Links passing through api.viglink.com?

5 Document 27 April 2013 12:39PM

Visiting Less Wrong after being absent for a while can be a major time sink. The sidebar recent-posts and recent-comments links (which I usually have blocked, but not always; I haven't installed the relevant extensions on the system I'm on yet) draw me into interesting discussions, which frequently link back to other discussions, and so on.

To limit how deep I get drawn in, I try to hold back from reflexively clicking links in comments and posts. Instead I just hover over them (or press and hold on a touchscreen) to view the address, hoping to get a general idea of what they're about and whether I'm familiar with them (and occasionally saving them to a folder if I think I might want them later).

Recently, though, I've noticed that LW is replacing off-site links with indirect links, passed through the domain api.viglink.com. This means I can't just glance at the URL to see where it points; I have to either open it or paste it into the address bar and scroll through it looking for the embedded URL of the actual link. Is it important for it to do that? Is there a way to turn that function off, or a browser extension (preferrably Android-compatible) to reverse it?

(Initially posted about here in the current open thread, but I decided I wanted it to be more visible.)

Phil Zimbardo answering questions on Reddit

5 Document 06 June 2012 05:20PM

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/untpp/i_am_a_published_psychologist_author_of_the/

Starts tomorrow (June 7) at 12PM ET (1600 GMT) (thanks to khafra for the correction).

Looking for a quote

0 Document 10 July 2011 10:55PM

The last sentence was something like "I regret that the judgment I made was wrong, not that it was made." I thought it was in one of the Rationality Quotes threads here, but I can't find it with Google.

Looking for a comic that was posted here

0 Document 17 June 2011 07:19PM

It opened with a fortune teller predicting a rich man's death and ended with him beaten by Death in a metaphorical boxing ring. It might have been in a Quotes thread or an open thread. Does anyone have it?

(Edit: for the record, I wanted to add it to the Challenge Gamer page at TV Tropes.)

[LINK] Wondermark comic talks about "carpe diem" vs. "think more"

4 Document 04 June 2011 04:15AM

Comic here.

I feel like I'm likely to hear that it's a false dichotomy, but if so I haven't successfully dissolved it. (I'm not sure I actually had a concise name for it before; now that I do I should start saving comments about it.)

Edit: Ability to react may be related, possibly applying on shorter timescales.

Can't downvote

1 Document 01 June 2011 10:06PM

Downvote buttons seem to have just stopped working for me, saying I need at least 1 karma. I'm posting in case it leads someone to fix the problem.

Michio Kaku to answer questions from a Reddit thread

1 Document 24 December 2010 05:26AM

Thread is here. I'm not sure if it's relevant to Less Wrong, but he did do a short segment on the Singularity Institute on Sci-Fi Science recently (the episode was "AI Uprising"). (They were represented by Ben Goertzel, answering hypothetical questions about robot maids. In the context of the episode, it was a brief dead end on the way to eventually presenting mind uploading (as presented by Max Tegmark) as the true solution to AI risk. But it seems to be a highly fluffy show to begin with, so I'm not taking it (as a SIAI supporter) personally.)

Kazakhstan's president urges scientists to find the elixir of life

7 Document 10 December 2010 04:17AM

...according to this front-page Reddit headline I just saw, which links to this Guardian article. I wonder if he's heard of KrioRus, whether he's signed up (Wikipedia says they offer services "to clients from Russia, CIS and EU"), and what his odds would be if he were (would it be possible to emigrate to Russia to be closer to the facility, and if not, what would be the best possible option?). Given his being a head of state, presumably it'd be pretty tough for an advocate to even get close enough to try to make the case.

Searching the Reddit comment thread for "cryo" turned up nothing.

Transhumanism thread in progress at Reddit

6 Document 25 November 2010 08:46PM

Starting with this reply to "You were born too soon":

> depending on when exactly we achieve this, this could be the best time to be born ever, because it will be the absolute earliest anybody will have achieved immortality. Someone born within 20 years of this moment could one day be the oldest human, sentient, or even living being in the Universe.

The comments are currently split between arguing and agreeing with this. So far, no mention of cryonics. One post presents a possibly interesting technical argument that our current knowledge/technology is centuries away from mind uploading/whole-brain emulation.

(Also posted to The Singularity in the Zeitgeist, but that thread seems to have been mostly forgotten.)