Comment author: mwengler 25 June 2010 08:50:25PM 0 points [-]

i used it for a few hours then it broke, and now all it will do is give me an error dump with this last line: 'BadRequestError: cannot get more than 1000 keys in a single call"

Comment author: Divide 27 June 2010 05:46:50AM 1 point [-]

It should work now, please test. Sorry about that problem.

I needed to change the method to pick a random entity -- no easy feat in app engine, apparently. As a side effect, there might be some apparent nonuniformity in sampling when you have few todos. It will smooth out as you start/stop them and add more.

Comment author: mwengler 25 June 2010 08:50:25PM 0 points [-]

i used it for a few hours then it broke, and now all it will do is give me an error dump with this last line: 'BadRequestError: cannot get more than 1000 keys in a single call"

Comment author: Divide 26 June 2010 04:32:19AM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the report! I'll look into it.

Comment author: vinayak 22 June 2010 12:11:59PM 10 points [-]

If you have many things to do and you are wasting time, then you should number those things from 1 to n and assign n+1 to wasting time and then use http://random.org to generate a random number between 1 and n+1 (1 and n+1 included) to decide what you should do. This adds some excitement and often works.

Comment author: Divide 23 June 2010 11:14:41PM 5 points [-]

I thought I'd share my pick-thing-to-do-at-random app that helps somewhat. You just add things and then it shows you them at random. You can click to commit to do something for a while, or just flick to another thing if you can't do that now. I've added hundreds of both timewasters and productive activities there and it's quite cool to do this kind of lottery to determine what to do now.

Obviously it won't work if you just keep flicking until you happen upon a favorite timewaster, nor when you have something that needs to be done now. It's also essential to have clearly defined activities, even if it's just "think really hard about what to do about <whatever> and make that a new activity" or whatever. Tell me what you think.

http://things-be-done.appspot.com/ (google login needed for persistent storage, but you can play without logging in, data will be associated with a cookie left in your browser (and will be transferred once you do login))

Comment author: Divide 17 May 2010 11:58:18PM *  6 points [-]

This is spot-on. That's exactly how I do it, although I seem to have a good coprocessor for emotional empathy (tuned towards the opposite gender, no less), which does help tremendously; I only have to do social in software and while I'm rather bad at it, the empathy compensates for that and makes people more forgiving for miscalculations.

Consequently I tend not to like and avoid my own gender, because the empathy processor fails there and what's left is pure awkwardness.

That, or I'm just rationalizing over competition anxiety.

(EDIT: BTW, I got 32 on the test.)

(Another edit: in case it's not apparent, note that I strongly prefer the opposite gender for mating. And, well, for pretty much anything at all.)

Comment author: Yvain 14 May 2010 08:28:53PM *  64 points [-]

This is really too long for a comment, but I couldn't resist:

Tom Marvolo Riddle, who had lately taken to calling himself Lord Voldemort, shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the envelope was lying on his bed, just as he had hoped. He studied the papers inside with barely concealed glee. Over several pages was a very long string of incomprehensible letters and numbers. Almost shaking, he typed it into the computer, where it said "ENTER RANDOM SEED", and pressed enter. The screen filled with - could it be? - pages of comprehensible text. He had to restrain himself from giving a very un-Dark-Lordly whoop of triumph.

This was outstandingly clever even for him. The Time-Turner, the computer generating random text blocks that - with the right seed - would be coherent hypotheses, the dungeon of prisoners to serve as subjects in hastily conducted impromptu experiments. And the only stable time loop being the one where he ended up with the secrets of human behavior.

He hit PRINT, then called in Dolohov, the trustworthy one. "Take these psychology hypotheses and test them on the prisoners downstairs. If you get p < .05, no, make it .01, and if you can think of ways they'd be useful in manipulating people, take these pages of letters and numbers, copy them, stick the copy in this envelope, and put it on my desk. Otherwise, increase the ASCII value of the last character in the random seed by one, and put that on my desk. No questions, just do it. And do it in the next twenty-four hours."

That would take care of the Time-Turner. He was glad his model lacked the length limitations of the standard version: six hours wouldn't have been enough time for Dolohov to finish the tests. Those idiots at the Ministry had no idea how easy it was to extend the gas mileage of one of those things. Or maybe they did and were too squeamish to go around obtaining the secret ingredient. He smiled lovingly at the jar of kitten hearts on his desk. Those things were like the duct tape of evil magic - you could use them for anything.

Now it only remained to make sure no one else ever copied his trick. The Ministry he'd already dealt with - Merlin bless that fool Minister Bagnold and her "it's inconceivable anyone could break through our wards" policy. He'd apparated into the Ministry, put a curse on their whole stockpile of Time-Turners, and gotten out with no one the wiser. The artifacts would still function for little things like attending extra classes, but try to use them for anything...clever...and they'd do their best to scare the user into submission. Cryptic warnings not to mess with time, that kind of thing.

