katydee

Karma: 4,700

katydee Nov 5, 2014, 5:43 AM
7 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: November 2014 Media Thread

Politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality—but it’s a terrible domain in which to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational.

The purpose of LessWrong is to discuss and learn rationality, so I think politics are almost never appropriate here. But even if we think that civilized discussion of political matters is appropriate, the post I was critiquing was not, IMO, up to our standards of civility and polite discussion.

katydee Nov 5, 2014, 5:22 AM
7 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: November 2014 Media Thread

For discussion of political matters? A bit late for that, I think. This train has left the station.

Has it? Insofar as it has, that’s been thanks to our own failure to tend to basic principles. I think that in order to better reach as many people as possible, it’s critical that LW avoid politics and the potential biases that can result.

I do agree that having civilized discussions even while disagreeing about politics is important. But there are other venues for that, like Slate Star Codex, and if we indeed need more of this I think it’s better to move it off-site.

katydee Nov 5, 2014, 4:22 AM
10 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: November 2014 Media Thread
Yes, ha ha. This is a serious matter, though. I believe that it really truly doesn’t matter whether someone’s political points are good or not. LessWrong should not allow itself to be a venue for this sort of behavior, especially when it’s accompanied by this sort of tone.

In order for the LessWrong community to flourish, I think it is critical that it be divorced from bickering over political matters. So when it comes to posts like this one, I really truly don’t care whether their arguments are valid or not—either way, they shouldn’t be on LessWrong

katydee Nov 4, 2014, 11:59 PM
5 points
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: November 2014 Media Thread
I don’t particularly care about whether the points are valid. This kind of discussion isn’t what LessWrong is for, especially when it’s being posted with this sort of tone.

katydee Nov 4, 2014, 11:20 PM
15 points
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: November 2014 Media Thread
I disagree with the general concept that LW is an appropriate place to post bizarre, mindkilled political rants.

katydee Nov 4, 2014, 10:09 PM
15 points
in reply to: advancedatheist’s comment on: November 2014 Media Thread
Please stop making comments like this.

katydee Oct 21, 2014, 8:30 AM
7 points
in reply to: pewpewlasergun’s comment on: One Year of Goodsearching
The example that springs to mind most readily is that a few days ago, someone asked me if we had a video cable I hadn’t heard of in the office. I didn’t recognize the name but knew I’d recognize it by sight, so I searched for the name of the cable online, found a picture of it, and directed the person to the right location.

katydee Oct 21, 2014, 5:25 AM
9 points
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: One Year of Goodsearching
It doesn’t take significantly longer for me (I just did a side-by-side comparison and couldn’t tell the difference), though I have Google Fiber at home and pretty fast Internet at work. I also didn’t notice the ads until you pointed that out and don’t consider them particularly annoying.

That said, if these are persistent stumbling blocks then by all means don’t use this service. If Goodsearch took 2-3 seconds more than Bing/Google for me I would certainly not use it.

katydee Oct 20, 2014, 10:28 PM
4 points
in reply to: Capla’s comment on: A Day Without Defaults
I have some degree of discipline and a pretty good degree of self-awareness, but in the past—even the recent past—I’ve definitely found myself doing shiny but unfulfilling activities for extended periods. It’s possible that I’ve gained a bunch of skill or willpower without noticing it and that this event caused me to shift into a mode that I didn’t know how to access before, but this didn’t feel like using discipline to me.

katydee Oct 20, 2014, 10:18 PM
2 points
in reply to: RomeoStevens’s comment on: A Day Without Defaults
I’ve experimented with different alarms. For some reason the one that seems to work best is very loud and harsh—not because it wakes me up, but because my subconscious hates it and consistently wakes me up a few minutes before it goes off. I’m not sure what exactly causes this effect but I’ve found it extremely useful.

katydee Sep 19, 2014, 6:03 AM
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Simulate and Defer To More Rational Selves
Hmm, depends on what you mean by useful. I think lucid dreaming is:

a) very fun

b) useful for becoming more rational,, but only in a somewhat limited way—it can be very good for training noticing confusion but doesn’t seem to have a huge amount of potential beyond this.

katydee Sep 13, 2014, 5:50 PM
6 points
on: Simulate and Defer To More Rational Selves
This is a line of development that—while clearly useful—seems somewhat hacky and unpromising to me. While I agree that this is likely to yield useful benefits in the short run, it strikes me that fixing one’s internal structure in order to produce reliably correct external actions without these sorts of hacks seems more promising in terms of long-term growth and skills.

About a year ago, I thought that lucid dreaming was a great path to rationality. While lucid dreaming is a great way to train the skill of noticing confusion, I no longer recommend it to people asking me for advice on rationality practice, because I think you hit the skill ceiling relatively fast and it doesn’t particularly lend itself to further development.

I’m worried that this strategy falls prey to the same flaw—while it’s quite effective in the short run, I think that people using these methods will ultimately have to learn the internal solutions anyway if they wish to progress to more advanced domains. Therefore, it makes more sense to me to just start with the internal solutions.

(Of course, if you need rapid skill growth in the short term, this might well be a useful strategy to adopt—just be aware of the downsides.)
What links here?
- Better Rationality Through Lucid Dreaming by katydee (Oct 18, 2013, 8:48 PM; 14 points)

katydee Aug 22, 2014, 6:59 PM
1 point
on: A self-experiment in training “noticing confusion”
Extremely good post. I’d love to see more content like this on LessWrong.

katydee Jun 21, 2014, 2:51 AM
10 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Proper value learning through indifference
“Cake or Death” was part of an Eddie Izzard joke from 1998-- I think it has achieved some kind of widespread memetic success, though, since I’ve seen it in quite a few places since.

katydee May 19, 2014, 1:32 PM
−1 points
in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: Strawman Yourself
This approach 80/20s the point I want to convey. Writing up a bunch of examples is more work than the entire rest of the post combined and IMO adds substantially less utility, so I’m not doing it here. I’ll probably do so when/if I write this up for Main.

katydee May 19, 2014, 1:13 PM
2 points
in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Strawman Yourself
If you can reliably emulate a wiser person, why not just be the wiser person?

katydee May 19, 2014, 1:47 AM
−1 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Strawman Yourself
Yes, I consider this an empirical claim. I have a fair amount of anecdata from people I’ve shared this with in person about this being a useful approach.

That said, I agree that some may not find this effective or will find it harmful; this is why I wrote “in many cases” rather than “in almost all cases” or “you will find” or similar.

If you do not find this technique effective, I suggest that you don’t practice it. I and a few friends found it useful and interesting enough to be worth disseminating.

katydee May 19, 2014, 1:43 AM
−1 points
in reply to: brazil84’s comment on: Strawman Yourself

Wouldn’t it be easier to just write down and then assess/ameleriorate the biggest weaknesses in your plans?

In theory, yes; in practice, this seems to work less effectively than we’d like to think.

katydee May 19, 2014, 1:41 AM
1 point
in reply to: Creutzer’s comment on: Strawman Yourself

You even mention an example and then still fail to actually give it. That annoyed me because it would have been nice to see this abstract idea grounded.

In general I think LessWrong cares far too much about this sort of detail. I posted this in Discussion rather than Main precisely because I didn’t want to write up a bunch of examples to express a straightforward principle.

katydee May 18, 2014, 8:26 PM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Strawman Yourself

Is this intended to be an empirical claim?

I’m confused as to what thought process generated this comment. Can you explain?