., the friction of the oar rotating around the fingers and thumb holding it. Crooked nose sometimes indicates repeated breaking - high contact sports or plain fighting most common. From experience... (read more)

A sensible point, though dating yin to the advent of 'modern civilization' is too extreme. The 'spiritual' or 'yin-like' aspects of green have a long history pre-dating modern civilization.

The level of material security required before one can 'indulge in yin' is probably extremely low (though of course strongly dependent on local environmental conditions). 

Under this definition of 'manipulation', telling someone about a new brand of toothpaste is manipulation, which suggests to me that this framing is overly broad. 

The question is whether you believe in any form of personal autonomy, such that a person can be responsible for their own internal changes, even if stimulated by someone or something else. Day to day life suggests this is a useful concept, and that there is a meaningful distinction between being lied to and being given true information, just as there is between coercive-control and sad movies... (read more)

Like: what happens if you read a book, or watch a documentary, or fall in love, or get some kind of indigestion – and then your heart is never exactly the same ever again, and not because of Reason, and then the only possible vector of non-trivial long-term value in this bleak and godless lightcone has been snuffed out?!

I'm finding it hard to parse this, perhaps someone can clarify for me. At first I assumed this was a problem inherent in the 'naturalist' view Scott Alexander gives: 

"This is only a problem for ethical subjectivists like myself,

The section on bears reminded me of a short story by Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) called 'The Bears of Namotoko.' Here's an internet archive translation with illustrations. To give a quick summary: 

Does your argument also apply to physical sports? If not, what makes table tennis different from monopoly? 

I think your analogy gestures at something useful but needs expansion. The 'roofie detector gadget' example could be reframed in a way which disempowers - eg, 'it's your fault for not using this gadget', or 'well you really ought to have used this gadget', etc. 

This suggests to me subject matter of the advice is less important than its underlying motive or attitude. I think advice will generally be disempowering if it presupposes the level of risk a person can acceptably run. Contrast the following: 'well, you were wearing revealing clothes' versus 'y... (read more)