LESSWRONG
LW

All of root's Comments + Replies

root00

I made this simply because I'm curious about what your programming setup looks like. More specifically, eye ergonomics.

This page https://ergonomics.ucla.edu/injuries-and-prevention/eye-strain.html looks useful, but I'm curious if there's much to add.

Reply
Halloween costume: Paperclipperer
root10

Just dress as Voldemort and use a flashlight with a green LED. Works fantastically for trick or treating.

Reply
0Dagon
Yup, looks that way. LW 2.0 is running, but seems to have gone further toward the "publish thoughts, get some comments" and away from the conversational feel we had here. So it goes.
4Manfred
Plausibly? LW2 seems to be doing okay, which is gonna siphon off posts and comments.
2Lumifer
The patient is fading: pulse is weak, blood pressure is low and dropping, brain is getting anoxic. Absent a radical intervention, we don't anticipate a good prognosis.
LW2.0 now in public beta (you'll need to reset your password to log in)
root00

Why not use something like.. werc? http://werc.cat-v.org/

Granted, if you're using Windows, you're out of luck.

Reply
[Slashdot] We're Not Living in a Computer Simulation, New Research Shows
root00

Abstract question here, but does this paper prove we're not living in a simulation, versus proving that at our current amount of knowledge, we can't prove if we're in one, or not?

The bigger question, of course, would be how many simulations deep we are at, and how long until we make our own.

Reply
8Gunnar_Zarncke
I'd say it proves that we are not living in a simulation that a) runs in a universe that has the same computational constraints as ours and b) simulates quantum effects faithfully at macroscopic levels
LW2.0 now in public beta (you'll need to reset your password to log in)
root20

Unfortunately, due to the shape of modern web development

I humbly request this to be unpacked.

Reply
2Raemon
There's a large number of tools that expand the options available to you as a front end developer (as well as tools that are part of the ecosystem that supports the first set of tools). Basically all of those tools are built around the assumption that you can just use javascript. You can build sites that function without that, that have javascript as an optional thing that spruces up the site for people who use it. But you will be putting in more effort. ReactJS (which Lesswrong 2.0 is built on), is built around the premise that you literally just use javascript for everything (HTML is rendered out of javascript files). This has a lot of benefits. You don't need to have three sorts of files (html, javascript, and css) for every component of your page, and it's generally easier to automatically test your site if you know what you're doing. I don't think this was necessary or inevitable, but it is the way things have shook out.
LW2.0 now in public beta (you'll need to reset your password to log in)
root00

(EDIT: Polls are broken or I did something incorrect. Lookat this:

[Which LessWrong had a better design?]{1.0}{2.0}{Results}

And help me fix this, please. Thanks!)

Do tell why your chosen design is better. I like the current design because

  • Familiarity
  • Doesn't have a width limit? (Either it was fixed or firefox being firefox)

Neutral points:

  • Maybe taking time to get used to the new design because new != bad, but new != good either. My guess is that new systems can be intuitively bad at first but giving them a few tries isn't unreasonable.

Good points/impro... (read more)

Reply
LW2.0 now in public beta (you'll need to reset your password to log in)
root40

Small (but critical) complaint: the login button doesn't work without javascript.

Reply
0Raemon
Unfortunately, due to the shape of modern web development, basically the entire site (at least, all the features you would log in for) will not work without javascript. This does suck but it's not really an option at this point.
Straw Hufflepuffs and Lone Heroes
root00

An rather disturbing thought crossed my mind when I was thinking of a good reply. You're against the lone hero mindset - explained your reason for doing so - and yet once you've established groups, haven't you introduced the lone group mindset? You have focused entirely on Hufflepuff, but asked no Ravenclaw what their thoughts on the matter are. No Slytherin was asked how to make your project crumble and the leader be exiled or better yet, usurped. No Gryffindor was asked what kind of bravery is needed for such a project, although I believe you'd get a cheerful smile at the very least for doing what you believe is right.

So do please tell me, what, exactly, are the reasons for not including others.

