Elund

Karma: 172

Elund Nov 2, 2014, 8:55 PM
2 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey

Gwern (79) and Vaniver (66) show significantly more upvotes than the next in line

Thanks. That’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed that. They even score higher than some people who posted earlier, and with similar quality posts.

If upvotes are handed out according to the rule and logically in order of occurrence the vots should roughly read n, n-1, n-2,

...At first I was going to say I think it would be more of an exponential decrease since most people take the survey in the first few days and I doubt many people diligently keep track of new comments, but then I remembered that the rate of new “I took the survey” comments themselves decrease exponentially, probably at a similar rate, which cancels out much of the effect. Oh well. This does make the situation less unfair.

Elund Nov 2, 2014, 6:36 PM
0 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
At first I thought this person would only downvote short comments that have little content beyond saying that the user took the survey, but I’ve since noticed that even “I took the survey” comments with very detailed critiques are getting the single downvotes. My guess is this person doesn’t like the idea of some people getting 100% positive ratings through posting only survey comments, as survey comments would be the easiest way to attain that otherwise, or thinks that the amount of karma awarded by other users for these comments (even the detailed ones) is too much, and that karma should mainly be reserved for quality discussions.

Personally I think the amount of karma awarded for the short and simple survey comments should be based on the difficulty, time commitment, and benefit from having people take these surveys, but I think the amount of karma being awarded already is in line with that. Sure, there might be a few people lying by saying they took the survey when they in fact didn’t, but I suspect that’s pretty rare. I would like it though if there were some users who prioritized quality in deciding whether to upvote comments, so that it would be easier for people to quickly locate the most useful comments when they choose the “Sort by: Best” option.

Elund Nov 2, 2014, 6:13 PM
0 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
I’m not sure I understand. I wasn’t able to find explanations by typing “upvote” into the search either. Can you please clarify?

Elund Nov 2, 2014, 6:04 PM
5 points
in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey

FWIW, this line of reasoning comes up pretty regularly (especially in response to that survey question), so if the surveyors fail to realize the associated difficulties, it’s not through failure to have it pointed out. I suspect they realize it just fine.

Continuing to complain about it may still have an effect though. I personally think they should post the definition they’re using for “supernatural” in the description for the question, maybe right below their current description.

Elund Nov 2, 2014, 4:07 AM
0 points
on: Rational Humanist Music

Something that’s bothered me a lot lately is a lack of good music that evokes the kind of emotion that spiritually-inspired music does, but whose subject matter is something I actually believe in.

I’ve had the exact same problem. Thank you for creating this post. :-)

For music that evokes a sublime atmosphere and lacks religious lyrics, I recommend the ambient electronic artist Stellardrone. You can download all the albums for free on his official website. http://stellardrone.bandcamp.com/ (There is one album called “Invent the Universe”, but that could refer to a programmer creating a simulated universe. There are no lyrics IIRC and the song titles are quite innocuous, so you are relatively free to interpret the songs as you wish.)

Also, how would you feel about listening to sublime music based on intentionally fictitious deities? I’m thinking in particular about a song from a video game, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. The song in question is Child of Chaos, the theme song for Yune, the in-game goddess of chaos. (There are no lyrics, in case that’s relevant.) I really love this song. Don’t be fooled by its name. The song is actually very serene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYdxRReGjaE

I love your song lyrics by the way. :-) I think it’s fine that they draw attention to the bright side of technological development. For the record, I like futuristic dystopian music as well. There’s a time and place for both, depending on my mood.

It’s been a few years since your post was published. Do you now have audio versions of your song that you can link?

Elund Nov 1, 2014, 7:05 PM
11 points
in reply to: lmm’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey

To me “occasionally” is rarer than “sometimes”.

I think so too. I found that part odd.

Elund Nov 1, 2014, 6:50 PM
5 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
When I first saw that there was going to be a digit ratio question, my first thought was that the survey was going to ask us to estimate our digit ratios, estimate our confidence in our estimates, and then measure the true ratios to see how far off we were. :P

Elund Oct 28, 2014, 3:22 AM
6 points
in reply to: Elund’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Why was I downvoted? Was that from you, jdgalt? Were you hoping to have the Singularity discussion here instead of below another post? If so that wasn’t clear to me from your above comment, since you were asking about whether it was welcome on LW, and you seemed to be going off on a tangent (particularly with your latter two points). Also, you didn’t seem like you possessed much of the background knowledge regarding intelligence explosion and friendly/unfriendly AI, so I thought you would find it helpful for me to point you toward some relevant sources that might answer your questions, not to mention provide more general information on the topic. Of course, if you’re not interested in general information I’d be willing to address your specific questions.

Sorry, I’m not trying to be confrontational, I just want to understand what I did wrong so that I can better improve the quality of my comments, as well as clear up any misunderstandings.

Elund Oct 28, 2014, 2:23 AM
0 points
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
I assumed you’d already factored in those other choices and still weren’t leaning more for or against it relative to all the other possibilities combined. By “leaning one way or another”, I meant along a hypothetical axis of “strongly believe” or “strongly disbelieve” for the given proposition. You have a good point about availability bias though. You can self-correct for that to some extent by decreasing your assigned probabilities, and we’d have to take availability bias into account while interpreting the probabilities given by other people.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 11:27 PM
6 points
in reply to: jdgalt’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey

I would like to participate in a deeper discussion of the idea of the Singularity, but don’t know if that’s welcome on LW.

