Blackened

Karma: 74

LessWrong IQ Survey

BlackenedDec 2, 2012, 9:53 PM

−2 points

59 comments1 min readLW link

Blackened Nov 26, 2012, 10:46 PM
12 points
on: 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Took the survey + all the extra questions. I just noticed this thread today. In my opinion, it is underadvertised.

Concerning the IQ test, I’ve seen this one before and I know it’s not reliable, because it is not based on a statistic and there’s no reason to believe it’s reliable in the first place. There are only two culture-fair free online IQ tests: JCTI and CFNSE. I am extremely curious to see the average score for LW.

Here’s how to make sense out of your IQ score: http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx

Blackened Nov 23, 2012, 6:11 PM
2 points
on: Open Thread, November 16–30, 2012
How do I improve my persuasion skills?

How do I translate a valid logical argument to a persuasive, intuitive argument that would work for most people? I have read a lot of psychological literature. I have also gotten to the point where I can recognize an intuitive argument that would be persuasive. So, I can recognise my arguments as non-persuasive before I say them and I avoid most debates with people who aren’t convinced by scientific evidence and stuff that works for rationalists and is technically a good argument. However, generating a persuasive argument isn’t the same as evaluating the persuasiveness of already existing arguments.

Any good, readable, concise literature on this?

Blackened Nov 8, 2012, 4:19 PM
0 points
on: Open Thread, November 1-15, 2012
Any tips for productivity (links to good articles are highly appreciated)? I was thinking that I knew all the main simple rules, until a few months ago I discovered nootropics.

Blackened Nov 8, 2012, 1:58 PM
0 points
on: Does My Vote Matter?
I have thought about this, to destroy my past erroneous belief that a single vote doesn’t make a difference. Imagine that you know a secret that few people know, which tells you that the right candidate to vote is definitely candidate X. All the people who know the secret also might think in the same way as you—that a single vote doesn’t matter. But the difference between all of those people voting and no one of them voting is winning the election. So there’s the two situations:
1. Nobody votes, you lose the election.
2. Everyone votes, you win the election.
The benefit of your desired party winning the election is greater than the cost to go and vote. But if your vote adds only 0.01% chance of winning, which is not enough to outweigh the time spent for voting, why is it better for everyone who knows the secret if all of them voted?

The answer is that by voting, you don’t only increase that chance by 0.01% for you, you also increase it for everyone else. So if there was two of you, you can both vote and each of you will gain a double increase for the same cost. But if you’re altruistic, then the most logical thing would be to vote.

Sorry if my idea is repeated in the article or in some of the comments, I didn’t read everything.

Blackened Oct 12, 2012, 9:39 AM
0 points
on: [Link] “Fewer than X% of Americans know Y”
I remember when a few years ago, on the news on TV, there was an article about how 40-70% (forgot the exact number) of the interviewed people said that Beethoven is a dog. I was frustrated at how shocked the other people in the room were.

Blackened Oct 4, 2012, 3:37 PM
0 points
in reply to: Epiphany’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
I’m talking about personal statement. Not sure if this is the same as cover letter, but I do know that they require it. And it appears that mine is going to significantly increase the overall quality of the CV.

Blackened Oct 3, 2012, 10:11 AM
5 points
in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
Why do you think so? I would personally like more people who are actively talking about their good and bad sides, although I’m not sure if I’d do that in an interview, because it might mean they don’t know what appears to be the most effective strategy.

Blackened Oct 2, 2012, 9:20 PM
4 points
on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
I’m writing my CV now and was wondering whether I should indeed be “as confident as possible” (which basically means, according to some people, that I’m limited to sentences that don’t even contain words like “but”, “mostly”, “although” etc.). Overconfidence is a killer of rationality, and displaying it might signal that you’re irrational. I would personally trust much more someone who actively doubts in many things he says, rather than someone who is always confident. However, some people say the opposite.

I was wondering how should I approach my CV? Would it attract more rational employers if it’s more self-skeptical? I’m not going to take it to a degree where it’s as self-skeptical as I usually get when I give my honest advice on something (pointing out as many assumptions and dependencies on sources of information as possible, and sounding like nobody else I know, based on a very quick search). But still wondering whether this would get me a more irrational employer, and would some of you actually trust more someone who sounds confident.

Blackened Oct 2, 2012, 6:11 PM
0 points
in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
That’s because I wanted to see what their programmers study and computer science was the closest I found. I assume that their programmers would study that? And that it’s better than study software engineering in a significantly worse university?

Blackened Oct 1, 2012, 12:13 PM
2 points
on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
Any good books on mathematics for software engineers? I’ve been looking at the best universities in UK, they all have much more mathematics in their degree than what I’m taught.

Also, any good books for probability theory and all the things needed for AI development? I’m doing this course: https://www.edx.org/courses/BerkeleyX/CS188.1x/2012_Fall/about

Edit: These are the programs I’ve been talking about.

Imperial college: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ugprospectus/facultiesanddepartments/computing/computingcourses http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/computing/teaching/ug/mengcompse

Cambridge: http://www.study.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/compsci/

Oxford: http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/courses/computer_science/computer_science_.html

I assume they teach mathematics, because it’s useful for software engineers.

