English is not my first language, German is. I am noticing a phenomenon more and more: Stuff I read does not annoy me as much in English as it does in German, though it is the exact same topic. The other day I read a German article complaining about the idiocy of a particular 'comedian', angering me that I wasted my time on reading about someone complaining about some idiotic person. Though I have no problem reading the standard subreddits on Reddit, which are no less idiotic than the average column in German. What is going on?
I assume that in German I have plenty of preformed conceptions about what is proper and what is not. In English though I am able to keep an open mind about what I experience, as it is a new and foreign culture. This narrative doesn't satisfy me though, as I do not see a proper way to test the hypothesis.
An alternative narrative - one should always have more than one hypothesis on any topic - is that German media is inherently inferior to English products. I refuse to believe this, though I am willing to accept an argument on statistical distributions and number of trials. Or am I just unable to find the niches in German that do satisfy my itches?
Is this a phenomenon anyone else encounters? What is your take on it?
Foreign language use is associated with weaker emotional reactions: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/foreign-language-improve-decisions/
I don't speak English natively, and haven't ever lived somewhere where English is the dominant language, and I've been wondering about the same thing. It seems to be easy to notice and get annoyed if someone's Finnish sounds stilted or off, and I'm pretty sure I have much less of a sense of textual voices in English. I think it comes down to having basically zero exposure to real-life face-to-face socialization and status play using spoken English, so the various subtle cues aren't internalized and need to be inferred.
I also can't tell non-native speakers apart from native ones based on writing style on a message board like LW. Can native English speakers do that?
A question for London LWers:
I have recently created an opportunity for potentially moving from my home in the American South to London, where I would be employed by a fairly prestigious secondary school. Obviously, the prospect of leaving an area of very little opportunity for one of greater opportunity entices me. A lot. However, I have only minimum savings, and my family, reflecting the area, is poor and highly desirous of avoiding change, leaving me to do this alone.
I have not yet had a salary offer. My salary will be determined by my qualifications and I will not be informed of such a decision until some weeks from now. My research has led me to expect a salary between 24,000 and 26,000 pounds annually. As far as I am aware, there is no housing stipend or housing assistance with my employment, though I do not yet know if there is no chance of such assistance being offered or included.
While I do believe this move would be extremely beneficial and an excellent start to my chosen career, my worry is that I could not sustain myself taking on both the move and living in London on such a salary. I only know of two people with experience in London, both of whom have advised me that s...
Puzzle:
A countable infinity of prisoners are placed in a room so that they can all see each other, but are not allowed to communicate in any way and cannot see their own heads. The warden places on the head of each prisoner a red hat or a black hat. The prisoners will each guess the color of their own hat. They will all be released if at most finitely many of them guess incorrectly, and they will all be killed otherwise. The prisoners know all of this, and may collude beforehand. The prisoners are all distinguishable - think of them as being numbered 1,2,3,.... Again, once the warden has placed the hats, the prisoners receive no information other than the color of their fellow prisoners' hats. Prove that there is a strategy that guarantees a win for the prisoners.
(On my honor, this is possible.)
So apparently Ishual, the secluded monastery devoted to science and reasoning, is sort of a real thing.
Well, that isn't exactly right; it's not that the monasteries are devoted to science, it's more like the monks are inviting scientists to come and teach them. Still, I thought it was cool.
Reposting from last open thread as I didn't get any inquiries:
I've seen a lot of discontent on LW about exercise. I know enough about physical training to provide very basic coaching and instruction to get people started, and I can optimize a plan for a variety of parameters (including effectiveness, duration of workout, frequency of workout, cost of equipment, space of equipment, gym availability, etc.). If anyone is interested in some free one-on-one help, post a request for your situation, budget, and needs and I'll write up some basic recommendations.
I don't have much in the ways of credentials, except that I've coached myself for all of my training and have made decent progress (from sedentary fat weakling to deadlifting 415lbs at 190lb BW and 13%BF). I've helped several friends, all of which have made pretty good progress, and I've been able to tailor workouts to specific situations.
Have there been any studies on how effective things like MOOCS and Khanacademy and so on are at teaching people?
