Martin Čelko

Karma: −58

Martin Čelko 22 Feb 2023 18:55 UTC
−10 points
0
on: When Money Is Abundant, Knowledge Is The Real Wealth
Science is blind.

Martin Čelko 18 Feb 2023 17:06 UTC
1 point
0
on: Childhoods of exceptional people
When most people had no or very little education, and some people had access to private tutors is it surprise some of them end up exceptional?
I mean you are talking about pre internet era and era where people were relatively less knowledgeable.
Today private tutoring still gives edge anyways. As you can personalize the needs of pupils.
I cannot imagine someone having several private tutors since childhood and not being exceptional in some regard or above average at least in knowledge if not intellect.

Martin Čelko 13 Feb 2023 23:14 UTC
1 point
on: Alike minds think great
When driving good drivers are invisible to us.
Bad drivers are seemingly everywhere.
:D
If people judge what they judge is their own knowledge they are familiar with, against what they see as most critical failing of people around.
People who are wrong are alien to us.
People who are right and agree with us don’t make us emotional.
SO they are not that obvious.

Martin Čelko 4 Feb 2023 15:49 UTC
1 point
0
on: Small Talk is Good, Actually
As far as observations go, small talk from my point of view is to see other peoples attitudes, but information value of small talks drops after a while as everything was said.
Small talk does not mean people will like you though or know you better or necessarily lead to anything good. It just means that if by chance someone shares your attitudes you might bond over the fact you have same attitudes and then conversation leads to better chance of having something more meaningful to say.
However people are from different walks of life often times live different lives and have different habits.

Martin Čelko 3 Feb 2023 1:09 UTC
4 points
3
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Exercise is Good, Actually
Why should people with “power saving mode” be sick?
If you were farmer in Northern climate and you had low crop yield it could mean starving whole winter with little food. Would exercising help then?
If you were in Southern climate and worked in heat all the time, and burned out all your calories would you call it smart? What if a flood came on the Nile and took your crop.
So I would argue laziness is a good survival strategy. Helps people stop from killing themselves by overworking.
On flip side body builds equilibrium. If person exercises since childhood exercise becomes the norm.
Stop exercising and in few months “power saving mode” kicks in and you won’t lift a finger.
Start exercising and the body will resist until exercise becomes the new norm.
For person who hates exercising this could take months before exercising becomes new norm.
For someone who exercises all the time a bit of lazy time does not stop them from exercising next time.
Body wants balance, but it integrates balance from the environment.

Martin Čelko 18 Jan 2023 8:59 UTC
−8 points
−14
on: What determines female romantic “market value”?
I think red lines are more important for males. They are less picky than females.
Most males are wired to procreate with in proximity, so any female with proximity is most likely to end up having sex with males.
When you introduce more females males have the ability to pick, but then you have more males and males have a hierarchy too.
But male hierarchy is governed by females too in terms of picking partners.
Redlines are things that disqualify a lady from the pick, but other way around most women for this reason seem to be more normative than males.
That is also why most females even less attractive has lot less work to do to eventually have sex and become fertile.
I think fat is important factor.
I believe there are some unconscious phenotypical archetypes males and females have eched into their brains prior to being born.
So for example slender slim males and slender slim females have a typical advantage, but more robust males with more fat, much like females have certain types that pick each other.
This is probably decided prior to being born, much like most things.
Survival strategies mean you need to either care for the few children and be high status or have many kids and hope some of them make it.
Conversely high status males can feed more females and children.
High testosterone means more aggression, but necessarily higher status as intellect had to be selected for even in stone age. Its also obvious that intellect had to be selected for even in females.
Females however lack competitive behaviors and tend towards more subversive tactics.
For female to score here main approach is looking for best fit, which means she just needs to be noticed in group males by the greatest amount of males, where males need to notice attractiveness. It is important that attractiveness is something primed in humans, but developed over time. Attractiveness is therefore not a stable factor.
Another variable is compatibility in world view etc. which also correlates with status.
Status is archetypal thing. Females are relatively selection free they can go up and down the hierarchy, but males have more rigid hierarchy. This probably obvious from military perspective where males shifting hierarchy constantly would cause in fighting and defeating incoherent groups is easier so males have strict hierarchy where archetypal approach to women is more obvious.
Younger males or males that have less sex will probably be less picky.
More sex active males will be more picky and likely also more averse to picking someone less attractive to them and with ideas of procreation where the male intends to stay they will probably have a very specific idea of what they are looking for, whereas females are looking for a variety of males that gives females more flexibility as they are in high pressure, because once they mate they have to stick to child rearing, this means females have to be a lot more flexible in male selection, plus a lot of males are assholes and those don’t have a chance if females lacked flexibility.
Females have natural blind spots for psycho guys and abusive types mainly as this is the only way our species can be perpetuated.

