All of just_browsing's Comments + Replies

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. The post is both venting for the fun of it (which, clearly, landed with absolutely nobody here) and earnestly questioning whether the content is net positive (which, clearly, very few interpreted as being earnest): 

But honestly, is this content for the greater good? Are the clickbait titles causing people to earnestly engage? Are peoples’ minds being changed? Are people thinking thoughtfully about the facts and ideas being presented?

I don’t know. It seems like Kat Woods is spending a lot of time making these posts. May

Well put and I agree.

Karma is tricky as a measure because subreddits are non-stationary. In particular, I feel like the "vibes" of all the subreddits I listed were different 6+ months ago, and they are becoming more homogenous (in part due to power users such as Kat Woods). I don't know of a way to view what the "hot" page of any given subreddit would have looked like at some previous point in time, so it's hard to find data to understand subreddit culture drift. Anyway, the high karma is also consistent with selection effects, where the users who do not like this content bounce off, and only the users that do stick around those subreddits in the long term. 

Typically I agree with the underlying facts behind her memes! For example I also think AI safety is a pressing issue. If her memes were funny I would instead be writing a post about how awesome it is that Kat Woods is everywhere. My main objection is that I do not like the packaging of the ideas she is spreading. For example the memes are not funny. (See the outline of this post: content, vibes, conduct.) 

You asked for an example of Kat Woods content that aims to convince rather than educate. Here is one recent example. I feel like the packaging of th... (read more)

Suggestion: could you also transcribe the Q&A? 4 out of the 10 minutes of content is Q&A. 

Retrospective: This comment was helpful

Write in order to organize your thoughts [...] then record yourself giving a short explanation of what you've learned about the topic [...] Watch the recording and process the emotions/discomforts with your speaking that come up

Haven't done the "record yourself" part but I have since started deliberately practicing explaining particular concepts. Typically I will practice it 5 times in a row, and after each time think carefully about what went well/poorly. Multiple comments suggested practice but I think this one resonated with me best (even though I'm not into focusing stuff) 

Retrospective: I found this particularly helpful

Watch podcast interviews. Pay attention to how the host asks questions.

Retrospective: I found this particularly helpful 

The best way to sound smart is to spend hours preparing something and present it as if you made it up on the spot. Really smart people will have a ton of prepared phrases, so many that they can talk on a wide variety of topics by saying something they already know how to say and just modifying it a little.

I think you can 80/20 all this stuff by being "moderately active" instead of "an athlete". 

Average BMI in the United States increased from 25.2 in 1975 to 28.9 in 2014, so a 3 point increase. Compare an average 1975 person with an average 2014 person. It's far more likely that the 3 point increase is due to overeating, rather than other explanations like packing on muscle (3 whole points of muscle is a lot) or variation in bone mass (this is likely negligible). Overeating is the path of least resistance in wealthy Western countries. So yes, technically BMI is not the same thing as fatness, but they are highly correlated. 

Also as Rockenots p... (read more)

AI capabilities are advancing rapidly. It's deeply concerning that individual actors can plan and execute experiments like "give a LLM access to a terminal and/or the internet". However I need to remember it's not worth spending my time worrying about this stuff. When I worry about this stuff, I'm not doing anything useful for AI Safety, I am just worrying. This is not a useful way to spend my time. Instead it is more constructive to avoid these thoughts and focus on completing projects I believe are impactful. 

Wow thanks for sharing. I might steal the NFC / walk scheduling ideas -- those sound like they could be useful. 

Long shot but you haven't happened to figure out how to get Tasker to interface with "Focus Mode" have you? That's one thing I haven't managed to get Tasker to detect yet.

"Don't make us look bad" is a powerful coordination problem which can have negative effects on a movement. Examples:

• Veganism has a bad reputation of being holier than thou. It's hard to be a vegan without getting lumped in with "those vegans". So, it's hard to be open about being a vegan, which makes making veganism more socially acceptable tricky.
• Ideas perceived as crazy are connected to the EA movement. For example, EAs discuss the possibility that we are living in a simulation seriously. So do flat earthers. Similarly, outsiders could dismiss EA as bein

This is a good point concerning current gait recognition technology. However, I don't doubt it will improve. On longer timescales, this should happen naturally as compute gets cheaper and more data gets collected. On shorter timescales, this can be accelerated using techniques such as synthetic data generation. 

