All of Stingray's Comments + Replies

Search for adult swimming lessons. Everyone there will be as embarrassed as you are. Or try to find swimming lessons out of town, then you won't accidentally meet people who know you.

This distinction is blurry. Which side do boycotts fall on?

3Lumifer
Public, organized boycotts are compulsion since they have the clear goal of changing the others' behaviour. If you just quietly stop buying products from Acme without telling everyone (including Acme) about it, that's withdrawal.

I think that parenting skills are a good example of such situation

I have taken the survey.

Then living in a wilderness and cutting trees would be much better. Or some kinds of manual work where you can see the fruits of your labor, e.g. gardening. I believe that activities like these would be better suited for connecting mental and physical parts of a person.

Strongly disagree with 2) and 3). I think you mean them as a proxy for 'become more social, make more connections, find ways to fit in a local culture', but quality of connections usually matters more than quantity. But in many circles that are likely to matter for a typical LWer 3) is likely to be useless and likely benefits of 2) are achievable without drinking or with a very modest drinking.

5cousin_it
My advice was more like "get in touch with your stupid animal side". The social part comes later :-)

Would this description pass an ideological Turing test?

1Lyyce
(for the ideological turing test) I have tried to make my argument as neutral as possible, giving both sides of the arguments and avoiding depreciating any, Let's try from both directions then (personally am a leftist). Left side, I think so, I definitely think societal influence (amongst other things out of the individual power such as genetics) trumps individual choices, I also saw this opinion amongst friends and intellectuals so I am not alone in this, not everybody on the left think like this though. Right side, my model of the right is not as good as I'd like, but i have seen it expressed in various places. Again it does not concern all the rightists neither is the main point for everyone.
3gjm
It seems to me (leftish) that it's pointing at something correct but oversimplifying. In so far as Lycce's analysis is correct, I should be looking at people in difficulty and saying "there's nothing wrong with their abilities, but society has screwed them over, and for that reason they should be helped". I might say that sometimes -- e.g., when looking at a case of alleged sexual discrimination -- but in that case my disagreement with those who take the other position isn't philosophical, it's a matter of empirical fact. (Unless either side takes that position without regard to the evidence in any given case, which I don't think I do and wouldn't expect the more reasonable sort of rightist to do either.) But it's not what I'd say about, say, someone who has had no job for a year and is surviving on government benefits. Because that would suggest that if in fact they had no job because they simply had no marketable skills, then I should be saying "OK, then let them starve". Which I wouldn't. I would say: no, we don't let them starve, because part of being civilized is not letting people starve even if for one reason or another they're not useful. We might then have an argument -- my hypothetical rightist and I -- about whether a policy of letting some people starve results in more people working for fear of starvation, hence more prosperity, hence fewer people actually starving in the end. I hope I'd be persuadable by evidence and argument, but most likely I'd be looking for reasons to broaden the safety net and Hypothetical Rightist would be looking for reasons to narrow it. That may be because of differences in opinion about "personal responsibility" (as Lycce suggests) or in compassion (as I might suggest if feeling uncharitable) or in realism (as H.R. might suggest if feeling uncharitable) but I don't think it has much to do with societal influence trumping individual capabilities. I think Lycce's analysis works better to explain left/right differences in at
-1Lyyce
Sorry but I'm not sure I understand what you are talking about, could you develop your point?

Lee Sedol isn't at the top of Go ratings. How would Ke Jie fare against AlphaGo? A match against the best human player would be a better test of AlphaGo capabilities.

2Dentin
Honestly that hundred point difference at the top of the Go ratings isn't really going to matter. At best, it probably means that the top player has a ten percent chance of winning a single game, instead of a two percent chance. I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that AlphaGo is playing at a rating in excess of four thousand, and could be expected to beat the best human players 99% of the time. Frankly, my gut instinct watching the livestream is that AlphaGo is playing at such a high level that even the players at the top of the rankings are having a hard time identifying it. It must be very frustrating to be in that position - you're supposedly one of the best in the world, and for the first half of the game your opponent makes mostly ok but not great moves including some likely mistakes and weird moves that seem pointless. Then near endgame you've somehow ended up 20 points behind with no hope of victory and you're not even sure how it happened.
0[anonymous]
Any arbitrary threat?