Apparently one reason that the famous "419 Scam" spammers write such illiterate and instantly-recognizable spam email is that this serves to filter out all but the most gullible recipients. By writing badly and unconvincingly, they ensure that more of the people who actually respond are gullible enough to be pulled in to the scam. Because it's cheap to send out millions of copies of a spam email, they have a strong incentive to minimize the number of responses that aren't good leads.
Are there other cases where someone might do a deliberately bad job at convincing people of a falsehood, in order to filter for the most gullible or susceptible marks?
Are there other cases where someone might do a deliberately bad job at convincing people of a falsehood, in order to filter for the most gullible or susceptible marks?
Cults!
It is also not unknown for someone with something genuine to teach to actively filter out those not capable of learning it.
I enjoyed reading the Temptation of Christ article. One thing that struck me is that the Jesus character responded far more reasonably than your typical deluded person does when asked questions which challenge their beliefs, at least in my experience.
In my experience, when a person's beliefs are driven by emotion, he tends to have much more of a "concede nothing" mentality -- even if he is sane. Can Jesus in the story use this as evidence that he really is Jesus? Again we run into the problem that irrationality blinds the irrational to their own irrationality. But it's still worth considering I think.
Has there been any research into reinforcement schedules that work such that when a behavior is shown less often, reinforcement is increased, and when the behavior returns to high levels, it is decreased? Like spaced repetition, but with reinforcement?
This looks right up LW's alley.
There is a question
I am a 3rd year medical student, and for the purposes of this question, let’s assume I have equal interest and ability in the various medical specialties. In order to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people through my work in medicine (i.e., the highest return to society), what specialty should I pursue? ... I’ve been looking at DALYs and QALYs associated with various medical interventions ...
And some answers, not all of which LW will like :-)
Say that I want to donate to help mitigate X-risk. Using numbers, why should I donate to MIRI over other causes?
I probably have obstructive sleep apnea. I exhibit a symptoms (ie feeling sleepy despite getting normal or above average amounts of sleep, dry mouth when I wake up) and also I just had a sleep specialist tell me that the geometry of my mouth and sinuses makes puts me at high risk. I got an appointment for a sleep study a month from now. Based on what I've read, this means that it will probably take at least two months or more before I can start using a CPAP machine if I go through the standard procedure. This seems like an insane amount of time to wait for...
Continuing the use of LW as my source for non-fiction recommendations...
Any suggestions on a decent popular-but-not-too-dumbed-down intro to Economics?
Is there a consensus on the account of unemployment and inflation F. A. Hayek provides in his Nobel Lecture (1974)? I'm sympathetic to the abstract philosophy-of-science considerations he argues there, but I don't know enough (anything) about economics to say whether he's using that account to substantiate those considerations, or he's using those considerations to obliquely promote a controversial account. Here's an excerpt:
...The theory which has been guiding monetary and financial policy during the last thirty years, and which I contend is largely the pr
Is it fine to upset one person for the entertainment of others according to your personal flavour of utilitarianism? (to the point of depression but not suicide, while entertaining enough other people to be generating more 'good' feelings than 'bad')
Another thing up LW alley. Starting quote:
You’ll think this is weird, but for three years now I’ve taken what might be described as a “data-driven” approach to my social life. Specifically, I’ve been maintaining a gigantic spreadsheet of friends and business contacts, updated with columns such as “Hotness Index,” “Income,” and “Strategic Value.” And I spend about four hours a week keeping it up to date.
I just finished reading Eliezer's April Fools Day post, where he illustrated how good society could be. A future society filled with rational people, that is structured the way Eliezer describes, and continues with linear progression in technology would be pretty amazing. What is it that the intelligence explosion would provide of value that this society wouldn't?
Put differently, diff(intelligenceExplosion, dath ilan).
A question about site mechanics: I can no longer find EYs "My April Fools' Day Confession" post in Main. It is just not listed there neither by rating nor by time. I can navigate toward it from comments or bookmarks.
Checking this a bit I find that this is only filtered if I'm logged in. And I remember that something like this happened some weeks ago with another post which was moved between Main and Discussion.
Is this a bug or is this some kind of filtering feature I don't get?
