Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015

So, several years ago I was moved by my primary dissatisfaction with HPMoR and my enjoyment of MLP to start a rationalist MLP fanfic. (There are at least two others, that occupied very different spheres, which I will get to in a bit.)

My main dissatisfaction with HPMoR was that Harry is almost always the teacher, not the student; relatedly, his cleverness far outstrips his wisdom. It is only at the very end, after he nearly loses everything, that he starts to realize how difficult it is to get things right, and even then he does not fully get it. Harry is the sort of character that the careful reader can learn from, but not the sort of character one should try to emulate.

MLP's protagonist, Twilight Sparkle, is in many ways the opposite character: instead of being overconfident and arrogant, she is anxious and (generally) humble. Where Harry has difficulty seeing others as equals or useful, Twilight genuinely relies on her friends. Most of Harry's positive characteristics, though, Twilight shares--or could plausibly share with little modification. (In HP terms, she's basically what would have happen if bookish Hermione had been the Girl-Who-Lived, with the accompanying leadership pot... (read more)

8Alicorn10y

I have not read your story yet, but if I wait till I get around to it, I will forget to inform you that I have been known to accept commissions.

4Zian10y

I suggest doing #1 and #2 in parallel. As you said, the story is mostly done and just needs editing. That will require help from other people and can happen while you do other things. It will be good for you to be able to say "Behold, I have finished this thing." At the same time, as you tackle the full story as a separate thing, it may be worth giving it your best effort (by pulling in #2) so that after a few months, you can say "I tried really hard and it didn't work. Alas. Time to stop." or the opposite, without having to wonder if you just didn't try hard enough.

[-]Rukiedor10y160

I think I recall seeing somewhere that the open thread is a good place for potentially silly questions. So I've got one to ask.

As long as I can remember small things give me the willies. Objects around the size of a penny or smaller trigger a kind of revulsion response if I have to handle them. Things like small coins, those paper circles created when using a hole punch, those stickers that they stick on fruit. I'm not typically bothered by handling a lot of the objects at the same time, a handful of pennies wouldn't bother me.

One thing that's odd, well aside from everything else about it, is that it seems to be especially triggered by jewelry. Rings, basically any piercings, even smallish necklaces. I'm alright as long as they don't get too close to me, but I start feeling weird if I have to interact with them.

Anyway, I've always thought this was pretty strange and it recently occurred to me that someone here probably has some idea of what's going on. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke10y100

Interesting. Great that you shared it. Have never heard of something like this. To me it looks like one basic fear pattern matching gone wrong (wired differently than usual in the brain). I mean there must be some pre-wiring of object recognition in the brain that triggers on e.g. spider-like and snake-like forms. Why should such a wiring go wrong (mutation or whatever) and pattern-match against small-ringlike.

See also What universal experiences are you missing without realizing it. Where people mention a lot special things and maybe by now you can find something comparable to yours.

3Rukiedor10y

Ha, it was actually looking through the Universal Experiences comments that prompted me to come here and ask if anyone had any experience with something like this. I didn't see anything in the comments there that sounded similar. I kind of doubt it's related to fear triggers, because I don't like spiders either, and my aversion to spiders feels very different from this. Interesting thing to think about though. Thanks.

9chaosmage10y

I'm not a doctor, but this sounds like Mikrophobia. I do recognize you're describing your feelings as a kind of revulsion, not fear proper, but still that'd the best pattern match I got. I suggest you talk to a psychiatrist or psychotherapist about it, because if it is that, your issue is very solvable. Phobias are one of the easiest-to-treat psychological issues; desensitization and cognitive-behavioral therapy work quite well.

2Rukiedor10y

Interesting, not exactly the same thing, but it does sound similar. You're probably right about desensitization, there are some rather small things I can handle without problem. I'll have to give that a shot. Thanks.

4Toggle10y

My housemate has this exact problem- right down to the issues with jewelry in particular. If she has to shake hands with somebody who's wearing a metal ring, she has to sort of ritualistically wipe off her hands afterwards. Metal in general seems to trigger the reaction much more strongly, so she'll have problems with loose coins but not stickers. It's been persistent throughout her life, I understand, but exposure therapy has reduced its severity.

3Rukiedor10y

That is very interesting. Kind of validating, and one more bit of evidence in favor of trying exposure therapy. Thank you for sharing that.

3[anonymous]10y

Maybe childhood training against choking hazards. I was once hospitalized for months at 5 years old, and the had exhibitions on the wall of the small stuff kids stuffed into their noses or ears and had to be removed surgically. It was scary. I was afraid of them. The fact I still remember it means it may be traumatic, may have been something like that for you. How do you handle eating or cooking lentils?

2Rukiedor10y

That's an interesting possibility. I don't have any particularly strong memories of being warned about choking hazards, about the only one I remember is warnings about plastic bags. For lentils, I'm fine handling them in bulk, and eating spoonfuls of them doesn't bother me. When most of them are gone, and there are only a few scattered in my plate or bowl they start to trigger the revulsion a little bit, although not nearly as strong as many other things. This actually seems to suggest that there is some desensitization going on. I never had lentils until I was an adult, I have however been eating rice for as long as I can remember, and individual rice grains don't trigger the reaction under most circumstances. Small candies, like skittles, m&ms, smarties, etc. don't really trigger it either, in most circumstances, which again, I have been eating since childhood.

[-][anonymous]10y140

I'm going to be doing a Rationality / Sequences reading group. Sorry I've been busy the last few days since the book came out, but I'll be making an introductory posting soon. The plan is to cover one sequence every two weeks covering the whole book over the course of a year.

[-]chaosmage10y130

What resources would you recommend for skilled, highly-specialized, employed EU citizens looking for employment in the US?

4is4junk10y

I'd look for a good headhunter in your field (assuming it is not too niche). Let them get the commission for finding you a job. * Update your linkedin profile and see if any contact you. * Talk to a recruiter in a company that is a near fit for you even if they aren't hiring now and ask if they have worked with any headhunters in the past. * Go to a Job fair in the US - not for job but to interview headhunters

0chaosmage10y

Thank you!

[-]Artaxerxes10y120

Gates goes into a little bit more detail on his views on AI.

Interviewer:

Yesterday there was a lot of talk here on machine intelligence and I know you had expressed some concerns about how machines are making leaps in processing ability. What do you think we should be doing?

Gates:

There are two different threat models for AI. One is simply the labor substitution problem. That, in a certain way, seems like it should be solvable because what you are really talking about is an embarrassment of riches. But it is happening so quickly. It does raise some very interesting questions given the speed with which it happens.

Then you have the issue of greater-than-human intelligence. That one, I’ll be very interested to spend time with people who think they know how we avoid that. I know Elon [Musk] just gave some money. A guy at Microsoft, Eric Horvitz, gave some money to Stanford. I think there are some serious efforts to look into could you avoid that problem.

Horvitz's thing.

Musk's thing.

If Gates were to really get on board, that would be huge, I think. Fingers crossed.

