details
One day my dad was reading this book called the "Going to Bed Book" to
my sister Nora. The book is
basically about a bunch of animals who are getting ready for bed on a
boat. They go down the stairs, take a bath, hang their towels on the
wall, find their pajamas, brush their teeth, go up and exercise, then
go down again and fall asleep.
But I noticed there was a big problem: my whole life everyone has been
telling me "don't exercise before bed". The reason you shouldn't
exer… Putting in some work to get the behavior you want
The post Investing in boundaries with young kids appeared first on Otherwise.
You will probably not have a career on the stage
The post Some careers are overhyped to children appeared first on Otherwise.
My brain is not always reliable.
The post When to not trust my feelings appeared first on Otherwise.
This month I lost a bunch of bets. Back in early 2016 I bet at even odds that self-driving ride sharing would be available in 10 US cities by July 2023. Then I made similar bets a dozen times because everyone disagreed with me. The first deployment to potentially meet our bar was Phoenix in … More Self-driving car bets
I first started playing fiddle when I was five, just around my
birthday. I had really wanted a fiddle because I wanted to learn how
to play it and my parents got me one for my birthday so I started
taking lessons. Though after a couple of lessons I started to find it
more and more boring and at the time I wasn't really prepared for my
fingers to hurt when I did it, so I didn't really like it that much
and also overall I think that probably starting from that age wasn't
the best idea. … Will they ever stay up late playing this kind of music for fun?
The post The best kind of music to learn is social music appeared first on Otherwise.
I posted this on the Effective Altruism forum as part of the EA Strategy Fortnight. I’m cross posting it here. I just got comprehensive blood test results and it seems my nutritional numbers are in decent shape (vitamin D, B12, etc) after being vegan for over a year, which is a good sign that I’m probably doing most things okay. Also, I feel good, my weight hasn’t changed, and I can still build muscle (although not quickly; it seems I need to eat more in order to build muscle quickly, and I am not prioritizing that right now). What's "for their own good"?
The post How much to coerce children? appeared first on Otherwise.
I looked at a few years’ worth of data for DC (where I live) to try to figure out how risky cycling is here. the trough of zero dopamine • managing the wrong amount • procrastinating on hard questions • indefinitely deferring maintenance • angsting instead of asking
I noticed that there was a hole in one of the park toys at the park
near my house, Lexington Park, specifically. It was one of those toy
cars that babies scootch around in, and one of the front wheels was
broken. It had a big hole in it, and there was a crack running almost
all around it.
I decided to go home and get my toolbelt to fix it. I decided that
probably tape and cardboard would be the best materials because
metal and wood and stuff wouldn't really keep the right shape.
First I starte… Early signs of catastrophic risk? Yes and no.
I have several reasons I think why neighborhoods should have speed
bumps.
First, speed bumps are very useful to stop cars from hitting people
in the streets.
Second, when construction workers installed speed bumps on the street
in front of our house it was very useful to me because my parents
decided to let me cross that street, and now I can go to the park and
my friends house and a bunch of other places without my parents having
to walk me there.
There is a downside to speed bumps, which is that whe… Governments could be crucial in the long run, but it's probably best to proceed with caution. Major AI companies can increase or reduce global catastrophic risks. Scenario: You’re working hard on an important seeming problem. Maybe you have an idea to cure a specific form of cancer using mRNA. You’ve been working on the idea for a year or two, and seem to be making slow progress; it is not yet clear whether you will succeed. People are far better at their jobs than at anything else. Here are the best ways to help the most important century go well. love for Wave • why leave • where to • why there • what’s next For people who want to help improve our prospects for navigating transformative AI, and have an audience.
I think that once a kid is in third grade they should be able to get a
phone. I think that while sometimes parents might want kids not to
have them at certain ages, phones can be quite useful at
times. Tablets don't have GPS, they don't have WiFi when you're out
of the house, but a phone does have all that stuff.
Have you ever tried putting a tablet in your pocket? I don't think
so! They definitely don't fit. But a phone will: they're tiny and
portable, which is quite us…
For Christmas I got a really fun kit about rainbows. It had a rainbow
catcher, a really cool necklace, a streamer thingy, and it also had a
really really cool pinwheel, and it also had a bracelet and a pinata.
Unfortunately the pinata didn't work out that well. I didn't make the
bracelet yet. The pinata just didn't fall apart when we hit it. We
had to take it apart with our hands to get it open.
