All of tomme's Comments + Replies

tomme20

No, I'm not interested in computer science.

tomme30

No, I am not an American citizen. Every single college that I am applying to is private. Private colleges that claim to offer full-need financial aid to international students usually do that. I also keep in touch with a handful of international students studying in the USA and they all receive the financial aid they needed, from private colleges of course.

What specific factors make you believe that you will receive US financial aid and not UK financial aid?

Except for a tuition fee loan, there is no other financial aid I can receive in the UK, either f... (read more)

tomme00

Thanks for the heads-up.

In the USA I'll receive full-need financial aid, hopefully, which means that I'll only pay what I can afford, without going into insurmountable debt In the UK I'll take a loan to pay for the tuition, which can be paid back after I start earning a certain salary.

-1Xachariah
Why do you believe you will receive full-need financial aid in the US? Specifically, are you a US national currently living in Hungary and do you have some way to establish residence in the US? Governments do not give financial aid because students need it. Governments view financial aid as an investment in the future; students pay back the government by paying higher taxes and having more economic activity once the student graduates. A foreign student never pays taxes, as they return home after they graduate, so a government has no incentive to help them. Financial aid for non-nationals is exceedingly rare. Super, super rare. With the recession going on, financial aid of all types is harder to get and foreign financial aid was already hard to get. For most foreign students, ability to pay the complete cost of tuition without any aid is a significant factor to admissions. While foreign college attendance in the US has been going up, that's because we've been using the higher cost that foreign students pay to help pay for domestic students. What specific factors make you believe that you will receive US financial aid and not UK financial aid?
tomme10

This is what I was contemplating! Could you create an article with this proposal?

6Dorikka
Or just create the thread, and then see if it gets used. :P Less meta-proposals, more empiricism.
tomme10

The crux of my confusion is not what school to pick, but what to study and in which country.

Anyhow, in the USA I'm thinking some liberal arts colleges: Berea, Bowdoin, Bates, Carleton, Harvey Mudd. England - I got an offer at Durham for Biology.

2Larks
Durham is widely viewed in England as second only to Oxford and Cambridge. (For some specific subjects, Warwick, LSE, Imperial etc. do better, but Durham does well overall).
3NoSignalNoNoise
From a financial standpoint, Harvey Mudd may be a good choice; its graduates tend to do pretty well (I am in no way affiliated w/ Harvey Mudd, though I was accepted there): http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp I can't really speak to the others. Regarding biology vs. medicine, how well does medicine pay in Hungary? How transferable is a Hungarian medical degree?
tomme-10

1: The precise schools' names are irrelevant, for they're all on par academically, whether they're in England or the USA.

2: True, but in the USA, for instance, I have more means to educate myself in school, as opposed to Hungary. Also, consider the learning environment!

The precise schools' names are irrelevant, for they're all on par academically, whether they're in England or the USA.

No, they are the most important thing. If you want to ask for advice, you should not cripple peoples' ability to give you advice by withholding vital information. The best thing that you could hope to get out of this thread is some surprising information (good or bad) about one of the schools, which makes it a clear winner or loser.

tomme00

The ones from Hungary are no-name. In regards to England, think slightly below Oxford-Cambridge. The USA - liberal arts colleges, such as Bates and Bowdoin.

tomme20

Hungary. Why Biology? My mom always laments that I should become a doctor because of financial and career security. :(

tomme00

Only in England. I've started working on my college application and university admissions in Hungary at undergrad level is more of a formality.

tomme00

Nice one, I like it!

But there's something I fail to understand: where's the 9.6% rendered?

"9.6% of the area outside of event A." - wait, doesn't that little area outside A represent the women with cancer?

1John_Maxwell
Pretty sure the 9.6% is the section of the green circle that doesn't overlap with the red circle.
tomme00

I suggest you reconsider your position on fiction

I now believe that fiction could be useful because it conveys experience. For example, The Walking Dead, the Tv series I am watching at the moment, has a complex interplay characters, as it shows how humans interact in a plethora of situations.