Reply
1Benquo
I'm enough of a non-Hufflepuff (leaning Ravenclaw & to a lesser extent Slytherin) that the name "Project Hufflepuff" still creeps me out a bit, and Raemon has made strong active efforts to get my perspective. "Why didn't you ask people from different perspectives?" starts from a false premise. If you think Raemon is missing something, best to just tell us what it is.
9Raemon
I have actually been asking Raveclaws and Slytherins for help since day one (this may not be obvious because I did that elsewhere while I was still fleshing this all out). Also, I'm a Ravenclaw. The point here is not replace us with Hufflepuff, the point is to strike a better balance
First impressions...
root20

... of LW: a while ago, a former boss and friend of mine said that rationality is irrational because you never have sufficient computational power to evaluate everything rationally. I thought he was missing the point - but after two posts on LW, I am inclined to agree with him.

He's techinically correct on the first part, but what really bothers me is that while that statement is resource-aware, it totally disregards time. What can you do in 1, 2, 5, 10 minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years (remind me to edit this to include decades/centuries/milleniums ... (read more)

Reply
0TheAncientGeek
There is a definition of rationality implicit in that, which seems to be along the lines of "use system 2, use if for eveything, and it keep on using it till you get an answer".
Project Hufflepuff
root20

Some more information about Hufflepuff:

Hufflepuff is the most inclusive among the four houses; valuing hard work, dedication, patience, loyalty, and fair play rather than a particular aptitude in its members.

Reply
2Dagon
Wait. Why does the author think those qualities aren't aptitudes? Conscientiousness and agreeableness are both somewhat heritable.
If I must eat meat, I eat pork
root00

Forgive me for the rudeness of "DO THE RESEARCH FOR ME", but honestly, every time I read a similar post like this one, I NEVER see numbers. If you've ever heard of a far-away paradise or living hell, you might be amazed or scared at first, but one step later you wonder how good or bad it really is.

So in this case, how much meat is ACTUALLY eaten? Can we get numbers?

Reply
0Gordon Seidoh Worley
numbers in links
Should you share your goals
root00

The second group feels like the most punchable people I've seen for December 2016. I don't see why the insults were necessary. I'd imagine a proper response would be something like "What was so bad about last month?". In fact, NONE of them helped, because I can totally see something like one of your characters posting how they'd like to get into Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxbridge, and then they get responses like "lol man who you kidding, you're a moron, do you even have a high school diploma?"

(Maybe my first paragraph was missing the po... (read more)

Reply
root10

Fun fact: I can generally imagine a person described by the word asshole, but I can't really imagine a person defined by the word 'bigot'. It's such a liberally used word that.. it suffers from lingual inflation.

I wanted to have a bigger bite but there's this funny part of the article which is a miniature black hole of irony:

“We have an obligation and a responsibility to create a campus climate that is empowering, rewarding and welcoming for all students,” Leonard said.

The letter cited the erection of the Trump wall and acts of harassment since the elect

... (read more)
Reply
Open thread, Dec. 12 - Dec. 18, 2016
root00

POSSIBLY POLITICAL (MINDKILLING) WARNING: WEED, also I can't get the asterisks at the bottom to work correctly, what the hell happened to WYSIWYG?

So recently I've been acquainted with a few smokers. It's not really about the smoking itself but rather it's my overall disposition toward it.

Maybe it's some sort of blind spot on my hand, I'd appreciate if maybe the nootropics guys can help me with this. But I can't seem to wrap my head around what are the:

  1. Benefits*
  2. Drawbacks**
  3. Placebo

Obligatory warning that I'm not really knowledgeable nor experienced with... (read more)

Reply
0morganism
There was a doc who did autopsies, that showed a correlation of enlarged heart, and cardiac death, tied to weed. LA i think. and there is a new disease going around, a stomach thing, that smokers have intense vomiting., Very limited set, but they are trying to get the word out to other emergency docs..
0Vaniver
We use Markdown, which isn't WYSIWYG. If you want to escape a special character, use a \ in front of it, like so: \* Version *A*. * Version A. * Version *B*. * Version B.
0justsomeoldnick
Add personaltity change. This is completely anecdotal but I do hear stories about personality changes. More mellow, sure, but also less motivated and less likely to accept responsibility.
Which areas of rationality are underexplored? - Discussion Thread
root00

Do we really need to take the whole package in? If we have (n) beliefs, some number of them might be useful, some of them would be less effective than advertised, and some could be useless if not harmful.

