I want to thank this community for existing, all the people founding it, the people contributing to it and all the stuff linked here. I may not like all the topics or agree with all the opinions posted here. Nor may I find use of most of the stuff I read around here. But at least I don't feel so alone anymore.
Previous discussion in the last open thread:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/jv4/open_thread_1117_march_2014/apgw
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/jv4/open_thread_1117_march_2014/apgw]
2jkrause9y
Yes, this happens to me in Windows, but not Ubuntu (both Chrome).
0RowanE9y
Am experiencing this with chrome on my phone, but did not notice earlier on my
PC, even though that also uses chrome.
0[anonymous]9y
Yes, very annoying.
0[anonymous]9y
I used Chrome and it happened, when I use Firefox it doesn't.
How well do medical doctors fare in terms of health outcomes compared to people of similar social economic status and family history? Is there a difference between research doctors and practising doctors? What about nurses, is there a notable difference too?
This question is posted within the context of "how big is the effect of medical knowledge on personal health?" and the assumption that medical doctors should represent the upper end of the spectrum. Other medical professionals should represent data points in between. All this together should hint at the personal use of medical knowledge in some kind of unit.
This study seems to go quite a ways towards answering your question:
Among both U.S. white and black men, physicians were, on average, older when they died, (73.0 years for white and 68.7 for black) than were lawyers (72.3 and 62.0), all examined professionals (70.9 and 65.3), and all men (70.3 and 63.6). The top ten causes of death for white male physicians were essentially the same as those of the general population, although they were more likely to die from cerebrovascular disease, accidents, and suicide, and less likely to die from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia/influenza, or liver disease than were other professional white men...
These findings should help to erase the myth of the unhealthy doctor. At least for men, mortality outcomes suggest that physicians make healthy personal choices.
-- Frank, Erica, Holly Biola, and Carol A. Burnett. "Mortality rates and causes among US physicians." American journal of preventive medicine 19.3 (2000): 155-159.
The doctors had a lower mortality rate than the general population for all causes of death except suicide. The mortality rate ratios for other graduates and
This is spot on! And a great starting point for further research. Thank you.
0[anonymous]9y
Gah! I had been deceived, thanks for clearing that up.
-1TylerJay9y
Somewhat related, I remember reading an article claiming that Doctors are more
likely to opt out of life-prolonging treatment. Not really well-cited, but
seemed like an interesting claim. That end-of-life hospital care is so bad that
they would choose not to do it.
Link [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/feb/08/how-doctors-choose-die]
4Sabiola9y
Sorry for nitpicking, but don't you mean 'doctors are more likely to opt out'?
Both sides are totally opposed, yet see the same fact as proving they are right.
If redheads are 10 times more likely to be in jail for violent crimes, it is evidence for both "redheads are violent" and "judges hate redheads" - and both might be true!
And "redheads are violent" and "judges hate redheads" are not totally opposed, they only look that way in a context where they are taken as arguments in support of broader ideologies who, them, are totally opposed (or rather, compete with each other so oppose each other).
More generally, many facts can be interpreted different ways, and if one interpretation is more favorable to one ideological side, that side will use that interpretation as an argument. Seen like that, facts looking like they support "opposite sides" seems almost inevitable.
Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics
[http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html]
5Kaj_Sotala9y
Confirmation bias [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias].
Also more specifically attitude polarization
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_polarization]:
5Dahlen9y
Apologies for the nitpick, but didn't you mean ethnic group?
Everyone knows utilitarians are more likely to break rules.
(This is mostly a joke based on the misspelling. I know a sophisticated utilitarianism would consider the effect of widespread lawbreaking and not necessarily break laws so much as to be overrepresented in prison)
I don't know if you intended your disclaimer to be funny, but I found it funnier
than the original joke.
0mstevens9y
I did actually mean ethnic group, but now I see my typo I'm actually quite
liking it this way as it's less likely to trigger real-world connotations.
5Plasmon9y
You know what they say: one man’s Modus Ponens is another man’s Modus Tollens
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/9ki/shit_rationalists_say/]
1Gurkenglas9y
That's only once you reformulate grandfather's scenario as "If the justice
system is unbiased, racism is justified.". It surprises me that father would cut
grandfather's class along its joints... can mstevens think up examples of his
class not covered by father, or nonexamples covered by father?
I have sometimes seen arguments that fit this pattern, including on Less Wrong —
Your disagreement with me on a point of meta-level theory or ideology implies that you intend harm to me personally, or can't be trusted not to harm me if the whim strikes you to do so.
It seems to me that something is deficient or abusive about many arguments of this form in the general case, but I'm not sure that it's always wrong. What are some examples of legitimate arguments of this form?
(A point of clarification: The "meta-level theory or ideology" part is important. That should match propositions such as "consequentialism is true and deontology is false" or "natural-rights theory doesn't usefully explain why we shouldn't hurt others". It should not match propositions such as "other people don't really suffer when I punch them in the head" or "injury to wiggins has no moral significance".)
One mistake is overestimating the probability that the other person will act on their ideology.
People compartmentalize. For example, in theory, religious people should kill me for being unbeliever, but in real life I don't expect this from my neighbors. They will find an excuse not to act according to logical consequences of their faith; and most likely they will not even realize they did this.
(And it's probably safest if I stop trying to teach them to decompartmentalize. Ethics first, effectiveness can wait. I don't really need semi-rational Bible maximizers in my universe.)
I don't think the problem with such argument are so much that they are wrong on
a factual basis, but they prevent the discussion of some important ideas.
A feminist can argue that ze can measure with a implicit bias test how biased
people are and that the argument that you are making is going to make the
average reader more biased. Ze might be completely right, but that doesn't mean
that your argument is wrong on a factual level.
Once you move to political consideration that certain things are not allowed to
be said because they support harmful memes, you are in danger of getting mind
killed and be left with a world view that doesn't allow you to make good
predictions about reality.
My heart sinks whenever I see these sorts of discussions on LessWrong.
-1solipsist9y
My heart sinks whenever I see these sorts of discussions on LessWrong. Could we
analyze sometime we expect to be verifiable?
4Jayson_Virissimo9y
Making verifiable predictions about a missing airplane doesn't seem all that
difficult to me; what am I missing? For instance, is there something wrong with
this [http://predictionbook.com/predictions/24426] one?
