All of Regex's Comments + Replies

Answer by Regex20

My purchase of an arduino kit at the end of highschool. This has essentially passively introduced me to a lot of basic electronics over the years without explicitly studying them. And so now I sometimes think "I want to measure my heart rate" or "I want to build a DIY custom keyboard" or "I want a physical pomodoro timer with just one button and 3 LEDs" and I can just order some parts, build the thing, and have a new tool that solves a simple problem.

I sometimes try to recommend other people build something simple with electronics occasionally, only to rea... (read more)

Regex*40

Two years later, there are now whole brain wide recordings on C. Elegans via calcium imaging. This includes models apparently at least partially predictive of behavior and analysis of individual neuron contributions to behavior. 

If you want the "brain-wide recordings and accompanying behavioral data" you can apparently download them here!

It is very exciting to finally have measurements for this. I still need to do more than skim the paper though. While reading it, here are the questions on my mind:
* What are the simplest individual neuron models that ... (read more)

Regex60

I expanded 'shocked at failure' into:

The plans you make work.

When they fail, it is because of one of the following reasons:

  • a predicted reason (you took a risk / made a tradeoff, saw it as low probability or unavoidable)
  • violation of an explicit assumption (encryption used is secure, won't crash on the way to the airport)
  • a black swan (coronavirus, 9/11, stock market crash)

When they fail for reasons other than these, you are extremely surprised and can point to exactly what about your worldview and anticipations misled you.

Regex10

The planbot link is down.

2[anonymous]
Thanks for the catch! The new link is here
Regex20

I first tried to describe rationality piece by piece, but realized that just comes out as something like: "Enumerate all the principles, fundamentals, and ideas you can think of and find about effective thinking and action. Master all of them. More thoroughly and systematically apply them to every aspect of your life. Use the strongest to solve its most relevant problem. Find their limits. Be unsatisfied. Create new principles, fundamentals, and ideas to master. Become strong and healthy in all ways. "

Non-meta attempt:

<Epistemic status: I would predict

... (read more)
Regex240
Hopefully, you came up with at least 100 bugs; I came up with 142.

I wrote 20,000 words from these prompts. Not all of those bugs, but also my reactions to them. Ended up doing not much else for about three days, but I went over basically my entire life top to bottom. I now have a thorough overview of my errors. I stopped not because I ran out of things I think I need to fix, but because I realized the list would never end. I was still finding MAJOR areas I need to improve even after all that. I see why the exercise is supposed to only be half an hour no... (read more)

Regex00

I've only taken a really basic economics course, but found the explanations really straight forward and learned a lot. So I don't think the topic is as hard to parse as you'd think.

(Alternatively, I may have misunderstood details, overlooked problems, and simply don't have anything to contrast these statements to. This would make it harder to judge.)

The bank's persona did however fall flat repeatedly and could have been a lot better by having realistic responses.

Regex10

High upvote low reply is less bad, but still feels like it is fundamentally broken in some way. Failing to leave a mark maybe? I think I would mostly be confused given such a reaction. There might be specific types of posts that would generate that, but I feel those qualities do not generalize to the set of "authoritative, well researched and obviously correct" posts.

2Raemon
I think posts will produce engagement if they leave the reader with open questions and ways to apply it. But generally, the more comprehensive and correct a post is, the more I expect less engagement. (This has been my experience anyway) I agree we don't want to optimize against engagement, but I do think it's a longstanding problem that good, comprehensive high quality posts often get less engagement – the more comprehensive and high quality, generally the more you need to actually have skills and domain expertise to figure out how to apply it to other things. See Writing That Provokes Comments
Regex30

Moreover, why should there be discussion? If a post is authoritative, well researched and obviously correct, then the only thing to do is upvote it and move on. A lengthy discussion thread is a sign that either the post is either unclear, incorrect, or has mindkilled its readers.

