All of Spade's Comments + Replies

How much serendipity is too much?

Twice now, within the month-to-date, I've started seriously looking into an idea and, within a week or two, a directly related post finds its way to the HackerNews front page. As far as I know, HN doesn't have a personalization engine that could've tracked me across the internet to show these to me specifically.

I don't mean to imply anything crazy is going on here -- it's entirely possible that some decent subsection of the HN cohort was primed in some way, and I'm perfectly aware of the frequency bias (and more vulnerable ... (read more)

You offer a really interesting point. I don't think I feel as sharply bad about having to context switch as you do, but it very well could be that I still register a similar bad feeling, and simply react to it by doing nothing as opposed to being productive and then having to go through a context switch.

I hadn't really thought about it as a response to stimulus like that, but I guess that's because I have a more subtly bad feeling when switching contexts, so there wasn't as obvious of a thing to associate my behavior with.

Anecdotally, I remember seeing analyses of Stockfish v. Alpha Zero (I think) where AlphaZero would fairly consistently trade absurd amounts of materiel for position. While there is obviously still a tipping point at which a materiel advantage will massively swing the odds I feel that the thrust of this essay kind-of understates the value of a lot-a lot of intelligence in light of those matches.

With that said, I haven't seen any odds-games with AlphaZero, so perhaps my point is entirely moot and it does need that initial materiel as badly as Stockfish.

Ah. I had no idea that this was symptomatic of ADHD. I happen to have an appointment with a psychiatrist coming up for reasons unrelated, so I suppose it might be worth bringing up. Thank you for the insight, and sorry the post was so trite.

Something that I struggle badly with is valuing (and meaningfully using) small chunks of free time. I feel that I am more inclined to waste a forty-five minute block of free time between classes than I am to waste, say, the entire end of a day.

What I feel is that I cannot meaningfully engage with an activity if I suspect that I might be forced to stop before I'd like to, and I'm not sure that that is an entirely incorrect intuition. After all, there is certainly a loss incurred by context-switching, and perhaps leaving business unfinished in one task while... (read more)

Last night, I had a dream that scared me awake. I suspect that this was some sort of response to a low heart rate, because when I woke, I noticed that my lips were rather cold, and my heart was now beating rather quickly. I've often heard of dreams of falling being a way for the mind to correct for this kind of danger, but I've failed to find any evidence for that with some quick searches.

If true, though. this would be interesting because it would suggest that some part of my brain has a model of "things I put myself through that I would fear enough to cau... (read more)

I may, at some point, and for other reasons. Lets say, if I were to start drinking some rather foul-tasting protein or something -- it would be nice to potentially taste less of that. But, in general, deliberately and severely impairing my ability to taste the things I like for about two weeks, only to be able to taste in that way for a meal or two post-recovery is probably not the sort of tradeoff that I'd find myself making regularly.

Recently, I had a strange reaction to Sensodyne Whitening and Gum Sensitivity toothpaste. As luck would have it, I happen to fall into the subset of the population that lose much of their ability to taste certain flavors after using the toothpaste for a couple of days.

I happened to catch on pretty quickly and ended up switching toothpastes within the week, but it still resulted in about two weeks where I could not taste salt, and could hardly taste anything sour, sweet, or whatever makes buffalo sauce taste like buffalo sauce. It felt like I was coating my... (read more)

That's a very interesting outlook -- I haven't really considered action being a sum of motivations up until now. So, I guess my question then would be, what does encouraging/discouraging sources of intrinsic motivation look like for you?

This is a very interesting approach, and one that I haven't really considered. I fear that the temptation to start from scratch might be quite strong, but then I suppose that having very good documentation serves to blunt that problem in the first place.

I can certainly see the appeal of social pressure/the potential reward of better social standing for sticking a long-term goal through. I've employed this tactic on a few occasions, and, at least with my current circles, it doesn't seem to do much for me -- or, at least, whatever improvement it offers isn't enough for me to make it substantially farther.

I feel that I am expected to bail by default -- I've done so many times -- and that I'm not going to be changing worlds if I come through. With that said, I don't think I've been as deliberate as I could ha... (read more)

That certainly could be the case, but my reason for asking after manipulation of passion specifically is that commitment sans passion would likely breed disdain in long-term scenarios. But, I could be wrong, and it would certainly at least be worth trying something like Beeminder, I suppose. It just seems that, in this situation, want of a deep desire to finish isn't great.

I think these are pretty good, if not somewhat intrusive strategies to mitigate the problems that concern me. Kudos!

> I feel that one of the best uses of a probability-weighted knowledgebase is to gather information on things that suffer from a miasma of controversy and special interests.

I think you meant "don't suffer".

It wasn't a typo; disregarding manipulation, weighted contributions in murky circumstances might produce behavior similar to that of a prediction market, which would be better behavior than a system like Wikipedia exhibits under similar ... (read more)

This is an interesting idea, but I worry about the database's resilience in the face of adversarial action.

While using a more personally identifiable account, like a PayPal account, as a means of admittance is a step in the right direction, I'd imagine that it would still be relatively easy to create sockpuppets which could then amass credibility in banal topics and spend it to manipulate more contested ones.

If the database were to grow to the size and prevalence of Wikipedia, for example, then one might see manipulation for political gain during elections... (read more)

In a public system, perhaps a means by which one could choose to allocate some of the tax dollars they pay towards such a project?

It would mean a loss of funds elsewhere, if we are to avoid rasing taxes/spending less money, but might achieve some of what a kickstarter-like process might offer.