LESSWRONG
LW

All of amacfie's Comments + Replies

Against Open Threads
amacfie10

Ah, you're right about meetups. It happened (24 days ago).

Reply
Against Open Threads
amacfie50

The clearest way to improve discussions here, which has been called for numerous times, is reorganizing the subreddits and adding a few new ones. So far we haven't even got a separate subreddit for meetups, which should be uncontroversial, although I hear it is under development. Despite the simplicity of this proposed change, apparently the codebase makes it difficult. How much would it cost to expedite the development, if that's a possibility, and could we let people donate money directly toward this feature? If it's too expensive, how about cheap altern... (read more)

Reply
3Douglas_Knight
Yes we do. um, no. That's old, from before discussion existed, whose existence shows that the problem has been solved.
2Error
This is darkly hilarious to me; adding a new posting board should be trivial, with no coding required at all. If I may go old-fart for a moment, it's yet another way that modern tech has still failed to match old tech that's fallen out of use over trivial inconveniences.
Open thread, 18-24 March 2014
amacfie00

I'd say it's worth it to have some humor and somewhat self-deprecating fun here.

Reply
4Lumifer
It's not only worth it, it is sorely needed. Taking yourself too seriously is a debilitating disease that can be fatal.
Open Thread February 25 - March 3
amacfie00

ya sorry, i misread things. showing the numbers of upvotes and downvotes would indeed solve the precision problem.

Reply
Open Thread February 25 - March 3
amacfie30

What do you do when you're low on mental energy? I have had trouble thinking of anything productive to do when my brain seems to need a break from hard thinking.

Reply
1Jennifer_H
A rather belated response, but hopefully still relevant: consider exploring fields of interest to you that are sufficiently different from compsci to give your brain a break while still being productive? To explain by means of an example: I happen to have a strong interest in both historical philology and theoretical physics, and I've actively leveraged this to my advantage in that when my brain is fed up of thinking about conundrums of translation in Old Norse poetry, I'll switch gears completely and crack open a textbook on, say, subatomic physics or Lie algebras, and start reading/working problems. Similarly, if I've spent several hours trying to wrap my head around a mathematical concept and need a respite, I can go read an article or a book on some aspect of Anglo-Saxon literature. It's still a productive use of time, but it's also a refreshing break, because it requires a different type of thinking. (At least, in my experience?) Of course, if I'm exceptionally low on energy, I simply resort to burying myself in a good book (non-fiction or fiction, generally it doesn't matter). Another example: a friend of mine is a computer scientist, but did a minor in philosophy and is an avid musician in his spare time. (And both reading philosophy and practicing music have the added advantage of being activities that do not involve staring at a computer screen!)
3Squark
Read LessWrong? :)
1drethelin
You can use pomodoros for leisure as well as work. If you worry about staying too long on the internet you can set a timer or a random alarm to kick you off.
Open Thread February 25 - March 3
amacfie00

(hovering your mouse over the karma scores shows that)

Reply
0blacktrance
It only shows percentages, not the number of upvotes and downvotes. For example, if you have 100% upvotes, you may not know whether it was one upvote or 20.
Open Thread for February 18-24 2014
amacfie30

I've had success with Mack's soft silicone earplugs.

Reply
Baldness
amacfie60

I'd say the benefits of cosmetic surgery can sometimes be sizable.

Reply
2Dagon
Fair enough. Quantify those benefits so they can be compared with the costs and risks.
Open thread, January 25- February 1
amacfie20

Would it change for particular behavior, e.g. clothes, dancing/gestures, language?

Reply
1Lumifer
Pretty much the same thing. Regardless of an, um, widespread misunderstanding :-D sexy behavior does NOT signal either promiscuity or sexual availability. It signals "I want you to desire me" and being desired is a generally advantageous position to be in.
Open thread, January 25- February 1
amacfie50

How would you define the word "sexy" in terms of signaling?

Reply
2ChristianKl
Sexy is a quite broad word that probably used by different people in different ways. I think for most people it about what they feel when looking at the person. Those feeling where set up by evolution over large time frames. Evolution doesn't really care about whether you get a fun intercourse partner. But it's not only evolution. It also has a lot to do with culture. Culture also doesn't care about whether you get a fun intercourse partner. People who watch a lot of TV get taught that certain characteristics are sexy. For myself I would guess that most of my cultural imprint regarding what I find sexy comes from dancing interactions. If a woman moves in a way that suggests that she doesn't dance well, that will reduce her sex appeal to me more than it probably does with the average male.
2Torello
Being sexy signals health, youth, and fertility. This is quite well supported by evidence and discussed in many books and articles. I would agree with what Lumifer says below, but I think sexy can be signalling when many people are involved: look at the sexy people I hang out with. Being with sexy people brings high status because it's high status.
3Lumifer
"Sexy" isn't signaling -- it's a characteristic that people (usually) try to signal, more or less successfully. "I'm sexy" basically means "You want me" : note the difference in subjects :-)
PSA: Very important policy change at Cryonics Institute
amacfie00

I just meant "dead" as in the current legal sense.

