tim

Karma: 623

tim 22 Aug 2016 5:33 UTC
0 points
on: Time management and Do your tasks in a different order
I know it will take me 10 minutes to get gas, 30 minutes to go to the grocery store and some as-of-yet unknown amount of time to deploy a new build of a website to the production server (things might go smoothly, or I might be spending several hours trying to track down some configuration error).

If I can survive until tomorrow without filling my car with gas and getting food at the store, it doesn’t make any sense to do those “fixed tasks” first and then risk not having enough time to complete the “flexible” (yet more immediately important) task.

Your examples conflate the idea of a task that takes a variable amount of time and task that isn’t particularly important. You need to shower and dress for your appointment whether or not it takes 20 minutes every time. What you’re really saying is, “do the most important tasks first then, if you have time, do some less important tasks”—which isn’t particularly insightful.

tim 2 Apr 2016 9:52 UTC
2 points
on: The increasing uselessness of Promoted
Good lord. I haven’t been on LW in quite a while, but I wholeheartedly agree.

The collection of articles currently on the front page are painfully useless to someone looking to discuss “the art of human rationality” rather than be inundated with content blatantly serving the interests of a particular company/organization.

This content will (for the most part) appeal to people already in the fold. But what, in any way would a newcomer to the site gain from articles titled:
- [ACRONYMYOUHAVENEVERHEARDOF] Is Hiring!
- Why Is Our Company Great? Click Here To Find Out!
- Donate Money To Us, Please!
- Read About What Our Company Does—It’s Super Important!
- Please, Take Our Survey And Maybe WIN BIG!
Are these massively unfair oversimplifications of the actual content of the articles? Yes. Are these roughly along the lines of what a newcomer to the site will hear in their brain when they look at the front page? Almost certainly.

tim 6 Nov 2015 7:26 UTC
2 points
in reply to: PeerGynt’s comment on: LINK: An example of the Pink Flamingo, the obvious-yet-overlooked cousin of the Black Swan
Yeah, I was fortunate enough to enter a percent sign after my estimate which resulted in an explicit warning, but an open-ended text box is not a great way to structure this poll.

tim 10 Oct 2015 0:26 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Thomas’s comment on: Crazy Ideas Thread—October 2015
shrug

I am interested in your idea but based on your description, I am legitimately uncertain as to how it is measurably different from what Google already does.

I am certainly not saying that Google is and always will be the best.

tim 9 Oct 2015 6:03 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Thomas’s comment on: Crazy Ideas Thread—October 2015
That conveys a much different impression than

What I want is to input any blob of data and output should be all possible relations this blob of data has with any other blob of data. … If I input a picture, all pictures of the same object(s) is the natural answer this GLT should return.

And how is this functionality

Millions of filters would be inside GLT, already. Yours may be added. It is a main advantage over Google.

any different from Google in the first place? Are you implying they aren’t already mining information regarding each user’s search-revision and link-clicking habits to improve their filters as whole?

tim 8 Oct 2015 3:15 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Thomas’s comment on: Crazy Ideas Thread—October 2015
I dunno. I don’t think I would use what you’re describing over Google. Filtering the associations with little to no work from the end user is huge. If I type “register s” into google, it instantly understands that I want to know about registering scripts in asp.net due to my previous search history, the types of sites I visit, etc.

I think you are underestimating what a tremendous pain in the ass it will be to manually filter through the massive number of associations with a particular string.

In incognito mode “register script” gives links to various resources (WGA/Library of Congress/etc) directed at screenwriters along with sites directed towards programming in languages I don’t know and don’t care about. And this is after Google has removed/hidden links it believes to be spammy or generally unhelpful toward people who make this search.

tim 30 Sep 2015 6:03 UTC
4 points
on: The Trolley Problem and Reversibility
I am not a deontologist, but it’s clear you’re painting the entire school of thought with a fairly broad brush.

However, deontologists would say that you don’t have the right to make that decision.

It is hard to argue against this conclusion, assuming that there is a strong moral obligation for Aaron not to flick the switch, along the lines of “Do not kill”.

I can’t see any pathway to find a logical contradiction, but I can’t imagine that many people would defend this state of affairs.

It is hoped that this post won’t be oversimplified into a, “this is why you are wrong” post, but to help deontologists understand and refine their commitments better.

The entire tone of the post reeks of strawmanning. There is no discussion regarding how different sets of deontological rules might come to seperate conclusions. Each premise is assumed to be correct and there is zero effort made to exploring why it might be wrong (see: steel manning). And finally, almost every paragraph ends with a statement along the lines of:
- ″...it seems...”
- ″...seems consistent with...”
- ″...I can’t imagine that...”
- ″...this doesn’t seem...”
- ″...seems strange to suggest...”
- ″...this seems like a very hard position to defend.”
If you ignore the ethical prescriptivism, there’s not a whole lot of substance left.

tim 4 Sep 2015 5:38 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Stupid Questions September 2015
Every game has rules and every rule can be gamed. What makes you think that sociopaths are rendered less threatening when living in a capitalist society? If anything, it seems like capitalism would be a highly advantageous environment for a sociopath compared to a society where all important economic entities are mired in government oversight.

tim 1 Sep 2015 4:00 UTC
3 points
in reply to: ike’s comment on: Meta post: Did something go wrong?
I guess...

