All of MaryCh's Comments + Replies

MaryCh00

Well, in my life I can recall two instances off-hand. There have probably been more of them, but at the very least, they seem to be completely unrelated to attempts to raise well-being levels...

MaryCh10

I feel so much freer when I don't have to demonstrate that I am happy.

Sometimes, it almost seems like I am truly happy only when I "escape" or "triumph" over something that almost "ate me up": my husband's household, the Department that I had gone to for a PhD thesis... the genuinely nice psychiatrist who soothes my Mother's fears... Like "I am happy when I have proved that I haven't changed, because change is corruption". So yes, [feeling happy] is one of the necessary chores of self-maintenance. I don't get why I should want it more than, say, a chance to sleep in.

OTOH, joy is very different. It kind of just happens, unasked-for.

1thefishinthetank
This is the happiness we are really searching for. The other kind is better described as pleasure.
1NerdyAesthete_duplicate0.5979037175915429
I'd say that's a relief from a precarious situation, which does provide happiness, but is only temporary and not sustainable. However, contentment (or a relaxed sense of well-being) is a form of happiness that can be sustained until something distressful occurs. Sustaining contentment may require life changes, for I feel many people's lives are incompatible with this sustained level of contentment; the lack of freedom imposed by obligations tends to being more stressing than not. Also, exhilaration is another form of happiness (similar to anxiety, but the difference is certainly noticeable) that is desirable that's tricky to activate. I believe your joy is similar to my exhilaration, or maybe a gradation between contentment and exhilaration.
MaryCh00

Would be interesting to read something on dogs' theory of humans' minds. (Like, does a dog estimate a human female is going to feed the baby sooner rather then later and so leaves it alone?)

MaryCh10

My husband said "He's not a pseudoscientist! He's just sick!" :)

MaryCh30

The wiki article on professor Yuri Teslya, who is the most infamous pseudoscientist in Ukraine right now (in Russian). I haven't found a link in English, so here's the gist of it: prof. Teslya published a Theory of Non-Force Interaction, according to which gravity, for example, doesn't exist - things fall down because they and the Earth exchange information about each other and change their attitudes towards each other accordingly. Being the Head of the Physics Department of KNU, Teslya teaches it to students. Mrs. Irina Yehorchenko, who works in the Insti... (read more)

3IlyaShpitser
Oof.
MaryCh00

alright, then: at what earliest point do people start reading their predictions for another year?

MaryCh10

but surely a normal person who makes a list of about 50 items can't update daily? they have stuff to do.

1Elo
No. But they are probably not each as important as each other. And you can update without writing down the beliefs.
MaryCh00

(I think it is going to be useful, but I don't know yet.) I have a problem: lack of body mass, no set lunch break at work and things to do besides dinner that is yet to be made when I get home, which is about 7 pm. It's especially bad during "The Season" (middle August - middle October), the time when many people come to us to buy textbooks and we have time to maybe drink a cup of tea, if we remember to do it during a lull. Sometimes, I even took something with me and just forgot to take it out. Then we get home, eat whatever and go to sleep.

Rece... (read more)

MaryCh10

(btw, just thought to ask the people here who have thought about logging their predictions about the year 2018 around the end of December: How do you decide how much time you need before you settle on a prediction? I mean, if making a list on December, 31st is just a common point in time when to state your current state of knowledge, you have 364 days to come to it, but nobody takes so long.)

1Elo
Superforecasers (book) suggests updating regularly. Like daily if you think your predictions change.
MaryCh00

It is also very annoying that I know damn right what I mean by любой, and so does любой with whom I speak.

Sometimes, it seems to me that English is just too precise. Or maybe it's just me.

In Ukrainian, we have жодний, which means "none of the above" or smth like it... now that's a word worth having!

MaryCh00

Русская киевлянка, первые 4 класса училась в Казани. Татарский, говорят, сильно отличается от крымско-татарского.

0IlyaShpitser
It is very annoying that любой is translated both as "any" and "every." какой-либо is closer to formal logical "there exists" or "any."
MaryCh00

And then, Ukrainian too has всяк/усякий (всякий) that is different from кожен (каждый)... If I were to translate усякий into English distinctly from both "every" and "any", I would probably have to say "of all kinds", but how do you say that about one thing?! anyway, this is silly.

(а мой "исходный" язык - русский + татарский + украинский. Даже не помню, что там в татарском делается.)

0IlyaShpitser
Крымская tатарка? Я одессит, родился в Крыму.
MaryCh00

It is still too improbable. Any kid in the wild is a free gift to the predator. Not just a baby, or a toddler.

