Angela Pretorius

Karma: 184

Angela Pretorius 26 Mar 2022 16:59 UTC
56 points
0
on: Counter-theses on Sleep

70% of 84 hunter-gatherers studied in 2013 slept less than 7 hours per day, with 46% sleeping less than 6 hours.

The study in question also found that the hunter gatherers spent 8-9 hours in bed each night. Sleep duration was measured using those Fitbit trackers that always tell you that you only slept four hours when you’re sure you slept about eight hours. If you move around in your sleep then the tracker assumes that you are awake.

Angela Pretorius 22 Oct 2021 8:10 UTC
14 points
on: Successful Mentoring on Parenting, Arranged Through LessWrong
Don’t make the mistake that I made when I was pregnant. I spent too much time planning parenting strategies years down the line and not enough time researching breastfeeding, and I ended up struggling with a tongue tied baby who would not latch.

Before the baby arrives make sure that, as a minimum, you know the following:
- The side-lying, laid-back, koala hold, cradle hold, cross cradle hold, dangle and clutch hold nursing positions.
- the flipple technique
- how to cup feed a baby
- how to use nipple shields
- how to use a breast pump
- how to do breast compressions
- how many wet nappies a baby should have per day
- how wet a nappy has to be to qualify as wet
- that you should never hold the back of a baby’s head while nursing even if the midwife tells you to.
The best online resources are La Leche League, Kellymom and Analytical Armadillo.

Angela Pretorius 8 Jul 2020 12:01 UTC
11 points
on: Angela Pretorius’s Shortform
I’m curious about the long-term effects of eviction laws on homelessness rates.

I have a an intuitive argument (below) that removing eviction laws and making no-fault evictions really
easy would allow the housing market to clear and cause lower rents and (in the long term) a drop in
homelessness rates.

Does anyone here know whether there have been any empirical studies into the long-term effects of eviction
laws on homelessness and whether or not they have borne out the conclusion that eviction laws increase the
rate of homelessness? If not, are there any good theoretical arguments as to why eviction laws may or may
not increase homelessness rates?

Here is my argument:

Most rental accommodation stands empty for long periods of time. Why would landlords prefer to let rooms
stand empty than to lower their rents and get their rooms filled? And why do so many landlords refuse to
rent to people of certain demographic groups? For example, I many know of landlords who refuse to rent to
construction workers, black people or people who claim benefits and would rather lose money by letting
their accommodation stand empty. Even where there are anti-discrimination laws to prevent this from
happening, in practice the anti-discrimination laws are impossible to enforce.

The reason is that every time a new tenant moves in, the landlord has to trust that the new tenant will pay
their rent and won’t cause property damage or complaints from the neighbors. Because it is so difficult to
evict a ‘problem’ tenant, the landlord will not rent to demographic groups that he/she perceives as
containing a higher proportion of problem tenants.

In addition, because tenants of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to become ‘problem’ tenants,
landlords deliberately keep their rents high to discourage those of lower socioeconomic status from renting
from them. As an example, £1000 per month for a property and having it stand empty half the time brings in
an average of £500 per month, whereas charging £800 per month for a property and having it occupied 90% of
the time brings in £720 per month, but if the sort of tenants who can afford £800 per month are more likely
to become problem tenants than the sort of tenants who can afford £1000 per month, and if eviction laws
make the cost of taking in problem tenants very high, then it will be more profitable to charge £1000 per
month.

One other point that needs to be made is that the people who are most at risk of homelessness tend to be
those who are impulsive/heavily discount the future. Imagine a tenant who values the pleasure of engaging
in a certain problem behavior at 10 units and values being evicted and made homeless now at −50 units, but
discounts the future heavily and only values being made homeless in five months time at −5 units. If there
are no eviction laws and engaging in this problem behavior will lead to immediate eviction and
homelessness, then this tenant will decide not to engage in this problem behavior and will not become
homeless. On the other hand, if there are strict eviction laws and engaging in this problem behavior will
lead to a 50% chance of eviction after five months of court cases then this tenant will decide to engage in
the problem behavior.

Angela Pretorius 12 Aug 2022 11:28 UTC
7 points
0
on: Unifying Bargaining Notions (1/2)
I wonder how often the CoCo point is attained in real life transferable utility bargaining games.

Eg. Do most houses sell for half way between the seller’s walk away price and the buyer’s walk away price? Do most employees earn a wage that is half way between the employee’s walk away wage and the employer’s walk away wage (at least when the employee’s walk away wage is above the legal minimum wage)?

Angela Pretorius 6 Jul 2020 20:41 UTC
7 points
on: How to Beat Procrastination
In my personal experience, the most common cause of procrastination and lack of willpower is open-ended tasks.

