Lakin

Karma: 349

Lakin 27 Nov 2023 21:06 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Public Call for Interest in Mathematical Alignment
Related: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tLb86DhrTYgkXw5Hf/apply-to-the-conceptual-boundaries-workshop-for-ai-safety

Lakin 23 Nov 2022 14:21 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Joel Tan’s comment on: Shallow Report on Hypertension
oh cool! (Also I’m glad you proactively acknowledge the eg saturated fat)
Also, are there risks to over-reduction in salt intake?
Hmmmm. I’m suspicious is because it doesn’t make any sense for anyone to decide what’s best for me. (Sure, educate me instead, whatever.) (I’m particularly suspicious of this because of the discourse I’ve seen around proposed ‘meat taxes’, typically pedaled by people who think the climate and nutritional (and ethical) effects are far worse than I think they are. So I’m worried about the same thing here.)

Lakin 22 Nov 2022 2:26 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Shallow Report on Hypertension
Couple things (I’ve only skimmed the post):
1. How certain are you that increased sodium consumption causes hypertension? (I’m skeptical of this personally)
  1. (Do prediction markets exist on this? Could you make one?)
2. How certain are you that decreasing increased sodium consumption causes not less hypertension, but also less mortality/more DALYs overall? Some interventions are backwards like this. (E.g. Limiting sun exposure fairly certainly decreases skin cancer, but it also might fairly significantly increase mortality, on net)
3. Why specifically taxation, instead of other ways to influence individual behavior? (Taxation seems rather coercive IMO, an overstepping of bounds of individuals by their government)
(I have more questions like this but I’ll leave just these three for now.)

Lakin 14 Nov 2022 1:23 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Jason’s comment on: Thoughts on legal concerns surrounding the FTX situation
Are you thinking that the community should consider collectively insuring against the risk of a megadonor going underwater in the future?
Yeah something like that. Just trying to think of a way to make a market out of due-diligence.

Lakin 14 Nov 2022 0:27 UTC
1 point
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on: Thoughts on legal concerns surrounding the FTX situation
Is there an insurance product that covers clawbacks?

Lakin 13 Nov 2022 21:24 UTC
31 points
7 ∶ 1
on: Announcing Nonlinear Emergency Funding
Hm, how could this interact with hypothetical clawbacks?
E.g.
1. your org has $0
2. your org receives $100 from FTXF, now your org has $100
3. your org spends $50 of that money, and then decides to stop
4. your org receive $10 from Nonlinear, now your org has $60
5. the clawback effort comes to your org and says “hey we need $100”. org say “I don’t have $100, I only have $50″
6. Does the clawback effort then say “No actually you have $60, we’re taking all $60” because of money fungibility?

Lakin 12 Nov 2022 20:32 UTC
9 points
7 ∶ 0
on: Ways to buy time
The title of this made me think “ways to buy time [with money in your personal life]” rather than “ways to buy time [in AI safety]”

Lakin 2 Nov 2022 20:53 UTC
−3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: How effective are prizes at spurring innovation?
wow

Lakin 12 Oct 2022 22:24 UTC
5 points
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on: We can do better than argmax
Animals do this intuitively:
Pigeons were presented with two buttons in a Skinner box, each of which led to varying rates of food reward. The pigeons tended to peck the button that yielded the greater food reward more often than the other button, and the ratio of their rates to the two buttons matched the ratio of their rates of reward on the two buttons.
Matching Law

Lakin 14 Sep 2022 17:02 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 1
on: “Agency” needs nuance
I’m glad you wrote this! I was worried about your previous post, and was thinking about writing something on this dimension myself.
It’s funny: this could’ve been mostly avoided by a consideration of Chesterton’s Fence and the EMH? (“If AGENCY was so good, why wouldn’t everyone do it?”)
Anyways, I’m now worried about e.g. high school summer camp programs that prioritize the development of unbalanced agency.

Lakin 5 Sep 2022 13:22 UTC
13 points
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on: Effective altruism in the garden of ends
Thank you for writing about what pushed me away from the EA community. The force to make all else instrumental. Best of luck

Lakin 14 Jul 2022 18:40 UTC
30 points
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in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: Criticism of EA Criticism Contest
I’ve known many EAs. Many have been vegan and many have not (I’m not). I’ve never seen anyone “treat [someone] as non-serious (or even evil)” based on their diet.
I’ve had this happen fwiw.

Lakin 24 Jun 2022 17:49 UTC
5 points
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on: Apply to join SHELTER Weekend this August
I think #3 is the most important question and the most likely way that shelters fail

Lakin 25 May 2022 18:35 UTC
9 points
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on: Open Philanthropy’s Cause Exploration Prizes: $120k for written work on global health and wellbeing
Should no overlap with FTX’s project ideas competition be assumed? (Links: Announcement, Awards)

Lakin 21 May 2022 12:38 UTC
8 points
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on: Most students who would agree with EA ideas haven’t heard of EA yet (results of a large-scale survey)
Hm… of 7.4% of students who are familiar with EA, only 17.6% of those students (1.3%/7.3%) are pro-EA and 82% are not. What fraction did we expect here?

Lakin 19 May 2022 21:00 UTC
44 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Some potential lessons from Carrick’s Congressional bid
There’s a weird detail I see in this post that seems to overemphasize the campaign’s success:
Yes, Carrick lost. But he came in second out of nine, despite several factors pushing pretty strongly against him. Had things shaken out differently on a few key factors, he could have won.
and
So the fact that Carrick came in second, despite several (in the future, mostly avoidable) factors strongly pushing against him, and no comparable unique factors pushing in his favor, makes me more optimistic about the prospects of any future EAs who decide to run. To be concrete, my personal best guess is that >30% of American EAs would have at least a decent shot (say, >20%) of making it into Congress if they chose to dedicate themselves to their local community and spend time practicing the appropriate communication skills.
However, Carrick only received half as many votes as the winning candidate (results). Maybe this wasn’t immediately clear as the data was tentative, but I find it hard to update much on this data.

Lakin 12 May 2022 16:04 UTC
8 points
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on: Bad Omens in Current Community Building
Can confirm that other groups/subcultures have begun to see EA as a deceitful cult because of stuff like this

Lakin 4 May 2022 1:15 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Doing good easier: how to have passive impact
One of the best passive impact examples I know is Eneasz Brodski’s recording of HPMoR. (Also, can we retroactively reward this?)

Lakin 3 May 2022 15:26 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: A retroactive grant for creating the HPMoR audiobook (Eneasz Brodski)?
update: Eneasz has confirmed that there has not been

Lakin 3 May 2022 15:15 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Linch’s comment on: A retroactive grant for creating the HPMoR audiobook (Eneasz Brodski)?
ah, yes, this is the obvious thing to do. Ty, I’ve messaged him over email and facebook.
update: he has confirmed that there has not been