If it's worth saying but not worth its own thread even in discussion it goes here.
Once again I am deeply impressed how Yvain can explain things that I have vaguely felt for a long time but couldn't quite put into words.
Specifically the concept of the "safe spaces" and whether only some groups deserve them and other groups don't. And more generally, whether only members of some groups have feelings and can be hurt (or perhaps whether only feelings and pain of some groups matter) or whether we all are to some degree fragile and valueable.
And how the "safe space" of one group sometimes cannot be a "safe space" of another group, and it's okay to simply have both of them. And as a consequence how by insisting that every place must be a "safe space" of group X we de facto say that the group Y should have no "safe space", ever.
A few months ago, I re-read HPMOR in its entirety, and had an insight about the Hermione / feminism issue that I'd previously missed when I wrote this comment. I never got around to saying it anywhere, so I'm saying it here:
I'd previously written:
HPMOR kinda feels off because canonically, Hermione is unambiguously the most competent person in Harry's year, and has a good chance of growing up to be the most competent person in the 'verse. Harry is kept at the center of the story by his magical connection to Voldemort. In HPMOR, in contrast, Harry is kept at the center of the story by competence and drive. It's going to be very hard to do that without it feeling like Hermione is getting shafted.
But actually, HPMOR closely parallels cannon on this point: Methods!Hermione got just as much of an intelligence upgrade as Methods!Harry did, so she's still unambiguously more competent than him, at least before repeated use of his mysterious dark side gave him a mental age-up. This is more or less explicitly pointed out in chapter 21:
She'd done better than him in every single class they'd taken. (Except for broomstick riding which was like gym class, it didn't count.) She'd gotten real House points almost every day of their first week, not for weird heroic things, but smart things like learning spells quickly and helping other students. She knew those kinds of House points were better, and the best part was, Harry Potter knew it too. She could see it in his eyes every time she won another real House point.
The that the universe is being grossly unfair to Hermione, and this is hammered home multiple times. E.g. I can't find it at the moment but I think there's a scene where Harry explains to her she can't get house points for telling adults about the secret message in the Sorting Hat. Or there's this exchange in the Self-Actualization arc (emphasis added):
She couldn't find words. She'd never been able to find words. "If you get too near Harry - you get swallowed up, and no one sees you any more, you're just something of his, everyone thinks the whole world revolves around him and..." She didn't have the words.
The old wizard nodded slowly. "It is indeed an unjust world we live in, Miss Granger. All the world now knows that it is I who defeated Grindelwald, and fewer remember Elizabeth Beckett who died opening the way so I could pass through. And yet she is remembered. Harry Potter is the hero of this play, Miss Granger; the world does revolve around him. He is destined for great things; and I ween that in time the name of Albus Dumbledore will be remembered as Harry Potter's mysterious old wizard, more than for anything else I have done. And perhaps the name of Hermione Granger will be remembered as his companion, if you prove worthy of it in your day. For this I tell you true: never will you find more glory on your own, than in Harry Potter's company."
I think what happened is that Eliezer realized how unfair the universe was to Hermione in canon, and decided to keep things that way in HPMOR but comment on it. Which is clever, but looks like Eliezer being unfair to Hermione for no good reason if you don't understand he's commenting on the screwiness of canon.
Related thing I noticed: Hermione is probably the most incredibly brave character in HPMOR. Think about it: she, as a twelve year old girl, is told she has an important job to do helping Harry, and then one of the scariest dark wizards who ever lived tries destroy her, when he doesn't succeed at that, tries to convince her to just run, and she stands her ground. As a twelve year old girl against an ultra-powerful dark wizard. And that's ultimately why she died. Make no mistake about it: she died a hero's death.
Edit: this is relevant.
After doing a large amount of research, I feel fairly confident saying that high-dose Potassium supplementation was the initial trigger that pushed me into two-year nightmare struggle with migraines which I am still dealing with. I didn't do anything beyond the recommendations that you can find on gwern's page and gwern doesn't really recomend anything that is technically unsafe, but the fact is that (apparently!) some people are migraine prone and these people should probably definitely not do what I did. (To be clear, I'm not blaming gwern in any way, that's merely a "community reference" that a lot of folks refer to.)
