All of CalmNearEnd's Comments + Replies

This idea seems amazing.

This is how envisioned the beginning should be:


???: “Hey there.”

Eep! Someone is talking to me! Is he another applicant, or a staff member? Based on my own school there were roughly 30 students in a classroom to the one teacher. So 30 to 1. Adding in other staff members such as janitors, secretaries, and the principal I'll say to 1 staff member to 24 students to makes the math nice. That makes my prior a one in twenty five chance for it to be a staff member before I turn around.

I’m guessing that applicant would look a lot younger ... (read more)

8ArisKatsaris
Since in the immediately next part the protagonist assigns a 50% chance on a monster being behind her back (because she doesn't know for sure either way), I'm guessing that the concept of having reasonable priors is one which is supposed to get gradually introduced. This early on, the character's estimates seem to be tending to go from a false 50% to either a false 0/% or a false 100%. So, yeah, what you suggest is probably too complex to start with.

I downloaded StayFocusd which allows me to have 10 minutes of FaceBook a day and then blocks it and I was playing a computer game too much so I just uninstalled it.

I like this idea of taking action while I'm mindful to prevent myself from doing things that are a waste of time when I'm in normal zombie mode.

0DeevGrape
"zombie mode" -- I love this description! Mostly because it reminds me of Professor Quirrell, but still, it definitely describes how I feel when I'm in a procrastination/akrasia/depression cycle. I also have StayFocusd, which I find useful for automatically logging the amount of time I spend doing things I don't care about. It doesn't forcibly stop me from wandering (since it's simple enough to disable), but just knowing that I'm eating up my "leisure time" is enough to keep me doing things that are at least pseudo-productive.

I just got a new job and my boss is really terrible at Being Specific. At first I wasn't worried because I figured I would just force him to Be Specific by asking precise questions. I felt like my questions were awesome but I still wasn't getting the information I needed out of him and I couldn't figure out why.

I was super excited when I figured it out: he was interrupting me in the middle of my questions and giving an answer to a question he was imagining. I tried talking through him and finishing my question when he interrupted me and it worked. He answ... (read more)

5[anonymous]
Neat, but seems nonoptimal to have to talk over people. Can you perhaps restructure your questions to not make any sense until the precise part is delivered? Like "Can you tell me any good stores around here - that sell cars - specifically red ones?" could be transformed to "I am looking for a red car. Are there any good stores around here for that?" I'll try out your technique next time I have that problem.

Hello, I'm Dean! I just attended the minicamp, and this is my first post.

On my flight back I started talking to the guy beside me, which is something I wouldn't usually do. I've wanted to talk to the person beside me on the flight before and it hasn't happened because I got nervous. This time I used a trigger to perform a next action. The trigger was getting to my seat and the action was saying hello to my seat mate BEFORE I sat down. It worked well because for me the hardest part of talking to a stranger is making the first move.

He was a chemical engineer and we shared amazing conversation for the whole flight.

0james_edwards
Nice work Dean!