Reply
5wedrifid
I see I misinterpreted your earlier comment. My mistake, vote corrected. Even assuming your premise is correct (that cryopreserved humans can not be considered in any sense 'alive') it wouldn't be a misuse of the word suicide for that reason. Anissimov would be using the typical use of the word to express a claim that you believe to be false.
6wedrifid
True, it could be "murder", "manslaughter" or "tragic accident" instead.
Meetup : LessWrong Ottawa
amacfie30

Should people ask for Chris's table?

Reply
5ChrisH
Sure! We'll be at the back of the cafe.
Good luck, Mr. Rationalist
amacfie20

it's a question of live vs. dead metaphors

Reply
LW Women Entries- LW Meetups
amacfie00

Crocker's Rules might help?

Declaring yourself to be operating by "Crocker's Rules" means that other people are allowed to optimize their messages for information, not for being nice to you.
[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
0Richard_Kennaway
I have never seen Crocker's Rules in action, but it has always seemed to me that declaring that other people are allowed to optimize their messages for information, not for being nice to you, gives carte blanche for them to optimise their messages for being nasty to you, not for information.
6Decius
But the meetup is far more than a place to share factual information. There are messages sent entirely within the subtext, and you cannot make those messages explicit without sending additional messages in the subtext of 'I am explicitly saying this'.
What truths are actually taboo?
amacfie20

I hear "er", literally (rhotically), quite infrequently and I always assumed that people said it that way because of seeing "er" in written English and not knowing that it was intended to be pronounced "uh"; similarly, I've heard "arg" spoken by people who thought "argh" from written English was pronounced that way.

Reply
0randallsquared
...but "argh" is pronounced that way... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOlKRMXvTiA :) Since the late 90s, at least.
2arundelo
In my previous commented I restrained myself from linking to Ant Phillips's Um & Aargh but now you've given me sufficient excuse. (The chorus sounds to my American ears like "um and ah".) Edit: Grumble grumble Markdown parser bug grumble grumble.
What truths are actually taboo?
amacfie30

Any particular reason why you write "erm" even though (I assume) you don't have a British accent?

Reply
4westward
'My reading of the use of "erm" here is as a replacement for "my repetition of the word taboo seems awkward in this context (since the point is we don't share a mutual understanding of the word) but I don't know a better word of phrasing this". Do the British commonly use "erm"? I didn't know that.
1Qiaochu_Yuan
It's more fun? I dunno.
5arundelo
I had been reading this (and its more common cousin "er") for years before I saw someone point out that they're just different spellings of "um" and "uh". Edit: Not different pronunciations (modulo the difference in accent), for anyone who doesn't know what amacfie and I are on about.
Singularity Institute is now Machine Intelligence Research Institute
amacfie30

I was under the impression that this use of the word "machine" was archaic -- it was used decades ago for naming things like machine learning, machine translation, and the Association for Computing Machinery. I don't immediately see why a more familiar term wasn't used.

Reply
0loup-vaillant
Possibly for the "M". Imagine "AIRI" instead of "MIRI".
2011 Survey Results
amacfie150

So people just got silly with the IQ field again.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
8MixedNuts
Or people only have old results from when they were kids, when being at all bright quickly gets you out of range.
6PeterisP
Actually, how should one measure own IQ ? I wouldn't know a reasonable place where to start looking for it, as the internet is full of advertising for IQ measurements, i.e., lots of intentional misinformation. Especially avoiding anything restricted to a single location like USA - this makes SAT's useless, well, at least for me.
Jack130

I'd almost rather see SAT scores at this point.

Reply
4[anonymous]
Anyone expecting otherwise was also being silly.
2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey
amacfie80

I thought it was nanoweapons, not gray goo, that was the risk of nanotechnology.

Reply
5Nominull
Nanoweapons that aren't used to kill everyone aren't an existential threat, they're just a threat to the enemies of the people with the nanoweapons. I guess you could argue that nano-proliferation could set up a scenario like we have now with the nuclear standoff, but we already have a situation like that, with the nuclear standoff. Not easy to see why that should be more worrisome.
0XFrequentist
Thanks!
Training for math olympiads
amacfie10

Do math contest problems from the different areas of math covered by the IMO and start at your current level of ability and work from there.

Find problems from books, previous contests and forums like Art of Problem Solving.

Reply
1Cyan
I haven't had trouble when I've been in the neighbourhood. Be aware that parking on Preston is metered.
Rationality Boot Camp
amacfie60

So does this have anything to do with the Visiting Fellows Program? It isn't a replacement, is it?

Reply