NunoSempere
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User ID: 1101
NunoSempere
5mo ago
German grammar
I am not talking about grammar, I am talking about speech as practiced.
almost entirely negative German stereotypes
based on experience about a specific caste/subgroup of Germans. I contend this is valid, in the same way that, e.g., talking about Puritan ethics or values or attributes is valid. I could go on about the positive aspects, but the negatives are more salient, since we are talking about the limitations of language, rather than, e.g., the benefits of discipline.
and the example of a fictional Frenchman from a 19th century novel
also a 1892 book, in case you find that more persuasive. You might find the Google translation of the title a bit interesting. But I think that the Javert example captures the core intuition. If you are a Javert kid, surrounded by Javert parents and Javert peers which utter Javert phrases, it's pretty intuitive to me how you will grow to mimick those utterances.
NunoSempere
9mo ago
I think military greatness is a red-herring here: I don't think that it's a realistic shot at greatness for readers here. Starting a religion, or a billion-dollar startup, or a social/political movement seems much easier.
Maybe I'm just rehashing 'good times breed weak men, weak men make harsh times'.
Maybe so, but it's a useful handle nonetheless.
Elon Musk and Dominic Cummings are the closest we have to the great men 'type' today, aiming for performance above all else. Elon Musk is widely hated and disliked by the usual suspects in government and acceptable society
I'm not sure about them two. I prefer Peter Thiel as an example. He was:
- able to shut down Gawker
- able to create several scalable companies: Paypal, Palantir, Founders Fund
- able to spread his worldview around, through books, the Thiel Fellowship, etc.
- able to make multi-year political plans (endorse Trump, give very high salaries to people who could later run for office, to get around spending limits), even if these didn't work out (Trump doesn't seem to have consulted him for much, his candidates didn't win the elections)
and like, these aren't world-changing, but he's still got time, and he isn't constrained by fickle political winds.
NunoSempere
9mo ago
Respectfully disagree. Though it's hard to say whether we do disagree in substance. Maybe you think that trying to be maximally ambitious is always misguided, and I'd agree that being misguided + maximally ambitious is not something to be admired? idk.
NunoSempere
11mo ago
would pay for some of them if not for my desire to be anonymous
Happy to be paid in monero. You can reach out to me at nuno.semperelh@protonmail.com with a burner account.
NunoSempere
4mo ago
NunoSempere
5mo ago
Just Look At the Germans. The way these minds are shackled by man-made categories was really obvious to me, as a foreigner from Spain:
- In a charity I was volunteering, they made emphasis in having processes, structures, sub-groups responsible for categories of work. Sadly, despite this, not much got done.
- Their morality is base on some concept of what is MORALLY CORRECT that doesn't leave much place for uncertainty. Sure, let's shut down nuclear plants and crippling the economy and industrial base, because it is MORALLY CORRECT. Let's vote for the Greens, because they are the MORALLY CORRECT party.
- You wouldn't cross an empty street when the traffic light is red, even if you can see that there aren't any cars coming, because it wouldn't be MORALLY CORRECT
- Look at the way Switzerland's nuclear weapons programme went: they established a subcomittee to study the possibility, and when that didn't work, they established a second subcomittee, which produced a report, which... you get the idea.
- The way you learn math is by understanding a finite list of concepts and methods, going subject by subject
- Rather than by having a problem and looking for an algorithm/tooling/approach which solves it.
- To understand language and communication, you differentiate between sense and meaning; you seek to understand language by presenting categories for it.
- Consider Javert from Les Miserables. He is hunting the sympathetic protagonist because he is A CRIMINAL, and criminals are DANGEROUS TO SOCIETY and must be BROUGHT TO JUSTICE.
In a stylized way, there is a common way of being amongst Germans which is something like, implicit Aristotelianism? There are categories, which are so robust that they need not be questioned, and which can be a source of comfort and security in this uncertain world. This is why we should choose a subcomittee to address the subcategory of Strategic Dialogue, which is different from Cooperative Dialogue (of which a different committe is responsible).
To be clear, though, I admire some parts of it, like the work ethic, the strong economy (particularly compared to my more chill Spain), the part of their moral structure that ends up helping other people. Also, do note that this is just one subculture in the geographical Germany.
So, throughout, what alternatives could my stylized German be missing?
