All of tim's Comments + Replies

I know it will take me 10 minutes to get gas, 30 minutes to go to the grocery store and some as-of-yet unknown amount of time to deploy a new build of a website to the production server (things might go smoothly, or I might be spending several hours trying to track down some configuration error).

If I can survive until tomorrow without filling my car with gas and getting food at the store, it doesn't make any sense to do those "fixed tasks" first and then risk not having enough time to complete the "flexible" (yet more immediately import... (read more)

0Elo
yes; this is of crucial importance and even though it might be obvious to you; it is often not obvious to other people. As well - often tasks have vague importance. Where it might be hard to say which one is more important. In cases where the super important website deployment and some less important tasks are on the list, definitely it's easy to see the super-important thing taking precedent. but in cases where you need to choose between groceries, going for a walk, and checking facebook - it might be harder to decide. In that case - consider the task that can most easily be cut off. for example; it's can be harder to cut "a walk" in half because you might be halfway home. But it could be easier to cut groceries in half by only buying some of the groceries and rushing around the store.

Good lord. I haven't been on LW in quite a while, but I wholeheartedly agree.

The collection of articles currently on the front page are painfully useless to someone looking to discuss "the art of human rationality" rather than be inundated with content blatantly serving the interests of a particular company/organization.

This content will (for the most part) appeal to people already in the fold. But what, in any way would a newcomer to the site gain from articles titled:

  • [ACRONYMYOUHAVENEVERHEARDOF] Is Hiring!
  • Why Is Our Company Great? Click Here
... (read more)

Yeah, I was fortunate enough to enter a percent sign after my estimate which resulted in an explicit warning, but an open-ended text box is not a great way to structure this poll.

shrug

I am interested in your idea but based on your description, I am legitimately uncertain as to how it is measurably different from what Google already does.

I am certainly not saying that Google is and always will be the best.

0Thomas
Currently Google does not give you all the available pictures of an object, from a photo you have. This "horizontal" knowledge isn't present in Google's databases. Additionally, page ranking, whichever it is currently, does not permit you to sort the answers by yourself. You may want that. Or implement a function like "the shortest". And many more complex functions. Sites are just one type of object. You can't Google for most other objects. There are some cameras in Africa, showing you water ponds. I want to know, if there is a waterhole, where a lion came into the picture less than 100 seconds ago. Or a warthog. Or both. And so on. Above mentioned GLT would give you such answers, Google doesn't.

That conveys a much different impression than

What I want is to input any blob of data and output should be all possible relations this blob of data has with any other blob of data. ... If I input a picture, all pictures of the same object(s) is the natural answer this GLT should return.

And how is this functionality

Millions of filters would be inside GLT, already. Yours may be added. It is a main advantage over Google.

any different from Google in the first place? Are you implying they aren't already mining information regarding each user's search-revision and link-clicking habits to improve their filters as whole?

2Thomas
Google is enough and will be enough? They already doing this and that and everything? Had Brin and Page thought like that, we would be on AltaVista. But there would be no AltaVista as well. Not even an iron ax. Some people have no imagination, whatsoever. Most of them. Including very many on this site. This is a crazy idea thread, remember? Someone may pick one of those ideas and put it into life. That's all that it is. I will not go into technical details, for sure.

I dunno. I don't think I would use what you're describing over Google. Filtering the associations with little to no work from the end user is huge. If I type "register s" into google, it instantly understands that I want to know about registering scripts in asp.net due to my previous search history, the types of sites I visit, etc.

I think you are underestimating what a tremendous pain in the ass it will be to manually filter through the massive number of associations with a particular string.

In incognito mode "register script" gives lin... (read more)

0Thomas
The thing is, that every search you make, is going to be appended to the GLT. I said so, that each Google query can be just added to the table. But not only your Google query, if you choose so - but every GLT query as well. But even without this option, your "register s" example would work better on GLT then on Google. With this option on, so much easier. Millions of filters would be inside GLT, already. Yours may be added. It is a main advantage over Google. Quite obvious to me.

I am not a deontologist, but it's clear you're painting the entire school of thought with a fairly broad brush.

However, deontologists would say that you don’t have the right to make that decision.

It is hard to argue against this conclusion, assuming that there is a strong moral obligation for Aaron not to flick the switch, along the lines of “Do not kill”.

