A lot of people give the correct (but nonsequitur) answer "mirrors don't flip text horizontally or vertically, the flip it through the plane of the mirror". But it is still the case that if you hold a book up to the mirror almost certainly you'll be reading right-to-left, but still top-to-bottom! That needs an explanation!

And the answer is this: you broke symmetry when you decided to hold the book up to the mirror – you probably rotated the book about the vertical axis, not its horizontal axis. I first heard this from @shachaf. If you have a book in your hand and you simply tilt it forward then you'll be reading the text left-to-right bottom-to-top in the mirror, but that's a much less natural motion, and is not usually how you present text to the mirror.

It's crazy to me how often folks get this one wrong. Like, they hear "mirrors actually mirror through the plane of the mirror" and nod sagely, and forget to explain the original phenomenon that almost all text I see in mirrors requires me to read right-to-left+top-to-bottom.

https://x.com/ptrschmdtnlsn/status/1837960441152295154

Lately, dishonesty has been standing out to me more. Not dishonesty in other people -- dishonesty in myself.

All the time, I'm noticing myself subtly misleading people. Never with outright lies. Never out of malice; never for much personal gain. Usually it's out of a desire to avoid upsetting people.

Like, it's not uncommon for a friend/acquaintance to do something that bothers me. And then I *don't tell them*. I keep acting cheery, despite whatever bothersome thing they did. That's misleading!

Or, like... if a friend makes an irreversible decision that I think was kinda bad, I usually won't say anything.

I wish I could just switch to telling people everything. Or telling my friends everything? But it seems intractable. A ton of people don't want feedback.

And it's hard to convey what a small deal a lot of these things are. "I didn't like it when you did X" can make it sound like I am commanding them to stop, and I'll be mad if they don't. But that's not how I feel.

I just want people to have the information so they can use it to make better choices. (Maybe this info means they should stop doing X; maybe it means they should stop being friends with me; maybe it means they should stop doing X iff they get the same feedback from 3 more people. That's up to them!)

I kinda wish we were all more honest about everything. I wish I could tell everyone what I think of them, and vice versa. I wish my value-aligned friends told me whenever they think I've made a mistake, or I'm doing something off-putting, or whatever.

Cross posting from the Bountied Rationality Facebook group:

Here is a Google Doc that lists 21 important beliefs that Palisade Research has about AI. For each belief, we're looking for the strongest evidence that exists in favor of that idea, and the strongest evidence that exists against it. We'll award at least $20 for the best evidence in favor, and at least $20 for the best evidence against each idea. We'll use our discretion for what we consider the "best" evidence, but the kind of thing we're looking for includes empirical research or convincing arguments. Empirical research, or arguments clearly backed by empirical observations, will be preferred over pure arguments.

To submit a piece of evidence, you can either comment here, making it clear which specific idea(s) you're giving evidence for, or you can add a comment to the linked document. A piece of evidence should include a link, should be clearly associated with a specific idea, and should include a short sentence about how the evidence applies to that idea.

For example, you might write a comment on "a strategic AI system will aim to appear convincingly aligned with human goals, or incapable of harming humans, whether it really is or not.", that includes a link to a paper on AI Sandbagging (e.g. "AI Sandbagging: Language Models can Strategically Underperform on Evaluations"), with a sentence like "This work on AI sandbagging shows that existing AI systems already strategically underperform when they can tell they are being evaluated."

In addition to the base $20 bonus for the best evidence on each point, we'll also give bonuses of $50 for pieces of evidence that we think are especially strong. We'll give at least 4 of these bonuses, and up to 20 depending on our subjective sense of the quality of submissions.

So in total, we're offering at least 21 * 2 * $20 + 4 * $50 = $1040, and up to 21 * 2 * $20 + 20 * $50 = $1840 in bounties.

Max bounty: $500 per person. All bounties paid via PayPal. Tentative deadline is October 1.

Imagine your hourly rate is ostensibly $50/hr. Your *actual* hourly rate depends greatly on the type of job you have.

1) If you get paid for 40 hours every week, but you work less: your actual rate is higher

2) If you get paid for 40 hours every week, but you work MORE: your actual rate is lower

3) If you only bill hours you actually spent working: it's truly $50/hr

4) If you're freelancing or doing bounties, then you spend a lot of unpaid time figuring out what to work on next. So your actual rate is lower. (I think a lot of freelance positions take this into account.)

I used to work "full-time," less than 40 hours per week, with a salary. But in the last few years, I've just done a few tiny odd jobs for friends, with negotiated rates. So the difference has been quite notable to me.

I think hourly rates at full-time jobs anchor people on reasonable rates outside of full-time jobs.

e.g. For one task, my friend looked up the typical hourly rate for someone who does the job full-time, to negotiate a rate with me. Neither of us thought about the fact that working full-time means their actual rate could easily be twice their ostensible rate. (But that's hard to assess from the outside.)

Another one of my friends paid me pretty generously when I did a task for them. They calculated my pay by thinking about A. how much time I saved them, and B. the actual value of their time.

I'm currently unable to "like" posts here, and I asked ChatGPT about that. Here's what they said (which I'm posting, b/c maybe it'll help solve this problem!):

On Friendica, the ability to interact with posts, such as "liking" them, often depends on the settings of the specific instance you've joined, as well as the status of your account. Here are a few possible reasons you might not be able to "like" posts:

New Account Restrictions: Some Friendica instances restrict the actions new users can take until they’ve been active for a certain amount of time or made a certain number of posts. This is done to prevent spam and ensure the user is genuinely engaging with the platform.

Instance Settings: The administrator of your Friendica instance might have configured the platform to limit certain interactions. For example, some instances might disable "liking" or other social actions by default for all users or just for new users.

Network Settings: Friendica allows users to connect with other social networks (like Diaspora, Mastodon, etc.). If you’re trying to "like" a post from another network, there might be compatibility issues or restrictions depending on how the networks are interconnected.

User Permissions: Your account might have limited permissions. Check your account settings or contact the administrator of the instance to confirm your permissions.

To resolve the issue, you can try the following:

Check your account status: Make sure your account is fully activated and that there are no restrictions on it.
Review instance policies: Look for any information or guidelines on your instance’s homepage or help sections that might explain the restrictions.
Contact support: Reach out to the instance's admin for clarification on why you can't "like" posts and what you need to do to gain that access.
If none of these suggestions work, let me know, and we can try to troubleshoot further.

I often have small conflicts with people I'm dating. I quickly get a sense of how it feels to resolve our conflicts. Often, it's been pretty good -- I tend to date people who are quite receptive to feedback. And if they aren't, it becomes a problem very quickly. The progression of my romantic relationships depends on good conflict resolution.

This is not true for my friendships. (I'm not sure of all the reasons why.) I tend to smooth things over with friendships much more often. If they bother me a little, it's not a big deal, because we aren't trying to be that close or spend that much time together.

And then when a bigger problem does come up, I find myself worried: how will they handle the conflict?

With many people, if I tell them that they did something that bothered me, then there's a good chance they will refuse responsibility and just blame me for being upset. ("Many people" is meant to be very vague -- I really don't know the percentage, since I'm rarely testing this.)

Last time I initiated a conflict with a friend, I only did it because I felt like I really needed to, and their reactions made me give up on them.

I vaguely wish that my friendships involved more small conflicts early on. So I could check how conflicts go between us, before getting invested. But I'm not sure how to do this -- it doesn't happen by default for me.