Martin Čelko 29 Sep 2022 20:43 UTC
0 points
0
on: Generalizing From One Example
I have cheated on tests.
Not very successfully.
The problem is sometimes you actually learn more by cheating, because making strategies on how to cheat actually makes you remember more.
Its actually creative activity.
Also sometimes cheating actually made me able to remember the stuff more as it gave me a chance.
On other hand the long term benefits of cheating are tiny.
Obviously the best strategy is to learn, cheating or not.
The key important thing is whether cheating is viable strategy in real life.
On other hand cheating is kind of ambiguous concept.
Rules are many. If you make notes in math class and they are permitted then its not cheating.
Some teachers explicitly allowed people to use books and look up answers.
This would obviously be cheating in most other classes.
But if the end game is knowledge then its either about the process or the result.
If its about process both methods are OK, if its purely about result then the best technique, is to simply do it as fast as possible in little time as possible as soon as possible.
This in and of its self is actually valued approach.
As for shoplifting I have done something like that.
Not sure I actually enjoyed it. I think I just did it, because you kind of think, hey its possible?
First time I was certainly dumb enough to get duped.
Not sure even why.
Mind fallacy is interesting concept.
The approach is probably simply done, because its the easiest way to approach people.
Or at least it seems.
People are complex, so without trying to assume things you kind of work out what the common ground is.
Unfortunately there are so many ways to, not figure this out.
What makes people tick is something I just don’t get.
Or more accurately I get it, but I actually don’t know how that translates to real life approaching people.

Martin Čelko 23 Sep 2022 8:50 UTC
4 points
1
on: What Are You Tracking In Your Head?
I started writing down things I am tracking.
I actually never realized I am tracking so many things.
The problem and issue is, I rarely remember or know what to do with the tracked information.
Lets say I am trying to be engaging and have a discussion.
There could be a number of things to track, from motives, meanings, or specific reasons something is said.
Other thing to track is filling in the gaps. Lets say someone says something incomplete, one should when engaged fill in the gaps and ask question or find a way to follow up.
Another thing is to know you are actually communicating the things you think you are communicating.
Or further when you track your words whether they actually are understood or misinterpreted while maybe simultaneously trying to get feedback form the person, be it verbal or non verbal reaction.
For me big part is also facial expression, or being properly engaged.
Lets say I have a good focus and aim to do this.
Well realistically this will have no real impact as its a massive number of tasks.
Not to mention being self conscious in the moment about the various errors.
The other key factor for me is keep track of communication to know that whatever I said or made clear, is actually inline with my intent.
I also have to track what not to say or do. Which depends on context and that can be rather trick to figure in the moment now.

