All of shullak7's Comments + Replies

I'll tell you how it comes across. It comes across as focusing on the other men and ignoring the women's contributions. Treating the men as rivals and the women as prizes. Sucky for everyone all around.

Thank you for this. As a younger woman, I became reluctant to join conversations at conferences or other professional meetings because I had noticed that the dynamic of the group sometimes changed for the worse when I entered the discussion. As I get older, I'm no longer as much of a "prize", so it doesn't happen to me as often (which is hones... (read more)

Thanks for the paper (that's a lot of authors!). The complexity you mention makes it difficult to determine whether substance X (caffeine, alcohol, eggs, etc.) has a net positive or negative for any given person when it comes to health benefits. Coffee has been linked to some positive health effects, but maybe only for those people who don't get the jitters....that's the sort of thing that would be cool to know. Until then, I'm just going to listen to my body and minimize consumption.

Is there any research on why caffeine seems to affect some people more/differently than others? Anecdotally, I've noticed over the years that I get the "jitters" after two cups and have to stop because I can't stand the feeling, whereas others can drink half a pot and barely notice the effects.

I initially thought that these others had just 'pushed through the jitters' and built up a tolerance, but some of them have told me they've never experienced the jittery feeling I'm talking about. Or maybe it just didn't make them as uncomfortable as it makes me?

The people I know who retired or are scheduled to retire the quickest
Cops.

Also military. Defined pension benefits and health care (such as it is) for the rest of your life. Of course, you must be in the military for 20+ years, which I'm guessing is not what the OP is looking for based on his/her other comments. :-)

Oh, and a practical question (for the US people) -- once you retire at, say, 40, what are you going to use for health insurance and does your retirement planning cover the medical costs?

I experienced this to some extent (a long story I w... (read more)

Thanks Vaniver. I am going to take this to mean that I'm young at heart.

It looks like the median age is 27.67, but I'm curious to see the age-range breakdown as I've frequently assumed I'm "old" for the group (over 40). Oh....never mind.....just saw the link to the Excel spreadsheet and will sort it myself.

I truly wish that I was in a position to help make rationality training part of the public school curriculum because I think that would be of tremendous value to our society. I do work at a library and people hold workshops there...libraries could be a good place to "spread the word" to people who might be interested in rationality education, but may not have heard about it. The workshop would have to be free of charge, though, and CFAR isn't there yet.

I think that is one of my questions; i.e., is some form of natural language required? Or maybe what I'm wondering is what intelligence would look like if it weren't constrained by language -- if that's even possible. I need to read/learn more on this topic. I find it really interesting.

I think that "the role of language in human thought" is one of the ways that AI could be very different from us. There is research into the way that different languages affect cognitive abilities (e.g. -- https://psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/sci-am-2011.pdf). One of the examples given is that, as a native English-speaker, I may have more difficulty learning the base-10 structure in numbers than a Mandarin speaker because of the difference in the number words used in these languages. Language can also affect memory, emotion, etc.

I'm guessing... (read more)

This correlates with my experience in the military. I had a job for a while that did not allow time for thoughtful analysis before each decision. In order to become competent, I had to do simulation after simulation after simulation, then live exercise after live exercise after live exercise...to the point where I could just react (hopefully competently).

Although I was well-trained in that role, it didn't automatically make me good at "Being Responsible For This Shit". Being Responsible (well, being good at Being Responsible) requires consid... (read more)