I'm planning to meet with my local Department of Services for the Blind tomorrow; the stated purpose of the meeting is to discuss upcoming life changes/needs/etc. This appears to be exactly what I need at the moment, but I'm concerned that I'm not going to be optimally prepared, so I'd like to post some details here to increase the chances of useful feedback.
(For transparency's sake: I'm legally blind, unemployed, living with my parents until they take the necessary steps to get me moved into the place I own, with student loan payments outpacing my SSI benefits by over $200/month, and stuck in the bible belt.)
- The plan to move out will doubtless frame the conversation.
- I'm unsure as to whether this conversation will be private (me talking to a DSB representative), or if one of my parents will sit in. Who is in earshot matters, since for all the problems I have with my parents, they are the entirety of my support system at the moment, and the less risk to that relationship the better.
- Most important topic: Training. My skills across the board are pathetic, yet I've been unable to improve them independently in the time since I've realized this (most of the past year and a half, IIRC). I find myself drawn toward the National Federation of the Blind's training centers, but those involve a hefty time investment (six months), and the prices I've found suggest it would cost ~$3600/month, not to mention travel. This is exactly the sort of thing I would expect DSB to help with, but at the same time, I don't consider it unlikely that I'll be pushed toward cheaper, more local options. (My research over the past several months has reduced my confidence that the more local options are of much value.)
- I feel I would greatly benefit from a functional Notetaker. The one I was previously using has stopped functioning. I'm worried about this one; I expect that anything for which DSB provides assistance will need directing toward a tangible goal, possibly with a narrower subset than "I can get much more done with it than I could hope to with just a laptop". (I could write an entire post on why I think Notetakers are awesome, but this is already quite lengthy.)
I'm unsure as to how I will approach these topics, or the meeting as a whole, or if there are other issues I've missed/neglected/been mistaken about.
I do not like being a net drain on resources; managing this correctly seems the most viable path to reversing that.
I was absurdly lucky: the counselor I spoke to is new and motivated to put in the necessary effort for everything, and went to high school with my stepmother; it also turns out that the in-state training center has a thirty-day trial period, during which commitment is a non-issue. They also offered to provide any required technology, be it laptops or note takers or whatever. It could start as early as the first week of February, which is early enough that I wouldn't need to worry about security at my property. So on the whole, a surprisingly good day.
If you have not dealt with something the DSB before, you're probably drastically overestimating how much mental effort they are willing to expend to help you. (I dealt with a similar agency, the California Department of Rehabilitation, many years ago.)
Although it is of course good for you to try to estimate how much mental effort they are willing to make in real time during the interview, I suggest the plan you go into the meeting with assume it is low. E.g. you might consider just asking for a notetaker over and over again.
Try to appear a little dumber than you actually are.
I would not risk alienating your parents to try for a deeper conversation with DSB staff.
What are you supposed to do when you've nailed up a post that is generally disliked? I figured that once this got to -5 karma it would disappear from view and be forgotten. But it just keeps going down and it's now at -12. This must mean that someone saw the title of it at -11 karma and thought "Sounds promising! Reading this now will be a good use of my time." And then they read it and went: "Arrgh! This turned out to be a disappointing post. Less like this, please. I'd better downvote it to warn others."
What does etiquette suggest I do here? Am I supposed to delete the post to keep people from falling into the trap of reading it? But I like the discussion it spawned and I'd like to preserve it. I'm at a loss and I can't find relevant advice at the wiki.
This must mean that someone saw the title of it at -11 karma and thought "Sounds promising! Reading this now will be a good use of my time." And then they read it and went: "Arrgh! This turned out to be a disappointing post. Less like this, please. I'd better downvote it to warn others."
Not necessarily. Seeing a heavily downvoted post seems to trigger some kind of group-norm-reinforcement instinct in me: I often end up wanting to read it in the hopes of it being just as bad as the downvotes imply, so that I could join in the others in downvoting it. And I actually get pleasure out of being able to downvote it.
