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I occasionally see people move their fingers on a flat surface while thinking, as if they were writing equations with their fingers. Does anyone do this, and can anyone explain why people do this? I asked one person who does it, and he said it helps him think about problems (presumably math problems) without actually writing anything down. Can this be learned? Is it a useful technique? Or is it just an innate idiosyncrasy?
Political topics attract participants inclined to use the norms of mainstream political debate, risking a tipping point to lower quality discussion
(I hope that is the least click-baity title ever.)
Political topics elicit lower quality participation, holding the set of participants fixed. This is the thesis of "politics is the mind-killer".
Here's a separate effect: Political topics attract mind-killed participants. This can happen even when the initial participants are not mind-killed by the topic.
Since outreach is important, this could be a good thing. Raise the sanity water line! But the sea of people eager to enter political discussions is vast, and the epistemic problems can run deep. Of course not everyone needs to come perfectly prealigned with community norms, but any community will be limited in how robustly it can handle an influx of participants expecting a different set of norms. If you look at other forums, it seems to take very little overt contemporary political discussion before the whole place is swamped, and politics becomes endemic. As appealing as "LW, but with slightly more contemporary politics" sounds, it's probably not even an option. You have "LW, with politics in every thread", and "LW, with as little politics as we can manage".
That said, most of the problems are avoided by just not saying anything that patterns matches too easily to current political issues. From what I can tell, LW has always had tons of meta-political content, which doesn't seem to cause problems, as well as standard political points presented in unusual ways, and contrarian political opinions that are too marginal to raise concern. Frankly, if you have a "no politics" norm, people will still talk about politics, but to a limited degree. But if you don't even half-heartedly (or even hypocritically) discourage politics, then a open-entry site that accepts general topics will risk spiraling too far in a political direction.
As an aside, I'm not apolitical. Although some people advance a more sweeping dismissal of the importance or utility of political debate, this isn't required to justify restricting politics in certain contexts. The sort of the argument I've sketched (I don't want LW to be swamped by the worse sorts of people who can be attracted to political debate) is enough. There's no hypocrisy in not wanting politics on LW, but accepting political talk (and the warts it entails) elsewhere. Of the top of my head, Yvain is one LW affiliate who now largely writes about more politically charged topics on their own blog (SlateStarCodex), and there are some other progressive blogs in that direction. There are libertarians and right-leaning (reactionary? NRx-lbgt?) connections. I would love a grand unification as much as anyone, (of course, provided we all realize that I've been right all along), but please let's not tell the generals to bring their armies here for the negotiations.
In response to
Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015
Seems to be a working memory aid for me.
If I have to manipulate equations mentally, I'll (sort of) explain the equation sub-vocally and assign chunks of it to different fingers/regions of space, and then move my fingers around or reassign to regions, as if I'm "dragging and dropping" (e.g. multiply by a denominator means dragging a finger pointing at the denominator over and up). Even if I'm working on paper, this helps me see one or two steps further ahead than I could do so using internal mental imagery alone. I don't remember explicitly learning this.
In response to
Open thread, Mar. 2 - Mar. 8, 2015
Perhaps it would be beneficial to use a unary numeral system when discussing topics on which biases like scope insensitivity, probability neglect, and placing too much weight on outcomes that are likely to occur. Using a unary numeral system could prevent these biases by presenting a more visual representation of the numbers, which might give readers more intuition on them and thus be less biased about them. Here’s an example: “One study found that people are willing to pay $80 to save || * 1000 (2,000) birds, but only $88 to save |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| * 1000 (200,000 birds).”
Edit: Made it a bit easier to read.
If you would like to be horrified, represent the number of deaths from WWII in unary in a text document and scroll through it (by copy pasting larger and larger chunks, or by some other method).
There are about 4000 "1" characters in a page in MS Word, so at 20 million battle deaths, you'll get about 5000 pages.
To my frustration, the majority of the results I found were not scholarly. Then again, the only database I have access to is Google Scholar, which is utter crap for finding specific results.
