“Uhh..”
“You might want to get some coffee.”
I find this the most humorous bit in the post. Smarter than Yudokowsky? May be.
akshatrathi
Karma: 30
I quite like your point, now that you put it minus the rigidity. Your argument, first looked like what SilasBarta said. But I agree with you on trying to make this debating smarter.
There is certainly scope to improve the way comments are structured at lesswrong. May be showing who voted up a comment would be a good start. Then we can move to associating certain messages with a group of people who agree to that point. And yes, it is important to maintain flexibility while making these changes.
I’ve joined KGS. Look forward to playing GO!
I’d be interested in such a room.
During a sleep experiment, I used to record my mental performance by a simple arithmetic game. Start with a 3 digit number, subtract 9, then 8, then 7...so on. Time yourself in the task. If the result is ±3 seconds to my average score, means I am quite active.
If we’re taking the US as a reference point, I would argue that adults should be punished a lot less for most crimes...
Could you elaborate?
A well made argument. Particularly agree to the one-size-fits-all argument.
Our evolution as mammals has forced us to protect our young ones for the survival of our species. The concerns CronoDAS has made are from the perspective of a modern society, especially that of western countries. Even now, millions of kids in third-world countries do not have the option to choose most of the things in that list. In such a situation, more responsible adults need to make a decision on behalf of the children and make available whatever they can for their own benefit.
So… when your willpower is all gone, you continue doing the activity with… what?
Although, I have no desire to do it, I force myself to do it. So it can be argued that it is till your willpower to do it. But this willpower is not for the activity but for the sheer reason of doing a little more of an activity. Thus, this willpower is orthogonal to the willpower of doing the activity.
An article in the NY times is an interesting read, mentions something close to my technique.
Children ought to have fundamentally lower status, not just because they’re children per se, but because they’re stupid and useless.
I am not a parent myself but I’ve been told a lot of times by my parents and others that they have learnt a great deal from children. Thus, calling them useless is not fair.
Also, even now children in rural India are treated as future bread-earners. Thus, taking care of them and helping them grow is seen as an advantage to the parents.
Stupid, yes they may be but then weren’t we all?
I’m going to be talking about more mundane situations, and the point I want to make is that beliefs are very different objects from the act of communicating those beliefs.
Isn’t this what happens in a courtroom drama? The lawyers bend facts by the way they communicate it to maximize the utility of their argument. I haven’t observed a real court case but can come up with scores of examples from bollywood movies!
I believe it is possible to increase one’s willpower reserve. I follow a simple technique to that effect. Every time my willpower to do something is over, I stretch myself to do that activity a little longer. Next time, I find myself stretching it beyond that and so on until I have a sufficient reserve of willpower for that activity.
I believe that each individual’s store of willpower is different. May be you are one of those individuals with a huge reserve and thus don’t find it a limited resource.
Thanks for the welcome. I had a few simple questions. How to get bullet points in comments? How to make text into hyperlinks? and How to get that blue line on the left margin when quoting something?
Name: Akshat Rathi
Location: Oxford, UK
Age: 22
Education: B. Tech (Pharmaceutical Chemistry & Technology), currently studying towards a D. Phil. in Organic Chemistry
I grew up in India but in a family where religion was never forced on the individual. I think I became a rationalist the day I started countering superstition and its evils through reasoning. Now as a scientist I find myself rationalising every experimental outcome. As a chemist, I get angry every so often when I have to settle for an empirical outcome over a rational one.
I was introduced to less wrong by alexflint with whom I co-author a blog. I have always been interested in philosophy and hope to take it up as a subject of study very soon.
I am sure that I must’ve done this as well.
I have to keep constant vigilance not to do this myself!
A documented example would definitely be appreciated so that we know what we are looking for in a particular situation. Otherwise getting stuck in this loop of winning arguments by double-counting evidence is very easy.
Furthermore, my experience with smart people strongly suggests that they are less likely to develop that capacity.
I agree. The students with the highest IQ in my high school are not the ones who are most successful in life now.
Making a DNA sequence will count as (an extremely low level activity) [http://lesswrong.com/lw/xr/in_praise_of_boredom/] which is necessary to support non-boring activities. It is a very simple argument that these are the very activity we stop thinking about and concentrate on novel activities.