Username

Karma: 1,653

Username Aug 12, 2015, 7:00 PM
−2 points
on: Ideas on growth of the community
I am a lazy and selfish person. I want to get more rational myself, but I don’t want to put any effort into helping others become more rational.

Username Aug 12, 2015, 4:53 PM
9 points
on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
A Scientific Look at Bad Science

By one estimate, from 2001 to 2010, the annual rate of retractions by academic journals increased by a factor of 11 (adjusting for increases in published literature, and excluding articles by repeat offenders) [2]. This surge raises an obvious question: Are retractions increasing because errors and other misdeeds are becoming more common, or because research is now scrutinized more closely? Helpfully, some scientists have taken to conducting studies of retracted studies, and their work sheds new light on the situation.

“Retractions are born of many mothers,” write Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, the co-founders of the blog Retraction Watch, which has logged thousands of retractions in the past five years. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reviewed 2,047 retractions of biomedical and life-sciences articles and found that just 21.3 percent stemmed from straightforward error, while 67.4 percent resulted from misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4 percent) and plagiarism (9.8 percent) [3].

Surveys of scientists have tried to gauge the extent of undiscovered misconduct. According to a 2009 meta-analysis of these surveys, about 2 percent of scientists admitted to having fabricated, falsified, or modified data or results at least once, and as many as a third confessed “a variety of other questionable research practices including ‘dropping data points based on a gut feeling,’ and ‘changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressures from a funding source’ ” [4].

Username Aug 12, 2015, 3:38 AM
−6 points
in reply to: 4hodmt’s comment on: Crazy Ideas Thread, Aug. 2015
1. What other cost is there? If you have something like fear in mind, you can give them a tranquilizer before.
2. No, but you can explain the deal to them pretty early on. Certainly better than not living.
This would also solve the organ shortage.

Username Aug 12, 2015, 3:04 AM
−7 points
on: Crazy Ideas Thread, Aug. 2015
Legalize slavery, with the following rules:

1) Non-slaves can never become slaves.

2) Slaves can only be born by other slaves, or by parents who choose to conceive a slave child (which creates the initial stock and an influx of new slaves).

3) Slaves have no rights other than to access drugs, including the best drugs for suicide. They cannot be prevented from taking them by anyone, including their owners.

Effects of this policy: Additional people would be born that will not be born otherwise. These additional people would be of use to the existing people, because they have no rights to welfare or other redistribution. They would also benefit from their existence, since they can always end it if they feel otherwise.

The assumption is that the birh rates are lower than carrying capacity allows, and potential lives are lost because no one wants to pay for their costs. This policy would create an incentive to have more children, without harming anyone. The benefit to these additional children would be small, as their lives would not be very good, but still positive, since their lives would be voluntary.

Username Aug 11, 2015, 9:12 PM
5 points
on: Crazy Ideas Thread, Aug. 2015
Keep kindergartens dirty to help children avoid developing allergies.

Username Aug 11, 2015, 9:06 PM
2 points
in reply to: pwno’s comment on: Crazy Ideas Thread, Aug. 2015
This is called emancipation of minors.

Username Aug 11, 2015, 7:04 PM
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
Employment at a single company is the plan.

Username Aug 11, 2015, 5:32 PM
1 point
on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
Previously on LW, I have seen the suggestion made that having short hair can be a good idea, and it seems like this can be especially true in professional contexts. For an entry-level male web developer who will be shortly moving to San Francisco, is this still true? I’m not sure if the culture there is different enough that long hair might actually be a plus. What about beards?

(I didn’t post in this OT yet).

Username Aug 11, 2015, 2:20 PM
39 points
0
on: Crazy Ideas Thread, Aug. 2015
Legalize doping and other artificial human enhancements in sports, but require them to reveal what drugs they are using. Create new sports if you want to encourage specific enhancements.

It would lead to arms races between medical teams and pharmaceutical companies and even if it would harm sportsmen themselves, the fact that new drugs would constantly be invented and perfected would help even ordinary people, because after a while those new drugs and other human enhancements would become available on the market.

Use already existing Paralympic Games to test artificial limbs.

Username Aug 11, 2015, 4:34 AM
2 points
on: Stupid Questions August 2015
If I have an account but want to change my user name, is there a way to do that?

Username Aug 10, 2015, 9:40 PM
7 points
in reply to: Dahlen’s comment on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
The similar formatting of the comments suggests that in this thread it’s mostly one person with a lot of links to share.

Personally, I just haven’t been bothered to make an account, and have been using the username account exclusively for about 5 years. I’d estimate 30-50% of all the posts on the account were made by me over this timeframe, though writing style suggests to me that a good number of people have used it as a one-shot throwaway, and several people have used it many times.

Username Aug 10, 2015, 6:17 PM
−2 points
in reply to: Username’s comment on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
Why?

Username Aug 10, 2015, 5:49 PM
−11 points
on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
Random thought: It would be sensible for this post to get 85 downvotes. But maybe I’m just being paranoid.

Username Aug 10, 2015, 5:21 PM
−4 points
in reply to: Houshalter’s comment on: Versions of AIXI can be arbitrarily stupid
No, maximizing expected utility (still) should not be abandoned.