I can’t see any pathway to find a logical contradiction, but I can’t imagine that many people would defend this state of affairs.

It is hoped that this post won’t be oversimplified into a, “this is why y

... (read more)
0casebash
Deontology is a very broad philosophical position and so it is hard to avoid broad brush strokes whilst also trying to keep an article to a reasonable length. If there is a need, then I will write a follow up article that dives into how this problem relates to more specific deontological positions based upon feedback. "And finally, almost every paragraph ends with a statement along the lines of: it seems..." - the purpose of this article was to demonstrate that someone who has accepted deontology will most likely find themselves accepting some kind of strange philosophical commitments. I wanted to acknowledge the fact that there were many points at which a deontologist might object to my chain of thought and to not overrepresent how strong the chains of logic were.

Every game has rules and every rule can be gamed. What makes you think that sociopaths are rendered less threatening when living in a capitalist society? If anything, it seems like capitalism would be a highly advantageous environment for a sociopath compared to a society where all important economic entities are mired in government oversight.

In a society where government controls everything important, all ambitious sociopaths will aim for government functions.

I guess...

But I would never think to navigate to the FAQ of a site and scroll through several hundred lines of completely unrelated text to find an instance of the link which allows me to then view a comprehensive collection of new content from said site.

2Elo
Thank you! Shows that I am not the only village idiot here! Who do I contact to go about fixing this thing?
2ike
The FAQ links to that page. So presumably it's not terribly unsupported.

This doesn't seem particularly odd to me. If someone moved the ignition of your car up by 20mm, I bet you'd slam your key into the surrounding plastic at least a couple times.

Is this a link that is supposed to be readily accessible? A quick search through the source of this page doesn't turn up any hits for "all/new" outside your post here and it's corresponding entry in the recent comments section.

Maybe this obvious to regular users of reddit, but I had no idea you could filter lists of posts with the /r/ syntax.

2ike
See http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/FAQ

This feeds directly into what the OP has just broken free from: a cycle of continuously re-convincing himself that this relationship might not be what it appears on the surface and that he still has a responsibility to the other party.

One-sided advice is exactly what the brain needs to stop it from falling back to the endless well of excuses and rationalizations.

-1Gunnar_Zarncke
Maybe. But if you don't know more than I do from what what posted here your can't say with the strength you did in your post (though agree that by now some more details have become apparent). I have been in a probably much less but still abusive relationship and if your are smart, reflective and it's not too abusive (though I guess that the level of abuse changes over time) you can break up without loosing everything of the relationship. After all both sides have a part in it and by denying worth one looses or misrepresents also ones own part in it. My view of her and us has changed by our breakup but I salvaged positive emotion for her, esp. the things we did right and what was good about her - without feeling compelled to help her overly. A point he is over too apparently now (yes, it does take time). Could you back that up with non-anecdotal evidence please.

Setting aside emotion and simply doing the math is certainly worthy of praise in of itself. But I feel this anecdote would be better served after you have gone through with the purchase, lived in the house for a period of time and been able to say unequivocally: "I am really happy that we live in this house."

The pending uncertainty over the actual outcome casts a pretty big shadow over "yay we did rationality!"

1Gleb_Tsipursky
I prefer to avoid outcome bias, and focus on optimizing good decision-making processes :-)

While I don't agree with the way they phrased their explanation, it's akin to saying "I'm not sure if 2 + 2 = 4 is true, but I am sure it can't equal anything else." Then falling back to "but there could be oddities in the foundation of mathematics that I'm not aware of" when pressed on the inconsistency.

If you claim that your understanding of logic isn't exhaustive, I don't see how you can also claim that X is logically impossible. ("I'm not a car expert but there is no possible way the problem is with the engine")

0[anonymous]
Thanks for that analogy, that gives me a new way to think about it. I believe I can agree with the 2 + 2 = 4 theorem because I already agree with agreement in the summation of the components represented. To illustrate: If I put up 2 figures, then another 2 fingers, I can reliable get consensus from a survey of people and my own intuition/memory that it represents 4 fingers, and correspondingly the number 4. Meanwhile, I don't have any kind of clear idea of what people are on about when they say god, so doing any logical operation from there is unclear. The reason that understanding the component is important to doing an operation is that it may have an implicit modifier that affects the logical operation in and of itself. For instance: 2 + (-2) = 4 the (-2), is not the same as 2, it's a different component which may sometimes appear to be a 2, but getting consensus about it from people, or figuring out what to do with your fingers when you read it, might confuse people into giving an answer that is less consistent. It appears that I'm using a consensus theory of truth. I guess that's neccersary for any kind of discussion with more than one participant anyhow.

