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If you accept the definition of the supernatural as a physical law that applies to ontologically basic mental things, then finding the answers to a test would seem to be something the supernatural can do without having to do natural language processing, the same way a spell can turn someone into a frog without having to process DNA. We think of "the answers to a test" as a concept.
In response to
comment
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on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, January 2015, chapter 103
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, January 2015, chapter 103
That just means that the spell inventor doesn't need to know anything about or implement natural language processing. To get magical primitives like ontologically basic mental parts you still have to have complex and fully reducible algorithms running over the base physics outputs somewhere even if that somewhere is "parallel to or between frames of the simulation".
In response to
Stupid Questions December 2014
I have a constant impression that everyone around me is more competent than me at everything. Does it actually mean that I am, or is there some sort of strong psychological effect that can create that impression, even if it is not actually true? If there is, is it a problem you should see your therapist about?
I sometimes have a similar experience, and when I do, it is almost always simply an effect of my own standards of competence being higher than those around me.
Imagine, some sort of problem arises in the presence of a small group. The members of that group look at each other, and whoever signals the most confidence gets first crack at the problem. But this more-confident person then does not reveal any knowledge or skill that the others do not possess, because said confidence was entirely do to higher willingness to potentially make the problem worse through trial and error.
So, in this scenario, feeling less competent does not mean you are less competent; it means you are more risk-adverse. Do you have a generalized paralyzing fear of making the problem worse? If so, welcome to the club. If not, nevermind.
In response to
Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale
"What on Earth makes you think monkeys can change into humans?"
It seems - based upon personal experience - that the difference between the rational and the irrational is that the rational at least attempts to present a cogent answer to such questions in a way that actually answers the question; the irrational just gets mad at you for asking.
I'm wondering if this is the kind of confusion that can be cleared up by tabooing the right words.
I believe it can be taken as obvious that the image in the muslim woman's head upon hearing the phrase "monkey's transformed into humans" isn't at all similar to the image in the mind of someone who understands evolution, as even to my ear it comes across as, at best, misleading.
Thus my response would be more along the lines of:
I don't believe monkeys can change into humans. I believe that both monkeys and humans belong to a larger category of creatures called apes, and it seems very suspicious to me that if a hypothetical omnipotent being created humans in His image, that the image would be just another species of ape rather than anything unique.
With greater time and preparation, I don't think it would be too hard to demonstrate how a human body and a chimp body are almost the same machine, just shaped a little different. In the 'explain in twenty minutes' scenario, I think the critical insight is scope insensitivity. It is legitimately difficult to imagine the number of generations involved. You'd have to describe a family tree, point out how the less distance up you need to go to find a common ancestor, the more similar any two individuals will look, and then... zoom out, massively.
Even if your non-evolutionist then believes that family tree will eventually lead back to Adam and Eve or whoever, rather than connecting to the animal kindgom once you go far enough back, it moves the competing suppositions out of the realm of absurdity and creates an actual disagreement rather than merely a confusion.
It is hard to argue that magic was not involved in the origin of the human species when the other person cannot conceive of the possibility that humans could even exist or function without magic being involved. And that is not a trivial thing. Even many of today's educated people, who pay lip-service to the idea that humans are biology and nothing else, still believe in souls-and-elanvital-by-another-name. There are modern martial arts that still believe in Ki. You can't trip over your own feet without stumbling on "science" fiction that treats sentient thought as something ontologically fundamental. Likewise, "science" fiction where things like age can be disconnected from people and moved around. And just try to ask the Worm fandom what the difference between telepathy and precise telekinesis acting on the brain, is.
In response to
Open thread, July 21-27, 2014
There are a lot of games that can be played with a standard deck of playing cards, but it has occurred to me that I've never heard of a skill-based strategy game that minimizes luck-of-the-draw, meant for ordinary playing cards.
So, I tried my hand at inventing such a game.
Unfortunately, I have no practical way to play-test it, so I'm putting it out there for other people to try.
