Comment author: cousin_it 13 April 2016 07:33:34AM *  6 points [-]

Homestuck has just joined HPMOR, Ra, Pact and TNC in the pantheon of "geek epic" stories with underwhelming endings :-(

As far as I know, only Worm and Undertale have managed to beat that curse so far.

Comment author: 4hodmt 15 April 2016 07:00:18AM -1 points [-]

I thought Worm had a very bad ending. Vg cebzvaragyl srngherf Pbagrffn, jub vf gur jbefg punenpgre naq unezf gur fgbel fvzcyl ol rkvfgvat. Gnlybe ybfrf ure cbjref. Gur Fvzhetu fgnegf fbzr cyna naq gura gur cybg guernq vf nonaqbarq.

But despite this I still consider it one of my favorite stories.

Comment author: ChristianKl 14 March 2016 06:03:30PM 2 points [-]

The part of focusing your efforts on the right task is a rationality skill.

Recently one rationalist wrote on facebook how he used physical rationality to make his his shoulder heal faster after an operation and produce less pain. Having accurate models of reality is very useful in many cases.

Comment author: 4hodmt 16 March 2016 10:57:53AM 0 points [-]

Assuming he only had one shoulder operated on, where was the control shoulder?

Comment author: Brillyant 27 January 2016 05:48:46PM *  0 points [-]

I think it's certainly true. I suppose it depends on your definition of "habit"...

Isn't much of what we do habitual, whether it benefits us or not? In this way, you have either good habits or bad that are reciprocals of one another.

For example, people who refrain are not said to have a "habit of not biting their nails". But that is, I think, what is happening.

Comment author: 4hodmt 27 January 2016 06:35:48PM 0 points [-]

I stopped biting my nails (coating them in a bitter substance to remind myself not to bite them if I tried) and I did not make any replacement habit. I don't have a "habit of not biting my nails" any more than I have a habit of breathing. It happens automatically without conscious effort, so calling "not biting nails" a habit is misusing the word.

Comment author: Brillyant 30 December 2015 08:20:58PM *  1 point [-]

Does anyone know why Jesus commanded his followers to give in secret?

Comment author: 4hodmt 31 December 2015 10:01:54PM 0 points [-]

Probably because rich people have most to lose if they're expected to be charitable, and rich people controlled what got published in the Bible. If giving is supposed to be secret then who can prove they're giving nothing?

Comment author: coffeespoons 27 November 2015 02:40:03PM 0 points [-]

I don't find that there's much of a social cost to smoking e-cigarettes. Most non-smokers don't mind them as they don't smell, and where I live (the UK) you can smoke them inside in lots of places.

Comment author: 4hodmt 03 December 2015 11:07:17AM 0 points [-]

Flavoring is optional, but the vast majority of e-cigarette users use strong smelling flavored liquids. Some of them smell worse than tobacco IMO.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 25 November 2015 04:58:37PM 0 points [-]

If you use caffeine: No. Nicotine increases your metabolism of caffeine, meaning you need higher doses of caffeine to achieve the same effect. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9022872

Personal experience suggests tolerance development is less affected than metabolism (presumably because peak caffeine levels aren't affected, although I don't have studied backing that up), which means you'll develop a tolerance to caffeine faster, as well.

Comment author: 4hodmt 03 December 2015 11:05:11AM *  0 points [-]

That study is testing the effect of tobacco use, not pure nicotine.

EDIT -- why is this downvoted? The linked study does not test your claim. Tobacco smoking is a CYP1A2 inducer so it will increase caffeine metabolism, but I am not aware of any studies demonstrating that the nicotine is responsible for this. Tobacco smoke contains PAHs and PAHs are known CYP1A2 inducers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25911656

Comment author: Vaniver 06 November 2015 09:56:18PM *  2 points [-]

Success in social interaction is not about holding more things in your head but often about holding less things in your head.

Sounds like we do need to go into the longer conversation.

I view most of these skills are something like the follows: at level 0, you have no clue what's going on; at level 1, you have a system 2 model of what's going on that's too slow / clumsy to operate successfully in real time; at level 2, you have a system 1 model of what's going on that's fast and good enough to operate successfully in real time.

