All of CAE_Jones's Comments + Replies

Obvious advice is obvious because it works, yes. The background assumption is that it is all implementable without further advice-wanting requirements. Advice for building a kickass gaming PC in 2017 with secure income and access to the internet will be simpler than the same advice adapted for 1950, because PCs were not available in 1950, the internet did not exist, and computers were huge, slow, and low on storage capacity as compared to 2000, never mind 2017.

Of course, if this could be fully generalized to all contexts, it would likely have been done by ... (read more)

Then again, I sometimes feel as if I'm one-eyed, saying "I understand how having two eyes would be better, but is it really necessary?"

You know, discovering LessWrong forced me to reconsider exactly this. I mean, the "you don't know what you're missing if you never had it" argument never seemed wrong before LW, just annoying.

Realistically, if a cheap and quick-to-heal eye repair/replacement method became available tomorrow, I can only try to imagine how my brain would respond to a random extra input. And depth perception sounds lik... (read more)

I've heard the phrase "disability markup" used to describe how almost everything ever targeted toward physical or sensory disabilities are absurdly expensive. That name implies more intentional malice than I expect is at work; I'd generally round off to "market forces"--it's difficult to take advantage of mass market capitalism when selling to a minority, but it is possible to take advantage of government assistance programs.

It seems like, though, based on my (very limited) understanding of hearing aids, a charitable version of "di... (read more)

No, I'm afraid of the witch-hunters. (So far, polling indicates that this was not the right hypothesis for the commentary in general.) I avoided commenting until my previous comment because I was pretty sure I'd regret it--probably missing the point or getting drawn into the political deluge--and it seems this was the correct expectation.

Five years ago

Five years ago, we weren't just coming down from a spree of witch-hunts in which online mobs destroy people's lives for being insufficiently politically correct. I suspect lots of "be on the look out for anything that looks sexist" conditioning still hasn't worn off. But I might be mind-projecting.

Actually, it seems worth a poll. did/did not take it as something close to rape apologia, are/are not worried about doxing or other such harassment campaigns?

[pollid:1126]

Perhaps instead of "divorced from", I should have said "adversarial to"?

Or maybe I should have just left it at "adversarial" and not bothered bringing up the relation to reality at all.

I was thinking of a specific comment I wrote multiple replies to before successfully restraining myself with the realization that it was blatant flame-bait. I do not claim that the basic point ("groups x y and z produce fewer successful people on average than groups u v and w", and "mediocre success gets signal-boosted among disadvantaged groups") is false. I do claim that the way the_lion conducted himself during the discussion rapidly stopped including a willingness to engage with facts or use enough clarity to make some of his claims... (read more)

I'd certainly grant that you could well be correct in your impressions. After all, it's odd for him to go from this to this week's spree of what looks a lot like trolling, seemingly over getting a rule against his voting strategies enforced.

It wasn't so much the racism, as the completely assinine, dogmatic, insulting-to-everyone-involved, divorced-from-reality manner in which he went about it. At least his previous incarnations didn't sound like a Klansman got drunk and decided to go trolling (Heck, some of his stuff in his original form was downright reasonable, and when it wasn't, he still came across as the more rational person in the conversation at times, even if you disagreed with his conclusions).

He was originally banned for abusing the voting system to try and remove his political opp... (read more)

I understand QI as related to the Anthropic Principal. The point is that you will tend to find yourself observing things, which implies that there is an effectively immortal version of you somewhere in probability space. It doesn't require that any Quantum Immortals coexist in the same world.

Of course, we'd be far more likely to continue observing things in a world where immortality is already available than in one where it is not, but since we're not in that world, it doesn't seem too outlandish to give a little weight to the idea that the absence of Quan... (read more)

I can only remember one instance in which I noticed a black person in a CS class*. He clearly wasn't connecting with anyone else there on a cultural level, but he was making much better observations and comments than most anyone else (some of the people who sounded like a Racial Realist's dream programmers were answering simple questions with facepalm-worthy wonkiness).

What stuck out to me most, though, was whenever the teacher would elaborate on or correct any of that black student's responses, the student would respond to everything with a very submissiv... (read more)

There was a recent thread in discussion trying to objectively evaluate Obama's presidency. The general conclusion seems to be, based on comparing policy outcomes and polling data with that of other presidents, that Obama is a fairly mediocre president, and unless some evidence surfaces that he was secretly the mastermind behind ISIS, in no way among the worst.

Ah, yeah, that's true. Adjectives exhibit verb-like behavior in several East Asian languages; that they also do this in Chinese kinda slipped my mind.

