pinyaka

Thanks, Gleb. I will look into this more.

It really seems like you have gone out of your way to not actually share any content until I give you personal information. After looking at a few of your pages I still have no idea what you're offering except that it's something to help people find meaning in their lives using methods that (probably) have one or more scientific study to back them up. This is the kind of sales pitch I usually associate very strongly with scammers. The main differences between the way you look and the way a scammer looks are:

a) I found your recommendations on Less Wrong and you are an... (read more)

Replying toConveying rational thinking about long-term goals to youth and young adults

pinyaka10y

Conveying rational thinking about long-term goals to youth and young adults

My wife and I are the high school youth leaders at a UU church. Most of our youths are atheists or agnostics. I looked over the page you linked and subsequent pages on the course itself as I am very interested in helping our youths to think more rationally about goals. As the course is outlined now I would not suggest it to our youths because:

a) The course requires a lot of time and there's not enough information about how that time can be broken up. We meet for two hours per week and could maybe spare an hour of that for a program, but it's not clear that it... (read more)

Replying toThe Best Textbooks on Every Subject

pinyaka11y

The Best Textbooks on Every Subject

I purchased Shilov's Linear Algebra and put it on my bookshelf. When I actually needed to use it to refresh myself on how to get eigenvalues and eigenvectors I found all the references to preceding sections and choppy lemma->proof style writing to be very difficult to parse. This might be great if you actually work your way through the book, but I didn't find it useful as a refresher text.

Instead, I found Gilbert Strang's Introduction to Linear Algebra to be more useful. It's not as thorough as Shilov's text, but seems to cover topics fairly thoroughly and each section seems to be relatively self contained so that if there's a section that covers what you want to refresh your self on, it'll be relatively self contained.

Replying toHow to come to a rational believe about whether someone has a crush on yo

pinyaka11y

How to come to a rational believe about whether someone has a crush on yo

If you aren't good at reading other people's signals, then the following heuristic is a pretty good one: If you like A, and you are wondering whether A likes you, the answer is no.

This heuristic is terrible if you're trying to find a romantic partner since following it consistently will always lead you to believe that the people you're interested in and whose reciprocal interest isn't clear to you are not interested in you. If you live in a society where your potential partner isn't supposed to make overt signals about their romantic interests (because of gender roles or something), this may result in never finding a partner.

Also, suggesting that people who "aren't good at reading other people's signals" should condition anything based on the presence of uncertainty about reciprocal interest seems like it'll produce inconsistent results at best. In this case, I think they should take the potential failure mode and increase signaling until A (or a trusted friend) gives a unambiguous signal.

Replying toHPMOR Q&A by Eliezer at Wrap Party in Berkeley [Transcription]

pinyaka11y

HPMOR Q&A by Eliezer at Wrap Party in Berkeley [Transcription]

Well, maybe.

Replying toCalories per dollar vs calories per glycemic load: some notes on my diet

pinyaka11y

Calories per dollar vs calories per glycemic load: some notes on my diet

Mixing the high glycemic load foods with the low glycemic load foods will result in a lower peak insulin concentration than if you ate them separately.

Also, millet has a slightly higher glycemic load (12/100g) compared to quinoa (10/100g), but has almost the same calories (~120) and is usually significantly cheaper (in my area, it's about a third the cost when purchased in bulk). It's probably comparable to the basmati brown (which I don't like the taste of).

Replying toCalories per dollar vs calories per glycemic load: some notes on my diet

pinyaka11y

Calories per dollar vs calories per glycemic load: some notes on my diet

I never feel full on meat + vegs, but adding a bit of bread does the job. Conversely, I never feel full on bread or rice or generally carbs only, adding a bit of meat does the job. It seems I need the combination.

My subjective experience is that starting a meal with a small amount of insulin spiking carbohydrate and then moving on to protein and fat results in feeling full faster than starting with the protein/fat and moving on to the carbs. I generally have a rule about portioning my food out at the beginning of the meal and not going back for more until 20 minutes after I finish the first portions. Usually this prevents me from overeating, although eating imbalanced meals almost always leaves me hungry long enough to get second helpings.

Replying toRationality: From AI to Zombies

pinyaka11y

Rationality: From AI to Zombies

You should send that to errata@intelligence.org.

Replying toStupid Questions March 2015

pinyaka11y

Stupid Questions March 2015

True enough. Tea or water would definitely be better choices.

Replying toStupid Questions March 2015

pinyaka11y

Stupid Questions March 2015

Apparently, one reason more intellectual people (typical Silicon Valley types) have less of an addiction problem is that they enjoy their work and thus life enough, they don't need to quickly wash down another suck of a day, so they can have less euphoric hobbies in the evening, say, drawing or painting.

