All of eeuuah's Comments + Replies

Yeah that's reasonable. I read your post as being unwilling to bet even $1000 overall, my b if that was a misinterpretation.

I didn't expect you would be making any money on this venture (social organizing is usually expensive) - I expect that anyone willing to put together a venture like this is doing it because they think the outcome will be good, not because they think it will be personally profitable.

Regardless, I look forward to seeing what comes of your experiment.

For an experiment that is going to have an explicit cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, and an even higher implicit cost, $1000 doesn't seem like very much to bet on an aspect of it which you are confident in.

Not that the experiment would necessarily be an overall failure if some participants experience great emotional stress and washed out. A sufficiently high performance pressure org should expect wash outs.

(For what it's worth, I am sympathetic to the sort of thing you're trying to do here, and would be interested in participating in a similar experiment, but am very turned off by particular elements of your approach.)

0Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)
Betting $1000 has a low cost, but betting $1000 multiple times adds up; I don't make very much money and won't be making any through this experiment (indeed, I expect to lose money funding various little projects).

You can fake this reasonably well with tags, or alternately, just importing on a chapter by chapter basis.

The expression is "against the grain", deriving from cutting wood against its grain, fyi.

I don't know why common opinion is against it, it's just the impression I've gotten. I think it stems from the tendency to caution against blindly memorizing things that you could just look up when needed.

But there's a middle ground of things that I'll forget without anki cards but that I do use often enough to justify memorizing.

I don't have a ton of math cards, but I have a few, plus I've used anki alongside a few other textbooks (as well as for learning programming languages, which is against the grain of common advice), and I've been using anki effectively for about three years now (I used it ineffectively for several months before that - I think the learning curve of making good cards about the right things is one of the hardest parts of anki).

I think long term retention of these texts is one of the biggest advantages it has. I tend to go through phases of caring and not carin... (read more)

0Arthur Milchior
Why the grain of common advice (never heard this expression before) says not to use Anki to learn programming language ? I find it useful in order to recall the order of the argument of certain functions, like List.fold_left and List.fold_right, that I often uses when programming.

How do you get notifications only if there are still due cards? I would like this

To flesh out my opinion:

  • I have basically all notifications off (really only for calls, texts, and alarms), which minimizes the downsides
  • having maps / search available all the time is really convenient. I used to spend a lot of effort either looking up directions or being lost, now I don't
    • I've found that using my phone to triage emails / rss / whatever is faster than on a full computer, because of the touchscreen
  • it functions as a mobile hot spot (not sure if older phones do this) so when it's nice out I can sit in the park and work, which is pretty p
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0Regex
My first thought: "Oh, you leave your house." I'm either at my computer or class with little time between, so there isn't much downtime for me to even use my phone. It is just an alarm clock people can talk to me from. Admittedly I do have a tablet, but for the most part it is used for taking notes and so it may as well be replaced by a paper notebook, but I'm a sucker for OneNote. Because I spend every non-class minute walking or at home I've yet to give my tablet another role beyond that since my desktop is so much superior.

Yeah I really should use moisturizer more often, but I can never seem to find a convenient place in my daily routine for it

I could send you some of my anki cards, but I don't know that you'll get useful structural information out of them. They tend to be pretty random bits that I think I'll want to know or phrases I want to build associations between. For most things, I take actual notes (I find that writing things down helps me remember the shape of the idea better, even if I never look at them), and only make flashcards for the highest value ideas.

It took me several months of starting and quitting anki to start to get the hang of it, and I'm still learning how to better stru... (read more)

I have been wanting to increase my general kindness lately. If anyone is looking for an accountability partner for random acts of kindness, gratitude journaling, or anything similar (or has good ideas), let me know.

Yeah that seems like it would work pretty well for the case of country data. Let us know how development goes!

This kind of thing sounds very useful especially if easily extensible. How are you planning to make the ui for this work? I think it would be fairly challenging to make it both easily available without being obnoxiously overpresent and am interested to hear your approach to the problem.

