The enjoyment of the activity factors into whether it is a good use of time.
my probability that something like string theory is true would go way up after the detection of a Higgs boson
I'm not sure that this should be the case, as the Higgs is a Standard Model prediction and string theory is an attempt to extend that model. The accuracy of the former has little to say on whether the latter is sensible or accurate. For a concrete example, this is like allowing the accuracy of Newtonian Mechanics (via say some confirmed prediction about the existence of a planetary body based on anomalous orbital data) to influence your confide...
But it is near-consequentialist: "I'm a hard-working person and hard-working people wouldn't just give up" --> "the act of giving up will make me feel less like a hard-working person and therefore make me less likely to work hard in the future"
That particular element seems like it would incentivize campers to spend the period hyper-aware of their own and others' specificity, which seems counterproductive to me. The goal is an increase in the specificity of statements made casually, which could be entirely unrelated. Extending the period to say, a week, might work to prevent this- at that point it would be a long term incentive rather than a prize.
This activity seems like it would tie in well with a unit on hypothesis and experiment generation as well- it reminds me of the 2-4-6 test. Perhaps have two different scoring rules: when trying to teach specificity, give points for getting your partner to guess; when teaching how to find the right hypotheses and tests, give points for guessing correctly.
I unfortunately wont be able to make it up for this one, despite my strong interest in the subject. Would someone be willing to host me via Skype though?
This sounds very interesting. Do you have anybody who's particularly experienced with TDT or other decision theories committed to come? And which business will it be at, as that appears to be a mall of some sort?
Also, is anyone from down here in Tucson looking for a ride up, or already has one with an extra seat?
Okay, thanks for clarifying the question. I've essentially already stated all the "evidence" I'm using for the claim, it's almost entirely anecdotal, and there's certainly no actual studies that I've used to support this particular bullet point. So, there is a good chance I may have stated things in a way which seems overconfident, and I may in fact be overconfident regarding this particular claim, especially considering that I've not tested alternate explanations for the efficacy I've had. I'd be more than willing to have a detailed discussion ...
The statement about strong visualization (essentially simulating experiences as closely as possible) is taken from the video and personal (and anecdotal) experience with the method. The reinforcement from actual completion refers to how once you've completed the task you were motivating yourself to do, you should get the feeling of reward you were imagining to motivate yourself. Actually experiencing the reward makes it easier to simulate if you need to become motivated again later. Additionally the mental connection you'll make between completing the task...
Do you read/watch a lot of fiction? I personally end up selecting for fiction which matches my beliefs somewhat closely, and that in retrospect has likely strongly enforced the connection. This seems like a reasonable candidate for an automatic yet unnoticeable process with those results.
This can actually be done unintentionally as well. One of the things that might have caused the original haunted rationalist problem could have been watching/reading too much horror fiction: if most experiences you've seen regarding an old house end up with people tortured and dead, even if you know they were all known to be fictitious, you will still anticipate, however strongly, bad things happening in old houses. This also makes me wary that my anticipations regarding the future are likely highly influenced by all the science fiction I read, so I know to watch my aliefs in that regard very very closely.
This example was intended as a possible alief you might want to hold, whether it is accurate to your beliefs or not. There are some people who can reasonably expect to never encounter a dangerous snake in the wild who are nonetheless very afraid of them (and all other snakes as well); while respect and fear for dangerous and potentially poisonous animals is worthwhile for some, for others it can be a handicap.
I should also mention (though I took this part out of the article) that there are some situations where one might want to alieve things entirely co...
True. I was actually considering omitting the last sentence, as it doesn't really contribute much, but I wasn't sure if that would have been misleading as to the original meaning.
"When you are stubbornly making an argument, there is a possibility that you are uninformed, ignorant, in denial, and/or being a jerk. Of course, you might be right."
It would be really convenient if rationality, the meme-cluster that we most enjoy and are best-equipped to participate in, also happened to be the best for winning at life.
As I've seen it used here, "rationality" most commonly refers to "the best [memecluster] for winning at life" whatever that actual memecluster may be. If it could be shown that believing in the christian god uniformly improved or did not affect every aspect of believers lives regardless of any other beliefs held, I think a majority of lesswrongers would take every...
