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The Flash player for the video of Max Tegmark and Nick Bostrom speaking at the UN is super annoying. Anyone know how to extract the raw video file so I can watch it more conveniently? Thanks!
In response to
Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015
Looks like you can just aim youtube-dl at the URL and it'll start downloading.
In response to
Open thread, Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2015
I expect that most people are biased when it comes to judging how attractive they are. Asking people probably doesn't help too much, since people are likely to be nice, and close friends probably also have a biased view of ones attractiveness. So is there a good way to calibrate your perception of how good you look?
If there was a large dataset of faces shot in a similar way and rated for attractiveness somewhere, you could take a photo of yourself, look for people in the set who look like you (possibly with some sort of face recognition program) and see how they are rated.
In response to
Open thread, Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2015
Journaling, an extended argument for why you should do it.
Since January 2015, journaling has become the basis for everything I do, try and want. What I've found is that there's huge potential in a pen and some paper.
Keeping a structured notebook system is helping me monitor my habits, both good and bad. It makes it easier to keep tabs on my projects and to brainstorm solutions. Writing daily motivates me to try new things, and note what works and what doesn't.
Let's break down some of the reasons why I believe journaling is such a powerful tool for introspection, problem solving and goal setting.
I'm still doing this after starting a year ago. I've filled up one large ruled Moleskine and am 50 pages into the second one. I have calendar pages where I don't do any forward planning, but just write a one-line summary of what I worked on that day. Empty lines or variants of "slacking off" are an instant sign of trouble.
Other than that, the nice thing is just that I have a designated single nice journal to do any sort of brainstorming notes I need. Random ideas, planning an ongoing project or reading notes all just start by labeling a new page on the journal and writing down whatever is relevant.
In response to
Open thread, Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2015
Are there any known deaths due to Quantum suicide experiments? Conversely, are there any known survivals in such experiments? (We should presumably not expect the latter for large odds of death, but just want the question to be complete.)
Not exactly, but related: Hugh Everett's' daughter Elizabeth committed suicide in 1996 and wrote in her suicide note that she's going to a parallel universe to be with her father.
In response to
Open thread, Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2015
This isn't worth a karma hit to me (though I'm risking one by posting this way), but I'm pretty sure that advanced atheist was making a joke. It wasn't an especially good joke, but all the comments seemed to assume aa was serious.
It's still related to his shtick and people are getting really tired of his shtick.
Is the fact that it's been on your reading list for some time but you haven't read it a strike against it? E.g., does it indicate that it's intimidating rather than engaging?
No, it's just indicating that I haven't made any sort of concentrated effort at clearing my reading list or maintaining some sort of FIFO discipline on it. The Complete History of the World in Impeccable Engaging Detail tends to not do very well against a Warren Ellis comic book about shooting aliens wearing human skin suits in the head with flesh-eating bullets when picking random media to consume during idle time.
In response to
The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
Does anyone have a recommendation for a comprehensive history textbook, covering ancient as well as modern history, and several geographical regions? Just something to teach me about major events and dates, wars, rulers & dynasties, interactions between civilisations, etc., without neglecting the non-geopolitical aspects of history. College-level, please. (A dumbed-down alternative to what I'm asking would be to start looking for my old high school textbooks, but obviously that wouldn't be very satisfactory.) Comprehensive accounts of single civilisations in a single period could work as well, but I'm looking for a book that is mainly didactic in purpose and with a broad subject matter.
Also: should I supplant whatever I'm studying with Wikipedia, so that I have the option of going in as much depth as I like? Or is it too unreliable even for basic learning purposes?
Can't recommend a book I've read, but I've had J.M. Roberts' The New Penguin History of the World on my reading list for a while now. It's more big picture than facts.
If you're after rulers, dates and the like, just diving into wikipedia, starting from high-level articles and taking your own notes might not be a terribly bad approach.
We could also stalk Eliezer on FB and repost his interesting comments on LW. Preferably asking his permission first.
I'd be happy if there was a RSS feed of his publicly visible FB posts.
In response to
September 2015 Media Thread
Other Media Thread
Stand Still, Stay Silent, a webcomic about a post-apocalyptic Northern Europe with very nice art.
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In Finland, today, can I just say "I don't feel like working" and get welfare for life?
(Not an expert on this stuff, but here's my rough understanding.)
You get a couple years of pretty straightforward welfare if you quit your job, then it looks like they will start doing means testing (tarveharkinta) on your savings and will stop paying you if it doesn't look like you're living hand-to-mouth. After you've gone through all your savings that the employment office is aware of, I think you can go on living in some sort of rental apartment and get food. There's also a spectrum of make-work programs from "send your application to this poorly matching open job we picked for you" to "attend this useless training course" to "rehabilitative labor activity" which can end up looking sort of like the American prisoner labor thing. The welfare will be suspended as a sanction if you refuse to attend, but I'm not quite sure how easy it is to end up actually homeless if you keep diligently pestering the social services and refuse to cooperate with anything work-like.
One problem is the diligent pestering of the social services part. Many of the actual unemployed are ill or have some mental problems, and they might not be that good at working the bureaucracy. So it probably helps if you're reasonably energetic and smart enough to navigate the systems of regulations if you want to become a lifestyle unemployed. Also, you need to make sure to spend your time in an economically unproductive way. Starting any kind of small business will wipe out all welfare eligibility instantly.