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Welcome to LessWrong (For highschoolers)

I probably share this with many people, it's just that I haven't come into direct contact with anyone who shares this. I'm extremely right-brained. I'm an actor. I'm slightly introverted, but I do pretty well with people, I struggle in math and science.

Yet I want to be a scientist. Which is a fairly left-brained aspiration, I think. Especially the heavier sciences, like physics. I don't know if that's a realistic goal.

And that isn't really unusual, my mind is higly regular. It's just that I'm using my brain for things it's not as capable of as other people... This is beginning to sound like a disadvantage. But being right-brained isn't all bad. Coming up with creative ideas is nice and fun. :]

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Welcome to LessWrong (For highschoolers)

Thanks! :D

TheatreAddict13y180

Hello! I'm Allison, 16, a Junior in high school.
Yes, I've tried to enhance my education.. I mean, my GPA is 3.6, so I don't think I fit in with the LessWrong community very well. I'm not gifted with a natural born intelligence. I'm not saying I'm stupid, I'm just saying I'm not a genius and have to work pretty hard what comes easily to others. I struggle in math at school, despite being interested in it. I'm a thespian, so I'm fairly right-brained. But even though school is challenging for me, I also sometimes find it boring. And as I like learning, but

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4[anonymous]13y

GPA has very little to do with intelligence, and intelligence has very little to do with fitting in on LW. If you're interested in rationality and philosophy, you'll do fine. And don't worry about fitting in, this place needs more diversity. welcome!

2KPier13y

We're planning weekly/biweekly online meetups for the LessWrong teenage crowd, if you'd like more interesting people to talk to: http://groups.google.com/group/lesswrong-highschool?hl=en

6Kaj_Sotala13y

Not at all! Reading about the personal details of various LWers is interesting.

LessWrong opinion of Nietzsche?

TheatreAddict13y-10

I'm not really sure if there's any actual link between Nietzsche and rationality, I was merely curious what a person who possesses rationality's opinion was on Nietzsche. If that makes sense.

Thanks, though. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is on my list to read after I finish Human, All Too Human. On my copy of Human, All Too Human, though, they messed up the formatting of the comma on the main page, it wasn't centered properly after "Human", making it look extremely awkward.

I loled. Ironic?

How to write a mathematical formula on the fear of death?

TheatreAddict13y20

I was, but it would've made more sense to refer to Harry's, sorry, my bad.

*She

How to write a mathematical formula on the fear of death?

How to write a mathematical formula on the fear of death?

Oh.. Erm.. I read that wrong. >_>

Facepalm

1Kaj_Sotala13y

Heh, and I misread your question to ask why it is the same thing, only realizing my mistake when I read this comment. :-)

How to write a mathematical formula on the fear of death?

This may seem like a silly question, but why isn't not-not-dying the same thing as dying?

0Kaj_Sotala13y

I'm not sure if this helps, but: you can think of it this way Dying = Someone dies. Not-dying = It is not so that someone dies. Not-not-dying = It is not so that (it is not so that someone dies). The first "it is not so that" cancels out the second "it is not so that". Similarly, if someone said (in ordinary speech) "I'm not ungrateful", that would mean that they were grateful, while "I'm not grateful" or "I'm ungrateful" would mean that they weren't. "I'm not-not-grateful = I'm grateful."

2Zack_M_Davis13y

It is the same thing.

TheatreAddict13y30

Awhh! :D You're welcome! It makes me happy knowing I helped someone.. Albeit inadvertedly. :]

How to write a mathematical formula on the fear of death?

Your first link doesn't work, but I'll check out the second one. I don't completely understand, but I understand more than I did before you commented, so thanks! :]

5Zack_M_Davis13y

In more detail: the underlying principle here is called De Morgan's law. De Morgan's law is our name for the fact that to say that a cat is not both furry and white, is the same as saying that the cat is either not-furry or not-white (or both). (More generally: the negation of a conjunction (respectively, disjunction) is the disjunction (respectively, conjunction) of the negations.) Suppose we lived in a world with twenty cats. We could make a statement about all of the cats by saying "The first cat is furry and the second cat is furry and the third cat is furry and [...] and the twentieth cat is furry." But that would take too long; instead we just say, "Every cat is furry." Similarly, instead of "Either the first cat is white or the second cat is white or [...] or the twentieth cat is white," we can say, "There exists a white cat." Thus, the same principles that we use for and-statements ("conjunctions") and or-statements ("disjunctions") can be used on ("quantified") for every-statements and there exists-statements. "There does not exist a winged cat" is the same thing as "For every cat, that cat does not have wings" for the same reason that "It is not the case that either the first cat has wings or the second cat has wings" is the same thing as "The first cat does not have wings and the second cat does not have wings." That's de Morgan's law. So, suppose there does not exist a person who does not die. De Morgan's law tells us that this is equivalent to saying that for every person, that person does not-not-die. But not-not-dying is the same thing as dying. But this is that which was to be proven.

