All of ahartell's Comments + Replies

Does this create a shortform feed?

It does! Alright I'll leave this here because I think it will make me more likely to start using this feature.

I've enjoyed listening to Nonlinear Library for recent posts.

Something that would really improve my experience would be for links to the original to be included in the description section of each "episode".

Indeed, before dismissing it entirely, one would presumably want an account of why it features so prominently in our mental and social lives.

One aspect to this seems to be that clinging is a mechanism by which a portion of the network maintains its own activation.  Given evolutionary dynamics, it's unsurprising to see widespread greediness and self-recommendation among neurons/neural structures (cf Neurons Gone Wild).

Thanks, fixed!

Endorsed.

In addition to safety and contact, another dynamic was that I was generally not S1 expecting much value to come out of Dragon Army, so chafing more within the system seemed like pain, effort, and time spent for little expected gain.

Stag hunts, anyone?

Edit: Though, I will note that it can be hard to find the space between "I'm damaging the group by excluding my optimization power from the process" and "I'm being a Red Knight here and should be game for whatever the commander decides." It may seem like the obvious split is "... (read more)

Many of the Dragons who stepped into the role of the Ghost for a time did so softly and gradually, and it never felt like this level of absence was Notably Different from the previous level, in a paradox-of-the-heap sort of way. Set a bar, and set a gradient around that bar, and stay in contact.

As the person who fell most heavily into this role, the above resonates a lot. Below are some other thoughts on my experience.

I had the sense early on that I wasn't getting very much value out of group activities, and felt not very connected to the house. In th... (read more)

Likewise.

Just finished. I'm sure my calibration was terrible though.

Hello Internet is a fun "two guys talking" podcast made by two popular youtubers including CGPGray, the guy who made this great video about the future of automation and employment. Low (almost no) informational content, but really enjoyable, and CGPGray will often say things that make it sound as if he's read at least some of LessWrong/Overcoming Bias. At the very least he's a transhumanist.

Completed!

There is also the possibility that sex would not have happened anyway but brining it up that that was your intention made them want to distance themselves from the situation. And the possibility that it would have happened if you hadn't asked but only because the flirty/touchy behavior was leading them towards wanting to have sex but asking interrupted the process (this is distinct from the original claim in that the problem wasn't asking but asking too soon).

Awesome.

Shouldn't the last one refer to the one above it rather that the one two places above it though? I think it should be "and I love being able to recognize the costs and benefits of this uncertainty" rather than "and I love just what this drive to dispel uncertainty can do."

I don't know if they're sure. Mostly I was just responding to the "who are they supposed to have learned that from?". I think there are a lot of social, gender expectation-y things that would lead to women thinking that they were "supposed" to be less assertive.

Who are they supposed to have learned that from? They sure as hell didn't learn that from me. And every man I know wishes women were more to the point. The stereotype criticism is "blah blah blah", not abruptness. If you're in charge, make decisions, and give orders. I'll salute, and we'll get something done.

No citations, but I've heard a lot of times that women in business positions are punished for being assertive or aggressive in situations where men are expected to do the same. I don't know if this is true (I think it probably is), but either way I've definitely heard it enough times that it doesn't surprise me that women would think they should try not to seem abrupt or bossy.

To be honest, I'm surprised by the hostility of your comments here. I was bringing a hypothesis to your attention so that you could evaluate it. I suppose I could have read all of your comments but I don't really care that much I guess. "I wonder" was meant to identify this as a passing thought. And in my second comment I updated away from the hypothesis, so I'm not sure why this tone would be present.

I might be misreading it, but your last sentence sounds sort of fake-nice and passive aggressive due to the rest of the comment. I normally wouldn't make an entire comment just about tone, and I actually like the tone on Lessswrong, but this conversation is sort of about it, and like I said, I was surprised.

It doesn't seem like that would be the case, no. I expected your alterations to have been deeper than that, including stuff like softening your disagreement.

I wonder if your niceness padding has led to people missing your point and to you being frustrated by their failure to understand you.

The problem is that the concept of "fairness" you are using there is incompatible with VHM-utilitarianism. (If somebody disagrees with this, please describe what the term in one's utility function corresponding to fairness would look like.)

People care about fairness, and get negative utility from feeling like they are being treated unfairly.

I would tend towards the last two, I think, and wouldn't find the forth to be rude (though it might depend on the nature and scale of the clarifications, with this method being most apt for smaller ones). However, I am one of those who likes the style of discussion on lesswrong.

I feel like part of this is not acknowledging that quite a few people will experience non-fuzzy or anti-fuzzy feelings if they are disagreed with in a dismissive way. Or maybe when they feel like they are disagreed with in a dismissive way.

I think that showing respect can stop disagreements from seeming like dismissals.

Pedantry:

If you score 70% in an exact, you are not very accurate. If that was the only exact on which you scored 70%...

