All of OpenThreadGuy's Comments + Replies

As there were some podcasts on the List of Blogs page, I've removed them from that page.

It goes without saying that if you disagree with my decision to make this page, or what I wrote in it, you can make your own edits.

I desperately want something like this, so long as it is anywhere other than the bay area. god help me, I will avoid living there if it means being as socially isolated as I currently am forever

I agree that it makes sense there.

The reason I put it where it is, is: belief-edifice-memeplex-paradigm-framework-system-movement-whatevers have members who say different things. Some members say things that are more like a motte and others say things that are more like a bailey. Even if the individual members consistently claim one or the other, this looks suspiciously like a group responding to incentives by committing the fallacy.

I was there.

"but most of our time was spent thinking about probability distributions on consistent theories" seems incorrect to me, unless I'm a lot more confused than I thought I was. What I saw was that we spent an equal amount of time on essentially three topics:

  1. Trying to manufacture a truth-predicate weaker than provability but still able to do work, for getting around Löb's theorem;
  2. Binary logical versions/formulations of Solomonoff Induction (Abram's prior);
  3. What to do if you have an inconsistent set of probabilities over sentences / how
... (read more)
2Scott Garrabrant
Both 2 and 3 fall under what I said we spent most of the time doing. Perhaps "majority" would have been a better word.

Capital idea, old sport. I was considering making a thread about our group, but now there's no need. Supposing then that I, Grognor, should kick things off with a State of the Union address for the West Los Angeles LW meetups, eh, wot?

Our relocation last week went well. It was my goal to make it as difficult as possible not to know we had Officially Moved Somewhere Else; to that end I mentioned it in every single paragraph in the meetup post and the post to the mailing list, and individually messaged everyone I could contact who had ever attended who was n... (read more)

2eggman
+1 to reformatting the meetup guide.

A friend lent me this exact book recently, and while I followed the first chapter, I quickly gave up upon encountering the exercises, because I could not even do the first one. At all.

I don't think I am stupid, so I hope you're just underestimating the required mathematical thinking experience (if not actual background knowledge, none of which is assumed) required to get through this book. Mathematicians do so as a rule.

8Will_Sawin
So that I can better update on this information, can you tell me what the first exercise is?
6So8res
This is quite likely, especially for the beginning (which is mostly on computation, my area of expertise). That said, I'd guess that your difficulties stemmed from not knowing a good way to approach the problems, and being intimidated by terminology. I bet that if you work your way through a few of them with a friend, and get a feel for how these types of question are tackled, then the other exercises will seem much easier in short order. I'm also more than happy to go over the early exercises in the book with you, if you want some assistance. PM me if you're interested.

The "Add new meetup" button automatically creates a discussion post, in addition to posting to /meetups (which already exists).

When I used to actually read this site, this annoyed me too, so I'd be fine with removing that "feature".

This does not work for meetup groups that have a different topic every time, like ours does. I'm going to ask the group whether they think this is a good idea, but membership is getting a bit poorer and it might still impact that.

0Vaniver
I've edited the Austin meetup post to change the topic, like I've edited the post to change the date- having the date automatically adjust should work out for your situation as well. (It'll still require constant work on your part- but no more so than making a new meetup post every time.)

I have no idea. I just included it because it was Sister Y

yes, all of the people who recognized it was a joke

For various reasons, I cannot make open threads anymore, ever again.

gwern110

Message acknowledged. We appreciate your good work. And godspeed, Grognor.

El psy congroo.

I've played and loved all of Matt Roszak's games. He is good at making games.

I'm moving to Los Angeles. I leave on the 21st. If anyone along this or another route wants to give me a shower and bed for a night, it will soon be your chance to do so!

By the way, I am Grognor. I created this account because I didn't want to get karma for posting open threads or the monthly rationality quotes threads.

4khafra
If you need a shower and a bed after just two hours of driving, you're probably doing something wrong; but I'll wave when I guess you're going past Tampa.
1Jayson_Virissimo
Your route comes within 10 minutes of my place in Phoenix. PM me if you want to coordinate.
[anonymous]210

That's a particularly clever way of circumventing this. Almost against the spirit of the prediction...

