There is no such thing as "the shortest program for which the halting property is uncomputable". That property is computable trivially for every possible program.

The halting property is semi-decidable: if a program halts, then you can always trivially prove that it halts, you just need run it. If a program does not halt, then sometimes you can prove that it doesn't halt, and sometimes you can't prove anything.
For any programming language, there exist a length such that you can compute the halting property for all programs shorter than that. At length L_max, there will be program Bad_0, which:

• Does not halt.
• Can't be proven not to halt.
• Doesn't emit any output symbol.
• It can't be proven that there exist any string of output symbols that it doesn't emit.

You can never prove that any string S has Kolmogorov complexity K if K > L_max, as it would imply that you proved that Bad_0 doesn't halt, or at least doesn't emit any symbol which is not a prefix of S.

Since there are only finitely many strings with complexity up to L_max, we can only compute Kolmogorov complexity, for finitely many strings.

It is also easy to make up artificial languages in which Kolmogorov complexity is computable for an infinite subset of all possible strings.

If the language is Turing-complete I don't think this is possible. If you think that an arbitrary string S has complexity K, how can you prove that there exist no program shorter than K that computes S?

Computing upper bounds on on Kolmogorov Complexity is not very difficult: gzip and all the other compression algorithms do it. The difficulty is computing non-trivial lower bounds:
For all programming languages (with a self-terminating encoding), there is a trivial lower bound that doesn't depend on the string. This bound is at least one token.

But there is also a language-dependent constant L_max which is the maximum KC complexity and lower bound on KC complexity that you can compute for any string: L_max is the length of the shortest program for which the halting property is uncomputable ( * ) (which makes L_max is uncomputable as well).
This implies that you can compute the KC complexity only for a finite number of strings.

( * And doesn't provably emit any token)

(I doubt this is original)

To help yourself do something regularly on a computer, put a direct link on your bookmarks bar.

Example: you want to keep a diary. Write it in a Google doc document and put the direct link to it in your bookmarks bar, so that one click is all it takes to open it. Not in your bookmarks somewhere else, not in a shortcut on the desktop (your browser is open all the time anyway), not a separate fancy diary-keeping software, but just one click in a place that's always in front of you. If you're like me, that'll help a lot.

Perhaps anti-intuitively, the difference in results is huge even between "one click in the bookmarks bar" and "one click to open a folder in the bookmarks bar and one click on the right link in that folder".

P.S. Alerts are also good, but this method helps where alerts aren't helpful. You want to train yourself to write a quick review of every book once you finish it. There's no way to set an alert to go off when you turn the last page in Kindle. But put a link on your bookmarks bar.

Is there a causal link between being relatively lonely and isolated during school years and (higher chance of) ending up a more intelligent, less shallow, more successful adult?

Imagine that you have a pre-school child who has socialization problems, finds it difficult to do anything in a group of other kids, to acquire friends, etc., but cognitively the kid's fine. If nothing changes, the kid is looking at being shunned or mocked as weird throughout school. You work hard on overcoming the social issues, maybe you go with the kid to a therapist, you arrange play-dates, you play-act social scenarios with them..

Then your friend comes up to have a heart-to-heart talk with you. Look, your friend says. You were a nerd at school. I was a nerd at school. We each had one or two friends at best and never hung out with popular kids. We were never part of any crowd. Instead we read books under our desks during lessons and read SF novels during the breaks and read science encyclopedias during dinner at home, and started programming at 10, and and and. Now you're working so hard to give your kid a full social life. You barely had any, are you sure now you'd rather you had it otherwise? Let me be frank. You have a smart kid. It's normal for a smart kid to be kind of lonely throughout school, and never hang out with lots of other kids, and read books instead. It builds substance. Having a lousy social life is not the failure scenario. The failure scenario is to have a very full and happy school experience and end up a ditzy adolescent. You should worry about that much much more, and distribute your efforts accordingly.

Is your friend completely asinine, or do they have a point?

A confusion of mine: How is epistemology a separate thing? Or is that just a flag for "We're going to go meta-level" and applied to some particular topic.

E.g. I read a bit of Kant about experience, which I suppose is metaphysics (right?) but it seems like if he's making any positive claim, the debate about the claim is going to be about the arguments for the claim, which is settled via epistemology?

Metaphysics: what's out there?

Isn't that ontology? What's the difference?

Can anybody give me a good description of the term "metaphysical" or "metaphysics" in a way that is likely to stick in my head and be applicable to future contemplations and conversations? I have tried to read a few definitions and descriptions, but I've never been able to really grok any of them and even when I thought I had a working definition it slipped out of my head when I tried to use it later. Right now its default function in my brain is, when uttered, to raise a flag that signifies "I can't tell if this person is speaking at a level significantly above my comprehension or is just spouting bullshit, but either way I'm not likely to make sense of what they're saying" and therefore tends to just kind of kill the mental process that that was trying to follow what somebody was saying to me / what I was reading.

Given how often it comes up, and often from people I respect, I'm pretty sure that's not the correct behavior Figured it's worth asking here. In case it wasn't obvious, I have virtually no background in philosophy (though I've been looking to change that).

Do you or would you secretly invade your child's privacy for their own protection?

I don't see why this was modded down. Saying that someone should stop posting things that you disagree with, because it is bad for their health, when you are very transparently motivated to not want them to post things you disagree with because you don't like seeing things you disagree with, is a prime example of motivated reasoning. It's not as if you have made a general policy of giving XiXiDu advice on his health.

About the only way that this could have been any clearer an example would have been if you said "You should give me your car, because giving me your car is good for your health".

There's no "fight". You've been a very aggressive and mean-spirited critic of LW/MIRI/EY for a few years. Doesn't mean that there's a fight. Doesn't mean anyone "wins" if, say, you shut up and go away.

Your suggestion is not constructive, because coming up with retorts to mean-spirited past posts and endorsing them would be a poor use of MIRI's time, and would only add to drama rather than reduce it. Here's what you should do instead:

First, consider just going away. It may be best for your physical and mental health to stay away from LW and LW-related topics. Delete your old posts, forget you ever cared about this stuff, take up some other hobbies, etc. If you feel you can't, presumably because you think these issues are really important, read on.

1. Come up with a generously-sized kindly-worded update that negates the meanness and stick it on top of your relevant past posts. E.g. if I were in your position I would write something like "I wrote the post below during years in which, I now recognize, I was locked in a venom-filled flamewar against a community which I actually like and appreciate, despite what I perceive as its faults. I do not automatically repudiate my arguments and factual points, but if you read the below, please note that I regret the venom and the personal attacks and that I may well have quote-mined and misrepresented persons and communities. I now wish I wrote it all in a kinder spirit".

2. Continue participating on LW as you desire, trying your best to be kind and not get into drama. Plenty of people manage to be skeptical of MIRI/EY and criticize them here without being you. (If you're not sure you can do this well, ask some regular(s) to help you out. Precommit that if people you asked PM you about your future LW comment or blog post saying you're being an asshole, you'll believe them and mend it.)

3. Accept that some people will continue to hate/dislike/hold a grudge against you. Issue private apologies to them if you feel you should, but don't do it publicly (because drama). If that doesn't help, accept and move on.