Happiness is not for appreciation of goodness of events, at least, that's not what evolution intended it to be for. It's for rewarding your actions to motivate you to do them as well as rewarding other people for their actions that are good for you. If neither you did anything to do it, neither you can pinpoint an actual person who did it and whose action you want to celebrate, it's no surprise that you do not feel happiness about that thing.

What research are you refering to? Please cite it.

Are there any science fiction novels that take this approach?

3philh
The characters in Greg Egan's Diaspora are mostly sentient software, who send out several probes containing copies of themselves.
6NancyLebovitz
Charles Stross' Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood has robots with minds based on humans as humanity's successor. David Moffitt's Genesis Quest and Second Genesis has specs for humans sent out by radio and recreated by aliens. James Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear has a probe which has humans recreated on another planet and raised by robots.

You should also subscribe to this subreddit.

Another possibility: the first group of people have more free time than the latter and spending some free time together is quite important for building friendships.

I think that it is likely that pre-WWI drug usage levels survived during 1920s-1940s in certain subcultures, such as. jazz scene, who influenced beatniks, who, among others, were among those who formed the zeitgeist of 1960s and drug culture. Up until that point, postmodernists cannot be said to have any influence, because most works of philosophers most often associated with postmodernism (Baudrillard, Lyotard, Derrida)came only in late 1960s and 1970s. Many 1960s hippies became influential members of society, university professors, and I think that was w... (read more)

0ike
What post-dictions does this make?
3username2
It's a well known saying, but is it true? My non-academia friends complain about office politics and cliques much more than those who stayed in academia.

Widespread popularity of drugs predates WWI, let alone postmodernism, which became popular (outside architecture) only after 1960s (mostly in 1970s).

0ike
He said that polls show the younger someone is, the more likely they are to support legalization, and this appears to be true. You can't explain that with anything going back to 1910.
6VoiceOfRa
Yes, and at the time the social response to this was too ban them.

Isn't this backwards? Shouldn't you first find a goal, and only then decide that this is something that you want to protect?

0ChristianKl
I haven't said anything against finding goals or having them. Most of us likely have goals.
Stingray-10

Most colonized places were net money-losers for the colonizer for most of their history

But then why did people keep conquering and colonizing new lands?

More importantly, there are a few "control-group" countries which were not colonized while their neighbors were, like Siam (modern Thailand) and Ethiopia, and they don't seem better off than their neighbors.

There is also Japan, which was better off than its neighbors. In 1905 Japan was strong enough to win a war against Russia.

0VoiceOfRa
Because conquering new lands helps spread the meme that one should conquer as much as one can.
8drethelin
Because the people directly responsible for the colonization profited, even if their nation as a whole did not. To go back further in history, the general of a roman legion often came home from a campaign fabulously wealthy, while the people back home saw far less of the plunder. And asking modern italians to pay spain for what ceasar looted is kind of absurd
0Lumifer
Money is not the only motivator. Power is another one.
3IlyaShpitser
That is a very good question on which books have been written. Some of this was about religion and prestige, and competition with others. Some of it was various sovereigns being convinced to fund dubious (in retrospect) ventures by good marketing. We have our biases and our cultural zeitgeist, and folks in the past had theirs. After the Otman Turks conquered Constantinople and killed off the Roman empire for good, the Portuguise started looking for an alternative route to do spice trading (and also look for Prester John, the mythical Christian king in the east). "We are looking for spices and Christians" was the motto. The English had complicated reasons to start colonizing that were not all about money. A lot of the times it felt like colonial things happened for complex reasons (e.g. having to do w/ what was happening w/ Christianity at the time), and the Crown tried to find ways to make money off it. It was the case that at some point the sugar trade became very valuable (e.g. to Napoleon the tiny sugar-producing possessions of France were worth much more than the entirety of Louisiana), but this happened much later -- there wasn't a "master imperialist plan" at all.
Stingray170

The whole point of MIRI is to create an organization of a type that doesn't currently exist, focused on much longer term goals. If you measure organizations on the basis of how many publications they make, you're going to get a lot of low-quality publications. Citations are only slightly better, especially if you're focused on ignored areas of research.

Just because MIRI researchers' incentives aren't distorted by "publish or perish" culture, it doesn't mean they aren't distorted by other things, especially those that are associated with lack of feedback and accountability.