Username Aug 10, 2015, 2:20 PM
2 points
on: Effects of Castration on the Life Expectancy of Contemporary Men
Stupid question: if you think that huge improvements in medicine and radical life extension are just around the corner, should you castrate yourself or your children to increase your chances to survive up to that point in order to uncastrate yourself later with the help of new improved medicine? Potentially high rewards strategy, even if it’s very risky.

Username Aug 10, 2015, 2:08 PM
5 points
in reply to: Stephen_Cole’s comment on: Rationality Quotes Thread August 2015
Violence requires at least two people, you can be irrational even when you are alone.

Username Aug 10, 2015, 1:37 PM
2 points
on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
An Introverted Writer’s Lament by Meghan Tifft

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Username Aug 10, 2015, 1:31 PM
19 points
on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid, an article about using CBT to fight impulsivity that leads to criminal behaviour, especially among young males from poor backgrounds.

How much crime takes place simply because the criminal makes an impulsive, very bad decision? One employee at a juvenile detention center in Illinois estimates the overwhelming percentage of crime takes place because of an impulse versus conscious decision to embark on criminal activity:

“20 percent of our residents are criminals, they just need to be locked up. But the other 80 percent, I always tell them – if I could give them back just ten minutes of their lives, most of them wouldn’t be here.”

...

The teenager in a poor area [who is] is not behaving any less automatically than the teenager in the affluent area. Instead the problem arises from the variability in contexts—and the fact that some contexts call for retaliation.” To illustrate their theory, they offer an example: If a rich kid gets mugged in a low-crime neighborhood, the adaptive response is to comply—hand over his wallet, go tell the authorities. If a poor kid gets mugged in a high-crime neighborhood, it is sometimes adaptive to refuse—stand up for himself, retaliate, run. If he complies, he might get a reputation as someone who is easy to bully, increasing the probability he will be victimized in the future. The two kids, conditioned by their environment, learn very different automatic responses to similar stimuli: someone else asserting authority over them.

The authors of “Thinking, Fast and Slow” extend the example further by asking you to imagine these same two kids in the classroom. If a teacher tells the rich kid to sit down and be quiet, his automatic response to authority on the street—comply, sit down and be quiet—is the same as the adaptive response for this situation. If a teacher tells the poor kid to sit down and be quiet, his automatic response to authority on the street—refuse, retaliate—is maladapted to this situation. The poor kid knows the contexts are different, but still on a certain level feels like his reputation is at stake when he’s confronted at school, and acts-out, automatically.

...
The researchers examined clinical studies of programs that keep this in mind and focus on teaching kids to regulate their automaticity. These interventions were designed to help young people, “recognize when they are in a high-stakes situation where their automatic responses might be maladaptive,” and slow down and consider them. One of the interventions studied was the Becoming a Man (BAM) program, conducted in public schools with disadvantaged young males, grades 6-12, on the south and west sides of Chicago.

“What makes the interventions we study particularly interesting is that they do not attempt to delineate specific behaviors as “good,” but rather focus on teaching youths when and how to be less automatic and more contingent in their behavior.”

Researchers randomly assigned students to have the opportunity to participate in BAM, as a course conducted once a week throughout the 2009-2010 school year.

The course is actually a program of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT helps people identify harmful psychological and behavioral patterns, and then disrupt them and foster healthier ones. It’s used by a wide range of people for a wide range of issues, including to treat depression, anger management, and anxiety disorders. The particular style of CBT used in BAM focuses on three fundamental skills:
1. Recognize when their automatic responses might get them into trouble,
2. Slow down in those situations and behave less automatically,
3. Objectively assess situations and think about what response is called-for. One thing participants are taught in BAM is that “a shift to an aversive emotion” is an important cue for when they are prone to act automatically. Anger, for example, was a common cue among participants in the study group. They were also taught tricks to help them slow down to consider their situation before acting: including deep breathing and other relaxation techniques. Lastly, they were guided through self-reflection and assessment of their own behavior: examining their “automatic” missteps, thinking about how they might have acted differently.
The researchers found that, during the program year, program participants had a 44% lower arrest rate for violent crimes than the control group. They repeated the intervention in 2013-2014 with a new group, and found that program participants had a 31% lower arrest rate for violent crimes than the control group.

Username Aug 10, 2015, 1:13 PM
16 points
on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
Composing Music With Recurrent Neural Networks

It’s hard not to be blown away by the surprising power of neural networks these days. With enough training, so called “deep neural networks”, with many nodes and hidden layers, can do impressively well on modeling and predicting all kinds of data. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I recommend reading about recurrent character-level language models, Google Deep Dream, and neural Turing machines. Very cool stuff!) Now seems like as good a time as ever to experiment with what a neural network can do.

For a while now, I’ve been floating around vague ideas about writing a program to compose music. My original idea was based on a fractal decomposition of time and some sort of repetition mechanism, but after reading more about neural networks, I decided that they would be a better fit. So a few weeks ago, I got to work designing my network. And after training for a while, I am happy to report remarkable success!

Username Aug 10, 2015, 1:11 PM
2 points
on: Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015
Change your name by Paul Graham

If you have a US startup called X and you don’t have x.com, you should probably change your name.

The reason is not just that people can’t find you. For companies with mobile apps, especially, having the right domain name is not as critical as it used to be for getting users. The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals weakness. Unless you’re so big that your reputation precedes you, a marginal domain suggests you’re a marginal company. Whereas (as Stripe shows) having x.com signals strength even if it has no relation to what you do.

...

100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another