MaryCh

Karma: 151

MaryCh 5 Jan 2018 15:23 UTC
0 points
in reply to: thefishinthetank’s comment on: Happiness Is a Chore
Well, in my life I can recall two instances off-hand. There have probably been more of them, but at the very least, they seem to be completely unrelated to attempts to raise well-being levels...

MaryCh 23 Dec 2017 18:02 UTC
1 point
on: Happiness Is a Chore
I feel so much freer when I don’t have to demonstrate that I am happy.

Sometimes, it almost seems like I am truly happy only when I “escape” or “triumph” over something that almost “ate me up”: my husband’s household, the Department that I had gone to for a PhD thesis… the genuinely nice psychiatrist who soothes my Mother’s fears… Like “I am happy when I have proved that I haven’t changed, because change is corruption”. So yes, [feeling happy] is one of the necessary chores of self-maintenance. I don’t get why I should want it more than, say, a chance to sleep in.

OTOH, joy is very different. It kind of just happens, unasked-for.

MaryCh 2 Dec 2017 20:10 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Fables grow around missed natural experiments
Would be interesting to read something on dogs’ theory of humans’ minds. (Like, does a dog estimate a human female is going to feed the baby sooner rather then later and so leaves it alone?)

MaryCh 29 Nov 2017 6:21 UTC
1 point
in reply to: IlyaShpitser’s comment on: Open thread, October 30 - November 5, 2017
My husband said “He’s not a pseudoscientist! He’s just sick!” :)

MaryCh 28 Nov 2017 20:51 UTC
3 points
on: Open thread, October 30 - November 5, 2017
The wiki article on professor Yuri Teslya, who is the most infamous pseudoscientist in Ukraine right now (in Russian). I haven’t found a link in English, so here’s the gist of it: prof. Teslya published a Theory of Non-Force Interaction, according to which gravity, for example, doesn’t exist—things fall down because they and the Earth exchange information about each other and change their attitudes towards each other accordingly. Being the Head of the Physics Department of KNU, Teslya teaches it to students. Mrs. Irina Yehorchenko, who works in the Institute of Mathematics, called him a pseudoscientist in 2016 speaking at a meeting of Verkhovna Rada on the problems of funding education and science (very publicly). So he is suing her for offence against honour and dignity. People have raised money for her defence, but it won’t come as the least bit surprising if she loses the court.

The worst thing about it will be the precedent of deciding science vs. pseudoscience in courts of justice.

MaryCh 19 Nov 2017 19:47 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Elo’s comment on: Open thread, October 30 - November 5, 2017
alright, then: at what earliest point do people start reading their predictions for another year?

MaryCh 18 Nov 2017 18:00 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Elo’s comment on: Open thread, October 30 - November 5, 2017
but surely a normal person who makes a list of about 50 items can’t update daily? they have stuff to do.

MaryCh 18 Nov 2017 17:37 UTC
0 points
on: Group Rationality Diary, February 2017
(I think it is going to be useful, but I don’t know yet.) I have a problem: lack of body mass, no set lunch break at work and things to do besides dinner that is yet to be made when I get home, which is about 7 pm. It’s especially bad during “The Season” (middle August—middle October), the time when many people come to us to buy textbooks and we have time to maybe drink a cup of tea, if we remember to do it during a lull. Sometimes, I even took something with me and just forgot to take it out. Then we get home, eat whatever and go to sleep.

Recently, The Season ended & I tried eating just before I leave for home, so that when I do get home I have time to cook something that doesn’t take much time, and/or uses ingredients from yesterday. Unfortunately, if I cook larger portions, we lose the food in the fridge. Now crossing fingers to keep this up.

MaryCh 18 Nov 2017 17:09 UTC
1 point
on: Open thread, October 30 - November 5, 2017
(btw, just thought to ask the people here who have thought about logging their predictions about the year 2018 around the end of December: How do you decide how much time you need before you settle on a prediction? I mean, if making a list on December, 31st is just a common point in time when to state your current state of knowledge, you have 364 days to come to it, but nobody takes so long.)

MaryCh 15 Nov 2017 19:17 UTC
0 points
in reply to: IlyaShpitser’s comment on: Stupid Questions September 2017
It is also very annoying that I know damn right what I mean by любой, and so does любой with whom I speak.

