All of RTiberiu's Comments + Replies

One strange bug-fix: praying once in a faraway Church in Spain helped daylight some relationship damage I was suffering. I've never been religious and still am not.

This didn't come out of explicitly looking for bugs, but it seemed in keeping with the theme.

This entire project looks very exciting. I hope it yields something life-changing, and I'd love to take part.

This is a good point. I anecdotally hear that crabs don't do this from my parents who cooked crabs, but this may be suspect due to memory issues on my part. If I am understanding correctly, the major objection your comment brings up is: this article presents a faulty anecdote and a 'lesson' that can be abused by the speaker. And that is dangerous.

In particular, I think you are referring to speakers who do misuse the metaphor to achieve group compliance. I agree this seems possible, and I respect your experience with it. Thus, I agree that t... (read more)

This sounds like the idea that is good in theory, but difficult to implement in practice.

I am not too familiar with the community, but my understanding is that most communities 'drift' into what they are, often by happenstance: not much is a conscious choice.

For example, it is well documented that people tend to live in communities and have friend groups that are ethnically similar to themselves. (Example: Nicky Case's Parable of the Polygons. http://ncase.me/polygons/). Few people consciously choose to do this. It happens when people follow... (read more)

I'm mostly thinking of: conversations I've had with Rationalists in Berkeley. They encouraged me to do some exercises involving free-association and idea generation. For example coming up with a list of twenty plants as quickly as possible. Or saying 5 words that I do not mentally associate with each other. Improv-style exercises (perhaps excellent method of training some types of babble).

I see where you are coming from. I agree with your comment w.r.t. what you are pointing at :).

Hmmm, that may be the case on diets. Positive changes below the sensory threshold. Maybe you can write a post on it :).

There is a heuristic I have heard about PhD studies. A capable mathematics professor once told me: a graduate student should feel like s/he is making progress every day. Even if no new resullts are forthcoming. Experimentally, this is possible, and leads to improved happinness and better results. I am part of the academic system, so my anecdotes are biased in that direction.

I wonder if diets where you can feel improvement every day, work... (read more)

If a balanced Babble and Prune game is supposed to involve one Artist against one Critic, then having an overactive Prune is like pitting a pitchfork-wielding mob of Critics against one Artist. The first three Critics tar-and-feather the Artist and the rest are just there for moral support.

In my internal experience, there are multiple sources of babble. A thousand artists crying out at once.

I suspect a lot of neural machinery is at work here, and that the babbler, like the gates, is secretly many many voices speaking in semi-unison. This goes beyond the ... (read more)

Preliminary comments:

The task of relaxing all of Prune at once is monumental. Instead, relax the Gates individually in order. Simultaneously, shorten the psychological distance between them.

This is intriguing. I want to give it a try sometime. I like the way you set it up. This recommendation naturally follows from the model of the multiple dams, or the multiple tar-and-featherers.

Rationalist training (and schooling in general) slants towards developing Prune over Babble. I'm trying to solve the dual problem: that of improving the quality of your Babb

Wow, that sounds great. Can I poke you for a few questions on how those organizations ran? I think that experience is invaluable.

In particular, I'd like to know how wikidata's community reaches a consensus, when I imagine many different players would like many different things for the future of the community.

I suspect you might get more traction on comments like these if you provided examples, and/or reasons for taking this more seriously. As it stands, it's not clear to me why I should be taking it more seriously other than taking your word for it [and I say this as someone who wrote the section you just commented on :)].

The first point is a good question. The goal is personal: feeling out whether such thoughts find a place in the LW space, and if so, engaging with this community more :). Altenately, it's a reflection/"blog post", whose partial intention is to throw some thoughts out there and hear alternative perspectives that may cause me to update.

The second point: yeah, that's a great point and sadly I don't know how to elaborate effectively. I'll think on it and update this comment if that changes. Thanks for the point on body language -... (read more)

Do you have experience being one of the leads in an organization where this worked? Just curious. (If you have, I have some questions to ask about pitfalls you ran into and how you avoided certain failure modes that I encountered.)

I think telling this to volunteers runs into natural difficulties: in the volunteer setup, people naturally expect to be compensated with something (whether that's money, status, college-app material, or the feeling of being part of something larger than themselves). Otherwise why would they put the reliable dedication time in?

This was something I'll be thinking on more next time I organize something. I'm curious if you have any suggestions or thoughts.

Fwiw I didn't think ChristianKL's comment was in bad faith, but I could see how it could be taken as such. Agree with the decision to shut down that thread though. There was some kindling ready for a flame war there :).

Thank you for the comment. I know Elizabeth somewhat well, and I'm really happy that she became CFAR's community manager :). Her position came after my time in the physical community. Perhaps I'll feel more at home at Berkeley nowadays.

The vibe was: person felt kind of "rapey" (and I mean this in the most serious sense). It is unclear whether this vibe was presenting more than pure noise.

Thank you! I apologize about the confusion. Duly noted for the future!