Incidentally, I find Leonard Susskind is brilliant at all of these things. So, for a good example, his lectures on physics are well worth watching. Heck, they're worth watching even if you don't care about explaining things to people.
I'm not sure about this "selection space" of universes, but if we're talking about all possible mathematical constructs (weighted, perhaps, according to Solomonoff's universal prior), it bears noting that even some one-dimensional, two-colour cellular automata - extremely simple systems as far as that goes - have been proven to be Turing complete. Doesn't mean they'll necessarily produce life, as a lot depends on initial conditions, but we know at least that they can, in principle, produce life. Given what else I've seen of mathematics, it seems the space of mathematically possible universes is positively teeming with critters.
AndrewHickey's comment notwithstanding, it wouldn't surprise me if he did say that, and if he meant it very literally, like in the batshit crazy sense. Famous mathematicians have a long and celebrated history of going off the deep end. Cf. Georg Cantor, Kurt Gödel, Alexander Grothendieck.
Well, of course. But assuming B is a rational agent, and assuming the expected damages awarded in court per trespass are additive, she's going to wait until A has finished building his house, then take him to court for all counts of trespassing, rather than fight each one individually, since that'll save her a great deal on time and legal fees.
It seems to me that the easement will cost, at most, the amount of money that B could get from A in court for illegally crossing B's land. Given the additional expenditure of time and legal fees, not to mention the uncertainty of the legal outcome, it will probably be somewhat less than that.
This clever point shouldn't distract from the intended sense of the post.
This may vary from person to person, but I found I didn't need a rigourous schedule to make enough progress to determine that meditation was beneficial for my mental well-being. Doing about half an hour once every few days (when I remembered to) was enough, within a few months, to grant me relaxation and greater clarity of mind. Those aren't really the point, but it's reason enough to push forward and see what else there is to see.
Sorry, I have a bit of a skewed perspective about what's obvious. :P Once I perceived the connection to binary trees it seemed plain as day.
A proof in ROT13:
Gb rnpu cbffvoyr rapbqvat bs n pbhagnoyr frg ol svavgr ovg fgevatf gurer pbeerfcbaqf n ovanel gerr: ng gur ebbg abqr lbh tb yrsg (fnl) vs gur svefg ovg vf n mreb naq evtug vs vg'f n bar, gura ng gur arkg abqr lbh tb yrsg be evtug vs gur frpbaq ovg vf n mreb be bar, naq fb sbegu. Gur npghny vagrtref pbeerfcbaq gb grezvany abqrf, ernpurq ol n svavgr ahzore bs oenapuvatf. Znysbezrq ovg fgevatf, gbb, pbeerfcbaq gb grezvany abqrf, ng gur rneyvrfg cbvag gung jr pna gryy gurl'er znysbezrq. Ubjrire, fvapr gurer ner vasvavgryl znal vagrtref, naq...
I'm inclined to disagree. Deep abstraction gives us powerful tools for solving less abstract problems, including those that come out of the empirical sciences. Even fields developed with a deliberate eye to avoiding practical applications have sometimes turned out to make significant contributions to the sciences (I understand knot theory, for example, began this way, but has since turned out to have important applications in biochemistry).
However, it is worth emphasising that you have provided little evidence with your writing that the actual ideas coming from peak experiences are worth much. You have provided a great deal of indication that the motivational aspect of these ideas is useful, though.
You may be right. I will have to think about this. A lot of the imperative ideas ("Go do this!") that I've had while manic have had decidedly positive results - notably my bike trip to Georgia and the decision to devote a lot more of my time and mental energy to mathematics, foundin...
I would wonder if something like that actually happened - it might have been an unfamiliar trick of the light or electrical malfunction...
It's entirely possible. I recall I stayed at that intersection for a few minutes, watching the light and trying to figure out how such a thing might have happened, before concluding I had hallucinated it - but I can't make any guarantees that I was very thorough, given my mental state at the time. I don't think an electrical malfunction would have produced what I saw, but a trick of the light is plausible.
For reference: this video was evidently made on Xtranormal. Xtranormal is a site which takes a simple text file containing dialogue, etc. and outputs a movie; the voices are synthesized because that's how the site works. Voice actors would be nice, of course, but that's a rather more involved process.