If anyone has access to a decent scholarly database, I'd much appreciate a quick search. It seems possible that this idea "mental illness is highly correlated with intelligence" is just another Lucy-esque pop psych idea with little truth.
I think my point still stands- mental illness is still really common. And I know a lot of intelligent people have a mental illness. I don't think we should ignore the skewed thinking of mental illness even if the ratio of metally ill to mentally normal people is exactly the same in average versus above average populations. The statistic I'm finding there is 1 in 5. I'm not finding anywhere that's properly sourcing that statistic, though. The article I read sourced the older report (in 2012) but didn't link to the newer one.
I agree that the relationship is separate question. I did find some links though:
Here is a Swedish conscripts study, finding that pre-morbid IQ was negatively associated with later adult depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia, but positively related to mania, measured by hospital admittance. This New Zealand study replicates this: Low childhood IQ predicts depression, anxiety, while higher IQ predicts bipolar.
These are about the best "large homogeneous" population studies I could find, in two more-or-less standard Western cultures. There is one study that tracked some particularly high performing children through adulthood, but the results weren't much different regarding mental illness than a normal high intelligence sample would be. Needless to say, it gets complicated when you look at populations that are preselected (college students, etc) or more diverse. Most popular articles that claim a uniform association are looking at some narrow populations (e.g. famous artists), or reporting how intelligence relates to different presentations of a given mental illness (e.g. intelligence seems to the presentation of anxiety).
Even assuming genetic risk for a mental illness was unrelated to education or intelligence, you'd expect something like this given the environmental correlates: Better family conditions early on, better social status later. While there are some environmental stressors that are probably associated with higher intelligence (graduate/medical/law school, perhaps more status anxiety?), these are probably not severe enough to outweigh the stressors in the opposite direction.
I've always been sort of jealous of people for whom this sort of solution works. When my brother was still in high school, I woke up to drive him to school every morning, then went back to sleep when I got home. I'm better about it now than I was then, but still not enough for this sort of thing to work. I keep my alarm clock on the other side of the room and I never even remember walking over there to turn it off.
Just leaving the phone across the room didn't work for me, but the lock did.
There are all sorts of possible schemes: I also thought about putting the clock up in an inaccessible location (a high shelf in my closet). Then turning it off would require physically dragging a stepladder or chair from some other room, bringing it in, being awake enough not to fall off it, etc.
In response to
Group Rationality Diary, March 1-21
My sleep tends to be delayed and irregular. I put my alarm clock in a locked box. In the morning, it takes ~45 seconds to get out of bed, walk across the room, and open the combination lock. Since doing so, my waking time has greatly smoothed.
The funny thing is that everything I read (mainly fiction) or watch (movie) about the "cowboy" culture of rural America does not seem to reflect it much. OK it is clear that religion tends to ebb and flow, have low and high tides and there was a sort of a high one after 1970 ("moral majority"), still. Random example: Axl Rose from Guns'n'Roses. He is such a typical rural guy, in fact, he kind of revolutionized rock fashion by doing away with leathers and chains and basically dressing on stage like like a rural US agricultural tractor driver. There is hardly any reference to either religiousness or atheism in the songs. Just seems to not care. The whole rock and roll culture does not seem to care much and apparently never did, no matter how much I go back in time, Easy Riders, or even further. That matters, because that is the most popular aspect of America over here :) Many an aging Euro guy imitates all this ride choppers, wear cowboy boots and hats, indian jewelry, booorn to be wiiild kind of thing and it is authentic so far that at the very least the American musicians whose songs get listened to really don't seem to care either way.
(Although of course there is one confounding factor: all this kind of thing feels very American but is often surprisingly not so, Born to be Wild is actually a Canadian song and so on, these things have a prairie-cowboy-freedom feel, but not really sure to what extent do the reflect actual American experiences or aspirations. This may be a different topic, but I think it is relevant to understanding. There is an America-as-a-concept many an aging Euro guy loves and religion does not seem to play much a role in it. It is based on various things. Like westerns. Who makes the westerns? Surprisingly, Italians like Mario Girotti!