2sixes_and_sevens
For the country data example, every instance of a country name is prepended with a small icon (for development purposes this is currently an obnoxious red X, but I plan to replace this with a neutral-coloured globe or something), and the name itself is wrapped in some custom style (currently boldface, but could be anything). Clicking on the icon places a container with the relevant data on the page, offset to the same location as the icon, (giving the illusion of the icon "expanding" to show the data). Clicking on the icon again, or away from the container, removes it. In terms of extensibility, all the data is in a local JSON file, and the format of the data container is an HTML template that might eventually live in the same file. I'm also planning on having local image assets (maps and flags). This could all be swapped out for anything, or even obtained from a web service.

For what it's worth, when I first started trying to improve my social skills, I spent a fair amount of time chatting with strangers at bus stops. I guess the less wrong study hall is probably not as useful for pomodoros if you can't see (since I don't think people usually actually talk much).

Speaking of, I should probably try pomodoros again :) I've also failed to adopt them usefully the last couple times

Try doing whatever it is you need to do (not sure from your posting) physically with other people doing the same thing. I've found that this is both the lowest effort and most effective way for me to overcome akrasia. If you feel like you can't motivate yourself, put yourself somewhere where your goals are downhill from you and let gravity carry you.

Not sure what your exact goals are, but feel free to ask if you want more help.

0CAE_Jones
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.

Overall I agree with your post. As someone who feels like they're getting a lot out of anki, a few quick notes on my experience with it (been using for ~15 months continuously now)

  • The first 2-4 months of use for me were very difficult, and consisting mostly of making bad cards that didn't usefully cement knowledge. I quit (for about 6ish months each time) twice.
  • Anki is much better suited to some knowledge domains than others. I think the classic example of this is language learning - many people undisputedly have a lot of success with srs in this domain
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That's slightly terrifying, but I guess makes sense as an incentive to perform life saving medical interventions

Does this criteria apply to present-day questions that are in vaguely the same ballpark? That is, do you choose who to help based on whether or not you can force them to pay you?

Good point here - I don't usually have any mechanism to force people to pay me. I usually to help based on how likely I think it I am to get what I want out of it. A few examples:

  • I help my employer accomplish their goals very often, because I think they will pay me.
  • I help my friends with things because so far they have cooperated and helped me things in return.
  • Sometimes I he
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You would need to be able to provide value for me - so you would need to have skills (or the ability to gain skills) that are still in expensive and in demand, and society would need to give me an enforceable right to extract that value from you. Slavery or indentured servitude, perhaps.

1DataPacRat
If I may ask, are you yourself a cryonicist who might end up facing the question from either side? You seem to be assuming that immediate economic value is the only value worth considering; was this your intent? Does this criteria apply to present-day questions that are in vaguely the same ballpark? That is, do you choose who to help based on whether or not you can force them to pay you?
0DanielLC
It's already legal to perform a medical procedure to save someone's life without their consent if they're not capable of consenting, and then demand payment. You could still go bankrupt, but that causes problems so if you're capable of repaying you probably would.

You keep bringing up sucking at writing as a core reason there's a poor reception to your ideas. This doesn't seem correct to me, the mechanics of your writing seem fine. A couple things you could do to improve to improve your posts:

  • Cut the length. I've noticed this especially with your comments. You can't assume a reader is going to take five minutes to really dig into what you're saying. You need to make your basic case in the first twenty seconds or so, and keep it brisk.
  • Inline information. Instead of throwing a bunch of links out there, explain a li
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-5Xerographica

A smart phone is easily the highest roi purchase I've ever made. For people who don't have them, seriously it's worth it.

