> Do my taxes? Oh, no! It’s not going to be that easy. It’s going to be different this year, I’m sure. I saw the forms—they look different. There are probably new rules I’m going to have to figure out. I might need to read all that damn material. Long...
Recently, a video produced by Christians claimed that the future world would be Muslim. It hit 10 million hits in YouTube. The alarming demographics presented were proven mostly false and exaggerated both by BBC and Snopes. Yet, religion is such a powerful self-replicating memeplex that its competition against atheism deserves...
I have Notes from Underground, but haven't yet read it. Would you tell me what impressed you in it?
I've read Meditations.
Many wise aphorisms and thoughts there. Would recommend it for tougher times, as with any other stoic in general. Don't read it when feeling incredibly happy, or you are bound to have your emotional state flatten.
This is the nth time someone recommends me Borges. Although I have never felt particularly attracted to his writings by sampling pages of his books, I am reaching some kind of irresistible threshold I am about to cross. Will read something from him.
Remarkable quote, thank you.
Reminded me of the Anorexic Hermit Crab Syndrome:
... (read more)The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety. The hermit crab is a colorful example of a creature that lives by this aspect of the growth process (albeit without our psychological baggage). As the crab gets bigger, it needs to find a more spacious shell. So the slow, lumbering creature goes on a quest for a new home. If an appropriate new shell is not found quickly, a terribly delicate moment of truth arises. A
I would love to see an ongoing big wiki-style FAQ addressing all possible received critics of the singularity — of course, refuting the refutable ones, accepting the sensible.
A version with steroids of what this one did with Atheism.
Team would be:
It seems criticism and answers have been scattered all over. There seems to be no one-stop source for that.
For survival skills, I'd suggest buying this one before the disaster, while there's still internet.
The argument that no one person in the face of Earth knows how to build a mouse from scratch is plausible.
I've had some dozens of viewquakes, most minors, although it's hard to evaluate it in hindsight now that I take them for granted.
Some are somewhat commonplace here: Bayesianism, map–territory relations, evolution etc.
One that I always feel people should be shouting Eureka — and when they are not impressed I assume that this is old news to them (and is often not, as I don't see it reflected in their actions) — is the Curse of Knowledge: it's hard to be a tapper. I feel that being aware of it dramatically improved my perceptions in conversation. I also feel that if more people were aware of it, misunderstandings would be far less common.
Maybe worth a post someday.
P (H|E) = P (H and E) / P(E)
which tends to be how conditional probability is defined, and actually the first version of Bayes that I recall seeing.
... (read 2195 more words →)Do my taxes? Oh, no! It’s not going to be that easy. It’s going to be different this year, I’m sure. I saw the forms—they look different. There are probably new rules I’m going to have to figure out. I might need to read all that damn material. Long form, short form, medium form? File together, file separate? We’ll probably want to claim deductions, but if we do we’ll have to back them up, and that means we’ll need all the receipts. Oh, my God—I don’t know if we really have all the receipts we’d need, and what if we didn’t have all the receipts and claimed the deductions anyway and got
Recently, a video produced by Christians claimed that the future world would be Muslim. It hit 10 million hits in YouTube. The alarming demographics presented were proven mostly false and exaggerated both by BBC and Snopes. Yet, religion is such a powerful self-replicating memeplex that its competition against atheism deserves some analysis.
Leaving apart the aesthetic nicety of some religious rituals — which I respect —, it would be preferable to see a world with predominance of rationality instead of faith, brights instead of supers. Not just because I whimsically wish so, but because reason ensues atheism. Rationality is the primer here. With more rational agents, the more rationality propagates, and people’s maps... (read 938 more words →)
The visual guide to a PhD: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
Nice map–territory perspective.