Despard

Karma: 175

Despard Aug 29, 2012, 8:30 PM
2 points
on: Meetup : SLC, UT: Free Will and Rationality Checklists
Hello,

Not sure if any SLCers have seen this thread:

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/e9t/the_wandering_rationalist/

...but I’ll be travelling through SLC sometime in December and it would be great to meet some of you if you’re planning another meetup around that time. Offers of hanging out and accommodation gratefully received!

Despard Aug 29, 2012, 2:40 PM
2 points
in reply to: Morendil’s comment on: Expected utility and utility after time
As I recall from my readings on amnesia, having no conscious recollection of events but nevertheless having an unconscious preference (or lack of preference) is fairly common. Essentially patients have impaired declarative (explicit) memory but some spared implicit perceptual and motor memory. So the fictional example of Sammy Jenkis is actually quite reality-based.

What needs to be distinguished in this scenario is whether Omega is only wiping your declarative memory or if he’s also going in and getting rid of your implicit memory as well, which takes care of lower-level responses to stimuli that might otherwise cause problems after the event.

Despard Aug 29, 2012, 3:38 AM
3 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
I’ve done Amtrak before and I quite liked it. What I’m wavering on is whether to buy the $450 30-day bus pass which allows me unlimited travel for that period or be a bit riskier and hope I’ll find enough rides to get me across for cheaper. I need to sit down and do the research and the maths really.

I can rent a car for sure (I’m 31) but I haven’t driven in ten years and considering it’ll be December I’m not confident in my driving ability in bad weather conditions...

Despard Aug 29, 2012, 3:36 AM
0 points
in reply to: Tyrrell_McAllister’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
Don’t see why I wouldn’t be able to stop a night! It’s going in the right direction at least.

Despard Aug 29, 2012, 3:32 AM
0 points
in reply to: magfrump’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
No worries. I’m definitely interested in seeing nice things as opposed to just going places as quickly as possible, depending of course on how my travel time is going. I need to figure out what I’m actually going to do for Christmas—hopefully some friends of mine on the West Coast will take me in and feed me...

Despard Aug 29, 2012, 3:31 AM
0 points
in reply to: David_Allen’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
Great, thanks!

Despard Aug 29, 2012, 3:31 AM
0 points
in reply to: asparisi’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
Well, it seems fairly close to Des Moines, and I don’t know anyone there… it’s just on my way to OK at this point. I’ll bear it in mind!

Despard Aug 29, 2012, 3:30 AM
0 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
I’ll definitely look into that.

Despard Aug 28, 2012, 4:51 PM
0 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
I know very little about what the most optimal way to get from place to place is in the US. Since I don’t have a car, I figured big highways would be the way to do it, either by bus or by grabbing rides. But of course I’m happy to take advice.

I’ve also heard Austin is fun. I wasn’t really planning on doing Texas and Austin’s pretty far out of my way, but I’ll think on it.

Despard Aug 28, 2012, 4:48 PM
1 point
in reply to: maia’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
I was thinking of doing that anyway, but I wanted to have a general post up early to prime people that I’ll be travelling through. It would also be fun to see if I could pop from meetup to meetup and maybe post a cross-country review of them. Got a few months to plan it more carefully anyway.

Despard Aug 28, 2012, 1:27 PM
0 points
in reply to: fortyeridania’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
Thanks—it’s a possibility. I’d love to see China. I do want to try to make Korea and Japan this trip as well.

Despard Aug 28, 2012, 5:06 AM
2 points
in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
Awesome, thanks! Madison’s actually somewhere I need a place to stay; I have friends in Chicago and Minneapolis already, for example. Good to know you’re there, I’ve heard Madison’s a lot of fun.

Despard Aug 28, 2012, 3:19 AM
0 points
in reply to: OrphanWilde’s comment on: The wandering rationalist
Fixed—thanks for that!

The wandering rationalist

DespardAug 28, 2012, 2:59 AM

12 points

27 comments2 min readLW link

Despard Aug 24, 2012, 8:37 PM
0 points
on: Four major problems with neuroscience
Very useful information and incredibly relevant for, among other things, rationality testing. I have some experience with these kinds of effects from my research on motor control, but it’s good to keep them in the forefront of one’s mind when designing studies.

Despard Aug 21, 2012, 2:19 PM
2 points
on: LessWrong could grow a lot, but we’re doing it wrong.
I’m not sure growth is necessarily a thing LW needs per se, as some of the other commenters have pointed out. But I do think there is scope for improving the landing page and decreasing the bounce rate of people we want to be here. That last is crucial.

In my case, I still only have a handful of comments due to not having much time to post at the moment, but I got here through HPMOR and read the Sequences… and still had problems sticking around to post anything as I was somewhat underwhelmed by the design and ease of navigation. I think things can definitely be made a little more user-friendly without ruining the community.

Despard Aug 9, 2012, 9:11 AM
0 points
in reply to: sark’s comment on: Meetup : Edinburgh summer meetup
So I’m here a couple more days—still up for grabbing a pint?

Despard Jul 24, 2012, 8:55 PM
2 points
on: The Perception-Action Cycle
I’m interested in this—my PhD and postdoc work has all been in motor control, which is of course very much tied up with perception and action. I’m less interested in motor control now and more interested in beliefs, but this analysis demonstrates that the two systems are very much intertwined. You need to have beliefs about the world, which come from perception, before you can generate a useful motor command, for example.

Only thing I’d take issue with is that linking this process solely to reinforcement learning is a little simplistic. Motor learning is a rich field in its own right and learning can (and does) proceed without the presence of a reinforcing stimulus.

″...the importance of constantly making predictions of all of our sensory inputs as a functional part of our cognition, is only now dawning on neuroscientists and machine learning researchers.”

This sounds a lot like Emo Todorov’s work.

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/todorov/

P.S. Somebody please tell me how to blockquote and link. Can I use HTML here?

Despard Jul 22, 2012, 4:26 PM
3 points
in reply to: Cogitus_Maximus’s comment on: [link] Prepared to wait? New research challenges the idea that we favour small rewards now over bigger later
This already happens in some cases. PLoS One, for example, publishes open-access entirely online and invites community criticism:

http://www.plosone.org/static/information.action

(Sorry, I’ve yet to figure out how to link things and suchlike; can HTML be used here?)

One issue with just allowing anyone to comment on a paper though is a high proportion of misinformed or ignorant people who can hijack the discussion. LW gets round this very well with its judicious gardening, and other sites do this too, so perhaps it’s not as big an issue as I’m making it out to be. Unmoderated comment forums tend to turn into slimepits though.

Despard Jul 20, 2012, 7:04 PM
1 point
in reply to: VincentYu’s comment on: [link] Prepared to wait? New research challenges the idea that we favour small rewards now over bigger later
I generally agree. I have an aversion to just reading abstracts because it doesn’t let you get at the nitty-gritty of how exactly the studies were performed, but it’s way better than just reading the news reports—and not everyone has full-text access to studies anyway.

Despard

The wan­der­ing rationalist

The wandering rationalist