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pythia__

85 karma · joined January 10, 2016

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pythia__··on A Peddler of Fake Reviews on TripAdvisor Gets Jail Time
To be able to trust random Internet users was never a good dream because cheap identity is the Internet's default. (Not necessarily a bad one.) More surprising than reviews regressing to the mean is that it took them so long. Why?
pythia__··on Ask HN: What do you believe that most people don't?
Corporal punishment is more humane and a more effective deterrent to crime than prison. I am not actually sure if most people don't believe this.
pythia__··on Addressing Recent Claims of “Manipulated” Blog Posts in the Wayback Machine
They will be as effective as anti-piracy law would be if pirates were paid to seed. At best they will prevent respectable publications from directly using distributed archives as a source.
pythia__··on Ask HN: Is it possible to train oneself to be calmer/kinder?
>kind (especially when others around us are unreasonable just because they can)

Think about why you want to be kind to such people. It is one thing if you expect your kindness to disarm them and be reciprocated and another if you don't. If you don't, you would only be rewarding and reinforcing bad behavior. Surrendering to avoid conflict is not a viable long-term strategy in any career but that of a monk. It is far better to learn to stand up to those who mistreat you without undue kindness.

pythia__··on Ask HN: How would you fix cities?
If obvious inefficiencies are not being fixed, nobody's incentives are aligned with fixing them. A sustainable solution must address the wrong or weak incentives, not try to fix the inefficiencies one at a time. Business owners are uniquely empowered and incentivized to address inefficiencies in their businesses and to compete for the customer. They lose money if they provide a product that isn't good enough. Making cities businesses would allow you to leverage that.
pythia__··on Is it unethical to have kids in the era of climate change
The problem with voluntary human extinction is that suicidal ethical systems are inherently self-limiting. A serious negative utilitarian who wished for human extinction would have to sterilize or kill others to succeed.
pythia__··on Verelox Wiped by Ex-Admin
>I for one would like to see the tables turned more often.

The most prominent example of this in recent memory is Peter Thiel sponsoring Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. Do you approve of what he did?

pythia__··on Caddy – HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS
It's funny how when they ask you if you really have to be anonymous it tips the scales towards "yes".
pythia__··on Am I Introverted, or Just Rude?
Can you give a few typical examples for when your are and aren't entitled to your "casual time"?
pythia__··on Adblock Plus now sells ads
Why is it unethical? What ethical principle is being violated? (These are not rhetorical questions.)
pythia__··on Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month
People may yet make a comeback as a premium service since they can do things that self-driving cars can't like help a passenger carry bags.
pythia__··on New Startup Aims to Commercialize a Brain Prosthetic to Improve Memory
If those who augment their brains outcompete those who don't by an ever-widening margin (seems more likely than not), this discussion topic is preemptively obsolete. Their ethics will be dominant sooner or later.
pythia__··on In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie (2011)
On the other hand, if a lot of countries had apocalyptic weapons (a phase that naturally precedes such weapons becoming available to individuals), it could all but eliminate war. Countries behave surprisingly like rational agents in international relations. This period would be the window of opportunity for one lucky winner to bootstrap an AGI.
pythia__··on Please save GMane
You can have it both ways: use CloudFlare and offer direct access through a hidden service (since DDoS attacks over Tor are impossible, expect for application layer attacks).
pythia__··on Please save GMane
As a Slashdot comment points out, CloudFlare could protect the owner from DDoS attacks with minimal effort on his part.

Edit: The original original post already talks about CloudFlare. The reference was lost in an Internet game of telephone.

pythia__··on Amazon Picking Challenge
I think you do my argument a disservice by equating it to the general trend of people denying X can be automated until X is automated. It is more specific: I say that some jobs (roughly, those requiring an agent to rapidly gain an understanding of existing unstandardized systems) need AGI to automate to human satisfaction in a way that doesn't require constant human supervision. It predicts, for instance, wide replacement of cashiers (which is already happening) and construction workers (which isn't yet).

>Maybe plumber, give it 20.

Perhaps we have different standards for "automated." Do you expect remote operators standing by ready to take over for a plumberbot or giving it hints at least once per service operation on average in 2036? If so, I find that technically plausible. I also expect new buildings to be built for automated service.