0Regex
As a counter opinion, I barely use my smart phone for anything I didn't use my old Razr phone for. The only reason I got it was because it was actually cheaper to get a new smart phone than to continue on the old plan. The cost I pay is that I have to charge it every day.
0listic
Your claim is worthless without context. Please provide some evidence: why is smartphone the highest ROI purchase for you and why do you think it will be worth it for others. With smartphones as ubiquitous as they are today, computer-literate people who don't have them should have their reasons. You don' t provide any. My reasons for not having a smartphone are: I predict that benefits of smartphone ownership will not justify the cost of ownership for me. The cost of ownership consists of: One-time: * Researching and choosing a smartphone * Learning to use it and its many applications * Cost (smartphone must be bought) Recurring: * One more thing to manage and obsess over * One more thing to charge and not lose * A distraction that's always with me. I cannot do any productive work on the phone, but I can use the internet, very slowly. Any time and energy spent on it would be better spent elsewhere. * Data plans cost money. Of course, smartphone usage has its well-documented benefits, but for me they didn't yet outweigh the costs. The reason I ultimately surrendered and bought a smartphone was that I hoped to implement Allen's GTD with it. Only later I came across his interview where he advices not to use brand new technologies for GTD, but tried and true ones, that you are already comfortable with. So true.

they're also on record as having really regretted doing it

Mostly agree with your point (I don't really recommend linux for most people, despite having happily used archlinux for years), but minor nit in that photoshop is primarily made for os x, I think. At least all of the designers I know use macs (slightly confounded by working for a SaaS startup).

My skin (particularly my hands, because soap is harsh) is prone to drying out, so a humidifier really reduces small issues.

0NoSignalNoNoise
So does mine. The humidifier helps, but since I spend a lot of time in environments where I can't easily install one (eg work), I also use moisturizer.

the buttons on a high end suit can cost much more than 10 euro. First hit on amazon for mother of pearl buttons is $36, and I'm sure there are more expensive materials in use. Likewise for fabric, I think. Do you need these things? No. But they exist, and you can pay for them.

Also typically the cost of clothing approximately doubles every times it changes hands, so if cost of product was $500, the retailer might pay $1000, and the consumer might pay $2000.

High fashion really is expensive just to be expensive, though.

0[anonymous]
The interesting thing is not even that high fashion is largely meant to signal wealth. People could be wearing some random tracksuit and show of their wealth with jewelry - that is actually a saner investment resales value wise. But that would be called "ghetto", "not classy", largely because it is so obvious. High fashion is for people who want to show off wealth while not looking like someone who wants to show off wealth. Counter-signalling - people trying to look like someone who does not need to look wealthy anymore, because the people who do are middle class and these people are one level higher. But since even this is too obvious, about 10-15 years ago a new category of people (I think it overlaps a lot with the category called "hipsters") emerged who purposefully try to look poor / not conventionally rich and yet you can guess they have money because they always have the latest iProducts.
0Izeinwinter
Shorter, clearer point: past a certain price point, buying clothes in shops is daft - Anything which you buy off rack is going to be strictly inferior in terms of fit and construction to the tailored version, so once you pass the price point where you could elect to patronize a tailor, the only possible reason to spend more money is status signaling. With a side order of signaling one does not grasp how to spend money correctly. Personally I sew everything other than jeans. Hmm. You know what, I need a new suit or two anyway. This should make a funny blog post in about 2 weeks.
  • the font is obnoxious
  • I've already tried gratitude journaling, and don't expect this to be hugely different
  • seems like other-optimizing

The biggest hangup I've found in using multiple computers simultaneously is copy pasting long strings. I can chat them to myself, but it's still slightly awkwarder than I'd like.

Otherwise, Sherincall is pretty on point.

If your goal is for this to be a temporary step, pick whichever one will make a stronger argument. I.e. if one has much better substitutes available, get rid of it now.

Shouldn't outcome 2 be given higher weight on account of having actually happened before? Reallocation of wealth seems to be a pretty common outcome of shifts in power.

3James_Miller
Yes

One thing that can affect this is the material used in the jeans. Typically, a lot of synthetic fabrics tend to start smelling more easily, while wool and silk are known for being naturally odor resistant. This can vary some, but it's a good general guideline.

