alexvermeer

Karma: 495

alexvermeer Jul 3, 2015, 5:06 PM
12 points
in reply to: tanagrabeast’s comment on: MIRI needs an Office Manager (aka Force Multiplier)
Then you should definitely apply!

The salary range is “competitive” given the job and the bay area. It depends a lot of past experience and job performance. You should be able to afford to live in Berkeley, especially if you’re a dual-income family.

To echo what ciphergoth said, if you’re the right candidate, we would definitely make it work.

alexvermeer Mar 16, 2015, 4:11 PM
3 points
in reply to: quinox’s comment on: Rationality: From AI to Zombies

The book looks great!

Thanks!

A bunch of inter-book links such as …

D’oh. It’s all good in the epub, but something broke (for very dumb reasons) converting the mobi. It’s fixed now. If you’ve already bought the book though Amazon or e-junkie, you’ll have to re-download the file to get the fixed one (in a few hours, while Amazon approves the new book). Sorry about that.

The difference between a link going to the web and one going to a location within the book aren’t obvious: one is only a slighter darker grey than the other. In Calibri the links are a nice green/blue, but my kindle doesn’t have colours.

Not much we can do about this. Amazon is very restrictive in how you can modify the styling of links. It works fine for displays with color, but people with e-ink displays are out of luck. :-(

Thanks.

alexvermeer Mar 14, 2015, 3:38 AM
2 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Rationality: From AI to Zombies
Yup, but those are convenient distribution platforms.

alexvermeer Mar 13, 2015, 4:46 PM
19 points
on: Rationality: From AI to Zombies
Just a reminder that mistakes/problems/errors can be sent to errata@intelligence.org and we’ll try fix them!

alexvermeer Mar 13, 2015, 4:40 PM
9 points
in reply to: Tenoke’s comment on: Rationality: From AI to Zombies
Approximately 600,000 words!

alexvermeer Mar 13, 2015, 4:40 PM
16 points
0
in reply to: kotrfa’s comment on: Rationality: From AI to Zombies
From Amazon, 30% goes to Amazon and 70% goes to MIRI.

From e-junkie (the pay-what-you-want option): 100% goes to MIRI, minus PayPal transaction fees (a few %).

alexvermeer Mar 12, 2015, 7:25 AM
30 points
in reply to: EGI’s comment on: HPMOR Wrap Parties: Resources, Information and Discussion
(Habryka here. My account still appears to be broken)

I want to outline my thinking a bit, about why I decided to organize all of this with so much reliance on Facebook:

The attendance at these events heavily relies on networking effects and reducing trivial inconveniences. I did consider organizing it on LessWrong, but it’s just less integrated into most peoples life as Facebook is. This was the easiest way for people to invite their friends, get notified of new parties, spread information and, most importantly, get interested in the event if you so far haven’t been completely hooked on the book.

This is the last obvious big opportunity to get more people to read the book. Sending people to LessWrong, a website they’ve never been to and often only tangentially heard off, to then send an email to the current organizer, not really knowing who else of their friends will be there, if any, and then add that event manually in their own calendar, just seemed like a path that too many people would not bother to go.

I don’t like Facebook. I don’t like their stance on privacy, and I don’t like the social pressure that drives everyone to sign up for it. But I think the stakes on this are high, and the potential positive impact on the world is large. And I think the number of people who are shied away from this because of its reliance on Facebook is smaller than the number of people who would not otherwise come.

This is the reason why I made all information available outside of Facebook and spent multiple hours copying details from the Facebook events into the spreadsheet. Because I want to make sure that if someone doesn’t have Facebook, and wants to attend, that they will be able to. But the need to reduce trivial inconveniences for that category is a lot lower, as I think most would be willing to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to attend these.

I don’t think the decision was completely clear, but I did make the decision consciously and tried my best at weighing the benefits and drawbacks. I am interested in anyone’s thoughts on this.

alexvermeer Mar 6, 2015, 10:55 PM
2 points
in reply to: Normal_Anomaly’s comment on: HPMOR Wrap Parties: Resources, Information and Discussion
(Writing from this account, since through some strange bug my original account can’t comment on this post):

I just added the Spreadsheet to the list of resources, and am just in the process of getting everyone’s contact information. I hope this helps everyone who doesn’t have Facebook to find the details for the parties in their area. I think posting every wrap party individually is probably a bad idea.

alexvermeer Oct 25, 2014, 10:11 PM
0 points
in reply to: Ixiel’s comment on: Karma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook
The plan is to do both.