Reply
3Viliam
Sure, there are at least two ways how to go stupid about this. One of them is saying "here is a package that contains at least one true statement, I am going to adopt it as a whole". Other is hearing a statement in isolation and saying "hey, this statement is a part of this package, and we reject that package as a whole, right?"
Downvotes temporarily disabled
root00

Why can't we have both?

Reply
Which areas of rationality are underexplored? - Discussion Thread
root30

It could be a difficult endeavour but I'd love to see what we can do with what we already have on LW. I don't see any easily-discoverable links to (for example) the Repository repository. Would anyone be kind as to share links to some pages they believe are useful, but are not easily reachable?

Here's a possibly bad list, but some useful-looking results by searching for 'economics':

  • Here is a post with a few recommendations in the comments, which seem interesting but I don't really know if the recommendations are still good, or have been superseded by fre

... (read more)
Reply
2scarcegreengrass
Can you clarify what you mean by the Repository repository? I'm not familiar with that term.
Which areas of rationality are underexplored? - Discussion Thread
root00

I vaguely remember a comment made by Vladimir_M, citing PUA as 'the elephant in the room'. I'd imagine there's some variant of Godwin's law in which someone will eventually say 'hey, why does nobody care about the elephant in the room?', so maybe the question should be 'Are we fully prepared and able to debunk PUA beliefs?'.

Reply
1ChristianKl
PUA comes from a bunch of nerds trying to tackle the problem of how to "systematically win" in the interaction with females. Mostly with relatively little contact to prior art and little experience in existing frameworks for building skills in human interaction. At the start most of the PUA framework was created by discussions on an online forum. Those basic underlying factors lead to a lot of problems that PUA does have. They are also present on LessWrong and not easily debunked.
7Viliam
No, it definitely shouldn't be. First, you already have the bottom line written. Second, beliefs are true or false individually; if you put a large set of beliefs (I am not ever sure what exactly qualifies as a "PUA belief" these days) in one package, and try to reject the whole package (or accept it), you will almost certainly acquire some false beliefs. Third, framing the statements as somehow belonging to an outgroup already removes rationality from the debate. (Also, what happens if some belief is shared, for example, by both evolutionary psychologists and PUAs? Do these also get dismissed as "PUA beliefs"? What if PUAs also believe that 2+2=4? Because I suspect many of them do.)
Your Truth Is Not My Truth
root00

Can someone help me dissolve this, and give insight into how to proceed with someone who says this?

You don't, they just don't want to talk about it. Some people can sadly not be saved.

Reply
Open thread, Sep. 12 - Sep. 18, 2016
root00

Have you ever had a moment where they could not directly recall something, but you could recall it indirectly, if you were given a list of words with the correct one in it?

I'm going to try this for myself with Anki, but I'm curious if anyone else ever had this. Something like the information is stored, but cannot be retrieved.

For example: "What is the ___ word?"

1) Right 2) Code 3) Missing 4) Test

Any of those don't seem inappropriate, but option (3) should be the correct answer.

Reply
2HungryHippo
What you're describing is the difference between recall and recognition, if you want to google it. E.g. the question "What is the atomic number of Oxygen?" is a recognition task if you're given multiple choices "a) 1 b) 6 c) 8", and it's a recall task if you're just presented a blank space in which to write down your answer. Recognition tasks are generally easier.
2niceguyanon
Isn't this what normal memory forget/recall looks like? Same as seeing a celeb whose name you forgot, but if given a list of names, you could immediately be sure of it once again. The combination to your lock, the items on your grocery list, the meaning to a word, are all things I cant remember directly but if given a list to choose from then no problem.
[LINK] Collaborate on HPMOR blurbs; earn chance to win three-volume physical HPMOR
root10
  1. Are you going to print it yourself or pay a printing company? Printing it yourself can be some work (binding all the pages and the cover) but maybe a printing company wouldn't want to print it due to licensing issues.
  2. Will you be using the HPMOR PDF? It was (probably) made to be identical to the style of the original HP books, but it's your choice if you want to keep it that way.
Reply
3plex
I'll try a printing company, and look into other options if it does not work. A modified version of one of the fan PDFs, yes.
Open Thread, Sept 5. - Sept 11. 2016
root00

ie for 17, do 7, 6, 3, 2, 1),

That rounds up to 19, not 17.

