All of Said Achmiz's Comments + Replies

But is this because you didn’t know what cream cheese was?

In my experience, everyone already understands that cream cheese frosting is (a) sweet, and (b) delicious. I have never met anyone, nor heard of anyone, who was somehow under the impression that cream cheese frosting is in any way incongruous or weird.

In other words, as far as I can tell, the problem you are describing is completely nonexistent.

cured fish.

Why would I do that to myself? I don’t feel my sins deserve that level of punishment.

Perhaps you are not aware of the lox & cream cheese bagel sandwich, a venerable and beloved item of New York City cuisine. If you have not had this food, then you are missing out on a singular life experience, and you are spiritually impoverished by this lack. I suggest rectifying this omission forthwith.

Humans display a bias called scope neglect. Because we can’t intuitively grok how much larger some big numbers are than others, we have a tendency to treat big numbers all the same. People will pay as much to save 2,000 birds as 20,000 and 200,000 birds.

This is a deeply misleading characterization of that study.

If I got suddenly teleported to the court of Genghis Khan and proposed we vote on who’s in charge, this obviously doesn’t work.

Genghis Khan was, in fact, elected:

All Great Khans of the Mongol Empire, for example Genghis Khan and Ögedei Khan, were formally elected in a Kurultai; khans of subordinate Mongol states, such as the Golden Horde, were elected by a similar regional Kurultai.

I think you’ve had her buy an extra pair of boots.

Ah, true. So, $239.41, at the end.

(Of course, this all assumes that the cheap boots don’t get more expensive over the course of 14 years. Siderea does say that she spends $20 each year on boots, but that’s hard to take seriously over a decade-plus period…)

We might be talking about poverty at different orders of magnitude, and you might be writing off a lot of failures to purchase efficiently as “skill issue”… but being poor in skills and the capacity to hone them is, itself, a form of poverty.

Once we’ve redefined “poverty” to mean something other than poverty, we can obviously make all sorts of claims about it. Being “poor in skills and the capacity to hone them” can be the cause of poverty. Notice how this is a different cause from the one that “boots theory” posits.

As I’ve written, I have personally ex... (read more)

In another world, Siderea buys $20 boots and invests $260. …

I think that your calculation is a bit off. After a year, she’ll have $258.20 (i.e., ($260 * 1.07) − $20). After two years, $256.27 (i.e., ($258.20 * 1.07) − $20). And so on. After 14 years, she’ll have $219.41.

Still better than buying the expensive boots—in purely financial terms.

(Inflation-adjustment is another important point, of course. That $200 in 2005 would be $265 in 2018 dollars.)

In short, yes, this is indeed a very poor example—ironic, as it’s a real-life version of the original examp... (read more)

buying poor quality food and then having to pay for medical care

I have seen this sort of thing mentioned, but I don’t think that it works.

Let’s set aside for the moment the somewhat tenuous and indirect connection between the food you eat today, and the medical care you will require, some years down the line. (If you end up with heart disease in ten years because you’ve been eating poorly, surely this can’t be any part of the reason why you’re poor today—that would require some sort of anti-temporal causation!)

And let’s also set aside this business of “... (read more)

paying rent instead of buying and building equity

It’s interesting that you should mention this. I currently rent an apartment. At one point, some years ago, I realized that my financial situation was such that, if I wanted to, I could buy a condo or co-op. I recalled the received wisdom that owning is better than renting, and looked into my options. After doing the math, I concluded that, on a time horizon of 10, 20, 30, or 40 years^[1], renting unambiguously came out ahead—and not just slightly ahead, but way ahead. Buying an apartment would have amount... (read more)

Boots theory captures the “being poor is expensive” element that’s true in Ankh-Morkpork and also true on Earth

It certainly is not true on Earth.

As I have written:

It sounds so wise and worldly! And it’s also complete bullshit.

Because let’s say that I want a pair of sneakers (i.e., shoes that are comfortable and won’t hurt my feet) that won’t wear out in a couple of years, so that I can buy them once and wear them for ten years. Why, I’d have to pay five times the price of an ordinary pair of sneakers! But then I’d have my ten-year shoes. Right?

WRONG.