You should be able to find a lot of info about the Singularity (and proposed ways to influence its outcome) in MIRI publications and LW posts. If you want to have further discussions about the Singularity you can comment below the relevant LW posts.

I didn’t do the finger length questions; not sure what “the bottom crease” is, or maybe I don’t have them. (Do you mean the crease at the base of the fingers, or one farther down on the hand?)

It’s supposed to refer to the crease at the base of the fingers.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 9:18 PM
2 points
in reply to: VAuroch’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Well, the description provided in the survey doesn’t preclude it, as long as that person is not currently cryonically frozen (the question says living at this moment). My guess is that the intent was to discover the likelihood we assign to anti-agathic drugs being developed during the next 1000 years, in which case they probably should have used a more precise description.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 7:53 PM
0 points
in reply to: Ixiel’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey

Though maybe in terms of analysis “I do not identify with any race,” which I imagine may be more common here than other places since people choose not to identify with other variables for which it is a more radical statement, is uninteresting to the survey.

It might be uninteresting from the standpoint of someone who only wants specific racial information, but it still might be interesting for other reasons to see what other qualities correlate with someone who picks that kind of answer. The thing is, I wasn’t sure Yvain had the capability to create checkboxes that allow selecting more than one answer choice, as I didn’t see them anywhere on the survey. The “I don’t primarily identify with one race” was meant to be a catch-all for mixed-race people who don’t want to pick sides between their races, but I agree it would be more useful to subdivide that even further to “I identify with more than one race” and “I do not identify with a race”. I personally got around this by selecting “other” on the grounds that I identify with the human race.

If we’re the only two a racial people on the site I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

It looks like for the 2013 survey, 51 people answered “other” and 22 people left it blank, so I think there are enough people for further distinctions to be worthwhile. There were other race options that even fewer people selected. I feel like “other” is best reserved for people who do identify with an ethnicity that wasn’t represented in the answer choices, and leaving the question blank is best reserved for people who dislike the question/answers, want to be more anonymous, etc.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 7:48 AM
2 points
in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Well, the statement could still be true in the context of the simulation. You may not have bones that exist in the universe outside the simulation, but you still have “bones” within the simulation. The name “bone” as well as the names for specific bones would be accurate if those are the agreed-upon names within your simulated culture. Whether the bones need to physically exist in the most fundamental level of reality in order to be considered bones seems like an argument over semantics. They still possess the other typical characteristics of bones that our culture has decided bones are supposed to possess. In everyday practice, people assign objects to linguistic categories based on resemblance to a prototypical example, not by making sure they fulfill a list of necessary criteria.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 6:09 AM
2 points
in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey

Specifically, ‘odds’ refers to expressions like ‘5 to 3 against’

Oh right, I forgot about that definition. The main probability conversions that I was aware of involved converting between fractions and percentages, sometimes expressed instead as probabilities between 0 and 1. Theoretically, it makes sense that odds can also be converted to or from probabilities, now that I think about it. Thanks for your explanation.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 4:05 AM
5 points
in reply to: kuudes’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Sure, if you gave the same test to a representative sample of LWers and to a representative sample of the general population, you could calibrate IQ scores across them. I still expect it to be less reliable than proctored IQ tests though, not because I’m worried about people lying about their scores, but because of a higher incidence of confounding factors such as distracting noises, internet connection failures, and even the presence of daylight from a nearby window.

http://h-m-g.com/projects/daylighting/publicity%20daylighting.htm

I suppose it might be interesting to include some IQ questions anyway, as it might still turn up some interesting results. We’d just have to keep the limitations in mind while analyzing the results.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 1:25 AM
0 points
in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
I don’t think it will mess up the algorithms. My guess is that most people probably rounded most calibration answers to the tens place due to lack of enough confidence to be more precise, but since people are giving different values, the average across all respondents is unlikely to fall on an increment of ten, and should be a reasonably accurate measure of the respondents’ collective assigned probability for a question.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 1:18 AM
2 points
in reply to: Sarunas’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Are you using “odds” to refer to percentages and “probabilities” to refer to fractions? I don’t think there is actually any difference in meaning between the two terms.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 1:00 AM
4 points
in reply to: A1987dM’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
You can click “select your monitor dimension” to resize the ruler. The default they gave me was wrong. I actually suggest making the ruler even smaller than the authentic size, so that the distance between millimeters will be shorter and thus the ratio will be more precise.

Elund Oct 27, 2014, 12:13 AM
0 points
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Putting 0 is misleading. It implies that you’re confident there is no chance at all. If you’re really not leaning one way or another, your best bet is to just put 50, or perhaps even skip the question if you really don’t want to give a probability.

Elund Oct 26, 2014, 10:45 PM
2 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Maybe the corresponding fingers on your other hand really are different in length. Mine are. Whenever I press my fingers against each other such as to line up their bottom creases (keeping the orientation of the fingers as straight as possible), the middle and upper creases and fingertips don’t line up. My right fingers are slightly shorter.

Good point about the photocopier. Hopefully these issues won’t add too much noise to the results and obscure any significant results.