Let's test this! I love this shop, and wear some things from here, and it is not out of place at all for an older Euro guy esp. a bit outside cities. How does it look like with American eyes - completely fake? Or normal? http://www.world-of-western.at/ and especially: http://www.world-of-western.com/shop?00000000000000fa04720fdc0000004a26150000&&kcc&navid=23007&kat=%5BSchmuck%5D&currblock=1&suche1=& )
My point is, is this "real America" AND I should imagine religion as part of it, or is the whole thing completely off?)
There are roughly four prototypical white American regions/cultures, which correspond to fairly clear demographic events. Two of these are distinct white "rural" cultures (crudely: the western cowboy and the southern redneck) but these are often misleadingly combined into a unified "rural" stereotype that doesn't really describe many actual people. This makes about as much sense as combining New York and San Francisco to create the archetypal "urban" American. Alas, the media is based in big coastal cities, and so even many Americans conflate the two.
So I think what you've noticed is that the cowboy culture has this individualist current, that leads to fewer public displays of religion, even though the people tended to be privately religious. Whereas the redneck culture has a more group-based history, with an theological approach (Evangelicalism) that requires more public displays of faith.
For the immigration element, look at this is map of self-reported ancestry.
The huge region of self-identified German ancestry is centered on historically cowboy culture areas, and the Grey region labeled "American" is redneck culture. The "American" self-identification usually means Northern England / Southern Scotland / Northern Ireland, but far in the past.
The Grey region is the so-called Bible Belt, sometimes just referred to as "the South", or as Appalachia. The lower-class whites in this area are the basis for the redneck stereotype (see Google images for pictures), but the area really doesn't have the cowboy flavor. The cowboy or frontier rural culture historically spread out over the modern-day-German-ancestry areas in waves. The modern impact of this is complicated, but it's sufficient to say that the rural cultures of the West are rather different from the rural culture of the South.
So I'm not too surprised if aspects of cowboy culture appeal more to Europeans today than redneck culture, because the modern areas where cowboy cultural flourished were inhabited by the descents of immigrants who were closer to modern Europe (culturally and temporally) than the people who founded redneck culture.
Thanks, it is good ideas. I got two different kinds of de-training completely mixed up.
I decided that if you want to understand yourself you may start first studying others, because you will be more honest and less likely to find excuses, and then applying the lesson to yourself (not allowing new excuses). That is a good idea?
I studied my late father and current father-in-law both classical blue-collar guys with classical blue-collar vices i.e. drinking more than healthy and probably being addicted (no textbook alcoholics: they were/are never actually drunk, just elevated "bubbly" every evening).
One thing I have noticed is that the basic idea is that you don't enjoy your work and life much. And when the daily work is done you need a quick pick me up, something that quickly makes you feel good, for the blue-collar culture it is booze, for others, it is sugar (contributing to the obesity epidemic), drugs or gambling. They all act fast.
Apparently, one reason more intellectual people (typical Silicon Valley types) have less of an addiction problem is that they enjoy their work and thus life enough, they don't need to quickly wash down another suck of a day, so they can have less euphoric hobbies in the evening, say, drawing or painting.
I am fairly intellectual but for reasons I don't think I will ever have a very enjoyable job or life. It is mainly a must-do tasks to stay afloat kind of life. So I need to see how to cope better.
A) I started studying what healthy "quickly pick me up" other people are using. I found music and socialization. I.e. they put on headphones when riding the subway or Facebook chat with their friends. Neither is to my taste or possibilities. Any other ideas? I.e. not the kinds of enjoyable activities that take investment, but the kinds that are easy as downing a drink or three, calling someone on the phone or putting on music. But it has to be a strong jolt, I am very easily bored. For example something like playing Settlers of Catan on an Android tablet (against AI) bores me out in 15 mins even though is one of the most popular board games.
