wyrd

total token activation values

Is this a straight sum, where negative actvals cancel with positive ones? If so, if you instead summed the absolute values of activations be more indicative of "distributed effort"? Or if only positive actvals have an effect on downstream activations, maybe a better metric for "effort" would be to sum only the positive ones?

I'm not sure whether total actvals for a token is a good measure of the "effort" it takes to process it. Maybe. In brains, the salience (somewhat analogous to actvals) of some input is definitely related to ... (read more)

ohmygodthatlojbanbabyissocute! —but anyway I don't think you need to be raised speaking a new language for a good one to have large effect on your ability to think.

I find it weird that people call it the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" as if there's an alternative way people can robustly learn to think better. Engineering a language isn't really about the language, it's about trying to rewrite the way we think. LessWrong and other academic disciplines have had decent success with this on the margin, I'd say—and the phrase "on the margin" is a good example of a re... (read more)