But I would never think to navigate to the FAQ of a site and scroll through several hundred lines of completely unrelated text to find an instance of the link which allows me to then view a comprehensive collection of new content from said site.

tim 1 Sep 2015 3:50 UTC
2 points
in reply to: ike’s comment on: Meta post: Did something go wrong?
So, no?

tim 1 Sep 2015 3:25 UTC
7 points
on: An accidental experiment in location memory
This doesn’t seem particularly odd to me. If someone moved the ignition of your car up by 20mm, I bet you’d slam your key into the surrounding plastic at least a couple times.

tim 1 Sep 2015 3:11 UTC
3 points
in reply to: ike’s comment on: Meta post: Did something go wrong?
Is this a link that is supposed to be readily accessible? A quick search through the source of this page doesn’t turn up any hits for “all/new” outside your post here and it’s corresponding entry in the recent comments section.

Maybe this obvious to regular users of reddit, but I had no idea you could filter lists of posts with the /r/ syntax.

tim 27 Aug 2015 3:24 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Open Thread—Aug 24 - Aug 30
This feeds directly into what the OP has just broken free from: a cycle of continuously re-convincing himself that this relationship might not be what it appears on the surface and that he still has a responsibility to the other party.

One-sided advice is exactly what the brain needs to stop it from falling back to the endless well of excuses and rationalizations.

tim 27 Aug 2015 3:00 UTC
4 points
on: Personal story about benefits of Rationality Dojo and shutting up and multiplying
Setting aside emotion and simply doing the math is certainly worthy of praise in of itself. But I feel this anecdote would be better served after you have gone through with the purchase, lived in the house for a period of time and been able to say unequivocally: “I am really happy that we live in this house.”

The pending uncertainty over the actual outcome casts a pretty big shadow over “yay we did rationality!”

tim 26 Aug 2015 4:43 UTC
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread—Aug 24 - Aug 30
While I don’t agree with the way they phrased their explanation, it’s akin to saying “I’m not sure if 2 + 2 = 4 is true, but I am sure it can’t equal anything else.” Then falling back to “but there could be oddities in the foundation of mathematics that I’m not aware of” when pressed on the inconsistency.

If you claim that your understanding of logic isn’t exhaustive, I don’t see how you can also claim that X is logically impossible. (“I’m not a car expert but there is no possible way the problem is with the engine”)

tim 26 Aug 2015 3:28 UTC
1 point
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Why people want to die
Huh, I have harbored that misconception for a really long time. Pretty annoyed that I never thought to examine that statistic further (it just sounds so right!). Thank you.

e: regardless of the fact that there is a decade or so of actual increased lifespan between the two periods, this still solidly harpoons my analogy.

tim 25 Aug 2015 5:09 UTC
11 points
on: Why people want to die
How much of this effect is an inherent effect of evolution + aging and how much is the effect of the surrounding social and cultural norms? Do elderly people who still have a well-established, high-status place in society and actively contribute to its well being also experience the sensation of “waiting for death?”

tim 25 Aug 2015 4:49 UTC
5 points
in reply to: advancedatheist’s comment on: Why people want to die
Not really buying the analogy between massive wealth and superlongevity. Virtually unlimited access to super-stimulation such as fame, drugs and any other rush you could want to get your hands on doesn’t seem all that comparable to an unlimited supply of everyday normal life.

The everyday reality of living forever isn’t going to be shockingly more exciting than regular ol’ not living forever. There will be new awesome and crazy stuff, but you’ll have had lifetimes to grow used to them. People born into them will think of them like how we currently think of small handheld computers that can connect us to almost everyone we’ve ever known and effortlessly tap into a huge reservoir of collected human knowledge.

Seems more analogous to looking at the average level of wealth/lifespan in 1700 and wondering how our brains could ever handle the lavish living conditions and doubled life expectancy of 2015.

tim 7 Aug 2015 2:02 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread August 2015
Because it’s a fully general counterargument against caring about or doing anything. That you shouldn’t care about something because it is temporary is poison. I can’t even imagine the hell we would live in if views like this were widely and earnestly adopted.

tim 28 Jul 2015 2:24 UTC
2 points
in reply to: D_Malik’s comment on: Open Thread, Jul. 27 - Aug 02, 2015
I am probably misunderstanding something here, but doesn’t this

Then the correct guess, if you don’t know whether a given question is “easy” or “hard”...

Basically say, “if you have no calibration whatsoever?” If there are distinct categories of questions (easy and hard) and you can’t tell which questions belong to which category, then simply guessing according to your overall base rate will make your calibration look terrible—because it is