dkl9

9mo

When you get to know someone, you might ask about their interests or hobbies. From that, you can better decide what activity to invite them to join, or on what topic to have them converse, whenever you meet again.

Any interest or hobby appeals to variously many people. If you have the same interest as the person you meet, the commonality informs you much better about how to connect with them. Ceteris paribus, if the interest is more common, you and your interlocutor are more likely to share it, but would bond by it more weakly. Think, for example, of how two extreme ironers connect, versus two people who "like Linux", versus two... (read 161 more words →)

Taxonomy of possibility

dkl9

10mo

Followup to: Will issues are quite nearly skill issues

You do a thing iff you can do it and you want to do it.

Something you can do, but didn't, looks just the same to the simple observer as something you can't do. Likewise with what you want to do, but didn't. When you don't do something, obvious physical reality leaves ambiguous whether you were unable or disinclined.

Here are some things I don't do:

fly
stay awake continuously for a year
destroy Instagram
enter the gym without showing ID
take notes on a chalkboard
crush my finger between door and frame

Each of those things, I don't do for a single reason: I'm unable to do the first three, and disinclined... (read 1321 more words →)

Replying toAvoid the Counterargument Collapse

dkl910mo

Avoid the Counterargument Collapse

So the collapse is mistaking the one on the right for the one on the left. (This was an internet meme of some years ago, which happens to seem very relevant by how I understand the OP) midwit

Replying toConsider showering

dkl910mo

Consider showering

"Stimulating" here is not quite the opposite of "boring". Many minds are used to said temperature changes, water assaults, and laborious motions, such that they still stimulate, but are easily ignored, leaving much space for thoughts. Showers are boring by consistency, despite stimulation.

Calculus is about change

dkl9

10mo

This is a joke taken too far, especially given that I am thoroughly educated in only a minority of these subjects.

Maths

Calculus is about change. Statistics is about variation. Linear Algebra is about vectors. Multivariable Calculus is about the chain rule. Differential Equations is about initial conditions. Topology is about boundaries. Complex Analysis is about local isotropy.

Hard sciences

Classical Physics is about energy. Quantum Physics is about amplitudes. Astronomy is about gravity. Inorganic Chemistry is about charge. Organic Chemistry is about groups. Botany is about seeds. Zoology is about predation. Neuroscience is about stimuli.

Social sciences

Economics is about demand. Linguistics is about compression. Psychology is about habits. Law is about incentives.

Miscellaneous

Finance is about arbitrage. Marketing is about preferences. Agriculture is about growth. Computer Science is about precision. Journalism is about description.

Replying toTest of the Bene Gesserit

dkl91y

Test of the Bene Gesserit

"older the human beings" -> "older than human beings"

"copper metal cube 16 centimeters in diameter" -> "copper cube 16 centimeters to an edge"

"stuck out your throat" -> "stick out your throat"

"exame" -> "exam"

"to boy is about to die" -> "to a boy who is about to die"

Except for the crucial paragraph near the end, the style reads more like Herbert than Lsusr. Good job.

The manifest manifesto

dkl9

Followup to: If you weren't such an idiot...

We believe in staying alive — at least when life is or will be worth it — to do things that are useful and/or fun.

Protect yourself from extreme cold by techniques such as wearing clothes. Avoid looking directly at the sun, except when using eye-protecting equipment. Prefer to avoid addictive drugs, especially those with acute overdose risk. Prefer to keep yourself and others alive. Use a vehicle to travel a long distance, if you must do it quickly and/or thru a dangerous environment.

Wash your hands sometimes, at least after you defecate and before you perform surgery. Clean your body, by shower or equivalent, at least... (read 359 more words →)

Ascetic hedonism

dkl9

In being ascetic, you abandon the usual sources of material pleasure, guided by the benefits of the lifestyle: you use less money and effort on avoidable pleasures, you can better focus your mind on the spiritual and the creative, and you make yourself resilient to potentially losing these pleasures.

In being a hedonist, you proportionally focus your lifestyle around the pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure is appealing — perhaps an outright moral good — by very intuitive appeal.

The types of products you consume and activities in which you partake affect the pleasure you get. I have often taken those things thought of as less pleasurable than the majority's preferences. Sometimes I would opt for... (read 548 more words →)

Replying toStream Entry

dkl91y

Stream Entry

Correction: "is that you experienced was real" -> "is that what you experienced was real"

> Now I knew how to not trigger those defense mechanisms.
The linked video looks like rhetorical aikido. If that's what you're talking about, link it. If you meant something else, what did you learn to do?

Variably compressibly studies are fun

dkl9

I like studying calculus, physics, and English etymology.

Calculus includes problems like $\int d x arctan x$ . $arctan$ is an elementary function, so you may be expected to have its integral memorised. I'd have to find it otherwise. By parts: $\int d x arctan x = x arctan x - \int d x (x {arctan}^{'} x)$ . I remember arctan's derivative: $\frac{1}{x^{2} + 1}$ . Short of that, I could rederive it in terms of trigonometric identities and the chain rule. Then $\int d x arctan x = x arctan x - \int d x \frac{x}{x^{2} + 1}$ .

I can easily enough express $\frac{1}{x^{2} + 1}$ as a power series, based on that of $\frac{1}{1 - x}$ , and the numerator $x$ just multiplies each term. Integrate term-by-term and get a new power series reminiscent of that for the logarithm. From that, I could guess-and-check to get the exact logarithm — or I do it precisely from the knowledge that $(ln (f))^{'} = \frac{f^{'}}{f}$ , recognising $x$ as roughly the derivative of $x^{2} + 1$ .