[-][anonymous]10y110

To the old ask and guess thread: I grew up under the impression it is a gender thing.

My mother would be "guess", she would expect me to notice that the thrash needs taking out, I didn't because I was lazy, and then she did it and acted hurt and told me she is tired of always needing to tell me to do my share of housework, she rather does it herself but she was bitter and hurt.

In the occasional cases she was ill and my father had to give a damn about the housework (in his defense he tended to have 10-11 hour workdays, mother was at home, so it made sense not to), he would do it in the clearly "tell" style of military training sergeants, "get that effing thrash out but on the double you got five effing seconds to finish it", that kind of style, however he was NEVER angry or hurt about this, he actually looked amused and having fun during that verbal rudeness, I think he always thought if you order people do things and they do them on the bounce, then things are right even if you need to give that order every day: you just tell it ruder and ruder until they learn, easy enough.

While I know ask and guess cultures exist in general, for me it got really tie... (read more)

9Lumifer10y

That's pretty classical passive-aggressive behaviour. I don't think it has much to do with guess-vs-ask cultures. But I agree that there is probably some gender correlation.

7NancyLebovitz10y

It seems plausible that Hint cultures lead to passive aggression-- if you can't be just plain aggressive, what have you got left?

[-]Lumifer10y120

I think power imbalance leads to passive aggression much more than the Hint or Ask character of the culture.

Hint and Ask are basically preferred communication protocols and most Hint people I know will adjust if the hints are clearly not working. But there is a big difference between

Glance at garbage. Glance at garbage. Glance at garbage. Dear, can you please take out the garbage?

and

Glance at garbage. Glance at garbage. Glance at garbage. You never pay any attention to me and you screwed up my whole life, you ungrateful bastard!

0[anonymous]10y

But that is largely the same thing. The classical boss-subordinate relationship is ask (order) down, guess up. Passive-aggression is extreme (angry, upset) guess, active aggression is extreme (angry, upset) ask/order. When whole cultures are all-ask or all-guess that is probably a sign of egalitarianism - within that subset.

2Lumifer10y

It's more complicated. Ask/tell is simpler, faster, and more efficient so in the workplace (where status and power relationships are largely formalized) it tends to dominate anyway. Also, as anecdata, I know a girl who is a very pronounced Hint/Guess person, but she's a manager and has underlings. She quite successfully manages them mostly on the Hint/Guess basis (within reason, of course).

6JoshuaZ10y

The idea that there's a gender correlation, whether for cultural or biological reasons certainly is something I've seen a fair bit when this comes up as a subject. See for example here. This one where cultural distinctions are going to be very difficult since some cultures (e.g. China) are so heavily on one side. It would I think be very interesting to see if the obvious gender trend in the West still is true in those extreme examples- it would be pretty strong evidence of a biological basis.

2Gunnar_Zarncke10y

In a way the gender aspect could be seen as a micro culture thing as women operating in their own social circles build up these sub-protocols (influenced due to power structures of ourse).

5[anonymous]10y

Yes, but passive-aggression is what guess-people do when upset, and active-aggression is what ask-people do when upset.

0Lumifer10y

I don't know if I am willing to accept it as a such tight relation. For one thing, being passive-aggressive is usually not one particular action, an outburst when upset, it's more like a an attitude, a continuous inclination/slant/flavour. I think that passive vs. active aggression depends much more on power, status, and specific circumstances rather than on usually preferred communication styles.

0MathiasZaman10y

I think it would be wrong to generalize from that example, so I'd like to report the opposite. My mother would also ask me to do specific, clearly defined task when she wanted them done and ask again when I forgot. My dad, on the other hand, would just get angry when things weren't done according to his requirements without making those requirements clear.

[-][anonymous]10y100

I don't understand why I do find certain kinds of goodness, kindness, compassion annoying. Of all the publications, The Guardians seems to rank highest in pissing me off with kindness. Consider this:

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/jun/12/anti-homeless-spikes-latest-defensive-urban-architecture

Ocean Howell, a former skateboarder and assistant professor of architectural history at the University of Oregon, who studies such anti-skating design, says it reveals wider processes of power. “Architectural deterrents to skateboarding and sleeping are interesting because – when noticed – they draw attention to the way that managers of spaces are always designing for specific subjects of the population, consciously or otherwise,” he says. “When we talk about the ‘public’, we’re never actually talking about ‘everyone’.”

Does anyone have any idea why may I find it annoying? Putting it differently, why do I experience something similar as Scott i.e. while I don't have many problems with most contemporary left-leaning ideas, I seem to have a problem with left-leaning people?

For example, I don't find anything inherently bad about starting a discussion about making design more skateboar... (read more)

4seer10y

The problem is he starts with false premises that it is impermissible (or at least impolite) to question in public, such as that homeless people are perfectly normal people who are down on their luck. (Most homeless, especially long time homeless have a mental illness.) And then he proceeds to reason from them and expects people to agree.

2NancyLebovitz10y

Cite? My assumption is that the proportion of homeless people who are normal people down on their luck is much higher when the economy has been bad for a while.

4Lumifer10y

I think I dislike this sort of articles because they assume I'm a stupid mark easily to manipulate by crude emotional-blackmail methods. AND the author is someone who thinks that manipulating other people this way is an excellent idea.

3is4junk10y

Why even read left wing articles if they upset you? My take is that if the public space was skateboarder and homeless friendly, the author could easily write a similar article on how that scares [insert other victim group] away from the public space. As for why it is written that way, Kling's book The Three Languages of Politics is a good explanation. The left likes to think in oppressed verses oppressor terms. Thanks for posting this article. There is a park being planned near me and there are certain architectural features I now want it to consider ...

0ChristianKl10y

There a difference between not designing for being homeless friendly and designing spikes to prevent homeless people from sleeping in the area.

1Jiro10y

What's the difference? (This is a serious question. Of course, I know some reasons why people think they are different, but I don't think the reasons that I can think of stand up to examination.)

0ChristianKl10y

If you design a system, then you can optimize it for different goals. A designer that's supposed to design a public space signs a contract. To the extend that the designer optimizes for different goals and especially goals that disadvantage certain people he's doing wrong. From the perspective of a city written into the contract that the space is designed against homelessness also makes a difference.

0Jiro10y

That only moves the question up a level: why is it wrong to do X as your goal, but okay to do X in service of something else, even if that something else is as vague as aesthetic reasons or whatever impels people to randomly design things? By your initial reasoning, it would be wrong to design spikes to discourage the homeless, but okay to design spikes if you just happen to like the look of spikes, even though both of these have the same effect.

1ChristianKl10y

Because intentions matter for judge morality of a lot of human interactions. If a professional is hired for a specific purpose, it's important that the professional doesn't use the power of his role to push his personal agenda.

0tut10y

The spikes make the place worse for the intended users than it would be if the designers just ignored the homeless in this place and build a better place for them nearby.