My hosting company got annoyed because something was taking up too many resources. I did what the nice person on the telephone suggested (installed some WordPress plugins, uninstalled others) and it's back online now. If the problem recurs I might have to restrict commenting for a while until I can figure out a more permanent solution, but for now everything's fine.
I checked the site, and got a 403. Is that what you're talking about? When did
you first notice it? The latest Google cache is from Mar 18, 2014 17:37:21 GMT.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://slatestarcodex.com/#
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://slatestarcodex.com/#]
etc.
The concept of heroic responsibility seems to be off-putting for some people, mostly because it looks like it puts the blame of every single bad thing at the feed of an individual. Generally, I've answered this objection by telling them that they don't need to look that broadly and that they can apply the concept at a smaller, everyday scale. So instead of worrying about solving depression forever, you can worry about making sure a friend gets the psychological help they need and not telling yourself things like: "It's their parent's/partner's/doctor's responsibility that they get proper help."
Is this a correct way to explain the concept or am I strongly misrepresenting it?
Maybe it's not a problem with explaining the concept per se, it's just that its consequences are unpleasant. Feels like you are telling people that heroic responsibility is one of the possible choices, a one that they didn't make, but could have made, and perhaps even should have made. -- There probably are good reasons why most people don't take heroic responsibility, but these are difficult to explain. So it's easier to pretend that the whole concept does not make sense to you.
Also, it's not my responsibility to understand the concept of heroic responsibility. :D
EDIT: It may be related to the status-regulation emotion that apparently some people feel very strongly, and some people don't even know. The problem with "heroic responsibility" might simply be the emotional reaction of: "Who do you think you are that you even consider taking more responsibility than other people around you?! That is a task worth of a king; and you obviously aren't one. And you try to explain it to me, but I am also not a king; I don't even pretend to be, so... this whole stuff doesn't make any sense. You must be insane."
It seems most people don't feel good about being considered personally
responsible for all the bad things in the world. Especially people who already
suffer from anxiety of some kind.
But it's a worthwhile thing to know about, even in everyday life. I work at a
homeless shelter at the moment, and I've occasionally gone out of my way to help
people because I knew about heroic responsibility. Even if I'm not tackling
homelessness as a general problem, it has still helped me become a better me.
0kalium9y
This seems completely incompatible with the actual concept, but certainly more
palatable.
The problem with the concept as a whole is that it imposes an impossible
requirement -> I will be maximally guilty whatever I do -> why even bother doing
anything. Humans (with rare exceptions) just aren't built such that heroic
responsibility works for them. If I'm only responsible for close relatives and
friends plus some limited charity, I can actually fulfill my responsibilities so
there's a reason to try, and so unheroic responsibility is a better model to
live by unless you want to impress LWers.
0Squark9y
The way I would put it: Doing the right thing is hard. It doesn't mean one
should give up without trying. Also, something can be done better even if it's
not done perfectly.
-2ChristianKl9y
In what contexts do you try to convince other people of heroic responsibility?
Why do you want to frame it that way?
I think the concept comes on LW from HPMOR. Specifically from:
Most people reject that kind of responsibility. It's no accident that the person
who wrote those lines is on a quest to safe the world.
It also in some sense quite telling that the character who speaks those lines is
a child who hasn't learned the rules about what is and what isn't his business.
Taking responsibility for the life on another is invasive and if you look at the
story than Hermoine isn't that happy that Harry tries to be the prime hero.
Half a year ago I sat in a café and had a conversation about personal
development. As "collateral damage" the words I spoke brought up a deep personal
issue in a stranger next to me and the person sort of angrily started an
interaction with me. I went into a direct 10 minute NLP intervention.
Hopefully it helped but I didn't gave the person afterwards my contact details
to prolong the interaction with him but just told him to seek help elsewhere.
That particular interaction burned my out and it was okay because the other
person started it.
If I'm however sitting in public transportation and the person sitting next to
me is crying after ending a telephone conversation I don't take it as my
responsibility to fix the issue.
There are days were I might do a bit on a nonverbal level but I wouldn't impose
myself into the situation by speaking words. I could try to play the role of a
hero, but I often chose against it and that's fine.
When it comes to psychological help for friends, then I think it's good to offer
it. It's good to explain to someone which choices are available to them. On the
other hand everybody has a right to feel bad and if a friend wants to feel bad
and/or not be helped by myself, then it's not my business to break through and
make him feel well.
That also means that if people around you don't want to take responsibility,
0MathiasZaman9y
I'm not exactly trying to convince them, just trying to explain the concept.
It's something that occasionally comes up when you mention Less Wrong somewhere
on the internet. "Less Wrong, aren't those the guys that think you are
personally responsible for children dying in Africa?"
This looks like good advice. Thank you.
-1ChristianKl9y
In those cases, it's useful to explain the advantages of that mindset. Knowing
you saved a child in Africa from dying through malaria feels really great. It
makes you feel powerful and makes you feel agentship.
Happiness research shows that giving to other people often makes you more happy
than buying possessions for yourself.
4fubarobfusco9y
To what extent has this been shown when you will never meet or hear directly
from the recipients of your gift?
2kalium9y
Um. The one time I donated to a charity (as a child), I immediately felt
terrible guilt. My family was poor at the time, and I realized my parents might
have needed those $300 of saved-up allowance. When I save money, I reduce the
risk that I will be a burden to those close to me, and that's really fucking
valuable.
Laser eye surgery (LASIK) is being suggested by several people on LessWrong, who suggest it is a costly procedure that has high likelihood to improve your life. I do not think this is a good trade-off across a life time, because presbyopia.
Almost all humans experience presbyopia. This is age-related deterioration in the ability of the eye to adjust focus. In history, the biggest effect for most people is reduced ability to read, but now it also is affecting the ability to use computers.
If you have myopia (short sight), you can not see distant objects witho... (read more)
The need for glasses is a binary variable -- either you need them or you don't.
Someone with presbyopia always needs glasses because he can't focus both near
and far. It doesn't matter whether that person started with good eyesight, or
with myopia, or had myopia corrected by Lasik -- he will need glasses.
You seem to think that presbyopia "corrects" myopia, that is not so. In
geometric terms myopia "translates", shifts your zone of focus closer to you so
that it doesn't include infinity any more. But presbyopia narrows your zone of
focus, contracts it. You don't get far vision back by overlaying myopia with
presbyopia.
1aubrey9y
Sorry, I was not clear. I do not think that presbyopia corrects myopia. It even
makes it worse at distance. But at close myopia can offset the effect of
presbyopia.