Alternatively, a length discussion could be a sign that the post inspired connections to related topics and events. Additionally, it may have made a critical advance that furthered understanding of the topic for other people. Even though optimizing for engagement yields divergen

... (read more)
3quanticle
Note that I said discussion, not engagement. Would your conclusion be the same if a post got relatively few replies, but was upvoted to +100?
Regex70

I independently generated an alternative solution using the redirector extension:

http://einaregilsson.com/writing-a-browser-extension-for-three-browsers/

Pattern:

Example URL: http://lesswrong.com/some_path

Include pattern: *lesswrong*

Redirect to: $1greaterwrong$2

You should get out example result:

http://greaterwrong.com/some_path

(I am using Firefox and I assume it is the same on other browsers)

Regex30

I do agree that a graduated UBI (negative income tax) would be cleaner than the current welfare system. A smooth gradient out instead of a sharp cut in benefits. The incentives would align substantially for people seeking to escape the poverty trap.

A major issue for me when I think of this is the incentives for increasing the amount until it is unsustainable. Being able to vote yourself more money is... well. A ticket towards candidates promising to give people more money out of the pockets of others.

This would incentivize brain drain as well as immigrat... (read more)

Regex40

~300,000,000 US citizens.

$1,000/month/person = 12,000 $/year/person

$12,000*300,000,000 = $3,600,000,000,000/year = 3.6 trillion dollars a year

For reference, the United States takes in a little over 6 trillion dollars a year in taxes.

8Raemon
Most proposals I've heard of use a graduated income tax to pay for the UBI. This essentially means that people making more than X don't actually get a UBI. (Or rather, they receive $1000, but they also paid $1000 in taxes for it, so it's a wash). How expensive this is depends on what value of X you pick. The advantage of this over the status quo is avoidance of welfare cliffs and generally reduced accounting by not making people prove that they're poor.
Regex80

Found a big list of crowd funding options. Don't have to set up our own, just need to find one that is both low fee and trustworthy.

https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding

Finding a superior option seems doable in 5-10 hours?

Regex30

There is one pretty big problem with using patreon as their fundraising platform: It eats a little less than 8% of the money you put in. That is money simply lost from the community. This makes patreon an unacceptable medium for transactions.

Now, about 3% of that is from credit card fees. Are there alternatives to that? I am unsure how much the one time donation takes, but I suspect it is only the credit card fees. We're losing 5% to the convenience of not pressing a button to donate every month.

As of this writing they're making $5,464/month. I presume t... (read more)

6Raemon
This is certainly worth considering. But in counterpoint – building an alternative platform (one that *in particular* solves the problem of 'people can donate each month without having to pay attention _and_ people know is reasonably bug free and works smoothly') is a nontrivial undertaking. This isn't to say it's not worth it, but it actually matters how much time it'd take. If something quick can be thrown together in 5-10 hours, it's definitely worth it (each hour providing about $500 worth of value for one year of REACH. If it's 40 hours, probably still worth it but less overwhelmingly so. I think doing this well enough to succeed not just for REACH but also for all analogous projects in the future would require not just a bare-bones working project, but an actual quality platform that would end up being more like "build a competitor for Patreon" than anything quick (which would most likely end up charging as well). I do agree someone should look into this but I'm not as confident it'll turn out to be a quick project. I will say that if anyone wants to build this, I recommend using Plaid (a service partnered with stripe) which uses ACH payments instead of credit cards, for much smaller fees (at least for larger donations).
Regex30

The Origin Project is also working on the same general problems, and looking to grow. You don't have to move anywhere, and you can get started right now.


https://hivewired.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/an-introduction-to-origin/


We've been working for the last few months on building out a cultural framework that can be used wherever you are, and just with the people around you. To build a sense of community and meaningful interactions.


But we're not there yet. We're too few.


Come as you are.

1Chris_Leong
What group of people are involved in the origin project?
1vedrfolnir
I'm not sure I quite understand the goal here. Is the goal to form a community, to draft an Ordnung (in the Amish sense) that communities can use, both, or neither?
Regex10

My impression reading this is that you mostly just want a better Tumblr. Would that be fair?