O

I’ve become so reliant on a GPS that using maps to direct myself feels like a foreign concept. Google Maps, Waze, whatever, if it’s outside of my neighbourhood, I’m punching in the address before I head out. Sometimes I notice the GPS taking slower routes or sending me the wrong way as I get out of a parking lot, but regardless, I just follow its directions, because I don’t have to think. Though I know, without this convenient tool, I’d be lost (literally).

If you recognize this problem, why not stop using a GPS? Navigating without a GPS is not difficult. You could regain this skill easily. What’s stopping you?

Given how spectacularly harmful psychedelic drugs can often be, I think we’d better hope that there isn’t any such “sensory-input-only” method of inducing psychedelic states.

your proposal would have the displayed image revert back to the first frame on mouseleave IIUC

Yes, correct.

I was hoping to have the hover-mode animation seamlessly pause and unpause

This SO question has several answers, all of which seem like reasonable solutions to me (if I were doing this, I’d try them all and pick the most performant one, most likely).

The “auto” icon is the sun if auto says light mode, and the moon if it says dark mode. Though ideally it’d be self-explanatory.

Hmm, I see. Alright, that’s not too bad, given the labels.

I found setting it in smallcaps to be quite distracting, so I settled for italics. What do you think?

Seems reasonable. (I agree that underlining the links is no good.)

Auto-dark mode!

Good; however:

1. “Auto” has the same icon as light—confusing!
2. “Auto” has a label, while the others do not—likewise confusing
3. The “Auto” label is styled just like the sidebar links, but of course it’s not a link at all (indeed, it’s not clickable or interactable in any way)

For #1, I suggest the “black & white cookie” (a.k.a. “contrast”) icon, as seen on gwern.net (this trio of “B&W cookie” / “sun” / “crescent moon” for “auto” / “light” / “dark” is becoming increasingly common for tri-state mode selectors, in my experience).

For #2,... (read more)

I can’t play/pause the GIF on hover because GIFs don’t allow that (AFAIK).

1. Make a static version of the image (the first frame of the animation, perhaps?). Set that image to load by default.

2. At the end of page load, in the background, load the animated version.

3. On hover (by adding a listener to the mouseenter event), rewrite the src attribute of the image element to point to the animated image.

4. On un-hover (mouseleave event), rewrite the src back to the static one.

I don’t really mind the zeros. If I hear from more people that the slashed zero

Just the benefits gained by the small minority of kids actually being taught something?

Certainly we lose that, yes.

Whether we lose other things is beyond the scope of the main point that I am making here. That point is: if we switch from teachers teaching kids to parents teaching kids, we cannot assume that we thereby go from kids not being taught effectively, to kids being taught effectively. That is because most parents are not competent to effectively teach their kids most (or, often, all) academic subjects.

I would guess (but haven’t checked) that

I think much of the discussion of homeschooling is focused on elementary school.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is a motte-and-bailey situation here, where the motte is “some kids can be homeschooled at the elementary school grade level by some exceptional parents” and the bailey is “abolish schools and homeschool everyone for everything at all grade levels”.

I can provide you cited quotes if you like; or you can take my word that I’ve seen many homeschooling advocates quite unambiguously arguing for homeschooling beyond the elementary-school ... (read more)

My mathematics teachers in high school were qualified to teach me mathematics because they had degrees (mostly doctorates, but a couple did have lesser degrees) in mathematics.

My chemistry teachers in high school were qualified to teach me chemistry because they had (respectively) a Ph.D. in chemistry and three decades of experience as a working chemist in industry.

My computer science teachers in high school were qualified to teach me computer science because they had degrees in computer science (and were working programmers / engineers).

My biology teacher... (read more)

I want to follow up on this a bit more, because this is a point which I’ve discussed with homeschooling advocates before, and it’s one which seems just wildly underappreciated in these sorts of discussions.

I will mention one anecdotal example, which is, I think, very generous to the pro-homeschooling side: namely, my own case. Now, my mother is a professional educator (now retired). She has a doctorate in education. She taught (English—specifically ESL / “Business Communication”) for several decades. She worked with school age kids and with adults in conti... (read more)

Ugh, this is totally my fault, but I did mean “first paragraph”. (Second paragraph of the comment, of which the first paragraph is the quote… yeah, I know; I wouldn’t have figured it out either…)

What I am saying is: yeah, your second paragraph makes sense. But… aren’t you just describing exactly the same thing that you, in your first paragraph, said would be bad?