As presbyopia narrows your zone of focus, you can not focus as close as
previously. If you have myopia, you can focus at much closer distances than
people with normal vision. Before presbyopia, this is not much use. When
presbyopia develops, you have more close vision to spare, and can still read a
book or a computer screen when people with normal vision would need reading
glasses.
I will give a simplified example. A person has mild myopia, and needs a
correction to focus at infinity, of strength -2.50 dioptres. They have
successful LASIK surgery which gives them normal vision. They develop severe
presbyopia, and require a correction of +2.50 dioptres to be able to focus at a
comfortable reading distance. They now need reading glasses. If they had not had
LASIK surgery they would need distance glasses but would not need reading
glasses. They can gain the correction of +2.50 dioptres by taking off their
distance glasses.
This is why I say, "[with successful LASIK] you get better distance vision but
also you get worse close vision as presbyopia develops.". What is more important
may vary from person to person.
I have spoken to an optician about this, and she was mostly confirming this.
This is only N=1 argument from authority though! She agreed of course that
people with myopia and presbyopia can get good close vision by taking off their
distance glasses. They do not need reading glasses, unless they wear contact
lenses or have had LASIK. However, I must say that she did not not think that
this would be a reason for most young people to not have LASIK. She said would
certainly not advise LASIK for people with presbyopia or who would likely have
it soon. She said also that people who wear contact lenses for myopia who get
presbyopia, she will suggest under-correction in one eye, so that they have good
d
0wadavis9y
Please keep us updated on your findings and decisions.
I'm also looking at a cost-benefit of LASIK and watching the reports on early
adopters. High chance of an improved quality of life versus a small chance of
significantly reduced quality of life. So this is how risk aversion feels like
from the inside.
1aubrey9y
I have spoken to an optician as in reply to other message in this thread.
I have also asked at a computer science department in a European university. It
was funny! Everybody in the department except some grad students had myopia.
Many of the older faculty also had myopia. But nobody had LASIK. Sorry I did not
count properly. My visit was for other reason. However, I can say the modal mode
of vision correction was glasses for distance vision and taken off for reading
or computers. There were also some people with varifocal glasses. There were
also some people with contact lenses for distance vision and reading glasses for
reading or computers.
[LINK] Sleep loss can cause brain damage (permanently lost neurons at least in mice). Even if the study is only about mice it nonetheless provides references to more general results:
I have a friend with Crohn's Disease, who often struggles with the motivation to even figure out how to improve his diet in order to prevent relapse. I suggested he should find a consistent way to not have to worry about diet, such as prepared meals, a snack plan, meal replacements (Soylent is out soon!), or dietary supplement.
As usual, I'm pinging the rationalists to see if there happens to be a medically inclined recommendation lurking about. Soylent seems promising, and doesn't seem the sort of thing that he and his doctor would have even discussed. ... (read more)
Consider helminthic therapy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy].
Hookworm infection down-regulates bowel inflammation and my parasitology
professor thinks it is a very promising approach. NPR
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/91951-an-update-on-hookworms/] has a reasonably
good popularization. Depending on the species chosen, one treatment can control
symptoms for up to 5 years at a time. It is commercially available
[http://autoimmunetherapies.com/helminthic_therapy_purchase.html] despite lack
of regulatory approval. Not quite a magic bullet, but an active area of research
with good preliminary results.
2tut9y
There is no known "cure all solution not entirely endorsed by the FDA that will
solve all of your motivational and health problems in one fell swoop." A lot of
people with Crohn's seem to get some benefit from changing their diet. But the
conclusions they draw always seem to contradict each other and in general the
improvements are temporary. What it looks like to me (and at least on person
with her own experience of the problem) is that radically changing your diet
every few years is what you need to do.
Has anyone evr tried writing rationalist fiction of The Sandman? It's a world that explicitly runs on storytelling patterns, but surely something can be done that illustrates the merits of rational thought even in such a setting. Rationalistis should win and adapt to the circumstances, even if they are a dreamscape.
Neil Gaiman himself, sort of. In his take on the Marvel Universe
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_1602], the genius scientist character has
figured out the world runs on storytelling logic instead of mechanical science
and that he won't ever be able to permanently change his friend turned into a
superhuman rock monster back into a human since "guy permanently turned into
superhuman rock monster" makes a better story element than "guy who was a
superhuman rock monster but is all better now".
For the current fic writers, I don't see it working. Rationalist fiction writers
range from middling to terrible in skill compared to traditional fiction writers
at the top of their game like Gaiman, and trying to do this would basically be
trying to one-up Gaiman in his own game at his home field. Not to mention that
his world-building is a lot more self-aware already than the perennial nerd
culture favorite soft targets like Star Wars or Harry Potter, like the Marvel
1602 example shows, so you wouldn't have the nice obvious stuff to work with.
4Ritalin9y
@First bit; that's Discworld-grade brilliant, but does the knowledge spread, as
it does in Discworld where everyone is Genre Savvy, or is Reed Richards still
Useless? Of course, the problem with narrativium is that attempting to take
advantage of it is likely to bite you back, but is it better than not knowing?
My very first attempt at writing, waaay back in 2007, was a story about a guy
who was thurst into a Narrativium-based world, which was kind of like an
immense, live Let's Play for the entertainment a bunch of True Fae children
(about three centuries old). Gran't Morrison's Action Comics come to mind. He'd
be thurst into different genres asd different roles, and he'd have to start
thinking vey meta, very fast, if he wanted to survive each story. He also wanted
to get the damned show cancelled without giving a bad performance that would
give the Showrunner a reason to fire him (literally), leading to many Springtime
For Hitler moments, much to his frustration (sort of like Hideo Kojima and Metal
Gear, Hideaki Anno and Evangelion, ... but he also starts to take pride in his
work (think Walter White and his blue meth)... At some point, he'd become aware
that the way things made "storytelling sense" rather than "logical sense" also
extended to the world outside the game. And then we'd have an Animal Man meets
Grant Morrison type of meeting.
Most of the references I'm making here are retroactive; I had the idea much
before I came in contact with them, but they're handy for condensing. Another
work I'd compare this to would be GAINAX's Abenoashi Mahou Shoutengai. In fact,
now that I think of it, it might be better to start the story as an Ontological
Mystery, instead of having his slavery revealed to him right away as I initially
thought.
