All of Lakin's Comments + Replies
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.)
Couple things (I've only skimmed the post):
- How certain are you that increased sodium consumption causes hypertension? (I'm skeptical of this personally)
- (Do prediction markets exist on this? Could you make one?)
- 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)
- Why specifically taxation, in
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.
Hm, how could this interact with hypothetical clawbacks?
E.g.
- your org has $0
- your org receives $100 from FTXF, now your org has $100
- your org spends $50 of that money, and then decides to stop
- your org receive $10 from Nonlinear, now your org has $60
- the clawback effort comes to your org and says "hey we need $100". org say "I don't have $100, I only have $50"
- Does the clawback effort then say "No actually you have $60, we're taking all $60" because of money fungibility?
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]"
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.
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.
Thank you for writing about what pushed me away from the EA community. The force to make all else instrumental. Best of luck
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.
I've had pushback about not being vegan/vegetarian, but I perceive it to be a thing a small fraction of EAs push other people on rather than a general norm.
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?
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 concr
Can confirm that other groups/subcultures have begun to see EA as a deceitful cult because of stuff like this
I've seen people make these complaints about EA since it first came to exist.
As EA becomes bigger and better-known, I expect to see a higher volume of complaints even if the average person's impression remains the same/gets a bit better (though I'm not confident that's the case either).
This includes groups with no prior EA contact learning about it and deciding they don't like it — but I think they'd have had the same reaction at any point in EA's history.
Are there notable people or groups whose liking/trust of EA has, in your view, gone down over time?
One of the best passive impact examples I know is Eneasz Brodski's recording of HPMoR. (Also, can we retroactively reward this?)
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
have you tried starting first with having the schedule that's probably going to happen? Consider it a prediction rather than a schedule
My model of research seems like it happens in hours-long continuous threads, rather than 30 min blocks (let alone blocks that you can specific in advance)
It seems that your main work is research (correct me if wrong), so I'm surprised you work in 30 min blocks
I got this sense, but I could be wrong--
Does it need to start big to get big? Could you start small-- just you, just one or a few articles perhaps? I.e. https://sive.rs/infinity
e.g. https://dynomight.net/ started pretty recently and is well-known now
FYI when I read the title and skimmed the hover-preview (~first paragraph) of this essay, I didn't at all realize you meant psychological minimum
Fair enough! I have revised the title to include "self-care", which hopefully makes it clearer (the previous title, for later arrivals to this comment thread, was just "Aiming for the minimum is dangerous").
On the form linked it might be nice to ask for some kind of rough expiration date. I.e. how long is this opportunity relevant-- a few days, a few months, indefinitely? This way hopefully you can automate the upkeep a bit.
Also would be great to turn this into a newsletter
The 'Education status' part of the form linked seems vague to me. E.g. Does "Who is this opportunity open to?: Undergraduate" mean in undergrad or to hold a bachelors? Moreover, what does "Recent Grad" mean?
ok, what's your call to action- collaborators? funding? any specific questions you're looking for insight into?
Several EAs have accurately updated prominent individuals' bios (e.g., the profile of Michael Kremer) to highlight their founding roles in Giving What We Can — or other notable EA affiliations.
I can't take credit for those additions, but think they are smart, consistent with the spirit of Wikipedia, and worthwhile.
Another point to add: It's possible that last-minute planning of a retreat might make some people (read: women) hesitant to suddenly spend a lot of time with people they don't know that well.
FYI If finances are any constraint for you, community building is going to have a really hard time paying you much (as is the case for past and present full-time community builders).
These kinds of things seem like they happen incrementally-- they evolve, rather than coming into being as the result of a grand plan. What is the simplest, quickest way you could make Version 0 of this exist today?
That said, I'm not sure I'd trust that anyone who just did one if those was really well acquainted with the ideas or way of thinking.
Yeah I would probably have more experienced community builders fly in to help out.
I think it's pretty weird that Melatonin is #1 in your list. I think it's weird to suggest exogenous supplementation of something like that without an explanation of why melatonin is low to begin with. The efficient market hypothesis, but applied to your own biochemistry. Chesterton's fence, etc.
The body isn't a machine- as if you can just give it the right amounts of the right compounds and it will perform optimally.
It took me 112 seconds start-to-writing-this-comment for what it's worth. (Update the title accordingly maybe lol? I would've been more likely to click if you said '112s' than '30s'.)
On the vitamin D side: In I'm pretty skeptical of reductionist viewpoints in general such as here, ~"the single compound of 'vitamin D' placed into supplements has nearly the same effect as broad-spectrum UV on skin affects the body". I wouldn't be surprised if broad-spectrum UV had plenty of other effects that we have no idea how to look for, or for example if "UV → {this specific compound that is put in supplements}" is a poor approximation (maybe broad-spectrum UV causes the production of plenty of compounds that are also great, and we're only inclined ...
Another structure I've been considering is converting the fellowship into a class. (At CMU student-taught classes are part of the culture and pretty common.) But I'm less excited about this than the idea I outlined in my other comment.
Hey Ashley, I'm glad someone else is thinking about this too. Here at CMU I've been thinking about this too, particularly because CMU students are so busy. I think we miss people who would otherwise be engaged because of the current structure of the intro fellowship.
What I've been thinking about is running something like an 'EA Expo Day' in the beginning of the semester. It would be a full day with talks and workshops with plenty of capacity. At the same time it would be early in the semester before students get busy. I have a hunch that more people would ...
Yeah, time constraints as expected. I think I found the title of this post a bit strong then.
Also, I would be surprised if light exposure + Vitamin D approximates daytime sunlight at more than 50% effect.
recording oneself sleeping for snoring/sleep apnea seems huge.
(sorry for the comment spam. I have lots more ideas too, feel free to email me, https://chrislakin.com/now.)
What about the effects of daytime sunlight on sleep? (I would be hesitant about confounding sunlight exposure with vitamin D supplementation, I think it's unlikely that they're equivalent.)
I'm surprised you haven't mentioned temperature. E.g. buying a chilipad brought down my night-time insomnia by ~80%. (And I live in the northeast, too!)
Recently I've moved my bed directly next to my air conditioner, which has been great
Have you investigated the effect of night-time darkness?
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/24/12019
Also of blocking blue/green light? Though there's only a handful of studies
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7229994/ - found a 58% increase in night-time melatonin (blocking just blue, though separately it might do well to block green too)
I think I have some more notes lying around somewhere if you need them
it is hard to think of what is 'videoable/showy' while while also effective. it seems to be different objectives unfortunately, but maybe this works out better in the long run as that's how they get their audience
Would love if you could do this for the EA Intro Fellowship syllabus (e.g. here's one syllabus, but note that the syllabus is continuously updating between semesters and different universities use different syllabi)
Related: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tLb86DhrTYgkXw5Hf/apply-to-the-conceptual-boundaries-workshop-for-ai-safety