Huh, I have harbored that misconception for a really long time. Pretty annoyed that I never thought to examine that statistic further (it just sounds so right!). Thank you.

e: regardless of the fact that there is a decade or so of actual increased lifespan between the two periods, this still solidly harpoons my analogy.

How much of this effect is an inherent effect of evolution + aging and how much is the effect of the surrounding social and cultural norms? Do elderly people who still have a well-established, high-status place in society and actively contribute to its well being also experience the sensation of "waiting for death?"

Not really buying the analogy between massive wealth and superlongevity. Virtually unlimited access to super-stimulation such as fame, drugs and any other rush you could want to get your hands on doesn't seem all that comparable to an unlimited supply of everyday normal life.

The everyday reality of living forever isn't going to be shockingly more exciting than regular ol' not living forever. There will be new awesome and crazy stuff, but you'll have had lifetimes to grow used to them. People born into them will think of them like how we currently think of ... (read more)

7[anonymous]
Life expectancy (at age 0) has increased mainly because infant mortality and child mortality has decreased dramatically, not because people used to collectively live to 30's and now live to 70's. Most adults in our ancestral past lived to be about as old as people do in western industrialized nations today.

Contrast the Kardashians with Elon Musk or Peter Thiel.

Because it's a fully general counterargument against caring about or doing anything. That you shouldn't care about something because it is temporary is poison. I can't even imagine the hell we would live in if views like this were widely and earnestly adopted.

3Sabiola
You're right, of course (have an upvote). OTOH, I do like the start of the quote, because there is a difference between caring about something and believing you need to do something. I see the quote as a reminder that you don't have to do anything in an absolute sense. You have to do some things because you want some other things. 'I need to do ' should be short for 'I need to do because '. And it should be your reason, you shouldn't feel you have to do it just because others tell you to or because your parents told you when you were small. On the gripping hand, I didn't upvote the quote either, because I don't like the part that's saying 'nothing is real'.
-1[anonymous]
Thanks for the explanation. Is atheism a fully general counterargument against being a moral person?

I am probably misunderstanding something here, but doesn't this

Then the correct guess, if you don't know whether a given question is "easy" or "hard"...

Basically say, "if you have no calibration whatsoever?" If there are distinct categories of questions (easy and hard) and you can't tell which questions belong to which category, then simply guessing according to your overall base rate will make your calibration look terrible - because it is

0D_Malik
Replace "if you don't know" with "if you aren't told". If you believe 80% of them are easy, then you're perfectly calibrated as to whether or not a question is easy, and the apparent under/overconfidence remains.

But what are you basing that that off of? There are a ridiculous number of confounding factors that might explain why a particular website doesn't conform to the latest studies in web usability (money, time, the site gets tons of hits already, management is hard to talk to, etc) outside of "professional web designers don't seem to use [empirical web design data]."

And if you go beyond the web designers themselves then you are really just asking why companies/corporations don't tirelessly invest in making the best website possible.

Is the premise that modern sites do not take studies on aesthetics/usability/effectiveness into account even true? I've moved into web development over the past 8 months or so and I regularly search for topics such as "log in vs sign in," "ok cancel button placement" and "optimal web page navigation."

It seems to me that there is no shortage of studies, opinions and hard evidence on display regarding the (in)effectiveness of particular web design choices. Granted not every google hit is going to cite a formal study, but a surpr... (read more)

0TimothyScriven
Right, the whole point is that there's a lot of studies, and professional web designers don't seem to use them.

Regardless of the content of either of those sites, the first is clearly more aesthetically pleasing despite the lack of shit moving around on the page. Scrolling to the bottom of the second (which shouldn't even be a thing at all: it's like a <100px scroll on a standard monitor and even hiding the taskbar and bookmarks toolbar in Chrome still leaves a miniscule amount of vertical scroll) reveals a copyright footer (and "top" link!) that is almost comically out of place after viewing the content above it. I would be very surprised if this site worked because of its modern web facade rather than in spite of it.