Reply
0DataPacRat
So it does. Obviously, for 17, I should have wrote 6, 5, 3, 2, 1. (And for 19, it would be 6, 5, 4, 3, 1.)
Open Thread, Aug. 8 - Aug 14. 2016
root00

depend on the specific person

I'm not really sure how to pinpoint individual differences. I'm going to stop here but I honestly think it would be nice to break this down further. A potentially harmful practice could be taking some sort of average ability to digest food, and then start deriving standard deviations from it. I'm saying 'harmful' because I (1) do not know how to do this and (2) I have no idea if this is the right thing to do.

Now apply this argument to the calories themselves. Is it possible that two people eat the same food, yet one of the

... (read more)
Reply
Open Thread, Aug. 8 - Aug 14. 2016
root00

Can we get in some agreed upon middle ground?

A simple daily-iterated formula to start: WEIGHT = WEIGHT - WEIGHTBURN + FOOD

My assumptions are that WEIGHT is the person's current weight. WEIGHTBURN is the amount the person burn per every day from energy consumption + bodily maintenance. FOOD varies from person to person.

My questions for you:

But it is possible that some of the "calories in (the mouth)" may pass through the digestive system undigested and later excreted? Could people differ in this aspect, perhaps because of their gut flora?

Not u... (read more)

Reply
0Viliam
Yes, but more importantly, I ask whether the difference between "food labels" and "actual food digestion" may depend on the specific person. To use your example, some person may be able to better extract calcium from food than other person, either because their genes create different enzymes, or because their gut flora preprocesses the food differently. Now apply this argument to the calories themselves. Is it possible that two people eat the same food, yet one of them extracts 1000 calories from the food, and the other extracts 1500 calories? Well, you have just returned my question. I was curious whether there are ways to spend calories that most people would forget to think about when thinking about "work". For example, whether it is possible that we could observe two people the whole day and conclude that they do the same things (same kind of work, same kind of sport) and therefore their "calories out" should be approximately the same, while in reality their "calories out" would differ because one of them e.g. wears a warmer sweater. Adding these two questions together, I am asking whether it is possible to have two people eat the same food, do the same amount of work and sport, and yet at the end of the day one of them gains extra calories and the other does not.
0Elo
going to modify for clarification: EndOfTodayWeight = StartOfTodayWeight - EenergyBurn + EnergyIntakeFromFood + WaterIn - WaterOut where Energyburn is: EnergyBurn = BaseMetabolicRate + IncidentalExercise + PurposefulExercise (+ SomeFudgeFactor for individual variance) And: EnergyIntakeFromFood = Food'sCaloricComposition (* PercentAbsorbed: where this is probably close to 100%) ---------------------------------------- This is also more complicated because food travelling through your digestive system (or liquid travelling through your filtration system) can be at various stages and weights. For example watermelon has a lot of water in it, so will initially make your weight go up, but shortly after only the sugar will remain. Other factors like feeling bloated may genuinely be caused by water retention. BUT if we try to build a model assuming these other factors are not there... And assuming that when you eat food, the mass of the food is equivalent to your weight change due to the caloric load. (which is distinctly not true for chocolate, where you can eat less weight of chocolate but put on more weight because of the calories. The weight comes from added water when you process that food.) (this is where the weight-measure starts breaking down but if we keep going anyway we can still get a useful model)
Low hanging productivity - improving your workspace
root00

Can you give a picture of your workspace?[0] Mine is just a one screen with dwm[1]. dwm is simple and useful and I can easily switch between 'workspaces' with two buttons.

[0] Screencap works as well. [1] http://dwm.suckless.org/

Reply
Now is the time to eliminate mosquitoes
root10

Is there a possibility that those diseases will move to a different animal?