7Manfred13y

So basically, two statements are being compared (and said to be equivalent) by the equals sign. The first statement is "All x: Die(x)." For every x, x dies. Or, replacing the label 'x' by the label 'that person': Every person dies. The second statement is "Not exist x: Not Die(x)." There does not exist a person who doesn't die. This equation describes the fact that if nobody's immortal, everyone dies.

You Are A Brain

Subjective and Objective Reality: My Essay

So... Does anyone know of any helpful presentations? My brain likes pictures. This was probably the most helpful thing I've come across on here. I'm 16, not the best at math and complex equations, so this sort of helped a lot of stuff click in my mind. :)

Subjective and Objective Reality: My Essay

Are you referring to staying away from the topic in the essay, or in general? Because I'll admit to being a complete layman on QM, but I do find it interesting. Mind-blowing and confusing, certainly, but interesting.

0Shmi13y

Upon reflection I think that you can certainly find something online or in the sequences to quote, with a disclaimer that you are not qualified to form an opinion on the subjectivity of QM.

Trouble with Bayes Theorem? (The actual math is confusing)

"The debate was then concluded, long ago, because this was science and not a debate club."

Hahahaha. Fair enough point. I'll change that, I sort of wrote the introduction first, when I had done minimal research, and so when I saw that people still believed in subjective reality, I assumed that it was still a legit viewpoint, even though I disagreed with it. I'm glad that I got the recently revived by quantum mechanics part right though. The audience is my teacher, who's fairly intelligent, and while I'm not entirely sure he's familiar with the con... (read more)

1Shmi13y

There are definitely approaches to QM that smack of subjective reality ("subjective" describing this one you of the many near-clones of you, one in each possible worlds each quantum mechanical outcome involving you creates, if you believe the MWI the way EY does). However, it is indeed best to stay away from the topic unless you are well versed in it.

TheatreAddict14y50

I'm awfully glad to here that, I'm not a big fan of percentages... Real numbers just come easier to me, I suppose.

Once I figure out the formulat itself, then I feel comfortable using a calculator, but I hate using a calculator if I don't understand the mental math to begin with.

Trouble with Bayes Theorem? (The actual math is confusing)

Trouble with Bayes Theorem? (The actual math is confusing)

....Oh.

Well, thanks Owen, Swimmy. I now understand Bayes Theorem significantly more than I did a half hour ago. :)

Interest in LW meetup in Farmington Hills, Michigan?

Thanks. I'm pretty sure I understand now. Although I'm not sure why I get the correct answer when I'm working with the actual numbers and not percentages when I do the math wrong.

But when I do the math like you wrote, I get the right answer for the precentages. So I get that part. But aren't I ignoring the base rate in the actual numbers one? Or no?

0Eugine_Nier14y

The actual numbers in the problem were chosen in such a way to make the base rates obvious. Here is another version using real numbers where the base rates aren't quiet so obvious, see if you can get it right: "1 out of every 100 women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer. 80 out of every 100 women with breast cancer will get positive mammographies. 96 out of every 1,000 women without breast cancer will also get positive mammographies. A woman in this age group had a positive mammography in a routine screening. What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?"

9shokwave14y

I know it now makes more sense to you now, but I want to point out that reality isn't school, and nobody is going to take marks off for using actual numbers or ratios instead of percentages (the 'pure' way that the teacher prefers or what-have-you). A calculator more reliably gets me the answer than mental arithmetic, and so I use a calculator at work even though it seems lazier than doing it in my head - in the same way, if ratios and actual numbers more reliably let you use Bayes Theorem than percentages, use actual numbers and all the people who think it's purer to use percentages be damned.

3Manfred14y

You can think of accounting for the base rate as equivalent to using the actual numbers. How many women have cancer and test positive? 0.8 probability 0.01 population. How many women don't have cancer and test positive? 0.096 probability 0.99 population.

