All of Gav's Comments + Replies

Gav10

OK, here's the gossip: (again, I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure nothing here is grossly misleading).

Some background: M22 is the formula used by Alcor, and VM-1 is the solution used by Cryonics Institute. Both are designed by professional cryobiologists, and M22 is patented (as well as being extensively used for cryoprotection of tissues in 'regular' labs).

There's some info here: http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/2008/07/08/vitrification-agents-in-cryonics-m22/ VM1 is extremely stable against ice formation at dry ice temps of -80C. However it'... (read more)

1Fluttershy
Thanks so much for the info!
Gav20

Yeah, sorry, I felt bad for not acknowledging that bit.

I guess that sufficiently long patient storage at dry ice temperatures would just result in a super thin (nanoscale) layer of ice forming on basically all the nucleation-inducing surfaces (which could then all potentially grow with rewarming), right?

Hmm.. that's a really good question. Off the top of my head I don't know where the actual amount of ice growth over time can be figured out. I'll keep an eye out for more info.

Trouble is, I think, that (depending on perfusion) at -80'C it's water is ... (read more)

1Fluttershy
Ok, well thanks so much for the comments, for offering to ask about that at the Alcor conference, and for being interested!
Gav10

Also just another thing that might be interesting:

Check out 'intermediate temperature storage', the idea of storing at a slightly warmer than liquid nitrogen temps (-130'C as opposed to -196'C) is a good idea in order to avoid any fracturing*. This is right near the glass transition temp, so no nucleation can proceed.

Tricky part is there aren't any practical scalable chemicals that have a handy phase change near -130'C, (in the same way that liquid nitrogen does at -196'C) so any system to keep patients there would have to be engineered as a custom elect... (read more)

0Pentashagon
Phase changes are also pressure dependent; it would be odd if 1 atm just happened to be optimal for cryonics. Presumably substances have different temperature/pressure curves and there might be a thermal/pressure path that avoids ice crystal formation but ends up below the glass transition temperature.
Gav40

I'm stuck at work for a while, so this is going to be painfully short, sorry.

The bit you're missing is getting below the glass transition temperature prevents both heterogeneous and homogenous nucleation. Dry ice is still well above the glass transition temperature.

Quickest online result I could find for the relevant graph is here: http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/vitrify.html, in section III. Axis labels are "Cryoprotectant concentration" and "Temperature (*C)"

(Although there's a nicer graph Fig3, p36 in Wolker's "Cryopreservat... (read more)

2Fluttershy
Good point-- I tried to note that in the second to last section. So, with standard amounts of cryoprotectant, I guess that sufficiently long patient storage at dry ice temperatures would just result in a super thin (nanoscale) layer of ice forming on basically all the nucleation-inducing surfaces (which could then all potentially grow with rewarming), right? That sounds bad, but I don't have much intuition for exactly how bad that would be.
1Gav
Also just another thing that might be interesting: Check out 'intermediate temperature storage', the idea of storing at a slightly warmer than liquid nitrogen temps (-130'C as opposed to -196'C) is a good idea in order to avoid any fracturing*. This is right near the glass transition temp, so no nucleation can proceed. Tricky part is there aren't any practical scalable chemicals that have a handy phase change near -130'C, (in the same way that liquid nitrogen does at -196'C) so any system to keep patients there would have to be engineered as a custom electrically controlled device, rather than a simple vat of liquid. Not impossible, but adds a lot of compexity. They might end up doing it in a few years by putting a dewar in a dewar, and making a robust heater that will failsafe down to LN2 if there's any problem. *Personally I'm not concerned with fracturing, it seems like a very information-preserving change compared to everything else.
Gav170

Hmm.. wait a tic. Helmets absorb shock if your head hits something. On the motorcycle that's pretty much anything around me. But in the car, what exactly can my head hit?

I drive a recent model vehicle, and there's at least two* airbags around the driver. I can't think of any unprotected objects that my head could strike, that a helmet would help deal with. Plus if I wear a helmet, the added mass my neck supports is going to make it more likely to suffer whiplash, surely?

Not to mention that helmets seem to be designed to stop large accelerations over very... (read more)

8James_Miller
Something is causing a huge number of Americans to " receive a motor vehicle induced traumatic brain injury every year." I agree with you about a helmet's mass being a problem, but the Crasche hat is very light.
Gav40

Dang it, days later and I'm still insanely curious to see how the results would differ if the length of the matches wasn't known by the algorithms. Either by removing the concept of limiting matches, or by ending matches far earlier(not just one or two steps) than they were 'planned' to end.

I've been pondering downloading the code, changing and running it, but my shoulder angels start slapping me at the thought of me neglecting my current projects to (even briefly) learn Haskell.

Just occurred to me that there's a way around this, I can offer a shameless b... (read more)

Gav40

I'm kinda surprised, my naive intuition was that SimHatingTitForTat would force a cooperative win.

Does anyone know if the lack of SimHatingTitForTat getting into the finals is an artifact of the algorithms knowing the length of the rounds? (I.e. they can decide to backstab on the final turn to get an extra point).

Gav50

Tongue in cheek thought that just popped into my head: There is no great filter, and we are actually seeing intelligence everywhere because it turns out dark matter is just a really advanced form of computronium.

Gav70

I have to +1 'Writing essays'.

Too easily overlooked in a technical environment, but it really pays off. Both to assist in consolidating your own ideas, and also in communicating them to others.