I have a question about quantum physics. Suppose Bob is in state |Bob>, the rest of Bob's Everett branch is in state |rest>, and the universe is in state |u>, one of whose summands is |Bob>|rest>. How should Bob make predictions?
Determine |b'>, the successor state to |Bob>|rest>. Then the expectation of observable o is .
Determine |u'>, the successor state to |u>. Then the expectation of observable o is .
Theory 1 leads to the paradox I described in last week's open thread. Two users helpfully informed me that theory 1 is...
Reminder: The first session of the first course in Cousera's data science sequence starts today.
Today in failures of agency/playing a role as opposed to being a role: I have a friend who is somewhat paranoid with respect to their possessions and physical safety. Said friend recently got their laptop stolen from their lab, which has understandably heightened their paranoia about their lab's level of security, particularly since their work often involves being there alone at odd hours. It turns out that their lab is even more insecure than was first apparent, and there's a relatively simple procedure for getting in without any credentials. Friend poste...
It seems Ozymandias has retired from tumblr. Maybe some other tumblr-using Lesswronger (I don't have an account) could take up stewardship of the Rationalist Masterlist while it still exists in Google's cache? It was a nice way to find fun posts.
Please share your GTD setup and experience: what works for you and what doesn't?
What software do you use and how?
I never owned a smartphone or a tablet, because I believed that they are mostly good for wasting time and effort on distractions (I have a Nokia 1202), but recently I gave in and bought an HTC One mini, because I believe it will help my productivity. Still getting used to the fact what goes for 'mini' these days, but that's the best phone I could find that looks well-made and not overly huge, short of the iPhone.
For my main computer I am running...
There are plenty of internet articles that I want to read later or have read but want to preserve for rereading and reference. Because of link rot I can't trust the sites to exist for arbitrary amounts of time, so I need to save these sites somehow. How do you do that in the most comfortable way, ideally a single click?
Does it make sense to apply the Kelly Criterion to Hanson's LMSR? It seems to intuitively, but my math skills are too weak.
If you live in the USA, I could use your help to buy a Microsoft Surface Pro 2 computer for myself. I live in Russia and Microsoft doesn't sell those here and refuses to ship; I have already tried using a US proxy and reshipping service, but the order doesn't go through: maybe it detects that I'm not in the US, or my debit card is not issued by US bank, or something else. Either way, I need someone's help in this.
Also, if you are a student, you should be eligible for 10% discount. But I'm not sure whether Microsoft actually checks this: I could click a cer...
Off-topic, just something that I found interesting:
The other day, I heard a radio commercial for some kind of support group or therapy for non-24 hour disorder. I had read about Eliezer's problem with it, but had never heard anything about it before from any other source. I guess I was just surprised to hear that it was common enough to warrant a radio commercial.
What are rational approaches to preparing on an individual level for the possible occurrence of various types of catastrophes? I'm not referring to proactively trying to stop the catastrophes, but rather to being prepared in case something does happen. I'm primarily interested in global catastrophes (pandemic, economic catastrophe, solar flare knocking out the internet, etc.). But I'm also curious about rationalists living in areas susceptible to regional disasters (local economic collapse, wars, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, ecological disasters, etc.) - what do you do to prepare for these possibilities?
We should refer to standard sources compiled by people who have thought a lot about this problem already, rather than attempting to formulate answers from first principles.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has some lists for emergency supplies. The Mormon Church makes emergency preparedness a point of their practice. The Burning Man organization has a recommended list of survival gear for their regularly-scheduled natural disaster.
This is the top-rated first-aid kit on Amazon.
Community-building is kind of essential. Knowing that you have neighbors you can trust is a big deal — you can share the burdens of an emergency and help each other out. Does anyone in your social circle do amateur (ham) radio? Any trained EMTs or paramedics? You can get EMT training in a lot of places.
Oh, and keep a few gallon jugs of clean drinking water handy. No sense dying of dysentery.
The typical mind fallacy is bratwurst fallacy.
Wait, what?
Exactly.
Dissecting a joke is supposed to kill it, but I find that this is not the case here. See if you can pick out all the layers.