Sanji

• Sanji 23 Jan 2014 13:52 UTC

  7 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ists Are Less Cre­d­u­lous But Bet­ter At Tak­ing Ideas Seriously

  Is it possible that the difference you’re seeing is just lack of knowledge of probabilities? I am a new person, and I don’t really understand percentages. My brain just doesn’t work that way. I don’t know how I would even begin to assign a probability to how likely cryonics is to work.

  What links here?

  • itaibn0's comment on Ra­tion­al­ists Are Less Cre­d­u­lous But Bet­ter At Tak­ing Ideas Seriously by Scott Alexander (24 Jan 2014 1:44 UTC; 0 points)

• Sanji 3 Jan 2014 20:52 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Brillyant’s comment on: Hand­shakes, Hi, and What’s New: What’s Go­ing On With Small Talk?

  Something I have noticed myself getting into:

  Whenever I or someone else ends an statement with a question, often someone (probably me) asks a question about the original statement as well as answering the question, essentially resulting in two simultaneous conversations.

  Example:

  A: Do you play any sports? B: I play baseball. I play second base. And you? A: I play volley ball. Which one is second base? B: The one opposite home. What position in volleyball?

  These simultaneous conversations proliferate online much easier, but they often happen in real life too. (for me)

• Sanji 31 Dec 2013 2:32 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Acidmind’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes De­cem­ber 2013

  Then again negative reinforcement doesn’t work quite as well as positive reinforcement, and is sometimes counterproductive?

  The Power of Reinforcement

  It implies that in there all over the place but never outright states it.

  EDIT: Assuming that blame is being used as operent conditioning, which is the impression I got.

• Sanji 29 Dec 2013 14:42 UTC

  1 point

  on: Doubt, Science, and Mag­i­cal Crea­tures—a Child’s Perspective

  I had the same experience with Santa, but instead of trying a super complicated experiment, I just tried to stay up past midnight. Little did I know that Santa had some sort of sleep dust (or I had never stayed up past 10 so I fell asleep naturally)

• Sanji 1 Dec 2013 21:55 UTC

  −2 points

  on: On Wal­mart, And Who Bears Re­spon­si­bil­ity For the Poor

  I have noticed a contrarian position on the whole minimum wage thing. One that advocates buying from sweatshops, because they say “at least those people working in the sweatshops aren’t homeless”.

  Possible solution to the whole minimum wage thing: model the thing as a math problem where you minimize the cost to taxpayers? Like, if (current minimum wage current number of jobs) - (hypothetical minimum wage resulting number of jobs) < 0, then the taxpayers would want to switch to the hypothetical minimum wage.

  And to keep experimentation in that from being too harmful to people who have jobs, a possible solution: a limited number of sweatshops, where there is no minimum wage. The limited number is important, so that it doesn’t become a viable option for companies like Walmart to start their own sweatshops and flood the market with jobs, contaminating the experimental results.

  Actually a sort of “sweatshop fallback net” might be a good idea.

• Sanji 1 Dec 2013 18:00 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Lit­tle Johny Bayesian

  In a lot of old poems, fire is just one syllable, and fiery two. I imagine real could be similarly condensed. In the most widely accepted english translation of the Kalevala (Finnish national epic), fire is never two syllables. I always found that strange because I pronounce it “fie-urr”.

• Sanji 1 Dec 2013 1:02 UTC

  9 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)

  I’m Griffin. I am 17 and sending in my first application to college today! (relevance? maybe)I suppose one reason I am signing up for an account now is that all these wacky essays have made me want to write more about myself.

  Things that led me to Less Wrong: well I guess when I first found my way here it was to the wiki article on some religious topic and I was like, “hmm a hate website. How curious.” because I had that thing where I knew hate websites existed but didn’t really connect it to reality. In any case, I closed the page and went on doing whatever I was doing

  Later I stumbled upon Less Wrong again, this time under the guise of Overcoming Bias. This was probably at an old or obsolete section of the website, and it linked to the sequences, which I read about ¹⁄₄ of. I became all about the power of science, and became insufferable to be around (I suspect) for a few weeks.

  I cooled off for some time (still trying to apply the techniques I learned) but then discovered HPMOR, which started all over again and became this huge ordeal.

  In any case, I lurked for around two years, and accumulated a few pet projects I intend to work on later in life (or now), mostly influenced by this blog. I do viola at an arts high school, and the uncuriousity of musicians in general just baffles me.

  Also gender and sexuality may have influenced me getting inexorably drawn here, because I was drawn to the asexual community, being asexual (or at least near it in asexy-space). Asexuals are super into reductionism (link to an asexual blog) and just wacky models in general, and the idea that theoretical models shouldn’t be wrong was kind of hammered into me, hence the dislike of music theory and also the inexorable drawing. Of course, it’s possible I started with a strong sense that beliefs should be consistent and that models should not be wrong.

  Should theoretical models not be wrong? Now that I actually put that (mostly subconscious) belief down in writing, I find myself suspecting it.

  Proof that I need to be a better rationalist: it took me 90 minutes to figure out that I needed to verify my email address in order to comment. I was distracted because there was a thing on this page that takes me down to were this comment box allegedly was, but I hadn’t done the email so I didn’t see any box (or little button that says reply on every comment). I was convinced (to my credit, it was more suspicion than conviction) that the website had some sort of bug. At one point I gave up and tried to post in the discussion place an article asking for help (couldn’t post a comment asking for help duh) and I was saved from the embarrassment (until now) by the little message that says I need an email to post articles. One crazy entrance exam, huh?