Martin Čelko 11 Sep 2022 17:26 UTC
−5 points
on: Why I’m Not Vegan
Depends. What is your objective. Every farm animal replaces a wild animal, by process of production.
Farmland takes space. Farms produce food for animals. More farmland therefore less wild animals.
Less space for wild animals more chances of extincting animals.
Every thing is a trade off.
Vegans are ethical or for health, but both stances are ethical and they are not mutually separable. If you are healthier then you are less burden on nature as well.
If killing off people is your goal with civilizational illness such as heart problems strokes and diabetes or significantly reducing life quality and expectancy then meat is OK, but the current problem is not just meat consumption, but overall quality of food, which is partially by product of mass production and high demand which is higher than ever before.
Your health is not something you can impact very much always, but it is always better (without ethical weights) to be somewhat healthier, if possible.
Meat is not cheap, from environmental perspective.
Calculating the impact of meat production, by consumption alone is not the issue.
Before and after eating meat, where you get protein and fat, you also have to take in consideration what happens to nature before and after.
Only then we can have ethical stance fully meaningfully.
I don’t know how much of meat production hurts environment, but if all industries are so bad for environment, as far as I know this one is not different by much.
Its also important to note that you are taking stance of not harming animals needlessly.
Or survival of humans?
Unfortunately these two are connected directly.
The direct connection is simply not easy to see, because we don’t yet consider it.
The connection is that eating a pig while immediately OK, in long term and context of civilized world means you expect to leave no harm to environment while demand for mean and overproduction of meat is massive.
Meat is also more demanding on refrigeration and energy.
The animals suffer yes, but if we omit that as bad for them, but good for us we have to justify eating meat everyday, every month, every, year and so on.
If people reduce eating meat to healthy portions the demand for meat would probably go down by several multiples.
If I remember correctly when I eat meat I could have eaten as much as 2 meals of meat per week, every day of week.
I don’t think framing this problem as vegans for ethics actually makes sense in light of what the industry has now.
It simply operates on technologies that provide very little hope for better outcomes.
The problem is meat industries exist now, and need profit now, but the bad impact it has is cumulative and over many years.
As for animal wellfare I so no point in discussing such things, as long as people agree that pigs feel pain and go through a process of life that is simply brutal.
Unless someone can show me how long brutal life of farm pig is better than short brutal life of wild pig.
Wild animals suffer yes. But they also have function for us.
The benefit of nature is easy to see for humans, but in sum wild animals and wild nature sustains our civilization much more than meat production.

Martin Čelko 1 Sep 2022 22:46 UTC
−4 points
0
on: Why was progress so slow in the past?
On account of sounding dumb, but needing to point out, progress is set by baseline of some sort.
However qualitatively our society does live differently in many ways.
Most things in the past required huge time investment, there was low security for life, and generally the product be it crops, or food, were small compared to these days.
So the constraints people dealt with were huge.
Its fallacy though to think we don’t have the exact same issues in today’s world.
We have washing machines and microwaves and tools that speed things up so we can do the more progressive things so to speak.
The problem is we are subject to biological evolution and therefore progress needs more than quantity.
For instance dinosaurs are extinct yet I bet most dinosaurs would boast that they are huge and bigger than other dinosaurs therefore they made more progress and therefore are the bestests of all.
Human evolution can be the same issue.
On scale of evolution the danger we face is not that we are so good at adaptation and use of tools and changing environments.
We face the problem of change.
All change leads to extinction of some sort. Change is dangerous, but we live in a world were change is becoming a constant variable.
And there is no amount of progress that protects humans from this tricky problem.
If not today 1000 years from now, we might be just as extinct as dinosaurs and from the wood works will crawl out some weird creature of tiny stature like mammals did.
We should therefore not assume the fallacy that bit of fossil fuels, and combustion engines or rocketry will make us better at surviving.
We have better chance of surviving today as individuals, but the behemoth civilization became, is by far something that has never existed before.
Its also not something humans ever did on this mass world wide scale with such pacing and such incredible complex balance of activity.
So yes once people overcame certain constraints that were constant we grew.
So as with all things considering something new, you need lots of trail and error to know what works.
In this sense nature does not have friends or good side.
Nature can kill off anything, and there were creatures that lived for millions of years and went in way of dodo in a single instance as if they never existed.
We have to understand that progress in many ways is limited in certain dimensions for all people.
We as humans are extremely good at predicting certain catastrophic scenarios, but we should not think for one second that nature cannot do more than we can imagine.
We have funny things like bees dying off.
A single species could end our civilization.
And this assuming bees are the only species.
Who knows what other species could die off and kill humanity in basically few years.
So my basic question is what progress really is?
If its survival we made some progress, but we added a layer of problems that never threatened humanity.
If its number of humans on this planet and their long life, that is progress, but it comes at a cost.
Cost we will have to pay back at some point in worlds history to simply go on.

Martin Čelko 29 Aug 2022 0:53 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Martin Čelko’s comment on: Is population collapse due to low birth rates a problem?
To add—undercutting the human demographic pyramid has serious social drawback. Capital grows on influx of human population. Unfortunately the idea that human demographic growth is necessary is probably bias based around human psychology and large capital, that maintains its relevance merely by generating profit. If we neglect these rather stupid ideas, we are left with infinite sea of positive options where less population is always, better. We are not few. We are billions.