Interesting. In addition to that, how much of this lack of desires is sociological and related to self-perception? I mean, these elders probably perceive themselves as a periphery of society, as someone whose time has already passed, who shouldn't have any more ambitions. Will aging societies make businesses and entertainers cater more and more towards seniors (e.g. like this), thus making them feel as the central part of society that everyone else revolves around?

Stingray100

That depends on what you consider to be the main purpose of a sports team - winning matches or providing entertainment and selling tickets to their games.

Would you call a cutter a violent person? You wouldn't.

I think that if someone who is completely unfamiliar with Yvain's writings saw your post, she/he would likely be scared of a wall of links. If you want your list to be useful, you should provide a recommended reading order for new readers. I've upvoted you, but at the moment the list is ordered randomly.

0casebash
That's an interesting idea. However, the most likely outcome is that I'll be distracted by other projects and never get round to this. Compiling that list already took way too much of my time.

What criteria have you used to decide which posts are the most important?

9casebash
Well, it's very subjective. I tried to optimise heavily for originality, ideas that I've seen on Slatestarcodex, but haven't seen anywhere else. On the other hand, I've also included comprehensive rebuttals like Why I hate your freedom, Consequentialism FAQ and Who by very slow decay. Here it isn't so much the ideas that are unique, but how comprehensively he tackles these issues and with how much charity. The reason why the list is so long is that I've tried to be inclusive. My aim is to try ensure that it includes all the "must read" articles, even if this results in the list being very long.
Stingray160

Is it possible to tame an octopus? Could humanity over several generations tame octopuses and breed them into work animals?

1telomerase
Octopodes use hemocyanin... use CRISPR to take that out, lenti vector to replace with hemoglobin, and you've got a super-octopus. Now just apply MIRI's magic formula for making friendly superintelligence, and you've got your tame octopus. Great basis for a TV show in the genre of "Lassie", "Flipper", or "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo". "Good on ya', Cthulipper!" Octopuses have poisonous bites, of course.... some would see that as a bad quality in a pet.
5Tem42
It is not hard to tame them and train them, but I have not heard of anyone training them to do something that is functionally useful aside from the narrow area of octopus-keeping. They have been trained to get into a bucket for easy transportation, to climb out of the water and interact with their keepers 'politely', and, famously, to take photos of aquarium goers. Bus as far as underwater rescue, exploration, or hunting for artifacts, AFAIK this has not been done yet. But if for some reason we needed them to run an underwater maze -- easy!
2Sarunas
Octopuses are solitary animals, whereas most working animals are social. Which leads to another interesting question - is it possible to breed octopuses to become social animals?
[anonymous]100

Most of them are pretty darn short-lived, despite their intelliigence...

Hacker News has higher concentration of entrepreneurs than Reddit.

Has anyone already tried Windows 10? What are your impressions?

Acknowledges that in a group context, actions have a utility in of themselves (signalling) separate from the utility of the resulting scenarios.

Why do people even signal anything? To get something for themselves from others. Why would signaling be outside the scope of consequentialism.

0snarles
Ordinarily, yes, but you could imagine scenarios where agents have the option to erase their own memories or essentially commit group suicide. (I don't believe these kinds of scenarios are extreme beyond belief--they could come up in transhuman contexts.) In this case nobody even remembers which action you chose, so there is no extrinsic motivation for signalling.

Is there any scientific backing for ASMR?

4[anonymous]
There's a very recent paper on PeerJ (hooray, open access), perhaps not what one would call "scientific backing" in the strongest sense, but more a study aiming to establish the scope of the phenomenon, and relate it to other aspects of perceptual experience - through survey of self-reported ASMR experiencers: Barratt & Davis, 2015 Full survey data is also provided as supplemental information (see the link above) in case anyone wants to do some deeper digging.
3[anonymous]
Could be related to skin orgasms. Some people have brought it in relation with foreplay, cuddling and delousing. Perhaps the closeness of the sounds evoke strong associations with being actually touched resulting in something like a laughter response to being tickled (which could be thought of as a signaling that there is no danger from a spider crawling down your neck). Perhaps the high spectra in whispering make it even related to chills we receive from high-pitched noises, which is possibly related to teeth maintenance. I'm not aware of any research.
7Satoshi_Nakamoto
Yes you can. See this site for what I think is a good example of visualizing Bayes' theorem with venn diagrams.