I was under the impression that 是 was Chinese for "to be". The nuance isn't quite the same--you can say 是 in response to "are or aren't you American?", but that's more or less subject-omission--but it seems close enough?

But my experience with Chinese includes only two years of Mandarin classes and a few podcasts; I haven't studied the linguistics in so much detail, and that studying ended 5 years ago, so if you're basing this on something I don't know, I'd be glad for the correction.

What do "destroy" and "recreate" mean?

I interpret them as meaning something like "disassemble" and "reassemble in the same configuration as before, with the same component parts"

That's not how I interpret the descriptions of the destructive teleportation, uploading, and forking scenarios.

The only arguments I can presently think of that really make me doubt my response to the "do you survive destructive uploading/teleportation/copying?" questions are more on the lines of the Ship of Theseus. My computer rema... (read more)

I honestly have no idea if I have excess bodyfat (not weight; at last check I was well under 140Lbs, which makes me lighter than some decidedly not overweight people I know, some of whom are shorter than me), but if I did and wanted to get rid of it... I have quite a few obstacles, the biggest being financial and Akrasia-from-Hell. Mostly that last one, because lack of akrasia = more problem-solving power = better chances of escaping the wellfare cliff. (I only half apply Akrasia to diet and exercise; it's rather that my options are limited. Though reducin... (read more)

By third-world comparisons, yes. Otherwise, I doubt it. Provide an example. (Or pledge 50% of your richness to GiveWell)

Unless the third world includes the United States outside of the Bay Area and New England (which, judging by the term "fly-over country", it probably does in lots of minds), then yes, LWers talking about attending CFAR's $3000 workshops and traveling all over the place and how they're already working for a big software giant and talked their bosses into giving them a raise are signs of being toward the higher end of the Ameri... (read more)

Meta/style: I expect the first two sentences of your comment to attract more negative feedback than the rest of it. I might have upvoted if they hadn't primed me to be annoyed. (I read the comment before I read your name, and I'm glad to see the subject taken seriously; the frustration comes from those two sentences. I'm not sure how to explain why. I understand the cultural assumptions that led you to include them, assuming this was genuine and not shock-bait, which seems a safe assumption.)

It would be the most helpful if done prior to puberty.

I'd worry about cardiovascular side-effects, fat accumulation/redistribution, mental side-effects (something something spatial rotation)... basically, I've studied this on and off since puberty (and not before, because life would be boring if I could do anything right the first time), and concluded that, given my current state of health, castration would probably make more things worse than it improves. Actually, I concluded that circa 2008, and I'm pretty sure I was ever-so-slightly healthier then.

I must admit, had lucy managed to only post the vampire ads in threads about interventions to increase longevity / social skills / etc, I might have considered them worth keeping around for entertainment value. At least then we could use them as an excuse to discuss how blood transfusions from healthy donors affects various quality-of-life factors.

(I wonder how long before someone tries to start a business based around selling healthy blood / fecal transplants / etc, and how long before the FDA tells them to stop before they sell someone diseases.)

Based on what I've encountered, I've interpreted the Japanese version as being more broad and metaphysical (the power of friendship, Killing intent), whereas the Chinese version is more like Alchemy: not quite science, but sorta-kinda tries to be (Fengshui and TCM, but also conservation of energy and such). There is considerable overlap, since ki is literally qi filtered through Japanese culture, but I generally expect people who talk about qi to be more interested in the Alternative Medicine route, whereas Ki indicates one or more of anime fan / Aikido practitioner / practitioner of Japanese spirituality. (These are more probabilities than hard categories; Reiki is a good counterexample.)

Having "interesting to journalists" but not "interesting for standard social interaction" covered might be a personal extreme that isn't true for everybody in LW,

Second datapoint: I've been interviewed by journalists a few times, am terrible at people in general. (A whole half of these would have been dull and pointless interviews if not for my visual impairment. The others I could see happening regardless.)

My general expectation is that either you're right, people will complain loudly until food and water stay cheap, or prices will avoid inflating because the people who produce need the people living on UBI to buy their stuff.

I have no general idea on which is more probable. I like the last one because it is the most convenient, but I'm not convinced it has any more probability than the first two.

Based on personal experience, I would have agreed with you, right up until last year, when I found myself in the rather terrifying position of being mentally aroused by a huge crash in my house, but unable to wake up all the way for several seconds afterward, during which my sleeping mind refused to reject the "something just blew a hole in the building we're under attack!" hypothesis.

(It was an overfilled bag falling off the wall.)

But absent actual difficulty waking for potential emergencies, sure; hang out in Tel'aran'rhiod until you get bored.