So, due to bad luck, bad timing, and lack of proper foresight, it seems this attempt was a total bust(well, not total, I got some work done). I'll try another one sometime this month. Any feedback would be helpful.
I'm wearing a dark red shirt and jeans and typing on a white laptop if that helps.
I had a bit of car trouble, but I managed to get here get my coffee and the wifi password, and then realize I forgot a sign or anything of the kind. I'm sitting in the corner near the register if anybody happens to be waiting
If CEV encounters a large proportion of the population that wish it was not run and will continue to do so after extrapolation, it simply stops and reports that fact. That's one of the points of the method. It is, in and of itself a large scale social survey of present and future humanity. And if the groups that wouldn't want it run now would after extrapolation, I'm fine with running it against their present wishes, and hope that if I were part of a group under similar circumstances someone else would do the same- "past me" is an idiot, I'm not much better, and "future me" is hopefully an even bigger improvement, while "desired future me" almost certainly is.
I'm aware that the proxying service is available while I'm logged in, I was just misled by a cached login to believe that it was working without logging in, which would have been very odd, though beneficial. I've decided to update the comment to reflect that.
Okay, so there was some sort of fluke. I checked again and I did have to relogin; I'm guessing it was cached data rather than the cookie which stores my login, because other sites still failed to recognize me. Sorry for getting peoples hopes up,
But rationalism doesn’t have a well-defined set of norms/desirable skills to develop.
Actually changing your mind, learning the simple math of various fields,and becoming more luminous seem to represent a set of desirable skills to me, though I admit that is far from comprehensive. See also the twelve virtues of rationality.
I may be experiencing a fluke, but it appears that my university's library's website allows any computer to use it as proxy for viewing and downloading articles from many paywalled sites (in fact, every site it gives me access to with my student login, which is a very large selection). I only discovered this by accident, and I'm hoping it isn't unintentional on their part. If anybody is interested, the address is here. If you try it and it doesn't work, please tell me.
ETA: It appears that my browser simply cached my login, and that this service is unfortun...
Sorry I didn't make it. There were some last minute surprise Mother's day obligations.
I just recently found out about and obtained the sequels, and I have high hopes for them too.
I find that for me, and many other people I know in the mathematics department of my university, once infinities, uncountability, and such enter the picture, the accuracy of intuition quickly starts to diminish, so it's wise to be careful and make sure the proof is complete before declaring it obvious. As a good example, note how surprising and notable Cantor's diagonal argument seemed the first time you heard it- it isn't obvious that the reals aren't countable when you don't already know that, so you might start trying to construct a counting scheme and end up with one that "obviously" works.
I'm in Tucson, at the U of A.
I'll try and make it up; It's the weekend before finals start, but that likely wont be a problem.
I can't overemphasize how true this is. The economic advantages that APs have given me are staggering: I took 14, passed all of them, and started at my local state college with enough credit to obviate all but one of the 30-40 credits of required gen. ed. courses. Since they're effectively paying me to come here, I didn't graduate in 2 years like I could have, but instead am taking the full 4, getting a double major, and actually struggling a bit (even after many courses taken just for fun) to find enough classes to maintain full enrollment. Those tests cost about $1000, but seeing the benefits they were literally worth more than ten times that.
for some reason I read "oldest" as "oldest son" the first time...no idea why. I do think it's very likely that your elder daughter will end up atheist, and that's what the congratulations was about.
For full disclosure on my own part, I should also mention that my little sister has continued to attend church, and is in fact getting confirmed in a few months. I think based on the evidence I have that there may be a good amount of credence to the theory that women seem more prone to believe for social reasons, especially since most women who I would otherwise expect to be atheist give that as their only reason. So, unfortunately, your daughter may be as hard to lead away from the faith as your wife seems to be. Congratulations with regard to your son though.
Subject to artificial tyranny of the majority:
I hack the definition of person(in program B) to include my 3^^^3 artificially constructed simple utility maximizers, and use them to take over the world by changing their utility functions to satisfy each of my goals, thereby arbitrarily deciding the "FAI"'s utility function. Extra measures can be added to ensure the safety of my reign, such as making future changes to the definition of human negative utility, &c.