Reply
3James_Miller
CDC CDC
Irrationality Quotes August 2016
root00

Meta question: are there 'gray area' quotes that can fit both rationality and irrationality?

Let's take 'You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" for example. On the positive side, it means that you should definitely do X, because otherwise you could never get it. The gray area is that it's abstract and situation specific, there's nothing that guaratees success or failure. The negative side could end up you making a fool of yourself.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. It seems like rationality quotes provide wisdom, and things to consider.... (read more)

Reply
0Viliam
Seems similar to the "motte and bailey" concept -- ideas having both rational and irrational interpretation. Except that in the typical "motte and bailey", the rational version is supposed to be boring, while in what you describe, the rational version is also interesting. Probably any rational advice can be horribly abused, so I'm not sure if there is a specific category of those that are specifically "asking for" being abused, or whether just some forms of abuse accidentally become popular.
Should we enable public binding precommitments?
root00

open-source prisoner's dilemma

I believe the GNU GPL was made to address this.

It seems like we are moving in this direction, with things like Etherium that enable smart contracts.

Does anyone have proof that Etherium is secure? There's also the issue of giving whomever runs Etherium complete authority over those 'smart contracts', and that could easily turn into 'pay me to make the contract even smarter'.

Technology should enable us to enforce more real-world precommitments, since we'll be able to more easily monitor and make public our private data.

... (read more)
Reply
0David Scott Krueger (formerly: capybaralet)
People will be incentivized to share private things if robust public precommitments become available, because we all stand to benefit from more information. Because of human nature, we might settle on some agreement where some information is private, or differentially private, and/or where private information is only accessed via secure computation to determine things relevant to the public interest.
0Lumifer
Define "secure". And, naturally, Etherium contracts live on the blockchain, so there is no one who "runs" Etherium in the same sense that there is no one who runs Bitcoin. But, of course, persuade a sufficiently large part of the community and you can have anything you want -- see the DAO mess and the consequent hard fork.
Open thread, Jul. 25 - Jul. 31, 2016
root00

I've lurked around a bit and akrasia seems to be a consistent problem - I'd imagine that requires mental effort.

But on topic I doubt lifting weights doesn't require mental effort. You still need to choose a menu, choose your lifting program, consistently make sure you're doing things right. In fact, if common failure mods of dieting are usually caused by not enough mental energy put into proper planning.

And I'd give a special mention to the discipline required to follow on your meal plan.

Those things definitely take mental effort.

TLDR: What's the 'mental effort' you're talking about? Running calculations on $bitrate=(brainsize)* all day long?

  • formula not researched!
Reply
2Lumifer
"Requires non-mental effort" does NOT imply that no mental effort is required. The quip points out that nerds (and most local rationalists are nerds) are perfectly fine with spending a lot of mental energy on things of interest, but are generally loath to engage in intense exercise and/or tolerate physical discomfort and pain.
Open thread, Jul. 25 - Jul. 31, 2016
root00

Rationalists don't even lift bro.

Why not?

Reply
5Elo
they do. http://thefutureprimaeval.net/why-we-even-lift/
-2Lumifer
Requires (non-mental) effort.
Open thread, Jul. 18 - Jul. 24, 2016
root00

To clarify, what I meant was: Are the famous, top n, or places for education do provide a substantially better outcome for their students on average in comparison to less exceptional ones?

Reply
Open thread, Jul. 18 - Jul. 24, 2016
root00

Thanks for the long answer! I just looked at the Cambridge prices for overseas students and it made me feel poor. Might as well seen a 500,000 ILS debt in my bank account.

I live in Israel and maybe I should study here. None of my family has any education though so I'm not really sure what to do. Do you know any universal things I should look for when considering higher education? ('Is it worth it?' sounds like a good question now..)