Perhaps there is a natural limit to gait recognition, if it turns out that people can't be uniquely identified from their gait, even in the limit of perfect data. But if there isn't, then in 10 years, "94%" will turn into "99.999%", or whatever... (read more)

I could see the spotlight being unpleasant because the brightness differences might cause eye strain, unless the light is really perfectly placed. Sunlight (or even shade) seems much better in this regard. Interesting idea though—I'm surprised how affordable that spotlight is. 

Does Kelvin Color Temperature change much in the sun compared to the shade? Based on feel, the shade feels way brighter to me than even the brightest warm (= low Kelvin) lights indoors. This intuition could be wrong though. 

I really like your way of thinking about why books are useful!

This reminds me of another argument for why books are useful which came up in this 80,000 Hours podcast episode with Julia Galef. 

Julia Galef: [...] You know, the thing that I think books do really well is provide a nice container for a thesis or ideas, such that it’s easy to spread and talk about. And they do this better than blog posts, for the most part. I’ve heard people sometimes say, “Most books should be blog posts,” or “Most books should be articles,” or something like that, and I s

What blog posts are for: a response to "What books are for: a response to 'Why books don't work.'"

I read this blog post carefully yet absorbed only a small fraction of the total details it contains. You're only communicating one key idea here. For greater learning efficiency, you may as well replace this post with a one-sentence summary: "Anyway, I think that books are basically mechanisms to leverage this availability heuristic."

If you want more opinions on your situation than whatever you get on LessWrong, you could try asking this question on https://academia.stackexchange.com/ ). They have an entire tag on errors in published papers. 

Glad to hear I pointed you to some helpful stuff!

The log(popularity) is to discourage me from populating this list with lots of insightful but really well-known or easy to find stuff—I think this would make it less interesting or useful. Then "log" was arbitrarily chosen to weaken the penalty on popularity (compared to if I just divided by it). I'm not doing any of this quantitatively anyway, so it's really just me rationalizing including "Doing Good Better" but not the n other good popular things I 'should' similarly recommend. 

Yes, I completely agree with this point. I hope I made it clear that I like thinking about data like this exclusively for personal "outside view"-y reflection. So things like, "Oh I haven't gotten anything done this morning, maybe it's because of (x cycle variable), so maybe I can do (y intervention) to fix things". And then, generalizing to other women only in the sense that they might find it helpful to think similar thoughts. 

They didn't mention sex drive, but the binary variable "had sex" did come up in the study. However individual fluctuations cancelled out any patterns beyond "more sex on weekends" and "less sex during periods". 

Thing I would do if I had enough money for $200 to be inconsequential: buy 2 pairs of identical bluetooth headphones—one permanently paired to my laptop and one permanently paired to my phone. This would save me lots of annoyance whenever I switch between the two. Bluetooth seems to just suck 

Summarized, this post seems to be saying "Learning <thing> is most effective if you get the most effective teacher. The most effective teachers of <thing> aren't necessarily the most skilled ("the best") people—they are people who are marginally more skilled in <thing> than you ("the same")."

The first sentence seems very true. The second sentence is often true, but as johnswentworth pointed out, there are exceptions. I'll restate his exception and add two of my own. 

1. (from johnswentworth's comment) If the skill is niche, you may have

Problem: I compulsively pick at scabs. Often I do it even though I don't want to pick at it because I know I'll be worse off. (Scab will bleed, it'll just reform anyway, and I'll have to deal with the unhealed skin for longer.) Telling myself "don't pick" doesn't work, I get very distracted by the presence of the scab and HAVE TO pick. 

Solution: put a band-aid over the scab. Blocking the scab makes picking more difficult. More crucially, the adhesive of the bandaid gives me a mildly ticklish sensation which masks the sensation that a pickable scab is ... (read more)

That'll teach me to post without thinking! Yes, you're right that $np(1-p)$ is the better way to deal with variance here. (Or honestly, the $(1-\frac{1}{n}{)}^n$ method from the above comment is the slickest way.) 

I had been thinking of a similar kind of situation, where you have a fixed $p$ and varying sample sizes $n$. Then, the smaller $n$ gives more extreme outcomes than larger $n$. Of course, this isn't applicable here. 

Thanks for describing your data! I was hoping to hear stuff exactly like this. 