alexvermeer Oct 25, 2014, 10:11 PM
1 point
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Karma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook
Hopefully by the end of the year.

alexvermeer May 8, 2014, 3:05 AM
0 points
in reply to: Vulture’s comment on: “Smarter than us” is out!
FYI, Smarter Than Us is now available in print form. :-)
- Amazon.com
- Amazon.co.uk

alexvermeer Jan 2, 2014, 3:06 PM
3 points
in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: One Year of Pomodoros
Unfortunately, the app is in extremely alpha stages, running locally, and I doubt I’ll prioritize it over other projects.

alexvermeer Jan 2, 2014, 3:03 PM
8 points
in reply to: BenLowell’s comment on: One Year of Pomodoros
How do you not get fatigued with recording things?

I’m actually a bit surprised that I was able to maintain my recording for over a year. Some reasons why I think I was successful in hindsight:
1. Since I made the tracking app myself, I was excited to use it for the first little bit.
2. I intentionally made my tracking app such that I could see my daily, weekly, and category totals, all at once for a given week, which is important for me since my primarily unit of productivity measurement/planning is the week.
3. I came to realize that tracking all of the categories was key to the whole thing working. By tracking e.g. miscellaneous stuff (which seems pretty pointless at times), you’re given a constant reminder that you are “covering all your bases.”
4. After tracking pomodoros for several months, not tracking pomodoros made it feel like I wasn’t being productive.
5. Once I passed a critical threshold, I was motivated by the thought of having an entire year’s worth of data.
What are your recommendations for amount of structure before you incorporate pomodoros? Is there any structural/organizational stuff you should have set up before you do them?

You need basically zero structure to start using pomodoros; just a task and some time to work on it. (I say this especially because I’m really bad for wanting my system to be “perfect” before I use it.) I treaded the pomodoro waters for several months before delving in to tracking everything. My organization system, in short, is having a +/-5 year plan, a current year plan, and current quarter plan, and current month plan, and then specific tasks/projects for the current week (which I roughly estimate in pomodoros, or at least aim to hit a certain total for the week).

alexvermeer Jan 2, 2014, 2:48 PM
6 points
in reply to: Risto_Saarelma’s comment on: One Year of Pomodoros
Thanks for the encouragement. :-)

alexvermeer Jan 2, 2014, 2:48 PM
4 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: One Year of Pomodoros
I’ve been meaning to check this out. Thanks for the reminder.

alexvermeer Jan 2, 2014, 2:47 PM
2 points
in reply to: DaFranker’s comment on: One Year of Pomodoros

Real artists ship

Apparently attributed to Steve Jobs, though it was Seth Godin’s book Linchpin that drove this point home for me.

alexvermeer Dec 14, 2013, 12:01 AM
5 points
in reply to: TheTerribleTrivium’s comment on: Karma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook
Basically all of them, with some modifications (e.g. a significantly reduced QM sequence), and with some reorganizing to improve flow.

alexvermeer Dec 13, 2013, 11:58 PM
5 points
in reply to: passive_fist’s comment on: Karma awards for proofreaders of the Less Wrong Sequences ebook
It will probably be available as pay-what-you-want, similar to the Facing the Intelligence Explosion ebook.

alexvermeer 11 Dec 2013 3:33 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Gvaerg’s comment on: Open thread for December 9 − 16, 2013
Hmm, not sure why that’s happening. I’ll look into it.

alexvermeer 8 Dec 2013 0:20 UTC
5 points
on: Kurzban et al. on opportunity cost models of mental fatigue and resource-based models of willpower
This is exciting and interesting stuff. A good one-sentence summary from the paper:

In sum, many experiences, particularly the more or less unpleasant sensations discussed here (e.g., effort, boredom, fatigue), can be profitably thought of as resulting from (1) monitoring mechanisms that tally opportunity costs, which (2) cause an aversive state that corresponds in magnitude to the cost computed, which (3) enters into decision-making, acting as a kind of “vote,” influencing the decision ultimately taken.

I’m trying to get my head around ways I could use this to sustain better and longer levels of focus, reduce boredom, etc. Two questions come to mind, that as far as I can tell have not been investigated in detail yet, and to which I don’t have answers:
1. What, exactly, are the sorts of things my brain decides are more important than what I’m currently doing? Is it things like “I’m not signaling the right things to the people around me”, “need food”, etc.?
2. What are good ways to “reset” my internal monitoring mechanisms and thus return to a non-aversive state? I presume the answer is some kind of reward or positive feedback?
Basically, is it possible to trick this internal cost-benefit analysis into being focused for long periods of time?