WannabeChthonic

• WannabeChthonic 13 Dec 2024 11:57 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: WannabeChthonic’s comment on: WannabeChthonic’s Shortform

  No one is explicitly giving a link to the rules or stating an answer otherwise so let me word out what I gathered from the nonverbal feedback.

  I have received −7 agreement within a few minutes of posting this. Me assuming “when not defined it must be free game” was tagged as locally invalid and I can see how this is true. In other words: English is the de facto language of the LessWrong forum if not only due to policy then at least due to custom.

  I like the LW community and the feature of ForumMagnum/​LW2 they developed a lot and I didn’t even knew one can tag logical fallacies. I have a very specific goal in mind (not stated above) of publishing essays /​ longer ramblings that I sometimes happen to produce and usually pester my friends with. After considering a few alternatives I thought that this forum software is the most beautiful and most feature-rich place to post such things. The mismatch of language, tone, content and polish was something I was not sure how much of an issue it would be. The answer: yes it would be an issue.

  Perhaps there’s a personal space similar to Confluence where can publish longer essays not related to LW at all for the time being I move my ramblings to mataroa.blog/​ and use this account only for LW realted things

• WannabeChthonic 13 Dec 2024 11:23 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Nathan Young’s Shortform

  Early on I politically only specialized in a few areas (digital sovereignty, privacy, computer security) and started being politically active in those areas. I actively decided that other areas such as climate change, housing, diet, … are already focused on by many other activitst and I can probably do more good by specializing in some areas instead of trying to be well-read in all of them.

  Personally I believe the need the be informed is only needed when I have the intent to act. I do intent to act on the new german ePA law and thus I inform myself and I do activism, I do not intent to act on home based heating laws and thus every effort into researching it beyond the basics would be wasted effort.

• WannabeChthonic 13 Dec 2024 11:15 UTC

  5 points

  −8

  on: WannabeChthonic’s Shortform

  Ich suche ob es eine vorgegeben Sprache auf LessWrong.com gibt. Bisher habe ich lediglich die Beschreibung der Community auf Wikipedia gefunden und nicht soffizielles. Ich muss daher von ausgehen, dass ich auch Beiträge in Deutsch schreiben könnte.

  I am looking for the site rule defining language on LessWrong.com. So far I have only found the description of the community on Wikipedia and nothing official. I must therefore assume that I could also write posts in german.

• WannabeChthonic 13 Dec 2024 11:10 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: LessWrong FAQ

  I think the open source link is outdated (I am not sure) I think it should be https://​​github.com/​​ForumMagnum/​​ForumMagnum

WannabeChthonic’s Shortform

• WannabeChthonic 22 Sep 2022 2:45 UTC

  1 point

  on: Play in Hard Mode

  This very much speaks to me. I always played in hard mode. I loved it. It’s an euphoric rage. Bull and Bear @ Wall Street. That’s the feel.

  Now I have burn out and struggled for 3 years.

  Lol I think I am bipolar. If you love your work and fast cars and perhaps it’s a little bit too much get yourself tested. Lmao

• WannabeChthonic 8 Aug 2021 21:30 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Thiel on Progress and Stagnation

  Thanks. Re-reading the quote and reading your answer really made it understand better. I think a year ago I misinterpret this. It’s more on line of the free software movement and people saying “this sucks I will write a {OpenPGP, mutt, Patreon, Gmail, …} to make this better”

• WannabeChthonic 8 Aug 2021 18:57 UTC

  −1 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Stu­pidity as a men­tal illness

  Yes, IQ tests are medical measurements and they’re helpful to medical practitioners. Yes IQ is only loosely related to what we call “intelligence” in the broader sense. The term “IQ” is really consufing because a) it does not measure intelligence and b) it’s not a quotient.

• WannabeChthonic 8 Aug 2021 18:55 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Bound_up’s comment on: Stu­pidity as a men­tal illness

  Prejudice is a good word for describing this post. The article really tries to make the point of “we need less stupid people” without drilling into the “why” and without considering a basic ethical viewpoint.

• WannabeChthonic 8 Aug 2021 18:53 UTC

  1 point

  on: Stu­pidity as a men­tal illness

  The contents of this post seem unnecessary ableist to me. We’re building a society for all people and thus statements like these carry a rather bad taste:

  This could backfire horribly. We could see affirmative action for stupid people. Harvard would boast about how many stupid people it admitted.