You mean "exam" here, I think.

You're right though.

You seem to be confused about "the situation causing her nervousness" and how that relates to the mentioning of her previous experience at a party. I really don't see how

But her reason actually refers to a totally different situation!

seems like strong evidence for the "cause" (I agree with what buybuydandavis says above about the use of the word in this situation) being the woman in question.

It seems obvious to me that she has beliefs based on her experience at the party that make the elevator situation worrying. This is not a ... (read more)

Actually, I think that your analogy is apt. The only difference is that the priors on "someone says "four" whenever asked for a number" and "someone only says the word "four" are really low and the prior for "someone has some misogynist beliefs" is much higher.

(Note that I am definitely not saying that shminux is a misogynist.)

I don't think that would work if you tried (posting links to everything). It may naively seem like that is being incentivized but from my own intuitions about what I would do if someone did that and that fact that that hasn't actually happened, I don't think you need to be concerned.

I would.

Thanks, updated.

Thanks. This is exactly what I meant by "systemized."

Does the list of all articles include posts in discussion? If not, is there another list that does? Finally, is there some interesting reason that it stops in August 2012, or is that just a result of people not updating it? Thanks.

More broadly, I'm interested in hearing about the workflow of those who use Anki or some alternative regularly. I've used it intermittently but never felt like I was using it very efficiently. It may be that making cards always feels like that and SR's efficiency makes up for it but I'm curious to see how people have systemized the process if at all.

Also, this probably belongs in the open thread.

Hah, thanks. So one cannot use the word to reference their own "subjective feeling" but can use it to reference others'?

(Sidenote: If you're right, I guess most of its usage here is incorrect, and perhaps misleading, but it seems like we'd be wrong in an silly, pedantic, "what silly rules for word" sort of way. We'd still be wrong though.)

There was recently a discussion of Lesswrong's use of the word "Signaling," and it seemed to me that upon consideration it was shown that we're pretty much using it to mean what it means in a broader academic context. See this comment in particular.

With respect to the use of "affect," I again disagree but there aren't really any examples I can point to. I think its use in many cases is very similar to "emotion," but I also think that its use fits pretty perfectly with your stated definition. For example, someone might say,... (read more)

Trivial point: Do you mean "Site-wide Taboos?" The current title is "side-wide taboos."

And that's exactly why I'm against donating to cancer research.

I think opposition to donating to cancer research (as opposed to donating to more cost efficient options) is obvious and accepted (here). Still, I'm selfish enough that if I had cancer I would treat it, which is what was actually being considered/compared to cryonics.

I'm sure this has come up before, but I think there are some cases in which cancer research donations make sense. Often donations geared towards the curing of specific diseases is prompted by some personal emotional connectio... (read more)

Agreed.

I would just like to register my preference that those who retract comments leave the original text in place. In most cases, I believe the retraction itself serves the purposes of retraction pretty well, whereas replacing the text is sort of overkill and detracts from the conversation.

To those wondering, the first definition for rube I found was "an unsophisticated person from a rural area; a hick."

Is that why you chose her specifically to be voiced by Zoe Chace?

Judging by Kodos96's user page, the same is the case for posts, i.e., they are still visible after being "censored."

Or an exploration of its bounds.

Edit: Oops. Silly grammar/spelling mistake.

Do you remember the first time he lost for real? He put a dark torture spell on Harry and locked him in an unused classroom.

The argument she's making is that the silliness of the girls is all uniform and dependent on them being girls, namely that they all gossip about Harry, Hermione, and Draco in a romantic context. Now this isn't true if you take the SPEW members into account, but I can sort of see it if you only consider unnamed or cameo female characters in their dining hall conversations. She's also saying that the silliness shown by the male characters isn't so obviously determined by their gender (see: lack of silly conversations about Quidditch and other suggestions mentioned in the comments of this post).

You can't use the fineness thing as a reason for the Philosopher's Stone to be unique to Flamel as it says explicitly in the chapter that all alchemical magic has the same requirements, and it doesn't sound at all like Flamel is the only one who can do alchemy.

Yeah, different issue all together. Thanks though.

Padma had the subplot where she was mean to Hermione and Harry "reformed" her or whatever. She is put as second in command in Dragon Army and is respected enough by Draco to make him realize why his father said that Ravenclaw was an acceptable House from which to choose one's wife. She is shown to be powerful and loyal in both the armies and in SPEW (her prismatic sphere or whatever is mentioned to be particularly strong; she doesn't hesitate when Hermione tells her to go find help). Finally, she sort of kind of notices that something is wrong... (read more)

Is your edit saying that (in retrospect) what is being lampshaded is obvious or that it's obvious that it is a lampshade? If the former, what is behing lampshaded?

Edit: You're obviously talking about latter. Oops.

Oh yeah, obviously it would be more powerful since it was made before or after the cloak.