Clarity, you have a large number of comments with incorrect Wikipedia links. Your "introspective illusion" comment directly above this one does it correctly. You clearly are capable of generating functional links to Wikipedia pages.

Please take a few minutes to make your recent comments less frustrating to read. It is frankly astounding that so many people have given you this feedback and you are still posting these broken links.

5Elo
This post would need to be in response to his post (not a lower level replier) or he would not get a notification about it.

There's this extremely intelligent alien species that has evolved a distinct sense of morality very similar to our own, just more rigid. So rigid that they are incapable of even comprehending the way we might think. And we view killing them just as we view recycling computers.

What happens next?

Are you confused as to why politicians would repeat a phrase that reliably energizes their political base even though it may not represent reality completely accurately?

5Lumifer
I think the issue is how seriously do you want to take that phrase. For example, a few years ago when Putin was talking about gathering all the Russians under the protective wings of Mother Russia, most people interpreted this as a "phrase that reliably energizes [his] political base". And then Ukraine happened.
7James_Miller
In general, no. But I take the chant as evidence that lots of people in Iran would be happy if an atomic bomb went off in New York City. If someone says he wants to kill me, I raise my estimate of the likelihood of him wanting to kill me. If he says it over and over again to his cheering friends, I fear him and want him to be weak even if in the past I have given him justifiable cause for offense. I become really, really scared and desperate if I think he would be willing to kill me even at the cost of giving up his own life. I wish my president shared this view.

They don't create a new discussion post drawing attention to an old thread once a week, no. Whether there is one person a week who would make the same post in a less obtrusive thread dedicated to such posts is another question.

The existence of the Open Thread complicates the issue a bit as well.

I believe you're supposed to link to a past post you feel is valuable enough that people who missed its initial appearance in discussion should go back and read it. The idea of this thread being that you don't have to create a new post and clutter up discussion to do so.

1Tem42
That would only be effective if people do that more than once a week... do they?

Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?

I can't lend you any specific advice here, but I'm pretty confident that this is an insane thing to even consider considering in the situation you describe.

On the face of it, I don't feel that this particular risk differentiates itself enough from "what if [insert subtle end-of-times scenario here]?" to be worthy of specific consideration. It's a lot of what ifs and perhapses.

While I agree that the process seems absurd on the face of it, I don't think it's as nonsensical as it appears at first glance.

It's way, way easier to have a small group of people re-interpret a static text over and over than it is to have a larger group of people, accountable to an even larger group of constituents, write new text that they all agree on over and over.

edit: I guess basically what I'm saying is that democracy is hard and this is a nice out?

Re: the linked site. Browsing the homepage raises so many red flags that it's borderline overwhelming.

  • Offering me a free 45-page report? - Awesome, what do I get if I pay you money?

  • 16 Happiness Ideas That Really Work! - Um, good? Is this seriously BuzzFeed style clickbait?

  • Direct Brain Stimulation, a Trillion Dollar Invention? - Wow that's a lot of money, I'd better start reading right now!

And this overtly manipulative style continues for basically the entire first page of posts.

Admittedly everything that I've pointed out is entirely unrelated to t... (read more)

1amitpamin
If only everyone else had the same aesthetics as you. It's probably possible to make money in the space without being blatantly manipulative, but that's much much harder. I'm glad I'm not working in the space anymore.

This is not directly related to the wording of the introduction, but to the accessibility of the homepage to new users.

I have been an avid lurker/reader of LW since the beginning. Over the past year or two, I have almost exclusively read the discussion forum due to it's high turnover rate and greater density of "bite-size" ideas that tend to require less time to process and understand than promoted posts.

Only recently I've realized that a noticeable part of the reason I immediately click "Discussion" after navigating to my http://lesswr... (read more)

She may very well have magical powers, but the assumption that she is using them solely for his benefit and not misleading or manipulating him to her own ends is primarily what I take issue with.

