Had a conversation today about whether "coherence theorems" exist, what they are, to what extent you're shooting yourself in the foot if you're not an expected utility maximizer, to what extent agents will self-modify to be more coherent, etc. The last question is interesting and non-trivial. I think that in order to get self-modification, you have to have some preferences that are more basic than others. So the thing that happens is supposed to be something like:
- you realize that your current preferences will result in you having almost no influence in the future with high probability
- you realize that you don't want that
- so you change your preferences so that you stop shooting yourself in the foot etc.

The reason this comes up is that the person I was talking to made a distinction between "selection theorems" and "coherence theorems", where "if you do this you'll die out in the future" is just a selection theorem, and to be a "coherence theorem" you have to end up wanting to self-modify or something. But if you assume agents don't want to be selected against, then selection theorems become coherence theorems.

Anyway IDK this post is a bit rambly and I probably wouldn't make it if I weren't trying to add some momentum here. But I think that questions of how irrational agents end up self-modifying are kind of underrated / not thought about as much as they could be.

friendica seems to have a native markup syntax that involves square-bracketed tags reminiscent of the old phpBB forums, but this server has a plugin that enables markdown support.

Some questions:

1. Is it translated into the native markup at post submission time? If I edit my posts that I wrote in markdown, will I be editing the markdown, or the translation?
2. If someone on a server that doesn't have the plugin sees my posts, will they appear formatted?
3. If I download my posts via the API, will I get the markdown source, or a translation of it?

Here are some samples: italic, bold, link. I'll edit in my findings.

Edit:

1. The markdown syntax is translated at submission time, so everything is now in friendica's native square-bracket-tag syntax.
2. My guess is the markdown version of the post doesn't exist after submission, so there's no compatibility issues with other servers.
3. ...and likewise the API won't be able to get the markdown version.

I was largely interested in this question because I like markdown as a format to have my posts in, and was thinking about how to write posts here so that I could later migrate them to another platform if I ever do get a blog. Being unable to keep the markdown versions is a little discouraging, but of course not that big of a deal. Doing the reverse translation shouldn't be difficult if necessary.

Bounties are like "if you find the solution to my problem, I'll give you $Y."

But every time I think about writing a bounty, I worry it's not going to be very helpful. Because people often don't vet their solutions that much. It takes a lot of time to decide if the potential solution is an actual solution.

e.g. I say "$30 if you find me a place that will give me a dental appointment in the next week." 3 people suggest dentists they like; they each say "try calling this person!" No one actually called the dentists to ask for availability. I take what I can get; I call them myself. Dentist 2 has availability next week. Oof, this didn't save me that much time; I could've just googled for local dentists. Am I supposed to pay out now?

e.g. I say "$500 to fix my nighttime breathing problems," and then I get these suggestions: buteyko, Wim Hof, sleep study. But then I spend 2h reading about buteyko and learn it would take me 1 month of regular practice before I should expect to see results. (And maybe it just won't fix my problems at all.) It's going to take me more than $500 of additional time/money to evaluate each potential solution, so it'd be great if people only made suggestions with a high probability of success -- but how do I make that happen?

Even if verifying a solution takes just 5min on my end, if 20 people make suggestions, then that's going to take me a lot of time.

I wish I could say "if you make my problem disappear with as-little-work-as-possible on my end, I'll give you $Y." But it seems hard to operationalize for different problems.

I'm interested in reading more non-fiction! Read anything good lately? I'm mostly interested in books that are aimed at a non-academic audience but are info-dense, complex and 'crunchy' (i.e. not books that repeat the same 3 ideas for like 200 pages). Probably less interested in self-help/self-development style books?

Potential topics of interest (but I'm open to other topics)

-emotions, neuroscience, hormones, brain chemicals, 'processing'. Stuff about the connection between our physical bodies and our qualia, but probably from a more practical than a philosophical perspective. Good examples of the genre that I've read: The Body Keeps the Score, How Emotions Are Made, Unlocking the Emotional Brain

-stuff that gives me a better sense "how the world works" politically, economically, socially. Books that explain in a simple way some complex global system that lots of people don't understand. I'm most sympathetic to lefty perspectives, but also open to centrist/liberal or wacky/heterodox perspectives.
Example of the genre: Hickel's The Divide?

-history books focussing on: anarchism; sexuality; relationships; progressive social movements; people being queer/non-monogamous "before it was cool"
Good example of the genre: the podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

-work (history and sociology of); capitalism (critics and (semi-critical) defenders/explainers)
Good example of the genre: Bullshit Jobs

-social skills, charisma, interpersonal interaction. I'd tolerate more self-help-iness here, as probably most books about these things are self-help books.
Ok example of the genre: Non-violent Communication. This wasn't very info-dense, but I like that it shows you a way to approach social interaction in a structured, systematic way.

I might add more topics as comments when I think of them.

Thank you in advance!