I'm not very proud of acting on that impulse, especially since I'm not going to be able to objectively evaluate a post's merit if I start reading it while hoping it to be bad. But sometimes I do act on it regardless. (I didn't do that with your post, though.)
All the productivity posts on LW that I've read, I found mildly disturbing. They all give a sense of excessive regimentation, as well as giving up enjoyable activity - sacrificing a lot for a single goal (or a few goals). I'm sure it's good for getting work done, but there's more to life than work - there's actually enjoying life, having fun, etc.
I think you're talking about So8res's recent posts, but I think they're exceptional. Most productivity posts are about avoiding spending time web surfing, particularly during time that has been budgeted for work. They do this partly because fragmenting time is bad and partly because there are better ways to have fun.
Finally have a core mechanic for my edugame about Bayesian networks. At least on paper.
This should hopefully be my last post before I actually have a playable prototype done, even if a very short one (like the tutorial level or something).
In light of gwern's good experiences with one, I too now have an anonymous feedback form. You can use it to send me feedback on my personality, writing, personal or professional conduct, or anything else.
Me too! http://www.admonymous.com/philh
Two unrelated things (should I make these in separate posts or...?):
1.) Given recent discussion on social justice advocates and their... I don't know the best way to describe this, sometimes poor epistemological habits? I thought I would post this
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Concern_troll
Is this it just me, or is this, like, literally the worst concept ever? It literally just means "someone slightly to the right of me" or "someone does anything that could be considering cheering for the other side", backed with a dubious claim that these people are usually acting in bad faith. Is that even a thing people actually do, go on websites with people they disagree with and "troll" by claiming that they mostly agree except on certain issues? Outside of this context I have never seen this or had any reason to consider the possibility. Isn't it more likely, that you know... people mostly agree with you except on certain issues?
"Concern trolling is frequently banned in feminist communities."
"Concern trolling is frequently banned in feminist communities."
"Concern trolling is frequently banned in feminist communities."
I just don't get it. How does a movement with motives so noble become this horrible? I mean, I kind of do get it, but still... fuck.
2.) How can I train myself to speak more eloquently? Like most people my generation, I say "like" every ten words or so (although I've gotten better at avoiding this), say um and other filler sounds a lot, and often say "you know", "you see what I mean", etc. I also tend to repeat phrases for "filler" - I'll say things like "Yeah, I've been, I've been, I've been thinking about this a lot recently." (This looks really weird written out, trust me, it's not that weird in real life.) I want to stop doing this because doing so will let me sound more authoritative, and also I'm kind of disgusted by this pattern of speech even though everyone does it.
Note that I don't want to be one of those people who fetishizes the past and goes around forcing old-timey turns of phrase like "Great Scott!" into conversation and wears (yes) a fedora. I just want to be better at communicating concrete ideas in complete sentences in my daily life.
Concern trolling is a widespread phenomenon, not specific to feminist communities. The definition given in the first two sentences of that article is the exact concept that the phrase was coined to name:
A concern troll is a person who participates in a debate posing as an actual or potential ally who simply has some concerns they need answered before they will ally themselves with a cause. In reality they are a critic.
The article does then go on to broaden the concept to the point where it can be used as a club to invalidate anyone:
Concern trolls are not always self-aware, they may also view themselves as potential allies
Well, no. The whole point of the concept is that a concern troll is lying. They are, in fact, an enemy deliberately, consciously, intentionally, posing as a friend in order to undermine discourse. Someone who is actually a friend with genuine questions that they actually want to be constructively discussed is not a concern troll, even if those who do not wish the questions to be raised at all call them that.
Concern trolling in the false flag political operation sense is a thing that happened
An example of this occurred in 2006 when Tad Furtado, a staffer for then-Congressman Charles Bass (R-NH), was caught posing as a "concerned" supporter of Bass' opponent, Democrat Paul Hodes, on several liberal New Hampshire blogs, using the pseudonyms "IndieNH" or "IndyNH". "IndyNH" expressed concern that Democrats might just be wasting their time or money on Hodes, because Bass was unbeatable.[37][38] Hodes eventually won the election.
