All of clay's Comments + Replies

clay20

Like the Iced Drink Theory that Mass_Driver gave us last time.

clay20

I would think that the brain is devoting extra processing power to pickup on different social cues and status juxtapositions while listening to the bloggingheads versus text.

0matt
If you listen to it twice at 2x speed, especially with a sleep in between, I'm pretty confident that you'll get and retain more in the time you spend.
clay00

A little later on: Personal life extension conference Oct 9-10

clay20

Illegal??

From wikipedia:

One of the earliest attempts to quantify reasonable doubt was a 1971 article... In a later analysis of the question ("Distributions of Interest for Quantifying Reasonable Doubt and Their Applications," 2006[9]) , three students at Valparaiso University presented a trial to groups of students... From these samples, they concluded that the standard was between 0.70 and 0.74.

The majority of law theorists believe that reasonable doubt cannot be quantified. It is more a qualitative than a quantitative concept. As Rembar notes

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2JRMayne
It's illegal for the prosecution or defense to do so in court. Apologies for the lack of context. The 1971 paper that cites the .70-.74 numbers causes me to believe the people who participated were unbelievably bad at quantation, or that the flaws pointed out in 2006 paper of the 1971 paper are sufficient to destroy the value of that finding, or that this is one of many studies with fatal flaws. I expect there are very few jurors indeed who would convict with a belief that the defendant was 25% to be innocent. I wonder if quantation interferes with analysis for some large group of people? Perhaps just the mention of math interferes with efficient analysis. I don't know; I can say that in math- or physics-intensive cases, both sides try to simplify for the jury. In fact, we have some types of cases with fact patterns that give us fairly narrow confidence ranges; if there's a case where I'm 75% certain the guy did it, and no likely evidence or investigation will improve that number, that's either not issued, or if that state has been reached post-issuance, the case is dismissed.
clay10

Could you help end news/TV enjoyment with this method? Take and then watch TV, play video games, browse reddit/CNN/etc. End political identity biases? Take and then go to a political party meeting, religious service or read a bunch of politically charged information. Food cravings? Take and stuff your face with ice cream and greasy mexican food. Dirty gossip? Take and gossip about who your friends have slept with, who hates who, etc.

Do any of these activites involve the endorphine mechanism related to drug use that it's used for currently? Are you suggesting that this is a possible ticket to becoming a LessWrong superhero?

1Scott Alexander
I don't know. There's no certain reason it shouldn't work, but I could see a couple of possible sticking points. Alcoholism's a much more simple chemical addiction than some of the others. I don't know if those are mediated by opioids, dopamine, or something else entirely (though it would be worth study). And if it works, without some countermethod like the one Roko's hinting at in his comment, you're going to kill your ability to enjoy everything you currently enjoy without gaining any new enjoyment of anything else, which sounds as likely to leave you depressed as superproductive. Oh, and the alcoholics have to take the drug before each time they drink alcohol, even if it's twenty years after the finish the original course and they've been sober the whole time. Otherwise they get the reinforcement and the alcoholism starts to return. So I doubt anyone could practically arrange to take a tablet a half hour before each time they think about in-group politics. In a few years I might be in a better position to actually do some experiments with this stuff, at which point I'll report back.
clay30

Would it be reasonable to request a LW open thread digest to accompany these posts? A simple bullet list of most of the topics covered would be nice.

0RobinZ
On the Wiki, perhaps? A bit of a pain to update it, admittedly...
0k3nt
Love love love this article! A ton of interesting questions to chew on as I wrestle with this problem. Thanks very much for the link. I bookmarked it and will return to it.
7MichaelHoward
Maybe it's the correlation between believing in cryonics and being a smart rationalist, but for my money the most rational arguments against cryonics [Edit: or how cryonics is being practiced] don't come from people against cryonics. They come from cryonics supporters exploring the other side of the argument, or confronting what's wrong so they can try to fix it. I take that as strong evidence that those against cryonics are getting something badly wrong. I nominate the appropriate bits of the above Alcor article as currently the best anti-cryonics article in the world.
0[anonymous]
Maybe it's the correlation between believing in cryonics and being a smart rationalist, but for my money the most rational arguments against cryonics don't come from people against cryonics. They come from cryonics supporters exploring the other side of the argument, or confronting what's wrong so they can try to fix it. I take that as strong evidence that those against cryonics are doing it wrong. I nominate the appropriate bits of the above Alcor article as currently the best anti-cryonics article in the world.
clay30

I thought that this may be of interest to some. There was an IAMA posted on reddit from a person that suffers from alexithmia or lack of emotions recently. Check it out.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9xea8/i_am_unable_to_feel_most_emotion_i_have/

clay00

I just caught this when I saw Silas post in the sidebar. I don't know if you're still around LW, but I live in Richardson as well, although I plan to move to the Bay Area soon.

clay20

Along these lines?

"Jack, there's a team meeting at noon today and you need to be there." "Nope"

1Jack
I guess I was curious if you (1) had generalized knowledge about this skill... like in what sorts of situations will this work in and what situations will this fail in? Are excuses needed? If so when? Are tone, attitude and delivery important? Is there backlash from refusing? Most people seem to think this is a good way to get fired, if this is wrong why do they think this? etc. Also (2) do you have a particularly insightful or entertaining anecdotes of you using this skill? What is biggest request you've refused? Are there refusals you regret making? etc.
clay00

I rented one in Austin from a hippie couple. It was fun.

clay10

Actaully, I don't know why I didn't remember my experiences with sensory depravation tanks years ago. I remember after spending an hour in the tank feeling amazingly refreshed and significantly more able to concentrate on stuff.

1Alicorn
I've thought about trying sensory deprivation before! Is it hard to get access to the tanks?
clay40

Does this have any insights for meditation? Some of my friends swear by it but I cannot bring myself to use the time. Could I meditate for an hour and reset my experiential pica for the day?

3Alicorn
Maybe! Meditation (or a broader class of experience, "sitting around not doing much but not trying to nap either") could be useful for some or all people. It's not something I've tried seriously, mostly because trying to breathe regularly gives me a sore throat and trying to sit very still makes me very itchy.
clay10

I always try searching for course notes that good professors put online. Did you try looking through Andrew Ng's SVM notes?

0anonym
FYI to anyone who may be interested, the parent link is to lectures notes from Andrew Ng's awesome course on Machine Learning, available on youtube as well as through iTunes.
clay60

Monroe Fieldbinder sees psychologist to bounce ideas off him. One of Fieldbinder's ideas is that the phenomenon of modern party-dance is incompatible with self-consciousness, makes for staggeringly unpleasant situations (obvious resource: Amherst/Mt. Holyoke mixer '68) for the all self-conscious person. Modern party-dance is simply writhing to suggestive music. It is ridiculous, silly to watch and excruciatingly embarrassing to perform. It is ridiculous, and yet absolutely everyone does it, so that it is the person who does not want to do the ridiculo

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0CannibalSmith
By the way, obligatory YouTube link.
-1CronoDAS
No it isn't!