Arshuni

Karma: 41

Arshuni 9 May 2016 6:11 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Elo’s comment on: Open Thread May 9 - May 15 2016
Are you in distress?

Arshuni 9 May 2016 6:11 UTC
6 points
on: Open Thread May 9 - May 15 2016
Which psychological findings have great practical implications, if they are indeed true?

Overjustification comes to mind, as an example.

On a related note: if it is true, does that suggest that, as far as we take the diminishing utility of money for granted, by using extrinsic rewards, we are reducing the number of extreme performers? (in so far as we can’t keep giving exponential rewards, and money/tokens/what have you motivates in proportion to their utility) I have seen it argued, that if you are not doing well enough to be expecting a non-interrupted stream of extrinsic rewards, you probably shouldn’t be doing that thing. Does that lose any validity in this context?

Still, it seems like whether it’s true should have some implications.

A more certain finding seems to be the poor transfer of learning. It SEEMS like this SHOULD have implications for the education system.

What else would? (like, even if stereotype threat existed as a significant force, it seems far less clear to me how that finding could realistically impact any policies or our behaviors)

Arshuni 5 May 2016 23:55 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: A Second Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom
I use org-drill, which, AFAIK, does not collect such data.

Arshuni 5 May 2016 9:26 UTC
9 points
on: Open Thread May 2 - May 8, 2016
What skills are overwhelmingly easier to learn in institutionalized context?

(e.g math wouldn’t count, because even if motivation is circumvented as an issue in institutions, you should be theoretically to study everything at home. Neither would necessarily the handling of some kind of lab equipment, if there was some clear documentation available for you, and (assuming that you took the efforts to remember it) if the transfer to practice was straightforward (so pushing buttons and changing settings would be straightforward, while the precise motions of carving a specific kind of motive into wood would be less so))

Arshuni 4 May 2016 18:36 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: A Second Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom
I honestly don’t know. I would say quite much, but it does not feel like that: I do not review all my cards at one time in the day (I have notifications periodically nagging me if there are still due cards, so I don’t forget, and they aren’t too much bother) Another nice trick is to make more, smaller decks. When I see that there are 120 cards in one deck for review, I am not that ecstatic about that. If those same cards are split into 4 decks with 30-30 cars, I don’t even think about it. Generally, 20 cards are play, they don’t even register, and 80 seems to be the other end, that starts to feel a bit too much. (And the actual number of cards never changed)

If I somehow miss a day, though, that can make things indeed messy.

Arshuni 3 May 2016 17:28 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: A Second Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom
For BodyParts3D, there is a wikimedia category for a good few animations (it’s the place I actually first met it). (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Animations_using_BodyParts3D_polygon_data) You can download whole categories with (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Imker_%28batch_download%29).. For how well does that category cover the desired items, I don’t know.

Arshuni 2 May 2016 16:43 UTC
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: A Second Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom
Tangentially related: I have found the ease of creating cards one of the most important factors determining the speed at which I learn. For example in anatomy, I started with making cards from a photographic atlas, but this took way too long. (I still desire to make cards from them, since they use actual photos, not simple schematics). For the later, I had to manually cut out the images, and extract the labeling. In contrast, what I ended up using was Gray’s Anatomy for Students Flash Cards. It’s a 817 page book, with most of it in being alternating pages of images and corresponding names.

This was much easier to make (digital) flash cards from. With pdftk, I could separate the pages into a file of all images and a file of all assorted labels. With pdftotext I could easiliy convert the pdf of labels into text (which I could simply, ~automatically form into flash cards) while I used imagemagick to extract the images themselves. (with all the borders, etc, cut off.) (while I have done a part of the conversion process manually (some names were split into multiple lines, and there were minor irregularities in the text format of the file, so I manually made each section into a separate flashcard (Inserting headers of a card, deleting newline characters if splitting an item into two, and marking the beginnings and endings of clozes), but I am certain that that could’ve been easily automated, with a proper understanding of regexps. (learning which would’ve been more economical on my time)). With all this, it took me 13 days until I had first exposure to all 3630 cards, probably significantly less, than if I had to do everything manually.

So, whenever you can, automatize.

(Before this, I used to extract glossaries of books manually. Obviously, I use the same tools for that too, now.)

