Short Online Texts Thread
14 Ways Cognitive Biases Hamper Your Diablo Toon
It is actually titled "How Your Mind Screws with You in Games Like Diablo". Not novel material, but novel to see on a gaming website.
Thought experiment. You are doing a really boring job you dislike like data entry, but so well paid you don't want to leave it. You cannot automate it. You cannot work from home. You sit in the office 8 hours Thankfully it does not take 8 hours, you can do it in 5 and then browse the web or something.
What do you do? Trying to spend the other 3 meaningfully like studying with Anki, and trying to find challenging games in the actual job part are two obvious ones, what else? E.g. would you listen to ebooks while doing it? What else?
Plan A: Change your environment; spend three hours a day preparing a proposal for management/ownership to work as a contractor paid by entry opposed to an employee paid by the hour. Find the relevant tax and overhead savings to make this a mutually beneficial arrangement. Find out who in management/ownership can approve your proposal and who it just creates headaches for, buy beer for both.
I understand that goes against the spirit of your question, that your work environment may be to rigid, management that could approve the proposal are out of reach of the data entry staff, or one of many other arguments, but 60 hours a month is a large amount of time, it is shocking what could be done.
Plan B: Now on to things I've actually done in that situation; spend 60 hours preparing a bulletproof argument/presentation for a raise, spend 60 hours learning how to create better resumes, spend 60 hours learning how to job hunt without a resume (handshakes and recommendations), spend 60 hours job hunting, and last on the list spend the time on entertainment so that you are mentally recharged to make the most of your personal time.
I'm leading a rationality training group. We're working through the most recent CFAR curriculum, but I also want to work from parts of the sequences.
Which posts in the sequences were particularly impactfull for you? Not just ones that you found interesting, but ideas that you actually implemented in your thinking about object-level stuff.
I'm particularly interested in posts that we could spin out into techniques to practice, like noticing confusion or leaving a line of retreat.
“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”
I couldn't find the sequence that covers it directly, but going through my old journals, this one came up repeatedly while facing hard decisions.
I don't know what infinity over infinity is, but I suspect that it will be undefined.
This. This matters.
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
This is more that metaphor. A exponentially larger infinity divided by a small infinity will be infinity. A exponentially small infinity divided by a large infinity will be zero. A division of proportional infinities will be a real number.
So if the chances of a Boltzamann Brain becomes increasingly less likely as enthropy increases. and enthropy increases as time approaches infinity, you have a division of infinities which can equal infinity, a real number, or zero. You won't know which without actually crunching the numbers.
As an aside, arguments that use infinite time come up enough that I'm trying to find a brief graphic or write up that teaches ∞/(2*∞)=1/2 and the ∞/(∞^2)=0. Any pointers?
Well, it is necessarily true that anything that can happen, will happen in an infinite, probabilistic world. Of course, there are some issues with this. One, if the mass of the higgs boson falls in a certain area, then the universe will undergo a shift. From what I remember, it is something to do with the vacuum energy/state of the universe, and the laws of physics may well end up changing. Its been a few years since I read that article, so I may not have it completely right. And events that have a probability of an infinitesimal...well, I'm not sure what would happen. I don't know what infinity over infinity is, but I suspect that it will be undefined. Anyway, the expectation of a value is its probability, multiplied by the quantity of cards drawn, or whatever it is you're trying to determine. In this case, how many events with probability P are going to happen in an infinite amount of time? Well, an infinite number. That's just how it works.
If I've been obtuse in some way, don't hesitate to call me out on it. And thanks for reading!
Edit: I just re-read your comment. I don't think that's how the probabilities work in this reality, though I may be wrong... I mean, what sort of probability would this event have in a finite universe? Is it some infinite universe only event? Do those even exist? It should be irrelevant though, because our universe has existed for some time T, and we had some probability P of occurring, and so that would mean we will reoccur in an infinite universe. Same for the other versions of us, though you could provide me with an argument for why that isn't so.
I don't know what infinity over infinity is, but I suspect that it will be undefined.
This. This matters.
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
This is more that metaphor. A exponentially larger infinity divided by a small infinity will be infinity. A exponentially small infinity divided by a large infinity will be zero. A division of proportional infinities will be a real number.
