Alrenous

• Alrenous 14 Apr 2013 20:28 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

  Found helpful. Your conclusion is true, but not something I’d think to mention.

  Now I can construct an introduction template: “I’m Alrenous, and I find X important.” It won’t be complete, but at least it also won’t be inaccurate.

• Alrenous 14 Apr 2013 20:28 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: CCC’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

  Deliberately by accident: When I do it on purpose, it works. Sometimes, I have the impulse to, decide I shouldn’t, and then I do it anyway.

  For example, I think this conversation should be about introductions, not me, at least until I settle on how I think the introduction should go. I could easily make it about me, though—I almost did so, accidentally. Specifically, about how I hijack threads without meaning to.

  you can’t stand the taste of peas

  I in fact can’t stand the taste of peas. Except fresh ones, as in, I just picked them, which are great.

  To provide a starting point—a ‘this is what I choose to say about myself’ - which gives other people some information about your beliefs, personality, and other elements of identity.

  My problem is that I find introductions are mainly error. That said you’ve made me think of some things that I can do that should at least be worthwhile, even if not really introduction-y.

  Edit: also revealed that one of my heuristics is being inconsistently applied.

I Thought Free Will Would Be Easy to Dist­in­guish from Deter­minism, but I Was Wrong

• Alrenous 14 Apr 2013 19:09 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

  Sounds like a good goal to me. However, then I have to guess what features of mine are useful to share, which I’ve proven to be less than 50% effective at in the past. (For example, that was a feature. Does anyone care?) It also relies on me having a more accurate self-impression than I’ve noticed anyone else having.

  I guess, taken together, I just learned that I don’t think introductions are in fact epistemically worthwhile. So I’ll update my question: are introductions repairable, and if so, how?

  An additional issue is that I’m skilled at being deliberately inflammatory or conciliatory. Good enough that I sometimes do it by accident. I can easily overcome my resistance to introduction by doing either, but I’d rather not. It’s likely this makes doing an introduction cost-ineffective for me in particular. So my question here is, have I forgotten a reason to do an introduction, which would show it’s still worthwhile? Either, despite being inflammatory, or despite having to work hard to prevent it being inflammatory?

• Alrenous 10 Apr 2013 13:18 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: Prob­lems in Education

  It’s also possible that there’s a division between STEM and everything else. Especially, there aren’t many term papers or essays being written for math-heavy courses, and so I can safely assume the Shadow Scholar wouldn’t have run across their students.

• Alrenous 10 Apr 2013 13:10 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: OrphanWilde’s comment on: [SEQ RERUN] Tol­er­ate Tolerance

  Cyclotron radiation wavelengths can be tuned, as they aren’t tied to valence shells.

  The number of spots per second from thermal statistics plus harmonics on the cyclotron radiation can be calculated. If the electrons are also absorbing photons classically, you should get extra spots when they happen to add up.

  I think you’re going to see Rhydberg-OrphanWilde-interpretation blackbody radiation anyway. When an electron bounces off another, it counts as acceleration and produces cyclotron radiation. It might be different in magnitude, though.

  I think photoplates can be tuned too. It should have to be hit by a single particle with more than the activation energy for the light-sensitive reaction. (Neglecting tunneling.) Therefore, it should be possible to pick a compound with a suitably high activation energy.

  If you’re emitting enough radiation to create spots in the receiving medium, you’re dealing with energy that is at least occasionally above Planck scales, and this energy is already in the emitting medium.

  But it will look statistically different. From what I understand, photons below the necessary energy will just bounce off or get absorbed by some other process. That’s how the photoelectric effect is supposed to work, anyway.

• Alrenous 9 Apr 2013 3:55 UTC

  0 points

  on: Per­sonal Ev­i­dence—Su­per­sti­tions as Ra­tional Beliefs

  Was the alien geometry visible from outside the room? Or would the burglar have had to open the door and thus see the expensive materials before deciding to leave it be?

• Alrenous 9 Apr 2013 3:09 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: OrphanWilde’s comment on: [SEQ RERUN] Tol­er­ate Tolerance

  I have a question. My meta-question is whether the question makes sense in light of what you said. (I like working in low-information conditions, downside being dumb questions.)

  Wouldn’t this still be a testable difference? If electrons can briefly store energy, you could send a steady stream of below-Planck photons. Standard QM predicts no spots on the photoplate, but you predict spots, right?

• Alrenous 9 Apr 2013 3:05 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Decius’s comment on: [SEQ RERUN] Tol­er­ate Tolerance

  And an experiment can’t fail to provide new information, because you thought it would provide information and then it didn’t, which means it has something to teach you about experiment design. Unless you’re proposing that an experiment that goes exactly as expected is a waste of time?

  That said I think what Wilde means by ‘invalid’ is that a strong conclusion that resulted from the experiment is invalid in light of the fact that an entirely different model is consistent with the evidence.

• Alrenous 9 Apr 2013 2:49 UTC

  8 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)

  Apparently I have just registered.

  So, I have a question. What’s an introduction do? What is it supposed to do? How would I be able to tell that I’ve introduced myself if I somehow accidentally willed myself to forget?

• Alrenous 9 Apr 2013 2:30 UTC

  11 points

  on: Prob­lems in Education

  P.S. I was going to ask about the terms of your NDA. While I agree with greater transparency, I (perhaps idealistically) hope it can be done without breaking promises.

  However, I also have a principle, showing honour to honourless dogs is worse than useless.

  He couldn’t understand why he had needed to do this, and indeed, refused.

  I have to disagree that this is ineptitude. He knows which evidence he has to conceal from you, and is doing so effectively. Of course by doing so he only confirms that it is harmful to his case, but it nevertheless grants plausible deniability. Especially as I expect anyone who can fire him will collude in the concealment.

  When I submitted this to my boss for approval, she was flabbergasted, and explained that the evaluators job was to collude with the grant proposal submitter,

  Sadly I cannot prove this, but I read this after writing the above paragraph. I wasn’t primed on ‘collude.’ I’ma go ahead and conclude nothing happened to the poor bastard sideswiped by a thoroughly unexpected honest appraisal.

  every single project I evaluated listed their ‘process’ and then said that their ‘goal’ was to enact the process.

  Pays the piper, etc… Whoever informed you about the grant application was probably hoping you’d pick up that they were not to be taken seriously. The point of the grant program is to give goodies to certain demographics. The process was indeed the goal, no matter what anyone else said.

  There’s a limit to how incompetent the rich and/​or powerful can be. A single spot check would have caught this, if it wasn’t what was intended.

  A third. This is, of course, absolutely unacceptable.

  I wonder how many of the 2/​3rds could have but understood that wasn’t the point of the program and didn’t bother.

  --

  I can also explain the parent/​teacher/​math class thing, but you won’t like it. But, very short form: you can’t say ‘racism’ and then just stop thinking.

  --

  Edit: I should mention I’m surprised that such overt racism still exists, and I’m going to update a few theories accordingly. Especially, that you can have lily white AP classes without instantly dying under a rockslide of disparate-impact lawsuits. I can’t help but wonder if the gadgetry is related.