Unless I missed an extremely large piece of evidence regarding the red-lord-of-light-lady's trustworthiness, I don't think we can say any assessment is "completely justified." My impression of Stannis' new advisor is someone with a nice looking bag of tricks that likes to take credit when things go right and likes to counsel faith and patience when things go wrong.

She could also be the real thing. She could also be the real thing but have her own selfish motives. She could be westerosi-satan tempting Stannis in preparation to suck him into eterna... (read more)

0[anonymous]
I think it is Ice and Fire for a reason. Stopping the Others will take fire, either from dragons or the fire god, both are predicted by different prophecies. This gives 50% chance Melisandre is for real. Actually my bet would be more on the fire god. Dragons of this universe are not magic, just animals who happen to use fire to cook meals and hatch eggs. Something as big a deal as the Others probably requires input from a god to deal with. This makes it really likely she is for for real.
2James_Miller
Stannis has proof that the red lady has magical powers from when she ghearq uvz vagb n funqbj perngher fb ur pbhyq xvyy uvf oebgure. http://www.rot13.com/index.php

Exactly this. I am a big fish in a small pond. I have been seriously programming for about a year now and I am far and away the most technically skilled person at my (completely-non-technically-focused) business.

I have learned more in this past year than I did through all 4.5 years of college. I am given a tremendous amount of freedom in the approach I take to solving problems which allows me to constantly say to myself, "hey, the way I've been doing this before works...but I bet I can take an hour and learn a better way."

Initially I was writing ... (read more)

1Viliam
Yeah, being the big fish can give you great opportunity for autonomous growth, because there is no one to revise all your decisions. Or a great opportunity to sleep on your laurels. Different people will use the same opportunity very differently. Re: JavaScript. It has essentially two parts: the language itself (objects, functions), and the browser-specific stuff (DOM). My advice is to learn the language itself well, but use JQuery for everything DOM-related.

I don't think I have a particularly extreme fear of public speaking, but it certainly makes me feel very nervous. People are investing their time and attention into what you have to say and if you disappoint them, you have a whole room full of people that are immediately allied against you in their distaste for what you provided them in return for that attention.

Disappointing a few people in a crowd of many is nothing. Disappointing the crowd is fucking terrifying.

Yeah, but it's not fair to start with "given that I read a post and it was on a personal blog..." if the odds of you reading said post in the first place is higher when posted on LW rather than someone's personal blog that you may not be aware of or check regularly.

In the spirit of Lumifer's comment, anything we would consider an entity would have to be able to learn or we wouldn't be considering it at all.

-1DanielLC
That would explain why all entities learn. Not why any entities learn. Ignoring things that can't learn doesn't explain the existence if things that can.

Oooh I see. Now the post is interesting and worthwhile.

2gjm
I don't know whether tim is being sarcastic or sincere, but I don't see how the post is funny when treated as an April Fool, nor how it's worthwhile when taken seriously. I wouldn't go so far as to agree that it could have been generated by Markov chain, and some of the things it says are true and worth saying if one can get past the intensely annoying presentation, but I don't see anything here that's new or super-interesting or well expressed, nor do I see any joke beyond "hey, I did an annoying thing and it's April 1". I may well be missing something. Trevor, if you're reading this and not too offended at the negative reaction you got, it would be interesting to know what effect you were aiming at.

I read a tremendous amount of Overcoming Bias/The Sequences/Less Wrong from ages ~18-21 as I was transitioning from high school and into college. I cannot overstate how much this exposure impacted my mindset during these - generally tumultuous - years.

I don't recall ever feeling that I should be ~doing something more~ or doing anything other than exploring the world around me as I decided what I wanted to do with my life.

While a lot of the drive behind Less Wrong has evolved to emphasize optimal investment/philanthropy/career choices/etc, I don't think the... (read more)

I didn't give you a downvote, but I certainly want to downvote the linked site for a header that responds in a particularly nauseating fashion to the scroll wheel.

Harry weirdly ignored the missing recognition code on LV's forged message.

This is not how (Harry's) recognition code works. It is used to identify exact(ish) copies of himself because he is the only one - barring magical mental shenanigans - that can immediately recognize it. Writing it down on a piece of paper and then giving that piece of paper to someone else would defeat the purpose entirely.

