AndrewH

Karma: 199

AndrewH 1 Aug 2013 18:52 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: More “Stupid” Questions
One wonders if in the populations of rationalists (CFAR in particular) that there are naturally mono people who are ‘conformed’ into being poly?

AndrewH 28 Jul 2013 20:35 UTC
11 points
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in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ
This reminds me place premium, an interesting concept that someone doing the same job in one country can earn more than in another. Though we are talking about some kid who can’t even get a job in the first place, this concept works well.

For example if a homogenous region such as country, city, or even suburb, has automated to such a degree that menial jobs are few. Has attracted the best people, and the best people to serve the best people. Such a region has ‘place premium’ as the top creative jobs, programming, finance, design work, etc, pay extremely well to entice the best. These people demand, via their wealth, the best service and so entice those that are skilled, good looking, whatever attributes required for service. Continuously filtering people.

I’ll also argue that the US is a special case in that US dollar holders get a subsidy to living via the petrodollar/global reserve currency. Payed for by any foreigners wanting to by [relative to them] foreign products. This only increases the place premium of living in the US, and thus earning a wage in USD.

For the IQ 70 kids, perhaps there ARE no jobs for them in the region they live in. They have been filtered out by better (in the sense of selected for the jobs in that region) people after the region’s ‘place premium’.

The solution is to move somewhere else, go opposite the flow of people moving to higher ‘place premium’ locations; the one they are in has been saturated by above average people. Perhaps even it is time to think of immigration to one of those countries where they can earn 50c/hour.

Of course with the advent of nation states there is no longer free flow of people, so without welfare these kids might just starve to death, denied the freedom to move.

AndrewH 21 Jul 2013 1:37 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: A1987dM’s comment on: How I Lost 100 Pounds Using TDT
Plenty of foods available today not available to our ancestors, such as semi-dwarf wheat.

AndrewH 30 Jun 2013 7:19 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Could be that ‘use 75th’ only had the right information and mental algorithms to produce the correct prediction in this one case. Other cases ‘user 75th’ might not have passed a sufficient threshold of probability to spout out a prediction.

Please label me as user 2nd when it comes to predictions of ‘user 75th’ ’s predictive powers.

AndrewH 1 Jun 2013 22:37 UTC
−1 points
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on: Optimizing for attractiveness
Being happy is a higher order goal than becoming attractive correct? How about picking up meditation instead? You shouldn’t need to rely on anyone but yourself to be a happy person.

Here’s some simple instructions to get you started. If interested, google “Progressive Stages of Meditation in Plain English” for more detailed instructions.

AndrewH 26 May 2013 21:43 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Mathematicians and the Prevention of Recessions
To the degree that money is used as a store of value, the money supply available for ‘positive-sum’ trades decreases. Let us say that the supply of goods and services on the market stays the same, then with less money available to potentially purchase theses goods and services, the price of the goods and services decreases; microeconomics supply and demand curve. This incentivizes people who are not holding money as a store of value to participate in more positive-sum trades.

Of course, people might end up taking their store-of-value money and investing it, allowing the creation of capital goods that make more efficient production possible. But that’s another story.

AndrewH 22 May 2013 2:00 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: B_For_Bandana’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
Better to think of ways to not spend money than think of ways to keep on living relying on other peoples’ money.

AndrewH 5 Mar 2013 18:33 UTC
−6 points
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in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: MetaMed: Evidence-Based Healthcare
If you haven’t done the search yet (in the manner MetaMed would do a search), how can you guarantee you’ll find something before you do the search? :)

AndrewH 24 Dec 2012 2:57 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people
Intriguing, actual paraphrasing here of a US “The Surgeon General”? I can imagine it is something someone in high office might say.

AndrewH 18 Dec 2012 8:32 UTC
14 points
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in reply to: Larks’s comment on: More Cryonics Probability Estimates
Accessing long term memory appears to be a reconstructive process, which additionally results in accessed memories becoming fragile again; this is what I believe is occurring here. The learned aversion is reconstructed and as then susceptible to damage much more than other non-recently accessed LTM. Consider that the drug didn’t destroy ALL of the mice’s (fear?) memories, only that which was most recently accessed.

So no worries to cryonics!