Psh, of course rationalists think Twilight Sparkle is the best pony.

3Luke_A_Somers
She's intellectual, but she reacts irrationally to the Pinkie Sense. Also, poor Rarity.
-3MaoShan
It's a trick question, Twilight Sparkle is a unicorn.

Congratulations to Vladimir Nesov for passing Anna Salamon in karma and making it to the top contributors, all time list.

I don't think this reasoning actually makes sense, but regardless, why do you think this makes it okay for other people to die, if they don't want to? That's what deathism is.

0OrphanWilde
Not all deathism holds that everybody should die, only that death is good.

Ending on a high note: "Deontology is the philosophy of enshrining the Worst Argument In The World as the only acceptable form of moral reasoning." Discuss.

-Original (and in my opinion better) version of this article

0[anonymous]
I'd like to see more on that.

PSA: If you want there to be a new Stupid Questions Open Thread, make it yourself! There is not and never has been a rule against this. I consider the "how often to make them" question unanswered, but a good interim answer is, "whenever someone feels like making one".

(Also, my computer broke, and so I posted this from a Wii, which is incapable of using the article editor. If someone could kindly edit "the sentence" into the post.)

Do you downvote all of my submissions, since this is a sock-puppet account?

0wedrifid
No. Your account doesn't fit the profile (as far as I have noticed). I'm rather shocked that the grandparent was negatively received. I was advocating penalising of overt subversion of the reputation system and the contribution standards it is there to support.

I will not be able to post the May 16-31 open thread until ten hours after midnight EST.

Edit: Circumstances have changed. I will be able to post it on time. (Thus, comment retracted.)

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
4David_Gerard
Thanks for a most useful thread, by the way.

[Meta] I hope it's okay that I posted the new open thread. Don't know what the procedure is, if any. I wanted to post something, but saw the last open thread was out of date. Please moderate/correct as appropriate.[/Meta]

you broke the code

Edit: Not really, anyone can make the open threads. But I've been doing it for a little while and I think it's a little strange that someone else did it when I'm only two hours late. C'est la vie.

3[anonymous]
Eeep! I throw myself upon the mercy of the Prophets, including but not limited to, Yudkousky, Jaynes, and OpenThreadGuy. Please don't excommunicate me. Or worse, karma-assassinate me. Edit: To be clear, I didn't mean it as a judgment against you. It wasn't "Oh, OpenThreadGuy is late. Let me do his job for him." It was more of a "Oh, the last open thread just expired and I wanted to post something. Let me make the new one, I don't think anyone would mind." If that's a little weird, then I happily accept the label ;)

Neither I nor the human running this account downvoted this post, but regarding the downvotes it has received, might I suggest you post future topics like this in the open threads? I think this would be quite well-received there!

Remember, open threads are our friends! We should love and respect (and use) them.

Kevin100

I think it's absolutely ridiculous that there is an attitude here that something is inferior because it is short.

9John_Maxwell
It was originally going to be longer, but I managed to pare it down...

Upvote this comment if you prefer the status quo of two open threads per month. Downvote it if you prefer to go back to one open thread per month.

-20OpenThreadGuy

Activity on these seems to be dying down, so my own reply to this comment is a poll.

Upvote this comment if you prefer the status quo of two open threads per month. Downvote it if you prefer to go back to one open thread per month.

Why aren't these open threads automatically generated, then archived into a list (also automatically)? The same could be said for the monthly quote threads and the Welcome to Less Wrong threads and the HPMoR threads. I don't understand.

2Anubhav
And why aren't the special threads updated accordingly? For a community with a rather large proportion of coders, LW sure likes its caveman lifestyle.

I plan to make a post for the second half of this month because daenerys hasn't made one yet. Can I have a couple of karma points so I can make it happen?

0[anonymous]
You literally are open thread guy, I must admit I didn't expect that.