Seconded and thirded. These books had a very deep and lasting impact on my development and worldview. Fair warning to those unfamiliar with his writings: they're chock-full of memetic hazards, but that's kind of the point. Wilson argues that we stand to benefit a great deal from being able to occupy unusual or even "false" belief systems (I use scare quotes because I think he would be reluctant to use that word), provided we can learn to consciously choose these systems and not get attached to them.
These are great. Do you mind if I incorporate them into the relevant post when the time comes?
This is a fair point, but I'm referring to information in the information theoretic sense; in this technical sense, mathematical truths are indeed not information.
There are proofs that rely on the GCH or Large Cardinal Axioms or V=L which are not among the accepted axioms and proven to be independent of the other axioms.
I'm aware that the Axiom of Choice is required for some important results of practical import (Tychonoff's theorem, for example, is equivalent to it), but do you know of any important and useful results following from the GCH, etc.? I've only looked into this a little; foundational math is not really my field.
I'm male. I gather certain psychotic-spectrum disorders are more common in men than in women, so this doesn't strike me as entirely irrelevant.
That's a critique of LSD, not mystical experiences in general, as a creativity enhancer, and even then, I think the author is leaving out a fair bit of evidence to the contrary. Though he never officially confirmed this, Francis Crick is believed to have been on LSD when he discovered the helical structure of DNA. Less controversially, many of the programmers in the early days of Silicon Valley are known to have done a fair bit of coding on acid; Steve Jobs himself is known to have taken a fair bit of it in his day. Here's another article claiming that ...
Eeeesh. You're right. In my defense, I think I checked the properties while I was still half-asleep, and I must have fudged the triangle inequality. I fiddled with it a bit, but couldn't find any obvious way to make it work. Thanks for your correction.
Happens to the best of us. However, it is worth emphasising that you have provided little evidence with your writing that the actual ideas coming from peak experiences are worth much. You have provided a great deal of indication that the motivational aspect of these ideas is useful, though.
The nonexistence thing was an error of judgment. In retrospect, it originated in an unconscious assumption I was making that there must be some ground to reality, a kind of "bottom level" of which everything else is epiphenomenal. A materialist might look to quantum fields to fill that role, but when I rejected all my former beliefs, that included my belief in an external reality independent of perception. So all I was left with was thought and sensory experience, and as they were interdependently defined, rather than any one aspect taking ont...
Thanks, that was an awesome read!
I'll attempt a translation. If I'm engaging with the world, then I notice new things about it, or I see things in new ways. For example: once, looking at the sky, I noticed that it was brightest near the horizon and darkest at the zenith. Suddenly I realized the reason: there was more air between me and the horizon than there was between me and the space directly above me. The scene snapped into focus, and I found I could distinctly see the atmosphere as a three-dimensional mass. If I turn my attention inward, on the o...
These are some interesting points. I meant "arational" in the sense that our actions are arational - rationally motivated, perhaps, but it would be incorrect to say that the action itself is either rational or irrational, hence it's arational. What intrigues me is the fact that these arational phenomena are deeply embedded in the way our minds are structured, and therefore can perhaps inform and augment the process of rationality. Indeed, some of them may be extremal states of the same systems that allow us to be rational in the first place.
I'd definitely like to see this post on Buddhism; you seem to have an excellent grasp on it.
I have two different answers to your question: one practical, one more theoretical. On a practical level, what I gain from peak experiences depends on where my attention is. If I'm out and about, or doing something materially, then the main advantage I gain is noticing new aspects of a situation, or seeing the same aspects in a different light; I believe this is a result of greater flexibility in choosing the cognitive map I apply to the territory. These, I suppose, would be the "unknown dots": information that was present in the environment, ...
Thanks for the suggestion; I'll definitely keep that in mind as I'm writing.
I don't really care how it renders, I mainly just want to be able to type LaTeX code directly into comments and posts.
Add LaTeX support (I mean inline LaTeX, not this thing).
EDIT: Based on comments below, I think I misused the word "inline". What I meant was simply the ability to type LaTeX directly into comments and posts. How it gets rendered doesn't matter much to me; some legitimate objections have been raised, but I don't feel like hard math gets used enough on the site that this would get out of hand. Restricting its use to posts rather than comments might be a good compromise.
Yeah, I could write about this. Look for it tomorrow (Wednesday) or Thursday evening.
