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I’ve spent endless hours on message boards for [...] Slatestarcodex readers; neither of which ever really discuss [...] Scott Alexander’s writing, but rather, are just hubs for the types of oddballs who like [...] Slatestarcodex to talk about stuff that people with these personality traits like to talk about.

From the other side, this probably also explains why I don't like the SSC/ACX related message boards.

ACX has much wider audience than LW, so "the kind of person who reads ACX" reduces to something like "an intelligent person who identifies as a contrarian and enjoys reading long texts", which may be a group that happens to include me, but it also includes many people I prefer to avoid.

I like the fact that Scott writes about different topics, but the downside is that now neither of those topics works as a hard filter. For example, whenever Scott directly or indirectly mentions effective altruism, some people are going to write in the comments how the entire idea is stupid. (That irritates me a lot; even if I am not an EA myself, doesn't mean that I am a fan of conspicuous talking smack about altruism in general.) So why do they keep reading the blog? Because there are also many articles on other interesting topics. So if you visit the message board, you will still find those people, but you won't find Scott there to balance their negativity.

Offline ACX meetups are okay though. Apparently being able to walk away from the computer is a hard filter.

I think the people who say such things don't really care, and would probably include your advice in the list of quotes they consider funny. (In other words, this is not a "mistake theory" situation.)

EDIT:

The response is too harsh, I think. There are situations where this is a useful advice. For example, if someone is acting under peer pressure, then telling them this may provide a useful outside view. As the Asch's Conformity Experiment teaches us, the first dissenting voice can be extremely valuable. It just seems unlikely that this is the robosucka's case.

The traditional technology used for similar purposes in some cultures is alcohol. The idea is that as alcohol impairs thinking, it impairs the ability to lie convincingly even more. Especially considering that even if one drunk person lies successfully to another drunk person, the next day the other person can reflect on the parts they remember with a sober mind.

Thus, alcohol is an imperfect lie detector with a few harmful side effects; and in cultures where it is popular, groups of friends do this together, and conspicuously avoiding it will provide evidence against your sincerity.

If I were ever unsure whether I could trust the word of a friend on an important matter, I'd think that would represent deeper issues than a mere lack of information a scan of their brain could provide.

Friendships exist on a scale. If you switch from "a stranger" to "100% trusted person" too quickly, you probably have some unpleasant surprises waiting for you in the future. Also, friendship is not transitive, and sometimes you need to know whether you can trust a friend of a friend (even when your friend says "yes"). I know some people whom I trust, but I definitely do not trust their judgment about other people.

Here is another explanation, kind of:

Taylor expansion of 1/(1+x)^2 is 1 - 2x + 3x^2 - 4x^3 + 5x^4...

When x = 1, it means that 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5... = 1/4

But 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5... can be written as 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5... - 2×2 - 2×4 - 2×6...

= 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5... - 2×(2 + 4 + 6...)

= 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5... - 2×2×(1 + 2 + 3...)

= (1 - 2×2) × (1 + 2 + 3...)

= -3 × (1 + 2 + 3...)

So if 1 - 2 + 3 - 4 + 5... = 1/4, we get:

1/4 = -3 × (1 + 2 + 3...)

-1/12 = 1 + 2 + 3...

(Found here.)

Yeah, I think it is okay to simplify things when someone puts an explicit disclaimer like "this is a simplification" or "this is not literally true, but it is an attempt to point in a certain direction".

But without such disclaimer, I will assume "once clickbait, always clickbait", especially when the priors on people being stupid on internet are so high.

If you want to experiment with alcohol, I would recommend trying it at home, with a trusted friend. Less social pressure, more pleasant environment, no need to solve the logistics of driving home, no problem if you e.g. start vomiting.

Decide in advance how much you want to try. Do not change your decision after you started drinking. For example, if you choose that today you want to try one glass of wine, do that, but if after drinking the first glass you decide that it was okay and you can try another... don't! (Ask your friend to help you keep your commitments, and evaluate their reliability based on if they actually do that.) The reason is that if you actually happen to be not okay, then you reasoning is untrustworthy. Sometimes, the more drunk people get, the more loudly they insist they are sober. (This is not a general rule, for example I am quite aware how drunk I am, but... I have seen other people do exactly this, and they just can't be convinced.)

Keep some records for your future self? Ask your friend to record you doing some tasks, such as walking along a straight line, juggling, singing, explaining a math problem, doing some introspection about how you feel. So that you can compare how you felt at the moment, vs how it seemed from outside. (Sometimes people feel very creative or smart when they are drunk, but to those around them they are not.)

Do not drink too late in the evening; give yourself some time to get sober before you go to bed, maybe at least three hours. I don't have a car, so I don't know how much time it takes after drinking to be able to drive; I think 24 hours should be safe.

Alcohol strength from low to high:

  • American beer
  • non-American beer
  • wine
  • distillates (vodka)

Your reaction to alcohol probably depends on the kind of alcohol, on its amount, on your genetics, and on your previous exposure (exposure increases tolerance, but it you become a heavy drinker, it might also decrease it). As an American with no previous exposure, perhaps start with the American beer.

(My guess would be that the amount that obviously does something noticeable to you, but doesn't result in anything bad, could be 1 bottle of beer, 2 deciliters of wine, or 1/2 deciliter of vodka.)

