Cthulhoo

Karma: 969

Cthulhoo Jan 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.

Cthulhoo Jan 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.

Cthulhoo Jan 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

CthulhooJan 30, 2013, 8:10 AM

−6 points

16 comments1 min readLW link

Cthulhoo Dec 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.

Cthulhoo Dec 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!

Cthulhoo Nov 29, 2012, 10:01 AM
2 points
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: 2012 Survey Results
It’s indeed working, thank you!

Cthulhoo Nov 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.

Cthulhoo Nov 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).

Cthulhoo Nov 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 :)

Cthulhoo Nov 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.

Cthulhoo Oct 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.

Cthulhoo Oct 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.

Cthulhoo Oct 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.

Cthulhoo Oct 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)

Cthulhoo Oct 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).

Cthulhoo Sep 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.

Cthulhoo Sep 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?

Cthulhoo Sep 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).

Cthulhoo Sep 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.

Cthulhoo

[LINK] Ob­vi­ously tran­shu­man­ist SMBC comic

[LINK] Obviously transhumanist SMBC comic