I've been preparing for coding interviews, and I realized that the skill had gotten "rusty" from disuse. A specific example is coding a binary search, which is a little nontrivial because you have to think carefully to avoid off-by-one errors.

When people talk about old skills they talk about them in two ways: some skills you can supposedly never forget, like riding a bike, Some others can get rusty, so you need to keep brushing them up over and over again.

Neither of these seems actually true. I think it's more like the exponential forgetting curve we have for (verbal) memory. The neurons for the skill still exist but you can't access them after a while, and when you recall the skill, you get to the same level as before. If you keep reinforcing it from time to time, say according to the spaced repetition schedule, the skills become permanent. (I've made the exponential analogy because it would be cool if motor memory and verbal memory had similar mechanisms, but it's just a model that I'm familiar with)

Has anyone heard of something like this in the psych literature?

What are your experiences with skills like these that you don't use as often? Have you made a skill "permanent" through repeated practice.

I liked both Worm and Pact, but was unimpressed by the endings. Both seemed similar in that the first 3/4 of the novel bring new information, the protagonist explores new options, etc., which keep it interested.

The remaining 1/4 of the novels are like putting almost everyone ever mentioned in the story, plus many new monsters, in the same room, and let them fight. About as interesting as a verbal transcription of 2 hours long Doom multiplayer.

V gubhtug lbh zrnag gung gurer jnf fbzrguvat abg fb tbbq jvgu gur svany pbasebagngvba.

Nyy gehr. Ba gur bgure unaq, vg jbhyq or haernyvfgvp sbe nal bs gubfr guvatf gb unir orra erfbyirq tvira gur pbafgenvagf bs gur fgbel (UWCRI'f svefg lrne ng Ubtjnegf).

Vg zvtug unir orra orggre vs Ryvrmre unq znantrq gb pbaqrafr gur fgbel bs UCZBE ol, fnl, n snpgbe bs guerr be fb, naq gura pbagvahr vg shegure vagb gur shgher naq erfbyir zber bs gubfr guvatf. Ohg ol, fnl, unys jnl guebhtu UCZBE vg fubhyq unir orra cerggl pyrne gung gung jnfa'g ba gur pneqf. Gur ceboyrz jnfa'g jvgu gur raqvat ohg jvgu gur jubyr fgehpgher.

(Gur zrgn-snasvp "Fvtavsvpnag Qvtvgf", jubfr riragf gnxr cynpr fbzr lrnef nsgre gubfr bs UCZBE, trgf shegure gbjneq erfbyivat gubfr guvatf. Ohg vg'f nobhg gb svavfu naq V jvyy or irel fhecevfrq vs vg cebivqrf fngvfsnpgbel erfbyhgvbaf bs gurz va gur gvzr vg'f tbg yrsg -- naq zl thrff vf gung abar bs gurz jvyy or erfbyirq orsber gur raq bs FQ.)

What was so wrong with the ending of HPMoR? rot13 please.

Homestuck has just joined HPMOR, Ra, Pact and TNC in the pantheon of "geek epic" stories with underwhelming endings :-(

As far as I know, only Worm and Undertale have managed to beat that curse so far.

And they are arguing for ethnic cleansing.

There is probably some clever "ethnic cleansing = ethnic cleansing plus privilege" argument that makes it okay. :(

I think it is interesting that what we call the far-right and the mainstream(ish) left are using almost isomorphic (meaning structurally identical) arguments.

This is called "horseshoe theory". I suspect the reason behind this observation is that there are some psychological traits that make people enjoy extreme versions of political opinions, regardless of the political direction, so all extremes will be inhabited by people who are psychologically similar to each other; and then they will converge on similar ideas about what should be done.

Alternatively, this is simply our corrupted hardware which is programmed by evolution to manifest in situations where we have sufficient political power. But because the society today is much larger than in our ancestral environment, this behavior may appear prematurely -- when we are surrounded by a group of fellow believers sufficiently large than in the ancient tribe of 150 members they would be a knockdown force. Then we suddenly realize that the best course of action would be to kill our opponents and threaten all neutrals into submission.

Yeah, it's nice when your opponents volunteer to remove from you the burden of proof whether they are irrational.

But seriously, I don't even know where to start. Perhaps here: Articles written on most popular websites are clickbait. It means that their primary purpose is to make you read the article after seeing the headline, and then share it either because you love it or because you hate it. And that's what you did. Mission accomplished.

Another article on the same website explains why animal rights movements are oppresive. (I am not going to link it, but here are the arguments for the curious readers: because it's wrong to care about animals while there are more important causes on this planet such as people being oppressed; because vegans and vegetarians don't acknowledge that vegan or vegetarian food can be expensive; because describing animals as male and female marginalizes trans people; and because protecting animals is colonialistic against native people who hunt animals as part of their tradition.) Obviously, the whole article is an exercise in making the reader scream and share the article to show other readers how crazy it is. This is exactly what the authors and editors get paid for; this is how you shovel the sweet AdSense money on them. So the only winning move is not to play this game.

.

I may be too extreme in this aspect, but when I talk with most people, I simply assume that almost everything they say is a metaphor for something (usually for their feelings), and almost nothing is to be taken literally. This is a normal way of communication among people who couldn't program a Friendly AI if their very lives depended on it.

When someone says "rationality is bad", the correct translation is probably something like "I hate my father because he criticized me a lot and didn't play with me; and my father believes he is smart, and he makes smartness his applause light; and this is why I hate everything that sounds like smartness". You cannot argue against that. (If you try anyway, the person will not remember any specific thing you said, they will only remember that you are just as horrible person as their father.) This is how people talk. This is how people think. And they understand each other, so when another person who also hates their father hears it, they will get the message, and say something like "yeah, exactly like you said, rationality is stupid". And then they know they can trust each other on the emotional level.

Here is a short dictionary containing the idioms from the article:

• everydayfeminism.com = "I hate my father"
• we should abolish prisons, police = "I hate my father"
• cisheteropatriarchy = "I hate my father; but I also blame my mother for staying with him"
• those who are committed to social justice = "my friends, who also hate their fathers"
• we have to stop placing limits on ourselves = "we should steal some money and get high"
• Being Rational Has No Inherent Value = "I don't even respect my father"
• my very existence is irrational = "my father disapproves of my lifestyle"
• The only logical time for abolition and decolonization is now = "I wish I had the courage to tell my parents right now how much I am angry at them"

You are overanalyzing it, searching for a logical structure when there is none. If you treat the article as a free-form poem, you will get much closer to the essence. You don't share the author's emotions, that's why the text rubs you the wrong way.

And by the way, other political groups do similar things, just in a different flavor (and perhaps intensity).

Strongly disagree with 2) and 3). I think you mean them as a proxy for 'become more social, make more connections, find ways to fit in a local culture', but quality of connections usually matters more than quantity. But in many circles that are likely to matter for a typical LWer 3) is likely to be useless and likely benefits of 2) are achievable without drinking or with a very modest drinking.

Simple hypothesis relating to Why Don't Rationalists Win:

Everyone has some collection of skills and abilities, including things like charisma, luck, rationality, determination, networking ability, etc. Each person's success is limited by constraints related to these abilities, in the same way that an application's performance is limited by the CPU speed, RAM, disk speed, networking speed, etc of the machine(s) it runs on. But just as for many applications the performance bottleneck isn't CPU speed, for most people the success bottleneck isn't rationality.