Suggestions on a name for the game are welcome. I have considered and dismissed "Card Chess" as derivative and inaccurate.
In response to
Open thread, 7-14 July 2014
Question for anyone who knows:
I've been getting "cannot connect to the real..." error messages in Google Chrome when trying to access several websites, which I gather has something to do with invalid certificates. I would like to know if going to Settings > Advanced > Manage Certificates and simply Removing everything under every tab will a) fix the problem and b) not break anything else. If not, then I would like to know what will.
In response to
What are you working on? January 2014
Earlier last year, I set out to write a crossover fanfiction, that crossed something popular over with something completely original that nobody had ever heard of before, to see where my writing skills stood when it came to introducing an unfamiliar setting.
The fic is titled Forever After Earth, and as of today is over a hundred thousand words long and has gotten mostly positive reviews. I think I've learned a few things about how to get important details across without bogging down the narrative, from where reviewers were confused or outright wrong about something I thought I had clearly established.
It has also been a good exercise in recognizing Magic By Another Name, weeding out Separate Magisteria, and Asking the Right Question.
In response to
Effective Altruism and Cryonics, Contest Results
It's beyond me why someone would push a short term, questionable solution like cryonics as being more altruistic than contributing to SENS. I could arguably see cryonics as better than a number of other charities, but against SENS, with its current level of funding, it's not even close.
I'm a member at Alcor because I'm imperfectly altruistic and wish to maximize my odds. But I contribute far, far more to SENS, as they have a vastly better plan for preventing death in the long run.
Place your fingers on your pulse and feel your heartbeat. If you're sitting at rest, every beat you feel is accompanied, somewhere in the world, by two or three people running to the end of the time nature allotted and being annihilated forever.
Short term solution is exactly that. People are dying RIGHT NOW. And cryonics is a way to potentially save those lives RIGHT NOW.
The following is merely my own intuition and guess, but... I suspect that the future will look back on this era, see that we had cryonics and CHOSE not to use it, and condemn current funeral practices as systematic murder.
I'm trying to answer this, but I can't help feeling like is overly arbitrary. I've lived with family, but which family? I've lived alone, but how alone? I might have lived with friends, or not, how do you define "friend"? What about living situations that are not covered by those categories, such as living with a lover, or living with coworkers?
This question seems meaningless to me without a lot more specificity.
In response to
Better Rationality Through Lucid Dreaming
I've had some success of my own with lucid dreaming. Relatively speaking.
The problem I have is that I dream so rarely that it is almost impossible to develop habits. I still manage to go lucid about half the time I do dream, and manage to go lucid without inadvertently waking myself up about half again of those times.
I don't know if lucid dreaming has improved my rationality, but I do think that my rationality helps with the "oh, this is silly and must be a dream" reflex. There is correlation, but it is not obvious in which direction there is causation, if there is at all.
The hardest part in my experience is actually staying asleep once I go lucid. I have to very deliberately pay attention to the physicality of myself and my immediate surroundings in the dream, while ignoring any signals from my real body, or the dream will evaporate in seconds.
For me, the key to manipulating a dream was figuring out that dreams, even lucid dreams, don't seem to run on willpower. I can will something to happen with all my might, and nothing will happen. Rather than wielding willpower, I have to wield expectation. If I expect to see something, I will. There is an exception to this that I don't have an explanation for, though: I'm telekinetic in my dreams. All my dreams, no matter what they're about, whether they're lucid or not. You'd think this would make it easy to check if I'm dreaming, but I'm just so used to it that half the time it doesn't register as strange.
Does anyone know possible causes for rarely-dreaming-at-all?
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I have a random physics question:
A solid sphere, in ordinary atmosphere, with a magical heating element at one pole and a magical refrigeration element at the other. If the sphere itself is stationary and at room temperature; one pole is super-cooled while the opposite pole is super-heated. (Edit: Assume the axis connecting the poles is horizontal.)
What effect does this have on air-flow around the sphere? Does it move? If so, in which direction?