Anyway, my point here is to say that, almost as soon as I wrote the first
chapter, I went on hiatus, because I was keenly aware that I was biting much,
much more than I could chew. Even now, I don't think I have remotely what it
Joining the Habit RPG party.
While the local meetup every month has been amazing every time I went, it didn't
have that much impact on my everyday life. Joining Habit RPG definitely has.
3polymathwannabe9y
Last Friday I joined the tinychat study hall for the first time, and I recommend
it very much.
Priming can nudge one's thoughts in certain directions; fashion can nudge others'.
It's easy enough to try priming abstract, rational, far thinking with cool blue colours, Mozart, and by surrounding oneself with books... but is there any data on scents that nudge peoples' modes of thinking in similar directions? Failing that, is there anecdata?
I wouldn't use the word rational in that place. Taking action instead of
spending a lot of energy in mental analysis is often rational.
I would guess that the smell of a library with a lot of books might be able to
have an effect for people who spent a lot of time in libraries.
0DataPacRat9y
In some cases, yes; but people tend to be willing to take action all on their
own quite often anyway. I'm hoping to find something that nudges in the
direction of far-mode thinking for those times when it /is/ appropriate to stop
and think.
0ChristianKl9y
A lot of people on LW have akrasia problems. Having thing in their environment
that bring them more into their heads wouldn't be beneficial.
I would profit more from an environment that primes me to take action than from
one that makes me think more about what I'm doing.
Be aware of the tradeoff you are making.
Crapshot: Say I have some kind of data per country and I want to use Python or other FOSS tools to plot this on a good looking map at the country level. Is there a good tutorial for this? I ask because I can do virtually anything else with Python like data manipulation and analysis or plots, so I'd be nice to do this with Python too.
I know it's not FOSS or Python, but Google docs has exactly this feature built
in to its spreadsheet application.
0Manfred9y
Looks like this
[http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/88209/python-mapping-in-matplotlib-cartopy-color-one-country]
might be like what you want.
0dougclow9y
R [http://www.r-project.org/] is free & open source, and widely used for stats,
data manipulation, analysis and plots. You can get geographical boundary data
from GADM [http://gadm.org/] in RData format, and use R packages such as sp
[http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/sp/index.html] to produce charts easily.
Or at least, as easily as you can do anything in R. I hesitate to suggest it to
people who already do data work in Python (it's less ... clean) but in this sort
of domain it can do many things easily that are much harder or less commonly
done in Python. My impression is the really whizzy, clever stats/graphics stuff
is still all about R. (See e.g. this geographic example
[http://geotheory.co.uk/blog/2014/02/07/visualising-topography/].) There are
many tutorials, some of them very good in parts, but it's famously slippery to
get to grips with.
More on spatial data in R [http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Spatial.html].
You can also get a long way with the maps
[http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/maps/index.html] and mapdata
[http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/mapdata/index.html] packages.
0Metus9y
I know about R. In fact I switched from R to Python because R is less ... clean.
It looks like I will have to use R for plotting though the rest of the stack
will be in Python.
Those maps look gorgeus!
0sixes_and_sevens9y
You might want to look at basemap for matplotlib
[http://wiki.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib/Maps].
Disclaimer: I haven't used this, (though I might start), but skimming over the
synopses it looks like it will do what you want it to.
0Metus9y
Thanks for the reply. Basemap looks like what I want but it is not. It is
surprisingly easy to plot arbitrary data on a world map but I didn't manage to
e.g. colour the countries of the world by some metric. If you look into basemap,
please keep me posted.
P.S.: There is some tutorial that shows how to colour Italy's regions seperately
but I did not manage to colour in the whole world.
What does Everett Immortality look like in the long term?
The general idea of EI is that there is always some small chance you will survive in any given situation, so there will be some multiverse timelines whose present is the same as your present, but in which you keep on living indefinitely. However, some forms of survival are a lot more likely than others; eg, it's a lot more likely that my cryonically-preserved brain will be scanned and turned into an AI than that a copy of my brain will spontaneously appear out of nothingness. Thus, it makes sense to ... (read more)
You're assuming some sort of pattern theory of identity when you consider
uploads a potential form of survival. If you go all-out pattern theory of
identity and assume we're in a big world
[http://lesswrong.com/r/all/lw/bg0/cryonics_without_freezers_resurrection/], is
there a reason why the subjectively subsequent moments of awareness need to
actually take place at increasing time points on the universe's timeline? A
state of matter that corresponds to your pattern's subjective t + 1 might have
occurred at the universe's t - 10000 at some distant light cone. If your mind
stays at any finite size, it'll eventually just end up going over the same
states again [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_lemma], so you could just get
an unbound subjective experience timeline inside a fixed timeslice of a
spatially infinite, temporally finite universe.
0[anonymous]9y
.
1Viliam_Bur9y
Infinite as in "if you succeeded to make it into situation X, you are guaranteed
to live forever" or merely potentially infinite, as in "for every situation X
where you are alive, in some Everett branch will survive it" (in other words,
you never run out of quantum immortality)? In the latter version, the integral
of the 'afterlife' may still be smaller than the integral of 'normal life'.
1[anonymous]9y
Good point.
During a person's 'normal' life the number of Everett branches containing that
person approaches infinity. The way mortality currently works is that there's a
certain probability that you will die during each year, let's say it's 0.01 when
you're 20. That percent of Everett branches gets "eliminated" each year. This
probability of dying increases each year, until it approaches 1 when you're
close to the age of 120. Let's ignore life-extending technologies. In Copenhagen
interpretation the probability that you're alive after the age of 120 is
effectively zero. In MWI there are few branches that survive beyond this, some
of these for very long, potentially forever. So I agree with you, that the
intergral of branches during a person's normal life is probably greater than
that of the smaller number of branches that survive almost forever. This is true
even if the number of branches or the length of them is infinite, didn't Cantor
prove that there are different sized infinities?
Is this what you were after? I'm a bit confused. Tell me if I made any mistakes.
-1James_Miller9y
As Max Tegmark mentioned on this Rationally Speaking podcast
[http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs101-max-tegmark-on-the-mathematical-universe-hypothesis.html]
quantum immortality might only work if the universe is infinite.
1DataPacRat9y
I don't have bandwidth for a podcast just now; so 'infinite' in what direction?
If the number of MWI timelines can be divided infinitely, then that seems like
it would suffice, even if the universe is finite in many other ways.
0James_Miller9y
As I recall, he doesn't believe the universe is infinite in any direction.