1Owen14y

When you use the actual numbers of people, you get those numbers by using the base rate: 10,000 women total, of which 100 have cancer (that's the base rate in action), of which 80 test positive, etc. So if you use the numbers 80 (= 0.8 0.01 10000) and 950 = (0.096 0.99 10000), you're not ignoring the base rate. You would be ignoring the base rate if you used the numbers 8000 and 960 (80% and 9.6% of the population of 10,000, respectively), but those numbers don't refer to any relevant groups of people.

4Swimmy14y

You're not. Remember, you're not taking 80 of the 10,000 women in the population. You're only taking 80 of the 100 women with breast cancer. Likewise, it's not 9.6% of all the women, it's 9.6% of the women who don't have breast cancer, or 950/9900. The wording of the problem already took the base rates into count, so when you're plugging the real numbers in, you are automatically taking the base rates into account. By giving you 80/100 and 950/9900, Eliezer already did the division for you.

Yes.

Whoever thumbed up my comment about not understanding.... Why?

XD If someone doesn't understand something, I'm not going to slap them on the back and tell them "Good job."

6wedrifid14y

It is not because you don't understand. It's because you took action based on that understanding that was useful. It both got you more explanation due to Tetronian's willingness to explain and also provided some evidence about how obvious the concept is for people in general. I don't just vote on stuff as a way to reward social or intellectual impressiveness.

TheatreAddict14y80

Update:

I confronted him with many of these arguments.

He still expects that people will exist in the future.

I think I've figured it out. This is what is wrong with his belief.

It doesn't pay rent.

Even if he's right, and people stop existing when we stop percieving them, it still won't change how we behave, or what we're expecting to happen. He expects to see his friends later, he just says he can't prove they exist at the moment. (I asked him about memories, he said that we still have memories of dead people, are they alive?)

It's not falsifiable. I

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0jhuffman14y

Yes you are right, these are flaws in his argument. I have trouble even expressing his position coherently. Is he really saying that objects in the universe blink out of existence when you are not perceiving them? If that is the case, how is state in those objects (such as the thoughts in your friend's head) maintained when they do not exist? Maybe its as if there is a meta-universe with some notion of working memory that stores the objects while they are not existing. Of course this is very question begging, isn't the storage itself what we mean by existence? Also the objects state isn't simply maintained, it advances in ways that are logically consistent with what you know about the object. Like your friend has maybe read another chapter of the book before you see him again. So its as if we have to have computation over this set of working memory, to work out what would be happening in them to keep them consistent with your model of reality. I personally would call this computation "existence" so it might be be advantageous if your friend goes down this track. At this point he may well acknowledge that objects exist in some sort of separate or parallel universe when outside your perceptions. If you can trick him into taking this position you'll have him dead to rights.

2Jack14y

There is a sense of "prove" which implies certainty. If your friend is using this sense he is right- you cannot be certain that people stop existing when you stop perceiving them. In fact, he is not being nearly skeptical enough. You can't be certain people people exist when you're perceiving them either! Your senses could be lying to you- in fact people often dream or hallucinate people who aren't really there. But what we're doing when we say something exists is making a model to explain our sense perceptions. There are models consistent with our senses that do not involve people existing-- but they are bad models. Believing that all of reality is structured around your perception and that things come into and out of existence based on whether or not you sense them is not a very good model of the world. In fact it is a backwards and totally unhelpful model of the world. The point in saying "My mother exists" is to explain why you have all these sense perceptions: her image, the sound of her voice, memories of her, etc. The best way to explain and predict these perceptions is by thinking of your mother as an independently existing entity... "I saw my mother at 5:00 because that is when she gets home from work I didn't see her before then because she was at work." (note, one feature of hallucinations is that they usually don't lend themselves to being modeled as externally existing entities). And this isn't just true of people: it is true of all your beliefs.

0hairyfigment14y

That's probably the right answer. Still: "Your see your nose in your peripheral vision whenever you have your eyes open. Does this perception cease to exist when you stop noticing it?"

TheatreAddict14y30

Thank you (and others who have posted) for helping me with this silly argument.

:) I'll let you know how things turn out. He's quite clever at thinking on the spot.