My friend who studies wolves is quite adamant that it is simply impossible, unless you count cases where a child spent a few days in their company, because wolves often leave their toys for later.

0HungryHobo
It's improbable but if they ever behave anything like dogs not 100% impossible. I've encountered an older dog that really really wanted to have puppies that stole a kitten from a litter and tried to raise it and feed it and made no attempt to eat it. and there appear to be real reports of domesticated dogs adopting and nursing neglected children. https://www.thedodo.com/dog-breastfeeds-child-1336838906.html Of course dogs have the aggression dialed way way down such that they may be way way more likely to do that. I'd argue that a she-wolf that's recently lost it's puppies instead finding some other small mammal to adopt is merely very improbable. Mammal nursing mothers, even from fairly bloodthirsty species) can be surprisingly willing to adopt infant creatures of different species, even ones they'd usually snack upon. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pgW9rYRxS_4/UJbVUbIwPzI/AAAAAAAAS_4/Z_gUmGvK6Mg/s640/92770023_large_2moZJ2WhuU.jpg
0entirelyuseless
There are many cases where the child's behavior is far more assimilated to the behavior of the animals than would be a credible result of merely a few days.
MaryCh00

(Still confused.) Then it is possible to say, in principle, "for every combination of n out of the whole set of n, property(x) hold)" and mean ordered combinations? Is there any other meaning for "every 30 out of 30"?

(yes, it is probably because of my language background. I don't even use the Russian analogues all that often!)

1IlyaShpitser
It is possible to say that, but the work is being done by "combination." You can also say "for every permutation of n" and that means something different. Typically when you say "for every x out of 30, property(x) holds" it means something like: "every poster on lesswrong is a human being" (or more formally, "for every poster on lesswrong, that poster is a human being." (Note, this statement is meaningful but probably evaluates to false.) ---------------------------------------- Quantification is always over a set. If you are talking about permutations, you are first making a set of all permutations of 30 things (of which there are 30 factorial), and then saying "for every permutation in this set of permutations some property holds"). ---------------------------------------- edit: realized your native language might be Ukrainian: I think a similar issue exists in Ukrainian quantifier adjectives.
MaryCh00

what does "any" mean, then?

(yes, I agree that of course it usually means the same in practice, that's why this is a stupid question:) I just... I guess I see "any" as a potentiality, and "every" as realisation... anyway, do you think we can talk about this structures in some more complex way than simple "any one thing out of the collection" and "every one thing..."? What would it mean? I imagine the "[every 2 out of 4] out of [every 30 out of 30]" like something like walked paths.

Edit to add: I ju... (read more)

1Lark
A quick thought; It seems like 'any' is related to the logic function of 'OR' and 'every' is related to the logic function of 'AND'. But likely I'm not totally grokking your question. Does this thread elucidate anything? https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/49369/proper-way-to-read-forall-for-all-or-for-every
MaryCh00

then what story do you think was not made up?

2JenniferRM
If you just Google around there are a lot that hit the keyword that seem well attested. Most of them are either cases of monstrous parental abuse (plus sometimes proximity to pets of the parent) or else the child was already at least a toddler (and often aged 3-7) when they went into the wild. It is less surprising when you remember that in typical hunter gatherer societies the age at which children became roughly "calorie self sufficient" (not necessarily good nutrition, but able to gather enough not to starve) was around 4 or 5. Parental neglect cases often have trouble walking, which is moderate evidence that "walking is cultural" in the sense that we might not have reliable instincts for learning to do it without having any positive examples and/or encouragement. Also these stories tend to support the idea of critical periods in language acquisition. The ones that are usually hoaxes or gross exaggerations of real facts tend to be stories of very young children (like 0-18 month old babies) being literally raised by animals from scratch with no human input at all.
MaryCh00

I don't quite get the difference between "any" and "every" (in the more interesting cases.) Does "every 2 out of 30 [things have this property]" mean the set of ordered twos as a whole thing (unlike "any 2 two out of 30", which is talking about any one combination of two things but not all possible combinations taken at once?