Reply
0Strangeattractor
You might be able to get financial aid or scholarships, so I wouldn't rule out an expensive university right away. If you apply and get accepted, which admittedly itself costs some money, then you could have some talks with the financial aid people. And their first answer may not be the final answer, or there may be alternative sources of funding, so you may have to repeat yourself and keep talking to them for a while before you together figure out something that could work. Some universities claim to have the attitude that they don't want anyone to not be able to attend because of financial reasons, but in practice it is hit and miss to get them to live up to it, and easy to get into debt. It may depend on the individual person you are talking to. If one person isn't helping much, a different person in the same department may help more. Sometimes people unfamiliar with the system get discouraged by the first thing someone in financial aid says to them and walk away, instead of advocating for themselves more, or exploring the problem from a slightly different angle. You may also want to look into universities that have a co-operative education program that involves paid work in between sessions of study. This won't completely pay for the costs of education, but it can help a lot.
4Daniel_Burfoot
Israel has great tech universities. Oxbridge and other UK universities are chronically underfunded because of regulations about how much they can charge domestic students, so they try to make up for it by charging foreign students big money. My guess is that elite US universities are much better value-for-money for foreign students.
7Huluk
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your comment here gives me the impression that you are asking an awfully general question, but actually want the answer to a very concrete question: "Should I study X at a top uni abroad, any uni at home, or not at all, given that I'm good enough to choose myself but will have to make debts to study". This would be a much easier question for us to answer, especially if you tell us what X is, whether you'd want to continue with a postgrad, and maybe what you goals are for the time after your studies. It's perfectly ok not to know all of these yet, but some info would help.
gjm120

Yeah, Cambridge is pretty expensive. (I think the best US universities are a lot worse, but haven't actually looked at the numbers. Some or all of these places may have some kind of assistance available if you're very poor or very good or both.) The recent reduction in the value of the pound (because of all the "Brexit" hoohah) has made UK universities a bit cheaper for foreign students.

I'd hesitate to call anything universal, but I'd consider at least the following things. You've probably thought of them all already :-). Some of them are awfully... (read more)

Reply
1Lumifer
It somewhat depends on the specialty, but standard college rankings will get you into the ballpark. Look at things like selectivity (% of applicants offered admission) and the distribution of standardized test scores for students.
Open thread, Jul. 18 - Jul. 24, 2016
root00

Still not sure.

Why "either or"?

My English sucks, and I should stop thinking in a binary format.

Reply
Open thread, Jul. 18 - Jul. 24, 2016
root50

What are the differences between the 'big names' of higher education, in comparison to other places?

For example, I often hear about MIT, Oxford, and to a lesser extent, Cambridge. Either there's some sort of self-selection, or do graduates from there have better prospects than graduates of 'University of X, YZ'?

In a little bit of unintended self-reflection I noticed that I have a strange binary way of thinking of higher education. It feels that if I don't go to one of the top n, my effort is wasted. Not sure why.

I'm just becoming somewhat paranoid regardin... (read more)

Reply
2Strangeattractor
Yes, there are differences. I talked to a person who was hiring for tech jobs in Silicon Valley, and he said that the Ivy League schools in the United States get a much better quality of training than other United States schools in the fields of engineering and computer science. For example, the Ivy League schools would have 3 hour exams where you have to show how you arrived at an answer as well as the answer. Most of the other schools had 1 hour multiple choice exams. The situation is different in other countries. In Canada, unlike in the US, engineering is a regulated profession. That means certain types of designs have to be approved by a Professional Engineer. There are rules about how to become a professional engineer. One path to becoming one involves graduating from an accredited program at a university. So every engineering program at a university is monitored by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. No matter which university you go to in Canada, you'll get the 3 hour non-multiple choice exams, and very good training. For this reason, the person at the tech company liked to hire Canadians, since they have the good training, but not the entitled attitude of the Ivy League graduates. But he considered Ivy League graduates. He wouldn't even consider the non-Ivy League ones, unless they showed some other way that they actually have the skills and training, since they didn't get it at school. Another difference between Harvard, MIT, etc. and the typical Canadian university is that Harvard and MIT have huge endowment funds and many wealthy alumni and donors, so they have access to a lot more resources than most universities. Like about 1000x more money. The MIT endowment fund reached $13.5 billion in 2015. I also know someone who went to Harvard for a Masters degree in political science, and she said that after getting a degree from Harvard, she was taken a lot more seriously. People listened to what she said, and deferred to her, in a way that they
7Elo
http://siderea.livejournal.com/1261773.html?format=light useful thoughts about colleges.
gjm150

I studied at Cambridge (which, btw, is definitely better than Oxford :-)).[1] Being in the Cambridge area when I got out of academia meant that there were plenty of jobs around that suited me. (Obviously that's a good thing in itself, but perhaps if I'd been somewhere else then I'd have moved to, say, London and had a different range of job opportunities.)