Blackened Sep 19, 2012, 8:42 PM
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, September 1-15, 2012
I didn’t say that sexuality is entirely shaped by this, only that it’s influenced. Say, when I read that hourglass-shaped women bodies are supposed to be attractive, I started noticing that I think I’m attracted to that, although one can argue that I used to be before I read it, so I only started noticing that. However, it worked for me for other things, many of which are not liked by many people.

Blackened Sep 18, 2012, 8:24 PM
4 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, September 1-15, 2012
Sexuality is a strange thing. If you consciously think something is sexy, it then becomes sexy for you. At least that’s how it works for me, I’m generalizing from one example here.

Blackened Sep 11, 2012, 6:47 PM
3 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open Thread, September 1-15, 2012
That would only makes sense if vitamin D is the only one that has any real significant effects or if the other ones who do, are too included in small dosages (this doesn’t seem improbable at all).

I remember seeing studies which doubt that vitamin C would help healing from common cold. No wonder if most other are as insignificant.

Also, just checked some pills of vitamins (for hair, skin and nails) I bought 1-2 years ago. It says “take 3 times a day” and it has 100 IU of vitamin D. It’s also apparently 50% of RDA—most other vitamins/minerals in it are up to 200-250%, and my vitamin D pills are 1250% RDA. Mystery solved, I guess.

Blackened Sep 9, 2012, 11:43 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, September 1-15, 2012
Well, so it was a good decision to play lottery after all!

(I’m joking)

But anyway, congratulations for the success and thanks for the contributions! I personally am going to donate huge amounts of money on similar causes if I get rich. It seems to be the most rational way (according to my goals) to spend them.

Blackened Sep 9, 2012, 11:30 AM
12 points
on: Open Thread, September 1-15, 2012
I am very confused right now.

A few years ago, I learned that multivitamins are ineffective, according to research. At that point, I have heard of the benefits of many of them, they were individually praised like some would praise anything that’s good enough to take by itself, so I was thinking that multivitamins should be something ultra-effective that only irrational people won’t take. When I learned they were ineffective, I hypothesized that vitamins in pills simply don’t get processed well.

Recently, I was reading a few articles about Vitamin D—I thought I should definitely have it, because the sources were rather scientific and were praising it a lot. I got it in the form of softgels, because gwern suggested it. When they arrived, I saw it’s very similar to pills, so I thought it might be ineffective and decided to take another look at Wikipedia/Multivitamins. Then I got very confused.

Apparently, the multivitamins DO get processed! And yes, they ARE found to have no significant effect (even in double-blind placebo trials), But at the same time, we have pages saying that 50-60% of the people are deprived from Vitamin D and that it seriously reduces the risk of cancer, among with other things (including a heart disease). Can anyone explain what’s going on?

Blackened Sep 7, 2012, 11:39 AM
0 points
in reply to: ArisKatsaris’s comment on: Open Thread, September 1-15, 2012

it says that accupuncture (both “real” and “sham”) was seen to be effective in combatting pain

Oh damn I missed that. I got too distracted by the Effectiveness research section. So there you go, I found a reasonable explanation, although I was more looking forward to some sort of fundamental bias that effects everyone, which I must have somehow missed. Would have been a good explanation to some things.

Still, I’m waiting for someone to appear with a very good hypothesis of the cancer case. I’m not saying there has to necessarily be one, but there might be. Placebo was in fact a very good hypothesis, but I’m not sure if you can cure cancer with placebo (“Yes, you can” would close the case).

Edit: I looked it up, apparently placebo doesn’t affect cancer. Surprising.

Blackened Sep 7, 2012, 10:27 AM
0 points
on: Open Thread, September 1-15, 2012
I need help in explaining this case to myself.

I just talked to someone and she praised her doctor, because she complained from chest (armpit) pain, and the doctor, untraditinally, cured her with accupuncture on the spot. I asked her and she said the pain was going on for a few weeks (and was quite intense), and it disappeared on the next day. Some bias IS expected of her (more so than from the average person).

Maybe it’s just random chance plus unconscious exaggeration, but I doubt it could have been so strong. After I started writing this, I looked up on Wikipedia to confirm that there are no working forms of accupuncture, and this gave me the idea that it might have been placebo. Any other explanations I couldn’t think of? I find some similar cases to be quite surrealistic, given the premise that the treatments used were proven to be ineffective. My own grandmother was supposedly sick of cancer and the doctors told her she had no more tnah a month of life, then some alternative medicine practicioner told her to drink turtle blood and she did so and she’s alive now, more than 10 years later. It’s extremely unlikely that my father lied about this, but I thought it was incompetent doctors—incompetency amongst physicians is quite common, according to my personal anecdotes and the theory I use to support it.

Blackened Aug 12, 2012, 4:22 PM
0 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open Thread, July 1-15, 2012
Ha, I got the idea for nootropics from your dual n-back article in the first place.

I’ll certainly try some nicotine gums, but would that be strong? I’d like something strong, like Adderall, but I know that Adderall is illegal without prescription (damn stupid laws), and I will likely never be in the state of having an ADHD diagnosis.

Blackened Aug 11, 2012, 10:25 PM
0 points
on: Open Thread, July 1-15, 2012
Can anyone recommend me any nootropics for raising concentration (executive functions, working memory) that are effective, legal in the UK, not too expensive, and without too much side effects? My concentration is quite bad, if that’s relevant.