- Deep understanding (vs shallow understanding based on classification)
- Employing categories as shortcuts (vs as pillars, as fundaments)
- Rules as constraints that can sometimes be bent (vs as MORALLY CORRECT commandments)
- Finding approximate solutions through brute force and simulations (vs analytic solutions through applying a finite list of manipulations)
- Moral relativism (as opposed to moral realism)
- The Israeli nuclear weapons programme (as opposed to the Swiss)
- Not having a stick up your own ass (as opposed to having a stick up your own ass)
Now, there is a question, which part of this is language, and which part of this is culture? Yeah, I mean, you can definitely have a chill German, but the tradition, the language games, the way language is used in practice by the richer social strata, the utterances that people make in practice and that they grow up with, do contain and transmit these blindspots.
NunoSempere
8mo ago
Nice post, thanks for writting it
NunoSempere
9mo ago
I mean, we don't have a small number of clearly achievable goals, but if you pick N major human drives, the question then becomes why aren't we better at attaining all the major human drives, and formidability would just be a shorthand for becoming better across all these dimensions. But I'd in fact think that excellency in various domains does correlate.
On top of this, being formidable for long enough, in an impressive enough position for people to take note, requires huge amounts of luck over a long period
Sure, but we don't see that many people taking their shot at greatness come what may rather than wasting away in their cubicle jobs.
NunoSempere
9mo ago
Why are we not better, harder, faster, stronger
Now here: https://nunosempere.com/blog/2023/07/19/better-harder-faster-stronger/ (on the motte here: https://www.themotte.org/post/593/why-are-we-not-harder-better). I'm curious to get your perspective.
My consulting rates are now here: https://nunosempere.com/consulting/. I'll put up a list of bounties in a while; if you are particularly interested, I have an RSS endpoint here: https://nunosempere.com/blog/index.rss (or you could sign up per email, if you are a wimp: https://nunosempere.com/.subscribe/)
NunoSempere
1yr ago
Thanks for your long and thoughtful comment, /u/magic9mushroom. I appreciate it, and you bring up some good points.
That said, I'm kind of miffled that you don't quite mention why you believe the things that you believe. The obvious answer to why is that you cover a lot of points, and you are already covering a wide range of topics, so going into the whys would take too much time. But at the same time, I've also observed that pattern in other discussions (e.g. here and here), and it sort of makes me think that we could do better.
NunoSempere
1yr ago
I don't necessarily disagree. In particular, I think that from the considerations I mention, we can conclude that the specifics of how the x-risk would develop are still up in the air, and that his is somewhat valuable info.
NunoSempere
1yr ago
Log in
Heads up that I couldn't log in with my normal username and password.
NunoSempere
1yr ago
which means few have any idea
...which means that questions were selected for being uncertaint
I have yet to see anyone who can do it well
maybe you're not hanging out in the right places
NunoSempere
9mo ago
A. There is a heap of inertia B. Enthusiastic people with a grand plan are working in fields which already have inertia C. Therefore enthusiastic people which have a grand plan will be bogged down in that previously existing inertia.
I mean, sure. But then the answer would seem to not work inside fields which already have huge amounts of negative inertia: to try to explore new fields, or to in fact try to create a greenfield site. To give a small example, the Motte does happen to be its own effort, and thus seems less bogged down. Or, many open source projects were started pretty much from scratch.
Any thoughts on why people don't avoid fields with huge amounts of inertia? Otherwise the inertia hypothesis doesn't sound that explanatory to me.
NunoSempere
11mo ago
Breezewiki is good. And in general, OP might want to look into https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension
NunoSempere
1yr ago
This could be solved by offering bets. In particular, Insight Prediction has a bunch of liquid markets: https://insightprediction.com/c/5/russia-ukraine
The alternative is not only Open Philanthropy/the NHS/the government listening to people. It's the people organizing themselves civically, independently, and more unconstrainedly. For this you don't need to have barriers to entry of the kinds you are thinking of, you need for the community to not have atrophied a muscle of organizing things of its own initiative, using its own resources, with its own labour. As an example, consider the Informal Anarchist Federation.
"if your argument is just that "The current, top-down model has costs"
I'm arguing on the margin. Yes, the current top model has costs, and I think that on reflection these are much higher than when EA is advertising itself, which should lead to other alternatives looking better on the margin. I'm saying that, if one reflects on these dynamics, for some fraction of people who buy deeply into EA, the costs will have been too high. Maybe the trouble is that I'm not arguing "EA as a whole should", but rather at the level of individuals.
NunoSempere
5mo ago
German grammar
Actually, now that I think about it, German has the feature that in composite phrases (i.e., most phrases saying anything complicated), the verb is at the end. This makes sentences messier. It's possible that having strong categories could be a crutch to make such long sentences understandable.