8TheatreAddict14y

Update: I confronted him with many of these arguments. He still expects that people will exist in the future. I think I've figured it out. This is what is wrong with his belief. 1. It doesn't pay rent. Even if he's right, and people stop existing when we stop percieving them, it still won't change how we behave, or what we're expecting to happen. He expects to see his friends later, he just says he can't prove they exist at the moment. (I asked him about memories, he said that we still have memories of dead people, are they alive?) 1. It's not falsifiable. It doesn't constrain experience, I can't use this new idea as a model for future information. It's utterly useless because it permits anything to happen. When I think about it, it's like the tree dropping in the forest analogy. We're not anticipating different experiences. We both expect to see our mothers later. And we can both agree that we cannot percieve people when they aren't in front of us. He's just choosing a rather complicated way to state the obvious. At least this is what I'm getting. Am I right, guys?

4beriukay14y

You could also ask him what he would expect to happen if he were to close his eyes (or turn around), and you were to smack him on the head. Sure, you hitting him would be real in your "existence", but would he expect not to feel pain in his? That kinda goes along with floating beliefs vs. testable hypotheses; it is at least something to work with. And then, you could make it even more solipsistic by asking what happens if you both close your eyes before you smack him! There is also the possibility of getting to understand what he thinks about other forms of sensation. You could bring up echolocation, blind people, using magnetic fields to sense, IR vision (can the soldier see you if they are looking at your heat signature through a building in pitch black? Would either of you exist in one another's world?)... the list can be long, but it all boils down to there being evidence that you existed that whole time. If you can reach out and touch someone; with hands, or with phones, or with innernets. If they can upload images on facebook, even when they left your country, and you can see pictures of them. Then you are not being honest of your meaning of 'existence' when you say "they don't exist to me".

TheatreAddict14y50

I've already read that, and I still don't understand.

5[anonymous]14y

Oh, ok. In that case, I'll try to break the problem down a bit. What does "separate universes" mean, exactly? Your friend seems to be saying that people leave "your universe" when you can't see them, but in what sense are they actually leaving your plane of existence? Also, what is different about "your" universe versus someone else's? And how is it that two or more universes can "communicate" and overlap when the people in them can see each other? And does it have to be eyesight? What about talking to someone on the phone? For these reasons and many others that I neglected to list, I don't think the idea that everyone occupies their own universe is at all coherent. It's grammatically correct, but the concept just doesn't make sense.

Meetup : Chicago Meetup

Oh, well... Not that I'd.. well, yeah, I'd probably feel a bit awkward. Still, I plan on going to Chicago sometime in the next year, do teenagers show up at the Chicago one?

Fake Causality

Ehh, I don't mind the exaggeration and oversimplification.. If it wasn't simplified, I probably wouldn't understand it. :3

How An Algorithm Feels From Inside

TheatreAddict14y40

Edit: I've read most of the sequence, Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions.

TheatreAddict14y30

So.. is this pretty much a result of our human brains wanting to classify something? Like, if something doesn't necessarily fit into a box that we can neatly file away, our brains puzzle where to classify it, when actually it is its own classification... if that makes sense?

Two More Things to Unlearn from School

As a student, I can definitely see the benefit of not having knowledge just, as you said, handed to me on a silver platter. I'd actually much rather be challenged to attempt to figure out something for myself instead of simply being told about it. It honestly makes science rather dull, simply because I have a horrid teacher who doesn't even understand the material she teaches. Hopefully next year I'll have a competant teacher for physics.

2Synn Lee6y

Optimists are funny creatures.

Meetup : Chicago Meetup

It's alright. I'm rather new to the site, so would you happen to know if there are ever events or meeting in Michigan? And how old are the people who usually go? Do teens ever show up?

1arundelo14y

There has been one in Farmington Hills but (so far) it has not turned into a regular thing. Edit: No teenagers were there. I don't know what the median age was. (Probably in the 20s or 30s.)

Say Not "Complexity"

TheatreAddict14y40

I think I just thought of an insanely over-simplified analogy.

Say I'm not invited to my best friend's sleepover and I don't understand why. I call her, and the answer she gives me is: "It's complicated."

The situation might indeed be complicated, but the word complicated is just a fake explanation... :D Amiright, guys?

1DanielLC14y

That sounds to me more like a reason not to explain. If it's complicated, it will take a while.

Fake Causality

Thank you for clearing that up for me.

