All of sboo's Comments + Replies

I'm pretty sure that programming and reading about programming are much better ways of improving at programming, than reading about rationality is.

right, that's what motivated the post. I feel like spending time learning "domain specific knowledge" is much more effective than "general rationality techniques". like even if you want to get better at three totally different things over the course of a few years, the time spent on the general technique (that could help all three) might not help as much as on exclusively specific techni... (read more)

2Baughn
However, reading Lesswrong is what prodded me towards getting better at spending my time effectively, really getting into a growth mindset. My only problem nowadays is that there are too many things I want to learn, and that's a much better problem to have; I know I can, I just have to pick and choose. I'm getting better at that, too. Maybe the same would have happened anyway, but I don't think it would have happened quite as fast.

Rational!Jesus

We have the next HPMOR.

can you explain? Sounds interesting.

0buybuydandavis
"The Guy Responsible for Shit" as a role is conceptual and abstract. If you're trying to program yourself, a complete person with full sensory detail would be more motivating. Picture an actual person, maybe yourself, as Responsible Guy, a superhero with a full back story and life and personality. A role is a step more concrete than a verbal commandment, and better thereby. But an actual character is more concrete still.

anecdote: David Ingram (who claims to be enlightened) came to a cogsci lab at my school, and was able to perceive some normally-imperceptible "subliminal" visual stimuli (i.e. X milliseconds long flash or whatever). I heard it from a friend who administered the test, I don't have the raw data or an article, grains of salt and all that.

"... must relinquish bodily pain, embarrassment, and romantic troubles."

that's worse than letting billions of children be tortured to death every year. that's worse than dying from a supernova. that's worse than dying from mass suicide. that's worse than dying because you can't have sex with geniuses to gain their minds and thus avert the cause of death that you die from.

you really think existence without pain is that bad? you really they are not "true humans".

what about the 3WC humans? are they not "true humans" either. only ... (read more)

4somervta
No? The story explicitly rejects this. It is only because the Superhappies can deal with the Babyeaters on their own, and that solutions to the human problem do not prevent this that the story is resolved other ways. I don't see the story as advocating this - Akon does not suicide, for example. It is not that the value difference between human life before and after the change is so large (large than the negative value of death) that is the problem. It is that difference in value, multiplied by the entire human race and it's future potential/member is so large as to outweigh a comparatively tiny number of deaths. I'm not sure that is true, but it is the position of those in the story. I don't think he thinks that. I think he (Eliezer_2009) thinks they have lost something important, some aspect of their humanity - but that doesn't mean they are completely inhuman.

maybe that's why he hasn't killed harry after hearing the prophecy.

he needs help in finding his horcrux.

which he won't, because space is huge.

quirrel wants to protect himself from death. and gains the power to do it.

I didn't cry in "Humanism." I didn't cry in "Stanford Prison Experiment." I didn't even cry when Hermione died. But this chapter finally did it for me.

me too :)

I didn't cry in "Humanism." I didn't cry in "Stanford Prison Experiment." I didn't even cry when Hermione died. But this chapter finally did it for me.

me too :)

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why would voldemort need to possess harry? he's already stronger and smarter. and immortal.

well, it's tone too.

e.g. say sauvine.com had said: "this is why i think the scientists who believe in global warming have formed a BEC..."

i bet people would downvote, but i doubt they would label them as a troll.

as 5-HTP is metabolized to melatonin, i wonder how much of the effect comes from melatonin itself.

tl;dr

Roots of Empathy says caring for babies nurtures empathy.

0dottedmag
This link is broken too. Archive.org copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20131005121009/http://dorianinnes.com/how-to-be-happy-in-1-step/

what? no. maybe only strong "compassionate"/"nurturing" females can keep groups of hundreds together without fragmentation.

even if poison were cheap, every fight has a risk. better to neither fight nor flee.

"we irrationally find present costs more salient than future costs"

Present Bias is not always irrational!

it can be rationalized (as in, "find rational cause" not "make up excuse") as hedging against uncertainty. the future is never certain. our predictions about the future aren't even probable. if you save your money instead of spending it, you might lose it all to madoff. if you don't use that giftcard to some restaurant, your tastes might change and it won't be worth anything.

in fact, Geometric Discouting maximizes average (... (read more)

i think by 'emergence' you just mean 'implication'

have you succeeded in chaining these "one-inference-steps"?

that is, have you found you can take people with different beliefs / less domain knowledge, in casual conversation, and quickly explain things one inference at a time? i've found that i can only pull a few of those, even if they follow and are delightfully surprised by each one, else i start sounding too weird.

i like what you said about fiction perceived as distant reality. "long long ago in a galaxy far far away".

indeed.

if we decouple the cost of caching into "was true but is false" and "was never true", it may be that one dominates the other in likelihood. so maybe, the most efficient solution to the "cached thought" problem is not rethinking things, but ignoring most things by default. this, however, has the opportunity cost of false negatives.

i've personally found that i am very dependent on cached thoughts when learning/doing something new (not necessarily bad). like breadth over depth. what i do is try to force each cached though... (read more)

1gwern
I think you're reading that into it. I read this well before MoR was a gleam in Eliezer's eye, and didn't find it very what-I-might-later-label-as-Quirrelly-which-is-actually-"Hanson-y".

precision is hard. you know, until i started studying math, i didn't even know what "be precise" really means.

0handoflixue
laughs That is too true :)

i'm involved with a startup. there's so much well-intentioned bullshit and it's the founders who harm themselves more than any user or any investor.

i watched the video, and felt something was wrong, and then i read your article, you dissected it mercilessly, and nailed it precisely.

3sboo
precision is hard. you know, until i started studying math, i didn't even know what "be precise" really means.

""And," her voice said, "if you want to break school rules or something, you can ask me about it, I promise I won't just say no.""

perhaps eliezer's is not outlining but "fixing" her faults. by the end of ch75, hermione seems to have experienced a crisis of faith and become more morally harry.

harry carries around a small boulder as ring. the transfiguration could be finite incantem'd before battle. although quirrel did say that most magic battles are actually ambushes.

not me. there was consent and the capacity for consent, so the kiss was wistful at worst.