All of Trevor Hill-Hand's Comments + Replies

Answer by Trevor Hill-Hand20

My favorite one to play around with has been this Google Colab notebook: https://is.gd/artmachine - totally free if you don't mind it being slow (i.e. 10-20 minutes per image).

I need to +1 the reMarkable, especially the older version if you can find one. My wife has spent years looking for the perfect notetaking experience and the reMarkable blew everything else out of the water, especially with the fact they embrace and encourage homebrewing.

3NormanPerlmutter
How is the older version better than the newer version (other than meedstrom's comment)?
2meedstrom
Now I'm glad I recently ordered the older version. (my motivation was that it can run Parabola GNU/Linux + Emacs)

Without endorsing any other points (not because I agree or disagree, simply because I haven't done my own research on them), I'd like to +1 the sentiment of, "Let us not tolerate status jabs/mocking others."

I feel that the ideal rationalist writing will as a side effect avoid mocking, so it always feels a little out of place and unwarranted to me.

3Vanessa Kosoy
Where is the OP mocking anyone?
Answer by Trevor Hill-Hand110

Ra by Sam Hughes is the most austere version of the idea I've personally read. It intentionally starts with the premise, "What if magic worked like computer science?" The story then moves more to answering the question, "....Wait, why is that the case?" but you get lots of fun exploration of the premise along the way.

https://qntm.org/ra

Magic is real.

Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There's magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It's what's next after electricity.

Student mage Laura Ferno has designs on the fut

... (read more)
1qbolec
I've just finished reading it, and wanted to thank you very much for recommending this great experience :)
2mtaran
Came here to suggest exactly this, based on just the title of the question. https://qntm.org/structure has some similar themes as well.
2Templarrr
The revelation in later chapters of why magic works like programming was especially nice
Answer by Trevor Hill-Hand30

It's more than 2 hours of reading, but Steven Pinker's Rationality has been an awful pleasant and thorough read for me, especially in a, "Yeah but how do we make all this stuff work for taking care of humans?" context. As the book review on here said recently, there's nothing you haven't already seen if you're on LessWrong, but it covers everything important in his signature charming style.

I agree, though I feel this framework helps me put into words how it is both important and difficult to actually negotiate/haggle. In particular the advice for engineers.

Hrm, that is a good point. I suppose if I try to be more strict, it's when there is a question of what to do, there are two or more approaches, and there is some difference in quantifiable risk and/or reward between the options, and I haven't already pre-determined a best approach in advance that applies to the situation.

Answer by Trevor Hill-Hand-10

The rule I try to apply for myself is: whenever it is at all possible to open a spreadsheet and/or calculator app. On the rare occasion it's not possible (or would be impolite) the extra experience and intuition will be valuable. There's much more risk that I will underuse it than overuse it.

2Eli Tyre
Can you be more specific? Presumably it was possible to open a spreadsheet when you were typing this answer, but I'm guessing that you didn't?

I like it, sounds like it's just a debate format that works well in a virtual setting.

I wonder if there's a way to add an opening ceremony that helps determine whether this is a question of fact (proceed with the duel) or a question of politics/axioms/goals (cancel the duel).

Came here to mention/upvote gwern style sidenotes.

I footnotes are useful too, for citations, etc., but sidenotes are more what I want most of the time.

I was a little disappointed that the ROT13 didn't translate to "accented modern English" as the story stated.

But I'm loving this story.

I'd be interested in seeing the output, yes! I'd be willing to help with the graphic design so you could throw them up on Game Crafter or something.

Snapping to whole percentages might be better too. Having a displayed value of "87.23%" overstates how much control I have in choosing a specific value, given how the sliders work and how finicky per-pixel selection is.

2Allen Kim
Hey thanks for the feedback! After playing around with it more myself I agree with you about the percentages. I think ideally for more precise values it would have a manual input option, but rounding to whole values for now would be better. I also like the label changing suggestion.

I love this! I can imagine myself using this as an ad hoc calculator, especially when I need to explain my estimates to someone unfamiliar with probability. For that purpose it might be useful if I could fill in my own labels for all the variables. So instead of "E1/E2/..." the page could literally display "Drew a black marble/drew a white marble/..." or whatever I put in.

2Trevor Hill-Hand
Snapping to whole percentages might be better too. Having a displayed value of "87.23%" overstates how much control I have in choosing a specific value, given how the sliders work and how finicky per-pixel selection is.

You can also grate butter, as in with a cheese grater, and that helps too.

2Said Achmiz
Indeed you can! However, I find that this approach is not worth it except in one case, because washing a box grater is annoying, and cubing the butter works well enough. (That one exception is when making pie dough by hand, i.e. without a food processor.) (Also, I expect the “cleaning is annoying” calculus is different for people who own a dishwasher… although some box graters may not be dishwasher-safe—I am fairly sure mine is not, for instance.)

Thinking about how to decide whether or not to highlight a given statement; I think I'm going to try go through and look for things that are the "end" of a line of thought, and those are the greens. So once we get to a green, that's the end of a line, and a good spot for listeners to stop and ask questions before continuing.

On the other hand, some lines are "length zero" and are just a dangling green presented on their own, with the assumption being that you've already encountered the lines leading up to it somewhere else in your life.

3Hazard
Did trying it out in your training pan out?

I really like this, and I'm going to be trying this in an upcoming training at work, with the implict rule of "stop me if you don't understand anything in green" made explicit.

3Trevor Hill-Hand
Thinking about how to decide whether or not to highlight a given statement; I think I'm going to try go through and look for things that are the "end" of a line of thought, and those are the greens. So once we get to a green, that's the end of a line, and a good spot for listeners to stop and ask questions before continuing. On the other hand, some lines are "length zero" and are just a dangling green presented on their own, with the assumption being that you've already encountered the lines leading up to it somewhere else in your life.

Loved the narrative structure; lots of interesting insights that I felt like I was having right along with you. Towards the end you start making some pretty strong claims though; do you have any articles handy that measure the effects of vasodilation on psychological outlook?