0DataPacRat9y
Did he give any reasoning for that belief? Eg, does assuming non-infinitesimal
worldlines improve the predictions of the interference of double-slit style
experiments?
1Luke_A_Somers9y
Certainly not the latter.
If there were any perceptible grain to them, we'd be about a picosecond from the
abrupt end of the universe-as-we-know-it.
0James_Miller9y
Again from what I recall: scientists have not found any evidence of infinities,
math incompleteness problems go away without infinities, and computer physics
models work even though computers have finite memories.
-2shminux9y
Quantum immortality is a poor atheist's immortal soul.
5Luke_A_Somers9y
That's the opposite of comforting.
-1shminux9y
How so? Don't people find it comforting believing that there are universes where
they survive against impossible odds?
8JGWeissman9y
Mere survival doesn't sound all that great. Surviving in a way that is
comforting is a very small target in the general space of survival.
0shminux9y
Beats dying if you believe that some day you will be saved BY THE POWER OF
SCIENCE!
0Risto_Saarelma9y
So let's say you're a soldier in battle in 2000 BCE. Someone just slashed your
stomach open with a sword, you're in horrible pain, your internal organs are
spilling out, but you're still conscious and aware of what's happening. How are
quantum immortality and the power of science going to work out for you now?
EDIT: I thought quantum immortality was thought as a thing that applies to
everyone everywhere. Are we discussing some sort of more constrained version
here that doesn't apply to "your chest just got smashed by an engine block but
you're still conscious for a little while" but does apply to cryonics, uploading
etc. information theoretic undeath shenanigans?
0Viliam_Bur9y
The answer is the most likely miracle
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/ld/the_hidden_complexity_of_wishes/], but I am not sure
what exactly that would be. All necessary miracles are so improbably that I
don't trust my ability to evaluate their relative probabilities.
It could be something like: By random movement of atoms, your organs jump inside
and your wounds heal (and your body overcomes the infection). All wittnesses
stop fighting and start worshiping you as a god. You don't understand the
situation, but successfully use your new situation to stop the war or escape
from the war. You collect smart people around you, supported by your followers'
donations, and together you invent science relatively slowly. It still takes a
hundred years or more, that you miraculously survive with sufficient brain
function. At the end your team develops a recursively self-improving AI (not
necessarily a Friendly one, only one that wants to keep you alive).
Despite all the miracles, this seems like the least miraculous path from "cut
with a sword" to "immortality". (Assuming that the damage really happened,
because otherwise the most likely path starts with "you wake up from the
nightmate".)
0Risto_Saarelma9y
This is curiously detailed for something where basically the only requirement is
that you stay aware of every moment, constant horrible pain and debilitating
injuries aren't any sort of problem unless they keep you from staying conscious,
and there's basically no lookahead beyond whatever the duration between
consecutive states of subjective consciousness is, definitely something less
than a second.
Sure, someone in the multiverse is going to get the happy shiny human-friendly
thermodynamic miracle starting up for them, but it seems like there'd be
countless quite a bit less improbable quivering masses of horrible injuries and
pain who Just. Can't. Die.
I mean, think of the lookahead. Sure, the miracle scenario has you having a lot
bigger measure of existence after the miracle has taken place, but there doesn't
seem to be a point going directly forward from the lethal injury state where
it's more likely to go down the path of the miracle starting to happen than to
just stay improbably aware in your current rapidly decaying state. You'd
probably end up with some incredibly measure-sparse weird Boltzmann-brain-like
states in the end, but isn't it possible that at every step along the way there
are a lot more pseudo-Boltzmann-brain futures than there are body-repairing
thermodynamic miracle futures?
0[anonymous]9y
.
0shminux9y
What claim?
0[anonymous]9y
.
-1shminux9y
I find it counterproductive to assign probability or truth value to untestables.
0[anonymous]9y
.
-1shminux9y
If your decisions depend on untestables, you need a better decision theory.
0[anonymous]9y
.
0shminux9y
Quantum immortality is based on MWI, which is designed explicitly to match the
standard "shut up and calculate" approach to QM, which means that it cannot have
any measurable effects outside the standard framework, where "Everett branches"
are known as "possible outcomes". If you expect different consequences for your
personal experience in the two pictures, you probably do not understand MWI.
0[anonymous]9y
.
0shminux9y
Blanking your comments before retracting them? To hide changing your mind after
learning stuff?
0[anonymous]9y
No, now that I got a clear picture of this issue I will delete this account
among other things. Sorry for bothering you.
0[anonymous]9y
I don't think removing the content from your comments is a good way to react to
changing your mind, if that is your reason.
0Lumifer9y
What might these consequences be?
0[anonymous]9y
.
0Lumifer9y
I don't think that's how MWI works.
0[anonymous]9y
.
0Lumifer9y
Does not follow. MWI is orthogonal to "some nasty existential horror shit", it
doesn't provide evidence either for or against your worries.
0[anonymous]9y
.
0Lumifer9y
I have no idea what do you worry about, but according to our current
understanding in this life there is no detectable difference between a
Copenhagen world and an Everett world. As to the afterlife, all bets are off --
contemporary physics can't help you there.
0[anonymous]9y
.
0Lumifer9y
Trying to understand quantum physics on the basis of web comics doesn't strike
me as a useful. The lesson you should draw from that comic is that standing near
a nuclear bomb when it explodes is a bad idea.
Whatever happens to you after you die.
They neither know of night or day,
They night and day pour out their thunder.
As every Ingot rolls away,
A dozen more are split 'asunder.
There is a sign above the gate: Eleven days since a man lay dying,
Now every shift brings fear and hate, and shaken men in terror crying.
*
The molten rivers boil away a fiery brew Hell never equalled,
To their profits the bosses pray,
And Mammon sings in his grim cathedral:
His attendants join the choir,
and Heaven help us if we're shirking!
Stoke the furnace's altar fire and just be thankful that we're
Would it be possible for a comment to have anchors that are Karma scored separately, so that someone making several points in the same comment can see which one are getting/losing Karma?
If the points are chained to make a coherent argument, that's going to risk
having the argument split up, whether you nest them as replies or put them
sequentially.
