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Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

Found helpful. Your conclusion is true, but not something I'd think to mention.

Now I can construct an introduction template: "I'm Alrenous, and I find X important." It won't be complete, but at least it also won't be inaccurate.

Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

Alrenous12y00

Deliberately by accident: When I do it on purpose, it works. Sometimes, I have the impulse to, decide I shouldn't, and then I do it anyway.

For example, I think this conversation should be about introductions, not me, at least until I settle on how I think the introduction should go. I could easily make it about me, though - I almost did so, accidentally. Specifically, about how I hijack threads without meaning to.

you can't stand the taste of peas

I in fact can't stand the taste of peas. Except fresh ones, as in, I just picked them, which are great.

To

... (read more)

0CCC12y

Ah - so it's deliberately, including when you feel you shouldn't but want to in any case. Your definition of 'by accident' differs from mine (I define 'by accident' as undeliberate and almost always unexpected).

Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

Alrenous12y00

Sounds like a good goal to me. However, then I have to guess what features of mine are useful to share, which I've proven to be less than 50% effective at in the past. (For example, that was a feature. Does anyone care?) It also relies on me having a more accurate self-impression than I've noticed anyone else having.

I guess, taken together, I just learned that I don't think introductions are in fact epistemically worthwhile. So I'll update my question: are introductions repairable, and if so, how?

An additional issue is that I'm skilled at being deliberatel... (read more)

-2MugaSofer12y

Let's see, what features have I seen come in handy ... The philosophical positions you hold would be good; helps stop people assuming you hold opinions you don't. Some people might like to know roughly where you are, both in case they need to talk about something that differs between nations or you live near them and they can rope you into attending meetups. If you have any areas of expertise/qualifications, people who seek knowledge on those topics (for whatever purpose) would know they can ask you and get the mainstream position on things. For example, people with any training in physics will be treated as evidence in debates over the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. This could be a double-edged sword, though, in theory. Hmm. Does this conciliatory ability extend to sacrificing your interests? Because if not, it sounds like a handy minor superpower.

TheOtherDave12y100

My $0.02: the most valuable piece of information I get from open-ended introductions is typically what people choose to talk about, which I interpret as a reflection of what they consider important. For example, I interpret the way you describe yourself here as reflecting a substantial interest in how other people judge you.

3CCC12y

Deliberately... by accident? Accidentally inflammatory, or conciliatory makes sense, yes, but anyone can be that. My language parsing module is returning a reasonable probability that I'm misunderstanding something in those sentances. To provide a starting point - a 'this is what I choose to say about myself' - which gives other people some information about your beliefs, personality, and other elements of identity. Often, parts of the introduction will be true and parts false (often due to exaggeration). It will certainly be incomplete, due to limitations of language. But, in the case of error, it would be repairable by demonstrating a correct identity; if (for example) someone erroneously concludes from your introduction that you can't stand the taste of peas, then that error is repairable by your happily eating a large plate of peas. Without the starting point, people are forced to start out with a blank, generic depiction of you, and then add observed features of identity one by one. That's what I think, at least.

Problems in Education

Alrenous12y70

It's also possible that there's a division between STEM and everything else. Especially, there aren't many term papers or essays being written for math-heavy courses, and so I can safely assume the Shadow Scholar wouldn't have run across their students.

[SEQ RERUN] Tolerate Tolerance

Alrenous12y00

Cyclotron radiation wavelengths can be tuned, as they aren't tied to valence shells.

The number of spots per second from thermal statistics plus harmonics on the cyclotron radiation can be calculated. If the electrons are also absorbing photons classically, you should get extra spots when they happen to add up.

I think you're going to see Rhydberg-OrphanWilde-interpretation blackbody radiation anyway. When an electron bounces off another, it counts as acceleration and produces cyclotron radiation. It might be different in magnitude, though.

I think photopl... (read more)

0OrphanWilde12y

I'm not familiar enough with cyclotron radiation (read: I'm not familiar with it at all; my understanding of cyclotrons is limited to "They're the things hospitals and labs use to produce small amounts of radioactive isotopes") to be able to contribute to this discussion, so I'm afraid I'll have to tap out due to ignorance I currently don't have time to rectify.