B) Is it possible to just to learn to put up with it all? For example 2-3 generations ago British upper classes were very good at putting up with boredom. They could spend an afternoon just reading Times. It is not exciting at all. Even Carcassone on Android is more exciting. What and how made these people so good at putting up with nothing enjoyable and fun, no jolt, no pleasure shock happening?
Am I even on the right track here?
Counter-test: what do today smart people (who know unhealthy habits are unhealthy) do if their work/life is generally unpleasant, so they need a quick jolt of pleasure injected into themselves after work? Again I am not talking about hobbies one invest into, I am talking about something one may as well do on the subway back home. Well, I know one physcist doing some kind of a PhD internship where he analyses nuclear data all day writing C++ programs (don't even ask...) and he hates it, and he is a drinker. That is not a good example.
Is it possible to rank or categorize hobbies, interests, free time activities by factors like time investment, quick jolt vs. more slow pleasure and so on? E.g. parachuting or bungee jumping does give a quick jolt, one very similar to drugs, they are very good at washing down an unpleasant workday, but they require investment in the sense of going/driving there, going up etc. people who do it normally just do it on the weekend. They are clearly not something to quickly do on the subway on the way home. Music, as long as people can find one they really like, can work as press a button, get an instant jolt of pleasure. Hobbies like painting or drawing generally don't give this kind of euphoric jolt at all. I wonder if such an avenue of research is a good idea.
About my at-work brain: not until about 4PM, however, I am not very thirsty before that, it is the usually quite salty lunch (like street döner kebab) eaten around 1PM that generates it. I drink a lot of water but mainly as routine.
I can't comment on alcohol use, but on recuperative activity:
Different types of "burnt out" suggest different remedies.
If you just spent 8 hours sitting at a desk, you might get a bump from a game of tennis, or a long walk. If you just spent 8 hours on your feet, that game of tennis might not help.
If you just spent 8 hours alone, then socialize. If you were dealing with customers and coworkers and crowds nonstop, maybe do something alone.
Anecdote: When I lived in college dorms (4 people in 2 bunk beds in a unit), my idea of heaven was sitting alone in a quiet empty room. The desire evaporated as soon as I moved out.
Sometimes people match to the wrong class of remedies: If you're angry (a negative, high-arousal state), you might not want to go out with friends (social activity = further arousal). If you're lethargic and depressed (negative, low-arousal), the long hot bath might makes things worse (hot bath = low arousal).
Interesting! I can see this happening when I wave my hand in front of my window. When the shadow of my hand gets too close to the shadow of my window frame, the shadow of my hand seems to elongate. The window frame is closer to the light than my arm is. It doesn't work if my hand is too close to the wall. It also seems to bend a little, depending on the angles; and if I have my fingers in a /\ shape and bring them together, I can make a shadow grow between them towards the tips, kind of like an A shape.
One thing I notice is that shadows don't have hard edges, they fade out. When two penumbras overlap, you might start to perceive shadow where you weren't expecting it. Whatever is closer to the sun will have a wider penumbra, and this might cause the shadow to seem to grow on the other object. My two fingers were the same distance from the sun, so it grew equally from them.
Unfortunately the sun went behind a building while I was writing this post, so I can't experiment further. If I'm right, I'd expect this to happen less with lightbulbs and other spot lights, where the penumbra will be smaller.
Quick research... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_blister_effect isn't very detailed, but it looks like I'm correct?
Yes! I think this is it. The wikipedia article links to these ray diagrams, which I found helpful (particularly the fourth picture).
I suspected it had to do with an overlap in the penumbra, or the "fuzzy edges", of the shadow, but I kept getting confused because the observation isn't what you would expect, if you think of the penumbra as two separate pictures that you're simply "adding together" as they overlap.
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On outguessing the market: With only public information, can someone (expect to) determine better times to invest into diversified funds? Specifically, is it a good idea to use the "being greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy" heuristic?