Comment author: imaxwell 04 May 2011 02:11:39PM 3 points [-]

There's a bitcoin escrow service called ClearCoin that includes the option of sending escrowed funds to one of their listed nonprofits, rather than back to the payer, if the escrow expires. I asked the site owner to include the SI donation address as an option and have been using it since.

Unfortunately for SI, everyone I've dealt with has been honest so far! I'll have to actually donate on purpose instead of incidentally, it seems.

Comment author: imaxwell 13 May 2011 02:15:18AM 2 points [-]

Update: 14.01 bitcoins are "in the mail" (read: sitting in ClearCoin waiting for the transaction to expire). At current exchange rates, that's around $100.

In response to Timeless Physics
Comment author: imaxwell 05 May 2011 04:05:29PM *  4 points [-]

Years after first reading this, I think I've internalized its central point in a clear-to-me way, and I'd like to post it here in case it's useful to someone else with a similar bent to their thinking.

Without worrying about the specific nature of the Schrodinger equation, we can say the universe is governed by a set of equations of form x, where each x[i] is some variable in the universe's configuration space, each f[i] is some continuous function, and t is a parameter representing time. This would be true even in a classical universe---the configuration space would just look more like the coordinates for a bunch of particles, and less like parameters of a waveform. All this is really saying is that the universe has some configuration at every time.

Now, one thing you can do with parametric equations is eliminate the parameter. If we have, say, 1000 parametric equations relating x[1] through x[1000] to t, we can convert these to 999 equations relating x[1] through x[1000] to one another, and "cut out the middleman" so to speak. Your new equations will define the same curve in configuration space, and you can determine the relative order of events just by tracing along that curve (as long as there are no "singularities"---points where two different values of t gave you the same point in the configuration space).

Moreover, from inside the universe there's no way to tell the difference between these two situations. "Two hours ago" can mean either "at t - 2hr" or it can mean "at the point on this curve in configuration space where the clocks all say it's 7:00 instead of 9:00", and there's no experimental distinction to be made between these meanings. So positing a fundamental thing called "time" doesn't actually have any explanatory power!

From this understanding, timeless physics is better viewed as a more parsimonious way to frame any theory, rather than a part of quantum theory specifically. We could just as well explain Newtonian physics timelessly.

Comment author: imaxwell 04 May 2011 02:11:39PM 3 points [-]

There's a bitcoin escrow service called ClearCoin that includes the option of sending escrowed funds to one of their listed nonprofits, rather than back to the payer, if the escrow expires. I asked the site owner to include the SI donation address as an option and have been using it since.

Unfortunately for SI, everyone I've dealt with has been honest so far! I'll have to actually donate on purpose instead of incidentally, it seems.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 03 February 2011 11:38:09PM 27 points [-]

Just saw on reddit a perfect accidental metaphor: jakeredfield posted this in r/gaming:

For the people that have no played Portal yet, be warned, there may be spoilers up ahead for you.

So anyway, I am a huge fan of Portal, I love everything about the game. I bought it upon release and have played through it multiple times. My friends aren't as big of gamers as me so it took them some time to get their hands on Portal. My one friend didn't have a computer capable of running Portal so I let him play on mine.

I pulled up a chair besides him and eagerly watched him play then entire time. He loved the game. I expected him to. It's an awesome game. But here comes the WTF part...(SPOILERS AHEAD)

He go to the part at the last puzzle, right before GlaDOS tries to kill you in the fire. So then, my friend is like, "Oh, so it's one of those games where you die at the end. Haha, it was a good game." And then he immediately shuts it down. I just sat there. Shocked. In awe. I couldn't believe what I just saw. He turns to me and goes, "Good game, I'd play that again."

This is the part where I just hit him and yell, "IT WASN'T OVER YET!" He was so confused. He loaded it back up to that part and couldn't figure it out. I then pointed it out to him what he needed to do from there. He eventually fully finished the game.

Imagine what would have happened if I wasn't there? How many other people do you think only experienced the game up to this part, because they didn't have someone tell them?