  This statement shames people which the article previously stamped as “stupid”. People with disabilities have the same right to prosper just live everyone else. It seems to me that your post carries with it the assumption that “having less ‘stupid’ people” somehow translates to a better human condition. It’s hard to see how shaming people who suffer from “disability” or “being stupid” translates to a better society. Perhaps it’s exactly the opposite which helps society to prosper: accepting people with disabilities, giving them the resources they need, helping them to create policys and rules which help other people with the same disability etc.

  Would you take a pill which alters your thinking patterns in a way some other person considers better? I’d argue that a lot of people don’t suffer from “being stupid”. Impairing normal functioning and being a source of suffering is necessary for something to be labelled desease[1], something which you did not showed.

  Stupid people controlling technology and civilizations developed by smart people are an existential threat.

  David Freedman is right. Believing in meritocracy also leads to believing that “smart people” should excert control over civilization and technology. This is in harsh contrast to democracy, where civilization should be directed and altered by the civilization itself (populus). When some part of the civilization is “stupid” then they should be equally represented in the governing system instead of favoring people deemed of correct “intelligence” or “age” or “religion”.

  people will argue that stupidity isn’t any worse than being smart (much as some deaf activists claim that deafness is a culture, not a disability)

  The linked article does not state that deafness is a culture but instead that deafness can be used as cultural identification. A very valid assumption given that deaf people have it far easier interacting with other deaf people and their media instead of non-deaf people.

• WannabeChthonic 7 Jun 2021 7:43 UTC

  2 points

  on: What to op­ti­mize for in life?

  Life Satisfaction. Some people name this “tranquility” and I think the name is very common in the “minimalism” community (because they try to optimize tranquility as far as I can tell). Life Satisfaction is very complex. It’s not “maximize amount of friends” or “maximize amount of money” but instead requires constant introspection & skills related to introspection.

• WannabeChthonic 12 Aug 2020 12:04 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Dustin’s comment on: Thiel on Progress and Stagnation

  I’m also very suspicious of the idea that most of it is original thinking.

  It’s not important weather or not it’s original or not.
  In my opinion “I tell you something which make sense” is less important than “I tell you something AND show that this is a more accurate way of thinking than the alternative ideas”.

• WannabeChthonic 12 Aug 2020 12:01 UTC

  0 points

  on: Thiel on Progress and Stagnation

  Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.

  I highly question this. So apparently I have no say in a democracy but when I am an inventor then I can shape the world? So the activists who lobby for green energy are doing nothing? Governments spending money for research are doing nothing?

  I highly doubt that this romantic “single genius” idea is ever so slightly accurate. Usually people create companys and NGOs and sportsteams because together you are stronger, no matter how smart some individual.

• WannabeChthonic 12 Aug 2020 11:57 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: Thiel on Progress and Stagnation

  Your argument is correct but the premise, that common media coverage on technology is black/​white and that futuristic media is mostly dystopian still holds.

  I haven’t ran any studies on this but the relationship we have to technology is very important (“robot took my job so now I can be a writer, wohoo!”). When we have the impression that technology will further deepen the rifts in society, then we are unlikely to act on deepening rifts in society. When we assume that social progress needs to go hand in hand with technological progress then we are far more likely to act and say “AI can be really helpful but using it to identify non-productive employees can be very anti-social and discriminatory”.

• WannabeChthonic 29 Jul 2020 15:46 UTC

  2 points

  on: “Can you keep this con­fi­den­tial? How do you know?”

  Can you keep a secret?

  As far as I know: yes I am good at keeping secrets.

  How do you know?

  People have observed, that I am very concious about talking about other people. I say things like “you better ask them this in Person” or changing topic when permission groups don’t match (e. g. more people present than previously). Like many people, I am concious what’s on red tape and what’s not. Personally I advocate for transparency but I’ve learned that some people only make deals when off-tape.

  This results in people telling me more secrets. They know I can keep them—they have observed, how I not crack when asked about information I probably have.

  Person in my sports club once told me about patients of them. After describing vague psychological behaviour I stopped them and said something along the line of “I probably don’t know the person but it’s easier than you might think, to pin down individuals based on behaviour”. I have a degree in computer science with focus on information management, information transportation, analysis… etc. Maybe that’s because I sort of know how much information can be contained inside random excerps. I advocate in fahour of the GDPR and am fairly privacy-minded. I know how e-mail addresses can be used to trivially match online accounts. Thats’s why my LessWrong account has a randomly generated e-mail address. Etc.