Not sure to what extent that is a just-so story, though.
NunoSempere
9mo ago
Bismark Analysis has a pretty great analysis of Soros here: https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/p/the-legacy-of-george-soros-open-society, which might be of interest.
NunoSempere
9mo ago
You could also choose nuclear energy, better vaccines & pandemic prevention, better urban planning. etc. Or even in education, things like Khan Academy, Wikipedia, the Arch Wiki, edx, Stack Overflow,... provide value and make humanity more formidable. Thinking about those examples, do you still get the sense of pessimism, almost defeatism in your previous comments?
NunoSempere
9mo ago
Mmh, I see what you are saying. But on the other hand, there is such a thing as a Pareto frontier. Some points on that pareto frontier, such that you can't fulfill more needs without sacrificing previous gains, might be:
- monomaniacal formidability. You are a titan of industry and you to ignore your family because you just care that much about, idk, going to Mars.
- a life of bucolic contemplation and satisfaction.
- a flourishing family-values life, caring for your children and the members of your clan
- a life of hedonism, enjoyment and vice
- etc.
- some mix of the above, e.g., having a good career AND a family AND having fun AND ...
Like, if I look at my actions, I don't get the impression that I'm on any kind of Pareto frontier, where, idk, listening more to my in-the-moment curiosity trades off against the success of my romantic relationships, which trades off against professional success. It seems like I could just be... better on all fronts? Contradictorily, there is a sense in which I am "doing the best I can at every given moment", but it feels incomplete, and doesn't always ring true. Sorry for the rambling here.
For your example, making your same comment in the morning seems like it could plausibly be a better choice.
I think your first priority should be in finding reliable ways to prioritise and focus on long-term goals.
Yeah, maybe. My discount rates have increased a bunch after the fall of FTX, since their foundation was using some of the tools I was working on for the last few years. So now I'm a bit more hesitant about doing longer term stuff that relies on other people, and also, sadly, longer term stuff in general.
Updating in the face of anthropic effects is possible
Now here: https://nunosempere.com/blog/2023/05/11/updating-under-anthropic-effects/. Pasting the content to save you a link:
Status: Simple point worth writting up clearly.
Motivating example
You are a dinosaur astronomer about to encounter a sequence of big and small meteorites. If you see a big meteorite, you and your whole kin die. So far you have seen n small meteorites. What is your best guess as to the probability that you will next see a big meteorite?
In this example, there is an anthropic effect going on. Your attempt to estimate the frequency of big meteorites is made difficult by the fact that when you see a big meteorite, you immediately die. Or, in other words, no matter what the frequency of big meteorites is, conditional on you still being alive, you'd expect to only have seen small meteorites so far. For instance, if you had reason to believe that around 90% of meteorites are big, you'd still expect to only have seen small meteorites so far.
This makes it difficult to update in the face of historical observations.
Updating after observing latent variables
Now you go to outer space, and you observe the mechanism that is causing these meteorites. You see that they are produced by Dinosaur Extinction Simulation Society Inc., that the manual mentions that it will next produce a big asteroid and hurl it at you, and that there is a big crowd gathered to see a meteorite hit your Earth. Then your probability of getting hit rises, regardless of the historical frequency of small meteorites and the lack of any big ones.
Or conversely, you observe that most meteorites come from some cloud of debris in space that is made of small asteroids, and through observation of other solar systems you conclude that large meteorites almost never happen. And for good measure you build a giant space laser to incercept anything that comes your way. Then your probability of of getting hit with a large meteorite lowers, regardless of the anthropic effects.
The core point is that in the presence of anthropic effects, you can still reason and receive evidence about the latent variables and mechanistic factors which affect those anthropic effects.
What latent variables might look like in practice
Here are some examples of "latent variables" in the real world:
-
Institutional competence
-
The degree of epistemic competence and virtue which people who warn of existential risk display
-
The degree of plausibility of the various steps towards existential risk
-
The robustness of the preventative measures in place
-
etc.
In conclusion
In conclusion, you can still update in the face of anthropic effects by observing latent variables and mechanistic effects. As a result, it's not the case that you can't have forecasting questions or bets that are informative about existential risk, because you can make those questions and bets about the latent variables and early steps in the mechanistic chance. I think that this point is both in-hindsight-obvious, and also pretty key to thinking clearly about anthropic effects.
NunoSempere
11mo ago
I'm curious which ones you (or other motte people) think would be most interesting for you in particular, rather than "useful in general".
Neat piece, thanks for writing it.
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