More charitable hypothesis: The people most likely to notice an advancedatheist comment the quickest downvote. The next wave of people finds the downvoting excessive and upvote in response.

This doesn't really predict -10 to +3 swings, though.

I tried entering the code in the examples there, with the labels replaced. It showed up as code. Then I noticed polls showing up in the Recent Comments list (where markdown is not rendered) as [poll id=\], and concluded there must be some middle step that was somehow obvious to everyone else that I couldn't find.

One side-note: I notice that I seem to be almost the only one using polls. Why is that?

I tried a couple times, but couldn't figure out how to make them work. The wiki wasn't especially helpful.

My life got worse after I found LessWrong, but I can't really attribute that to a causal relationship. I just don't belong in this world, I think.

I can imagine LW-style rationality being helpful if you're already far enough above baseline in enough areas that you would have been fairly close to winning regardless. (I am now imagining "baseline" as the surface of liquids in Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3. If I start having nightmares including the drowning music, ... I'll... ... have a more colorful way to describe despair to the internet, I guess.)

As you say, if we use the number 1, then we shouldn't wear seatbelts, get fire insurance, or eat healthy to avoid getting cancer, since all of those can be classified as Pascal's Muggings.

And in fact, it has taken lots of pushing to make all of those things common enough that we can no longer say that no one does them. (In fact, looking back at hte 90s and early 2000s, it feels like wearing one's seatbelt at all times was pretty contrarian, where I live. This is only changing thanks to intense advertising campaigns.)

Not that I'm aware, but you might check the "fiction" tag on Slatestarcodex. (I remember finding a similarly useful tag on his Livejournal, but I don't remember what it was called OTTOMH).

(I don't think it's advisable, for a handful of reasons, [...])

I agree, even though I'm effectively punishing my past self in doing so.

I would like there to be a mechanism for making this possible, but it just seems too dangerous; even the idea of delaying puberty until the age of consent doesn't work, because apparently this path can have permanent side-effects as well.

If the son is not transgender,

Possibly TMI:

I don't consider myself transgender, but I have been wishing this had been done to me pretty much since I was 12.

The main thing I learned from this article is that everything I thought I knew about castration holds up under Lesswrongian analysis, including the part where I completely missed the opportunity and would probably be more likely to die early were I castrated now. There would still be some advantages, but it seems too late to be worth it.

You did specify "presumably normal", though. Presumably, I am far from normal.

You aren't possibly within range of Slate Star Codex meetups, by any chance?

(I am painfully aware that being in the same state (never mind country) is insufficient to provide easy access to people/events, but it seemed worth asking.)

A subset of Speech Therapy (especially for Autism Spectrum) covers exactly this sort of thing. I rather doubt it's what you're looking for, even if it's an option, but it fits what you described almost perfectly. The major issues would be the tendency toward a more clinical setting, only being an hour or so a week, the limited pool of people to practice with, and establishing your existing skills.

Have you looked at whether there are times when your capacity for action and/or enjoyment is better? When it's worse? This might give you some hypotheses to test to get some improvement.

I tried to do a somewhat quantified analysis of pairs of years, starting from 2002 (anything before 2002 is distorted by lots of things that I can't change without technology and the rest of the world obliging). I found that the best phases seemed to correlate most strongly with something resembling enforced pomodoros, and something resembling access to people. Trying to... (read more)

What happened when you attempted to do pomodoros?

I've tried this more than once. Each time shows some improvement (each time, it's less than the previous) for maybe a week or so at most, followed by horrible crashing.

Try doing whatever it is you need to do (not sure from your posting) physically with other people doing the same thing.

I'm blind and live in Northeast Arkansas and have no friends and the only part of this that seems like it should be easy is getting over the anxiety that prevents me from walking to the bus stop (I still haven't done this. I've spoken to DSB about it but have no idea if anything will come of this). And my social skills are only technically extant.

I did try something last year where I talked to someone on Skype between us both trying pomodoros and such. I only lasted about a week.

(Akrasia, because that's all I ever talk about):

I do not know to whose attention I should bring this so as to combat the problem, so I'm asking here:

http://caejones.livejournal.com/18117.html

I have a stupidly difficult time talking to people, too, especially my parents (who pretty much have to manage all the details, because of course they do). This does not help.

Yes, I've read all the Akrasia articles on Lesswrong that I can find. Mostly, I'm hoping there's someone better equipped to fix this than me or the internet, and that someone can help me find that... (read more)

In Praise of Life (Let’s Ditch the Cult of Longevity)

That article would be better titled "In Praise of Death", and is a string of the usual platitudes and circularities.