0Jiro10y

That doesn't explain the difference. Just ignoring the homeless can include building things that happen to discourage the homeless but are put there for other reasons. If so, then ignoring them and being hostile to them can produce the same result.

2Capla10y

upvote for noticing a (possibly) uncharitable reaction in yourself and taking steps to do better.

1ChristianKl10y

"We" is a bad word. "We" don't design public spaces. Certain architects do. Those architects do engage in certain rhetoric. They also do promise certain things to governments who hire them to build public spaces.

0hairyfigment10y

Congratulations on seeing a case where your emotions may mislead you. Now, what makes you think the author of that article "is pretending to be surprised we are not saints"? Looking at it, I get the exact opposite impression - he starts off by saying, suggesting that he finds their reaction surprising. So if anything, his article gives me a sense of self-satisfied cynicism, learnedly explaining to such people how the world works and why he thinks their indignation is rare. Were I uncharitable, I could read your own (parent) comment as showing off cynicism in the exact same way.

[-]Artaxerxes10y100

The World Weekly covers superintelligent AI.

It's one of the better media pieces I've read on the topic.

Bostrom, Yudkowsky, and Russell are quoted, among many others.

5Manfred10y

Was expecting weekly world news :) What this article really opened my eyes on is how impactful Nick Bostrom (or Bostrum) has been.

[-]CronoDAS10y90

What do you link someone to if you want to persuade them to start taking cryonics seriously instead of immediately dismissing it as ridiculous nonsense? There's no one single LW post that you can send someone to that I know of.

2Caue10y

I like this.

1polymathwannabe10y

I can think of this one and, especially, section B of this one.

[-]Kaj_Sotala10y80

I just realized that some people object to hedonistic utilitarianism (which I've traditionally favored) on the grounds that "pleasure" and "suffering" are meaningless and ill-defined concepts, whereas I tend to find preference utilitarianism absurd on the grounds that "preference" is a meaningless and ill-defined concept.

This seems to point to a difference in how people's motivational systems appear from the inside: maybe for some, "pleasure" is an obvious, atomic concept which they can constantly observe as driving ... (read more)

2somervta10y

Interestingly, both concepts seem worthwhile to me... and I mostly advocate a combination of hedonistic and preference utilitarianism.

1ChristianKl10y

Remembered pleasure and pleasure felt in the moment are two distinct things, towards which is the "obvious" one? My immediate idea of the terms pleasure and suffering is that "pleasure" is an emotion while suffering is more of an activity. The opposite of "suffering" would for me be "enjoying". There a state where you laugh and a state of warm relaxation. Both feel good but both are different. How does pleasure relate to that? Life satisfaction is another variable in that space. There are interactions I might have with another person where the person is going to laugh and feel energy but where the person would answer "No" if I would ask them whether they want to engage in a certain action. If you come from preference utilitarians it's important to ensure consent. If you just care about hedonics and are skilled enough to predict the results of your action and know the actions produce pleasure, consent isn't an issue anymore. The difference matters if you analyse what some PUA people do.

0Jayson_Virissimo10y

I think "pleasure" and "suffering" are very meaningful and that the prospects of finding decent metrics for each are good over the long term. The problem I have with hedonistic utilitarianism is that hedons are not what I want to maximize. Don't you ever pass up opportunities to do something you know will bring you more pleasure (even in the long run), in order to achieve some other value and don't regret doing so?

2Kaj_Sotala10y

Yeah, I've drifted away from hedonistic utilitarianism over time and don't particularly want to try to defend it here.

2Jayson_Virissimo10y

Fair enough.

[-]Ixiel10y80

I'll buy you sequences.

Sorry, I feel like a jerk repeating myself but this is the last time. I bought the three pack of the audio sequences on Kickstarter because there were multiple people who said they wanted it but for whom $50 was too dear. I just got the final "give us the names" email. Any takers?

4MathiasZaman10y

I'd like it as well, if you still have any. (email: king.grimmm@gmail.com)

7Ixiel10y

All set. Enjoy.

3MathiasZaman10y

Wow, awesome. Many thanks!

2jam_brand10y

I'd be happy to take you up on this if it's still available, my email is jam.br4nd@gmail.com. Many thanks for the kind offer either way!

0Ixiel10y

Sorry, I gave both out. (And sorry for delayed response, on vacation)

0[anonymous]10y

martin.malette@gmail.com (it's a friend I want to introduce to these topics, and he loves audiobooks)

[-][anonymous]10y80

On spaced repetition / Anki:

When I started to work after college I was surprised when people asked "How comes you don't know X? Haven't you read the manual?" I was surprised because in college it take more than one reading, a form of repetition, to learn, know and remember things. I would replay "I have read it, but have not yet memorized it."

Interestingly, later on, I managed to remember things after one reading, not details, but the general idea.

I wonder about the popularity of Anki and spaced repetition here. I am experimenting it ... (read more)

4is4junk10y

For most of the work stuff I find it easier to remember where to find things rather than the things themselves. The hard stuff is the undocumented and constantly changing locations and procedures where a search is likely to find out of date junk.

[-]Paul Crowley10y80

In Our Own Image: Will artificial intelligence save or destroy us? by George Zarkadakis was published by Random House on 5 March. I haven't read it, but from a search on Google Books, there's no mention of "Yudkowsky" or "MIRI", while "Bostrom" only appears once, in a discussion of the Simulation Argument. I nearly gave up at that point, but then I thought to search for "Hawking", and indeed, there is a discussion of the Hawking/Tegmark/Russell/Wilczek letter; this seems to me to be evidence on how carefully the auth... (read more)

[-]Tryagainslowly10y80

Could someone help me out with the LessWrong wiki? I made an account called Tryagainslowly on it; it wouldn't let me use my LessWrong account, instead making me register for the wiki independently. I wanted to post in the discussion for the wiki page entitled "Rationality". The discussion page didn't have anything posted in it. I wrote out my post, and attempted to post it, but it wouldn't let me, telling me new pages cannot be created by new editors. What do I need to do in order to submit my post? I'm happy to show what I was intending to post here if anyone wants me to.

5Tryagainslowly10y

It works now! It just required waiting a bit. Thanks for the help Gunnar_Zarncke.

3Gunnar_Zarncke10y

It takes some time for the Wiki accounts to get in sync with the LW account, just wait some time (a day?). I guess its some Troll protection.

[-]Paul Crowley10y120

You're giving this advice to that account handle?

4Tryagainslowly10y

Thanks, I'll wait and see.

[-]Adam Zerner10y70

Do dating conventions fall victim to Positive Bias?

It seems that people are always looking for positive evidence, and that looking for negative evidence (I suspect my vocabulary might be incorrect?) is socially unacceptable. Ie. "Let's see if we could find something in common." seems typical and acceptable, while "Let's see if each of us posses any characteristics that would make us incompatible" seems socially unacceptable.

Note: I have zero experience with dating and romance so these are just my impressions, although I suspect that they're true.

5Epictetus10y

It's considered rude to say that out loud during a date. However, it is considered good practice to be alert for such characteristics.