2kilobug
The "potato" code, yes. But knowing that Harry is "be prepared" so much that he prepared a recognition code when he didn't think he would ever use it, and then had been nearly a year with a time-turner, and knowning about Oblivatiate, it's quite surprising that he didn't device a recognition code to recognize a message sent either by a future self to his past self (time-turner) or from his past self to his future self (Obliviate).
0Nornagest
The cryptographic solution to this problem is to publicize related codes derived in such a way that the possessor of the secret code can recognize the derivation, but bystanders can't use them to rederive the secret code. It's probably a bit much to expect Harry to use that in its strong form -- most of the relevant math was known in 1991, but it only rose to prominence with the Internet, and it's quite laborious by hand -- but there's probably a similar ad-hoc scheme he can use that'd provide reasonably strong authentication against a bunch of cryptographically naive wizards.

This article is a great hands on demonstration regarding the opportunity cost of of reading 1,600 words explaining what Wikipedia can in less than 100.

-1[anonymous]
The Wikipedia article, while quite good for a Wikipedia article about economics, tells you nothing about the distinction between opportunity cost, harm cost, and outlay cost, and I would confidently predict that you would quickly mix up the three given an opportunity to do so. You would also predict action based on harm cost and outlay cost. Have seen it many times, it's why I wrote an article about it. But as long as you don't know this, you won't know that you don't know it. And it's frankly an idiotic thing to say. The whole point of writing this way is to convey an experience so that the lesson is learned more deeply than just memorizing some definition out of an encyclopedia article. The latter is better for regurgitating on a test, the former better for actual application and use.

I admit I did forget about that specific incident.

However, Dumbledore going cell to cell in Azkaban and Lord Voldemort attempting to subvert a prophecy predicting the end of the world in a fixed, controlled location seem like two very different things from a reader perspective.

It is also implied that Dumbledore did sense Harry's magic - at least on some level.

...the strongest had only as much magic left as a first-year child.

But he dismisses this because he is looking for a wizard strong enough to break into Azkaban and free Bellatrix Black. Lord Vold... (read more)

5TobyBartels
That's Dumbledore reading Harry's mana level, not sensing whether Harry is casting spells.

I am assuming that Voldemort, about to attempt the subversion of a prophecy to destroy the world, is not standing around in a graveyard with Harry Potter, a recently reanimated Hermione with unicorn powers and a bunch of Death Eaters of at least slightly questionable loyalty without any detection spells raised at all.

The biggest problem for me is that when I imagine myself reading these events and Voldemort going, "A nice try but I can sense whatever transfiguration trick it is that you're using. Thank you, that will take me some time to perfect in my eternity," I don't feel surprised.

Throwing additional stipulations and conditions into the situation doesn't change the fact that the way in which Voldemort loses is not convincing.

It doesn't feel like Harry earned the win because I can just as easily imagine Voldemort laughing at Harry's childish tricks and kil... (read more)

I do remark that Dumbledore was unable to detect Harry doing an ongoing Transfiguration while he looked into Harry's prison cell in Azkaban.

All that has to happen is that there is some entity that behaves and responds in the same way that Mr. Counsel does. While it might be likely that the Mr. Counsel character is Lucius, there is nothing in the laws of time that prevent the person under that hood from being someone else - particularly because Harry took care not to look closely at the remains of the decapitated death eaters.

Waiting for the other foot to drop because, as I'm sure the comments are full of, it is completely absurd that a wizard as powerful as ~Lord Voldemort~ is incapable of detecting a transfigured spidersilk looping its way around him and his followers regardless of his unawareness of partial transfiguration.

It's still magic.

Wizards are not blind to magic around them created by methods they are unaware of. The patronus charm 2.0 was still noticeable by Quirrel and Dumbledore. When Harry demonstrated partial transfiguration, Dumbledore and McGonagall were surpr... (read more)

5kilobug
I don't think wizards can detect magic that easily. Patronus is definitely easy to detect, it radiates both in visible light and in... emotional waves, whatever that is ;) But think about how it's hard to detect someone who is polyjuiced, or someone who is imperiused. Or how Dumbledore had to cast spells to detect what transfigured objects did Harry has on him when he looked for Hermione body. It seems perfectly plausible that wizards can't detect (without actively casting some detection spells) a transfiguration that happens on the microscopic scale and can't see.
Load More