Fhyve

Karma: 215

Fhyve Nov 25, 2013, 6:56 AM
0 points
in reply to: faul_sname’s comment on: What do we already have right?
I disagree with “common sense.” In my experience, when questioning people about what they mean by common sense, I find that they usually mean “general principles that seem like obviously correct to me.” And that doesn’t even guarantee that they are correct.

Fhyve Nov 16, 2013, 12:22 AM
2 points
on: MIRI course list study pairs
I’ve got Categories for the Working Mathematician by Mac Lane; I will be going through this because I will be giving some talks on category theory to the math club here at my university. I pretty much don’t have any logic and I want logic. I have Enderton’s A Mathematical introduction to logic which is ok, though I think I want to find a new book. I also have Probability: The Logic of Science that I want to work through. I also want to go through MIRI papers. I am a math undergrad.

I would like to be a part of a study pair or a study group. There seems to be enough people that we can group together. I would like to learn from people, and teach people what I know (mostly pure math: category theory/abstract algebra/algebraic topology and basic calculus/real analysis).

Fhyve Aug 19, 2013, 8:36 PM
0 points
in reply to: Tenoke’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97
aka Baba Yaga

Fhyve Aug 17, 2013, 7:43 AM
0 points
in reply to: JoshuaFox’s comment on: Engaging Intellectual Elites at Less Wrong
+1 because of the first point. Right now we are using this catch-all Reddit style “discussion” forum to encompass absolutely everything and it is a mess.

Fhyve Aug 2, 2013, 5:08 AM
1 point
in reply to: answer’s comment on: More “Stupid” Questions
How about 3^...(3^^^3 up arrows)...^3?

Fhyve Jul 30, 2013, 5:41 PM
0 points
in reply to: Xom’s comment on: Boring Advice Repository
You might want to make the habit a bit shorter than that so that it is easier to practice and repeat a lot.

Fhyve Jul 30, 2013, 4:45 PM
6 points
in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: Rationality Quotes from people associated with LessWrong
This is more to address the common thought process “this person disagrees with me, therefore they are an idiot!”

Even if they aren’t very smart, it is better to frame them as someone who isn’t very smart rather than a directly derogatory term “idiot.”

Fhyve Jul 30, 2013, 4:40 AM
27 points
on: Rationality Quotes from people associated with LessWrong
“How do you not have arguments with idiots? Don’t frame the people you argue with as idiots!”

-- Cat Lavigne at the July 2013 CFAR workshop

Fhyve Jul 30, 2013, 4:38 AM
10 points
on: Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013
Does anyone know of a good textbook on public relations (PR), or a good resource/summary of the state of the field? I think it would be interesting to know about this, especially with regards to school clubs, meetups, and online rationality advocacy.

Fhyve Jul 28, 2013, 11:57 PM
0 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Inferential credit history
Okay, that’s reasonable. But can we talk about the content post itself? I don’t think that this really is the most important part of the post and that the top comment should be about it.

Fhyve Jul 15, 2013, 9:48 PM
3 points
on: Writing Style and the Typical Mind Fallacy
I prefer your style (rather, I really dislike Eliezer’s style). Possible data points: I read a lot of math: math blogs, math texts, math papers, and I have poor reading comprehension and reading speed. I don’t have a particularly short or long attention span, and I don’t really read much science or philosophy. I didn’t get a whole lot of epiphanies from the sequences, though it did have a strong influence on how I think (ie. my updates weren’t felt as epiphanies).

I like the structure of your writing. I like to build my mental categories from the top down, and structured writing helps me put things in mental buckets. For quite a while after reading the sequences, the whole idea of rationality was a big muddle of concepts and I had a hard time thinking about it as a whole. I had to think it over and do all the categorization by myself, which was a lot of work, and I don’t think I benefited enough from having to do that to justify the exercise.

Fhyve Jul 13, 2013, 7:57 PM
5 points
on: “Stupid” questions thread
In transparent box Newcomb’s problem, in order to get the $1M, do you have to (precommit to) one box even if you see that there is nothing in box A?

Fhyve Jul 13, 2013, 3:05 AM
1 point
on: [META] Open threads (and repository threads) are underutilized.
Why can’t we implement subreddits here? Seems like it would be super useful, for this and for other problems like the fact that philosophy, AGI, life extension/transhumanism and rationality all get mixed into the same discussions section.

Fhyve Jul 7, 2013, 5:38 AM
0 points
in reply to: Ritalin’s comment on: Optimizing Workouts for Intellectual Performance
Have you looked at rhodiola and L-theanine? They tend to counter some of the negative effects of more intense nootropics.

Fhyve Jul 6, 2013, 6:29 AM
3 points
in reply to: elharo’s comment on: Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013
I am mostly talking about epistemic rationality, not instrumental rationality. With that in mind, I wouldn’t consider anyone from a hundred years ago or earlier to be up to my epistemic standards because they simply did not have access to the requisite information, ie. cognitive science and Bayesian epistemology. There are people that figured it out in certain domains (like figuring out that the labels in your mind are not the actual things that they represent), but those people are very exceptional and I doubt that I will meet people that are capable of the pioneering, original work that these exceptional people did.

What I want are people who know about cognitive biases, understand why they are very important, and have actively tried to reduce the effects of those biases on themselves. I want people who explicitly understand the map and territory distinction. I want people who are aware of truth-seeking versus status arguments. I want people who don’t step on philosophical landmines and don’t get mindkilled. I would not expect someone to have all of these without having at least read some of Lesswrong or the above material. They might have collected some of these beliefs and mental algorithms on their own, but it is highly unlikely that they came across all of them.

Is that too much to ask? Are my standards too high? I hope not.

Fhyve Jul 3, 2013, 7:51 PM
−4 points
in reply to: Risto_Saarelma’s comment on: Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013
Pretty much someone who has read the Lesswrong sequences. Otherwise, someone who is unusually well read in the right places (cognitive science, especially biases; books like Good and Real and Causality), and demonstrates that they have actually internalized those ideas and their implications.

Fhyve Jul 3, 2013, 10:52 AM
0 points
on: An attempt at a short no-prerequisite test for programming inclination
This might be a more enjoyable test (warning, game and time sink): http://armorgames.com/play/6061/light-bot-20

Fhyve Jul 3, 2013, 10:06 AM
−2 points
in reply to: Risto_Saarelma’s comment on: Open Thread, July 1-15, 2013
To be honest, unless they have exceptional mathematical ability or are already rationalists, I will consider them to be mooks. Of course, I wont make that apparent, it is rather hard to make friends that way. Acknowledging that you are smart is a very negative signal, so I try to be humble, which can be awkward in situations like when only two out of 13 people pass a math course that you are in, and you got an A- and the other guy got a C-.

And by the way, rationality, not rationalism.

Fhyve Jul 3, 2013, 9:38 AM
2 points
in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: What are you working on? July 2013
Tutorials/texts that I know of are Software Foundations, Andrej Bauer’s tutorial, and this Hott-Coq tutorial. It looks like installing the HoTT library is a huge pain in the arse though so I think I’ll stick with vanilla Coq until either I get one of my CS friend to install it for me, or they make a more user friendly install.

Edit: also this

Fhyve Jul 3, 2013, 7:07 AM
0 points
in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: What are you working on? July 2013
Why Haskell and not Coq or Agda? That’s where all the HoTT stuff is being done anyways.