Keenly waiting for your posts!

My opponent must be secretly a shill, no wonder my arguments failed to sway his opinion. And I have no obligation to waste my time listening to shills and arguing with them.

Admit it, this whole post is a secret ploy to get more people to register to Omnilibrium :)

0David_Bolin
I tried to register there just now but the email which is supposed to contain the link to verify my email is empty (no link). What can I do about it?
4John_Maxwell
If cleonid is willing to do in this level of analysis for us in their spare time, I say they deserve all the registrations they get.
2ChristianKl
But he does provide the data for LW comments on that page :) The page also told me how many comments I have written on LW which LW doesn't even tell me, so it's cool ;)

Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread. This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesome things they have done. Not "will do". Not "are working on". Have already done.

Incest is probably only slightly less despised than pedophilia

Not true at all. Nobody takes up a pitchfork when they hear about incest.

5Viliam
Oops, I... didn't see that one when I searched. :( Because I only searched in "Discussion". Forgot completely that the other part of this website exists. My apologies. My only excuse is that seemingly in July 2015 we have accomplished so many cool things that we can now fill two threads.
Stingray160

You talk about boys as if ugly duckling type fantasies weren't popular among shy schoolgirls as well. Why wouldn't you want to be approached by the kind of people who didn't like you before? It feels good to be validated

Stingray130

LessWrong offshoot for political discussion.

-1Lumifer
Martin/Martine Rothblatt, Larry/Lana Wachovski.

What's next for Greece and the rest of EU? What are your predictions?

3WalterL
Greece fiats debt, kicked out of EU, economic problems not as severe as expected. Other small nations are emboldened to cancel their debts.
0Lumifer
The most important fork is whether Greece will stay in the Euro zone (we're not talking about EU, but about the zone of the shared currency, the euro) or will leave it and go back to drachmas. Keep in mind that leaving euro and introducing drachmas is not a single action, but a process that takes at least a few months. Arguably, Greece has already started on this way. I am pretty sure we will see Greek government IOUs (scrip) in circulation soon. The Tsipras government doesn't look to be either willing or able to come to an agreement with the Troika. The interesting question is whether it will be kicked out of power before the conversion to drachmas becomes irreversible (in the medium term). Keep in mind that there are valid economic reasons for Greece to prefer having its own currency.
2Richard_Kennaway
I was thinking of visiting the Greek islands this September. Is this looking unwise? I would have booked already if not for the crisis. I've no problem taking enough cash with me for the whole trip, but what will the state of the infrastructure and public order be in two months?
9James_Miller
Leaves the euro which causes an economic collapse which causes a political collapse and the emergence of a new government which makes nice with Germany and gets lots of money from the EU. (25% likely) Gets a big loan from Russia that prevents an economic collapse (20% likely) Comes to an agreement that locks in its bad but not horrible economic situation for another decade. (35% likely)
5[anonymous]
If anyone would have a way of knowing, that kind of methodology would have made us mega-rich long ago by investing, shorting etc. Sort of if you don't see millions of dollars suddenly going to effective altruism and MIRI then LW is probably not that much better at figuring it out as anyone else :)

If you are interested in something specific, search by topic, not by user.

0[anonymous]
Past searches indicate that other future topics of interest won't return results of sufficient quality or substance to be useful to me. I have benefited more from incidental, unexpected results.

What are your predictions concerning Greece debt crisis?

0satt
Too late for this to bear on "prediction" of the Greek referendum, but I had the impression that betting markets pointed strongly at "Yes" while polls tilted a bit towards "No". The divergence is interesting (if real; a quick Google didn't reveal any reliable reports of the original market predictions to confirm my memory).

Youtube ads are very annoying. If someone's first acquaintance with existential risk was through youtube ads, he would get a very bad first impression.

But can it always be better?

2James_Miller
Yes, unless you die.

Dammit. This quote makes me feel even more of a pawn in the grand scheme of things.

3kleer001
Literally nobody else can see through your eyes. That's a pretty privileged point of view. Does that help at all?

Sounds similar to paradox of voting.

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