Most people go directly from level 0 to level 2, with some level 1 help. Most language speakers don't have an abstract grammatical model of their language in their heads, some constructions "just look weird" or don't come to mind, and they often can't articulate rules even if they use them correctly.

For example, in English, why is something "harder" instead of "more hard"? Why is it "more difficult" instead of "difficulter"?* (This came to mind because my mother is teaching ESL classes and had been surprised that there was a simple underlying rule, which I could not successfully identify before the question was spoiled, even though for any particular word I could correctly determine whether 'more' or 'er' was appropriate.)

But there are situations where it seems better to go through level 1. If you're teaching someone a second language, for example, they're much more likely to be able to make use of abstractly stated grammatical rules than children are. If someone has already been a child and yet not developed a 'normal' level of social intelligence, then the normal approach is inadequate, and we need to consider alternatives.

When developing those alternatives, it's worth noting that the right approach for going from level 0 to level 1 (learning more grammatical rules into system 2) is different from the right approach for going from level 1 to level 2 (practicing the grammatical rules into system 1). So yes, someone who is at level 1 would not get much out of holding more things in their head, but someone who is at level 0 would.

(To elaborate even further, I think someone at level 0 probably has some feature of their personality / communication style at a fundamental enough level of their model that they won't generate hypotheses that contradict it, and thus large parts of human interactions will be fundamentally mysterious to them. The point of reading about personality styles and communication styles and so on is that it generates alternative hypotheses at that level--many 'nerds' do not realize that there are people out there who interpret statements as about relationship closeness instead of as about factual accuracy, and pointing that out to them is the fastest way to level up their interaction ability.)

* Single syllable adjectives get an "er" or "est," multi-syllable adjectives get a "more" or "most," at least most of the time.

Comment author: 4hodmt 08 November 2015 12:38:23AM 0 points [-]

This rule is incomplete. Most two-syllable adjectives ending in "y" can be converted to comparative form with "er". Some of these may be uncommon, but not all, and my spell checker agrees they are real words, in both British and American English.

Eg. Angrier, heavier, cleverer, friendlier, happier, lazier, tidier, etc. And even three syllable words can take "er": bubblier, foolhardier, jitterier, slipperier, many words starting with "un".

Comment author: Lumifer 19 October 2015 04:53:49PM -2 points [-]

Life advice..?

Future is uncertain, eat dessert first.

:-P

Comment author: 4hodmt 20 October 2015 10:12:39PM 0 points [-]

Dessert is tasty even when you're already full, so if you're going to eat some eat it first to avoid obesity. This might not work if you have a strong habit of clearing your plate even if you don't need more food.

Comment author: Benja 31 August 2013 12:11:40PM 2 points [-]

As a pedestrian or cyclist, you're not all that easy to see from a car at night, worse if you don't wear white. High-visibility vests (that thing that construction workers wear, yellow or orange with reflective stripes) fix the problem and cost around $7-$8 from Amazon including shipping, or £3 in the UK.

Comment author: 4hodmt 14 October 2015 08:08:55PM 0 points [-]

Less than £2 on eBay. I bought mine for 99p including postage, but I can't find any for that price now.

Comment author: Error 02 August 2015 10:43:45PM 0 points [-]

Two boring items of cooking interest:

On cracking eggs: There's a thin membrane on the inside of an egg's shell. When you crack an egg, you're actually aiming to break that membrane. If you crack the shell but the membrane's still intact, the egg won't split cleanly and most likely you will get shell pieces in your food. Figuring this out reduced my shell-in-food mishaps by something like 80%.

On butter: Real butter (the kind that comes in sticks) is meant to be kept at room temperature when you're going to use it. It lasts a week or more that way in a butter dish. I somehow didn't realize this until I was past thirty. I used margarine all my life, because I thought it was normal for butter to be rock-solid and completely unspreadable, as it is when taken out of the fridge.

Comment author: 4hodmt 14 October 2015 11:03:55AM 0 points [-]

Butter is meant to be kept at room temperature only if you're going to use it as a spread. If you mostly use it as an ingredient, or for flavoring vegetables, it's better to keep it refridgerated.

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