1Lumifer10y

In these very words, probably, but it's perfectly socially acceptable for e.g. a vegan to declare outright that s/he is not interested in carnivores...

0Adam Zerner10y

Do you think that it's rude? It seems sensible to me. It seems that people interpret such actions as hostile. And people who say things like that probably are hostile. However, I don't think the likelihood of the person being hostile is high enough such that you should conclude that they actually are. I think that the likelihood is low enough such that the courteous thing to do is investigate further as why they're saying that. And if they're well intentioned - ie. they want both parties to find someone that they're compatible and happy with, and are just trying to do a good job of that - then I think the mature thing to do is to respect it.

2ChristianKl10y

The point of a dating conversation isn't primarily to exchange information. It's to create good feelings and see whether one can create a feeling of connection.

0Adam Zerner10y

Is this a correct restatement of your claim? The ultimate point is to determine compatibility. But the best way to do that is to follow social convention and keep things positive. In doing this, your System I will be able to determine compatibility, and will notify you by producing emotions. By violating social convention and saying something like, "Let's see if each of us posses any characteristics that would make us incompatible", you'd hamper System I in exchange for some information for System II to use. This exchange isn't worth it. It'd be interesting to see some research on this.

2ChristianKl10y

No, building an emotional connection isn't an act that's just about gathering information the same way as lighting a pile of wood on fire isn't about testing the wedness of the wood.

[-]NancyLebovitz10y70

Animals getting smarter in cities, or at least better at living in cities.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141121-coyotes-animals-science-chicago-cities-urban-nation/

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/15/raccoons-animals-science-suburbs-evolution-intelligence/

Also, does a beagle moving a chair to get up on a counter count as having tool use?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thum9-GU74M

[-]palladias10y60

I'm running an Ideological Turing Test about religion, and I need some people to try answering the questions. I've giving a talk at UPenn this week on how to have better fights about religion, and the audience is going to try to sort out honest/faked Christian and atheist answers and see where both sides have trouble understanding the other.

In April, I'll share all the entries on my blog, so you can play along at home and see whether you can distinguish the impostors from the true (non-)believers.

5Jiro10y

How do you account for ideological Turing tests failing because of shibboleths? It's one thing to be unable to express or recognize the same ideas as a Christian, it's another to be unable to express or recognize in-group terminology.

2palladias10y

I try to structure questions so that they'll be less vulnerable to shibboleth exploits (plus, some shammers do do a bit of research to be able to drop in jargon!).

3Ander10y

One thing I noted when doing this. Most of my true answers were more specific than my made up answers, which might give them away. I look forward to reading the results!

3polymathwannabe10y

It's curious; I felt the opposite.

1Ander10y

These questions are quite difficult and will require effort. I'll try to submit an entry. Edit: Completed. :)

0Jiro10y

I just took the "root of all sins" test and I tried to distinguish the answers of the Christians and non-Christians entirely based on shibboleths. Disordered love? Christ is a blinding searing light? Humans are finite beings who naturally desire the infinite? Maybe. But the decision was not "would a Christian have those ideas" but "would a Christian phrase the ideas that way". Of course I can't just go count the shibboleths; it's possible that non-Christians might overcompensate and actual Christians don't talk about Jesus' blinding light much at all, at least not actual Christians of the type who answer such surveys. But either way, I didn't feel that the most likely way to figure out which answer came from Christians was to look at the content of the answer. So I think that the test has already failed. On top of this is the question of what type of Christian the non-Christians are trying to imitate. Are they trying to imitate average Christians, average survey-answering Christians, average blogging Christians, average Christians who are knowledgeable about Christianity? Trying to imitate the wrong kind of Christian can mean that knowing too much about Christianity can make your imitation fail.

[-]Dahlen10y60

In the last few years I've been thinking about all the separate mental modules that influence productivity, procrastination, akrasia etc. in their own unique ways. (The one thing that's for sure is that the ability to get stuff done isn't monolithic.) This is how my breakdown of the psychology of productivity looks like, and I have a hunch that these are all separate and generate their own effects independently (more or less) of the others:

a baseline level of energy or willingness to take control of your own life
an affinity-based system that makes you a

... (read more)

1RowanE10y

I think to back up the hunch you'd need to poll some people, see if their akrasia comes from being weak on some points rather than others - if that's the case, and they're not consistently the same points, then probably it does work that way. I personally feel like I'm bad with respect to all the modules listed.

4Dahlen10y

Yes, that's what I was trying to do with the parent comment. I used myself as a reference for these points, as well as drawing on various anecdotes I've heard about other people. E.g. I'm high on "negative willpower", high on perseverance against physical discomfort (tiredness, hunger, pain), low on perseverance against boredom, frustration, and the feeling of being stuck. I'm very low on #1, and also have low affinity for, say, math, and hence I never put in the hours for learning it well, but I've heard of people who are also low on #1 but happen to have very high affinity for math, who'd go on and entertain themselves with their equations and theorems while dishes gathered in the sink and rent went unpaid. (Proof they don't necessarily have better work ethic than me.) Then there are people who do mildly dislike crouching over math textbooks for hours, but are very high on #3 and push themselves to keep going. (Proof that sometimes it is a matter of work ethic.) I listed #5 as its own factor because it can override other items on the list, and all the other items above it lacked any inherent reference to external factors. It could be a strong or a weak tendency; for instance, I notice about myself that I'm not particularly moved by rewards or punishments; moreover, my indifference to them seems tweaked especially to cause me to lose the greatest amount of money possible, either by missing opportunities or by having to pay up. (That's why I never ever plan on using Beeminder.) #6 is there because the whole thing lacked a time dimension without it. For example, however badly I might fare on other points, I'm only a moderate procrastinator (for tasks I don't loathe with a fervor), tend to begin working on assignments towards the midpoint of the available time range, and consider the long term.

[-]DataPacRat10y50

Wrist computer: To Buy or Not To Buy

I'm considering whether or not to buy an Android phone in a wristwatch form-factor, and am hesitating on whether it's the best use of my money. Would anyone here care to offer their opinion?

One of my goals: Go camping and enjoy it. One of my constraints: A limited budget. I suspect that taking a watch-phone, such as an Omate Truesmart or one of its clones ( eg, http://www.dx.com/p/imacwear-m7-waterproof-android-4-2-dual-core-3g-smart-watch-phone-w-1-54-5-0mp-black-373360 ), and filling a 32 gigabyte SD card with offline ... (read more)

[-]Lumifer10y100

Would anyone here care to offer their opinion?

Sure :-D Smartwatches are computers miniaturized to the point of uselessness because of the tiny screen and UI issues. Specifically for camping or backpacking you'd be much better off with a bigger-screen device like a regular smartphone. In fact, if you're serious about backpacking I would recommend a dedicated GPS unit.

