wnoise comments on Rationality Quotes April 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 April 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 05 April 2012 01:07:32AM 3 points [-]

Try visualizing four spacial dimensions.

Comment author: wnoise 05 April 2012 02:03:08AM 11 points [-]

Just visualize n dimensions, and then set n = 4.

Comment author: bbleeker 05 April 2012 12:40:14PM *  1 point [-]

You might as well tell me to 'just' grow wings and fly away...

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 April 2012 03:14:33PM 3 points [-]

I believe wnoise was making a joke-- one that I thought was moderately funny.

Comment author: bbleeker 06 April 2012 07:59:59AM 4 points [-]

I thought it might be, and if I'd read it elsewhere, I'd have been sure of it - but this is LessWrong, which is chock-full of hyperintelligent people whose abilities to do math, reason and visualize are close to superpowers from where I am. You people seriously intimidate me, you know. (Just because I feel you're so much out of my league, not for any other reason.)

Comment author: wnoise 12 April 2012 07:40:17PM 4 points [-]

It's a standard joke about mathematicians vs everybody else, and I intended it as such. I can do limited visualization in the 4th dimension (hypercubes and 5-cells (hypertetrahedra), not something as complicated as the 120-cell or even the 24-cell), but it's by extending from a 3-d visualization with math knowledge, rather than specializing n to 4.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 06 April 2012 01:20:54PM 0 points [-]

For what it's worth, my ability to reason is fairly good in a very specific way-- sometimes I see the relevant thing quickly (and after LWers have been chewing on a problem and haven't seen it (sorry, no examples handy, I just remember the process)), but I'm not good at long chains of reasoning. Math and visualizing aren't my strong points.