Many alcoholic drinks are basically a mix of a distillate, water, and flavor. So their strength depends on the amount of alcohol, which can range from very low to very high. You can't guess the strength by the taste, because the taste mostly depends on the non-alcoholic parts of the drink. For example a mix of vodka and the right kind/amount of fruit juice can result in a drink that tastes completely innocent and will knock you out before you even realize you were drinking something alcoholic.

Keep some water or other non-alcoholic drink at hand, so you won't drink more alcohol merely because you got thirsty (and too lazy/drunk to walk to the nearest water source).

It is generally recommended not to drink different types of alcohol at the same event. Not sure why, but it is one of those "it is known" things that most people follow. (My guess is that drinking different kinds of alcohol makes it more difficult to track intuitively how much you had? Like, a bottle of wine sounds like too much, but if you had a bottle of beer and a glass of wine and a little glass of vodka, then is still kinda sounds safe... or maybe it is not... and you do not have the mental capacity to figure it out at the moment.)

It takes maybe 5-30 minutes after drinking for the effect to appear at full strength. The effect is stronger on empty stomach; weaker if you eat e.g. bacon before drinking vodka. Physically demanding activity, such as dancing, helps metabolize the alcohol faster. (If you drink alcohol and do a physically demanding activity, remember to also drink enough water.)

Different people react differently to alcohol. Some get aggressive, others get cuddly; some feel full of energy, others feel sleepy; some forget what happened, others remember everything perfectly. Some get addicted, others don't, not sure what makes the difference. Alcohol addiction is really bad!

As usual with drugs, most people who volunteer the advice are the ones you should not listen to (yes, I am aware of the irony), because obviously the ones with most experience are the addicts, and you do not want to do the things they consider okay. Also, people are fucking hypocrites about the drugs they like vs don't like, mostly based on peer pressure; for example most rationalists consider drinking alcohol stupid and low-status... and then they overdose on some drug that happened to be popular in the Bay Area, because someone told them it was high-status and expanding their intellectual experience or whatever. I prefer alcohol, but I can also go for months without it, so I guess I am okay.

Analogies can be found in many places. FDA prevents you from selling certain kinds of food? Sounds similar to ancient priests declaring food taboos for their followers. Vaccination? That's just modern people performing a ritual to literally protect them from invisible threats. They even believe that a bad thing will happen to them if someone else in their neighborhood refuses to perform the ritual properly.

The difference is that we already have examples of food poisoning or people dying from a disease, but we do not have an example of a super-intelligent AI exterminating the humanity. That is a fair objection, but it is also clear why waiting to get the example first might be a wrong approach, so...

One possible approach is to look at smaller versions. What is a smaller version of "a super-intelligent AI exterminating the humanity"? If it is "a stupid program doing things its authors clearly did not intend", then every software developer has stories to tell.

This is not the full answer, of course, but I think that a reasonable debate should be more like this.

I agree that in long term, seller's market is the answer (and in the era of AGI, keeping it so will probably require some kind of UBI). But the market is not perfect, so the ban is useful to address those cases. Sometimes people are inflexible -- I have seen people tolerate more than they should, considering their market position they apparently were not aware/sure of. Transaction costs, imperfect information, etc.

Seems to me that debates about (de)regulation often conflate two different things, which probably are not clearly separated but exist on a continuum. One is that people are different. Another is cooperation vs defection in Prisoner's Dilemma (also known as sacrifice to Moloch).

From the "people are different" perspective, the theoretical ideal would be to let everyone do their own thing, unless the advantages of cooperation clearly outweigh the benefits of freedom.

From the "Moloch" perspective, it would be best for the players if defection was banned/punished.

As an example, should it be okay for an employee to have a sexual relation with their boss? From the "people are different" perspective, hey, if two people genuinely desire to have sex with each other, why should they be forbidden to do so, if they are both consenting adults? From the "Moloch" perspective, we have just added "provide sexual services to your boss and pretend that you like it" to the list of things that desperate poor people have to do in order to get a job.

And both these perspectives are legitimate, for different people in different situations, and it is easy to forget that the other situation exists (and to have this blind spot supported by your bubble).

Simply asking people about their genuine preferences is not enough, because of possible preference falsification. Imagine the person who desperately needs the job -- if you asked them whether they are genuinely okay with having sex with their boss, they might conclude that saying "no" means not getting the job. People could lie even if a specific job is not on the line, simply because taking a certain position sends various social signals, such as "I feel economically (in)secure".

But if we cannot reliably find out people's preferences, it is not possible to have a policy "it is OK only if it is really OK for you", and without an anonymous survey we can't even figure out which solution would be preferable for most people. (In near future, an AI will probably compile a list of your publicly stated opinions for HR before the job interview.) So we are left guessing.

Steelmanning is not the Ideological Turing Test.

ITT = simulating the other side

SM = can I extract something useful for myself from the other side's arguments

With ITT, my goal is to have a good model of the other side. That can be instrumentally useful to predict their behavior, or to win more debates against them (because they are less likely to surprise me). That is, ITT is socially motivated activity. If I knew that the other side will disappear tomorrow and no one will want to talk about them, ITT would be a waste of time.

With SM, my goal is to improve my model of the world. The other side is unimportant, except as a potential source of true information that may be currently in my blind spot. That is, SM is a selfishly motivated activity. Whether the other side approves of my steelman of them, is irrelevant; my activity is not aimed at them.

SM is trying to find a diamond in a heap of dung. ITT is learning to simulate someone who enjoys the dung.

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