Like… you say that “if no home schoolers are allowed to be as bad as the worst public schools”, this would be bad, would put an undue cost on homeschooling, etc. But then you say that “a right to a... (read more)

Instead, the actual thesis of many against homeschooling, when they’re not making up things like the claims earlier in this section, is flat out that parents are not qualified to teach their children.

That’s just true, though. Most parents aren’t even slightly qualified to teach their children. Is this not obvious…?

EDIT:

It is beyond absurd to think that an average teacher, with a class of 24 kids, couldn’t be outperformed by a competent parent focusing purely on their own child.

But most parents aren’t competent, at all, in any way whatsoever, especia... (read more)

Er… I think you maybe got the adjectives mixed up in a bit? As written, your second paragraph doesn’t make any sense.

Did you perhaps mean… “good” / “as bad as the best”…? But that is also weird… yeah, I don’t understand what you had in mind there. Clarify, please?

When a magnificent body is just one more of the things that is yours for the asking, what will you do with it in paradise?

See also Stanislaw Lem on this subject:

“The freedom I speak of, it is not that modest state desired by certain people when others oppress them. For then man becomes for man—a set of bars, a wall, a snare, a pit. The freedom I have in mind lies farther out, extends beyond that societal zone of reciprocal throat-throttling, for that zone may be passed through safely, and then, in the search for new constraints—since people no longer

I’d bet that I’m still on the side where I can safely navigate and pick up the utility, and I median-expect to be for the next couple months ish.

With respect, I suggest to you that this sort of thinking is a failure of security mindset. (However, I am content to leave the matter un-argued at this time.)

… if you’re going to be that paranoid about LLM interference (as is very reasonable to do), it makes sense to try and eliminate second order effects and never talk to people who talk to LLMs, for they too might be meaningfully harmful e.g. be under the

I concur with the descriptive claims and arguments in this post, as well as with the sentiment that this is very important, and with the “security mindset” framing for the latter point. I have no substantive comments about that part.

However, I must object to the sentiment (implied by your selection of potential solutions) that the only solutions to this problem still involve using LLMs in some way—perhaps a little more or a little less, but never “none at all”. Now, you say “you are in fact highly encouraged to add to this list”—fair enough, and here is my... (read more)

Alice should already know what kind of foods her friends like before inviting them to a dinner party where she provides all the food. She could have gathered this information by eating with them at other events, such as restaurants, pot lucks, or at mutual friends. Or she could have learned it in general conversation. When inviting friends to a dinner party where she provides all the food, Alice should say what the menu is and ask for allergies and dietary restrictions.

This is all true as far as it goes, but what it cashes out as is “don’t host a vegan ... (read more)

I don’t think that your first paragraph there makes sense as a response to what I wrote.

Given the problem that Alice and Bob are having, a good approach is that they communicate better, so that they know there is a problem, and what it is.

Perhaps. “Communicate better”, as advice, is hard to disagree with (what’s the alternative—“communicate worse”? “don’t try to improve how well you communicate”?); but (as is often the case with applause lights) what is not clear is how to apply the advice. What exactly would you suggest Bob do, in my fictional scenari... (read more)

Wouldn’t the Sun also change color in that scenario?

On the contrary, there would be nothing at all bizarre about that; it would be perfectly normal and totally commonplace.

What you are doing by expressing opinions outside the Overton window is not, in fact, “setting the honesty baseline”—because there is no such thing as “the honesty baseline”. There is “telling politically incorrect jokes is tolerated in this social context”, and there is “telling my vegan friend that I hate vegan food and I tolerate his vegan dinner parties with gritted teeth and a forced smile would hurt his feelings to no purpose whatso... (read more)

It certainly is about weirdness—because, for one thing, the weirder the food is, the more likely it is that many or most people will dislike it; and for another thing, if the weirdness of the food is in the form of a constraint (as “vegan” is) is, then this limits the possible scope of the food’s appeal (as compared to “food selected with no constraints and optimized for appeal”), and thus again increases the chance that the food will be disliked by any given person.