0DataPacRat10y

I've started looking into speech-to-text and text-to-speech alternatives to the tiny screen. I've tried one of those, every N years. There's always been some issue - only providing coordinates instead of a map, or power issues, or the like - which has ended up with me leaving it out of my kit. I'm vaguely hoping that the continuing convergence of all electronic devices into "phones" means that the various solutions to those issues will also have been collected.

4Lumifer10y

That sounds like a rationalization. And it's entirely unhelpful when you're trying to figure out maps.

0DataPacRat10y

Granted. :)

1Lumifer10y

For backpacking I still prefer a dedicated GPS unit because (a) it's waterproof plus I expect it to survive shock better than a smartphone; (b) it's power-thrifty and I can leave it on for the whole day without worrying about running down the battery; (c) it can run off AA batteries which are ubiquitous; (d) if you really need GPS, you need to carry two GPS-capable devices.

0DataPacRat10y

Maybe it's been longer than I thought since I went GPS-hunting... What brand and/or model accomplishes this witchcraft?

1Lumifer10y

My GPS is an old Garmin 76CSx.

9MrMind10y

For a long time I've wanted to want a smartwatch so badly I was forced to buy it, but the actual advantages of owning one never amounted to the desired threshold. In the end, and quite sadly, I've decided that there will probably never be enough reasons. I think it's happening the same to you: you want to want to buy a wrist-phone, but are rational enough to know that there's no reason to do such a thing. I suggest you to meditate on the fact that you probably already know what's the right course of action, it just sucks to follow.

2DataPacRat10y

In a curious twist to this process, I just dreamed that I checked this thread for a response to this comment, and found one, of which I explicitly remember only the words, "You're playing with fire here" and "You're taking your life into your hands", and implicitly remember something about the authour reminding me that I'm a cryonicist. Going camping does happen to increase the odds that I'll have an accident where my brain ends up warm and dead. Having a communications device that's quite likely to remain intact and ready to use if I fall down a cliff and break my legs modestly reduces the odds of that particular negative scenario. In fact, assuming that I'm not going to quit going camping, and that I already have my chosen first-aid equipment, there are few expenditures I can make which are as likely to increase my QALYs. So: Does /that/ sound like actually useful reasoning, or mere rationalization?

5knb10y

Sounds like a rationalization to me. I think you would be better off buying a ruggedized cell phone or radio if that is your true purpose. I suspect a watch is quite likely to get smashed in a serious fall like that.

0DataPacRat10y

Fair enough. Hm... brainstorming a bit, I'm considering looking up one of the cheaper watch-phones, removing the wrist-band, getting a SIM card for a phone service that only needs to be paid for annually, and keeping the miniaturized backup cellphone somewhere about my person. But that's a completely separate use-case than the device for camping, so I'm not going to even consider it until I finish my annual camping gear refreshing.

5Lumifer10y

While that's true you might want to consider what other activities also happen to increase the same odds and whether you want to spend your life avoiding all of them.

2DataPacRat10y

My lifestyle is mostly urban; whatever accidents befall me, I'm nearly always well within range of ambulances and hospitals with personnel able to call up my medical proxy. Camping is the exception where it would likely take a few hours just for emergency personnel to reach me.

-1Lumifer10y

Be realistic. If you're hit by bus on a city street, how long do you think your brain will spend being warm and dead before the information reaches someone who could call in the cryo team? And that even providing your brain stays intact.

2DataPacRat10y

My immediate family all know my wishes, I have a medic-alert type necklace with cryo contact info, there's similar info in my wallet, and so on. Basically, as soon as medical professionals learn who my corpse was, which should be close to as soon as they arrive, they'll know to contact someone who knows to tell them to put ice around my head (as a first stage in the cooling process). By contrast, if I'm camping, then even if I stay within range of cell towers, and have arranged to call someone twice a day, then even just getting the info out that I might be in trouble (and possibly dead) will take hours-to-days, let alone finding me. (For not-quite-as-lethal accidents, I've got everything from a mirror that can be used as a signal mirror to a pen-style flare launcher to help point possible rescuers in my direction.)

5gjm10y

Allow me to join the chorus of commenters who suspect that you've been persuaded by advertising, peer pressure, etc. that you have to have the latest cool gadget, and that you'd be better off if you could overcome that urge. It's a useful habit to break if you have a longer-term preference for having more money :-).

3VincentYu10y

Not directly answering your conundrum on wrist computers, but—I go trail running frequently (in Hong Kong), so I've thought a bit about wearable devices and safety. Here are some of my solutions and thoughts: * I use a forearm armband (example) to hold my phone in a position that allows me to use and see the touchscreen while running. I find this incredibly useful for checking a GPS map on the run while keeping both hands free for falls. I worry that the current generation of watches are nowhere near as capable as my phone. * I rely a lot on Strava's online route creation tool and phone app for navigation. * Digital personal locator beacons on the 406 MHz channel (example) are the current gold standard for distress signals. * Sharing your location through your phone (e.g., on Google+) can give some peace of mind to your family and friends. * An inactivity detector based on a phone's accelerometer might be a useful dead man switch for sending a distress SMS/email in the event of an accident that renders you incompetent. I haven't gotten around to setting this up on my phone, but here's an (untested) example of an app that might work. * In case of emergency, it might be useful to have a GPS app on your phone that can display your grid reference so that you can tell rescuers where to find you.

2DataPacRat10y

Indeed so - but as far as I've been able to dig up so far, they require a bit more gold than I can afford. Such beacons are required to be (re)programmed with a serial number appropriate for the country they're to be used in, which can only be done at an authorized dealer, which makes online purchases from other countries almost pointless. As near as I can tell, the nearest place I can get such a beacon is at mec.ca , where the least expensive example I can find is $265, above my budget for camping electronics. I'd be happy to have such a device; I just don't see how I can acquire one with my particular level of fixed income.

[-][anonymous]10y50

DAE know The Haze? The Haze is the brain fog whenever I have a subject I entertain comfortable lies about and the truth would be too painful. I.e. something negative about myself etc. whenever I approach the subject my brain decides to deal with the cognitive dissonance to avoid painful truth by reducing the IQ, but instead of becoming wooden and thick like normal stupidity, it becomes foggy. This fogginess is not actually felt or known at that time, but when I later on face the painful truth, it feels like a fog, a haze lifting. It feels a lot like as i... (read more)

4Joseph_P10y

Could you give a specific example of this foggy thinking? In which ways is it different from an Ugh field ?

3[anonymous]10y

I think ugh fields are about something fairly small and simple, it is different. When I as 15, I was weak in every sense, nerves (anxiety), borderline mentally ill, scrawny body etc. As I desperately did not want to admit it, because it sucks, and I wanted to convince myself I am strong, I externalized the self-hate and started to hate on other people's weakness (not actual individuals, but as a principle), saying things like the weak don't deserve to live and should go extinct to make room for the strong etc. in order to convince myself I am strong. But it didn't really work. It did not really work for Nietzsche either, who inspired me to do this... and especially when I was confronted by people who took offense when I exhorted how altruism is slave morality, and those people were strong and succesful in every possible way, yet they were altruists, basically they were paladins, I needed to exert more and more convoluted mental gymnastics to convince myself they are actually weak and I am somehow actually strong. Back then it felt like being a non-understood genius, a genius who is not understood because other people are stupid. But much later when I realized the folly, it felt like being in a mental fog, mental haze back then.

