Could you say more, especially about "non-verbal signs"? I can guess what you're gesturing out, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
A kind of contingency planning, but turning it into a habitual mental movement. That seems very valuable.
I think I'd like a different term for this profoundly important idea, something more immediately clear than "fabricated options", especially to people outside our own rationalist-leaning communities.
"Imaginary options" seems more immediately clear. Unfortunately it sounds like it carries a note of mockery, so I don't think it works.
I love the screenshot tool. Could that code be adapted to other platforms – Windows/Android/iOS – or would it need to be coded from scratch?
An archetypal example might be Richard Feynman:
Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing – it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with.
Which led to looking at spinning plates, which led to him developing a diagram for analysing their movement, and ultimately led to his Nobel prize.
Also, I wasn't effusive enough: thank you so much. I love what you're doing with this site.
Feedback on the mobile site.
Using Chrome on a Nexus 6P running Android 8.1.
The suboptimal:
Fair enough, and taking it that way, I think the reasoning does hold up.
Thanks - ahntharhapik seemed obvious but I missed khanfhighur. (Khanfhighur is much more obvious now when I imagine it with an American accent.)
Re my original question, I'm still curious whether there are any clues about the language itself (other than that there are obvious cognates with English and what those cognates are). Does it relate to other stories/worldbuilding
I'm probably overthinking it.
Out of curiosity, do we know anything about the native language of the hero? Ahntharhapik and khanfhighur don't seem to be from existing languages (Edit: by which I mean, using this or similar spelling).
Is there anything significant here for the story, or is Eliezer (say) just avoiding the assumption that the hero is an English speaker?
VENUE UPDATE:
Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane. Level 1, Room 1.
Dead link, FWIW.
Libertarianism secretly relies on most individuals being prosocial enough to tip at a restaurant they won't ever visit again.
I'm puzzled that you gave that specific example, given that it's obviously wrong. Most countries do not have a culture of tipping, and their economies don't implode. They just have less headaches at bill time. And in many cases (a long way from libertarianism) their wait staff get paid a living wage.
I'm also not sure what it means for libertarianism to rely on something, since libertarianism is not an actual functioning thing in e...
When you pick up a cup of water... the force exerted by your hand must be zero.
Unless you are holding the cup up, supporting it against the force of gravity.
Agreed - the article is remarkably rational for a mainstream media op-ed.
THESE DETAILS ARE INCORRECT. I'm trying to get this event deleted.
Thank you. (In hindsight I should have done a page search for "edit".)
Ah, thank you.
(Should have done a page search for "edit", now I think of it.)
Can I edit events that I created on Less Wrong?
It seems I can't. (I ask because I created this event, but when I pasted the details, I neglected to add the city (Melbourne). And now the map is wrong by about 3600km.
MELBOURNE! I forgot to write Melbourne, and the map incorrectly shows Perth. It seems I can't edit an event that I created.
The other writer who also does this extremely well is Vikram Seth, in A Suitable Boy.
As an experiment, a couple raised their child without telling them what colour the sky was. When they eventually asked, the child... thought about it. Eventually... "white". (I'd assumed it was a clear sky. Just realised it's a pointless story if it was cloudy.)
Why Isn't the Sky Blue? - starts with colours in Homer.
I can't answer your questions about / criticisms of my belief, but if you ask my guru (or read his book), he'll definitely have the answers to all your questions."
(Or "her book" etc - but the examples I've come across have all used men as their infallible guru.)
I found the last paragraph-sentence impossible to understand. I may just be not thinking straight, but it could be made clearer, and I'm posting about my confusion because I'm sure there'll be others who are also confused.
"actually does have a certain number of exemplars in real life" refers to the "honest people not being good at lying" theory, plus the risk of huge blow-ups from end of lies.
"though obvious selective reporting is at work in our hearing about this one" clearly refers to this sensational case of someone who w...
Sorry, I left an extra "not" and an extra "but" in. What a horrible sentence - I apologize.
Did you mean: "This version assumes that women are materialistic - worse than just materialistic, it assumes that women assess prospective mates solely on their net worth. It would be good to find a version that doesn't assume that."?
Yes - thank you.
I appreciate the value of the illustrations, but it would be good to find a version that doesn't assume that women are merely materialistic, assessing prospective mates solely on their net worth. Geek communities are often not friendly places for women - some readers will accept the assumptions for the sake of argument, but some are likely to take offence.
Edited when MixedNuts pointed out how confused the original version was. My apologies.
Is it our bias towards optimism? (And is that bias there because pessimists take fewer risks, and therefore don't succeed at much and therefore get eliminated from the gene pool?)
I heard (on a PRI podcast, I think) a brain scientist give an interpretation of the brain as a collection of agents, with consciousness as an interpreting layer that invents reasons for our actions after we've actually done them. There's evidence of this post-fact interpretation - and while I suspect this is only part of the story, it does give a hint that our conscious mind is ...
Open Thread doesn't quite do what the OP is looking for. Open Thread is: A. a bit hard to find (I didn't know it existed, and only found it through the site search) B. a single thread at any one time. Makes it hard to find or follow a particular topic.
Nothing original just now - I just want to go on record as saying that HP:MOR is amazing, brilliant work - I really enjoy it, as well as learning from it.
How did it go?
Btw, I'm in Canberra until ~23rd Jan, and would love to meet other LessWrongers.
I'll be busy at RecentChangesCamp on 20-22 Jan (great event if you're into wikis). So I'm really hoping for something between now and 19 Jan.
I'm 41, working on a wiki project for sustainability and development, which I love (and part-time on a related project which I like and actually get paid for). I use the same username everywhere, so if you're curious, you won't have trouble finding the wiki project.
I'm a one-time evangelical Christian. I think it was emotional damage from my upbringing that made me frightened to let go of that, and I stayed a believer for 9 years, starting in my late teens. I took it extremely seriously, and there were good things about that. But with hindsight, I would di...
I used to trade the stock market, getting into Bollinger Bands and other kinds of chart analysis. Had some successes, but the times that losses came, they were sudden and brutal. In the end, I decided I didn't enjoy it enough to do it well. And I wasn't quite sure I had the ability - the charts seem to work in hindsight, but there were a lot of factors that made looking at patterns in old charts deceptive - the fact that bankrupt stocks were removed from the data history by my data supplier was one obvious problem. And almost every other trader I knew see...
I suspect that many people who use such a phrase would endorse an interpretation such as "The most beautiful... to me."