In particular I can confirm experiencing these states

This is the best time for boring but important work

Cognitively I’m sharpest during this time (I can think the fastest but can’t focus that well)

at different times of the month (and I think it correlates with my cycle) but haven't noticed patterns this granular. I've started collecting data (and am trying to not let my knowledge of where I am in my cycle bias my perceived measurements) so maybe in several months I'll be able to confirm similar patterns. 

Perhaps a better way to describe this set is 'all you can build in finitely many steps using addition, inverse, and multiplication, starting from only elements with finite support'.

Ah, now I see what you are after.

But if you use addition on one of them, things may go wrong.

This is exactly right, here's an illustration: 

Here is a construction of $(\dots ,1,1,1,\dots )$: We have that $1+x+x^2+\dots$ is the inverse of $1-x.$ Moreover, $\frac{1}{x}+\frac{1}{x^2}+\frac{1}{x^3}+\dots$is the inverse of $x-1$. If we want this thing to be closed under inverses and addition, then thi... (read more)

If I'm correctly understanding your construction, it isn't actually using any properties of $0$. You're just looking at a formal power series (with negative exponents) and writing powers of $0$ instead of $x$. Identifying $x$ with "$0$" gives exactly what you motivated—$\frac{1}{x}$ and $\frac{2}{x}$ (which are $\frac{1}{0}$ and $\frac{2}{0}$ when interpreted) are two different things.

The structure you describe (where we want elements and their inverses to have finite support) turns out to be quite small. Specifically, this field consists precis... (read more)

Wow the long and heavy periods sound insane and exhausting. Yeah I have asked doctors about ways to mitigate period pain—seems like "4 hours of pretty bad cramps" was not enough for them to recommend anything beyond going on the pill. 

I have not been explicitly collecting data on productivity vs period. I do track my cycle and (when I remember) my symptoms throughout the month. I have a few reasons to believe that my menstrual cycle greatly influences my productivity: 

• The obvious fact that I can't do anything productive during the first 4 hours o

Lucky you! 

(Even if it doesn't affect productivity, do you at all notice fluctuations in energy level?) 

I've spoken to two doctors. Both seemed to think this was within normal range and advocated for the pill as a tool to reduce painful period symptoms. My impression is that my period symptoms are maybe in the top half of severity, but not the top quartile? 

Ah, I actually also have experience with the first bullet point. From what I remember, these "long cycle" periods were less problematic than my periods are off the pill. But, the particular pill I was on had negative side effects so I eventually stopped. 

Increasing cycle length would definitely improve my situation (assuming I can find a pill with no negative side effects). I think it's good to consider but not exclusively focus on that option because:

• The selection of pills that are compatible with long cycles seems to be relatively small (at least my doctor says so) 
• On a 1 month cycle one might be able to manufacture more "highs" than on a 3 month cycle 

Interesting! It's good to hear that your energy levels off the pill roughly match mine. 

Your experiences on the pill are also interesting to hear. I suppose to figure out what effects all of these hormones have on me I would have to sample different combinations for long enough time frames to notice effects (as you have been doing). 

Do you think you are unusually prone to panic attacks / depression? I wonder whether the pill brings out specific fixed traits in people (like depression) or whether it exacerbates characteristics they were already un... (read more)

The external link "A write-up of the proof of Aumann's agreement theorem (pdf) by Tyrrell McAllister" seems to be broken. At least, I get a 404 Error. I am not sure how to best fix this but I thought I may as well point this out. 

Question about people who do calorie restriction (CR) in humans with the goal of anti-aging. Do they experience "brain fog" i.e. decreased cognitive performance? Intuitively that seems like a major drawback of CR but perhaps brain fog can be eliminated with a healthier diet / getting used to consistent CR over time? Curious to hear evidence of/against this.

The case against a inbox with lots of items. This is certainly not a hot or unusual take but I am writing it anyway. I describe how I transitioned my TODO list setup from "big pile of email notifications" to something slightly more efficient (but still low tech overhead). 

I used to use my email inbox as a generic TODO list, with items ranging from "reply to this person" to "remember to go to this calendar event" but also "fill out the application for this program", "read this blog post", and so on. 

I think email inbox is still the best place to p... (read more)

Ah, that is a big timesaver. Thanks!

Summary: this post is mostly for self reflection. I my first impressions (likes/dislikes) after using Roam, a note-taking app with good "linking" features. I also use this post to think about some Roam-related decisions (should I look into competitor apps, should I upgrade to Roam's lump sum "Believer" plan). 

I'm trying out Roam and liking it so far. I started using it when I started working on a research project in order to reap the full benefits. 