Sometimes, it seems to me that English is just too precise. Or maybe it’s just me.

In Ukrainian, we have жодний, which means “none of the above” or smth like it… now that’s a word worth having!

MaryCh 15 Nov 2017 19:04 UTC
0 points
in reply to: IlyaShpitser’s comment on: Stupid Questions September 2017
Русская киевлянка, первые 4 класса училась в Казани. Татарский, говорят, сильно отличается от крымско-татарского.

MaryCh 15 Nov 2017 18:58 UTC
0 points
in reply to: IlyaShpitser’s comment on: Stupid Questions September 2017
And then, Ukrainian too has всяк/усякий (всякий) that is different from кожен (каждый)… If I were to translate усякий into English distinctly from both “every” and “any”, I would probably have to say “of all kinds”, but how do you say that about one thing?! anyway, this is silly.

(а мой “исходный” язык - русский + татарский + украинский. Даже не помню, что там в татарском делается.)

MaryCh 15 Nov 2017 18:46 UTC
0 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: Fables grow around missed natural experiments
What cases?

MaryCh 15 Nov 2017 12:32 UTC
0 points
in reply to: JenniferRM’s comment on: Fables grow around missed natural experiments
It is still too improbable. Any kid in the wild is a free gift to the predator. Not just a baby, or a toddler.

My friend who studies wolves is quite adamant that it is simply impossible, unless you count cases where a child spent a few days in their company, because wolves often leave their toys for later.

MaryCh 15 Nov 2017 6:27 UTC
0 points
in reply to: IlyaShpitser’s comment on: Stupid Questions September 2017
(Still confused.) Then it is possible to say, in principle, “for every combination of n out of the whole set of n, property(x) hold)” and mean ordered combinations? Is there any other meaning for “every 30 out of 30″?

(yes, it is probably because of my language background. I don’t even use the Russian analogues all that often!)

MaryCh 14 Nov 2017 18:43 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Elo’s comment on: Stupid Questions September 2017
what does “any” mean, then?

(yes, I agree that of course it usually means the same in practice, that’s why this is a stupid question:) I just… I guess I see “any” as a potentiality, and “every” as realisation… anyway, do you think we can talk about this structures in some more complex way than simple “any one thing out of the collection” and “every one thing...”? What would it mean? I imagine the “[every 2 out of 4] out of [every 30 out of 30]” like something like walked paths.

Edit to add: I just want to know what piece of math it corresponds to, mostly. (Combinatorics,obviously.) And what can be done next to this thing to make it more complicated and still exist, kind of. Like combining “anies” with “everies” in different ways, and, if I were to go crazy all the way, dividing things?

MaryCh 14 Nov 2017 18:38 UTC
0 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: Fables grow around missed natural experiments
then what story do you think was not made up?

MaryCh 14 Nov 2017 9:32 UTC
0 points
on: Stupid Questions September 2017
I don’t quite get the difference between “any” and “every” (in the more interesting cases.) Does “every 2 out of 30 [things have this property]” mean the set of ordered twos as a whole thing (unlike “any 2 two out of 30″, which is talking about any one combination of two things but not all possible combinations taken at once?

And if “every” needs some kind of order, even if we don’t know which, and some kind of “presented-togetherness”, then we can, for example, say, “[every two out of four] out of [every thirty out of thirty]”, but I don’t quite understand what it would say...

I mean, it doesn’t have to be something trivial like “every apple out of thirty apples has a spot on its side”, it can be something like “every node out of thirty is connected to another node”. But even this second case does not quite fit. Are there even objects for which “every 2 out of 30” and “every 1 out of 30″ are two distinct things?

(and negation is even worse.)

MaryCh 14 Nov 2017 9:17 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Luke_A_Somers’s comment on: Fables grow around missed natural experiments
The moral was that it is wrong to use an obviously false claim to prove wrong something nobody believes in anyway… by NE, I mean “something so awfully outside of everyday experience that either it is totally made up, or a scientifically-minded person should look into it and see where it leads”.

MaryCh 14 Nov 2017 9:13 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Elo’s comment on: Fables grow around missed natural experiments
well, yes, my friends biologists think this is the only possible explanation. everybody was laughing when we heard about the Antelope Boy who could run at 50 mph and lived among ruminants (in college! second year of college!) The professor didn’t understand why.