2NancyLebovitz10y

Hypothesis: what you can think is affected by the state of your nervous system. Have some neurology on the subject-- I'm not jumping to any conclusions about whether you have a background of trauma, these are just the books I know about. Complex Trauma: From Surviving to Thriving This one has some material about rage getting turned outward or inward. In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

0[anonymous]10y

If basic common playground bullying counts as one then yes. Hm, it checks out. Boys between 6 and 12 have rather harsh ways of establishing a hierarchy of strength, courage and general ranking and it is possible that it is traumatic in a way that the subject does not even recognize. Does that ever happen that people are conscious about their own coping methods but are not too conscious about the trauma they are coping with? My problem with the whole theory is that I am prone to pull a reversed stupidity on Freudism. I.e. if Freud was wrong that everything is about coping with childhood traumas then I tend to think nothing is. I also tend to think it is way, way too easy, it is suspiciously easy, because it sounds like blaming others in order to avoid facing a defect in the self.

2NancyLebovitz10y

In an Unspoken Voice has it that PTSD is a result of not being able to do normal simple movements such as running, punching, or pushing away when under high stress. There's a solution-- when the stress is over, go away for a bit and shake. Animals do this, but for various reasons-- the stress goes on for too long, or it feels socially or personally inappropriate to collapse and shake-- the uncompleted movements can get stuck in the memory and the trauma continues in the body and imagination. It wouldn't surprise me if "ordinary" childhood bullying would be enough to have a traumatic effect, especially on someone who was immobilized while being bullied. I think so. There's a lot of that around rape, where the person who was raped is showing symptoms of PTSD, but thinks that the way they were treated doesn't count as rape. I found it was useful to frame traumatic effects (in my case, a tendency to freeze) as part of the normal human range rather than a defect. Also, there's research that the biggest predictor of PTSD is the amount of previous trauma. I recommend Dorothy Fitzer's videos. She specializes in people with anxiety and takes a gentle, sensible approach to becoming more comfortable in the world.

0[anonymous]10y

Interesting. So the way it differs from Freudism is that the idea is not that getting hurt gives you problems, but not being able to react to hurt or stress (even environmental stress if I get it right) in basic ways does so?

0NancyLebovitz10y

Yes., bearing in mind that this theory says that some basic ways work much better than others-- for example, telling the story over and over (which is something a lot of people do) may not be nearly as useful as going to physical movement. There's also a school of more conventional psychology (sorry, I don't know which one) which holds that what happens to you isn't the fundamental thing-- what's important is what conclusions you draw from what happened to you.

1Gunnar_Zarncke10y

Sounds like unsuccessful rationalization or compartmentalization. Unsuccessful probably because the fog wasn't 'able' to lock you into a stable state. You mention lots of contact to other people so I guess that prevented it.

0satt10y

[On second thought, deleted — the example I pulled up is arguably more "wooden and thick like normal stupidity" than "foggy".]

[-][anonymous]10y40

From 2008: "Readers born to atheist parents have missed out on a fundamental life trial"

Not really, in my experience. First of all there are plenty of other silly things to believe in, such my parents tended to believe in feel-good liberal adages like "violence never solves anything".

But actually the experience made me learn from religious people quite a lot. For this reason: like for most modern secular liberal Europeans, for my parents the kind of history we live in began not so long ago. A few centuries ago. Or maybe 1945. Everythin... (read more)

1Lumifer10y

Have you discovered the neoreactionaries yet? :-)

3[anonymous]10y

Yes, Moldbug and Xenosystems. Love/Hate. The problem is they are too politics focused which is typically about using power to change other people's lives. Frankly I like it more if people experiment with their own lives first. This is what I don't understand - is there even a name for that? A non-political conservative/reactionary who experiments with old ideas on himself and not forcing others to do so, is there such a thing (NOT the SCA). If there was such a thing I would actually try a demo version of it, for example, I love the movie The Last Samurai for example, but strictly on a voluntary basis and I figure that means non-political. I mean, I guess, if I think deeper into it, the issue is not even whether voluntary or not but the Talebian "skin in the game". The honesty of every proposal is proportional with how much it affects oneself and how much it others. And that is why I hate politics. Too few personal skin in the game and way too much other people's skin.

1[anonymous]10y

Libertarians?

2[anonymous]10y

I know only a few places on Earth where it would have any chance of working. Such as the US, maybe UK but from Latin America to Eastern Europe, far too often criminal plunder was covered up with free-market adages. Like "I sell this state-owned thing to my friend for peanuts because private ownership is more efficient." The point is, ideas, one of the many angles to evaluate ideologies from is how easily they are misused as lip-service cover-up for something nasty. Marxism was misused into Leninism, Keynesianism into "spend in bad times... and not save in good times because fuck it: votes", and Libertarianism into neoliberal plunder. This makes it not worse than the others, but not perfect either. I would basically use it as part of my political-philosophy toolset but not the whole of it. Another thing Libertarians don't really understand even in US-based circumstances is that if I own the things I need to work with or live with, then private property gives me freedom and independence. But if other people own the things you need to work with, then private property is a burden, not a freedom for you. Libertarianism works best with a fairly egalitarian distribution of property - not income, not income redistribution, but property, as in: frontier homesteader farms and suchlike. It is the legacy of frontier equality that made Libertarianism popular in the US, Hayek and Mises come from an Austrian tradition that had much more a small-business focus and thus more equal property ownership than the Mittelstand focus of Prussia-Germany and so on. (May Weber hated small business: he considered shopkeepers lazy and spoke out against the Austrianization of Germany, as in, against small business opposed to middle and big. Needless to say he was anything but Libertarian.) In Europe Switzerland is the closest to Libertarianism and precisely because they have/had such a broad property-owning middle-class, every second Swiss person seems to have inherited 1/4 of a dairy farm or

0Lumifer10y

Sure, these people are usually known as eccentrics, cranks, and weirdos X-/ Since you're experimenting on yourself, what's stopping you and why do you want only a demo version? That depends on where do you live and what kind of politics you are talking about.

0[anonymous]10y

Lack of info. Know any good self-help books published before 1700 ? :) Most of the old stuff was learned by word of mouth. The "sensei" type of learning that we Westerners find so adorable in Asia, but actually we did it too, and that means not a lot of stuff was written down. Not all hope is lost, though, there are people learning fencing from manuals written around 1470. http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Main_Page But jokes aside. For example we are discussing akrasia a lot. In my childhood, it was "solved" by scaring the living bejeezus out of children who procrastinated instead of doing homework, everything from punishment to guilt-tripping. This sucked, and also, often worked. Akrasia became a problem largely when it was decided that now we are trying to be nice with each other and ourselves too. However, I cannot have been as simple as that. I think if I scratch deeper, I could find old methods. The issue is often not being written down.

