All of Thecommexokid's Comments + Replies

There are n applicants for the position, and the value of n is known.

If you're trying to make a dating analogy, I'm gonna have to stop you right there...

0Elo
I believe that n can be fairly approximated for the purpose of trying to use the equation.

Apparently you are putting

2. Predict how you'll feel in an upcoming situation. Affective forecasting – our ability to predict how we'll feel – has some well known flaws.
Examples: "How much will I enjoy this party?" "Will I feel better if I leave the house?" "If I don't get this job, will I still feel bad about it two weeks later?"

into your "Easily answerable questions" subset. Personally, I struggle to obtain a level of introspection sufficient to answer questions like these even after the fact.

Does anyone have a... (read more)

0efim
Hi! 1) If I understood Julia correctly "easily answerable questions" correspond not to areas where you are good at predicting, but to areas where answer space is known to you: "Can I toss the ball through the hoop?" - Yes\No vs. "What is the best present for a teenage girl?" ??\??\money??\puppy?? 2) If you have difficulties with associating common groups with your feelings or even percieve feelings that is really confusing and it would be good not to jump to the conclusions, but to add to other commenters: you could probably start by asking outside observer (i.e body language "comfort\defensiveness" "happy\sad")
1afeller08
I find that playing the piano is a particularly useful technique for gauging my emotions, when they are suppressed/muted. This works better when I'm just making stuff up by ear than it does when I'm playing something I know or reading music. (And learning to make stuff up is a lot easier than learning to read music if you don't already play.) Playing the piano does not help me feel the emotions any more strongly, but it does let me hear them -- I can tell that music is sad, happy, or angry regardless of its impact on my affect. Most people can. Something that I don't do that I think would work (based partially on what Ariely says in The Upside of Irrationality, partially on what Norman says in Emotional Design, and partially on anecdotal experience) is to do something challenging/frustrating and see how long it takes for you to give up or get angry. If you can do it for a while without getting frustrated, you're probably in a positive state of mind. If you give up feeling like it's futile, you're sad, and if you start feeling an impulse to break something, you're frustrated/angry. The shorter it takes you to give up or angry the stronger that emotion is. The huge downside to this approach is that it results in exacerbating negative emotions (temporarily) in order to gauge what you were feeling and how strongly.
5ChristianKl
Focusing. Learn to locate feelings in your body and learn to put labels on emotions. Having QS rituals where you put down an estamation of your internal state every day. I for example write down my dominating mood for the last 24 hours and a few numbers. As a weekly ritual it's also possible to fill out longer questionaires such as http://www.connections-therapy-center.com/upload/burns_anxiety_inventory.pdf . It's like a muscle. If you train to assess your internal state you get better.
0TheOtherDave
Hm. Are there any contexts in which you do have reliable insight into your own mood?

I think an optimal system if resources are no issue

What resources would be required for this?

an app

On what platform? As I commented on another reply, many of our student attendees come from poor districts so I don't want to assume every student has a smartphone.

0ChristianKl
The cheapest android phone I can find seems to be sold for 32.17$ (Rs. 1,999) in India (http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/jivi-launches-cheapest-android-based-smartphone-in-india-at-rs-1999-594264). Likely Android and IOS.

Where the lecture is given, setup a free wifi from which students must log in with their unique id at the beginning and at the end of the lecture.

Log in on what? Many of our student attendees come from poor districts so I would hesitate to choose a solution that, for instance, assumes every student has a smartphone.

0MrMind
You could still provide a couple of laptops so they could login if they don't have a smartphone.
  • There's an obvious exploit if the cards are identical every month. This is the reason you suggested different colors.
  • Requires a sufficient surplus of cards that we don't run out if attendance one month is much higher than average.
    • Not a problem by itself, but combined with the necessity of making them different every month, this leads to a lot of waste, since last month's leftovers can't be reused.

After thinking about this problem a while, I thought of the following idea. Instead of making the cards unique every month, simply number the cards conse... (read more)

Hand out index cards (a different color each month) at the entrance. Each student who wants credit puts his or her name, school, and teacher's name on the card, then at the end of the lecture puts it in a box at the exit. (If there are several exits, have several boxes. If you're worried about box tampering, station a host at each exit if you have enough hosts. And yes, you have to bin the cards by school and teacher afterward.)

This is, indeed, essentially the solution I had considered myself. I feel as though I still like it the best even after giving ... (read more)

1Thecommexokid
After thinking about this problem a while, I thought of the following idea. Instead of making the cards unique every month, simply number the cards consecutively. When handing them out each month, take note of the number of the first card handed out and the last. Then if there are any suspicions of fraud, we can check quite simply that there are no duplicate or errant numbers on the cards we got back. Possible solution: Hand out the cards as the students enter the building, rather than as they enter the lecture hall. (Easy in this case because the lectures are on a weekend and the building doors are locked except the one we open.)

I have an exercise in "thinking about the problem for 5 minutes before proposing solutions" for everyone.

I am a member of a small group of physics graduate students in charge of a monthly series of public science lectures. The lectures are aimed at local high school students, and we have many high school teachers who encourage their students to attend by offering extra credit. The audience of each talk (typically around 100) is composed almost wholly of students who have come solely because they want a few extra points in chemistry or whatever.