What makes it even more perfect is this reply by Aleitheo:

So rather than try to see if he could live or even just die in the fire he turned off the game before he even saw the "ending"?

Comment author: imaxwell 02 May 2011 12:01:15PM 0 points [-]

I just had to comment on this, it's too perfect. Thanks.

Comment author: Kevin 16 March 2011 04:56:07AM 0 points [-]

I bid 33 bitcoins and all profits will go to SIAI

Comment author: imaxwell 16 March 2011 03:41:50PM *  0 points [-]

If one other person will make an offer to round out the 70BTC, I can create a new BPM account and handle the distribution myself, returning the principal to Kevin and whomever else and sending the rest to SIAI.

Edited to point out: a higher bid will still win.

Comment author: imaxwell 16 March 2011 04:47:36AM 4 points [-]

If you want to donate to SIAI, I have an offer that will probably allow you to donate more!

My Radeon 5970 should generate close to 125 BTC per core per month at current difficulty levels. For an up-front fee of 70 BTC (about $60) or more, I will direct one core at the server of your choice (I recommend a pooling service like that at mining.bitcoin.cz) for one calendar month. I will gain the certainty of paying my huge electric bill, and you will gain a better-than-80% expected profit in only a month.

If you're interested in this offer, message me with a bid. Preference will be given to higher bids and to those who plan to donate some or all of their profit to SIAI---the higher the promised donation, the better.

If you're interested but don't know how to set up a mining server, I will walk you through it if your bid is accepted. It's really quite easy.

Comment author: imaxwell 15 March 2011 03:08:41PM 1 point [-]

I got 0.05 BTC from the Bitcoin Faucet. It looks like there's nothing meaningful I can do with 0.05 BTC, and I'm not certain I'll ever have more, so I'm donating it to SIAI instead of back to the Faucet.

I'm really just posting this so that the 0.05 BTC donation doesn't come off as the signalling equivalent of a 10-cent tip. If I do make more BTC, I'll donate at least some of that as well. (Actually, donating all of it sounds like a good way to avoid annoying tax questions, so I'm considering that.)

Comment author: gwern 01 February 2011 06:03:48PM 35 points [-]

"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered.
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time; premature optimization is the root of all evil."

--Donald Knuth (see also Amdahl's law)

Comment author: imaxwell 04 February 2011 03:30:08PM 4 points [-]

I never thought of this quote outside the context of programming before reading it here, but it does seem pretty generally applicable. The force behind premature optimization is the force that causes me to spend so much time comparison shopping that the time lost eventually outvalues the price difference; or to fail to give money to charity at all because there may be a better charity to give it to. (I've recently started donating the dollar to Vague Good Cause at stores and restaurants when asked, because it's all well and good to say "SIAI is better," but that defense only works if I then actually give the dollar to SIAI.)

In response to Optimal Employment
Comment author: imaxwell 31 January 2011 03:38:44PM 3 points [-]

Is overqualification a concern? That is: if I'm already working toward a Ph.D. and I decide to complete that first, will it work against me in finding hospitality work? (I'd guess such jobs have sufficiently high rotation anyway that the answer is no.)

Do you know if the situation is equally good for more "career-like" jobs? (I.e. instead of making good money without too much strain, can I bust my ass to make even more money?)

Even if both the answers are the less-desired, I'm going to seriously discuss this with my wife.

Comment author: imaxwell 20 December 2010 11:50:04PM 4 points [-]

I don't think learning the truth really affected my development one way or the other. One day when I was I-don't-remember-how-old, I asked to be told the truth and I was. I do remember that I wasn't very good at maintaining the conspiracy former my younger siblings, and almost let the truth slip a few times---and I'm still not very good at it and have almost let the truth slip to children in my family.

I am wary of whether lying to kids habitually is really as good for them as we rationalize, but the real reason I'm inclined not to spread this myth to my hypothetical children is because I am so uncomfortable with lies myself---I can barely even bring myself to do it for the sake of a surprise party or something innocuous like that. I'd rather tell it as what it is: a fun story, like Cinderella or Harry Potter.

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