Regex60

How culture war stuff is dealt with on the various discord servers is having a place to dump it all. This is often hidden to begin with and opt-in only, so people only become aware of it when they start trying to discuss it.

5Habryka
I've also been thinking quite a bit about certain tags on posts requiring a minimum karma for commenters. The minimum karma wouldn't have to be too high (e.g. 10-20 karma might be enough), but it would keep out people who only sign up to discuss highly political topics.
Regex250

I have taken the survey... away from everyone.

No one can have it.

It lives under my bed now.

Regex10

If he just has an instinct that a 6 should come up again, but can't explain where that instinct comes from or defend that belief in any kind of rational way other then "it feels right", then he's probably not being rational.

Maybe in the specific example of randomness, but I don't think you can say the general case of 'it feels so' is indefensible. This same mechanism is used for really complicated black box intuitive reasoning that underpins any trained skill. So in in areas one has a lot of experience in, or areas which are evolutionary keye... (read more)

1Yosarian2
Eh. Maybe, but I think that any idea which seriously underpins your actions and other belief systems in an important way should be something you can justify in a rational way. It doesn't mean you always need to think about it in that way, some things become "second nature" over time, but you should be able to explain rational underpinnings if asked. If you're talking about a trained skill, "I've been fixing cars for 20 years and in my experience when you do x you tend to get better results then when you do y" is a perfectly rational reason to have a belief. So is "That's what it said in my medical school textbook", ect. But, in my experience, people who put too much faith in their "black boxes" and don't ever think through the basis of their beliefs tend to behave in systematically irrational ways that probably harm them.
Regex00

It appears I can't replicate it either. I may have updated Firefox since last week or something? 54.0.1 (32-bit) is my current version.

Regex00

Playing around with the debates on firefox causes graphical glitches http://i.imgur.com/QsoLeqn.jpg

Chrome seems to work, but these submenus don't close after you click on them http://i.imgur.com/sbNBhZ1.png

0Venryx
Yeah, I use Chrome myself, so compatibility in Firefox breaks sometimes. (and I forget to check that it's working there more often) I'll look into it relatively soon. As for the submenus not closing when you re-press their sidebar buttons, I just haven't coded that yet. Should be a one line change, so it will probably be added by tomorrow. Thanks for checking it out. EDIT: Okay, I tried opening it in Firefox, and could not reproduce the "black boxes" issue in your screenshot. What version of Firefox are you using? Also, I've now updated the submenu/sidebar buttons to close the menus when re-pressed. (and updated their appearance a bit)
Regex00

Before even reading it I was confused.

Epistemic status for the first part of this post:

[image of thinking woman in front of math]

Epistemic status for the second part:

[Image of greek? philosopher preaching]

Admittedly I should probably know who the second image is of, but I have no idea what they're trying to say with either of these.

As we say in the Bayesian conspiracy: even if you’re not interested in base rates, base rates are interested in you.

No. Stop. This is just awkward to read.

3gjm
Well, the second picture is a 400-year-old painting, depicting Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones. (So presumably the guy preaching is Ezekiel, obeying God's instructions to tell the bones to join together and form bodies.) This still leaves it rather unclear what the two pictures mean as epistemic statuses, but I take the first to mean "here I am just explaining what the mathematics says, so there's not much scope for doubt" and the second to mean "here I am preaching religion, and you may if you wish dismiss me as a fanatic". This seems consistent with what he says at the start of the second part: "Part 1 was a careful explanation of a subject I know very well. Part 2 is a controversial rant about a subject I don’t."
Regex00

I suspect this will end up being something more akin to self-study groups that produce teaching material as a direct result of learning the material themselves. For example, writing up an explanation of how to do a particular book example. This doubles as an assessment of people's skills since other people that know the topic really well can build on those explanations or correct mistakes.

With a series of such explanations, anyone else trying to go through the material will have a clearer pathway for the level of understanding of a given sub-topic they need to develop to progress: the exercises and readings needed to be able to understand something, or do a particular difficulty of project.