Most people don't have that in mind when they bump into fiction. But, as I said, if you don't have enough experience, and you need a quick dose, sometimes fiction can help you.

tomme10

I'm guessing 6th or 7h grade, average flock.

tomme10

Thanks for writing this explanation.

I have tested my belief using the built-in "sky-detector"(my eyes) and I can tell that it's false, for the sky is clearly blue with a tint of white. Still, there are some instances where my "sky-detector" could be faulty(e.g., eye disorders, neurological conditions), but since other people's "sky-detectors" and machines have confirmed my belief, I guess it's true.

But how true? Is there, say, an algorithm I can use to assign numerical values to the probability of my belief? Assuming that there is such an 'algorithm', how can I use it to compare my initial belief to the belief I now have(i.e., the sky is blue with a tint of white)?

0Viliam_Bur
It's kind of simple: Does it seem that the sky is blue? Then accept it as a temporary truth and move on. Learn about physics, colors, human brain, et cetera. Every Friday review your beliefs about the color of the sky, and update them based on your current knowledge.
0Morendil
I suppose that there are infinitely many such algorithms! Again, imagine building some sort of robot to keep your lawn watered. You could program it with explicit hard-coded values for "blue", or you could equip it with some subprogram to "learn" the color of the sky. So the robot makes a note of the average color in the direction its nozzle its pointed at and (let's suppose) it receives feedback in the form of how well the lawn has been watered on each such occasion. The numerical value of the "belief" that the sky is a certain color, then, is simply the value of the "rightness" of certain colors to spray water at (it's a probability distribution of "sky-ness" over the color space). The robot updates this distribution each time it receives some feedback, and there are any number of ways you could program that. The laws of probability dictate certain constraints on this algorithm, for instance that you can't associate 0% or 100% probability to the proposition "the sky is blue", on pain of becoming unable to ever update away from these positions through a Bayesian update, if the robot finds itself in circumstances where the sky is a different color. (Though in the situation of the linked article, the lawn-watering robot wouldn't be much use at all.) There isn't a unique, exact algorithm for such calculations, because there isn't a unique, exact meaning for the words "sky" and for our color words, independent of what we use the concepts of sky and color for. There are as many different algorithms as there are purposes for the programs that embody them; you yourself embody an unknown algorithm resulting from your genetic and personal history. But, it seems, there are some constraints on any such algorithm, unique in the sense that they arise from the mathematical structure of the universe.
tomme00

While you make an interesting case for testing my belief, I do not know how to build a "sky-detector". So I still am oblivious as to whether my belief is true or not.

0Morendil
Get a camera, or use the two you were born with. I guess the first step is that you have to want to test your belief. :)
tomme00

I assign an util to each possible outcome.

what made you decide to begin spending time on writing posts on Less Wrong, as opposed to spending that time on reading quantum physics books, or lifting weights, or something ?

I do read quantum physics and lift weights and whatnot! :) As to why I decided to spend time here, see my original post.

tomme00

Pros&Cons and projected outcomes.

3Bugmaster
Right, but how do you evaluate pros and cons, and project outcomes ? Obviously you wouldn't take an action that has more cons than pros, and therefore has a poor projected outcome, but that doesn't tell me much. For example, what made you decide to begin spending time on writing posts on Less Wrong, as opposed to spending that time on reading quantum physics books, or lifting weights, or something ?
tomme20

What about pieces that blend truth and fiction, such as historical novels or most newspaper articles ?

I don't usually read those kinds of pieces.

Do you participate in any activities that you find enjoyable, but ultimately not very useful in the long term ?

No, I only take part in activities that have some long-term benefit.

0Bugmaster
That makes sense. What algorithm are you using to decide which activities have some long-term benefit ?
tomme00

In this case, how do you know what is fiction (and therefore you shouldn't read it) and what is not (and therefore you should read it) ?

I look for background info on the piece I consider reading and read its abstract.

Can you elaborate ?

See the reply below. I'm not good at explaining this stuff.