I don't think this is exactly right. There is a correlation between intelligence and addiction, but it's not so strong that you won't still find a lot of addicts among the intelligentsia. Chemical addiction is a process whereby you ingest chemicals to stimulate your reward center. Smarter people who are wired in such a way that they can get the same... (read more)

[Link] Learning how to exert self-control

pinyaka

11y

Here's a link to a short op-ed about some tips to develop self-control. The author get them from talking with Walter Mischel, a researcher who correlated impulsiveness as a child (measured by ability to delay eating sweets) and various metrics as an adult (education attainment/cocaine use/weight). Mischel has a new book coming out, but this is not a review of the book. I thought this might be of interest because it talks a little about how self-control is a skill that can be developed and even gave some specific things to do.

1. If possible remove unhelpful triggers from your environment. If not possible, try to reduce the emotional appeal of the trigger... (read more)

Free online course: How to Reason and Argue starting Mon. Any interest in study group?

pinyaka

12y

I am going to take the free Coursera class "Think Again: How to Reason and Argue" starting Monday, January 13 (three days from now) and I thought I'd to see if there was any interest in going through this as a group. This is one of the MIRI recommended courses under the "Heuristics and Biases" section. If you're interested and you will sign up if we get a group together, please leave a note in the comments (if you will only sign up if the group hits a specific size, please leave that requirement in the comments as well). If enough people are willing to sign up (5 or more? idk), I... (read 945 more words →)

[Link] - No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training

pinyaka

12y

This article critically examines previous studies that showed a link between working memory training (specifically via n-back training) and fluid intelligence, finding that the results may not have been as positive as reported owing to a number of factors including the use of a no-contact rather than active control group, and difficulty selecting tests that isolate the impact of working memory on fluid intelligence. The authors also present findings from a new study that show no improvement in fluid intelligence from dual n-back training, visual search training (active placebo) and no training (no contact placebo).

PubMed

Journal Challenged

Repository repository

pinyaka

13y

A few weeks ago, Adele_L suggested that the repositories were underutilized and looked for suggestions on how to improve that. In that spirit, I added the following links to the Special Threads wiki page.

Solved Problems Repository - A collection of "solved problems in instrumental rationality."
Useful Concepts Repository - A collection of concepts that Less Wrong users have "found particularly useful for understanding the world."
Boring Advice Repository - A collection of advice that is optimized for helpfulness rather than depth of insight.
Useful Questions Repository - Questions that are useful to keep in mind in various situations.
Bad Concepts Repository - A collection of useless or harmful concepts
Grad Student Advice Repository - A collection of... (read more)

How much do you value your current identity vs. your life?

pinyaka

13y

I was reading about the effectiveness of bicycle helmet laws (here) and wondered how worthwhile it is to save your life at the expense of some aspect key to your current identity (Note that the paper linked doesn't say that this is the situation; this was just a tangential thought).

Let's say that I perform some activity that carries a 10% chance that I will die but otherwise carries no risk of injury. There is some piece of safety gear that I can wear that cuts that risk in half, but for some reason adds a 10% chance that I will be permanently brain damaged such that I will not be "me" as I understand it now. Should I rate this as 15% fatal with the safety gear or is there some other way that this should be evaluated?

Can biases be used to encourage rational thinking?

pinyaka

13y

For example, the Forer (or Barnum) effect leads people to believe that vague and general descriptions of personality traits are very accurate when they believe that the results are tailored to them (based on some attribute like astrological sign).

If there were a service available to you that would only send you predictions like "you are more likely to notice and compensate for your biases today" would it be worth signing up for or is there a Shelling point around not deliberately engaging in irrational thought? Is there a way to calculate utility for limited self-deception?

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Repository repository

[Link] Learning how to exert self-control

Free online course: How to Reason and Argue starting Mon. Any interest in study group?

[Link] - No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training

pinyaka

pinyaka

[Link] Learning how to exert self-control

Free online course: How to Reason and Argue starting Mon. Any interest in study group?

[Link] - No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training

Repository repository

How much do you value your current identity vs. your life?

Can biases be used to encourage rational thinking?

pinyaka

Repository repository

[Link] Learning how to exert self-control

Free online course: How to Reason and Argue starting Mon. Any interest in study group?

[Link] - No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training

pinyaka

pinyaka

[Link] Learning how to exert self-control

Free online course: How to Reason and Argue starting Mon. Any interest in study group?

[Link] - No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training

Repository repository

How much do you value your current identity vs. your life?

Can biases be used to encourage rational thinking?