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Kawoomba comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013) - Less Wrong
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Welcome, Avi!
It looks like I downvoted three of your previous comments. Sorry about that (not really, it had to be done). Here is my reasoning, since you asked:
Your comment on AI avoiding destruction suggested that you neither read the previous discussion of the issue first, nor thought about it in any depth, just blurted out the first or second idea that you came up with.
Your retracted FTL question indicated that you didn't bother searching online for one of the most common questions ever asked about entanglement. Not until later, anyway. So the downvote worked as intended there.
Your comment on the vague quasi-philosophical concept of superdeterminism purported to provide some sort of a proof of it being not Turing-computable, yet did not discuss why the T.M. would not halt, only gave some poorly described thought experiment.
I am sorry you got a harsher-that-average welcome to this forum, I hope your comment quality improves after these few bumps to your ego.
Good for you. Note that the Quantum sequence is one of the harder and more controversial ones, consider alternative sources, like Scott Aaronson's semi-popular Quantum Computing Democritus, written by an expert in the field.
That's quite wise. If you write down what you want to say and then look back at it after you finish reading, you will likely find your original thoughts naive in retrospect. But a good exercise nonetheless.
If at some point you think that after a cursory reading of some post you found a hole in Eliezer's reasoning that had not been discussed in the comments, you are probably mistaken. Consider this post of mine as a warning.
Also note that as a self-identifying "Orthodox Jewish", you are bound to have compartmentalized a lot, and Eliezer's and Yvain's posts tend to vaporize these barriers quite spectacularly, so be warned, young Draco. Your original identity is not likely to remain intact, either.
With these caveats, have fun! :)
Joining these forums can serve as something of a reality check to gifted young people; they may be used to most any half-baked thought still being sufficient to impress their environment. Rarely is polish needed, rarely are "proofs" thoroughly nitpicked. Getting actual feedback knocking them off of their pedestal ("the smartest one around") can be ego-bruising, since we usually define ourselves through our perceived strengths. Ego-bruising, yet really, really important for actual personal and intellectual growth.
Blessed be the ones growing up around other minds who call them out on their mistakes, intellects against which they can grow their potential.
(I don't mean this as applying specifically to Avi, but more as a general observation.)
Yep. I'll put it even more directly.
Smart people growing up in environments where most people around them are less smart tend to develop a highly convenient habit of handwaving or bullshitting through issues. However when they find themselves among people who are at least as smart as they are and some are smarter, that habit often leads to problems and a need for adjustment :-)
Does that go both ways? That is, can I "nitpick" other people's comments and posts? Also, if I find a typo in a post (in the sequences so far, I've spotted at least 2), is it acceptable to comment just pointing out the typo?
Why not PM them first?
This is my own practice. My reasoning is that pointing out a typo is of no enduring interest to other readers, and renders the comments section less valuable to other readers; so if it's convenient to contact the author more quietly, one should.
Yes. I recommend using ctrl-f to ensure no one else has already pointed out that typo.
Of course you can. Whether it's wise to do so is an entirely different question :-D
I don't think I would have minded as much if there would have been comments explaining why they thought I was wrong. It was the lack of response that bothered me.
(And what's with this "You are trying to submit too fast"? I'm not allowed to post too many comments in a row?)
Yes. If I remember correctly, LW also implements some form of slow-banning (the amount of time required between your comments depends on your total karma), but I may be recalling a feature request as an implemented feature.
I thought it was caused by having a lot of recent posts downvoted.