Horace wrote that the purpose of literature is "to delight and instruct". It delights precisely because it's instructive and it's up to you to decide whether you only need precise information(nonfiction) or embedded information(fiction).

1Bugmaster
What about pieces that blend truth and fiction, such as historical novels or most newspaper articles ? Fair enough, but I'm still curious. Do you participate in any activities that you find enjoyable, but ultimately not very useful in the long term ? I'm not trying to be glib here; I genuinely want to learn about your way of thinking.
tomme00

Bioengineering looks like the right choice but, unfortunately, my only available options are either General Engineering or Biomedical Science. To illustrate how these courses are organized at undergraduate level, see this for Biomedical Science and this for General Engineering.

I guess I should go with General Engineering.

1CasioTheSane
The general engineering looks best to me also because you can work on your own project, so you can choose one in your specific area of interest. See if you you can talk the advisors into letting you custom tailor it to bioengineering by replacing some of the class requirements with biochemistry courses.
5jimmy
I think this should be emphasized. I did physics before electrical engineering in grad school and they were taught much differently. My physics classes (and background math) taught how to figure out how to solve problems, while the engineering classes only taught specific algorithms for solving specific problems. My physics classmates ended up doing all sorts of different things because the knowledge generalizes pretty well. My EE classmates all seemed to be cargo cult engineering, and even a lot of the professors didn't seem to know that there is a difference.
tomme40

Nonfiction because: my faulty brain sometimes mistakes fiction for reality(e.g., I used to believe that Santa is real) and cognitive economy - there is a finite amount of knowledge I can store, so I would rather make sure it's accurate, truthful, useful knowledge.

0Peacewise
tomme, welcome to lesswrong, gday I'm Peacewise. re Fair crack mate, "Santa" is a standard fiction/lie perpetrated by society and parents, hardly something to be used as evidence of a "faulty brain". In fact its more likely to be evidence that your brain was and is functioning in a developmentally normal state. I suggest you reconsider your position on fiction, since you state there is indeed plenty of accurate, truthful and useful knowledge within the realm of fiction. Shakespeare has plenty of accurate and useful knowledge about the human condition, just to give you one counter example. "Out damned spot, out " by lady Macbeth is an example of how murder and the guilt caused by the act of murder affects the human mind. (Macbeth, Act 5, scene 1.) Lady Macbeth cannot get the imagined blood stains off her hands after committing murder. Humans are subjective creatures, by experimenting with fiction you'll be looking into the human condition, by avoiding fiction you are dismissing a large subset of truth - for truth is subjective as well as objective.
1Bugmaster
In this case, how do you know what is fiction (and therefore you shouldn't read it) and what is not (and therefore you should read it) ? Can you elaborate ? I'm curious about the topic because I've heard this statement from several of my friends, but I can't quite wrap my head around it. In the interests of full disclosure, I personally do read fiction: primarily because I find it enjoyable, but also because it sometimes enables me to communicate (and receive) ideas much more effectively than nonfiction (f.ex., HPMoR).
tomme00

I started to see myself as a rationalist when I was about 13.

Growing up in a very religious culture, I never bothered to question the beliefs that had been instilled in me. But one day, somehow, I began contemplating death, "How do I know what happens after I die?" or "Will I go to Heaven or Hell?" were questions that bewildered me profoundly. It was then that I realized that everything I had believed about death and the so-called afterlife was pure nonsense. It took me a while to accept that "absence of evidence is evidence of a... (read more)

tomme90

Hi there,

I am a high school senior who is interested in science, particularly in natural sciences. One day I hope to further our understanding of...well, anything you can think of!

My lifestyle, which I adopted after carefully analyzing my goals, is pretty spartan: I eat a strict diet, I exercise often, I only read certain things and so forth.

I discovered the transhumanist movement a few months ago. I have decided to join lesswrong.com because I think that I stand to learn a lot from this community and, maybe, even bring something to the table.

1Bugmaster
What kinds of things, out of curiosity, and why do you read them and not other things ?