In physics, you can... (read 390 more words →)

Public computers can make addictive tools safe

dkl9

Intermittently for the past four years, I read LessWrong and its ilk to hazardous excess. By teaching technical topics sans pressure to rigourously understand, heavy with microhumour and satisfying insights, it got my susceptible mind addicted. Intermittently for the past year, I also posted on LessWrong, with variable (mostly good) results.

For a couple years, I alternated between a couple computers, only one of which I fully controlled. I blocked the addictive nerdy blogs on the machine I controlled. I cross-posted and over-read on the others. Cold-turkeying off the secondary computers gets me to quit the gratuitous reading, but locks me off from posting for much of my potential audience. We can do... (read more)

Picking favourites is hard

dkl9

If you ask for my "favourite", or whatever is "best", in any broad domain, I will refuse to answer, or else give an answer I know to be probably wrong.

Goodness-judgments are fuzzy, i.e. subjective and intuitive. Fuzzy values only compare one way or the other when values compared are far enough apart. The more items there are to compare in a set, the closer together their respective qualities will be, on average. Hence, as sets get larger, fuzzy comparisons among its members get less reliable.

Something confidently known to be best in its category is (definitionally) known to be strictly better than each other item in its category. So we can only be... (read 163 more words →)

Replying toDecorated pedestrian tunnels

dkl91y

Decorated pedestrian tunnels

You're probably right. I neglected check how effective this would be in any quantitative sense.

I think you underestimate the cost of street-level murals ($100K / mi is about $60 / m), and neglect the benefit of tunnels' inevitable insulation, but the decision would probably end up the same.

Decorated pedestrian tunnels

dkl9

Moving thru a visually-varied environment helps you remember what you think, say, and hear. Adding visual variety to an area thus aids the memories of those passing thru it, and, on average, makes it look nicer. Dense cities, especially those with mixed-use zoning, already have many mutually-distinct buildings. Some other small areas, like parks, are similarly intricate. Suburbs and blander cities, however, are mostly dull arrays of streets and houses. We can do better.

Visual art can be almost arbitrarily detailed and unique. If we cover walls around streets with visual art, the problem is solved. However, most walls around streets are the outer walls of buildings, most of which are privately owned,... (read 275 more words →)

Replying toEntropic strategy in Two Truths and a Lie

dkl91y

Entropic strategy in Two Truths and a Lie

My phone runs iOS or Android
My body mass is between 60 and 80 kg
English is one of my native languages

That would be fun in the same way. If your goal in playing includes informing listeners, it's better to use thoroughly absurd facts and an equally-absurd lie; absurdity is low prior probability leads to surprise corresponds to learning.

Entropic strategy in Two Truths and a Lie

dkl9

The classic social game "two truths and a lie" asks each player, at their turn, to say three facts as the title says, which other players, listening, then seek to tease apart. It gets boring if listeners can easily and reliably tell which "fact" is false. To make it more exciting, the natural strategy would be to pick two absurd true facts and one dull fake fact.

I picked my diet by poring over a spreadsheet
I've been to Mexico twice
I butter my bread on both sides

With this strategy used at a moderate level, listeners mostly guess the more absurd true fact as the probable lie. At an extreme, listeners correctly recognise the lie... (read more)

Replying toInternal music player: phenomenology of earworms

dkl91y

Internal music player: phenomenology of earworms

The post answers most of that, except for the first question, for which my memories of childhood are too vague anyway, but it was surely before when I was 14.

Replying toInternal music player: phenomenology of earworms

dkl91y

Internal music player: phenomenology of earworms

Some of the difference may be the quality (enjoyability, negative of annoyance) of the songs we respectively get as earworms (based ultimately on the quality of the songs we hear). Some of it may be that I can get distracted from verbal thinking by earworm lyrics. The rest is arbitrary personal mind-differences.

Replying toHow harmful is music, really?

dkl91y

How harmful is music, really?

I added intention-to-treat statistics in an addendum.

Replying toHow harmful is music, really?

dkl91y

How harmful is music, really?

there might be a common antecedent that both improves your mood and causes you to listen to music. As a silly example, maybe you love shopping for jeans, and clothing stores tend to play music, so your mood will, on average, be better on the days you hear music for this reason alone.

There might be a common antecedent that both worsens my mood and causes me to listen to music. As a silly example, maybe I hate shopping for jeans, but clothing stores tend to play music, which actually improves my mood enough to outweigh the shopping. That is, confounding could go both ways here; the effect could be greater than it... (read more)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Predictive history classes

Please speak unpredictably

Toki pona FAQ

Walk while you talk: don't balk at "no chalk"

dkl9

dkl9

Idiohobbies

Taxonomy of possibility

Calculus is about change

The manifest manifesto

Ascetic hedonism

Variably compressibly studies are fun

Public computers can make addictive tools safe

dkl9

Predictive history classes

Please speak unpredictably

Toki pona FAQ

Walk while you talk: don't balk at "no chalk"

dkl9

dkl9

Idiohobbies

Taxonomy of possibility

Calculus is about change

The manifest manifesto

Ascetic hedonism

Variably compressibly studies are fun

Public computers can make addictive tools safe

Maths

Hard sciences

Social sciences

Miscellaneous