0[anonymous]
This is indeed something that could happen, and I agree it'd be valuable. Although, while I think that writeups / explanation can be valuable for both the people writing it / the people reading it, the thing I was actually trying to point to was the sort of benefit you might get from a tutor: that is, if someone knows where you're struggling, they can suggest things that are more tailored to help you succeed vs a typical online curriculum. (And that this sort of personalized "adaptive curriculum" could be a unique benefit to come out of this activity.)
Regex00

This points to a need of looking for, building off prior work where possible.

Taking it a step further to generate a method of meta-solving this problem: there are many parallels here to programming and device connectors of old (phone charger or other standards). I would imagine we could look to how those sorts of problems were solved and apply or derive the analogous technique here.

Regex10

It seems to me that the sadistic simulator would fill up their suffering simulator to capacity. But is it worse for two unique people to be simulated and suffering compared to the same person simulated and suffering twice? If we say copies suffering is less bad than unique minds, If they didn't have enough unique human minds, they could just apply birth/genetics and grow some more.

This is more of a simulating-minds-at-all problem than a unique-minds-left-to-simulate problem.

Regex50

Now people have to call you doctor CellBioGuy

Regex20

Comment being non-spam and coherent is considered a bare minimum around here. Using the rule of upvoting nearly everything would induce noise. With the current schema of being a signal of quality, or used to say 'more like this' (not necessarily even 'I agree') provides a strong signal of quality discourse which is lost otherwise.

Regex20

The results of my five minutes of thinking:

take sample of group you want to measure sanity for:

  • productivity
  • goal achievement
  • correct predictions, especially correct contrarians
  • ability to recognize fallacious thinking
  • willingness to engage with political opponents
  • ability to develop nuanced political opinions
  • ability to detect lies and deception in information sources

Went in a different direction than the post. The list I generated seems to have turned far more to abstract individual sanity ideas than things we already have numbers for.

Regex00

I think you're coming on a little strong in ways you don't intend for requesting his process and previous system iterations. This reads as if you should never share any system without also sharing the process of how to get there, and most of the time that is filled with stuff no one really needs to see.

7Elo
yes. okay. What I mean to say is that there is a whole lot of value in with the rest of the system generation process that is missing here. Value that might help understand better how/why it works the way it does and consequently how to make it work for one's self.
Regex00

Alas, this group went bust, but I think I pretty much figured out why. Wrote my thoughts up for everyone's pleasure.

Regex20

I agree. Nowhere else are we likely to get something optimized for that especially since it took nearly a decade to create.

0ChristianKl
It took a long time to create but it's nearly 4 decades old. A lot has happened since then.
Regex60

Apparently it "never saw daylight". I bet he'd still have a copy for the materials if one were to get in contact with him. How much of that wouldn't be in Thinking Fast and Slow though?

3ChristianKl
Thinking Fast and Slow isn't about how to teach high school students. The curriculum might have ideas about how to go about that.
Regex00

My first thought: "Oh, you leave your house."

I'm either at my computer or class with little time between, so there isn't much downtime for me to even use my phone. It is just an alarm clock people can talk to me from.

Admittedly I do have a tablet, but for the most part it is used for taking notes and so it may as well be replaced by a paper notebook, but I'm a sucker for OneNote. Because I spend every non-class minute walking or at home I've yet to give my tablet another role beyond that since my desktop is so much superior.

Regex30

Welcome!

I've seen these sorts of argument maps before.

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Debate_tools http://en.arguman.org/

It seems there is some overlap with your list here

Generally what I've noticed about them is that they focus very hard on things like fallacies. One problem here is that some people are simply better debaters even though their ideas may be unsound. Because they can better follow the strict argument structure they 'win' debates, but actually remain incorrect.