2Jayson_Virissimo10y

The Enchiridion, by Epictetus.

2Richard_Kennaway10y

The Book of Proverbs? The Book of Baruch? Sermons from the past? Writings of the ancient Stoics?

0[anonymous]10y

+1 for stoics, actually people like Nassim Taleb are re-inventing that and it seems to be a good way.

0seer10y

No, Taleb isn't "re-inventing" stoicism any more then every mechanic is "re-inventing" the wheel.

0[anonymous]10y

You mean stoicism was always alive?

0Richard_Kennaway10y

More modern stoicism here, although personally, I think that the Modern Stoicism community treats stoicism too much as a package deal.

0MrMind10y

I'll add to the already growing list The meditations by Marcus Aurelius, I've been told is one of the best. Heck, sometimes I feel that past self-help books are way better than today's...

0Epictetus10y

Essays of Montaigne.

0[anonymous]10y

What about Bacon's essays? (I don't remember when they were written, though.)

0Nornagest10y

It might be worth mentioning that a lot of the people working at reviving Western longsword fencing also have rank in Eastern sword styles, or classical fencing, or both. That isn't really that big a deal from a purity/authenticity standpoint, contrary to what some people will tell you; schools differ mostly in methodology, since the biomechanics of fencing are largely the same whether you live in 21st-century California or 19th-century Japan or 15th-century Germany, and methodology lends itself better to being written down than biomechanics does. But it does mean they have a live body of practice to hang written descriptions of technique on.

0[anonymous]10y

I intend to learn HEMA/longsword after I get good enough in boxing i.e. fist-fencing. I wonder what, if anything, will I bring into it. One thing I am doing is to practice both dominant hand front and non-dominant hand front stances because while boxing focuses on the second, the first is useful both for surprising an opponent in boxing and also fencing does that. I hope my footwork will be well translatable, because I suffer like a pig on ice with it, it is really hard for me to learn boxing footwork so I I hope I can use that for historical fencing too. Another interesting thing I hope to help me with fencing later is the non-telegraphed jab. This means roughly this: turn the hand inward and raise the shoulder during a jab so the elbow does not flare out to the side. I think this can be useful for a side-sword or rapier thrust but I am not so sure for the two-handed longsword stuff.

-2ChristianKl10y

I think it makes more sense to learn fencing some someone who understands the biomechaniscs well enough to have his own opinion about what should be proper technique should be than someone who simply tries to teach what he thinks some book says.

0Lumifer10y

Sure, lots of those -- from St.Augustine's Confessions (that's way before 1700 :-D) to Machiavelli's The Prince.

-1ChristianKl10y

It was also a radically different environment. Computers provide for new distractions. People used to feel bored and have nothing to do. I never feel like I don't know what to do and there are always multiple options.

1[anonymous]10y

I have a sample size of 1 that it is possible today :) Screwing around on Reddit can be boring (and yet addictive). It is not that straightforward to find interesting content online. Maybe I am just unusually bad at it - or maybe because literally zero of my IRL friends and relatives reads Reddit, LW or any interesting blog, so I never get "hey this is cool check this out"emails. They just don't have much free time. This is probably atypical. Yet, it is very easy for a child to be distracted from homework at any level of technology. It is called daydreaming. You familiar with Karl May novels, I suppose? Old Shatterhand and Winnetou stories caused me huge amounts of daydreaming when I was a child and so did they for my friends. Imagination always fills the void that entertainment doesn't. Of course you need books because without adventure stories there is not much to daydream about, but that is solved problem since about, 1800-1850? I mean, that was roughly when books were cheap enough that children could have romantic novels. And vice versa - probably this is why experts say watching TV, even perfectly healthy educational shows retards the development of toddlers. Not enough exercise of imagination. I do. It is hard work for me to race with boredom and not always win. I fill my tablet, Instapaper, FBreader with saved articles and ebooks to read but the activity itself can be get boring, and there is not much left then, I used to be a gamer since 1987 (Commodore...) but grew to be bored with most games except currently the best mods for Mount & Blade Warband (such as A Clash of Kings or Brytenwalda). I have a family now so that fills out my weekends nice, still I sometimes get bored. The way I break it down, there is almost nothing outside our apartment that would be interesting in a random weekend in Vienna, just people drinking in bars or yet another kind of artsy music festival. Inside the apartment, it is each other, and that is great, and the computers, which

0ChristianKl10y

It's not the same kind of boring that people had 100 years ago. It fills your brain with information that has to be processed. I think daydreaming is qualitatively much different than outside input for the purpose of this discussion. Daydreaming allows you to process old information instead of adding new information. Books also don't have the constant change of focus.

-2seer10y

No, it's about trying to stop progressives from using power to change other people's lives. I think most reactionaries would settle for forcing the progressives to experiment with their new ideas on themselves before forcing them on everyone else. As for experimenting with old ideas. What do you mean? If the 1000+ years of data isn't enough for you, a couple of neoreactionaries' self-experimentation won't be either.

[-]Larks10y40

Suppose I wanted to predict the likelihood of and degree of delays and cost over-runs associated with a nuclear plant currently under construction. How would people recommend I do so?

5Tripitaka10y

Study existing literature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bent_Flyvbjerg this guy got a lot of good press in germany, apparently he has written extensively on big infrastructure projects and cost overruns. I find Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition

0satt10y

Reference class forecasting: get a list of previously constructed nuclear power plants, look up how much they were delayed and over budget, then use the empirical probability distribution of delays and cost over-runs. (Bent Flyvbjerg, cited by Tripitaka, turns out to be very keen on RCF.)

[-]Ishaan10y40

What is the name of the logical fallacy where you rhetorically invalidate an argument by providing an unflattering explanation of why someone might holds that viewpoint, rather than addressing the claim itself? I seem to remember there being a word for that sort of thing.

[-]bramflakes10y120

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism

3fubarobfusco10y

A related idea is psychologizing — analyzing someone's belief as a psychological phenomenon rather than as a factual claim.

1g_pepper10y

I believe that is the genetic fallacy.

2fubarobfusco10y

The genetic fallacy has more to do with dismissing a claim because of its origins or history, rather than because of who holds that view today. For instance, arguments from novelty or antiquity are genetic fallacies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

1g_pepper10y

Yes, Bulverism appears to be a specific subcategory of the genetic fallacy, and Bulverism more precisely answers Ishaan's question. Thanks for the clarification.

