All of SoftFlare's Comments + Replies

Hey guys, notice this meetup was moved to Wednesday, April 30th because there is a Rump Session in Jerusalem on May 1st.

See you soon!

Directions to the location:

Givatayim, Weizman 18, corner of Gush Etzion, Floor 2, Apt 3. Entry from Gush Etzion st, on the building is a Histadrut Haovdim sign.

Weizman street is perpendicular to Katzanelson st, a 15 minute walk from the diamond exchange from Ramat Gan.

To people coming from Jerusalem: Take line 480 from the central bus station, from Arlozorov in Tel Aviv take the bus described further below. There are return buses till 3:00 am.

To people coming from within Tel Aviv by bus:

Take line 55 from the station near the park (next to the protest tents... (read more)

Note: We've changed location this time. If anyone needs directions on how to get there, contact me!

The schedule got messed up in formatting. Here is a fixed version:

20:00 - 20:15: Assembly

20:15 - 21:00: Main Talk

21:00 - 22:00: Dinner and Discussion

22:00 - 23:00: Rump session

I'll be there as a well.

We now have a location: Maze 9, Tel Aviv.

There is a nearby parking lot Balfour 6 (Big, close and somewhat expensive) Or if you'd rather not enter the center of town, there is a big, cheap parking lot at Harakevet 20 thats really easy to get to from out of town and is a 10 minute walk away.

1TheOtherDave
(please pardon the complete digression) So, I first parsed this as the English word "maze", which amused me enormously. I then applied context and reparsed it as the Hebrew phrase "mah zeh?" which amused me even more.

Sometimes playing "the offended party" in a social situation has its advantages - especially when dealing with less rational people. Some people find it easier to empathize with you if you show signs of being offended, when all you are is unhappy with a certain state of affairs. I believe this has a net positive effect in certain situations - but must be used with caution because if you are actually offended it might reinforce that behaviour in you.

I'm also not sure if hiding your emotions like that is OK. (as in, morally solid and a good long-te... (read more)

2Qiaochu_Yuan
Agreed. I worry that not getting offended because it doesn't seem epistemically useful may come at the expense of not using a social tool which is instrumentally useful for dealing with people. (Getting offended on the internet is probably still a terrible idea - there are good reasons why people's instincts about what they should be offended at could be miscalibrated for online communication - but I think IRL it can still be valuable.)
0TheOtherDave
As well as modelling it for others. How do you recognize that what you are is offended? I find that learning to recognize the physical and contextual correlates of an emotional reaction as they arise, before they start influencing my behavior, is often useful.

True. I was giving the ambiguity as an example of something people say to claim a policy won't work, without hashing out what that actually means in real execution. Almost every policy is somewhat ambiguous, yet there are many good policies.

SoftFlare100

Beware Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs.

I am for the policy, although heavy-heartedly. I feel that one of the pillars of Rationality is that there should be no Stop Signs and this policy might produce some. On the other hand, I think PR is important, and that we must be aware of evaporative cooling that might happen if it is not applied.

On a neutral note - We aren't enemies here. We all have very similar utility functions, with slightly different weights on certain terminal values (PR) - which is understandable as some of us have more or less to lose f... (read more)

0NancyLebovitz
Ambiguity is actually a problem. If people don't know what the policy means, then the person who makes the policy doesn't know what they forbidding or permitting.
5kodos96
I disagree that this is the entire source of the dispute. I think that even when constrained to optimizing only for good PR, this is an instrumentally ineffective method of achieving that. Censorship is worse for PR than the problem in question, especially given that that problem in question is thus far nonexistent This is trivially easy to do, since the positive effects of enacting the policy are zero, given that the one and only time this has ever been a problem, the problem resolved itself without censorship, via self-policing. Well... the showing him the model part is trivially easy anyway. Convincing him... apparently not so much.
0Tenoke
There are better ideas in this thread but apparently LW can't afford software changes.

I agree with what you say, and would like to point out that being partially replaceable is also a virtue.

It is said that a good manager is judged in his absence. Furthermore, really good ones don't seem to be doing much at all. My point that while being wholly replaceable is a virtue, as you described - but being partially replaceable is also a virtue, to any small degree of replaceableness.

While Anne could either obfuscate the DB to gain job security and create pains for her replacement, or clearly document it and put her job at risk - either are problema... (read more)

We might want to consider methods of raising standards for community members via barriers of entry employed elsewhere (Either for posting, getting at some or all the content, or even hearing about the site's existance):

  • An application process for entry (Workplaces (ie Valve), MUD sites)
  • Regulating influx using a member cap (Torrent sites, betas of web products)
  • An activity standard - You have to be atleast this active to maintain membership (Torrent sites, task groups in organizations sometimes)
  • A membership fee - Maybe in conjuction with an activity stan
... (read more)
8Eugine_Nier
On the other had, lurking for a while before posting is very much what we want new users to do.

I think that how "connected to reality" scientists are has to do with this trend.

In older times, being a scientist or an engineer meant being able to exert real, measurable, almost magical force upon your (and people around your's) surroundings. You made a bridge come to existence, you created a vaccine.

Nowadays, being a scientist or an engineer is associated with spending long days holed up in a room doing work which is incredibly complex and expensive, yet does not seem to create net benefit except in rare occasions. Furthermore, this isolation... (read more)

SoftFlare250

tl;dr - I went to the July minicamp, met interesting, ambitious people and am still applying things I learnt at camp months later to a subjectively great effect. Also, instructors and speakers were good, the food was good and I had lots of fun.

I went to a previous CFAR camp, and so can help give evidence regarding how helpful this might be from my personal experience. (I am not affiliated with CFAR).

I signed up for the July minicamp, not really knowing what to expect (and flying half-way around the world to get there). Having gone, I'm very happy that I di... (read more)