schizoidboy

This is shockingly comprehensive and valuable; thank you. One minor suggestion is to generate a single-page or PDF version. I manually created one although of course this will go stale:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jKepii1hL9e-gkAsz906nRtgssz...

The SpaceX/Musk presentation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY

Thanks, I've added an existing research section and will reach out to researchers in the field for more feedback.

Thanks, I've tried to expand the abstract.

I think the meta-point is that betting on intellectual ideas is an underused tool in the toolbox of decision making. Endless academic journal debates don't seem to help much in moving people across ideological divides.

For all of those that disagree with his methodology or conclusions, if you can reach him, I recommend putting your money where your mouth is and proposing a different bet with Dr. Caplan.

I see a lot of people in the comments offended by his tone. I see his tone as analogous to a soccer player celebrating after a goal. We should socially encourage such behavior for those who win fair intellectual bets. (Although there is such a thing as unsportsmanly gloating, although I don't think this is such an example.)

The point is that these are bets between people who disagree with each other. They negotiate the data and terms and hopefully learn from the result and change their minds. This is one way to help tune bayesian priors about what ideas and people to trust and investigate further.

Dr. Caplan is a big proponent of betting. Disputes in academic journals are endless and inconclusive. Betting gets people to put their money where their mouth is. I think this is the best part of the economics profession and needs to be applied to more parts of society.

It's worth noting that the economist John Quiggin didn't propose an adjustment for this in the bet.

Second, he never addresses any other value than the unemployment rate as a number (for example, I can easily imagine an "apologist" being uninterested in his bet if they think he might be right about the numbers, but they value the regulation for other reasons). In never addressing their views, he dismisses them as unworthy.

Dr. Caplan reached out to the other economists and they didn't respond (which could have included proposing a different bet with different values). He is very judgy about public intellectuals that don't bet on their claims. I wouldn't call that dismissive because said intellectuals impose massive costs on society if they're wrong. It's not enough to hide behind unquantifiable hopes.

I know nothing of the people or personalities involved...but this does not give me a good impression of the author. First, he never refers to anyone with a contrary opinion in any way other than "apologist".

Apologist is a bit of a brash word, but it's a possible conclusion if a public intellectual is unwilling to put their ideas to tests and revise if necessary.

He includes a link to data connecting unemployment to unhappiness.

His so-called smugness derives from betting: putting his ideas on the line and winning. I think he's the opposite of smug because he's humble enough to put his ideas to the test. Maybe he gloats, but I think we should socially encourage victors gloating (in fair competitions).

The first sentence of the paragraph you quote links to data connecting unemployment to unhappiness.

My favorite quote from Ioannidis:

“Science is a noble endeavor, but it’s also a low-yield endeavor,” he says. “I’m not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life. We should be very comfortable with that fact.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-da...

Summarized by Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

I think this gets to the heart of it. Some places to start:

Meaning in Work TED talk by a researcher in the field: https://youtu.be/RLFVoEF2RI0?t=177

Happiness vs Meaning: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.830764

My favorite survey of the field: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623

Actual quote from Linus as opposed to the click-bait title:

I still wish we were better at having a standardized desktop that goes across all the distributions. There's been some progress there. I mean, this is not a kernel issue, so this is just more of a personal annoyance how the fragmentation of the different vendors have, I think, held the desktop back a bit. But there has been some progress on that front too with Flatpak and things like that, so I'm still optimistic, but it's been 25 years. It's going to be another few years at least.

It's a short(ish) and somewhat thought-provoking read, although it has the questionable value of most analogies, and is light on details; however, I enjoyed this line:

One of my biggest personal fears is working in the wrong field to achieve the goal I care about.

I know nothing about Citadel, but it may be unfair to generalize from one experience. For example, that particular group may be bad but other groups may be fine and don't know about the bad group.

If you're feeling particularly bold, the ideal is to report that bad group to Citadel. Then, after sufficient time for an internal review, follow up and ask if anything has been done, and if not, then conclude your generalization.

With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if our bayesian priors about the morality of financial institutions are correct, but it helps to empirically validate this and publish findings so that, over time, these institutions are validly, publicly shamed.

I guess this is the Bandcamp link: https://aubreyhodges.bandcamp.com/album/quest-for-glory-shad...

I hear ya. I've been a programmer for over a decade and even though I'm making great money and it's intellectually stimulating, I'm essentially giving it all up and diving into biotech (studying now for an M.S. in Bio).

