Comment author: arbo 20 December 2014 06:51:32AM 11 points [-]

Hello. I’m Mark. I’m a 24-year-old software engineer in Michigan.

I found LessWrong a little over a year ago via HPMOR. I’m working through the books listed on MIRI’s Research Guide. I finished Bostrom’s Superintelligence earlier this week, and I’m currently working through the Sequences and Naive Set Theory. I’m not quite sure what I want to do after I complete the Research Guide; but AI is challenging and interesting, so I’m excited to learn more.

P.S. I’m a SuperLurker™. I find it very difficult to post in public forums. I only visualize the futures where future!Me looks back at his old posts and cringes. If you suffer similarly, I hope you will follow my lead and introduce yourself. Throw caution to the wind! Or, you know, just send me a private message (a simple “hey” will suffice) and maybe we can help each other.

Comment author: Neo 20 December 2014 07:26:24AM 8 points [-]

Instead of cringing you can think "wow, I made a lot of progress since". It did the trick for me, but well, YMMV.

Comment author: Jiro 10 November 2014 05:04:58PM -3 points [-]

It's no longer common (hence my surprise when someone does it) but it's not an utterly unfamiliar usage, either.

"No one" doesn't literally mean "a number of people which is equal to zero".

Comment author: Neo 10 November 2014 06:23:12PM 1 point [-]

"No one" literally means exactly that.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 24 October 2014 06:20:14AM *  34 points [-]

Most comments show exactly one downvote without a clear pattern why. I'd guess that a single person downvoted all these short comments. Can it be that this user doesn't know the custom of upvoting survey-takers?

ADDED 2014-10-25T16:20 UTC: The single downvotes disappeared.

ADDED 2014-10-26T21:10 UTC: The single downvotes reappeared again (at least for a lot of high scoring comments).

Comment author: Neo 24 October 2014 07:09:26PM 3 points [-]

Same happened last year.

Comment author: Neo 23 October 2014 06:57:29PM 47 points [-]

Taken!

Comment author: Neo 05 August 2014 08:27:18PM 4 points [-]

Very straight forward and easy to use. However, I was only promised 4400 (400 for email, 4000 for fb integration, of which 500 now, 3500 later). Aside from that, the send STR and receive them back for free offer was only for 100 STR instead of 1000 STR.

Comment author: Neo 25 May 2014 04:29:09PM 0 points [-]

"This person believes he could make one statement about an issue as difficult as the origin of cellular life per Planck interval, every Planck interval from the Big Bang to the present day, and not be wrong even once" only brings us to 1/10^61 or so."

Wouldn't that be 1/ 2^(10^61) or am I missing something?

Comment author: DanielLC 19 May 2014 03:15:50AM -2 points [-]

If you want to use your selfishness to help others, then you're not selfish.

Comment author: Neo 19 May 2014 08:58:54AM 0 points [-]

Selfishness seems to be referred to as primarily a a mindset or attitude. Helping others as an outcome. I think they can co-exist at the same time, for example Adam Smith's invisible hand in capitalism.

In response to comment by Neo on Stranger Than History
Comment author: RichardKennaway 25 March 2014 12:51:09PM 6 points [-]

The significance of the Flynn effect is disputed, and some claim that the course of the 20th century saw a decline in innovation. Unfortunately, the divide on these matters, at least in the lay blogosphere, aligns with a political division. Those who want to say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket point to a decline in reaction times (which are correlated with intelligence) and claim scientific stagnation, those who believe that we've never had it so good and will have it better in the future point to Flynn and the modern cornucopia. Is evidence producing worldviews or are worldviews selecting evidence?

Comment author: Neo 25 March 2014 01:16:32PM *  3 points [-]

Those who advocate that the world is going to hell, do they point to a certain era as the most rational time, and what would have caused the downturn?

EDIT: Mainly asking this question in order to find out how they measure rationality, as right now I find the point of view rather surprising.

In response to comment by Jiro on Stranger Than History
Comment author: brazil84 25 March 2014 09:08:59AM 6 points [-]

people in 1901 had much lower levels of rationality than people from the 20th century.

Do you have any examples of this which do not rely on measuring peoples' rationality by the extent they agree with modern progressive political views?

Comment author: Neo 25 March 2014 11:45:11AM 3 points [-]

Flynn effect, economic prosperity, increase in rate of innovation, and better educational systems and other tools are around nowadays.

I cannot provide you a video tape, but this seems to be at least some evidence for that statement in my opinion.

Comment author: Neo 22 November 2013 06:26:55PM 28 points [-]

Taken!

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