Pretty much every job I've taken I've found out about because someone at my new employer knew me. In some cases those were people who studied with me. Does that count as an effect of having been at a good... (read more)

Reply
6Manfred
There's a lot of self-selection, and the classes and extracurricular resources are therefore allowed to be geared towards smarter students, and that's nice. You'll also get more opportunities to learn about current research in your chosen field, which improves your grad school chances. A lot of the value is if you plan to get a job straight out of college, going to a top n school will have a name brand advantage (not without reason). However, controlling for smartness and research experience, I think that where you did your undergrad doesn't matter all that much for grad school.
-1Lumifer
Yes, they do. There are basically three tiers: the elite (top 10-12 schools), the middle (top 50-100 or so), and the don't-bother (the rest).
9Huluk
I'm currently applying for jobs while finishing up my Master's degree, so I'm not technically in the group you are asking, but can hopefully still say something useful. Background: I've been studying Computer Science with a natural language focus, both at a relatively unknown university in Eastern Germany and at University of Edinburgh. The latter is definitely top n in the field, although it does not have the same nimbus and does not offer as much of regular 1-on-1 teaching time with profs like Oxford and Cambridge do (you can get it if you ask, but it is not a default teaching mode). I can't compare to the US because I haven't been there yet. Content comparison: I find that the courses at both universities is similar both according to content and quality. The focus is different of course, and workload is much higher in Edinburgh, probably because the degree program is only 1 year instead of 1.5 or 2 for roughly the same content. In both places I could get meetings with professors if I wanted to, although in Edinburgh there is additionally a lot of staff who checks up on us and reminds us about organisational things. Among students, there is a bigger share of really bright and enthusiastic people, and that is quite noticeable. The biggest difference here is that there is direct contact with the people who made major inventions and contributions to the field and are on top of things I actually care about. This is most important in a very narrow range of topics I want to go further. For the basics, it doesn't really matter who explains them. I currently also get very good dissertation supervision, but I cannot compare that to my old university because I wrote my dissertation there during an internship and largely with supervision from the company's research department. Job applications: I feel like being in Edinburgh gives a significant boost to job applications. In Germany, profs were willing to write recommendations on request, but did not offer interesting comp
0ChristianKl
What do you actually want to do with your life? There are careers like politics where personal connection that are gathered during university years are very important. There are other careers such as starting a startup where personal connections with high status people might not be central and a lot of the YC founders don't have them. Why "either or"?
Open thread, Jul. 11 - Jul. 17, 2016
root00

I've read (mostly things by Ron Maimon) that marijuana* can actually impair your ability to do calculations (and in extent, I'd also assume your ability to make decisions) and I'm curious if there's any truth to that.

  • Is there a difference between marijuana, medical marijuana, weed, instert_name_here? They seem to be used interchangeably. At least they seem to cause a similar if not the exact same effect.
Reply
2Gunnar_Zarncke
There are long-term effects, but the impact seems to be not fully clear (wikipedia, On the other hand there are many known side-effects of the normal drugs used for the same purpose. Beside the medical properties there are also the social properties of a drug. See also the AMS report Brain science, addiction and drugs.
1turchin
In Sextech it is promising but current implementations are not impressive
The map of cognitive biases, errors and obstacles affecting judgment and management of global catastrophic risks
root10

Interpretation: you think that despite all the supposed/possible/theoretical/whatever goodwill, your effort will not actually be rewarded with anything. And not only that, you fear that while you're putting effort in that, other people put effort in themselves and once the great disaster is averted, your standing will be worse off compared to those that invested in themselves.

Confirm/deny?