Not that I disagree with you in general, but I can think of a few cases in which you may actually want to cultivate blankness toward a given subject. In particular, deep and difficult questions have been known to occasionally drive people mad - it's an occupational hazard for mathematicians in particular, and perhaps also for people in other fields. One might reasonably object that correlation does not imply causation in this case, but I have had a couple of experiences in which intense study of math and physics led me to some pretty dark psychological p...
I have had a couple of experiences in which intense study of math and physics led me to some pretty dark psychological places
Why do I feel the irrational urge to beg you to do a post on this? What could possibly go wrong? :-)
I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure if the analogy applies, since it depends a great deal on the selection process. When I learn that Julius Caesar lived from 100-44BCE, or that Stephen Harper lives in the present day, that certainly doesn't increase my estimated probability of humans dying out within the next hundred years; and if I lack information about humans yet to be born, that's not surprising in the slightest, whether or not we go extinct soon.
Really it's the selection process that's the issue here; I don't know how to make sense of the question "Which human should I consider myself most likely to be?" I've just never been able to nail down precisely what bothers me about the question.
I've been meaning to post about the Doomsday Argument for awhile. I have a strong sense that it's wrong, but I've had a hell of a time trying to put my finger on how it fails. The best that I can come up with is as follows: Aumann's agreement theorem says that two rational agents cannot disagree, in the long run. In particular, two rational agents presented with the same evidence should update their probability distribution in the same direction. Suppose I learn that I am the 50th human, and I am led to conclude that it is far more likely that only 100...
I see what you're saying, certainly. But we're talking about someone who is already having a lot of sleep problems, and has exhausted all the other options they could find. They may find they're better able to keep up a consistent polyphasic regime than a more standard sleep pattern, and if their sleep problems are already bad enough, it may be worth the drawbacks to give it a shot.
There's a rather uncommon theological position - espoused by Paolo Soleri (and perhaps by others) - that God, the rapture, etc. are better regarded as a potential future, as something we have a responsibility to create, than as something pre-existing; in this view, religious texts can be viewed as imperfect but still visionary accounts of what such a thing might look like. The Singularity hypothesis seems to fit better in this model of religion than in more mainstream models. Soleri's theology seems far less pathological than religions tend to be, since it calls for both concrete action and accurate models of reality, so maybe this isn't such a bad thing.
Not really an answer to your specific question, but have you tried, or considered trying, something radically different, like a polyphasic sleep cycle (e.g. a 20-minute nap every four hours and nothing else)?
Furthermore judging either of these two as engaging in sexual assault is not a neutral or innocent act. It is invasive and damaging to your victims. As well as slandering their reputation the act of giving that label implies the need for and potentially causes a direct punishment and restriction of freedom.
Well I'm no fan of the criminal justice system either, but I'm trying to keep this on the topic of sexuality; if my anarchist leanings come into the conversation we'll be here all week. :p
But anyway, please see my comment here. A person can nonverbal...
A century of feminism is enough to convince me that, at the very least, a large minority of women are seriously, deeply upset at the lot they're traditionally given. In more recent years, some men have started to come forward and say they're not too happy about their own default either. If it were only a tiny handful of people who felt this way - say one in a hundred million - then it wouldn't make sense to adopt the more progressive approach by default, although we would still have a responsibility, if we chanced to meet one of these people and if they ...
Everything I said about consent applies just as much to women as to men. If he's actually uninterested, tearing his clothes off or grabbing his crotch isn't a signal, it's sexual assault.
Okay, so it's not a fundamental necessity, but it's not a noble lie either; it's a matter of ethics. The consequences of misunderstanding, probabilistically weighted, are still serious enough that it's ethically better to maintain a habit of making a bit of sexy talk before hopping in bed with any new partner.
For the record, I have indeed misinterpreted what I thought were totally unambiguous "go" signals. Fortunately things did not progress far, but it was a big wake-up call for me.
Gender roles of any sort are fine if consciously negotiated by consenting adults. When presented as the default, however, or as biological facts, with no chance for negotiation, they become oppressive. Kay's suggestions would be fine as suggestions for husband and wife to discuss and decide on together, but as presented they dangerously mislead their audience.
My vote was for disabling, but I think this should also change your username to something suitably anonymous (like "Account deleted").
How about username-change as an option without also necessary disabling? Possibly with restrictions against abuse.
Agreed, it should be possible to fully withdraw from the site without breaking all conversations one was involved in. People shouldn't have to choose between leaving their username visible in some places and deleting all their comments.