So if the chances of a Boltzamann Brain becomes increasingly less likely as enthropy increases. and enthropy increases as time approaches infinity, you have a division of infinities which can equal infinity, a real number, or zero. You won't know which without actually crunching the numbers.
Made the phone report it's location if you texted it the password. Security updates added hoops to jump through, and FindMyDroid came out for free with all the functionality.
Even without an App there's also the Android Device Manager.
Thank you kind stranger for showing me something new. I'm glad to have learnt that.
But to paint the full picture, I used that location password to find my lost phone very rarely. It was mostly used during festivals, conventions, and travelling so that my friends and co-travelers could easily find me. People are uncomfortable adopting it, but it is a real easy fix to the 'I'm here, where are you?' coordination problem.
What are the most important things you replaced with other apps?
Made the phone report it's location if you texted it the password. Security updates added hoops to jump through, and FindMyDroid came out for free with all the functionality.
Made the phone autoplay music when headphones were plugged in. I stopped needing these when I got a new car with a bluetooth stereo and stopped using the aux plug in.
I think we could write a book about our fundamental disagreement, but I’ll just ask one question…
Let’s imagine a machine that improves any of your skills at twice your normal rate of improvement. All you have to do is think of what you want to improve, and then connect your brain to the machine. After one hour connected to the machine, it is as if you practiced that skill for two hours.
Unfortunately, the machine transmits the greatest amount of pain imaginable while it is in use - every inch of your body is a throbbing firecracker of agony.
Would you ever use this machine?
Yes, as much I could tolerate it.
But yes, we have a fundamental difference of perspectives here.
Agreed, you would not be more capable after the vacation. Your prospects would not improve.
But surely, you must indulge yourself occasionally and Mac’s Wirehead Homestead seems like the best place for that.
“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy’s cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him.”
Miyamoto Musashi wrote, in The Book of Five Rings:
Musashi spoke of swordsmanship here, but this applies to any endeavor that aspires to excel. Like an electric train's regenerative brakes charge its batteries, and the exhaust gas of a firearm chambers the next round and cocks the hammer, I expect even my down-time and indulgences to provide future prosperity.
Time is what life is made of, why squander it on something so temporary as a week's bliss. Are you so content that you will delay improving your future for a week?
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Has anyone ever studied the educational model of studying just one subject at a time, and does it have a name? While in college the last semester, it occurred to me that, with so many subjects at once competing for my time and attention, I cannot dedicate myself to learning any given one in depth, and just achieve mediocre grades for all of them. The model I had in mind went like this:
1) Embark on one, and only one, subject for a few weeks or couple of months (example: high school trigonometry);
2) Study it full-time and exhaust the textbook;
3) Take an exam in it;
4) Have a short vacation (1-2 weeks);
5) Pass on to the next subject (example: early modern history).
There could be yearly review sessions a couple of weeks long, so that students have their memory refreshed on the subjects they have learned so far.
Leaving aside some issues relating to the practicality of scheduling classes like that, does this work better/worse than the model in which students' schedules are diversified? Would it just get monotonous after a while, and does this outweigh the benefits of being able to dedicate your focus to one single subject?
A few comments from my experience, these may not be applicable to all circumstances.
I found material to have a digestion time, to much material too fast and I would stop learning. If understanding A depends on understanding B, which depends on C, It was easier to learn C, and sleep on it, then learn and sleep on B, then A. As opposed to taking ABC all in one bite. In addition to the short term, I experienced this in the long term; I would frequently look back at courses from the previous years and wonder how I ever found them challenging. When I had Calculus 1 and 2 back to back I struggled hard, When I had a year break, then Calculus 3, another year break, then Calculus 4, I felt I had a better grasp of the material.
Also, as you approach higher levels of education and specialize, your classes overlap material more and more. In high school I took grade twelve physics then grade 12 calculus. I was very upset to discover after the fact the derivative relations between locations, velocity, and acceleration, and that the equations were simple to derive once the missing calculus piece of the puzzle was provided. Once I got to the end of my undergrad, every class I was taking was looking at the same problem from different perspectives, so any one taken by themselves would be without supporting knowledge to lean on.
And lastly, Topic burn out would kill me. This has to do with mental digestion time, but some times it was nice to skip a class or two, not think about the topic for a week, and then jump back in with renewed energy.
But of course also am full of bias, because learning is complex and I'm just latching on to the few patterns I've recognized.