For example: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1437 He uses mostly the same argu... (read more)

1WikiLogicOrg
Thanks for an excellent, in-depth reply! Brilliant resource! Thanks for pointing it out. You bring up a few worries although i think you also realize how i plan to deal with them. (Whether i am successful or not is another matter!) One part of this project is to make some positive aspects of debating skills easy to pick up by newbies using the site. Charisma and confidence are worthless in a written format and even powerful prose are diluted to simple facts and reasoning in this particular medium. In my mind, if a niggling issue can break an argument then it was crucial and not merely 'niggling'. If the argument was employing it but did not rely on it, then losing it wont change its status. Being aware of issues like the 'fallacy fallacy' is useful in time-limited oral debates but in this format its ok to attack a bad argument on an otherwise well supported theory. The usual issue is it allows ones bias to come into play and makes the opponent feel the whole argument is weak. But this is easily avoided when the node remains glowing green to signify it is still 'true'. Is this so bad? We are used to being frugal with a resource like manpower because its traditionally been limited, but i believe you can overcome that with the world wide reach offered by the internet. People will only concentrate on what they are passionate about which means the most contentious of arguments will also get the most attention to detail. Most people accept gravity so it wont get or need as much attention. In the future if a new prominent school of thought is formed attacking it, then it may require a revisit from those looking to defend it. I think the opposite is true. In most other formats, such as a forum, the one comment can easily be drowned out. Here there will simply be two different ideas. More people working on one will help of course but they cannot conjure good arguments from nothing. We also have to have faith (the good kind) in people here and assume that they will be w
Regex00

Before stepping in front of a car make eye contact with the driver.

Do not assume they saw you just because they slowed down.

Regex00

2016 update: Go is now also taken.

Impressive tasks remaining as (t-> inf) approaches zero!

If not to AI or heat death, we're doomed to having already done everything amazing.

Regex20

Three years later- have you found the time? I'm really curious to know the rest of these.

Regex00

Realized it was the wrong structure entirely for what I was trying to do. Still working on a lot of the same general ideas elsewhere.

Regex00

Use rechargeable batteries.

After two years of constant use in my headphones (8+ hours a day), I still get a full week's worth of power from each battery. I don't recall how long traditional batteries lasted, but I don't think it was all too much longer. I don't have any to compare it with as a major benefit is not needing to worry about buying batteries ever. I do need to make sure I keep charged and discharged batteries separate.

1Zian
If you take a Sharpie and write the date onto the battery when you buy it, then if the battery starts giving you grief (e.g. it's frequently not charged when you fetch it from the storage container) after its normal lifespan, you can toss it without worrying that it's a defective battery or that you did something wrong.
Regex00

As a counter opinion, I barely use my smart phone for anything I didn't use my old Razr phone for. The only reason I got it was because it was actually cheaper to get a new smart phone than to continue on the old plan. The cost I pay is that I have to charge it every day.

0eeuuah
To flesh out my opinion: * I have basically all notifications off (really only for calls, texts, and alarms), which minimizes the downsides * having maps / search available all the time is really convenient. I used to spend a lot of effort either looking up directions or being lost, now I don't * I've found that using my phone to triage emails / rss / whatever is faster than on a full computer, because of the touchscreen * it functions as a mobile hot spot (not sure if older phones do this) so when it's nice out I can sit in the park and work, which is pretty pleasant * it converts small amounts of downtime into interesting reading opportunities (not really roi, but enjoyable) Generally speaking, the smartphone keeps my tools close to me instead of at home. I use anki, beeminder, my calendar and other electronic assistance heavily, so I think that might be why I get more value out of it.
Regex00

About half of the images are no longer there

0Raemon
Sorry, the website I was hosting them on disappeared a while ago (it was hosted on a friend's server, who stopped maintaining it. I won't have time in the foreseeable future to find new suitable drawings.
Regex00

Any shorter four years later? Asking for a friend.

4[anonymous]
A little.
Regex00

Of the five recordings on that page I was able to figure out three without listening to the clear speech.

Regex00

my answer to this question has become: 1) Research the topic 2) gather many ancedotes and strategies 3) try them 4) as my pool of suggested actions runs low, either brainstorm or go and gather more.

Regex20

I would actually recommend not setting any rewards or punishments due to the overjustification effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect By adding an external reward you will feel less intrinsically motivated.

Regex20

A few years late, but I'm interested!

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