It even had a really really fun part. Actually, it wasn't really that
fun. It did m… because you’ll have more awesome friendships • be consistent • suggested post ideas • setup advice • getting initial readers In this post I’ll discuss three reasons to cooperate in a truly one-shot prisoner’s dilemma: Kindness makes common sense, but correlation and reciprocity are often lumped together under “weird acausal stuff.” I think they are worth distinguishing because they work quite differently. I’ll talk about details of correlation and reciprocity, and then argue that most … More Three reasons to cooperate thinking about scary things • examples from Wave • examples from elsewhere • finding a buddy • getting the timing right • a list of abyss questions There’s wide critique on the effective altruism forums of a decision made by Centre for Effective Altruism to purchase a $20M estate in Oxford, Wytham Abbey. deferring to markets • deferring to experts • deferring to low-information heuristics • why they fail • blindness to outliers • what to do instead
I went to a farm and at the farm I got to see a corncrib and the corn
that had fell out of the corncrib that no one wanted I got to use my
fingers to take off the corn kernels and once the cobs were empty I
put them in a bag and then once I got back to the house I was staying
in I ate dinner and I got to work with a few pencils some tape and some
paper and some markers and I used some of the markers to make the eyes
and mouth but I didn't want to add a nose so what I did was I made
little pink s…
I've been reading a lot of predictions from people who are looking to understand what problems humanity will face 10-50 years out (and sometimes longer) in order to work in areas that will be instrumental for the future and wondering how accurate these predictions of the future are. The timeframe of predictions that are so far out means that only a tiny fraction of people making those kinds of predictions today have a track record so, if we want to evaluate which predictions are plausible, …
I really like going in the water and this beach is a great place for
building sand castles and boogie boarding. I also like trying to
float on top of big waves. I'm not very good at it. I only float on
the flat waves.
Here is my current take on decision theory: When making a decision after observing X, we should condition (or causally intervene) on statements like “My decision algorithm outputs Y after observing X.” Updating seems like a description of something you do when making good decisions in this way, not part of defining what a good … More Decision theory and dynamic inconsistency
I love England. Especially because of the big castle called Buckingham
Palace. I got to see the outside there, but my mom showed me some
pictures of the inside. I love it there. But the outside doesn't look
very fancy to me. But I never knew why those people wear big bear skin
black poofy hats.
(Subsumed by: Timeless Decision Theory, EDT=CDT) People sometimes object to evidential decision theory by saying: “It seems like the distinction between correlation and causation is really important to making good decisions in practice. So how can a theory like EDT, with no role for causality, possibly be right?” Long-time readers probably know my answer, but … More What is causality to an evidential decision theorist?
There are many big buildings here. A lot of them are skyscrapers. And,
there's lots of old buildings here. Like, buildings from long
ago. Like, ones that Romans built! One of them is even a castle. It's
pretty fun here, and it barely ever snows here. So there's always
pretty flowers here. And there's even palm trees.
Wave is a $1.7B company with 70 engineers1 whose product is a CRUD app that adds and subtracts numbers. In keeping with this, our architecture is a standard CRUD app architecture, a Python monolith on top of Postgres. Starting with a simple architecture and solving problems in simple ways where possible has allowed us to scale to this size while engineers mostly focus on work that delivers value to users.
Stackoverflow scaled up a monolith to good effect (2013 architecture / 2016 architecture), …
There's a cocktail party version of the efficient markets hypothesis I frequently hear that's basically, "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive". We've previously discussed Marc Andreessen's quote that tech hiring can't be inefficient here and here:
Let's launch right into it. I think the critique that Silicon Valley companies are deliberately, systematically discriminatory is incorrect, an…
[Click to collapse / expand section on sports]
Here are some notes from talent scouts:
Recruit A:
... will be a real specimen with chance to have a Dave Parker body. Facially looks like Leon Wagner. Good body flexibility. Very large hands.
Recruit B:
Outstanding physical specimen – big athletic frame with broad shoulders and long, solid arms and leg. Good bounce in his step and above avg body control. Good strong face.
Recruit C:
Hi butt, longish arms & legs, leanish torso, young colt
[different sc…
This was co-authored with Yao Yue
This is a collection of information on severe (SEV-0 or SEV-1, the most severe incident classifications) incidents at Twitter that were at least partially attributed to cache from the time Twitter started using its current incident tracking JIRA (2012) to date (2022), with one bonus incident from before 2012. Not including the bonus incident, there were 6 SEV-0s and 6 SEV-1s that were at least partially attributed to cache in the incident tracker, along with 38 … I recently got confused thinking about the following case: Calculator bet: I am offered the opportunity to bet on a mathematical statement X to which I initially assign 50% probability (perhaps X = 139926 is a quadratic residue modulo 314159). I have access to a calculator that is 99% reliable, i.e. it corrupts the answer … More EDT with updating double counts
A Big Problem With The Going To Bed Book
Investing in boundaries with young kids
Some careers are overhyped to children
When to not trust my feelings
Self-driving car bets
Fiddle
The best kind of music to learn is social music
Why altruists can’t have nice things
Vegan nutrition notes
How much to coerce children?
Cycling Injuries Analysis in DC
Some mistakes I made as a new manager
Fixing a Tire
What does Bing Chat tell us about AI risk?
Why Neighborhoods Should Have Speed Bumps
How major governments can help with the most important century
What AI companies can do today to help with the most important century
Don’t Over-Update On Others’ Failures
Jobs that can help with the most important century
Leaving Wave, joining Anthropic
Spreading messages to help with the most important century
Phones
My Rainbow Kit
Why and how to write things on the Internet
Three reasons to cooperate
Staring into the abyss as a core life skill
Why I Decided To Buy A House
Be less scared of overconfidence
Corncob Dolls
Futurist prediction methods and accuracy
On the Beach
Decision theory and dynamic inconsistency
Buckingham Palace
What is causality to an evidential decision theorist?
I Love England
In defense of simple architectures
Why is it so hard to buy things that work well?
Misidentifying talent
A decade of major cache incidents at Twitter
EDT with updating double counts