I learned to love books which had great glossaries, and great summaries. Some are so great, that by reading the summaries, you don’t even have to read the actual chapters. (Which may be artificially inflated in length because of a length goal the publishers set, or because it is more targeted towards entertainment value, than for quick conveying of the ideas behind them. A quick skimming may still be worth it, though, even if in preceding chapters you established that their compression is pretty lossless.) Only tables are better.

One thing I want to add to my current toolset is a way to automatically extract wiktionary definitions: sometimes the whole idea is in there, but either way, speaking the language of your desired subject by the time you encounter the more in depth books is handy. (this, coupled with a trickle system, AKA (~20) word(s) of the day)

I used to try to avoid duplicate cards, but I learned to love redundancy.

Also, mind sharing your cards for the holonyms?

Arshuni 25 Apr 2016 17:53 UTC
3 points
on: Open Thread April 25 - May 1, 2016
What non-english content do you consume?

I want to try out a new system I came up with: a ‘trickle’ system, with some kind of interesting, but short text landing in my email box(/or comparable) each day, the words the text uses automatically compared to the list of words I already know, and the disjunction automatically queried from wiktionary and made into one sided flashcards. (reason being: I realized I cared for receptive abilities, but not so much for being able to express my thoughts in a different language. If it was a free action, great, but I feel like it usually is not.) And these words learned BEFORE reading the text. (as to avoid having too many breaks in the flow)

Arshuni 11 Apr 2016 23:07 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open Thread April 11 - April 17, 2016
Handle it without too much damage.

Distance, I don’t really know. When I think about living in the same city, I instinctively think about my city, which allows for getting from one point to another relatively fast. Like, less than 15 minutes.

I think you can usually buy land in the same general area, so I would go as far as to say ‘in really comfortable walking distance’.

But how one’s feelings change as the distance increases would be worth going into more.

Arshuni 11 Apr 2016 21:25 UTC
2 points
on: Open Thread April 11 - April 17, 2016
Parenting/Housing

I have been playing with the thought of instead of buying a house for a big family, maybe I should buy a small land/house for me and my potential fiancee, and seperate lands/houses for my children.

At what age would you be confident that your child could handle living alone-ish?

I plan to have a large family (this is coming from a childless person, so make of it what you will, but I am entertaining the idea of double digits...so what this means in practice, is that their number probably won’t be bottlenecked by my willingness, and thus, the future possibilities vary quite a lot, and as such, it’s harder to plan for them). I think the standard route is to buy a big-ass house which will fit all your future-kids. But, when they fly out of the nest, you are left with a house too big for you to maintain, and frankly, I wouldn’t care much for a big house, if only I would be in the picture. Also, I would probably be delaying starting a family, until I’ve got enough money for the bigger house.

Now, I can think of some advantages to this (assume that the costs are equivalent):
- I wouldn’t have to sell our house once they move.
- They would get to have their own houses: 1. land tenure is god (and oh my, did you ever see how involved kids get the moment you allow them to customize their rooms more to their liking? (even in dorm rooms, posters go everywhere!) I feel like they could really make something great out of a piece of dirt they can call their own. Having some free time helps a lot with that, too.) 2. past a certain age, kids really value some privacy
- They get to learn to be more independent early on
- There is an age until which kids are comfortable with sharing a room, and you have all this time to find a piece of land, so you will probably find better deals than if you’d to choose from the options on the market RIGHT NOW
- Getting together for a ‘barn-raising’ is freaking great!
Now, I’ll be honest, I didn’t think too much of why this might be a bad idea. There seems to be a spectrum from sharing a room, through using different rooms in the same house, or different buildings on the same family land, which I think are all pretty standard, to living in seperate houses on different plots. It does not seem THAT extreme to me? Now, if they were to live in a different city, I suppose I would get more uncomfortable?

So, uh, any thoughts? Is there something I did’nt think of?

Seperate but related ideas:
- phasing in/out liberties/monetary allowances gradually, as they grow up: when kids come of a pre-agreed upon age, you may start gradually decreasing the monetary support they get. The standard I usually encountered was that the moment kids start working, they start paying a fixed amount as ‘rent’...or they can continue paying nothing.
- treating child/student-ness as a job: with allowances adjusted by performance (also involving them with the family business/whatever as such)

Arshuni 4 Apr 2016 7:17 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Arshuni’s comment on: Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016
Self-promotion

Should I just apply the counter-signalling model?