"Concern trolling is frequently banned in feminist communities."
It may help if you consider the possibility that some feminist communities do not exist for the sake of rational dispassionate and balanced discussion of feminism. Rather, a feminist community may be a meeting place for the members of a feminist movement of some kind, which exists to achieve its goals. Like any other political movement.
TL;DR. LW is not the real world. In the real world, arguments are always soldiers (even if you pretend them not to be), discussion requires resources, and resources are finite.
Mere fact that the resources are finite is enough reason to use heuristics and -- inevitably -- biases.
If there are hundreds of comments I am not able to fully reaseach, I need to use some filters. Such as "trust the comments from people from the beginning of the alphabet and ignore the comments from people from the end of the alphabet" or "trust the comments from respected long-time users and ignore the comments from unknown new users". Obviously, some of these heuristics are much reliable than the others, but none of them is perfect.
Then, as abstractly thinking people we may play the game on a higher level, inventing meta-heuristics for accepting or rejecting heuristics. Such as: "if a more experienced member of my tribe recommends me a heuristic, I will use it; and I will ignore the heuristics promoted from unknown people or other tribes". Actually, this seems like a decent heuristic; you probably won't find a better one with comparable simplicity. And one of its consequences is that when an experienced member says "ignore concern trolls", you follow that. Plus you need some operational definition of what a concern troll is, which is something like: "expresses concern for our tribe, but does not pattern-match to a typical member of our tribe". There.
It's imperfect because all heuristics are imperfect.
And of course smart people always find a way to abuse it. Because all imperfect rules can be abused creatively. For example some people may start using it as a fully general counteragument against anyone who disagrees with them and happens to have lower status in given community.
And the only way to fix it would be to send all internet users to CFAR's reeducation camps. Which, unfortunately, are still under construction. :P
re: public speaking: There are in person groups like Toastmasters. Alternately, you can record yourself speaking about something and try to give yourself a self-critique.
Here's an exercise I've run before: Person 1 picks a word at random; Person 2 immediately starting speaking about something relevant. At 15 second intervals for 1-2 minutes, Person 1 throws out new words; Person 2 needs to keep speaking about the new words, and to flow smoothly between topics. (You can substitute Wikipedia's random article button for Person 1.)
I see from time to time people mention a 'rationalist house' as though it is somewhere they live, and everyone else seems to know what they're talking about. What are are they talking about? Are there many of these? Are these in some way actually planned places or just an inside joke of some kind?
i plan to quit my job and move to an Eastern European country with small costs of living in march. Because of this I am looking for any job that I can do online for around 20 hours a week. I am looking for recommendations on where to look, where to ask, who to contact that might help me, etc. Any help will be appreciated.
(Reposted from the bottom of the last open thread.)
I don't see any discussion about this blog post by Mike Travern.
His point is that people trying to solve for Friendly AI are doing so because it's an "easy", abstract problem well into the future. He contends that we are already taking significant damage from artificially created human systems like the financial system, which can be ascribed agency and it's goals are quite different from improving human life. These systems are quite akin to "Hostile AI". This, he contends, is the really hard problem.
Here is a quote from the blogpost (which is from a Facebook comment he made):
I am generally on the side of the critics of Singulitarianism, but now want to provide a bit of support to these so-called rationalists. At some very meta level, they have the right problem — how do we preserve human interests in a world of vast forces and systems that aren’t really all that interested in us? But they have chosen a fantasy version of the problem, when human interests are being fucked over by actual existing systems right now. All that brain-power is being wasted on silly hypotheticals, because those are fun to think about, whereas trying to fix industrial capitalism so it doesn’t wreck the human life-support system is hard, frustrating, and almost certainly doomed to failure.
It's a short post, so you can read it quickly. What do you think about his argument?
It's a short post, so you can read it quickly. What do you think about his argument?
I think it's silly. I suspect MIRI and every other singulatarian organization, and every other individual working on the challeges of unfriendly AI, could fit comfortably in a 100-person auditorium.