While much ink has been spilled arguing for this approach to the study of political science, little attention has been paid to justifying and rationalizing the method. On the rare occasions that justification has been attempted, the results have been maddeningly vague. Why test predictions from a deductive, and thus truth-preserving, system? What can be learned from such a test? If a prediction is not confirmed, are assumptions already known to be false to blame? What precisely is the connection betwe
I'm having trouble knowing how well I understand a concept, while learning the concept. I tend to be good at making up consistent verbalizations of why something is, or how something works. However these verbalizations aren't always accurate.
The first strategy against this trend is to simply do more problem sets with better feedback. I'm wondering if we can come up with a supplementary strategy where I can check if I really understand a concept or not.
I'm contemplating going to grad school for psychology.
I'd really like to focus on the psychology of religion, but there are other areas of psychology that I find interesting too (e.g. evolutionary psychology).
I don't have a background in psychology; I took one intro course in undergrad to fulfill a requirement for my bachelor's in IT. I do read a lot of pop-sci about psychology.
Think about how will you earn your living. Who will pay you money, for what, and
how much? In particular, consider that under the assumption that you will NOT be
able to get a tenured position in academia.
0JQuinton9y
Yes... I've been reading up on all of the horror stories of adjunct
professors...
They asked everyone what blogs they wanted on the side panel when they
redesigned the site. I don't think the list has been changed after they put it
up.
2eggman9y
Thanks for the information. In that case, I hope in the future there is another
opportunity to ask what blogs are featured on the side panel. I don't know what
anyone else is looking for, but as far as I'm concerned, I check these other
rationality blogs as often as I check things posted directly to Less Wrong. I
find Slate Star Codex, and Overcoming Bias, particularly interesting. Anyway, if
other people gain similar such value from these other blogs, perhaps other blogs
could be added in the future. I understand if each of us freely suggested what
blogs we individually considered 'rational', there would be lots of noise,
redundancy, and swamping the forum with poor suggestions. So, I may start a poll
in the future asking which blogs the community as a whole would like to see
added.
Any LW NYCers have a room available for <$1,000 per month that I (a friendly self-employed 23-year-old male) might be able to move into within a week or two? Or leads on a 1br/studio for <$1400? I could also go a bit above those prices if necessary.
PM me if so and I'll send more details about myself. I'm also staying with some friends in NYC right now so we could meet up anytime.
What is your irrational reading guilty pleasure? Whenever I need a cheap laugh, I browse Conservapedia. Where do you go to indulge the occasional craving for high-octane idiocy?
Russian LiveJournal. With the whole Crimea business going on, the shitstorm
there is really powerful as of now...
1drethelin9y
4chan
1Lumifer9y
Any feelings of your mind being killed while doing so?
0polymathwannabe9y
No, it would take more than that. Google "Golden Age of Gaia" if you'd like some
serious brain death.
Edited: http://www.whale.to/ [http://www.whale.to/] and
http://www.naturalnews.com/ [http://www.naturalnews.com/] are their own brand of
terrible.
-1Richard_Kennaway9y
This is like saying, what sort of shit do you look for when you want to smell
something really horrible?
Facebook announced graph search with great fanfare but if I want to know something simple like getting a list of my recently added friends I can't just type it into the search bar but have to search in Google and find that I have to go through recent activity tab.
Similarly I have told facebook that I speak English and German through the facebook menu. It still shows me French and Rumanian posts of my friends that I can't read. It doesn't offer to translate them. A simple idea like showing me English posts that my French friends post but not showing the Fre... (read more)
You have to remember that you are not the customer for Facebook... you are the product.
Giving you more control over your timeline and the posts you see is good for you, but makes Facebook's ability to charge for access to you through "promoted posts" substantially less inviting.
On the other hand, something like graph search allows the opportunity to compete with Google and LinkedIn.
Just now I had the experience of having Facebook helpfully place directly on my
newsfeed a post by somebody who is not on my friends list, who happens to
trigger the hell out of me and who I actively avoid reading about on Facebook as
much as possible. Thanks Facebook, great algorithms you've got there.
The topic "Is LW a cult?" has been discussed so much here and elsewhere that it
is probably worth creating a LWiki page about it. Including the discussion of
the term cult and when applying it constitutes a non-central fallacy.
4Luke_A_Somers9y
Can you mix and match? I don't think I could keep up with either of those by
themselves.
1ChristianKl9y
As far as I know there Uberman with 6 times and Everyman with 4 I don't know a
shedule to which people successfully adapted with takes 5 times.
I don't think we care about the timeframe of runrise to sunset. It has to be the
whole day but there might be one cheat day per week.
5RolfAndreassen9y
I would like to gently suggest that you may have missed the way my tongue was
poking into my cheek.
That's a good thing -- I would much prefer that somebody that clueless just
shake his head and continue on his merry way.
5polymathwannabe9y
True, we don't want to attract that particular person. But the misinformation
he/she's going to spread may discourage many potential desirables.
0amacfie9y
I'd say it's worth it to have some humor and somewhat self-deprecating fun here.
4Lumifer9y
It's not only worth it, it is sorely needed. Taking yourself too seriously is a
debilitating disease that can be fatal.
2fubarobfusco9y
One of the signs of a cult [http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html] is "grimness" —
"disapproval concerning jokes about the group, its doctrines or its leader(s)."
3polymathwannabe9y
How come that list doesn't mention hero worship?
1fubarobfusco9y
I don't know, and unfortunately the author is dead so we can't ask him.
That said, "hero worship" could mean a number of different things, not all of
which might be symptomatic of a dangerous cult. Could you expand on what you
mean by it?
5polymathwannabe9y
Eliezer Yudkowsky is one of the most accomplished, knowledgeable, and
stimulating writers I've ever encountered, and if he ever were to visit my
house, I'd buy a freezer large enough to accommodate his head, just in case he
choked on my boiled chickpeas. That being said, I think elevating him to Chuck
Norris status is decidedly harmful to the propagation of our cause. He himself
has advocated that we don't worship Einstein, because it obscures the fact that
he was just as human as we are, and discourages others from striving to achieve
his level. Likewise, EY is no superhero, no demigod, no mythic savior, and it
won't do to treat him like one. This is why, as much as I admire the guy's
awesomeness, I'm against the existence of the "EY Facts" thread. I can't explain
rationality to others and keep a straight face while thinking that the author
I'm citing is the Way, the Truth and the Life, the last hope and salvation of
humanity. Leave it to history books to sing his praises, but for the time being,
it will be the opposite of helpful.
6asr9y
I think the "EY facts" goes the other way. That's not hero worship, that's
making a joke of hero worship.