Before I list pros and cons, I should clarify that I am a novice at Roam. I know I am not using Roa... (read more)

This is an interesting way to think about it. For me, I'm not sure whether it's as much of a pressure differential as much as it is a pressure threshold. The latter meaning, if I exceed a certain level of excitement about a topic, then I feel a compulsion to communicate (and it feels effortless). By contrast, if I have not hit that level, it becomes much harder to write or think about that topic. I wonder whether developing more motivation based on the "sink" would in turn make me a more effective communicator...

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of! 

This might be helpful advice. Some of the more required writing I've been putting off is probably too niche for the "Being Wrong On The Internet" aspect but I could probably more proactively find people willing to let me explain things to them. Come to think of it this has often been a good way to motivate me to learn / write things...

Uh oh..."everybody knows" was poor wording here then. I guess it would have been more precise to say "I've heard this from multiple different non-overlapping groups so it seems like widely applicable advice". 

Or maybe you write for a living because you are naturally good at selecting the right time to write / have a wider window for when you are capable of writing well? 

(this is just a rant, not insightful) Everybody knows how important it is to choose the right time to write something. The optimal time is when you're really invested in the topic, learning rapidly but know enough to start the writing process. Then, ideally, during the writing process everything will crystalize. If you wait much longer than this the topic will no longer be exciting and you will not want to write about it. 

Everybody gives this advice, both within and outside of academia. I've heard it from professors, LW-y blog posts (maybe even on LW?), and everywhere in between. 

SO WHY DO I CONSTANTLY IGNORE THIS ADVICE?? :( 

Ah, I googled those and the results mostly mentioned "Thinking Fast and Slow". The book has been on my list for a while but it sounds like I should give it higher priority. Thanks for the pointer!

I've thought through an explanation as to why there exist people who are not effective altruists. I think it's important to understand these viewpoints if EAs want to convert more people to their side. 

As an added bonus, I think this explanation generalizes to many cases where a person's actions contradict their knowledge—thinking through this helped me better understand why I think I take actions which contradict my knowledge. 

Summary: people's gut feel (which actually governs most decision-making) takes time, thought and effort to catch up to t... (read more)

I used to struggle to pay attention to audiobooks and podcasts. No matter how fascinating I found the topic, whenever I tried to tune in I would quickly zone out and lose the thread. However I think I am figuring out how to get myself to focus on these audio-only information sources more consistently. 

I've tried listening to these audio information sources in three different environments: 

1. Doing nothing else
2. Going on a walk (route familiar or randomly chosen as I go)
3. Doing menial tasks in minecraft (fishing, villager trading, farming, small amounts

This post (and the discussion in its comments) were interesting reads, thanks. 

I noticed a small typo you might want to correct. The "will not agree" is missing from

Urban blue tribers because containment in cities is much harder anyway.

1 .If you want to find out about people’s opinions on a product, google <product> reddit. You’ll get real people arguing, as compared to the SEO’d Google results.

This used to be my go-to strategy. However, I think brands are increasingly catching on to this. Anecdotally, I have been observing an increased amount of astroturfing in reddit product threads. 

A good solution is to be skeptical and check commenters' post history. If the account is old, they are active in diverse subreddits, and generally seem like a real person, it is likely to ... (read more)

I gave somebody I know (50yo libertarian-leaning conservative) Doing Good Better by William MacAskill. I told them I think they might like the book because it has "interesting economic arguments", in order to not seem like a crazy EA-evangelist. I thought their response to it was interesting so I am sharing it here. 

They received the book mostly positively. Their main takeaway was the idea that thinking twice about whether a particular action is really sensible can have highly positive impacts.

Here were their criticisms / misconceptions (which I am de... (read more)

Fun brainteaser for students learning induction:

Here is a "proof" that $\pi$ is rational. It uses the fact

$\pi =4-\frac{4}{3}+\frac{4}{5}-\frac{4}{7}+\frac{4}{9}-\dots (\ast )$

as well as induction. It suffices to show that the right-hand side of $(\ast )$ is rational. We do this by induction. For the base case, we have that $4$ is rational. For the inductive step, assume $4-\frac{4}{3}+\cdots \pm \frac{4}{2k+1}$ is rational. Then adding or subtracting the next term $\frac{4}{2k+3}$ (which is rational) will result in a rational number. 

The flaw is of course that we've only shown that the partial sums ar... (read more)