Additionally, if you're on os x, Textmate is basically the other Sublime. While I don't use any of their super advanced features, I've used the two interchangeably essentially without having to relearn any key commands.

I think this is part of where the emacs / vim divide comes from.

How did you learn to think without verbal structure? That sounds very interesting and possibly useful.

1Slider
I never had a goal of learning to think without verbal structure. I would just be thinking very hard and in long marathon sessions. Then I would find the smallest nuances and distinctinos matter, a lot like collding particles with gigatons of energy to find out that a mass with vanishing quantity seems to be missing. I would find that I made some interference when pressed and I couldn't attribute it to any formal process. Search for the motivation for the alien thoguhts usual found a formal process that would be sympathetic to the end result. If it happened quickly enough I wouldhave just thought that I must have had thought taht thought wityh words as i can treat it afterwards as being equivalent to a verbal argument. However when this happened often enough I noticed that there was a delay or rather a small time that I didn't have any verbal representation but my thinking didn't seem to break down: I would still be confident that such an explanation would come forth but I could not be honest in beliefing that the representation would come/be first and the functionality second. It was as if the program was executing first and then later the source code would be written. In theory there is no snowball chance in hell for it to work like that but having empirical firsthand evidence that my brain didn't melt down or divide by zero, I knew I would need to hear the story the evidence was telling instead of the explanation I was used to give. This behaviour was most apparent where multiple trains of thought could be given a sympathetic backing. If you do a math homework, the middle steps don't matter (or atleast should not). You can just omit the middle and pretnd they don't exist (the issue on which level of omission is appropriate). But when there are multiple valid options such as what TV channel to watch next what middle steps are triggered will "matter", a view where they get omitted would be probabilitistic. Having such a juncture point and treating your "middle st

Long distance foot commuting is still pretty bad. In my experience I don't hate the world as much, but burning two plus hours a day commuting sucks no matter what. The subway is definitely much better than car commuting, but not as nice as biking or walking. I think subway commuting is vastly improved by good distractions available through a smartphone, though.

I enjoy sugarless black tea. I didn't use to. I got into through green tea (which I admittedly still prefer in the general). I think drinking a lot of green tea and getting pretty into it (trying lots of different loose leaf types, learning about ideal steeping temperatures and times) got me used to the basic form of tea, after which it's a lot easier to get into black tea.

If you work somewhere they do pair programming that can help with a lot of the issues though.

Let's talk about the fact that the top two comments on a very nice contribution in the open thread is about how this is the wrong place for the post, or how it is why LW is dying. Actually let's not talk about that.

Thanks for sharing the extension! I'll try to post a walk through of how I got it working if I do.

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In my anecdotal experience, being underweight is correlated with being unusually susceptible to cold. Building some mass might help. Consider doing a more general strength program too.

Probably not, but my point still stands for most leather shoes and other sneakers.

I would second that futon

Having static informational windows that you can view without getting rid of what your working on is highly valuable in my experience.

I've found I can successfully use 4 screens (primary screen for document editing, secondary for documentation, tertiary for viewing of test output, extra laptop with all my chats open (so I don't have to change mouse focus to talk to someone)), but I've never tried more.

Is that really true though? I've found with sneakers the sole lasts 250-500 miles, so buying a shoe that costs more than $40 is almost certainly bad value from a durability perspective.

For shoes that can be resoled, this number increases, as you want an upper that will last through a number of resoles, but the shoes with highest durability/cost are still not going to be on the expensive end of the shoe type.

0RomeoStevens
if you want/are able to wear running shoes all the time the advice doesn't really apply.
  1. I'd send myself an email or text my girlfriend. If I was more worried about it I'd leave myself a note in the place I typically leave myself notes.

  2. Ask for a second to write the name of the book down, that probably wouldn't be rude in context. If I can't do that but I have a pen, write it on my hand. If I had no other choice I would try binding an image of my door shattering as I opened it.