"Chuck Norris status" is the opposite of hero-worship. Is there anybody who
seriously believes that Chuck Norris is actually possessed of superhuman powers?
Heck, is there anybody who even seriously believes he's a uniquely talented
actor?
3fubarobfusco9y
I'm having difficulty parsing which parts of this comment are intended to be
"within quotes" as an example of hero worship ....
-2polymathwannabe9y
The great-writer, chickpeas-and-freezer part is truly my opinion.
0XiXiDu9y
Telling the world that EY is a great writer etc. is fine. Telling the world that
you believe him to be great enough that you'd buy a freezer large enough to
accommodate his head, in case he died in your house, is much worse than
self-mockery such as the EY facts page.
No offense, but I suggest that you stop trying to improve the reputation of
LW/MIRI. If MIRI wants to improve their reputation and public relations they
should hire a professional outsider who is neurotypical (I am neither, so maybe
I am wrong about the impression your opinion gives).
0polymathwannabe9y
Upon rereading my post after a full night's sleep, I can see the problems with
how I expressed it. I agree that it may have come off as too fanboyish, and
we're seeing the line between fanboyism and idolatry at different positions.
Continued argument will only dig me deeper.
3Lumifer9y
Oh, dear. Elevating EY to Chuck Norris status is hilarious and, I would argue,
shows "our cause" in good light.
Maybe elevating EY to the divinely-inspired-prophet (PBUH) status would be
harmful, but I haven't seen anyone do that.
I don't see any need to keep a straight face. I don't know if I am typical, but
I don't respond well to things explained to me with a terribly serious
expression (well, as long as they don't involve things like staunching bleeding
from open wounds and such).
1XiXiDu9y
Just one data point here. The EY facts post was funny and not at all cultish.
Whereas your first sentence (and to a lesser extent the whole comment) made me
cringe.
3FiftyTwo9y
They're attempting it, but it isn't sufficiently amusing for the tradeoff to be
worth it
I want to thank this community for existing, all the people founding it, the people contributing to it and all the stuff linked here. I may not like all the topics or agree with all the opinions posted here. Nor may I find use of most of the stuff I read around here. But at least I don't feel so alone anymore.
That is all, thank you.
When I hit discussion, it keeps automatically redirecting me to the 'top posts' even when I click back onto 'new'. Is anyone else getting this?
How well do medical doctors fare in terms of health outcomes compared to people of similar social economic status and family history? Is there a difference between research doctors and practising doctors? What about nurses, is there a notable difference too?
This question is posted within the context of "how big is the effect of medical knowledge on personal health?" and the assumption that medical doctors should represent the upper end of the spectrum. Other medical professionals should represent data points in between. All this together should hint at the personal use of medical knowledge in some kind of unit.
This study seems to go quite a ways towards answering your question:
-- Frank, Erica, Holly Biola, and Carol A. Burnett. "Mortality rates and causes among US physicians." American journal of preventive medicine 19.3 (2000): 155-159.
You may also find this worth checking into:
... (read more)Is there a name for the situation where the same piece of evidence is seen as obviously supporting their side by both sides of an argument?
eg: New statistics are published showing ethic group X is committing crimes at 10 times the rate of ethic group Y.
To one side, this is obvious evidence that ethic group X are criminals.
To another side, this is obvious evidence the justice system is biased.
Both sides are totally opposed, yet see the same fact as proving they are right.
If redheads are 10 times more likely to be in jail for violent crimes, it is evidence for both "redheads are violent" and "judges hate redheads" - and both might be true!
And "redheads are violent" and "judges hate redheads" are not totally opposed, they only look that way in a context where they are taken as arguments in support of broader ideologies who, them, are totally opposed (or rather, compete with each other so oppose each other).
More generally, many facts can be interpreted different ways, and if one interpretation is more favorable to one ideological side, that side will use that interpretation as an argument. Seen like that, facts looking like they support "opposite sides" seems almost inevitable.
Everyone knows utilitarians are more likely to break rules.
(This is mostly a joke based on the misspelling. I know a sophisticated utilitarianism would consider the effect of widespread lawbreaking and not necessarily break laws so much as to be overrepresented in prison)
I have sometimes seen arguments that fit this pattern, including on Less Wrong —
It seems to me that something is deficient or abusive about many arguments of this form in the general case, but I'm not sure that it's always wrong. What are some examples of legitimate arguments of this form?
(A point of clarification: The "meta-level theory or ideology" part is important. That should match propositions such as "consequentialism is true and deontology is false" or "natural-rights theory doesn't usefully explain why we shouldn't hurt others". It should not match propositions such as "other people don't really suffer when I punch them in the head" or "injury to wiggins has no moral significance".)
One mistake is overestimating the probability that the other person will act on their ideology.
People compartmentalize. For example, in theory, religious people should kill me for being unbeliever, but in real life I don't expect this from my neighbors. They will find an excuse not to act according to logical consequences of their faith; and most likely they will not even realize they did this.
(And it's probably safest if I stop trying to teach them to decompartmentalize. Ethics first, effectiveness can wait. I don't really need semi-rational Bible maximizers in my universe.)
The missing airplane story seems like an opportunity for prediction on par with the Amanda Knox trial.
What happened to slatestarcodex and does anyone know if it's just temporary or something to be concerned about?
My hosting company got annoyed because something was taking up too many resources. I did what the nice person on the telephone suggested (installed some WordPress plugins, uninstalled others) and it's back online now. If the problem recurs I might have to restrict commenting for a while until I can figure out a more permanent solution, but for now everything's fine.
Any tips on bailing out of an argument if you want to very nearly concede the whole thing without quite saying your opponent is right?
eg if you realise the whole conversation was a terrible mistake and you're totally unequipped to have the conversation, but still think you're right.
Should you just admit they're right for simplicity even if you're not quite convinced?
I state the truth: "I tend to get too attached to my opinion in live debates and want to think about your arguments in peace."
The people that get offended by this tend to be not the kind of people I want to associate with anyway.
The concept of heroic responsibility seems to be off-putting for some people, mostly because it looks like it puts the blame of every single bad thing at the feed of an individual. Generally, I've answered this objection by telling them that they don't need to look that broadly and that they can apply the concept at a smaller, everyday scale. So instead of worrying about solving depression forever, you can worry about making sure a friend gets the psychological help they need and not telling yourself things like: "It's their parent's/partner's/doctor's responsibility that they get proper help."
