Comments - Less Wrong

army1987 on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-25T12:15:13.046764+00:00

Sprinkle an emetic (a vomit-inducing drug) into foods that you want to stop eating, such as chocolate.

Why would I want to stop eating chocolate?

army1987 on Being Foreign and Being Sane

2013-05-25T12:08:16.926482+00:00

I thought it was going to be about something like this.

"what living abroad can teach a rationalist"

Huh, please no; "... can teach you" would be fine.

army1987 on Being Foreign and Being Sane

2013-05-25T12:03:53.609332+00:00

Alternatively, try to explain to someone with little-to-no English knowledge what something like "simple" or "almost all of" means.

I remember having this conversation with someone with very poor English:

Me: Did you have fun tonight?

Her: Fun? What does that mean?

Me: Did you enjoy yourself?

Her: Move myself?

Me: Enjoy.

Her: [confused look]

Me: Never mind.

wdcrouch on Robustness of Cost-Effectiveness Estimates and Philanthropy

2013-05-25T11:01:11.713146+00:00

I explicitly address this in the second paragraph of the "The history of GiveWell’s estimates for lives saved per dollar" section of my post as well as the "Donating to AMF has benefits beyond saving lives" section of my post.

Not really. You do mention the flow-on benefits. But you don't analyse whether your estimate of "good done per dollar" has increased or decreased. And that's the relevant thing to analyse. If you argued "cost per life saved has had greater regression to your prior than you'd expected; and for that reason I expect my estimates of good done per dollar to regress really substantially" (an argument I think you would endorse), I'd accept that argument, though I'd worry about how much it generalises to cause-areas other than global poverty. (e.g. I expect there to be much less of an 'efficient market' for activities where there are fewer agents with the same goals/values, like benefiting non-human animals, or making sure the far-future turn out well). Optimism bias still holds, of course.

You say that "cost-effectiveness estimates skew so negatively." I was just pointing out that for me that hasn't been the case (for good done per $), because long-run benefits strike me as swamping short-term benefits, a factor that I didn't initially incorporate into my model of doing good. And, though I agree with the conclusion that you want as many different angles as possible (etc), focusing on cost per life saved rather than good done per dollar might lead you to miss important lessons (e.g. "make sure that you've identified all crucial normative and empirical considerations"). I doubt that you personally have missed those lessons. But they aren't in your post. And that's fine, of course, you can't cover everything in one blog post. But it's important for the reader not to overgeneralise.

I agree with this. I don't think that my post suggests otherwise.

I wasn't suggesting it does.

Benito on Rationality Quotes May 2013

2013-05-25T10:56:49.959901+00:00

Aww, sorry. Do I delete it?

MichaelHoward on Singularity Institute now accepts donations via Bitcoin

2013-05-25T10:51:20.560135+00:00

They're now accepting it again, and even spoke at the last conference.

army1987 on Procedural Knowledge Gaps

2013-05-25T09:22:13.287213+00:00

On the other hand it's a word that I could reasonable use to describe an intimite Bachata dance between two people who just meet.

In that context, I meant “romantic” as ‘leading to romance’, rather than the colloquial meaning. So I wouldn't call a dance between two people who aren't looking to sleep with one another “romantic”.

The ability to be physically intimite with the opposing sex without getting tense is valuable.

As was pointed out before in this thread, physically intimate while dancing != physically intimate while having sex. (And ISTM that the latter is the more common meaning of that phrase.)

In dance the man leads the woman. For a shy male that's a valuable skill to learn.

Does that transfer to domains other than dancing? (And anyway, IME it's more accurate to say that the more experienced partner leads the less experienced partner. There are certain moves where from the outside it looks like the man is leading, but that's not necessarily what it feels like from the inside.)

Dancing doesn't teach you everything. It doesn't teach you having good conversations. The things that it teaches you are still valuable.

In my scale of “platonic” vs “romantic”, having good conversations is even more platonic than dancing.

Disclaimer: I have taken extremely few dancing classes in my life, extremely few of which were partnered dances. OTOH, when I improvise people often ask me if I've been taking classes (but I'm not sure they are serious).

army1987 on Procedural Knowledge Gaps

2013-05-25T09:13:34.557161+00:00

I think that there are cultural differences about that, too: where I am, ISTM that (assuming it's unambiguous that you're asking for a date, which is what siduri was recommending) “I'm not interested in dating at the moment” is perfectly socially acceptable.

somervta on The Centre for Applied Rationality: a year later from a (somewhat) outside perspective

2013-05-25T18:19:12.983174+10:00

HI there! Awesome post! Especially the agonizing tradeoff between going now and enjoying the compounding benefits earlier, and going later and getting better material. Obviously, I came down on the side of the first option, but this may not be optimal for everyone. Minor point: 'Rationality and the Reflective Mind' is by Stanovich, not by Kahneman.

(BTW, this is Tarn from the workshop)

katydee on Being Foreign and Being Sane

2013-05-25T16:50:47.352132+10:00

I don't know what I would have called the article, but generally I don't think using the word "sane" is optimal. I honestly thought this might be something to do with culture wars/reactionary politics at first glance.