I'm now curious: where are the essays that make actual arguments in favor of death? The linked article doesn't make any; it just asserts that death is OK and we're being silly for fighting it, without actually providing a reason (they cite Borges's distopias at the end, but this paragraph has practically nothing in common with the rest of the article, which seems to assume i... (read more)

(I do not claim to speak for the_jaded_one, but this needs to be said.)

So, you can't - for whatever reason - make yourself an alarm, a checklist, or basically anything that's a sign that says "negative ROI - stop immedietly"?

No. On the occasion that this is an option, it is fairly useless.

akrasia as far as I can tell is usually codeword for "I'm a lazy fuck".

Akrasia is shorthand for "I have spent the past nine years desperately trying to get the action part of my brain and the conscious desire part of my brain to agree, and... (read more)

Last summer, I installed Leach Block in Firefox.

This morning, I disabled it, because I determined that I'd rather waste time in Firefox than waste time in Internet Explorer.

I'd still expect carts to be useful in cultures that use loads of wood, or maybe to transport larger quantities of materials for trade. For example, this Seneca story has a man burning logs down to a size he can easily carry. Some northern peoples used dogs as pack animals, but the only land vehicles I'm aware of were sleds.

The tricks with the Basilisk and the Proddian[sic] charm seem like they could have been adaptable to HPMoR, but at the same time, canon Hermione was older when she accomplished those things.

Even in canon, discoveries in potions were plainly not her thing, at least; see Half Blood Prince.

I've heard similar techniques suggested for astral projection and self hypnosis. With the former, I actually heard the reverse order on muscle relaxation, with the idea being to move attention away from the body and into the mind.

Back when I could actually concentrate for more than 5 seconds, my early experiments with this technique resulted in me feeling something odd around my spine, as though there was some sort of force or pressure fluctuating with my breathing (probably because that's how breathing works and my posture was better than usual thanks to ... (read more)

My biggest setback is needing to rely on someone else to reach the training area. I could probably have walked to the dojo before it moved, but I didn't know the way; seeing as I actually got up early enough for the morning session, this was just frustrating (I did once try going anyway, but my GPS is terrible).

I knew someone in high school who wound up obtaining some weighted training equipment--arm/wrist bands, a vest, etc... think Dragonball Z. And that was quite enough to get him frequently running the local "mountain" (The threshold for moun... (read more)

It's hard to say; maybe there's a bit of cultural osmosis involved? Maybe it has to do with the combination of the vast amounts of unused space and the influx of jobs other than family farms (the one branch of my father's family that almost kept their own little extended clan together is so big on livestock, especially horses, that I honestly have no idea what jobs any of them have had. There was a family farm before I was born, but my father's oldest brother mismanaged it into oblivion).

My town has a significant manufacture sector, but it's mostly food pr... (read more)

I wonder if MetaMed does mental illness. Last I heard, they're still in the early, way-too-expensive-for-the-likes-of-me phase, but they're more or less "LW-affiliated rationalists try to filter the science to optimize your solution".

If there nobody to talk about deep personal issues in the city in which you are living, why are you living in the city in the first place?

The last time you posted something like this, I fretted for a whole day, trying to figure out how to respond. I found I could not do so without a mindkillxplosion at how offensive it is, so I settled for a silent downvote.

Welcome to the Mid-southern United States, where nothing is within walking distance of anything else, huge swaths of land have no sidewalks, gas mileage is artificially deflated, public transit consi... (read more)

I'm sure this is a problem for others, too.

Yes.

I'm in Northeast Arkansas. I considered trying to reach the St Louis Meetup Groups (my town's only cheap way out for someone who can't drive just happens to be to St Louis, and only St Louis), but for a number of reasons that never happened before that meetup group was defunct.

Meetup.com did briefly have a skeptics group in my town. Briefly--before I could get over my panic at the "describe yourself" requirement, it, too, was defunct. Otherwise, the meetups within 50 miles of me appear to include moms and a group of board gamers in Memphis.

On Akrasia:

• Improving the Akrasia Hypothesis
• Akrasia Tactics Review: The Akrasia Strikes Back
• Kicking Akrasia: Now or Never
• Proposal: Anti Akrasia Alliance
• Akrasia and Immunity to Change
• Rationality, Akrasia and Competitiveness

And it goes on and on, with no victory in sight.

I feel like I could fight the rest of my problems effectively with what I have (or at least, quickly learn otherwise) if I wasn't so paralyzed by Akrasia that the only resource I actually have is the ability to type incoherent comments into a small selection of websites.

I couldn't so... (read more)