The headwinds are persistent: credentialism and a glut of PhDs that are way more qualified than me. I'm constantly meeting bio people going the other way - into tech.

Despite that, I'm stubbornly going to keep going because like you say, the potential of Biotech to reduce human suffering seems so much greater.

I worry about becoming pigeonholed by my background, or falling into the many pitfalls you point out like screwed up incentives or narrow funding paths. More than anything, I want to work on something important and meaningful, like a disease.

Roughly speaking, my current idea is to learn the basics which I'm in the process of doing now [1], get basic credentials, and then find data on causes of suffering, take the first derivative, sort descending, and go. I know it's naive, but it seems like the right thing to do.

[1] https://freeradical13.github.io/

WINAMP, WINamp, winamp... it really...

Still works. Winamp is still my main music player (with classic skin, of course). I run it through Wine on Fedora 28. Some things cause crashes, but the only things I really care about are MilkDrop, the media library, and playlists and they all work fine. I've never been able to find something that comes close to MilkDrop.

Here are my installation instructions (after installing Wine) although I haven't tried them fresh in a few years (Fedora and Wine upgrades haven't screwed anything up):

  $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Winetricks/winetricks/master/src/winetricks
  $ chmod +x winetricks
  $ ./winetricks -q directmusic directplay directx9 gdiplus ie8 mfc42 wmp10 windowmanagerdecorated=n
  $ ./winetricks winamp
  Launch Winamp
  To get rid of some weird font issues: Right click Winamp > Options > Preferences... > General Preferences > Playlist > select Use font: MS Sans Serif
  To fix bug https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12060: Winamp > Options > Preferences... > Plug-ins > Visualization > MilkDrop v2.25c > Configure > WINDOWED settings > Uncheck Integrate with winamp skin

If we suppose that his conclusion is using boolean logic, then what you're saying is a strawman because of his last claim; namely, protobufs are bad if "[...] && !Google":

They're clearly written by amateurs, unbelievably ad-hoc, mired in gotchas, tricky to compile, and solve a problem that nobody but Google really has.

This dovetails with other arguments that I've seen recently that are becoming more frequent:

Have we entered a new world where the lessons of companies working at massive scales are not only generally superfluous for smaller scales, but are actively harmful?

I was in a similar state of mind and things turned around after pursuing more meaningful work in biotech. There's a whole subfield of Psychology that researches how people find meaningful work and it helped me greatly. A few places to start:

https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1137623

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLFVoEF2RI0

I'm surprised this didn't get more upvotes. Sure, there's some blatant and repetitive self-promotion, but it could start some great threads of discussion. I guess HN has gotten so big that some important articles are falling through the cracks.

I think that's a good summary. My favorite relevant quote from Dr. John Ioannidis:

“Science is a noble endeavor, but it’s also a low-yield endeavor,” he says. “I’m not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life. We should be very comfortable with that fact.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-da...

Why do you think it's basically zero?

To me, it just seems like an (admittedly difficult) engineering problem that we're likely to make a lot of progress on. I'm currently studying biology and it's pretty amazing what humans have discovered in the last ~100 years about how the body works at the atomic level.

As a meta-point, I find it fascinating how nearly completely divergent our bayesian priors are (I think our chances of counteracting all of those forces you mentioned are, on a long enough timeline and assuming we're not destroyed and we have sufficient energy, greater than 90%).

Our maximum lifespan may not have changed much, if at all. But that’s not to delegitimise the extraordinary advances of the last few decades which have helped so many more people reach that maximum lifespan, and live healthier lives overall.

Sure, maximum might not be changing much, but the fact that the average has changed so drastically means there has been unfathomably less death and suffering than otherwise would have been. Also, the advances have not been just over the last few decades, but more likely one or two hundred years (i.e. since the industrial revolution).

There are also serious thinkers (e.g. Kurzweil) who think that biotechnology will increase maximum lifespan pretty soon. I found it strange for an article tagged with 'Biology' to not talk about biotechnology potential related to longevity.

I can confirm this. I used to work on the IE team. Went from a team of hundreds to just a handful.

See my other comment in response to the parent - I hope neither of you were being sarcastic and that a bet is worked out.

Just a small meta-point that betting is a great way for both sides of a debate to tone down rhetoric, engage in dialogue, and discuss objective terms or processes for evaluating a disagreement. It looks like another commenter is taking you up on the bet and I hope neither of you were being sarcastic, because I think betting isn't something to joke about but a wonderful tool that we don't use often enough.

Makes sense