  What exactly do you mean by secret?

  ‘Secret’ is someone not to be shared. It’s very different from ‘not telling’. ‘Not telling’ means that I say it thruthfully when directly confronted. For example the question “Are you seeing other girls?” is a classic question which I would put under ‘not telling’. There’s nothing to be gained from yelling it into the world. But if someone asks I’d answer the truth (example completely fictional). ‘Secret’ on the other hand requires some more active work. Tracking the information which a person knows or knows not. Knowing the relationship between the people. If A told me this and B is a trustee of A then this person probably either knows it already of A hides it from B. That sort of stuff. I think the easiest way to solve this is by containerizing ‘Secrets’. Like in a way of ‘never say this unless you double checked that it’s okay to say right now’. Usually I say the truth. There are no logical loopholes if you answer “can’t tell” instead of faking something.

  Also helpful: I have a reputation for being a really bad liar. That’s good. Because ‘acting like a liar’ is a good thing when you want to tell the truth on paper while still gaining no acceptancy.

  I think my definiton of secret is a bit wonky and might need adjusting. Overall I think the term ‘Secret’ ist used for too many vague things.

• WannabeChthonic 5 Jul 2020 14:19 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: Decius’s comment on: Wire­less is a trap

  If a given dongle can be spoofed into providing arbitrary HID input (or just arbitrary keystrokes, in addition to mouse movement and clicks), that would be a more serious vulnerability.

  Dongles of bluetooth keyboards certainly can input arbitrary keystrokes. That’s already enough to do basically anything on the computer. For example the tab character can be used to switch between different UI elements and exploits are usually carried out in code and not by manually navigating through files or windows.

• WannabeChthonic 5 Jun 2020 7:07 UTC

  11 points

  on: Covid-19: My Cur­rent Model

  Thinking about how to act during the pandemic is very important. Tbh I dislike some aspects of this post. Some parts of it seem very emotion-fueled and political.

  For example:

  Governments Most Places Are Lying Liars With No Ability To Plan or Physically Reason. They Can’t Even Stop Interfering and Killing People

  This seems to be a very angloamerican thing. Here in europe things are bad (e. g. Norway, Italy, …) but overall, our political system seems to apply appropriate force when required. Badly struck areas are in lockdown while other areas have open restaurants and open zoos. Sure, not every decision will be right, but listening to science and cooperating across borders really helps.

  So for me, this post seems to spread a lot of FUD, something which is pretty hurtful to some people when they feel lack of control and physical isolation. Maybe we can compile this into a resource on how to understand exponential risk, superspreader theory and how to interpret the current research which is done on the SARS-CoV2 virus. Because let’s be honest: most people suck at understanding epidemics (we call the few remaining people “epidemiologist” and there’s a reason why they’re spend so many years in uni). Let’s not make the mistake and become hobby-epidemiologists.

• WannabeChthonic 14 Oct 2019 19:03 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: [VIDEO] Harm re­duc­tion, hacker psychology

  The same problems as with Alcoholics Anonymous should apply. Since AA does not store records it’s very hard for studies to analyze its effectiveness. This wikipedia page lists various studies which show (or don’t show) the effectiveness of AA. The effectiveness of AA is of high interest for anti-drug research. If it can’t be analyzed on AA-scale then it probably can’t be analyzed by a single individual working at a phone.

  It’s probably better to just shrug it off as a personal opinion of the reporter and focus on the main point instead.

• WannabeChthonic 13 Oct 2019 16:09 UTC

  2 points

  on: For progress to be by ac­cu­mu­la­tion and not by ran­dom walk, read great books

  I’d like to quote this argument from here:

  Distillation works best in very exact sciences, such as physics and mathematics. If you rely on distillation for an inexact science, you will do best at capturing its exact parts. You will be left with a systematic bias, and knowledge gap, regarding its inexact parts.

• WannabeChthonic 13 Oct 2019 16:04 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Zack_M_Davis’s comment on: For progress to be by ac­cu­mu­la­tion and not by ran­dom walk, read great books

  The purpose of the comment was more in the sense of fixing the article… I am new to LW. Posts can be edited, right?