If only I had known earlier! I would have driven up, but I already have plans :C
An interesting project, if it gets off the ground.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/benway/arc-island-a-brave-new-civilization
Having looked through the comments, I noticed that one of your main concerns with this whole ordeal is how your children will be raised. I thought it might be worth mentioning something I noticed, upon reflection, about my own childhood:
I was "raised Catholic" by agreement between my parents- my father is still Catholic, my mother reform Jewish- and went through CCD (I forget what it even stands for, it's "sunday school"), first confession and first communion. But oddly enough when looking back it was obvious that nobody in my family a...
I'd be very happy if a meetup somehow materialized at my school, but I don't think I personally have the energy to arrange one. I also have no idea how many people would even show up- our undergraduate population is huge, but not significantly above the sanity waterline on average, so I wouldn't estimate the number of lesswrongers to be very high. The Skeptics club might be willing to help set one up though. Feel free to PM me if you want to go into details.
A priori knowledge: yes or no? no.
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? not Platonism. don't know if the other is simply the opposite or a separate claim.
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? subjective
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? leaning no based on a brief reading of the literature
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? don't know.
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? non-skeptical realism
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? compatibilism, I guess.
God: theism or atheism?...
well, when you do, I'd definitely like to play :)
I can highly recommend everything I have read by Niven. Many of his works are really well done fairly "hard" Sci-fi, particularly the Ringworld series (the titular object is related to Dyson spheres, and has been called a "Niven ring" in his honor). I just finished Destiny's Road, and I couldn't put it down. The Mote In Gods Eye is an amazing collaboration with Pournelle, and a classic to boot. The last is the only one I saw mentioned elsewhere, but if you enjoy any of these, you'll likely enjoy the rest too.
I'm currently writing a program (in C) for my continuum mechanics class to simulate crowd physics (just in 2D) using nearest neighbor potentials. Once I get it running, I'll simulate a "Black Friday" type event with a linear attractive potential and various barriers, and then see if I can get and then avoid crushing "deaths". I'm also in the process of trying to be more social, actually actively trying to make friends and interact with my peers instead of holing up in my room all day. Thus far, I've noticed a distinct increase in my overall happiness as a result of this so far, and my academic performance unexpectedly hasn't even wavered.
Were you planning on running the game in person, or would there be a chance of doing it remotely. I've only had a little experiences with role-playing games, but I enjoyed it quite a lot.
Well, of course we would! Executing an action based on the truth of a hypothesis while trying to determine whether its true or not would be somewhat odd.
Another option:
it's morally acceptable to terminate a conscious program if it wants to be terminated
it's morally questionable(wrong, but to lesser degree) to terminate a conscious program against its will if it is also possible to resume execution
it is horribly wrong to turn off a conscious program against its will if it cannot be resumed(murder fits this description currently)
performing other operations on the program that it desires would likely be morally acceptable, unless the changes are socially unacceptable
performing other operations on th
I'm taking note of the latter and adding it to my list of "books to read when I have time and motivation for independent education." The addition of Scheme to the application of mechanics does seem quite useful from what I can tell after a cursory look. And there's a nice bit more mathematical rigor than I had the luxury of in my physics classes. Overall, it looks like this text takes an approach that I'll like a lot, once I get to it.
For the record, I'm a physics and mathematics undergrad, graduating next May. My schools physics program recently decided to actually start making us apply that programming they had us learn; I might consider trying Scheme instead of C if I feel like it.
I suppose the correct value is probably around 3000 m.
I know of no large mountains to be found in Sweden, so I'm guessing what seems to be a reasonably low number.
I'm a college student too, and just about finished with my application. The form really does make it seem like it's targeted at people who have already received at least one degree, but I wouldn't be surprised if some promising undergrads made it in.
Well, I have encountered people being (or claiming to be) offended by what in all rights would be an assault on someone else's status. This could be a form of empathy, or in many cases an attempt to gain status themselves through a show of sympathy. This does seem like a potential occurrence of legitimate offense not caused by a perceived direct or indirect threat to the status of the person being offended, iff the offense is genuine- something which I cannot personally attest to, never having experienced this myself.
Wait, so is this on Monday the 3rd or Tuesday the 4th?