I would be interested. It’d be a bit of a drive, but I would make time :) It’s good to know that there are more of you out here.
DanPeverley
Karma: 125
“Becominggaia” as a website name set off my alarms, and it only got worse when I read one of his papers. The author appears to believe that greater intelligence is necessarily equated with greater benevolence, thus limiting any need for fear of existential risk. I skimmed though, and I admit I was a bit biased from the onset by the use of Kant’s philosophy, so draw your own conclusions.
It is a royal pain in the ass, and I certainly don’t view it as some sort of adorable quirk. It hinders my social life and occasionally makes me feel completely incompetent. Getting lost when you’re on your own is one thing, but getting lost with a date is a completely different level of embarrassment. I’m not sure where you got the idea that I think this is some sort of “fun aspect” of my personality, it’s a patch of uselessness in my brain which I have to work around all the time. The reason I pointed out some positive characteristics was because this was a thread about neural irregularities, and a person who had poor spatial memory and sucked in other areas too would just be stupid, not that interesting at all. Maybe I could have just talked about my spatial memory problems, I guess, but I thought that detail seemed pertinent. It wasn’t like I spent very long talking about my positives, only 27 words out of 154 dealt with the positive characteristics mentioned. While signalling influences what we do, not everything is signalling by necessity. For instance, I could say that here, and in your earlier reply, you are attempting to set yourself apart from the group as a contrarian, attempting to score yourself some sweet, sweet internet status as a free thinker. Also, just for fun, some of the methods I am using to “FIX THIS” and their relative success.
1: Practice getting lost, find way back to set points. I intentionally leave one of my paths (GPS in my car in case I fail), and drive off into side streets, making essentially random turns. Then, I try to get back to my path. So far, I have had incredibly limited success with this method. I usually end up having to arbitrarily choose turns until I pop back onto the main road, but often even when I make it back without GPS assistance, it is not because I knew where I was, but because I got lucky. I haven’t seen any real improvement in this area.
2: Map study. I look at maps of the area, identify main roads, and then try to get places. It doesn’t work. While it’s better than going blind, I end up missing most of the visual cues needed to get anywhere. I’ve had to use this method mostly in live fire situations when I couldn’t get my GPS, and four times out of five I’ve had to pull over and call for directions. When I have a map with me, I can get there, but I’ll make several wrong turns and have to return to the correct path multiple times.
3: Avoiding the problem through assistance. My GPS is wonderful. I love it so much, and it loves me. I can get places, and it is able to help even after I’ve ignored its sage advice and made an incorrect turn due to operator error or traffic factors. A passenger who knows where they are going is around equivalent in terms of usefulness. However, these only help me when I’m with other people or in a car. In situations where I am on foot and alone, I give myself significant amounts of time to get to my destinations, because I will probably get lost (Planning fallacy means I am occasionally late anyway).
By all means, suggest how I can fix this issue. I don’t mean that in a passive aggressive way (maybe a little, I’m a bit annoyed), it’d be nice to hear some alternative strategies. I want to be awesome, smart is better than stupid in all areas, and I want to be better. I have changed things about myself before, but this trait is annoying and persistent.
I have an incredibly poor memory regarding spatial relations. I still have to look where the night stand is by my bed is to avoid hitting it, and it’s been there for more than a year now. I get lost constantly, I can memorize routes from point A to point B, but I can’t extrapolate routes between points based on location, because I have no general idea of location outside of specific routes and landmarks. Given that my verbal and visual memory are superb, and that I can absorb relatively large amounts of information in short amounts of time for most things, my inability to get anywhere without a GPS or absurdly specific directions is met with disbelief and amazement on the part of those who know me. I experience very strong sensations when reading, not just visual but the other senses as well, but I imagine that’s not too uncommon.
You are completely right. I’ll fix that right now.
