JayDee

Karma: 195

JayDee Feb 20, 2013, 11:19 AM
3 points
in reply to: D_Malik’s comment on: Open thread, February 15-28, 2013
My own posture improved once I took up singing. My theory is that I was focused on improving my vocal technique and that changes to my posture directly impacted on this. If I stood or held myself a certain way I could sing better, and the feedback I was getting on my singing ability propagated back and resulted in improved posture. Plus, singing was a lot of fun and with this connection pointed out to me—“your entire body is the instrument when singing, look after it”—my motivation to improve my posture was higher than ever.

That is more how I got there than conclusions. Hmm. You might consider trying to find something you value for which improved posture would be a necessary component. Or something you want to do that will provide feedback about changes in your posture.

If you are like me, “I don’t want to have bad posture anymore” may turn out to be insufficient motivation to get you there by itself.

JayDee Feb 20, 2013, 10:52 AM
3 points
in reply to: kilobug’s comment on: The Power of Pomodoros
You could try recursion. Call the function SetPomodoro(task, time) from within a Pomodoro, if that is needed.

When you get to a point where you have to wait for a response (from the tests, or the compiler, or IRC) set a new timer and start a new sub-Pomodoro. 25 minutes might not be the appropriate time frame, but estimate how long you have to wait and set a timer for that long. Until this second timer goes off you can check emails or do “other stuff” and be confident you are spending your time wisely.

The idea is to minimize the time spent choosing what to do, or worrying about what you are doing. Decide, set the timer, get stuck in. Use your own judgement to determine what timeframes and levels of recusion are appropriate to your workflow.

JayDee Feb 16, 2013, 10:22 AM
6 points
on: Rationalist Lent
I was thinking of making February “catch up with people I’ve been meaning to catch up with” month. But I kept putting it off and failed to think of a catchier name.

So instead I decided to give up procrastinating about social initiation for Lent.

So far it is working well: I’m learning about how difficult it is to schedule things with adults (which more interesting than intimidating upon reflection) and also learning that rejection does hurt a whole bunch but that I am more resilient in the face of it than I suspected.

JayDee Feb 16, 2013, 10:15 AM
4 points
in reply to: Yossarian’s comment on: Rationalist Lent
Good luck.

This reminds me of an experience from my childhood. After watching the finale of Seinfeld, my mother made some kind of comment about how I watched so much TV it was unhealthy. I decided to go a week without watching any television, you know, just to prove her wrong.

And I managed it (admittedly I taped the X-Files to watch after the week had passed. I am unreasonably proud that I went four years without missing an episode even though these days it is trivial to see them all.) It’s the first example I can think of where I took an unexamined behavior and made it a deliberate one. It was a good experience to have behind me.

JayDee Sep 6, 2011, 7:35 AM
0 points
on: Meetup : Melbourne, Ben’s house
I’ll be there.

JayDee Aug 4, 2011, 8:26 AM
−1 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010-2011)
The last sentence of these three: “My reasons for preferring to dissuade him [Mike] were entirely about myself. I hadn’t yet begun to scratch the surface of what I wanted out of dating or romance or anything in that department. And it seemed like a uniquely hazardous thing to uninformedly test by experiment, both for myself and for anyone else involved. ”

A concise explanation of my feelings towards courtship and such things.

JayDee Aug 3, 2011, 11:00 PM
11 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010-2011)
Five quick questions, five fast answers. Fast and perhaps somewhat rambling.

I’m an Australian, a few years shy of thirty, who has generally done things for his own reasons rather than simply going along with everyone else. After secondary school I got a job or two, became heavily involved in a fringe political group for a few years and only then decided to go onto to university. Bachelor of Science (Chemistry) - hopefully the last BS from the education system I’ll put up with. I’ve just very recently dropped out of Honours and moved the 1000km home to Melbourne, which was the most difficult decision I think I’ve ever faced. Not being easy, it stretched my relevant skills to their limit, and in the end it was quite nice to learn that I can make choices as a rational adult human. Or at least as some approximation thereof.

Every now and then I attempt to express my personal values in a system like those used in the Ultima games. Most recently, my three principles of virtue were Curiosity, Truthfulness, and Playfulness. Curiosity I have valued for as long as I can remember—my primary school motto included “live to learn” which I took to heart. Honesty has been an absolute for me since a particular incident in my late teens. Play I’ve valued especially since reading Schiller but creativity in general I’ve valued much longer. I find Internet “memes” and other banal forms of conformity an affront to creativity; people should find and use their own words.

I’ve never really identified as a rationalist per se, but as I say I’ve always tried to have my own reasons for why I do things, or why I think things. Tried with varying levels of success. Even at the age of ten I thought that knowledge was power, and that mathematics in particular should be seen as equipping my mind with tools to better solve problems. The only book to really open my mind or change the way I question things was Dune, first read in early high school, which raised my standards for self-control and for long-term planning. To say the least. The fringe political outfit I joined made a pretence of rationality, on reflection, which pretence I for one took quite seriously. And then when I was looking to do honours this year, one of the possible projects was “something something Bayesian something”, which was enough prompting to pick up a book on the subject and read it. I picked up Jaynes’ textbook, and people still look at me funny when I say I read a statistics textbook for fun and loved every minute of it. One of those “yes! this is the way that things work and I’ve never seen it put in words this well before” books. Or put into mathematics as well, perhaps.

Happening across Less Wrong after all that just seemed fitting. Turns out there are people out there with similar values to me—I even know some of them. I read some posts by HughRistik (a friend was engaged in an exchange with him on some blog, probably ‘Alas!’) and I was quite impressed with the way he argued, to put it mildly. Found a link to his comments here, bookmarked it as a place to check out one day. Eventually came back to do so, recognised a couple of people from the xkcd forums (Hi Vaniver!), read the Harry Potter fanfic (and was mightily impressed), read the Twilight fanfic and was even more impressed (I took great delight for a couple of days in telling people that I’d found the perfect expression of something I’d been trying to say for years, and that it was “something Bella said in a Twilight fan fiction”.)

I’ve started on reading the sequences (just moved interstate and it was easier to bring ebooks than physical ones) but I still would’ve put off making this intro-thread type post. But I’m planning to attend the local meet-up on Friday, and that makes for a useful deadline.