Sometimes you can win so big, that you need not say anything. Other times, you DO need to say something to be noticed. The problem is, nobody exactly LIKES a braggart. The question is, how do you find an appropriate weighting between these two? Does this change if you’ve already managed to win big in one different field?

Arshuni 4 Apr 2016 7:13 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Arshuni’s comment on: Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016
Unsolicited advice/interventions

You can really save someone a lot of time, effort, or pain. Or help them improve.

OTOH, sometimes you ARE wrong, unsolicited advice does not always come across well, and… well, you probably gave them advice because you care about them, but also, being the guy who always knows better (whether true or not, rarely matters) does not help your relationship.

I think giving advice only if asked, and otherwise, rewarding good behavior is A solution. But for example non-alcoholist me thinks I would prefer people to take a more interventionist approach, if I were to regularly take drinking to an excess.

Arshuni 4 Apr 2016 7:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Arshuni’s comment on: Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016
Revenge. It does not often come up in my life.

I think the supposed best strategy would be to be known to be a vengeful person, who ruins you if you cross him, but only if it is really a valid reason, so people are not afraid to enter a social relationship with you. (only hating for the right reasons)

OTOH, do people actually differentiate at this level? If I hear someone dealt sweet revenge, I am not sure my next question is necessarily going to be ‘was it for the right reason?’

Arshuni 4 Apr 2016 7:01 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Arshuni’s comment on: Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016
In telling stories about acquaintances, should I be explicit with names? It helps follow the story, makes it more personal, and follow up stories paint a better overall picture. On introductions, ‘Oh, I’ve heard a lot about you!’ is great, too. On the other hand, sometimes you end up telling stories that may be slightly embarrassing for some concerned. In being explicit with their names, you may end up making the recipient less likely to open up to you (or I would assume so: I don’t remember if I ever decided to be less open to someone merely because that, even after being surprised by hearing a story back from a third person. OTOH, I did definitely think deeply about my relationship with people who have a habit of shit-talking people behind their backs.)

Any other considerations? Which would you consider more appropriate?

Arshuni 4 Apr 2016 6:51 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Arshuni’s comment on: Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016
Specific examples go here (add yours), so they can be discussed separately

Arshuni 4 Apr 2016 6:50 UTC
0 points
on: Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016
Oftentimes, I am confused because I didn’t lock in my algorithm. This makes my behavior incongruent.

Arshuni 28 Mar 2016 6:32 UTC
6 points
in reply to: SquirrelInHell’s comment on: Abuse of Productivity Systems
I found the structure of your website interesting. Are those flashcards there? How well do they work for really internalizing things?

Arshuni 21 Mar 2016 5:25 UTC
8 points
on: Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016
How many of you guys keep a journal? How many of you would like to? What do you specifically write down?

I feel like it should help, but I have trouble coming up with a structure with which it could: Opening up a journal, with separate sections for work done, (and TODOs for the future, and how these two diverged), exercise, and others seems more useful than one with a massed ‘Dear Diary’ format.

Arshuni 17 Mar 2016 17:35 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Brillyant’s comment on: Open thread, Mar. 14 - Mar. 20, 2016
https://osf.io/hy58n/

There is the data. I am not sure what was the final criterion for the report, but sorting by P.value.R seems to have 33 findings with p under 0.05. (Maybe I misremembered the number?… also, I am unsure for what a p value of 0 is supposed to mean.) I didn’t go too deep into what all the different columns represent, but there seems to be one with descriptions of the findings.

Arshuni 14 Mar 2016 18:29 UTC
1 point
on: Open thread, Mar. 14 - Mar. 20, 2016
I want to make a desktop map application of my city, kinda like Paradox Interactive’s games. My city is 280 km^2, and I would like it at a street level detail. I want to be able to just overlay multiple layers of different maps. What I have in mind is displaying predicted tram locations, purchasing power maps, and pretty much any information I can find on one map, and combining these at will, with a reasonable speed (and I would much prefer it to be seamless, like in a game, and not displaying white spots at the edges while it is loading)

Does anyone know of some toolset for such?