Cthulhoo

• CthulhooJan 30, 2013, 1:01 PM

  6 points

  on: The Zeroth Skillset

  The topic looks promising. This post already achieved a result: it made me realized that SA is quite likely improvable trough training, and not some sort of magical skill someone is born with (see Sherlock Holmes and pretty much every detective in every detective story). May seem obvious in retrospect, but reading these few lines made me aware of this chached belief of mine. I’m looking forward to reading more about it.

• CthulhooJan 30, 2013, 12:53 PM

  −2 points

  in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: [LINK] Ob­vi­ously tran­shu­man­ist SMBC comic

  In which case he’d be right, but for the wrong reasons.

  What if I offered Zach Wiener a ridicolous amount of money to buy the domain and make the link permanent? It very likely happened in some Everett Branch anyway, so I’m not 100% wrong, depending on how you define a measure in MW.

  Or I must just admit that I didn’t double check...link corrected, thank you (also RichardKennaway).

  Edit

  I see this is getting downvoted, I don’t particularly care about the Karma, but I hope that I haven’t offend anybody, because this wasn’t my intent (English is not my first language, and sometimes I’m not 100% sure about how my writing comes off). In this case I apologize.

• CthulhooJan 30, 2013, 12:47 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: [LINK] Ob­vi­ously tran­shu­man­ist SMBC comic

  Sorry for the double posting, I was a bit in a hurry before, and didn’t check, which in retrospect was obviously a mistake, given how popular SMBC is here.

[LINK] Ob­vi­ously tran­shu­man­ist SMBC comic

• CthulhooDec 28, 2012, 8:53 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: A1987dM’s comment on: [LINK] Forty Years of String The­ory: Reflect­ing on the Foundations

  Yes, results form the LHC have been disappointing, so far. This talk pretty much summarized the official results up to a few months ago, and they’re not encouraging. We’re pushing the boundaries of the mass region implied by the Higgs mass hierarchy problem. What’s confusing is that we would expect to find something in that region, even if it’s not SUSY, but up to now nothing popped up.

• CthulhooDec 28, 2012, 8:14 AM

  31 points

  on: The Re­la­tion Pro­jec­tion Fal­lacy and the pur­pose of life

  I bet most people here have realized this explicitly or implicitly

  A maybe tangential comment: what I often appreciate on Lesswrong is the capability of certain posts to put order to some vague ideas or concept I have in my mind. This is one of those posts. Good work!

• CthulhooNov 29, 2012, 10:01 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: 2012 Sur­vey Results

  It’s indeed working, thank you!

• CthulhooNov 29, 2012, 8:21 AM

  21 points

  on: 2012 Sur­vey Results

  Before even reading the full details, I want to congratulate to you for the impressive amount of work. The survey period is possibly my favorite time of the year on lesswrong!

  EDIT: The links for the raw csv/​xls data at the bottom don’t seem to work for me.

• CthulhooNov 9, 2012, 4:33 PM

  13 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  My prior for Yvain to be a good guy was high enough for me to take the risk (though I had briefly the same thought of yours).

• CthulhooNov 9, 2012, 4:28 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: drnickbone’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  Same for me… missed by 60 years but stated 30% of accuracy. I’m actually emotionally confused about the whole matter :)

• CthulhooNov 9, 2012, 4:26 PM

  19 points

  on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  Done, except for the unreasonably long extra credit section, mostly due to not having time to take the tests now and not knowing when I could possibly manage to do it in the future.

  Good work Yvain, it’s been a pleasure to take the survey, and it will be a plesure to see the results.

• CthulhooOct 30, 2012, 8:51 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: MileyCyrus’s comment on: Econ­omy gos­sip open thread

  I do work for an external consultant firm /​ software house, and, to be honest a lot of the software is outsourced (which is good, because I like my job as it is). By now, I’ve got quite a bit of experience in working with one of those insurance giants, and the biggest problem is really the usual “political” one of getting to the right hooks. There is a lot of room for advanced economical models and the related software, and now probably the best choice is to work as a consultant. My suggestion is to look for medium size firms, since the biggest one (e.g Accenture, Ernst&Young) tend to have lower career opportunities, and usually you have to do a lot of boring work as a novice before having the chance to do something more interesting.

• CthulhooOct 15, 2012, 10:06 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Epiphany’s comment on: Rea­sons for some­one to “ig­nore” you

  Again (see answer to shminux comment), it’s possible that I’m exaggerating people feelings in this situation, and nobody really cares if I answer late to them. Reversing the situation, I would probably be fine to receive a late answer to a (non-urgent) question.

• CthulhooOct 15, 2012, 10:02 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Rea­sons for some­one to “ig­nore” you

  This seems a very practical and probably effective approach. I fear that in a more general environment this might come off as rude, but it’s also possible that the same thought process that sometimes leads me into the above cycle is making me misjudge the possible people reactions. No way to know if I don’t try, I guess.

• CthulhooOct 10, 2012, 8:16 AM

  32 points

  on: Signs you’re on LW too much

  “You might have been on LW for too much if...”

  • you read the world “cult” and feel the urge to substitute it with “phyg”

  • you hear a misuse of the word “rationality” and it’s like cat nails scratching on a blackboard

  • 99.9% of the time the word “rationality” is misused

  • you often try to explain to your friends that Einstein wasn’t that smart

  • your answer to the question “are you certain?” is a 30 minutes dissertation on probability

  • your answers to a “true or false” test are 30 pages long dissertations on map and territory

  • you try to pay the rent with your beliefs (the landlord might not be happy)

• CthulhooOct 9, 2012, 2:56 PM

  10 points

  in reply to: cata’s comment on: Rea­sons for some­one to “ig­nore” you

  I have left more than one online community for similar reason. The flow chart goes roughly like this:

  • receive a question /​ be addressed in a comment

  • don’t have time/​don’t want to answer right now

  • time passes: now any response will feel weird

  • I can’t really answer to other people/​threads if I didn’t answer the previous one

  • only solution: leave the community for some time

  I perfectly know this is absolutely stupid, and I try to avoid this behavior as much as I can, but it still pops up sometimes (still have to fully hack myself).

• CthulhooSep 29, 2012, 3:54 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: metaphysicist’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  Thank you, this is turning out a lot of material that I will definitely read.

• CthulhooSep 28, 2012, 11:00 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: metaphysicist’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  The arguments go to the concepts’ coherence.

  Ok, this starts to sound more interesting, thank you for the reply. I tried to briefly google for “Piercian limit”, though and it didn’t turn out anything relevant. Any quick reference?

• CthulhooSep 28, 2012, 10:55 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  This is something I understand and I can agree with. But it’s a very practical problem, like making Europeans and Americans agree on the meaning of the word “football”. It’s very likely that I’m still missing something, though (see metaphysicist reply).

• CthulhooSep 27, 2012, 5:41 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: pragmatist’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  The three theories of truth are different attempts to taboo the word “truth”.

  Isn’t this the point? Tabooing “truth”, one can see that the theories really speak about (slightly) different concepts. Going back to your previous example, if one theory claims the scientists have reached the truth and the second doesn’t, how does it change the reality? You can easily define some new words to correspond to the different concepts, and refer to the appropriate label under the different circumstances.