Kawoomba on Probability is in the Mind

2013-05-25T16:19:29.108089+10:00

I don't see any grounds for justifying either. Do you?

Yes. P1 also entails that phlogiston theory is an accurate descriptor of reality - after all, it is saying your stove has phlogiston. P2 does not entail that phlogiston theory is an accurate descriptor of reality. Rejecting that your stove contains phlogiston can be done on the basis of "chances are nothing contains phlogiston, not knowing anything about phlogiston theory, it's probably not real, duh", which is why P(P2)>>P(P1).

The same applies to case 2, knowing nothing about photons, you should always go with the proposition (in this case P4) which is also supported by "photons are an imaginary concept with no equivalent in reality". For P3 to be correct, photons must have some physical equivalent on the territory level, so that anything (e.g. your lightbulb) can produce photons in the first place. For a randomly picked concept (not picked out of a physics textbook), the chances of that are negligible.

Take some random concept, such as "there are 17 kinds of quark, if something contains the 13th quark - the blue quark - we call it 'blue'". Then affirming it is blue entails affirming the 17-kinds-of-quark theory (quite the burden, knowing nothing about its veracity), while saying "it is not blue = it does not contain the 13th quark, because the 17-kinds-of-quark theory does not describe our reality" is the much favored default case.

A not-yet-considered randomly chosen concept (phlogiston, photons) does not have 50-50 odds of accurately describing reality, its odds of doing so - given no evidence - are vanishingly small. That translates to

P("stove contains phlogiston") being much smaller than P("stove does not contain phlogiston"). Reason (rephrasing the above argument): rejecting phlogiston theory as an accurate map of the territory strengthens your "stove does not contain phlogiston (... because phlogiston theory is probably not an an accurate map, knowing nothing about it)"

even if

P("stove contains phlogiston given phlogiston theory describes reality") = P("stove does not contain phlogiston given phlogiston theory describes reality") = 0.5

fowlertm on Being Foreign and Being Sane

2013-05-25T16:00:35.888576+10:00

Not exactly what I was going for, but I'm glad to see it had a net positive effect. Incidentally, what do you think was wrong with the title, and what would you have called this article? I originally had it titled "what living abroad can teach a rationalist", something descriptive, but I thought this might catch people's attention. I struggle with coming up with good titles for papers and sections.

diegocaleiro on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-25T15:32:53.846391+10:00

Quick question. If I told you my name is Gee Kalero 1) is the pronounciation of Gee equal to that of the letter "G", or the beggining of the word "djibouti" or "jeez"? Do you see a difference between the three sounds? 2)Kalero is easier to pronounce than caleiro right?

What connotations does Kalero give?

CronoDAS on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-25T14:27:38.052212+10:00

Throughout history, a proven and popular method of acquiring wealth is to marry somebody rich.

How to accomplish this is left as an exercise for the reader. ;)

TsviBT on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-25T14:21:59.974004+10:00

Interesting. I definitely do this with Coursera... but you haven't noticed any dramatic timing being thrown off?

Qiaochu_Yuan on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-25T13:57:04.935801+10:00

I have friends who do this with lectures and audiobooks, which seems at least more productive-sounding.

private_messaging on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-25T03:46:38.319223+00:00

Well, yeah. The primary worry among tulpa creators is that it might get pissed at you and follow you around the house making faces.

They ought to be at least somewhat concerned that they have less brain for their own walking around the house.

And what, pray tell, is the salient feature of mental illness that causes us to avoid it? Because I don't think it's the fact that we refer to them with the collection of syllables "men-tal-il-nes".

You don't know? It's loss in "utility". When you have an unknown item which, out of the items that you know of, most closely resembles a mushroom consumption of which had very huge negative utility, the expected utility of consuming the unknown toxic mushroom like item is also negative (unless totally starving and there's literally nothing else one could seek for nourishment). Of course, in today's environment, people rarely face the need to make such inferences themselves - society warns you of all the common dangers, uncommon dangers are by definition uncommon, and language hides the inferential nature of categorization from the view.

If you had looked into the topic, you would know the process is reversible.

The cases I've heard which do not look like people attention seeking online, are associated with severe mental illness. Of course the direction of the causation is somewhat murky in any such issue, but necessity to see a doctor doesn't depend on direction of the causation here.

Nic_Smith on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-25T13:43:41.208309+10:00

I've personally found playing anime at 1.1x to be a difference which is barely even noticeable, but further speed increases to be somewhat annoying, and 1.5x+ to be unwatchable. It's likely low-hanging fruit for many, but YMMV.

katydee on Being Foreign and Being Sane

2013-05-25T03:11:33.101208+00:00

This article is really good. The title isn't, but I think it enhanced my overall experience by making me go in with low expectations. Nice work!

PrometheanFaun on Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8)

2013-05-25T13:05:53.151793+10:00

No. I personally exhibit a viable human idiogenetic strain which places no value on comfort or pleasure as end-goals - a living counterexample. I try to adhere to the essence of the dictum of life as closely as possible; survive and explore. I'd expect that to be a more enduring invariant shared by distinct lineages than a fear of pain.

Though if humanity were a species for which our agents truly couldn't resist merging thoughts in every moment- and we very nearly are- I wouldn't exist. But that still only speaks of humanity.