Is this a correct way to explain the concept or am I strongly misrepresenting it?
Maybe it's not a problem with explaining the concept per se, it's just that its consequences are unpleasant. Feels like you are telling people that heroic responsibility is one of the possible choices, a one that they didn't make, but could have made, and perhaps even should have made. -- There probably are good reasons why most people don't take heroic responsibility, but these are difficult to explain. So it's easier to pretend that the whole concept does not make sense to you.
Also, it's not my responsibility to understand the concept of heroic responsibility. :D
EDIT: It may be related to the status-regulation emotion that apparently some people feel very strongly, and some people don't even know. The problem with "heroic responsibility" might simply be the emotional reaction of: "Who do you think you are that you even consider taking more responsibility than other people around you?! That is a task worth of a king; and you obviously aren't one. And you try to explain it to me, but I am also not a king; I don't even pretend to be, so... this whole stuff doesn't make any sense. You must be insane."
Laser eye surgery (LASIK) is being suggested by several people on LessWrong, who suggest it is a costly procedure that has high likelihood to improve your life. I do not think this is a good trade-off across a life time, because presbyopia.
Almost all humans experience presbyopia. This is age-related deterioration in the ability of the eye to adjust focus. In history, the biggest effect for most people is reduced ability to read, but now it also is affecting the ability to use computers.
If you have myopia (short sight), you can not see distant objects witho... (read more)
[LINK] Sleep loss can cause brain damage (permanently lost neurons at least in mice). Even if the study is only about mice it nonetheless provides references to more general results:
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2014/03/veasey/
Scott Aaronson reviews Max Tegmark's book on the Mathematical Universe hypothesis. Tegmark responds in the comments, with an interesting and still ongoing back-and-forth.
I have a friend with Crohn's Disease, who often struggles with the motivation to even figure out how to improve his diet in order to prevent relapse. I suggested he should find a consistent way to not have to worry about diet, such as prepared meals, a snack plan, meal replacements (Soylent is out soon!), or dietary supplement.
As usual, I'm pinging the rationalists to see if there happens to be a medically inclined recommendation lurking about. Soylent seems promising, and doesn't seem the sort of thing that he and his doctor would have even discussed. ... (read more)
Has anyone evr tried writing rationalist fiction of The Sandman? It's a world that explicitly runs on storytelling patterns, but surely something can be done that illustrates the merits of rational thought even in such a setting. Rationalistis should win and adapt to the circumstances, even if they are a dreamscape.
What have been the most useful LW meetup activities in which you participate till now?
Priming can nudge one's thoughts in certain directions; fashion can nudge others'.
It's easy enough to try priming abstract, rational, far thinking with cool blue colours, Mozart, and by surrounding oneself with books... but is there any data on scents that nudge peoples' modes of thinking in similar directions? Failing that, is there anecdata?
Can you please add an open_thread tag.
Crapshot: Say I have some kind of data per country and I want to use Python or other FOSS tools to plot this on a good looking map at the country level. Is there a good tutorial for this? I ask because I can do virtually anything else with Python like data manipulation and analysis or plots, so I'd be nice to do this with Python too.
What does Everett Immortality look like in the long term?
The general idea of EI is that there is always some small chance you will survive in any given situation, so there will be some multiverse timelines whose present is the same as your present, but in which you keep on living indefinitely. However, some forms of survival are a lot more likely than others; eg, it's a lot more likely that my cryonically-preserved brain will be scanned and turned into an AI than that a copy of my brain will spontaneously appear out of nothingness. Thus, it makes sense to ... (read more)
A Puddler's Tale
... (read more)Would it be possible for a comment to have anchors that are Karma scored separately, so that someone making several points in the same comment can see which one are getting/losing Karma?
Just make multiple comments.
Amusing final sentence from Clarke & Primo (2005):
... (read more)I'm having trouble knowing how well I understand a concept, while learning the concept. I tend to be good at making up consistent verbalizations of why something is, or how something works. However these verbalizations aren't always accurate.
The first strategy against this trend is to simply do more problem sets with better feedback. I'm wondering if we can come up with a supplementary strategy where I can check if I really understand a concept or not.
Selective manipulation of learning through the application of a mild electrical current to the brain.
Reference is pay walled
I'm contemplating going to grad school for psychology.
I'd really like to focus on the psychology of religion, but there are other areas of psychology that I find interesting too (e.g. evolutionary psychology).
I don't have a background in psychology; I took one intro course in undergrad to fulfill a requirement for my bachelor's in IT. I do read a lot of pop-sci about psychology.
Anyone have any advice for me going forward?
What's the process for selecting what 'rationality blogs' are featured in the sidebar? Is it selected by the administrators of the site?
I'm surprised some blogs of other users with lots of promoted posts here aren't featured as rationality blogs.
Long shot again:
Any LW NYCers have a room available for <$1,000 per month that I (a friendly self-employed 23-year-old male) might be able to move into within a week or two? Or leads on a 1br/studio for <$1400? I could also go a bit above those prices if necessary.
PM me if so and I'll send more details about myself. I'm also staying with some friends in NYC right now so we could meet up anytime.
What is your irrational reading guilty pleasure? Whenever I need a cheap laugh, I browse Conservapedia. Where do you go to indulge the occasional craving for high-octane idiocy?
I frequent reddit, that is bad enough.
Facebook announced graph search with great fanfare but if I want to know something simple like getting a list of my recently added friends I can't just type it into the search bar but have to search in Google and find that I have to go through recent activity tab.
Similarly I have told facebook that I speak English and German through the facebook menu. It still shows me French and Rumanian posts of my friends that I can't read. It doesn't offer to translate them. A simple idea like showing me English posts that my French friends post but not showing the Fre... (read more)
You have to remember that you are not the customer for Facebook... you are the product.
Giving you more control over your timeline and the posts you see is good for you, but makes Facebook's ability to charge for access to you through "promoted posts" substantially less inviting.
On the other hand, something like graph search allows the opportunity to compete with Google and LinkedIn.
Based on discussion at the South Bay Area meetup tonight.
The five pillars of Islam are
By analogy, I propose five pillars of LessWrongIsm:
- Confession of faith: "There is no God except the one we're going to build, and the sage Yudkowsky is Its prophet."
- Polyphas
... (read more)I believe RolfAndreassen is being humorous.
I get he is. But Poe's Law works both ways: there's no self-parody that some clueless outsider won't mistake for real lunacy.