2 - By now, if you've done as instructed, you should have a pretty interesting life. Nonetheless, I think it's worth exploring this in more detail. If there's one thing pick-up artists get right, it's the value of confidence; but it's important to remember that this doesn't mean dominance, aggressiveness, or surliness. Confidence means being comfortable in your own skin, remaining centred in a conversation, listening with calm interest but also having something interesting to say about yourself and about your projects, your passions, the adventures you'...
Trouble is, most of what you write is extended far beyond what's written in the original list, or it's equally vague and thus of no practical use.
Take for example your advice to "start flirting." (Which, by the way, it would be quite a stretch to see as an interpretation of the original point five, except insofar as it's vague and allegoric enough to mean anything you want to see in it.) For a man who is socially inept, or even just clueless about women, flirting is like differential equations for someone who is stumped by basic algebra -- and u...
Yeah, I see what you mean, and you may be right (depending how you relate to your friends). Even then, though, there are aspects of friendly interactions that don't carry over to more general flirtation. I'm talking about a mode of conversation you can use with friends and acquaintances and even total strangers. That requires that it stays light and friendly and brief.
Well, fair enough. He also didn't shoot anyone in the face, so...
4 - A lot of pick-up artistry seems to be focused on the bar/club scene. This might be a reasonable place to find a one-night stand, if you know the unspoken etiquette (I don't, so I can't comment); if this is what you're after, then best of luck to you. But clubs and bars are really terrible places to find anything longer-term: they're loud, they're crowded, everyone's drunk, and women in particular tend to have their guard up, as they're used to incessant unwanted advances. Also, under the assumption that most of the people here will want to find inte...
"Ordinary" social interaction encompasses a wide range of different kinds of exchanges, most of which are not flirting (although some especially outgoing people appear to flirt all the time). Think of how many people you interact with on a daily basis in a perfunctory, business-as-usual fashion, putting out just the bare minimum of communication necessary to buy coffee, ask for directions, etc. Also think of situations in which flirtation would probably be quite inappropriate: in deep, intellectual conversations, when requesting a loan, during a job interview, and so on.
Also think of conversations that happen on this site. Pretty dour, a lot of them. About as flirtatious as margarine on Melba toast.
Okay. Challenge accepted.
6 - If you're hitting up PUA sites, it's probably because you've gone a long time without romantic involvement, and you're getting desperate. This is perfectly understandable: sex drive is deeply seated and can become overwhelming if it's not fulfilled. Unfortunately, at a certain point, people start to reify sex: it ceases to be about attraction to any one individual, but simply about "getting" sex from anyone who's just appealing enough.
Unfortunately, people are very perceptive, and if you're desperate, they'll notic...
I'm not previously familiar with him, no, but I did follow the link you posted to his site. The entire front page was about how women can doll themselves up to be more attractive to their hubbies. I was not impressed. Hoping to give him the benefit of the doubt, I followed the links to some of the "most important posts" on the site, and found more misogynistic bullshit: relationships boiled down, essentially, to how much she's putting out, whining about Nice Guy™ Syndrome, and perpetuation of pathological gender roles. So, zero points for eth...
Evidently you're not familiar with the dynamic of abusive relationships.
I'm not referring to group selection. If you're living in a close community, then once you've had your chance to conceive, there's not a lot of benefit in fighting off other suitors, since you'll be helping raise the child anyway; conversely, rivalry against other males is risky and socially divisive - which, since your band is probably rather small, can have serious consequences for you as an individual. This is not to say that all men will simply flee the scene once they've consummated their desire: for starters, we're a hell of a long way from evoluti...
There probably aren't genetic correlates per se (they'd get bred out of the population pretty quickly if so); but as I understand, there are fairly solid links between incidence of homosexuality and the hormonal environment in the womb during certain critical periods of pregnancy. That being said, sexuality is fluid to some extent, but not by a lot, and it doesn't seem to be under conscious control.
The situation makes a lot more sense when you realize that "heterosexual", "homosexual", "bisexual", etc., aren't atomic properti...
Er, good point; thanks for the reminder.
Not quite. One of my problems with objectification is that it implies certain attitudes which -- among other things -- create a favourable environment for rapists. That being said, I wrote the above comment at a time when rape was particularly salient to me, and may have overstated its relevance to this issue; I would now argue, more generally, that objectification openly expressed within a social group signals to women (almost by definition!) that they are regarded as objects and will not receive the status of full personhood within that group. Because... (read more)