If we are talking fully automated human-quality repair and improvement of legacy plumbing, do you to expect a long time to get from there to AGI?

pythia__··on Amazon Picking Challenge
I'll answer your specific questions first. Driver, no. Maid, no. (But keep in mind that robot maids/janitors are considerably farther away than self-driving cars. Cleaning environments not specifically designed for it is really complicated and I expect humans to outperform robots at it for longer than at most other kinds of physical labor.) For a fancier meal than burgers, yes, I'd pay a premium to have a human chef cook it. Doctor, definitely not in most cases.

As for it being "awkward and contemptful," I suspect you are imagining humans perform a task exactly as a robot would. That will be the minority of cases, because the economics are strongly against it in most. Instead, you'll pay humans for their ability to customize their work or the products they produce in a way that isn't economical to automate. (Burger flipping is doomed for this reason -- not much to differentiate humans form robots there.) Hence, chefs, plumbers, tailors, auto mechanics, specialist doctors, interior decorators, etc. will be assisted by "weak" AI but won't be replaced by it.

pythia__··on Amazon Picking Challenge
>Also, what will keep the 95% from revolting?

Security robots!

More seriously, as robots do more and more, people will start to place a premium on having a human do the work where they notice the difference (so, not Amazon warehouses but probably the local Starbucks). With this factored in, 95% unemployment is unlikely until artificial general intelligence.

pythia__··on What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC
Not ceding classic liberalism with the word is the point. (Because ceding too much of it puts you at danger of a populist takeover, i.e., "literally Hitler".)

Land explains this better (mentioning Thiel, too) at http://www.xenosystems.net/nrx-and-liberalism/. His thinking there should apply broadly to all non-left (non-)politics.

pythia__··on What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC
Conversely, if you recognize this, do not let "liberal(ism)" become a thought-terminating cliche for you.
pythia__··on What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC
The idea just might be in the air, but there are several ways an attempt at implementing it can go, some of which are less likely than others to succeed through differentiation. Those details should not be neglected.

For one, "libertarian" (but explicitly not left-libertarian) would probably be a better first-order approximation of how to position such an incubator (or conference, or...). A Republican incubator could plausibly reject Curtis Yarvin on ideological grounds, which doesn't seem like the goal.

pythia__··on Reddit is still in turmoil
Every "permaban" like this is an opportunity to get a famous person on a distributed Twitter competitor like GNU Social (especially if the ban actually lasts). If you work on one you may want to contact him. People whose presence is objectionable to Twitter are the natural early adopters for distributed social networks.
pythia__··on China is challenging the idea that censorship thwarts online innovation
>It takes decades to build up a world-class university. Maybe centuries.

This has been accurate so far but it could be because the idea of disrupting university education and research is only now gaining prominence. The incentives are bigger than ever.

If a substantially leaner alternative to either is found somewhere, it will at least be tried in China. Whether it succeeds will then depend on many factors.

pythia__··on Mormon Tycoon Wants to Build Mega-Utopia in Vermont
Your characterization might suggest that they hold too to little faith in rule of law, but the opposite is true. What true-believer "sovereign citizens" do not recognize is that there is no rule of law in relations between sovereign entities, only deterrence. Having a Snow Crash-style personal nuke is a lowball estimate of where the barrier to entry lies.
pythia__··on Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech
What you are describing is stereotype threat. High-quality evidence for it is scarce to none; a recent meta-analysis: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022440514....
pythia__··on After the coup, Turkey turns against America
That is exactly the point. Holding elections, even peaceful, transparent elections, is not the same thing as "replacing the government." Most government employees and non-employees who heavily influence policy are not elected and can't be replaced through elections.
pythia__··on After the coup, Turkey turns against America
Never mind Turkey. Could you name three Western governments that satisfy Popper's criterion?
pythia__··on New Cities
Good question. Quite a few people seem to be, actually. Mark Lutter is one at http://freecitiesinitiative.com/. Patri Friedman, perhaps the most famous supporter of idea, attempted to start a charter city in Honduras but the Honduran government changed its mind (https://athousandnations.com/2012/10/31/future-cities-develo...). The Seasteading Institute, cofounded by Friedman, was once backed by Peter Thiel.
pythia__··on Ask HN: Is Y Combinator a submarine communist plot?
Planned cities, if privately owned and governed, are the opposite of communism.
pythia__··on A Game of Consequences
>Seasteading

Or Patchwork.

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