  3. Bind the habit I want to the fridge door, and explicitly practice closing it a few times a day for a while.

  4. Get them to point out the location on my gps, if possibl

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Project Euler is a really good tool for getting the hang of a new language, imo. Strongly recommend it to anyone who wants an interesting project that will teach basic skills.

I actually did mean does :) Sinatra is definitely easier to understand than Rails and I agree that if the first code I had worked on with ruby was Rails instead of Sinatra I would have been pretty fucking confused (note that, at least in App Academy's case, the precourse work involves a fair amount of pure ruby). The real benefit of the bootcamps (I hope, anyway) is taking someone fro... (read more)

The fact that most bootcamps focus on webdev is probably not for any theoretical reason, but just that the practical uses of what you do are very apparent and you will see visible evidence of skills for which there is market demand very quickly and very often.

What would your ideal of a good place to start learning programming conceptually? I think phone app dev tends to be less elegant than webdev. While understanding C and pointers has value, imo, being able to do something useful with it is not within the reach of a bootcamp and learning it just for theo... (read more)

3John_Maxwell
Solving Project Euler problems, writing command line apps, creating games using Pygame or some JavaScript game development framework (or just a command-line hangman)? Or, even better, some programming project you are interested in for its own sake. You mean doesn't? Yeah, I agree, my suggestions are not nearly as fleshed out as Peter's. I certainly don't mean to discourage folks like you. I think learning Ruby on Rails is a great idea. I wouldn't suggest that someone who's partway through the path Peter outlined retool for a different set of skills. And once you've mastered one model of programming that will give you a leg up for learning others. It may be that learning Ruby on Rails is currently the best way to master programming just because of the existence of beginner guides like Peter's and coding bootcamps. If someone is having significant trouble following the route Peter outlined, however, I think I might have something useful to say. If you're using Ruby on Rails to write apps, you'll be using a lot of different technologies (HTML, CSS, HTTP, a database, maybe JavaScript, and Ruby) that interface with each other in weird ways. And Rails is full of magic and shortcuts that make things faster when you know what you're doing but make it harder to form a mental model as a beginner. I think I remember reading that Sinatra was used instead of Rails by at least one of the major coding bootcamps for the majority of the course because it's better for developing a mental model. Rails can be pretty hard for even experienced programmers to master because of all the magic. Point being, if you've having trouble (especially if you're not understanding things as thoroughly as you might like), you could still make a great programmer, and I'd recommend programming some command line games in Ruby, using Sinatra instead of Rails, and mastering technologies one at a time without shortcuts.

Recommendations for good collections of common Deep Wisdom? General or situation specific would be helpful (e.g. all the different standard advice you get while picking your college major, or going through a tough break up).

3niceguyanon
Check these out. http://lesswrong.com/lw/gx5/boring_advice_repository/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/i64/repository_repository/

Hey. I'm doing App Academy this summer, so I can't tell you about the program, but I can give you my thoughts on the interview. Based on what you said in the comments above, it sounds like we have somewhat similar backgrounds.

The interview was mostly pretty simple code problems. If you felt like you knew what you were doing in your cs classes and that you were keeping up with the other students, you'll probably be able to handle these. Just make sure you're comfortable with the ruby needed to do the practice problems.

Good luck!

Device manufacturers that ship certain google apps and code are not generally allowed to ship competitor apps.

This article goes into some detail, the bit about the OHA is on page 3, if I recall correctly.

But to come back to the topic at hand, Google is a company who wants to make money. When releasing something as open source interferes with that mission they won't release something as open source. On the other hand there are plenty of cases where Google supports Open Source.

I think this is one of the concerns that the author of the original post is re... (read more)

0ChristianKl
No, the orginal post pretends that for profit company don't release stuff into the public domain. The idea that nonprofits simply give all there resources into the public domain is without basis. The Americal Chemical Association which happens to be a non-for-profit sued Wikipedia for violating it's intellectual property by integrating CAS numbers information about chemicals into Wikipedia.
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