Martin Čelko 29 Aug 2022 0:32 UTC
1 point
0
on: Is population collapse due to low birth rates a problem?
Most of the world is covered with people. Economy and its productivity cannot be measured today. The measures or measuring stick we use to explain the world today is inadeqate. Retrospective analysis of humanity is nice. But very risky business since nothing today ressembless the past.

Martin Čelko 19 Aug 2022 21:03 UTC
−2 points
−1
on: In Defense Of Making Money
There are good founders with few relationships able to raise upwards of half a million as the first investment in ideas that seem impossibly difficult to monetize. With decent connections, you can pocket upwards of 10 million to start a company that seems hot.
You can learn programming in 3-12 months and earn 6 figures with low taxes working remotely in a few years. You can make bank by doing the most niche and easy to learn of jobs as long as you know how to follow the market. You can probably make it even if you just follow your nose and invest in trends like crypto or high-throughput sequencing early on.
OK, you make a case for money here, because making money is possible and there are actual outcomes.
The outcomes maybe true to market value.
Earning much is easy for many people and it provides no direct meaning. The rich man that’s unable to find happiness because he doesn’t realize the goal of life is altruism/nirvana/love/enjoying-the-moment/god is beyond cliche.
In what way is this rational or meaningful statement.
A wrong and un factual thing,to proposes the alternative is better and therefore true.
It must be true, because making money is the goal?
Then you are stating what you already stated as assumption.
Making money is goal, therefore its a true thing that is good.
Its good, because its money. But that is not a rational. It could be considered a rationalization.
That is just fact, when you make money then you have money.
So you are operating still with tautological truth.
We live and do things with money, and therefore they are good.
This is not “the case for money”, this is in my understanding just saying what we already have and operate on.
Unless there is no money we cannot operate on assumption that money is not the case.
It is the case. The question would be then where is “your case?”
Wealth can result in a paradigm shift, both for people and companies. But if you read about people or companies that made an impact assisted by their assets, one thing of note is that the paradigm shift usually didn’t come until they realized they had the assets to pursue new “unimaginable” goals.
Finally, there’s the oft-repeated but true line: wealth is inflow minus outflow. Many people that we think of as rich are dirt poor once you account for taxes and monthly expenses. Money is useful when it opens up degrees of freedom in the socio-economic environment, it’s useless when spent on status goods and other zero-sum games (e.g. housing in large cities).
Then again you cannot have the money and not the product.
In essence the highest asset for companies is the ability to develop things through time.
Time can be in some sense gotten by money, but essentially, then you are buying time with money, by making money through time.
Its a simple loop. I don’t think you made a realistic case. I think this accounts for the case everyone knows.
When companies invest they invest into values.
So a company that has coal invests in coal.
A company that can make coal into gold through some magic philosophers stone through magic transmutation, is still investing in its highest asset.
Now it would be the philosophers stone. Where did the stone come from? If it were merely function of money it would mean most companies would have philosophers stone.
In my understanding then the case is still the same. “money” There seems to me something missing.
Another common pitfall is trying to gain knowledge instead of money.
Yes you need to survive to have knowledge.
Money takes in such case precedence, because knowledge is slow, money works faster.
iii—Money Is Hard To Fake
Can you even be wrong in this statement though?
When you live in society where everything including my body, has monetary value, can you falsify this?
Well no.
But what case are you making then? We either live in world where money is the “thing which we want or not”
For every person this is true.
Saying that money is best indicator of whatever is not true though. What it indicates is what we already know.
Its the value of market working. It works because markets are build around financial concepts.
That alone explains merely that we don’t know the alternative of value on market with out putting a price tag on it.
But if we all subject goals to financial goal posts, we essentially have no alternative, but to put money as priority.
Then you mean to say that unless we put money as priority, we cannot, be objective?
Sure, thinking that you want to be a doctor until your mid-30s then realizing you were meant to be a recluse yogi is worst than giving in to your calling in your early 30s. But you know what’s worst? Being a self-thought nihilist until your late 30s. At least the doctor has the capital to settle his affairs, get a jungle house in Burma and start his yogic journey.
No? Where are you making the “case”
Alas, I’m happy taking responsibility over optionality, even if freedom comes with the possibility of undertaking a wrong action. I wager you might feel the same.
Yes, but is this statement necessary?
Are we in state of mind, where this is somehow questioned?
Making money equates having options true.
I think you used lots of concrete examples, and statements that are true, but I was expecting
“the case for money”. Something different from what we already somewhat on some level know.
After all money is useful in a world where everything is valued by monetary means.
But the way I see it you essentially said “money is good”
with many examples and statements.
The contrary statements are that some dudes did not make it without money.

