I know there are some R Scott Bakker fans on here, and I was thinking recently about the Second Darkness series. Rot13d for spoilers:
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Last month, I visited a school of dance with a number of other composers from my university, to meet students there and explore possible future collaborations. I had misunderstood how the meeting would take place, and so I only realised I'd have to give an informal presentation about my music when I was already at the train station.
I'm an okay public speaker but nervous about presenting on my music, but the hastily-improvised presentation went really well, I got a great response from the dancers, and met several people who expressed an interest in working with me in the future.
I'm feeling more confident about my presentation skills, my ability to communicate about my music, and my music itself as a result.
Survey taken!
I tried it a few days ago and it didn't submit as far as I can tell - in between I looked up the answer to the calibration question, but I answered as I did originally (NAILED IT anyway).
Survey gripe: I answered "left-handed" for the handedness question, but I only really write with my left hand, and do everything else with my right. My left hand might be a little more dextrous but my right is definitely stronger. As such I'd see myself as cross-dominant rather than ambidextrous; is this something that could be included on future surveys or is it not useful for the kind of data you're collecting?
I have a moral question.
Is it better for the last million people of a certain population to die, or for two million people all around the world, randomly selected and evenly distributed, to die? For the first group, their death would not just result in loss of human life, but potentially loss of a lot of cultural information; their language, their religion, their mythology and folklore, their music. I feel like this cultural information has value.
Thoughts?
What an ending that would be: Harry uses the Self-Indication Assumption to conclude that he is most probably a character in a Muggle story about magic, then manages to 'blackmail' the author into granting him godhood in order to stop Harry from committing suicide in a literarily unsatisfying fashion, since the author would prefer the former as an ending over the latter.
Am I the only one who thinks that would be a horrible ending?
The Captain Awkward advice blog. They're not currently taking questions but the archives cover lots of material, and I found just reading the various responses on many different problems, even ones that were in no way similar to mine, allowed me to approach my issues from a new perspective.
The concept of privilege of the "check your..." variety. It's not without it's problems as a tool - it can too easily be used as a Fully General Counterargument - but it's an important thing to be aware of and probably the single concept I've learned in the last two years that has most changed my outlook on the world.
Over the weekend, a potentially unpleasant social situation I was involved in didn't turn into lots of horrible drama. Everyone involved, as far as I can see, handled it well and with great maturity; I was told by someone external to but aware of events that I acted very well in the aftermath. As far as I can tell, everything is cool and back to normal with all involved parties now.
What I have learned:
I only heard about it recently, and did not think I ever experienced it/was capable of experiencing it. I was reading the /r/asmr reddit the other day, and saw a reference to "the goosebumps you get from really good music", and then got an ASMR-like response. Not sure if it was a true reaction, and I was listening to music that wouldn't fit with the usual description of ASMR triggers. I'm pretty suggestible I think, so it may have been the effect of remembering "really good music goosebumps" and then overreacting to that.
Red Fang (three more songs) - I guess you could call them stoner metal. They're like a less thinky Mastodon, but some of their more recent stuff (not linked) seems to be going down a more progressive route.
I found a neat little live studio album of Tower of Power recently. I can't find a good version of this album online, but here's two songs for anyone who doesn't know them, and the album is called Tower of Power Direct.
It's really clichéd for musicians to list her as an influence, but I'm curr
This article is interesting, particularly as the topic of LW parenting does come up occasionally.
What the author describes doesn't exactly promote rational thinking in the kids, rather telling them how to win arguments, but there is a degree of evaluation-of-argument in there ("Mary should give you the car because she's a pig?") and it teaches a useful skill early. Rationalists should win after all.
I should also make some friends, as my standard reaction to stress is to isolate myself.
Won't continuous biking and not being tied to a geogrpahic area make it harder to make friends? Unless you mean making friends with people you meet and practicing friend-making, in which case this may be a good way to go about it.
I imagine defending my arguments with people that I know, debate with, and find are good at challenging my beliefs/making me explain them - my girlfriend and my family most usually. They're always not very good copies - I often make bad predictions at what people will think about certain concepts - but they are useful in getting me to examine arguments. That might be a good place to start.
I have been a bad composer, and a bad blogger. BUT recently I have been better at self-promotion (having put myself forward for more opportunities than I normally would), a better teacher, and a better pianist (I'm making technical breakthroughs and getting back into a good practice routine).
I know some of the reasons that I'm not composing and blogging as well as I'd like, and I have plans to deal with them. I also launched my soundcloud after putting it off for quite a while - file under self-promotion too, I guess.
I've re-established the habit of recording the time I spend practicing. I record the times to the minute, rather than close estimates - if I sit down at the piano at 4:52, I'll write down 4:52 not "ten to five".
Even though there's no one checking my diary for practice times, it helps keep me focused and I'm more likely to practice for the length of time I've committed to and to meet my goals within the practice session.
Brahms' Rhapsody in G minor is wonderful, the other one in the set is good too.
One of my favourite pieces of all time is Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata (1st movement here).
For more contemporary stuff, I can't recommend Ligeti's solo piano music enough. Etude 13 is in large part responsible for me getting into contemporary music, and thus, becoming a composer.
