All of Benevolence's Comments + Replies

This is probably one the most thought-provoking comments section i've read on this site so far.

I never really thought how different people's visualizing (or lack thereof) could be. Specifically, I never thought some people couldn't visualize at all. I always kind of assumed that people visualized fairly similarly to me. Looking back, this was a naive and selfish view, but still, so much difference...

For example, I saw the man walking on the left side of the street. I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, at roughly my real-life height. the man was sh... (read more)

Eliezer:

Its hard for me to put it into words... but i have that feeling in the back of my head of something being wrong.

Maybe I'm a gullible philistine, because while i don't personally appreciate it, I do hold modern art to fall under the "art" category. Python, not so. Python is more of a tool it seems. You could say that a Python program could be art, and I would accept that. but the language itself doesn't seem to fit "art" as much as it does "tool".

Now before you blame me of tossing around and manipulating definitions, I... (read more)

0DrGodCarl
I know this is six months out from your original post, but I figured I'd respond anyway. Also, this is my first post, so forgive me if it's not of the quality expected. It would appear you view the language as the tool and the products of the language as art, much like the paintbrush and the painting. Would it be fair to say that most, if not all, nontrivial products of the language are to be considered art, at least by you? If so, consider that Python is written in English and is nontrivial. It's compilers/interpreters/implementations are written in other languages as well (C, RPython, &c.) and are also nontrivial. I think with those ideas in mind it's easier to see the tool as a piece of art; it is as though the paintbrush itself is painted and carved. The language is artfully crafted to be easily read and written. So I think, using what I have interpreted to be your meaning of the word "art" and the way you group it, we have no pizza quietly bucket decision going on here. Though you may still see this as a stretch of a boundary, it is how I see the concept of the Python language as an art.

I think the oddness of this fad can be described by its link to the "science" literary genre.

I heard about this theory a few years ago, and looked it up on the internet, where i promptly found out it was just a myth. however at first i believed it. And i had a decent reason to do so.

I didn't know a lot about genetics (not that i do now lol). It seemed entirely reasonable that the genetics that determined your blood type would at least give a predisposition for a persons personality to slide in a certain direction from the norm.

This myths populari... (read more)

Hi there, fairly new here to LW. I'm reading through the sequences in order. went through map and territory and mysterious answers to mysterious questions. Now going through this 37 ways words can be wrong sequence, as its recommended before i delve into reductionism.

Its been said several times that LW tries to cater to a broad audience, but i find myself lost here. I have not extensively studied physics, only having done 1 year of engineering so far, and the physics references here are pretty much unintelligible to me. I don't know what configuration spac... (read more)

0PetjaY
Reading Eliezers quantum physics sequence should help with configuration spaces and thingspaces, probably some other physics references aswell.

Ahh, thank you for the link DaFranker.

Or is this just hindsight bias?

Edit: im a fool, new to posting on LW, just noticed the date. Point still stands though (not that i expect a reply)

6DaFranker
You are not a fool... or so I want to believe anyway. The Welcome to LessWrong page tells us that it's fine to just resume discussion even on old posts if you think there's something to add, and that sometimes new discussions started this way can be worth more than "not wasting your time" replying to old comments. Though of course, if you want a reply from the original author of the comment, you might want to first check if that user is still around, I reckon.

Greetings!

My name is Dimitri Karcheglo, and I'm 22. I live in BC, Canada, having immigrated here from Odessa, Ukraine in 1998. I speak Russian as my first language though, not Ukrainian. Most of you likely don't know, but Odessa is a very Russian-speaking city in Ukraine.

I've been kinda lurking for a bit, but not very extensively or very consistently. I was directed here originally via HPMoR, which was recommended by a friend. I've known this site for probably around a year. originally i had read through the map and territory sequence and mysterious answer... (read more)

Greeting Less Wrong!

My name is Dimitri Karcheglo. I'm 21, I live in Vancouver, Canada. I was born in Ukraine and immigrated to Vancouver with my family in 1998.

I found my way here via a recommendation from a friend i have in The Zeitgeist Movement. He recommended Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to me, as well as the Less Wrong wiki/sequences. I've red HPMOR at least 10 times over now (I have a thing with re-reading. I don't get bored by it.) I've also read some of the material on the site (though not a lot yet. Just "map and territory"... (read more)

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to be very anal and nit-picky with your joke (cuz i feel like it):

You're mixing equal volumes with inconsistent densities (and thus mass) and trying to compute a final volume. Either way you'd get more than 2 cups.

Back on topic:

i have a very simple definition of evidence.

Anything that modifies my mental probabilities about certain beliefs i hold to be true or false is considered evidence by me.

Whether or not the evidence is weak, strong, or even reliable in the first place is irrelevant if we're trying to define what evidence is.

I disagree with evidence ... (read more)

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