Martin Čelko’s Shortform

Martin Čelko19 Aug 2022 20:10 UTC

1 point

0 comments1 min readLW link

Martin Čelko 19 Aug 2022 1:14 UTC
−23 points
−11
on: In Defense Of Making Money
uh you did not make a case for money . Sorry . You did make a case for avoiding internet? Also sociability is overated. People really need to quit telling people to be sociable. It does not equate better life or more success. Its a false equivalence.

Martin Čelko 16 Aug 2022 23:18 UTC
1 point
on: Mental Mountains
What ever the case I am often exhausted, when dealing with such issues.
Good post though.
For instance certain high pitch sounds are terrible for my ears. Makes me lose focus, and makes my eyes close.
Its so bad, that I literally feel as though there is pain in my mind.
Schema? Or auditory thing?
It never happens with other sounds, just with this pitch.
Same problem with focus.
I can clearly be aware how the little tribes in my mind come together to defeat the invaders, but once the battle is over they part ways, and go back, or if they have to do something, the infighting, metaphorically starts.
For some odd reason though they have the oddest moments and reasons to come together.
Its not though where my rational mind wants. This explanation could make sense.
Its also extremely exhausting.
The sheer amount of mental effort that goes into this just feels like I am overclocking my mind just to do something that “might seem to outsiders” like am barely alive.
On further thinking I also have issue naming emotions or putting them in context.
What people say and feel is hard to match to my own “schema or whatever”.
Like I can feel sad, but what makes me feel that way?
For example I can be more productive when “depressed”, but those two don’t go together do they?
So you can see how being productive and sad at the same time can be pretty unsettling.

Martin Čelko 16 Aug 2022 22:20 UTC
1 point
on: Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)
Then what is the difference between belief and assumption in our mental maps.
What about imagination? Is that belief or assumption or in-congruent map of reality.
Can imagination be part of mental processing without making us wrong about reality.
For instance, if I imagine that all buses in my city are blue, though they are red, can I then walk around with this model of reality in my head without a false belief? After all its just imagination?
Or is this model going to corrupt my thinking as I walk about thinking it, knowing full well its not true.
Further more !what does the question really ask!
Does the tree fall, first question? If it does, who is asking?
Who knows the tree? Who knows where it fell and how far and so on.
The question is more so nonsensical that it assumes the question can be asked without cognitive bias.
The question it self is cognitive bias.
If we tie down abstract thinking immediately to reality, there is no creative process to be had.
Imagination then leaves no room for us to abstract or use mental process, that bogs us down in every day life, thus we never form connections that allow us to think else.
Its either true or not, but result of sensory and thinking process such as logic is predictable, if done perfectly.
Even language can be cognitive bias.
So then if we translate the question of falling trees into reality, that is, you know what that looks like, the question is pointless. You have experienced a tree falling.
The question then makes zilch sense.
Its irrelevant.
You just know that there are no trees that fall and fail to make a sound.
There is no !if!.
There is no logic to be used.
Its like walking around and seeing a tree falling and asking people !Did you hear that?! It made a sound?
If however we word the question as such: Do all trees make a sound, all the time, under all conditions, here on Earth. Do all trees fall and hit ground and make a sound then the question is what to make of that?
For instance do all matches burn? How can we know if we don’t try them all out?
So in strict abstract sense we can be sure that our model is true, as long as all trees make a sound as we see them falling, but there is a chance that a tree falls, and we won’t hear it make a sound.