1Error
Agreed. Also: request for canonical sources on the art of essay-writing. It's something I could use improvement on, and I don't see anything related in the best-textbooks thread.
Gav140

Linux/Unix & their associated command line stuff. The number of times it's come in handy to be able to SSH into a machine that's way over there and do stuff is immense. Sadly I waited till Uni to learn, and I wonder where I'd be now if I'd internalised these concepts by the age of 15.

Need to log something you've just done? Redirect the output into a file. Boom. No longer do you have to find the bit of software that does everything, you just need programs that do simple stuff you can repurpose*.

Reading FOLDOC a bit to get the history was handy too. Th... (read more)

1AABoyles
Majorly with you on this one. Piping in shell changed my life, and then piping in R (via Magrittr via dplyr) changed my life again.
Gav20

I like the writeup and the idea very much. I can think of times when I've used something similar in the past, but the bit about recruiting people to do get milk didn't occur to me at the time.

I'm kinda torn, I see it as a very useful technique to defuse a situation and get people reminded about why they talk to each other in the first place. And of course the actual consequences of having a blazing row, which isn't as apparent when we're separated by keyboards. On the other hand as already pointed out a bunch of other social conventions then come into play. ('Home turf', shyness, social dominance, etc.)

At the very least, it's an important option to have in our toolkit.

Gav120

"There seems to be no good reason for banning the post" Drunken (by author admission) fanfic isn't what people come to LW to read. Multi-layered sarcastic incomprehensible stories that have no discernable point other than mockery aren't helpful.

Sure, there are plenty of sequences that use dialogs, but they are used 1) to make a comprehensible point, and 2) have to show their working and explain the conclusion and why it's applicable.

Fanfiction.net is the place for stuff like the original post.

/For ref, I'm not a mod, just a pleb.

3Viliam_Bur
Yet they upvote it. EDIT: Well, maybe.
-1[anonymous]
The post was was upvoted, so clearly some people do in fact come here to read things like it. Please stop speaking as if your subjective tastes are objective truths, it's distasteful.
Gav80

This doesn't really seem useful here. I didn't come to LW isn't to read drunk fanfic (or fanfic-fic), and I doubt most people do either.

If you think I'm being unfair, note that HPMOR isn't posted here, just referenced to it. If you actually want to work on writing as you've claimed, rather than trolling, maybe fanfic.net is the better place.

Gav50

Three Bayesians walk into a bar. The third one ducks

2Error
Now I'm trying to figure out if your missing period is part of the joke.
Gav30

If you're lucky enough to be in a country with preferential voting, there's usually a handful of 3rd parties with various policies (with published preferences so you know where the vote will 'actually' end up). So you'll at least have the opportunity to cast a few bits of information, rather than a single bit.

Obligatory Ken the Voting Dingo comic about how it's not possible to waste your vote: http://chickennation.com/website_stuff/cant-waste-vote/web-700-cant-waste-vote-SINGLE-IMAGE.png "I'll look into this 'hugs'"

0Lumifer
I must say I appreciate the comic which starts with "It's me, your good friend Dennis the Erection Koala" :-D On the other hand if you actually do care about conveying bits of information, there are much more effective ways than voting.
Gav10

Perhaps Nigerian scammers? Nowadays everyone knows that Nigerian scammers are likely going to take you for a ride, and what tactics they use. And how much it hurts to get stung by one.

You could use the idea of benevolent Nigerian Princes as the 'known false' idea that everyone can agree on, and segue into the features of it that ring alarm bells (high payoff for sending personal info, undeserved wealth triggering our 'greed' buttons, etc) and the idea that being primed on rationality helps you to not fall for whatever the next version of Nigerian scamming turns out to be.

Gav40

"desire to impose one's morality on alien intelligences." Actually it wasn't quite universal. The Baby Eaters (for all their obvious flaws) only tried to change other people's minds by debate and discussion. I was a bit disappointed that humanity didn't try and take the alien poetic argument and respond to it. As pointed out, it likely wouldn't have been fruitful given the Baby Eaters neurology is largely built on recycled baby-eating circuitry, but still.

Although of course it could be argued that the reason why we didn't see the Baby Eaters actually impose their morality was they were the least technologically sophisticated of all 3 species.

Gav250

From the paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.0126v1.pdf "In particular, memory functions must be vastly non-lossy, otherwise retrieving them repeatedly would cause them to gradually decay. " I wonder if they've ever met a human being? That's pretty much how we work. Memories don't so much decay as get influenced slightly every time we remember them. That's one reason why they get witnesses to crimes to write stuff down straight away, rather than waiting till a trial, etc.

Sigh. To go from 'brains are pretty good at storing information' to 'therefor... (read more)

Gav00

Last meetup there seemed to be a bit of interest in locks and locksport. I'll bring along some simple locks and tools and run a short introduction after the main discussion for anyone that's interested.

Cheers, Gav

Gav00

Whoops, I should have put a question mark in my comment. I'm pretty sure it's a 5:30pm start, but I'm not the one deciding it.

Gav00

Heyya,

Just want to confirm it's a 5:30pm start. The text says 5:30, but the 'Where/When' says 6:30.

Cheers, Gavin

0Gav
Whoops, I should have put a question mark in my comment. I'm pretty sure it's a 5:30pm start, but I'm not the one deciding it.
Gav00

Very nice meetup. I found the calibration exercises by Tim very useful, thanks for running them.

Ian's phenomena of the 'bouncing LED' display interested me enough that I built a bit of hardware to test whether my hunch of why it occurs was correct. I'll bring it in next time to show :-)

Gav10

Just wanted to say good meetup and I had a great time. Looking forward to the next one!