All of JAlfredPrufrock's Comments + Replies

Wrt strength and endurance, what do you think about fitocracy?

I only know about from xkcd, but this seems already set up to have physical goals for leveling up explicit in the design.

0cousin_it
Never heard of it. The idea seems fine. But my own chances of keeping or dropping a habit seem to be independent of whether I keep a written log.

I'm an economist. I've taught at a university, worked for a think tank, and worked for government agencies. I've never particularly liked any of them and am now searching for a new career (I'm still plenty young, i.e. < 30).

Teaching at a University is probably the best, but I'm only an average instructor. I get frustrated teaching students that don't get ideas as quickly as I would like them to and it's exhausting.

I don't care much for research. This can either be cause of ego (I want to make big discoveries, not small incremental ones), because... (read more)

0feanor1600
As an economics graduate student trying to decide between academia, think tanks, government, and the private sector, I would appreciate it if you could expand on this. In particular, I wonder which jobs have the most novelty (not always teaching the same class or working with the same data), which encourage you to do more/better work, and which have the highest quality colleagues (rated on intelligence or friendliness).

Letting advice seekers drive the discussion seems like a good idea, but I'm a little leery of the advice givers. Giving advice is fun and that makes it dangerous. Even if you have field tested it, external validity seems like a big problem here. There's enough heterogeneity in behavior that what works for me is not necessarily likely to work for you.

That said, I don't have a better alternative, so why not try out this one.

There seems to be a strong sense that a thread like this won't work. My question is: What would it look like if it did work? We seem to know where we don't want to go, but I don't have a clear idea of where we do want to go? What does winning look like?

0[anonymous]
.

I wasn't saying that it would become lengthy in 6 months, but that any haircut which can be maintained for 6 months without a trim has to be a lengthy one. My understanding is that, to maintain healthy hair, it is recommended you get a trim once a month (for split ends and what not.) I keep my hair fairly short (clippers on the side, "finger" length on top) and get a trim once every few weeks (I taught myself how to cut my own hair to make this more convient and affordable. Also, my sister is a cosmetologist so she can fix any mistakes I make ... (read more)

0AdeleneDawner
In relation to the last bit, I suspect that the bit about 'healthy hair' is something in the cached thoughts/no evidence category. I haven't had a haircut in something like five years, and while my hair would probably look a bit better if the ends were trimmed to be even, there's nothing about it that seems unhealthy to me - the only noticeable change in that time is that it used to be wavy when it was short and straight when it was long, and now it's somewhat curly (more than just wavy) even though it's rather long. (I'm more inclined to attribute that to having moved to a more humid climate than to the lack of haircuts, especially given that I wasn't getting it cut particularly often even back when it was straight.) There could very easily be evidence that I don't know of, but it's a data point.

You only cut your hair once every six months! Even if you sport a rather lengthy mane (which I'm assuming you do) once every six months seems way too infrequent.

0Zack_M_Davis
Six months isn't enough time to grow a lengthy mane! As I recall, it took much longer than that for me to grow my ponytail, and various internet sources confirm that hair grows at about six inches per year. (I haven't had a haircut since late 2006, but my hair seems to have maxed out in length some time ago.)
0ahartell
In the past I've had haircuts roughly that frequently. On the tail end my hair was a bit long but there wasn't any noticeable difference in romantic luck (not that there was ever very much to speak of).

I found this to be illuminating, although it has all the flaws you would expect from a magazine article (sub-par documentation, crummy story:information ratio).

The 4th page has a really interesting chart with different workout structures for different goals.

I agree with you. I don't think calling on poets and artists to be poetic and artistic is a problem, I was just interpreting what I thought Eliezer was saying.

Personally, I think Eliezer was actually offended by the idea that non-poets and non-artists cannot be poetic and artistic, i.e. we need poets and artists because these Computer Science/Math people can't express themselves without equations.

But I'm making some big assumptions here, so I could have misread the whole thing.

0Bugmaster
FWIW, I do believe that non-poets and non-artists can express themselves without equations. That seems kind of like a no-brainer, otherwise we wouldn't be able to communicate at all. Still, artists can probably express themselves better, on the average, than computer scientists and mathematicians. There's nothing wrong with that; we're good at one thing, they're good at another, it'd be a boring old world if everyone was the same. That's just my personal opinion, though, I'm making no claim regarding whether Eliezer believes this or not.

But the original article implies that the Singularity movement does not need liberal arts participants at all; at least, not in their professional capacity:

That's not how I read it. Eliezer was pointing out that they were signaling - calling out for participation from poets and artists because saying that brings out the warm fuzzies. Later he implies that artistic and poetic responses are welcome and appreciated (and I agree that the SAIA can benefit from artistic and poetic responses) but resents that poets and artists are specifically called on to do so, apparently because he sees that as reducing their humanity to mere titles.

1Bugmaster
I understood the rest of your comment, but I don't understand this part. I, for example, am a software engineer. If SIAI wanted me to write some sort of an AI-management console for them, I would gladly do it. I don't think this would "reduce my humanity to a mere title". Acknowledging that my particular skills are well-suited to writing AI consoles, and poorly suited to, say, writing poems, does not somehow objectify me. No one can be good at everything, after all (at least, not in our pre-Singularity world). So... are artists somehow fundamentally different from software engineers in this respect ?

That's a good question. Off the top of my head, I can't point to any specific post or comment. I could go through a look for examples, but that feels like clever arguing.

Maybe a better approach could be to just continue reading and make a note of whenever I see an example?

Like most stereotypes, this is something that just sorta "feels" true. But it also "feels" like it comes out more so in the comments than in the posts. This raises a couples issues. First, is it actually true? Second, if it isn't true, why does it "feel" true? Third, should we and could we do anything about it?

0iii
I doubt that a site that expects to entertain with college level math comprehension is ever going to ditch that image completely, but it should definitely be a goal.

I'm going to go ahead and generalize from one example. While technically a 'success' since I am aware of Less Wrong, I would say I'm right on the border between the group of people who read LW and those who wouldn't. I share an interest in rationality (and somewhat less so with AI) but rest of the LW 'community knowledge' is very foreign to me. I never really read or watched science fiction (beyond maybe Sliders and the X-Files) and am only barely aware that fan-fiction exists . I've never had trouble socially and rarely feel awkward. The jargon is, a... (read more)

2atucker
I'm definitely in the cluster of people you're describing (though my sci-fi background is pretty lacking), but I haven't noticed any particular references to them in most posts. I hope I'm not just totally blind... Where are you seeing the cultural references? Comments? Do you mean the transhumanisty stuff?

Currently Working On

  • I'm finishing the first week (of eleven) of my half-marathon training.
  • I'm finishing the second paper (of four) that I need to write in order to receive my masters.
  • Cultivating and maintaining a new romantic relationship.

Recent Success/Back story

More broadly I'd like to share some of my backstory. I hope it will be informative and maybe somewhat inspiring. Four years ago I had just graduated from College with a double major in Mathematics and Economics. My mind was set on getting a PhD in Economics and getting a job as a tenure-t... (read more)