And if "every" needs some kind of order, even if we don't know which, and some kind of "presented-togetherness", then we can, for example, say, "[every two out of four] o... (read more)

2IlyaShpitser
"Every" doesn't need an order. "For every x, property(x) holds" means "it is not the case that for any x, property(x) does not hold." "For any x, property(x) holds" means "it is not the case that for every x, property(x) does not hold." In Russian, quantifier adjectives are often implicit, which could be a part of the problem here. Native Russian speakers (like me) often have problems with this, also with definite vs indefinite articles in English. edit: not only implicit but ambiguous when explicit, too! ---------------------------------------- Person below is right, "every" is sort of like an infinite "AND" and "any" is sort of like an infinite "OR."
1Elo
(this may not help). It is the difference between, "each of..." and, "all of...". "if we go through each of the set, one at a time..." "if we go through all of the set" They can be made to mean the same.
MaryCh00

The moral was that it is wrong to use an obviously false claim to prove wrong something nobody believes in anyway... by NE, I mean "something so awfully outside of everyday experience that either it is totally made up, or a scientifically-minded person should look into it and see where it leads".

0entirelyuseless
I thought you were saying that feral children never existed and all the stories about them are completely made up. If so, I think you are clearly wrong.
MaryCh00

well, yes, my friends biologists think this is the only possible explanation. everybody was laughing when we heard about the Antelope Boy who could run at 50 mph and lived among ruminants (in college! second year of college!) The professor didn't understand why.

MaryCh00

Alizbar, A fairy-tale out of time. Guitar and harp. (He also plays with Ann'Sannat.)

MaryCh10

Why don't we just have a Books Thread? Everybody here reads, and more than just the occasional textbook. And why don't we have an Articles Thread, where we could discuss single articles or review several at once?

0Elo
Yes
MaryCh00

That's because it should have been the door, dammit.

...But really, this pictureis pretty "straightforward" as they go. No other interpretation, really. Why did it tease you and me but not Elo?..

MaryCh00

well, the first time I saw an ameboid star, and then very shortly I saw an invasive (where I live) oak's sapling. I'd say it's not an OI, it just makes you search for the focus of the image. The classic example Lumifer links to is something where you might not even think of looking for the other image; and of course, there should be ambiguity things nearer to crystal clear end of spectrum.

MaryCh00

I think she will be open to it. Here's hope. People usually don't get it, how having a twin makes you feel you live an experiment - same clothes or different clothes (but people say different things to you when they see you in them - "why?"), same favourite poems and different ones (so weird, really). Always thought it a shame, to have so much material go to waste.

MaryCh20

Warning: please don't read if you are triggered by a discussion of post-mortem analysis (might come up in the comments).

I want to have my body donated to science, well, afterwards, and to convince my twin sister to organize the same thing; there's probably a dearth of comparative post-mortem studies of adult (aged) human twins. However, my husband said he wouldn't do it. I don't want to argue with him about something we both hope won't be an issue for many years to come, so, in pure scientific interest:

what would you think it would be interesting to study in such a setting?

Sorry if I offended you, it wasn't my intention. Just can't ask this on facebook, my Mom would eat me alive.

1gwern
You could look into joining a twin registry. Discordant-twin designs are fairly powerful, but still need _n_>50 or something like that to be worth doing. Plus if you keep your own novel set of data, people will be less interested in analyzing it compared to a twin registry using a familiar set of questionnaires/scales/measures. (One of the reasons you see so much from twin registries or the UK Biobank: consistent measurements.) It would've been best if you two had been enrolled as kids, but perhaps better late than never.
0IlyaShpitser
Consider creating detailed records of lifestyle differences between you and your sister. Perhaps keep a diary (in effect creating a longitudinal dataset for folks to look at later). There is an enormous interest in disentangling lifestyle choices from genetics for all sorts of health and nutrition questions. ---------------------------------------- Thank you for considering this, I think this could be very valuable.
MaryCh00

Makes sense. Although I would still think my environment is mostly direct and mostly easygoing:)

MaryCh20

What if my job requires a direct easygoing attitude to people coming in to our shop?

2Gunnar_Zarncke
I didn't mean this to be about what is 'required' but how the environment overall is perceived to be. When I discussed this with my boys (who also have different environments - school, friends, at home - I left the specific environment open too. I talked more like how they see 'the world' around them.
MaryCh00

But why is it worth knowing?

0Elo
For that subset of the demographic there may be use in posts on relevant topics. Just as we have higher (double) depression rates than the normal population, and a post on depression may be relevant to them.
MaryCh00

Thank you for compiling another survey!

And on a completely unrelated note, what is it that we actually want to know about ourselves as LW? Surely it can't be the gender ratio. It's not like we don't already know not to post "traditionally feminine" stuff or something. It seems to me that surveys aren't done to achieve some further goal, although the results, of course, are of some curiosity. Sorry if this is counterproductive, I am genuinely interested in the above question.