In contrast, "trying to fix industrial capitalism" is one of the main topics of political dispute everywhere in the world. "How to make markets work better" is one of the main areas of research in economics. The American Economic Association has 18,000 members. We have half a dozen large government agencies, with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars each, to protecting people from hostile capitalism. (The SEC, the OCC, the FTC, etc etc, are all ultimately about trying to curb capitalist excess. Each of these organizations has a large enforcement bureaucracy, and also a number of full-time salaried researchers.)
The resources and human energy devoted to unfriendly AI are tiny compared to the amount expended on politics and economics. So it's strange to complain about the diversion of resources.
Excellent point. I'm surprised this did not occur to me. This reminds me of Scott Aaronson's reply when someone suggested that quantum computational complexity is quite unimportant compared to experimental approaches to quantum computing and therefore shouldn't get much funding:
I find your argument extremely persuasive—assuming, of course, that we’re both talking about Bizarro-World, the place where quantum complexity research commands megabillions and is regularly splashed across magazine covers, while Miley Cyrus’s twerking is studied mostly by a few dozen nerds who can all fit in a seminar room at Dagstuhl.
(My thoughts are still not sufficiently organized that I’m making a top level post about this, but I think it’s worth putting out for discussion.)
A couple of years ago, in a thread I can no longer find, someone argued that they valued the pleasure they got from defecation, and that they would not want to bioengineer away the need to do so. I thought this was ridiculous.
At the same time, I see many Lesswrongers view eating as a chore that they would like to do away with. And yet I also find this ridiculous.
So I was thinking about where there difference lay for me. My working hypothesis is that there are two elements of pleasure: relief and satisfaction. Defecation, or a drink of water when you’re very thirsty bring you relief, but not really satisfaction. Eating a gourmet meal, on the other hand, may or may not bring relief, depending on how hungry you are when you eat it, but it’s very satisfying. The ultimate pleasure is sex, which culminates in a very intense sense of both relief and satisfaction. (Masturbation, at least from a male perspective, can provide the relief but only a tiny fraction of the satisfaction – hence the difference in pleasure from sex.)
I can understand the desire to minimize or eliminate the need for functions that serve only to provide relief, but I think the “let’s subsist on Soylent” people are throwing the satisfaction baby out with the relief bathwater. I suspect lack of awareness of the possibility of satisfaction as well as relief may also explain the comments I’ve seen here from people who are asexual and happy about that (but I’m less confident in this case because the inferential distance is large.)
I would like to drink Soylent when I want to focus on something else, and to eat at a restaurant when I want to feel the pleasure of eating. Or maybe sometimes cook at home... but only when I decide to.
If I may borrow your analogy, it would be like moving from compulsively masturbating three times a day to having great sex once in a while and doing something else the rest of the time.
My friends keep posting videos of Jacob Barnett, a child genius (TEDx video; YouTube channel) on facebook. I'd like to have your opinion about what kind of a genius precisely he is.
From my short googling, seems to me that the kid has an Asperger syndrom, he probably enjoys reading a lot about maths and physics, he probably does it most of his day, and he seems to have some kind of photographic memory, so he remembers a lot and then goes to impress people. His mother is doing a very good marketing campaign for him. There are videos of him talking about quantum physics, relativity, black holes, and other similar stuff on YouTube. He is believed to have mastered the high-school mathematics in two weeks, or something like that. And there seems to be a lot of comment spam about him on various websites (e.g. over 400 google hits on StackExchange, most of it later deleted). On his webpage, you can buy a book about him (written by his mother) or contribute to a charity for autistic children.
If someone wants to see his videos about physics, I would like to know your opinion whether what he speaks seems correct, and whether it shows deeper understanding, or just repeating something he memorized from the book. (I am not good at physics. The YouTube videos make it difficult to read what he writes; but it wouldn't help me even if I could.) Most people's reactions are: "oh, the kid seems so smart, I don't even understand what he's saying, but it's so smart". So, I'd like to have an opinion of someone who does understand.