In... (read more)

3ChristianKl
I think an optimal system is resources are no issue is to have an app that allows the teacher to ask every student in attendance questions. It creates makes the teaching process more interactive and it also requires attendance.
1MrMind
I've thought of this solution, it requires coding and a somewhat elaborate technical setup, but also eliminates lots of waste, both in time and paper. Have a webform / app where student can sign in with their name, school and teacher. Upon signing, the system gives the student a unique id. Where the lecture is given, setup a free wifi from which students must log in with their unique id at the beginning and at the end of the lecture. Attendance can then be checked in this way: students that attended are only those whose unique id is present at the beginning and at the end of the lecture, according to time stamps and wi-fi origin. Students can still comunicate each other their unique id and forge their attendance, but you can setup incentives against cooperation: indeed, make credits transferable, so that if one student knows more than one id, s/he can rob other students and give the credits to him/her.
3fubarobfusco
Some thoughts — High schools have logos, mascots, school colors, and the like. Putting the school's logo on the sign-in sheet for that school might help students avoid signing the wrong one. Students could use some other means to authenticate their attendance to their teacher — such as taking a selfie at the lecture (with the date on a piece of paper) and sending it to their teacher. Doesn't work for all students, though — not everyone can afford a phone. Take a big group picture of the students in attendance and mail the picture to the teachers; let the teachers work it out. "Everyone who wants credit, stand up by the whiteboard with your classmates." The late arrivals problem could be fixed by having the sign-in before the lecture. "If you would like to receive extra credit, you must show up 10 minutes early. If you don't, you will not get extra credit." Hand out index cards (a different color each month) at the entrance. Each student who wants credit puts his or her name, school, and teacher's name on the card, then at the end of the lecture puts it in a box at the exit. (If there are several exits, have several boxes. If you're worried about box tampering, station a host at each exit if you have enough hosts. And yes, you have to bin the cards by school and teacher afterward.) If the students have class the next day, stamp their hands with a hand-stamp with long-lasting ink. Then they just show up to class the next day and show the teacher they got the stamp. Enlist one trustworthy student from each class to report their classmates' attendance.

My professor's favorite advice for giving presentations:

Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em.

Re: your question on Facebook about relative upvotes between this and your "Deferring" post.

The thesis of this post is the last paragraph. I had to read this whole long-ish before finding out what your point was. It wasn't a bad point, but if you're going to keep me interested in hearing about you driving around doing errands and noticing roofs, then I should know in advance what the intended lesson of the post is. I would have found the post much improved if some version the "Really About" section had come first, rather than (or, better yet, in addition to) last.

In the "Deferring" post, the thesis of your post was the first sentence.

1therufs
I'm not party to the FB post in question, but: Defer had obvious and extremely useful applications and little to no lag time to try them, whereas training habits is inherently non-instantaneous. Defer used social anxiety as an example (which I think many readers have experienced to one degree or another), whereas Notice is about ... red barn roofs? Defer had a super-catchy title, and may have gotten more clicks in the first place. As an aside, part of me hopes that Notice and Defer constitute some kind of A/B testing, and that Brienne is figuring out how to make Really Awesome Posts, and is going to do so :D
4Thecommexokid
My professor's favorite advice for giving presentations: Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em.

At first, I didn't seem to exercise this skill on days where I wasn't doing cognitively demanding work, or when most of my work was not in an academic context (typically weekends). Over time, I began doing so more, although still less than on demanding academic days.

I know quite a bit of time has passed since you posted this, but do you recall any specific instances of non-cognitively-demanding weekend-type confusions you could share?

1whales
I wrote down a handful as I was doing this, but not all of them. There were a couple about navigation (where rather than say "well, I don't know where I am, I'll just trust the group" I figured out how I was confused about different positions of landmarks). I avoided overbaking my cookies when the recipe had the wrong time written down. Analytics for a site I run pointed to a recent change causing problems for some people, and I saw the (slight) pattern right away but ignored it until it got caught on my confusion hook. It's also a nice hook for asking questions in casual conversations. People are happy to explain why they like author X but not the superficially similar author Y I've heard them complain about before, for example.

While there have been many attempts at a set of such pronouns and none ever became standard, this is the set I see by far most commonly. Several non-gender-binary-identifying people I know use ze/zir/zirs as their preferred pronouns. They definitely crop up in many more places than just here and SlateStarCodex, as someone else replied, but it tends to be mostly in communities that have a particular focus on gender identity.

Yes, Brienne herself posted it to Facebook (commenting "This post does not have nearly as many upvotes as it deserves") and Eliezer liked her post.

Alas, I fear that the very presence of such a notepad would eliminate whatever feature it is of showers that make them such frequent idea-generators.

7alicey
You'd think so, but it's quite the opposite for me!

No, I was originally certain that I was recalling something from this sequence, but I ultimately reread the whole sequence and didn't find it...that's what led to me posting here.

Seeing as how the thing I was actually thinking of turned out to be from Cracked, let's just go ahead and say that this is what I was really going for, okay? But seriously, thanks for this link; it's a great source.

I think you must be right: as Alejandro1 points out, the #1 item on the list is pretty much exactly what I described, even down to the healthcare headline example. I generally don't go on Cracked, since I find it maybe a quarter as bad as TVTropes in the sucks-you-in-forever department, but something I read must have linked to it. Thanks for finding it!

Thank you, I've been reading LW content for a while now, but I'm new to the discussion boards.

This is the solution to procrastination I finally settled on during my senior year of college, when I was deepest in its throes. My biggest hurdle was that I no longer cared about the work, and rather than try to fight the apathy, I embraced it. I said to myself, the reason I don't want to work on this lab report is because it's a stupid assignment and I don't care about it, so what sense does it make trying to force myself to work on it for hours and hours? Instead, I think it's worth, at most, 4 hours of my time, and it's due at 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon... (read more)