2gjm
I think it's mostly just curiosity. There are some things that make useful responses to common criticisms of the community. "You think you're so smart, but you really aren't!" (People reporting "proper" IQ scores and SAT results here consistently come out a couple of standard deviations above average.) "LW is a hive of racist sexist neoreactionary scum and villainy!" (LW consistently comes out more liberal and more feminist than the population as a whole. It has a lot of gay people and a lot of trans people. On the other hand, it doesn't have a lot of women or black people and some specific ideas neoreactionaries like are more popular here than in the world at large.) "You're a bunch of borderline autistics!" (Er, um, yeah, that one seems not to be too far from the truth.)
1Elo
Without explaining - the demographic is useful to know. I think it's good to ask the question - if the question yielded x results what would we do with that information? For gender specifically non-binary gender is about 10x more common on lesswrong than in the American population. That's worth knowing.
MaryCh00

And the "Recent on rationality blogs" button will work again?

MaryCh00

...and when we age and the lenses in our eyes get yellower, the sky loses some of its blueness.

MaryCh00

I think being very tired is a separate feeling, from being simply tired and being exhausted. One can be a bit very tired on Monday and a lot very tired on Friday - and still not exhausted.

1pcm
I'm sometimes able to distinguish different types of feeling tired, based on what my system 1 wants me to do differently: sleep more, use specific muscles less, exercise more slowly, do less of a specific type of work, etc.
MaryCh00

That I were blessed with a wonderful favourite teacher and a crazy, but wonderful supervisor in college.

Because when someone of mine dies - be it a relative or a dog - or gets diagnosed with incurable disease, I go to either of them and we drink tea or just have a walk together, and talk of irrelevant things.

Only got it after the fourth time, though...

MaryCh00

Just noting here that I was wrong. I'm working 12 hr a day now (it's The Season), hate my current boss for doing less than he could and generally creating work out of thin air, and am still very much content not to be a housewife.

MaryCh00

What, to you, is the difference between a hardcore popular science book and one of the serious science publicistics? It seems to me that it must be great, and I miss the former kind, and I can't be alone in this, but it's the latter kind that gets published, weakly supported by the distributors and occasionally, sold.

By 'gets published' I mean here in Ukraine, although it might be true for other countries.

MaryCh00

Huh. We have lawn storks here. Or, rather, roof storks. Don't know what they are made from, but possibly metal, from the look of those necks.

1g_pepper
Well, I guess I won't be complaining about my neighbor's lawn flamingos any more after reading that!
0ChristianKl
Given that the linked article isn't in English, what is it about?
MaryCh00

BTW, try taking portraits with a camera mounted on a tripod or just somehow fixed in place, eith Christmas lights for illumination. The results are quite magical, although a large portion of the photos are too dark.

MaryCh00

(It is, of course, unimportant, but I think I know what I was thinking about - continued fractions, and what do people even do when the fraction has functions, not numbers, for terms.)

MaryCh00

Thank you. We definitely had to learn about attractors in college, this is familiar...

MaryCh00

(A random question - what can be said about the behaviour of a function like y=cos(y1), where y1=cos(y2), ...? Sorry for spam, too much work makes me wonder more and think less.)

3IlyaShpitser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_(mathematics) search for cosine.
MaryCh10

The first question is - what kind of diabetes?

1morganism
That would be type 2, since it is corresponding liver damage ?
MaryCh00

But how do you know it applies to some people and not others? Post-hoc?

MaryCh00

Thank you. I should have realised that.

(And is it not weird, how two questions of the same, well, validity, give two different answers and perhaps - in a situation, where it matters - lead to different formulations?)

MaryCh10

We lost nomads' WOS (compared to ye good old times), including most people who spent months travelling not for the simple pleasure of it but just to get to certain places on Earth. (I don't think relief workers think like that, there have to be huge differences). All those different kinds of WOS of all those different kinds of slaves of the past. Alchemical WOS (I started typing why I think this would be educational, but it seems I need a whole-length post to do it:). Radio operators' WOS (largely, and not fully), etc.

1arundelo
Families with exactly two children: | oldest | youngest | +--------|----------| | boy... | boy..... | two boys | boy... | girl.... | one boy | girl.. | boy..... | one boy | girl.. | girl.... | no boys
MaryCh00

The Ides of March by Wilder

MaryCh20

I am a Ukrainian-born Russian-ethnic Ukrainian citizen :D

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