Fake Causality

So.. How precisely would I go about doing this? I mean, let's say I really thought that phlogiston was the reason fire was hot and bright when it burns. Something that today, we know to be untrue. But if I really thought it was true, and I decided to test my hypothesis, how would I go about proving it false?

What I think the point is about, is that if I already believe that phlogiston was the reason fire is hot and bright, and I observe fire being both hot and bright, then I think this proves that phlogiston is the reason fire is hot and bright. When actua... (read more)

3KPier14y

Yes, this is right. A better way of saying it might be: "Phlogiston", as ancient chemists understood it, meant "that which makes stuff burn". So saying "Phlogiston causes fire" is like saying "The stuff that makes things burn causes stuff to burn." If you look at the second statement, phlogiston obviously doesn't mean anything. If you wanted to test the hypothesis "phlogiston causes stuff to burn" you really couldn't, because phlogiston isn't a proper explanation - there aren't any conditions that would disprove it. If you want to even consider the hypothesis in the first place it has to make better predictions than other hypotheses.

Scope Insensitivity

Thanks. :3

Yeah, I mean from history, it shows that even when people think they're right, they can still be wrong, so if I'm proved wrong, I'll admit it, there's no point holding onto an argument that's proven scientifically wrong. :3

Hmm, I've darted around here and there, I've read a few of the sequences, and I'm continuing to read those. I've read how to actually change your mind. I've attempted to read more difficult stuff involving Bayes theorum, but it pretty much temporarily short-circuited my brain. Hahh.

4TheatreAddict14y

Edit: I've read most of the sequence, Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions.

Meetup : Chicago Meetup

TheatreAddict14y20

I might've gone if I had prior notice. :/

2Airedale14y

Sorry for the late notice. Steven and I usually try to give about a week or so notice, but it didn't work out this time. We figured it's better to have one now even with late notice than to wait until the next time our schedules cleared. Also, we have a Google Group where you can sign up to get e-mail notifications rather than relying on catching it on the site. Hopefully you can make it to the next one!

TheatreAddict14y20

Ahh! I forgot, I learned about this site through Eliezer Yudkowsky's fanfiction, Methods or Rationality. :3 A good read.

TheatreAddict14y140

Hello everyone,

My name is Allison, and I'm 15 years old. I'll be a junior next year. I come from a Christian background, and consider myself to also be a theist, for reasons that I'm not prepared to discuss at the moment... I wish to learn how to view the world as it is, not through a tinted lens that is limited in my own experiences and background.

While I find most everything on this site to be interesting, I must confess a particular hunger towards philosophy. I am drawn to philosophy as a moth is to a flame. However, I am relatively ignorant about prett... (read more)

1[anonymous]13y

LessWrong is basically a really good school of philosophy. And while you may hear some harsh words about academic philosophy ( that stuff, at least most of what's written in the 20th century, is dull anyway), reading some of the classics can be really fun and even useful for understanding the world around you (because so many of those ideas, sometimes especially the wrong ones, are baked into our society). I started with Plato right after my 15th birthday, continued reading stuff all through high school instead of studying, and occasionally still taking some time to read some old philosophy now that I'm in college. Concerning intelligence, do not be mislead by the polls that return self-reported IQs in the 140~ range, for active participants its probably a good 20 points lower and for average readers 5 points bellow that. As for relevant math, or studying math in general just ask in the open threads! LWers are helpful when it comes to these things. You even have people offering dedicated math tutoring, like Patrick Robotham or as of recently me.

1kilobug13y

Welcome here ! Don't underestimate yourself too much, being here and spending time reading the Sequences at your age is already something great :) And if you don't understand something, there is no shame to that, don't hesitate to ask questions on the points that aren't clear to you, people here will be glad to help you ! As for quantum physics, I hope you'll love Eliezer's QM Sequence, it's by far the clearest introduction to QM I ever saw, and doesn't require too much maths.

2KPier14y

Welcome! Encountering Less Wrong as a teenager is one of the best things that ever happened to me. One of the most difficult techniques this site can teach you, changing your mind, seems to be easier for younger people. Not understanding half the comments on this blog is about standard, for a first visit to the site, but you aren't stupid; if you stick with it you'll be fluent before you know it. How much of the site have you read so far?

2TheatreAddict14y

Ahh! I forgot, I learned about this site through Eliezer Yudkowsky's fanfiction, Methods or Rationality. :3 A good read.

Scope Insensitivity