Personal Evidence - Superstitions as Rational Beliefs

Alrenous12y00

Was the alien geometry visible from outside the room? Or would the burglar have had to open the door and thus see the expensive materials before deciding to leave it be?

3OrphanWilde12y

Update on the alien geometries thing: There's a reason the room looked like it didn't fit together right. It's because it didn't fit together right; that part of the house was sagging heavily, and the angles were within visual tolerances of square while the whole of it was still visibly off; effectively it was an optical illusion. It's been fixed now. It's still a very creepy room but the corners are at least square now.

[SEQ RERUN] Tolerate Tolerance

Alrenous12y00

I have a question. My meta-question is whether the question makes sense in light of what you said. (I like working in low-information conditions, downside being dumb questions.)

Wouldn't this still be a testable difference? If electrons can briefly store energy, you could send a steady stream of below-Planck photons. Standard QM predicts no spots on the photoplate, but you predict spots, right?

0OrphanWilde12y

The answer to that is a firm "Maybe." The question becomes - how do you create a steady stream of below-Planck photons? In the current model, photons are only emitted when electrons shift valence shells - these photons start, at least, as above-Planck. Rhydberg's model (assuming I understand where he was going with it correctly) asserts that photons are -also- emitted when the electrons are merely energetic - black-body radiation, essentially. However, if your electrons are energetic, and at least 50% of all photons are being shared by the emitting medium, you're going to get above-Planck photons anyways. (If you're emitting enough radiation to create spots in the receiving medium, you're dealing with energy that is at least occasionally above Planck scales, and this energy is already in the emitting medium.) An important thing to remember is that the existing model was devised to explain black-body radiation. The Planck scale is really really low, low enough that the bar can be cleared by (AFAIK) any material with an energy level meaningfully above absolute zero. (And maybe even there, I've never looked into blackbody radiation of Einstein-Bose condensates.) So in principle, for a sensitive enough photoplate (it's currently nonreactive to blackbody radiation), for a dark enough room (so as not to set the photoplate off constantly), yes. However, that ties us into another problem, which you may have sensed coming - the photoplate would be setting -itself- off constantly. I assume light is a wave, not is a particle, which gives a little more wiggle-room on the experiment; sections of the plate experience distributed energy build-up, which is released all at once in a cascade reaction when a sufficiently large (still quite small) region of the photoplate has amassed sufficient energy to react with only a small amount (say, a nearby atom reacting) of energy.

[SEQ RERUN] Tolerate Tolerance

Alrenous12y00

And an experiment can't fail to provide new information, because you thought it would provide information and then it didn't, which means it has something to teach you about experiment design. Unless you're proposing that an experiment that goes exactly as expected is a waste of time?

That said I think what Wilde means by 'invalid' is that a strong conclusion that resulted from the experiment is invalid in light of the fact that an entirely different model is consistent with the evidence.

0Decius12y

An experiment that fails would be "I was trying to measure the speed of neutrinos, but I measured lab errors instead.", or "I tried to titrate a solution, but used an excess of phenolphthalein accidentally."

Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

Alrenous12y80

Apparently I have just registered.

So, I have a question. What's an introduction do? What is it supposed to do? How would I be able to tell that I've introduced myself if I somehow accidentally willed myself to forget?

0MugaSofer12y

Well, I didn't introduce myself, but I guess it lets people know stuff about you without having to piece it together from your comments?

Problems in Education

Alrenous12y110

P.S. I was going to ask about the terms of your NDA. While I agree with greater transparency, I (perhaps idealistically) hope it can be done without breaking promises.

However, I also have a principle, showing honour to honourless dogs is worse than useless.

He couldn't understand why he had needed to do this, and indeed, refused.

I have to disagree that this is ineptitude. He knows which evidence he has to conceal from you, and is doing so effectively. Of course by doing so he only confirms that it is harmful to his case, but it nevertheless grants pla... (read more)

1Randy_M12y

"The point of the grant program is to give goodies to certain demographics. The process was indeed the goal, no matter what anyone else said." The job of being the grant writer, and evaluator, are probably themselves goodies. In fact, the author of the article is probably viewed as ungrateful for doing the job he was hired to do so scrupulously.

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