I often get my friends to eat vegan food. It doesn’t cost me any weirdness points. To the contrary, my friends reciprocate with generosity. Here’s how it works. I invite my friends over to dinner. I cook them dinner, or buy take-out. I insist on paying for everything, and refuse their offers to chip in. The food is vegan because I’m the one providing it. The food is tasty because I’m a good cook, because I know what all the good restaurants are, and because I know what kinds of foods my friends like. Do my friends complain that the food is vegan? Of cours

This story somehow manages to be both horrifyingly dystopian and thoroughly implausible in its optimism (both in the details and in the whole). I find that makes it even more depressing than either quality by itself would.

A person with HIV and a person without are both worth unity. These are fundamental results in disability studies.

Where are these studies that have results which are object-level ethical claims…? This seems not just improbable, but outright incoherent. Do you have any links to studies like this?

But what makes you think that every unit gets listed there? I assure you, that is not the case. I can quite clearly see, in my own neighborhood and other areas that I’m very familiar with, plenty of places that have apartments for rent but aren’t listed on there at all.

What’s unique about NYC is that nearly every unit gets listed on the same website

What website is this…?

I recently moved to New York City, and if there’s one thing people here obsess over, it’s apartments. Everyone eagerly shares how competitive, ruthless, and “efficient” the rental market is.

I have lived in New York City for over 30 years and I have never met anyone who has described the rental market here as “efficient”.

It predictably inflicts damage statistically, however—and (and this is the key part!) it prevents you from affecting that statistical distribution according to your own judgment.

It would be as if, for example, you weren’t allowed to drive carefully (or to not drive). Driving is dangerous, right? It’s not guaranteed to harm you, but there’s a certain chance that it will. But we accept this—why? Because you have the option of driving carefully, obeying the rules of the road, not driving when you’re tired or inebriated or when it’s snowing, etc.; indeed, you ... (read more)

Many reasons, including that vomiting repeatedly is bad for your esophagus.

Candy, cookies, and their high-sugar ilk taste delightful, if eaten without guilt. Adults tend to replace them with processed, professionally-designed “snacks”, which taste about as good and harm the body about as much. I tend to replace them with, say, a mere baked potato. It tastes less good, but the difference is small. From there to lettuce is a change about as large, i.e. about as small.

Are you claiming that there’s not much difference, in experiential terms, between a cookie and lettuce? If so, then (a) you’re very obviously wrong, and (b) given t... (read more)

The world changes when wealth is not locked away in trust funds but directed toward the collective advancement of society. The benefits are not theoretical; research consistently shows that high social mobility correlates with stronger economies, more resilient democracies, and greater national well-being.

Error: causation being inferred from correlation. Totally unwarranted!

Ziz reports that they don’t take psychedelics, and I believe that extends to her compatriots, as well.

From https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ziz-lasota-zizians-rationalism-20063671.php:

After the shootout, investigators who searched the car reported finding a cache of tactical gear, including a ballistic helmet, a night-vision device, face respirators, two-way radios and dozens of hollow-point bullets. They also located Youngblut’s journal, which according to prosecutors contained “cypher text” and writings about her psychedelic experiences.

“

Blockquotes.

you seem to be the only user, although not the only account, who experienced this problem.

Definitely not. I second the complaint.

I think for some games the GM world-model should change if it disagrees with applications of the rules.

The GM’s world-model either already incorporates the rules (in which case, there is nothing to change)—or else the GM’s world-model fails to incorporate relevant information, which is a mistake on the GM’s part. The GM should, after admitting the mistake, now decide how to rectify it. Here several options are available, but the key is that this is a mistake—an incorrect application of the approach I described.

You went through my examples of questions

I think that this is a bad concept.

I think this primarily for anti-Gell-mann-amnesia reasons, i.e. I am very sure that this is a very bad concept as applied to TTRPG design/implementation (a topic on which I am quite knowledgeable), so I conjecture, even before thinking about it directly, that it is also a bad concept as applied to the other things that you are applying it to (in which I would not claim as much expertise). (My weak impression from thinking directly about those other cases agrees with this, but that is not the main thrust of my comment.)

In ... (read more)

Correction: Gwern’s site is gwern.net, not gwern.com. (The latter is for sale for $10k, though.)

Here’s my grandmother’s borscht recipe and a recipe for “pasta navy style”.

Some relevant dessert recipes:

• medovik (honey cake)
• smetannik (sour cream cake)
• wafer torte
• птичье молоко (“bird’s milk cake”; actually an agar-based mousse on a cake base)