I think I wouldn’t. It is the way that questions are asked in Russian in the most widespread version (“Did you take my gun?” → “You my gun take?” (there is nothing like ‘did’ in this sentence)), and I sometimes speak affirmatives that way just as a habit (nobody makes a deal out of it).
Say, is Afrikaans an easy language to learn the basics of? Just out of curiosity.
Done—and mildly disappointed that we won’t be measuring the prevalence of transponyism this year.
Has that been actually suggested?
Done.
Also, concerning the psychological states. I was diagnosed with a certain something, but the results were largely inconclusive. Chose “was diagnosed”.
I don’t know Afrikaans, but Russian is very much unlike English in a lot of things—most notably, the order of words in a sentence usually plays next to no role whatsoever in terms of actual meaning (you may sound somewhat posh or dramatic if you randomize it too much, but Yoda still sounds pretty normal in all Star Wars Rusian translations I know). Given all that, I don’t feel anything like you describe when I think in Russian.
I empathize with this. But, still, it’s not like those communicational biases actually affect beliefs about reality (aka maps).
My native language is Russian (and was also the only language I could speak before my teens). I can also speak English, and it is my primary language for thinking now (it is MUCH easier to think in English, than in Russian—Russian is horrible). The two languages do not feel like different maps. I do have some problems in conversing with Russian-speaking individuals, mostly with expressing myself (English offers so many useful features not present in Russian that I feel like an amputee when I can’t use them), but I do not think that knowing the distinction helped me with rationality much. They are not different ways of seeing the world, but different ways of describing what you see. Not different maps, different map colorings, maybe.
You are a good parent.
Yeah, I understood the point.
You know, that actually persuaded me to override my intuitions and pick torture over dust specks.
Funny thing. I started out expanding this, trying to explain it as thoroughly as possible, and, all of a sudden, it became confusing to me. I guess, it was not a well thought out or consistent position to begin with. Thank you for a random rationality lesson, but you are not getting this idea expanded, alas.
No, just as I eat sweets for sweet pleasure, not for getting sugar into my body, but I still wouldn’t wirehead into constantly feeling sweetness in my mouth.
Because I wouldn’t actually care if my actions actually help, as long as my brain thinks they do.
Did the oil bird mental exercise. Came to conclusion that I don’t care at all about anyone else, and am only doing good things for altruistic high and social benefits. Sad.
Is the link for “Akrasia/addiction” a little bit weird?..
As a person who did not study decision theories specifically, I desperately need more and clearer examples of BetterDT agents predictably outperforming CDT agents.
I genuinely can’t tell what parts of it were a joke, which were serious, and why it was even posted. Downvote.
If only I cared about who goes to my funeral.
Love it.
I start noticing a pattern in my life. When I tell several jokes at once, people are most amused with the one I think is the least funny.
This one seems to be true. True of Eliezer Yudkowsky and true of every other human living or dead (again simultaneously). “Uncountably infinite counterfactual universes” make most mathematically coherent tasks kind of trivial. This is actually a less impressive feat than, say, “Chuck Norris contains at least one water molecule”.
That was not what I was thinking about. I should have been. Kinda obvious in hindsight.
That is supposedly true, but what does it have to do with covariance?
Oh yes, there are. My personal pet peeve, there is no way to distinguish “difficulty” and “complexity” in Russian. There is even no simple way (or, at least, I don’t know one) like “difficult as in how hard it is to do, not as in how hard it is to describe”). However, hard way (spending a minute explaining the difference and then using some shorthand) works perfectly with Russian-only speakers, even not very intelligent ones. They do seem to have that distinction in their maps, and sometimes even comment on how weird it is that it is impossible to spell it properly. I never saw anyone being confused by it.
BTW, Russian does have that distinction. Question words is one area in which Russian is superior, in my opinion.
Oh, that reminds me. In Russian, every noun has a grammatical gender. Cabinet is male, keyboard is female and window is neuter. It DOES carry a lot of connotations that affect me in introspectively noticable ways.
Curious note: when rereading this post last time before posting, I noticed that in the very first paragraph, when I talked about distinction between complexity and difficulty, I used words “simple” and “hard” as literal antonyms without even noticing.