For me, one of the most enlightening experiences I had in high school was learning how to play black-jack in the weeks after the AP Calculus Test. With the test done, our awesome teacher taught us all how to count cards and set up tables for us to play, and had us all keep track of our “winnings”. Everyday, some students would play control, using a chart of statistically optimal moves to decide whether to hit, stand, split, or double down. I learned in a very intuitive way that making the correct decisions doesn’t always lead to good results, and more importantly that that didn’t invalidate the correct decisions. Control group pretty much always won overall, even if some kids got ahead in the short term it was better to play the way the math said to. We all enjoyed the experience, and learned some gambling and life skills while we were at it. She was definitely my favorite math teacher :)
I can’t even imagine what sort of hell would break loose in my Politics class if I were to profess a belief merely in the possibility of measurable differences in intelligence between races. Any logic would be ignored, immediately branded as justification for a bigoted agenda. Politics truly is the mindkiller.
Hmmm… this seems like a fascinating project. The ego boost I got from qualifying is enough to motivate me to sign up :) .
You made a statement with undue confidence, and the votes would appear to indicate that at the very least, this large subset is not monitoring this thread.
Quirrel is starting to get antsy… things are going to become very interesting once his term as Battle Magic professor is over. The Tracy girl… I don’t like her. This is not to say I don’t like the writing associated with her (great for comic relief, I’ll EAT YOUR SOUL), it may have to do more with her being a vapid girl character in “competition” (within her own mind, anyway) with a smart, eminently likable Hermione Granger… I believe I may be in serious danger of becoming one of those shipper people.
I thought of it was hilarious. The dissonance between the two parts caused the humor for me. Then again, I wasn’t really looking at this sort of thing in the nineties, so maybe I haven’t had a chance for my joviality to mature sufficiently.
Salutations, LessWrong!
I am Daniel Peverley, I lurked for a few months and joined not too long ago. I was first introduced to this site via HPatMOR, my first and so far only foray into the world of fan-fiction. I’ve been raised as a mormon, and I’ve been a vague unbeliever for a few years, but the information on this site really solidified the doubts and problems I had with my religion. Just knowing how to properly label common logical fallacies has been vastly helpful in my life, and a few of the posts on social dynamics have likewise been of great utility. I’m seventeen, headed into my senior year of highschool, and on-track to attend a high end university. My hobbies include Warhammer 40k, watching anime, running, exercising, studying chinese, video games, webcomics, and reading and writing speculative fiction and poetry. I live in the skeptic-impoverished Salt Lake City area. I look forward to posting, but I’ll probably LURK MOAR for a while just to make sure what I have to say is worth reading.
78%? Depending on the difficulty, that could either be equivalent to an eight year old child or a dedicated gamer. I wonder how long it will take until they get a computer that can beat Koreans at Starcraft :)
I’m a pretty huge fan of the Transhuman Space series of rpg books. It’s a mostly hard science fiction setting with lots of biotechnology, terraforming, and artificial intelligence. There is no faster than light travel, psychic powers, or aliens. One of the things I love about it the most is the way it presents a wide variety of future viewpoints, it doesn’t try to thrust the values of the game creator onto you. I would highly suggest it just for reading value, but if you can find people to play with that’s awesome (I’m in a game right now, its pretty dang sweet.
I would obtain a small library of textbooks on academic subjects and read them all, then reread them, then do all the exercises contained therein several times. In my current state, being without a will of iron, I tend toward less efficient and detailed learning methods like online articles and wikipedia for extra education. I would take maybe five years and revolutionize a field of science after studying it continually, with regard for only my health and basic socialization. Eight hours of sleep, three hours of internet, movies and videogames, and thirteen hours studying and improving on widgets would make for an impressive work output, considering that that would be thirteen hours uninterrupted by distractions, procrastination, or sudden desires to scream.
Homestuck is an amazing example of what you can do with the web format. Flash animations, high quality music, and an intensely intricate plot with strong characterization and stable time loops (and some unstable ones) are just a few of the awesome things that Homestuck has. Andrew Hussy is a uniquely talented individual. Doesn’t hurt that he updates with extreme regularity either.
Something similar was used at my school, but it failed because they messed it up completely. For a week, students payed to change the annoying music they played during passing periods, but they just changed it to another annoying song, some of which were worse. It ended up raising almost no money, because who wants to pay to change the song from Bieber to Nyan-Cat? I donate in small quantities to charities at school purely for signalling purposes, I donate if I’m in a class with cool people, and not at all if I’m in one of my required classes I simply tolerate.