Reply
0Algernoq
Pretty accurate. Why sacrifice, when the payment is shame, not praise? Why be a good person, when I am called a weak coward for not taking as much as I can?
Checklist of Rationality Habits
root00

Bookmarks in your browser. There's also the diskette icon between the two horizontal bars that separate the article and the comment section.

Reply
8gjm
I think the "liked" tab on your user page displays precisely those articles that you've upvoted. So upvoting an article will make it available there in the future.
Open thread, Jul. 04 - Jul. 10, 2016
root00

I remember that LW has an API. It should only be a matter of finding all your posts that do not have any replies and then deleting them.

I'm referring to programming of course, but I can't help you with it more specifically.

Reply
The Ethics of AI and Its Effect On Us
root-30

If Microsoft were in charge of PR for sex the human race would be extinct.

Wouldn't trust them with an AI.

Reply
Meme: Valuable Vulnerability
root10

You should look into Brene Brown's stuff. Here's a TED talk

Reply
Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016
root-10

You have a point. I'm mostly at fault here to be honest as I'm getting slowly more and more skeptical of 'stuff on the internet' (the site being called Art of Manliness already gives me some certain ideological connotations) and seeing how many things which look appealing intuitively don't really yield much tasty fruit in real life, I'll often label things clickbait rather than actually put some time in them.

Reply
Open thread, June 27 - July 3, 2016
root00

Thoughts on the King, Warrior, Magician, Lover archetypes? Useful?

That website looks like a pretty big clickbait. Not footnotes either, which could be me overestimating people who put footnotes, but it might also be that whomever wrote that could be attempting to avoid being accused of wordplay.

Reply
0ChristianKl
What's wrong with simple hyperlinks to sources? The post explains ideas layed out in a book and links the book.
Are smart contracts AI-complete?
root30

Haven't people been making contracts for a pretty long time? What is this new 'smart contract' thing and how is it unique?

in a way that's already illegal.

Someone cracking a smart contract wouldn't really mind the law.

Reply
0Slider
From what I gather its a contract that is so spesific there isn't any room for interpretation. Normal contracts refer more strongly to a "reasonable human being fluent in the language its written in". This leaves some of the basic concepts somewhat open and some fitting is needed to make spesific sense for the circumstances. For example we can refer to "chairs" without there being any rigourous definition of such. But a smart contract can define rigourously complex hypotheticals on what migth happen in a way that doesn't leave any ambigity. I guess the theory of it could be way more sound if humans were capable of logical omniscience. But given a piece of code you probably only understand its main modes of function. If you brough up some weird edgecase on how the spesification binds you and ask "did you really will this?" a typical human can't answer yes to all such questions. Its like committing to following the bible and then afterwards finding out it involves stoning people (and then not being so willing after learning this fact). Someone who doesn't know that marriage influences inheritance etc is not capable of agreeing to a marriage, even if he says yes during some ritual. But marriage is simple enough that it can be externally verified when a person does understand it or atleast ought to. In a way we do somethign similar when we include terms of service that are boring enough and skippable enough that lots of people do not read them. But here the whole text is readable. It is just so dense in mathematical/technical coding that reading it in a comphehensive way would take significant effort which is not usually done. Its like saying "here read this schrödinger equation. Congratulations now you understand quantum mechanics completely". But the comprehensiveness can be executed and the ability to prescan it for known tricks/bugs makes it not automatically socially useless. But if the code ends up later to have a property that neither of the parties were aware
3WalterL
So, the theory goes: In a normal contract you agree to abide by some rules. If you break them penalties, etc. But you don't have to 'just' trust those rules to agree to the contract. You have to trust the oversight body. If you get the better of me on the text of the contract I might turn around and appeal to a judge that you are still violating the spirit of the contract. The idea of the 'Smart contract' is that the code is the contract, and there is no appeal. Our 'contract' is just an executable which does what it does. You only have to trust it, and not some random judge. This instance, where someone is unhappy with how their smart contract worked out in practice, and the dev/community at large are playing judge, has a lot of people wondering whether they are ending up with the worst of both worlds.
0ChristianKl
The contract isn't enforced by a court of law but is enforced by computer code.
Load More