If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.
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Random Note: Since the push to put more content on here, I actually have been checking more frequently. I'm looking now maybe every three weeks instead of every three months, which is nothing compared to the daily checking when I was active and the site was active, but is at least more on my radar.
Just some positive reinforcement for all yall.
In general, I admire EAs' intellectual and ethical seriousness. But part of the EA worldview bothers me: the idea that all Westerners are by definition rich and therefore should feel an obligation to donate a lot of money to charities to help poorer countries.
In some cases this worldview leads to factually incorrect conclusions. For example, I entered $30K, with a 1-person household in the US, into GWWC's How Rich Are You? calculator. The calculator told me my income is 21x the global average. That just seems implausible. According to Wikipedia, global GDP is $7.4e13, and global population is 7.4e9, so global GDP per capita is about $1e4. Similarly, per capita GDP of China is about $7e3. These estimates would suggest my inputs correspond to about 3-5 times global average income. And that doesn't even take into account PPP variation. This Wiki page claims that global average PPP per capita is $15K, suggesting a factor of 2 difference.
I think EAs should update their advertising material and outlook to suggest something like: "Many Westerners are extremely rich by world standards, but many more aren't. If you're a graduate student, an early-career professional, or have taken a lower income career path: relax and don't feel guilty! Work hard to improve your financial situation and come back in a couple of years!"
factually incorrect conclusions [...] $30k [...] 21x the global average. That just seems implausible.
Did you scroll down to the "Methodology" section? They explain that they are using the median, not the mean; I don't find it at all implausible that the median might be rather a lot lower than the mean. (And I think they are right to use the median in preference to the mean.)
GWWC has a page about median GDP. It unfortunately doesn't say exactly what they think the global median income is, nor how they calculated it, and even the lowest of the several figures there -- $2k, not stated explicitly but implicit in something they say near the start -- would make the factor 15x rather than 21x.
So I agree that they're doing something fishy with their numbers, I don't think it's quite as fishy as you suggest, and I think maybe someone should contact them and ask them just what their global median income figure is and where it comes from.
The GWWC numbers reflect global median income, which is $2,920 per capita, and not the mean income. It makes sense to use the median to think about global poverty, because the mean is mostly dependent on the global rich. When Bill Gates walks into a bar, the mean income of the bar patrons shoots up but the median barely budges. When a group of broke Africans goes into the bar, both the mean and the median drop.
In the hopes of making things easier for me, I've been referring to centuries by their number range-- "the 1900's" rather than "the twentieth century". I've gotten one piece of feedback from someone who found it confusing, but how clear is it to most people who are reading this?
Perfectly clear, and probably in most contexts less likely to elicit off-by-one errors. The only confusing things I can see are:
(If I had two karma points, I'd start its own thread on the topic, but I'm a lurker and I don't.)
I'm working (on the side) on a website that enables 1-on-1 conversations on a controversial topic, with someone of the opposing view. You are shown a list of topics, and asked what your opinion is on them ("I don't know" is an option). Then you are matched to another party that answered differently. You then start a text-based chat with them. Everything is anonymous (your name and avatar are auto-generated).
I am hoping that this could be a tool to reduce polarization and promote active open mindedness. Here's what I wrote:
"You may not be convinced by their arguments, but hopefully your conversation will lead to a better understanding on both sides. We hope that an interaction with someone with a different viewpoint will lead to reduced animosity toward their whole out-group."
However, as we get closer to launch, I'm trying to think of how to attract the right kind of users. Here's a list of who might be attracted to such a site:
All of those seem pretty rare. I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to spin the project so that it's attractive to a broader audience, and not just people that are normally into rationalism, self-doubt, CMV/etc. My friend suggested that I ask the rationalist community for their ideas, and here we are. Any thoughts here?
I'll add a datapoint to that and say an anonymous site like that is would tempt me enough to actively go and troll even though I'm not usually inclined towards trolling.
Although I picture it getting so immediately overwhelmed by trolls that the fun would disappear; "pissing in an ocean of piss" as 4chan calls it.
When creating a new website like this the goal should be to release a minimal viable product. The assumption that those three categories of people are rare doesn't mean that you can't find them for your minimum viable product.
The YC advice is to focus on creating a great product for a small audience instead of creating an okay product for a large audience.
A few days ago I had a crazy idea that counting numbers (first, second, etc) should start with zeroth instead of first. Not only would that help with teaching programming, but also many real world confusions and off-by-one errors would go away. Compare this:
The first year of the third millennium begins at 2001/01/01 00:00:00
to this:
The zeroth year of the 2nd millennium begins at 2000/00/00 00:00:00
Of course that would never happen, but as a thought experiment, I rest my case :-)
With this change, you could no longer say "now that we've found the fourth object, we finally have four objects". You'd have to remember to say "now that we've found the third object, we finally have four objects" which seems to be a new opportunity to make off-by-one error. It's not clear to me that you'd be fixing more errors than you're introducing. I echo WhySpace's request for more examples of things you're trying to fix with this change.
A friend of mine at university made the following observations about this.
off-by-one errors would go away.
I always have to consciously adjust for off-by-one errors, so this sounded appealing at first. (In the same way that Tau is appealing.)
However, after a bit of thought, I'm unable to come up with an example where this would help. Usually, the issue is that the 7th thru 10th seats aren't actually 10-7=3 seats, but 4 seats. (the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th seats).
Calling them the 6th thru 9th seats doesn't solve this. Can someone give an example of what it does solve, outside of timekeeping? (i.e., anything that counting time in beats wouldn't solve?)
How do you deal with noticing you've been mindkilled?
I recently did something I regret, and on reflection I note that the impetus was probably anti-Purple sentiment.
(ironically, I managed to simultaneously demonstrate some epic hypocrisy; I was inveighing against mindkilling anti-Orange sentiment at the time)
This bothers me. I've done what I can to repair the error, but it still bothers me. I assume it's not an uncommon experience, though. Thoughts?
RSS feed: Not yet. Will add a +1 to that bug.
Arbital Slack is probably the best place currently.
Another wish for the "LW 2.0": automating this.
Something like: a user can have a list of "reviewers", which are simply the people who can see the articles in the draft section. Everything else can be communicated using the existing channels (requests for reviewers, requests to become a reviewer, announcements that there is a new content to be reviewed, feedback). This actually could be relatively simple.