Martin Čelko 15 Aug 2022 15:31 UTC
−4 points
on: What an actually pessimistic containment strategy looks like
Iran is powerful, but Israel is tiny country that can be easily defeated in other ways.
Nukes are a flex. They cannot be used. If they do use them they might kill more people than just the ones they don’t like. Biological weapons are taboo also, but are lot easier to use and can be used to the same effect without much trouble.
So you might ask if Iran is really “saying destroy Israel” do they mean” it “and acting on it or are they just working on having more power?
I don’t think Iran can use nukes. Nor will they, nor will they have the ability to deploy them effectively.
I think Nukes are only political weapon. Minus Japan they have always been used as political weapon primarily.
And as long as Nukes work as political weapon they have greater leverage value for leaders than any other weapon.
The narratives about Iran and Israel are of use too. They too are political weapon.
Thus Israel talking about nuclear weapons it self is a form of weapon.
Its not clear whether Iran ever develops or even aims to develop nukes. Its merely “accepted as true” regardless of what we know, and we know very little.
Even in case of Japan one could argue the demonstration of power here was more political weapon than military victory. (But that is highly controversial), what is never controversial is that use of nuclear bombs had more than military implications. Which obviously resulted in arms race and cold war. Whether that was good or even intent I cannot say.
AI is not Iran though. Its not human, and while I assume its aimed to be human, its real mission is to combine both human and inhuman qualities.
Therefore we might find that whatever happens in future is going to be “unknown”.
And also the old famous “unknown, unknown”. Merely meaning that for example AI might never need to use strategies like game theory at all.
So the bottom line is its misguided to assume qualities about AI or its research, but being fearful is not wrong.
Its just to fear this is pointless.

Martin Čelko 13 Aug 2022 1:54 UTC
0 points
0
on: Where are the red lines for AI?
Framework for this could be looking for AI that is useful, by definition smarter than human.
The foundation is once the AI takes off, it needs to land.
When this take off and landing happens, its the job of humans, to know whether the act of AI actually did anything positive.
The problem is we as humans seem not have models and perfect measurements.
For instance if AI does something in economy, what exactly makes us believe, what it did was correct?
How can we know it was good?
Even economist struggle to put real life measurements into meaningful framework?
I guess we could use AI first to model the world better than we can?
For instance we act as if economical theories work. The reality is this is hardly true, if we measure less of reality than actually is.
One could argue that this is what intelligence does.
It abstracts principals. Those help people to act on realities, and ignore all else that is irrelevant.
The problem is that if AI works with just the exact variables we humans work with, all it can do, is to extrapolate from imperfect information.
Its likely going to just end up with our conclusions, but with slightly more accurate models.
For instance macro economic models don’t tell us anything about reality.
It just tells us something about our ability to interface with reality through data.
When we look at stocks we aren’t actually looking at the real thing.
We are looking at sets of information that we can effectively manipulate to our advantage.
If we want AI that actual helps us, to be smarter, and not just be a computer, we need it to do more than manipulate data that is pretty much useless.

Martin Čelko 13 Aug 2022 0:05 UTC
1 point
0
on: Argument by Intellectual Ordeal
I do agree, and I think relation to information and authority are forged in real world, where sometimes, the bottom line is based on might makes right.
Unfortunately kids are often right, but parents have higher agency.
The same goes for teachers.
So is it really that surprising we are a world of adults who aim to have higher agency than the other person?
We have been taught that authority stems mostly from force, not smarts.
By agency I mean you overpower the person, but not cooperate.
A general does not have to be paradoxically smarter than ordinary soldier in order to be a good general.
Someone running a business does not have to be smarter than the guy who does the work for the person running the business.
However we are taught otherwise.
Is the President the intelligence hub of the world? Hardly? Then why bother right?
The other problems are that debates with adversarial people may not be fun or good ethic, but they do supply people with hard to knock out arguments.
Or to quote some guy “Anger does not solve anything, but it does provide good arguments.”
Second line of though would be even more important.
Two people can be both wrong and right at the same time.
Two people can be both wrong.
Two people can be both right.
Sometimes a debate might end like two swordsmen who impale each other.
I also think that many good debates should be done at least twice at different times.
As long as something is that important, the idea of doing the same debate twice gives both parties time to digest information.
We know from psychology that brains integrate and digest information over time periods, where the mind is inactive. This makes the brain able to filter the effect of outside input and thus your mind can sort things without being disturbed. Like in sleep.
However usually that is not goal of debate.

Martin Čelko

iii—Money Is Hard To Fake

Martin Čelko’s Shortform