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Overview
This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die. Click to read Overcoming Bias, by Robin Hanson, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
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No-New-Physics Consciousness
There is a vast literature near the topic of this post, much of which has developed specialized vocabularies and concepts. And I can't be bothered to master enough of it to make this post match it well. So please try to treat my words here as if their mea
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Digital Mind Suicide
Greg Egan's 1994 novel Permutation City depicts digital minds having a right to suicide; if they push a particular internal button, they end. This seems like a robust way to avoid many horrible scenarios. (I discuss it in AgeOfEm.) But the novel also depi
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Digital Mind Castes
Humans have two main relations to animals: they are either food or pets. We ban dogs, cats, and horses from use as food in the U.S. We require humane slaughter for most livestock, but not poultry, and require minimizing pain and distress for animals in re
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The Modern Mind's Fatal Flaw
Here's a quick history of minds. First, there were no minds, just stupid stuff undergoing simple local interactions. Then appeared the first proto-mind: Darwinian evolution, via DNA. Under this, the universe made choices according to a purpose: adaption.
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Easy To Hard Discipline Academic Careers Paths
Tasks often vary along a dimension where some tasks matter more, yet are also harder to judge for quality of performance. This spectrum appears in org management, where it is harder to judge the quality of higher level more important decisions. It also ap
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How To Be A Usually-Right Contrarian
We rightly celebrate rebels who were initially contrarian on key claims, but then got the world to later agree with them. Many seek to achieve this status by backing various contrarian claims. Of course, as the usual consensus beliefs tend to be correct,
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Status And Social-Skill Bias
The following table gives medians of 3 LLM estimates re % relative importance for short term success in 5 areas of life of these 4 factors:(A) status: looks, $, fame, family, connections, credentials, charisma, wit, etc.(B) social skills: at flattering, b
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Why Sheep Need Pigs in Sheepdog's Clothing
Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. In that order. (Patrick Winston)We humans have norms that are anti-domination, but pro-prestige, and it is often hard to tell t
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Who Are Your "Descendants"?
On AI risk, I've said that evolved things have two robust habits: wariness of co-existing rivals, even when similar to you, and indulgence of descendants, even when different from you. Today, future AIs are our descendants, not co-existing rivals.Some rep
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