But his own Death Eaters were more of a problem. They'd notice if their master suddenly and inexplicably learned all the secrets of the human mind. Some of the brighter ones might start asking where he'd learned them. Some of the really bright ones might try figuring out exactly what those secrets were and how to use them themselves. He needed a distraction. Something that would turn their minds away from the Dark Lord's late nights in his study tinkering with Time Turners and computers, something that would make the secrets of the mind not even worth obtaining.

Suddenly he broke out into a grin. Make something a secret, and of course people would look for it. Make it mundane, better yet make it low status, and people wouldn't give it a second thought - that was the lesson of Muggle science. Was that on the paper he'd given Dolohov? It must be. He'd tell everyone he learned the secrets from the Muggles. Everyone knew they came up with a bright idea every so often, but the ancient and noble bloodlines who populated the Death Eaters would sooner die than go rooting around in Muggle books like Mudbloods trying to find them.

He'd fake an identity as a Muggle scientist - maybe even two, now that he'd mastered duplication with the Time-Turner, and get the secrets published in a Muggle journal. If anyone asked, he'd been reading Muggle journals, and there was nothing unusual about his possessing the secrets of the human mind at all.

His Quirrell alias was already a professor, but he was saving that for a rainy day. And Voldemort and Tom Riddle were right out. That meant someone new. He took out his sketchpad. He did so love anagrams. That TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE == I AM LORD VOLDEMORT one still sent chills up his spine. He'd want something at least that good if he was going to be a Muggle researcher or two. After a few abortive attempts, he finally found something he liked.

DOR DANIEL KM & DOR AMOS TVERSKY, IL == YIKES, I'M DARK LORD VOLDEMORT-SAN

Right, then. Dr. Daniel Kahneman and Dr. Amos Tversky, Israel. And while he was in the area, he could pick up the Spear of Destiny. Kill two birds with one stone.

He'd just need a few supplies, and he'd be ready to go. He picked up his miniature scapel and put in a call to the local animal shelter, whistling merrily to himself.

Comment author: Divide 17 May 2010 03:26:33AM 3 points [-]

And here I thought lesswrong would be the one place on teh internets where I wouldn't get confused by obscure Harry Potter references and consequently feel out of place for not reading it.

Comment author: Jack 14 May 2010 12:42:40AM 30 points [-]

Maybe you should write a post that describes the same effect but without the pictures, citations or good grammar.

Comment author: Divide 17 May 2010 03:21:25AM 0 points [-]

I agree, all that good grammar just gets in the way. There's too little appreciation for bad grammar here on lesswrong.

Comment author: Divide 26 April 2010 06:15:47AM 3 points [-]

“is an accurate belief” is a property of the belief only

Technically, it's a property of the (belief, what-the-belief-is-about) pair. Beliefs can't be accurate by themselves; there has to be an external referent to compare them with. (Only-)self-referencing beliefs degrade straighforwardly to tautologies or contradictions.

Comment author: taw 23 April 2010 06:53:55AM 0 points [-]

90% of GTD material is about next actions and project levels. How did you learn to do this kind of high level analysis?

Comment author: Divide 24 April 2010 09:03:21AM 0 points [-]

That's the remaining 10%. You know, the part which isn't covered in 'teach yourself GTD in one hour' audiobooks.

But seriously, there's much stuff about higher levels of planning in GTD. See 'someday maybe' lists, monthly review, putting analysis tasks on monthly lists, analysing farther horizons periodically, etc.

Comment author: Academian 23 April 2010 07:23:47PM *  8 points [-]

Have you read Thou Art Godshatter?

I agree with Eliezer that my values are an ad-hoc assembly of things that happened to increase the genetic fitness of my ancestors, and that this ad-hoc-ness is why I do not solely value my own genetic fitness. If natural selection were smarter, I would. But naturally, I'm satisfied with the values I got instead :)

From the perspective of a hypothetical, evolution-personified designer who "created" me, my morals might just be signals. So I'm careful that I might be running on hostile hardware that might try overtaking my conscious values to, say, become a corrupt and promiscuous political leader with many offspring. But I don't identify with this hostility as "my values", and will make much conscious effort to prevent such corruption.

ETA: You might really have those values; I just want to draw attention to them not being an inevitable consequence of evolution or "realizing one's true purpose". Thankfully, used as such "true purpose" doesn't have to mean anything non-subjective, nor in particular equate to "temporally earlier in-some-sense-implicitly-conceived purpose".

Comment author: Divide 24 April 2010 09:00:06AM 1 point [-]

I'm not quite sure that's what the parent meant. I understood it literally and it does make sense as well.

Comment author: Divide 19 April 2010 10:22:28PM 5 points [-]

Hi!

(Lurking since Eliezer had still been writing his sequences on OB.)

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