AndrewH 27 Jul 2012 4:55 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: iceman’s comment on: Article about LW: Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set
I can only give you one upvote, so please take my comment as a second.

AndrewH 26 Jul 2012 20:43 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Article about LW: Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set
Lets be honest about ‘demonstrating rationality’ here. If your goals are to have much more romping in the bedroom, they have done well here. However many of these techniques speak to me of cults, the ones with the leader getting all the brainwashed girls.

A much better sign of rationality is to have success in career, in money, in fame—to be Successful. Not to just have more fun. Being successful hasn’t been much demonstrated, though I am hopeful still.

AndrewH 26 Jul 2012 19:57 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Article about LW: Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set
To be honest, as a long term supporter of SIAI, this sort of social experimentation seems like a serious political blunder. I personally have no problem with finding new (or not part of current western culture) techniques of… social interactions… if you believe it will make yourself and others ‘better’ for some definition of better.

But if you are serious in actually getting the world behind the movement, this is Bad. “Why should I believe you when you seem to be amoral?”. I have more arguments on this matter but they are easy to generate anyway.

Another thought: one way to think of it might be that to achieve your goals personal sacrifice is necessary and applauded: ‘I’m too busy saving the world to have a girlfriend.’. Perhaps there are better examples than that. Maybe it’s time to get rid of couches?

AndrewH 18 Apr 2012 19:56 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85
With Unbreakable Vows, the… arbitrator?… sacrifices a portion of their magic permanently yes? One issue is that, after you die you might need that magic for something, like the more magic you have the more pleasant (or less!) magically created heaven is. In any case, even if magical society was fine with sacrifices, they might reason thus, and not use unbreakable vows. Such a society would make investigation (magical!) into potential afterlife a top priority, so lack of use of such a ritual might be compensated by finding out there is a heaven (or hell).

AndrewH 31 Mar 2012 8:27 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: khafra’s comment on: Brain Preservation
Clearly if you see larger costs as you age, then the incorrect course of action is to simply do nothing and find when you are old, you have no money to pay for the policy. If you don’t want to spend a large amount when you are old, then save now. Perhaps if you save/invest enough, you will have enough money to simply by a cryonics policy directly.

AndrewH 29 Jan 2012 2:48 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: wobster109’s comment on: Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8)

Other than the mass suicides...

And including the mass suicides? remember that in this story, 6 billion people become 1 in a million, and over 25% of people died in this branch of the story. Destroying Huygens resulted in 15 billion deaths.

As they say, shut up and multiply.

AndrewH 8 Sep 2011 2:09 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Polyhacking
At first, I thought that making a new convention is the wrong way to go about it. How many conventions should we need to remember then? making new conventions all over the place for LWer’s will be too difficult, too many different social rules to juggle.

For example, in such a situation, as in asking a person out, you would need to think about the LW community conventions and then normal conventions when deciding actions. But then, you couldn’t do better unless you allow for change.

If a community is to be truly made, perhaps a set of conventions can be constructed so that, this convention will slot nicely into an easily searchable hierarchy: Relationships → relationship changing → approaches/dating requests. You could make an iPhone app so that the LWer looking for love (or wishing to do some social action) can quickly and discretely check up the currently accepted conventions/guidelines. If someone deviates, you can have all sorts of fun deciding to call them on it.

AndrewH 29 Aug 2011 0:01 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: jmmcd’s comment on: [Link] Simon Cowell plans to sign up for cryonics
Are you going to kill yourself now? given that you are only living because you know someday you will be alive and Cowell will not be. Because not signing up for cryonics is saying that you don’t want to live for longer than ~90 years :)

AndrewH 28 Apr 2011 19:35 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Chala’s comment on: Auckland meet up Saturday Nov 28th
Most interesting! I would also recommend CompSci 111 even if you are skilled with computers. It introduces you to a wide range of skills.

You might even bump into me in the corridor.

AndrewH 28 Apr 2011 8:34 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Chala’s comment on: Auckland meet up Saturday Nov 28th
I noticed. I’ll be setting up a new meet up soon due to someone else requesting it. Auckland is positively on fire with rationality it seems! bring water buckets.

You are doing computer science now? that’s most interesting. Are you taking any stage 1 compsci papers this semester?