rabidchicken

Karma: 400

rabidchicken Mar 24, 2011, 3:57 AM
1 point
in reply to: CuSithBell’s comment on: Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy
Thats an interesting definition of philosophy, but I think philosophy does far more than that.

rabidchicken Mar 24, 2011, 3:55 AM
1 point
in reply to: Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) ’s comment on: The trouble with teamwork
I worked the same way until I started doing correspondence courses. With nobody to hassle me, no classes to hand stuff in at, and no peers I had to learn to motivate myself and follow a schedule fast.

I am motivated well by deadlines as well, but its amazing how much easier schoolwork is when you actually choose when to do it. instead of cramming in a sleep deprived state for the night before, you can break it up into easier pieces when you are most alert. Hopefully these newfound skills will carry over when I start university...

rabidchicken Mar 24, 2011, 2:30 AM
0 points
in reply to: Isaac’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Intelligence is notoriously hard to quantify, and I am slightly insulted by your generalization. Perhaps I know very unusual sixteen year olds, but I think maturity would be a better word to use in this context.

rabidchicken Mar 24, 2011, 2:15 AM
2 points
in reply to: free_rip’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Based on what little research I did, there seems to be a lot of variation in how iffy it looks. Some models of rejection therapy would probably help me, others look pointless or counter productive. So essentially… good thing they are giving a free test for their program.

rabidchicken Mar 23, 2011, 8:39 PM
4 points
on: The trouble with teamwork
I took an interesting computer science course in high school… Grade 11 was exactly what you would expect from a comp-sci course, and by the end of it all of us were fairly fluent in two languages, but the second year was quite different. In a group of about five students, we were given problems to solve (like how to delete a node from a binary tree and rebalance it), had to develop an algorithm, and then learn how to implement it in a language none of us had used before. Our teacher knew that we could all follow instructions and learn from him fairly well. But the hardest part of programming for real is that you are eventually going to be in a situation where you cannot finish a project on your own, and every single person is going to have to be committed enough to learn a language and get their code in on time or you will fail.

We were a fairly typical group of high school students, so you can probably guess how successful we were at first. I was the only one who cared about learning the material, and did not have much I could do to get the others to cooperate.(being two years younger never helps) Eventually, I just had to make it work by studying harder, and telling everyone in the group that if they did not finish their part a week in advance, they were on their own. The people who didn’t work hard failed, and those of us who were left eventually got much better at coordinating and working together. I don’t think teamwork ever gets easy, all you can really do is give people an incentive to work hard and take up the slack for anyone who doesn’t.

I don’t know where else you could take a course like mine, but it definitely helped :p

rabidchicken Mar 23, 2011, 4:03 AM
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Costs and Benefits of Scholarship
Does karma even matter once you have enough to not get silenced instantly? It is more a measure of experience with the site than intelligence. I cannot think of a short series of comments i could make that would drain all of my karma at this point, which would not get me banned even if I had several thousand.

rabidchicken Mar 23, 2011, 3:33 AM
12 points
in reply to: Goobahman’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Test the limits of their free travel offer ;p

rabidchicken Mar 23, 2011, 3:29 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
It is intended to automatically filter trolls, but being locked out after one bad comment does seem harsh. I would not worry about managing your karma now though… It would take a significant series of widely detested posts for you to be stuck making a new account.

rabidchicken Mar 23, 2011, 2:33 AM
3 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
I deliberately condition myself to not be afraid of losing karma. Trying to strike a balance between accepting other peoples opinions and listening to my own judgement is difficult. But when too many people delete anything which is unpopular, a sites content becomes monolithic.

Although since it was an easy to misinterpret joke, my karma policies may be irrelevant. Feel free to downvote.

rabidchicken Mar 23, 2011, 2:17 AM
0 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Who knows… If they do not get enough responses I expect them to change the length. They probably just wrote down everything they ideally would like to have time to teach, and figured out how long they thought it would take at a breakneck pace,

rabidchicken Mar 23, 2011, 1:17 AM
0 points
in reply to: Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) ’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Yeah, I really should be saving up over the summer as well. But then again… It will probably only get more difficult to go in the future. They might start charging, I will probably have a full time job, and an apartment to deal with.

rabidchicken Mar 22, 2011, 11:24 PM
0 points
in reply to: Jasen’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Sounds good to me… I cannot say that I have ever been involved in something this long that could take up nearly all of my time, but I tend to do well under pressure.

rabidchicken Mar 22, 2011, 11:19 PM
6 points
in reply to: AdeleneDawner’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Intensive training often involves doing things you would not normally make yourself do, but if I go and they ask me to do anything truly insane or unethical, I would opt out whether it was tolerated or not. That said, I trust most people here enough that I am extremely doubtful this will be necessary.

rabidchicken Mar 22, 2011, 6:08 PM
4 points
in reply to: Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) ’s comment on: What comes before rationality
Though the privacy concern was valid, the post was really interesting and made me think more carefully about possible negative impacts of rationality.

If you ever feel you can write something similar that avoids the concerns people had, that would be great.

rabidchicken Mar 22, 2011, 3:44 PM
4 points
on: Rationality Boot Camp
Covering room, board, and airfare? That is very generous. I will check my schedule for the summer, this sounds like it could be interesting.

Also, I stand to gain enough from this that I will be applying anyway, but how selective are you planning to be? I guess this is still a work in progress, but if there are any age restrictions, limits on how many people can attend, or application costs I would like to know.

rabidchicken Mar 22, 2011, 5:08 AM
1 point
in reply to: CuSithBell’s comment on: What comes before rationality
I would not be worried about people looking for instructions on how to murder someone nearly as much as I would be worried about officials who could find it.

Given our lack of experience or research, I do not think we could give very useful pointers. (I hope...)

rabidchicken Mar 22, 2011, 5:06 AM
−2 points
in reply to: CuSithBell’s comment on: What comes before rationality
Unless, you REALLY want to.

rabidchicken Mar 22, 2011, 5:00 AM
9 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: A Rationalist’s Account of Objectification?
Potentially unusual anecdotal evidence; I have been groped three times in as many years by complete strangers (who were females of about my age). It wasn’t a big deal to me, and I imagine that anyone who knew about it would just find it hilarious. Sexual harassment of men is probably heavily underreported, so people tend to forget it exists.

The media just reflects popular assumptions, so if you encourage people to reconsider their beliefs about how each gender behaves you might be able to equalize objectification.

rabidchicken Mar 22, 2011, 2:22 AM
2 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Sublimity vs. Youtube
Because I am on the utilitarian ethics bandwagon?

I think that (3^^^3(change in happiness when watching kitten 1 s)) > (1(average change in happiness in awesome life 3.15*10^9 s))

(assuming subject lives 100 years = 3.15 10^9 seconds). In fact, I think that change in happiness from seeing a kitten /second is probably comparable to the average change in happiness of a sublime life /second, so I could take the video even for around 3.1510^9 viewers. (But would be tempted to do more research first) With 3^^^3 viewers, its not much of a decision.

rabidchicken Mar 21, 2011, 7:20 PM
1 point
on: A Rationalist’s Account of Objectification?
Perhaps I have been studying AI to much, but I do not really think of myself or anyone else as an observer at all. Sure I have an unusual capacity to react to my environment, but the entire process can be reduced down to a large number of electrical signals interacting in predictable ways. What I find strange is NOT thinking of people as objects. Does this have any effect on how I treat women? I don’t think so… except perhaps an unusual ability to ignore people of both genders completely.