EDIT: Also, John Field was a big influence on Chopin; he's credited with inventing the nocturne form I think. Not as virtuosic though, if that's what you're into.
Thanks for the reply!
For example, if it turns out that group A has a higher average IQ than group B, and that A and B can be distinguished reliably by genetic testing (including but not limited to visual inspection for associated phenotypes), I might decide to devote more effort to educating group B than group A, to make up for the difference. Or I might decide to devote more effort to educating group A than group B, to get the best bang for my education buck.
Fair enough, that's an example of policy, based on this data.
...Or I might decide to research t
To answer your general method query, this essay by Karl Popper deals with the issue of distinguishing science v pseudoscience. However, from my reading of, you need to know a bit about the topic, or at least observe it in action, to make a judgement.
autism/language troubles in particular, are fields in which there is a lot of pseudo-science... There are a lot of mysticism and sect-like gurus related to autism, too.
What gives you this impression? I'm not saying you're wrong - just that it's something I haven't picked up on myself.
Regarding Freud, I get ...
similarly, the anti-racist who gets infected by LW might be terrified of telling their family and friends that they're now a race realist.
I recognize that if evidence shows differences in (for example) intelligence between races, then, yeah, I've got to change my belief and except that people of X race are smarter than those from Y. I don't know that this would change my behaviour towards people of either race, or that I think any state policy should change. Perhaps my "racism bad" reflex is stronger than I'm consciously accounting for, but I ...
I think I'm three behind on his books at this stage, not even counting his children's book... but the other books set in Bas-Lag (the Perdido Street Station world) are very good. The Scar is probably my favourite of the three. Iron Council is also pretty good - among other thing, it's a clever pastiche of a number of different kinds of story - but a lot of people get turned off by how heavily political it is. (Miéville is very very Marxist, as far as I know.) It didn't bother me too much.
The City and the City is very good. I've heard it described as a poli...
But if all mathematically possible universes exist anyway (or if they have a chance of existing), then the hypothetical "Azkaban from a universe without EY's logical inconsistencies" exists, no matter whether he writes about it or not. I don't see how writing about it could affect how real/not-real it is.
So by my understanding of how Eliezer explained it, he's not creating Azkaban, in the sense that writing about it causes it to exist, he's describing it. (This is not to say that he's not creating the fiction, but the way I see it create is being used in two different ways.) Unless I'm missing some mechanism by which imagining something causes it to exist, but that seems very unlikely.
However, I deliberately included logical impossibilities into HPMOR, such as tiling a corridor in pentagons and having the objects in Dumbledore's room change number without any being added or subtracted, to avoid the story being real anywhere.
Could you explain why you did that?
As regards the pentagons, I kinda assumed the pentagons weren't regular, equiangular pentagons - you could tile a floor in tiles that were shaped like a square with a triangle on top! Or the pentagons could be different sizes and shapes.
Thank you for the response!
The job of this hypothetical business is to find these things out, and publish them. Answering this question yourself is therefore part of the work required to create such a business, but the short answer is that it's available if you can find it, and by and large, if it's true it's legal to publish (but beware of Swiss laws on business secrets).
That makes a lot of sense, it would be hard to have a service that clarifies and presents already available material be illegal somehow. Defamation laws in Ireland are pretty stupid t...
First off-the-top-of-my-head idea:
An organization that would fulfill a role similar to GiveWell, but for people looking to invest money ethically in businesses. Ethical Investment could evaluate companies on how much their business reduces x-risk, improves the human condition, as well as other factors like environmental impact. What would save this from outright hippiedom is that it's actually encouraging investment in worthwhile companies, not saying "boo capitalism".
Potential problems
Yesterday I received a draft of a poem which I'm setting as a madrigal (SATB) for a concert in September. I only have two weeks to work on it, so time is pretty tight, but for the majority of that time I have my house to myself, the usual distractions in the house aren't available, and recently the place was tidied up so I will be better able to focus. (I find it difficult to study or work when my environment is messy - I don't know if this is common.)
I'm having difficulty finding any particularly 'positive emotion'-music in my collection! Based on what you posted and your responses to other suggestions, here are a few that may be worth checking out:
Bad Religion (solid pop-punk, three part vocal harmonies, highly intellectual to boot), Arctic Monkeys, At The Drive-In (highly charged, very energetic, somewhat anarchic), Ben Folds (modern piano rock, very rockin'), Blue Oyster Cult (not a million miles away from Journey), Kate Bush (80s singer with a unique voice). You probably won't like all of these, but some might be worthwhile.
Eh, I know this is 6 weeks late, but I have it on my computer now if you're still interested. In the meanwhile: Maddox
A few things lead me to this conclusion. a) High crime rates. b) High levels of recidivism. And though it wasn't something I was aware of before, it seems relevant c) the fact that it seems people underestimate how unpleasant prison will be reduces its effectiveness as a deterrent. I agree the opposite seems more intuitive, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
Does anyone have any good web resources on how to be a good community moderator?
A friend and I will shortly be launching a podcast and want to have a Reddit community where listeners can interact with us. He and I will be forum's moderators to begin with, and I want to research how to do it well.