0D_Malik10y

It's "explaining away" or "intercausal reasoning" applied to the "good reasons → belief ← bad reasons" Bayes net, and it's not really a fallacy. It doesn't invalidate arguments directly but it should still make us decrease our belief, because (1) we need to partly undo our update in favor of the belief caused by observing that the other person holds that belief, and (2) we need to compensate for our own increased desire to believe. It's often rude, because it implies that the other person is either dishonest or stupid, since it suggests that the other person's expressed belief is either not genuine (e.g. lies or belief-in-belief) or genuine but not due solely to truth (e.g. influenced by subconscious signaling concerns). Since this reasoning pattern is rude, i.e. status-lowering, people often claim that it's logically invalid when it's used against a belief that they hold. (See what I did there?) This status-lowering property also means we must be careful to apply it to our own beliefs too, not only our opponents' beliefs.

[-]James_Miller10y40

I labeled an exam question as "tricky" because if you applied the solution method we used in class to solve similar looking problems you would get the wrong answer. But it occurred to me that if the question had been identical to one given in class but I still labeled it as "tricky" the "tricky" label would have been accurate because the trick would have been students thinking that the obvious answer wasn't correct when indeed it was. So is it always accurate to label a question as "tricky"?

[-]Nornagest10y100

That's kind of a Hofstadter-esque question. I think the answer is "no", but the reason why depends on what meta-level you're looking at: if the label refers only to the object-level question, then it's straightforwardly true or false; but if you construe it as applying to the entire context of the question including its labeling, then it's possible to imagine a trick question that's transparent enough that labeling it as such exposes the trick and stops it from being tricky. It can be a self-fulfilling or a self-defeating prophecy.

0Lumifer10y

In other words, it's turtles all the way down :-)

4Richard_Kennaway10y

"Tricky" means "the other person is operating at a higher level than I am". If you answer a question at a lower level than it was posed, you get marked down for failing to level up. If you answer at a higher level than the question was posed at, and the teacher fails to level up, you get marked down for what failing to level up felt like to the teacher -- misinterpreting the question, nitpicking, showing off, whatever. The task in an exam is to figure out what level each question is being asked at, and address it on the same level.

3JoshuaZ10y

I don't whether it is tricky or not, but it is the sort of thing I think my students would get legitimately annoyed by. While teaching students to be confident of their answers can be important, I'm not sure in this context that would be helped by this.

4James_Miller10y

Normally you are right, but the class is game theory so I would feel justified playing meta tricky games with my students on exams. Here is a past exam question of mine that got posted.

[-]Jiro10y100

That makes as much sense as having a class about political corruption and requiring that students pass the test by bribing the teacher.

Just because the class is about X doesn't mean that grades in the class should be measured by X.

7James_Miller10y

If I taught a class on political corruption I would totally do that if it wouldn't get me in trouble. My goal with that question was to confront the students with a real game theory based moral dilemma. Tests are not just for evaluation, but should also be learning exercises.

[-]Jiro10y100

But there's a difference between "this is how you do X" and "doing X is appropriate in this situation". Deciding that because a class is about bribery, you should get your grade in it by bribery, confuses these two things--you've given the students an opportunity to use the lessons from the class, but it's not a situation where most people think you should have an opportunity to use the lessons from the class. If your class was about some field of statistics related to randomness would you insist that your students roll dice to determine their exam score? If your class was about male privilege, would you automatically give all female students a grade one rank lower?

Tests are not just for evaluation, but should also be learning exercises.

While tests can have purposes, such as learning, that are orthogonal to evaluation, that's different from giving the test an additional purpose that is counterproductive to evaluation.

Also, I'd hate to be the student who had to explain to a prospective employer that the employer should add a percentage point to his GPA when considering him for employment, on the grounds that he scored poorly in your class for reasons unrelated to evaluation.

1ike10y

That one is evil. Assuming the question was known in advance, the obvious solution is for the people who care more about their grades to pay those who care less to circle A while circling B themselves. If they trust each other, they might even be able to do this after-the-fact. The universalizing answer would be to choose A 51% of the time. What was the ratio of As?

1ilzolende10y

Does James Miller let his students take d% dice to his tests?

2James_Miller10y

No, but if a student asked I would be tempted to give her extra credit.

0ike10y

That's why you should always have some random bits up your sleeve (memorized). I remember being surprised that a large number of /r/rational commenters had password systems in case they ever invented time-travel or cloning. Anyone who goes to that effort can presumably also memorize 15 or so random bits if they ever need it, and refresh if used.

3Jiro10y

Time travel passwords are vulnerable to mindreading. If you want a good time travel password, you have to have an algorithm which the time-travelling version of you can calculate, but which can't be directly read by a mindreader because if he's reading it right now, he has no time to calculate it. For instance, I can have a time-travel password of "digits 300-310 of the square root of 3". A time-travelling version of me would know the password, so can compute it, then can tell me the result and I can check it. A mindreader would have to read my mind before the fact or engage in some time travel himself. Of course, it's impossible to have a time-travel password immune to all such tricks (maybe the mindreader did read my mind a week ago), but there's no reason to allow blatant loopholes.

1James_Miller10y

It was several years ago and I don't remember.

2Epictetus10y

If every question is tricky, then the label of "tricky" ceases to be meaningful. I believe the word you're looking for is "cruel".

0Gunnar_Zarncke10y

Only if you do it once (or a few times) and only after they have seen lots of tricky ones by now.

0Lumifer10y

Reminds me of Vizzini's battle of wits in the Princess Bride X-)

[-]RowanE10y30

Generating artificial gravity on spaceships using centrifuges is a common idea in hard-sci-fi and in speculation about space travel, but no-one seems to consider them for low gravity on e.g. Mars. Am I mistaken in thinking that all you'd need to do is build the centrifuge with an angled floor, so the net force experienced from gravity and (illusory) centrifugal force is straight "down" into it?

I realise there'd be other practical problems with centrifuge-induced artificial gravity on Mars, since it's full of dust and not the best environment, but that doesn't seem to be the right kind of objection to explain it never being brought up where I've seen it.

3DataPacRat10y

One variation: "Gravity trains", going round and round in circles. Used on my "New Attica" setting, as can be seen at http://datapacrat.deviantart.com/art/The-Grav-y-Train-343866014 .

3The_Duck10y

Sure, this would work in principle. But I guess it would be fantastically expensive compared to a simple building. The centrifuge would need to be really big and, unlike in 0g, would have to be powered by a big motor and supported against Mars gravity. And Mars gravity isn't that low, so it's unclear why you'd want to pay this expense.

0GMHowe10y

I recall a SF story that took place on a rotating space station orbiting Earth that had several oddities. The station had greater than Earth gravity. Each section was connected to the next by a confusing set of corridors. The protagonist did some experiments draining water out of a large vat and discovered a coriolis effect. So spoiler alert it turned out that the space station was a colossal fraud. It was actually on a massive centrifuge on Earth.

[-]Meni_Rosenfeld10y30

I've written a post on my blog covering some aspects of AGI and FAI.

It probably has nothing new for most people here, but could still be interesting.

I'll be happy for feedback - in particular, I can't remember if my analogy with flight is something I came up with or heard here long ago. Will be happy to hear if it's novel, and if it's any good.

How many hardware engineers does it take to develop an artificial general intelligence?

0Kaj_Sotala10y