Examples:
At school I would complete any short-answer or multiple choice homework in class or as soon as I got home,
but I would procrastinate over and often fail to complete any homework which involved writing essays, and
the more open-ended the essay question the more I would procrastinate over it. Similarly, if I was asked to
show workings out for my calculations I would refuse to do it, whereas I would usually comply when I was
given equally boring rote copying tasks. This is because there is often more than one way to solve a
problem, and more than one way to lay out such a method on paper, whereas rote copying does not offer any
options to choose from.

In conversation, I respond when I am asked a direct question but when I am asked an open-ended question I
procrastinate over coming up with an answer and there is an awkward silence. If I need to approach and talk
to someone who is not a close friend or family, I can motivate myself to overcome my shyness and do it if I
have what I need to say planned out word-for-word beforehand, but if there are many different ways to
phrase what I need to say then I procrastinate over deciding what to say and end up not saying anything.

I find it harder to motivate myself to clean windows than to motivate myself to vacuum. Vacuuming is a more
unpleasant task than cleaning windows—it involves listening to an irritating noise and wearing
uncomfortable heavy duty hearing protection. But when I clean a window, every time I look at it from a
different angle I see more smears. Due to the lack of a definite moment at which the window is clean I will
typically do the vacuuming first while I summon up the willpower for the window cleaning.

As I child, I would refuse to tidy my room when my mum asked me to. Whereas at school, at after-school
clubs and at church services I would always diligently help when I was asked to tidy up. This is because outside the home, there were always unambiguous rules about which tasks had to be done when tidying up.
Whereas at home I was never sure which tidying-up subtasks absolutely had to be done and which subtasks
were optional.

Angela Pretorius 8 Jun 2022 19:39 UTC
6 points
0
on: AGI Safety FAQ / all-dumb-questions-allowed thread
Suppose that an AI does not output anything during it’s training phase. Once it has been trained it is given various prompts. Each time it is given a prompt, it outputs a text or image response. Then it forgets both the prompt it was given and the response it outputted.

How might this AI get out of the box?

Angela Pretorius 26 Jul 2020 5:40 UTC
6 points
on: Swiss Political System: More than You ever Wanted to Know (II.)
How are these percentages to be interpreted?

Municipalities spend the most on the cost item “environment” (63%). Environment is followed by “culture, sports and recreation” (56%) and “administration” (44%).

Angela Pretorius 7 Jul 2023 8:06 UTC
5 points
0
on: Making Up Baby Signs
These are some of the signs that my 27 month old late-talker has invented:
-‘sit here’: taps where he wants me to sit
-‘I want a banana’: points to a picture of banana in a book, rubs his tummy then points to the fruit bowl
-‘I want to go outside’ fetches his shoes, points to his feet then runs to the door
-‘give it to me’ opens and closes hands
-‘the bin needs emptying’ runs to the kitchen bin then points to a picture of a wheelie bin
-‘please sweep up the food that I threw on the floor’ points to the dustpan and brush, then points to the food on the floor, then makes a pretend sweeping motion with his hand
Letting him make up his own gestures is much easier than attempting to teach sign language to a toddler who is too busy playing to pay any attention.

Angela Pretorius 16 Jan 2023 11:23 UTC
5 points
on: Why has nuclear power been a flop?
Brilliant article. I’m also curious about the economics side of things.

I found an article which estimates that nuclear power would be two orders of magnitude cheaper if the regulatory process were to be improved, but it doesn’t explain the calculations which led to the ‘two orders of magnitude’ claim. https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood

Angela Pretorius 1 Jan 2021 16:35 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Ericf’s comment on: Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets—Part 12
Or is the author a text predicting neural network which has no visuospatial capacities and sucks at geometry?

Angela Pretorius 25 Sep 2022 19:19 UTC
4 points
0
on: Orexin and the quest for more waking hours
There are two plausible ways to cut sleep duration without harming cognition: increasing the proportion of slow wave sleep that is spent in deep sleep and reducing REM sleep.

Slow wave sleep is needed for synaptic homeostasis (e.g. see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1087079205000420). There are evolutionary trade-offs between time spent awake, time spent in light sleep, and time spent in deep sleep. Deep sleep is more restorative than light sleep but an animal is more likely to be awakened from predators in deep sleep. Humans sleep less than other primates but spend more time in deep sleep than other primates—maybe because our ancestors took turns to stay awake and watch for predators at night?

I’m not so sure what the function of REM sleep is. Maybe something something emotion learning something something? There are cases of people on antidepressants going months with no REM sleep. There are also cases of people on antidepressants who say they have no emotions so I doubt that it’s possible to cut REM sleep without side effects.

Angela Pretorius 21 Dec 2020 7:23 UTC
4 points
in reply to: roryokane’s comment on: Gauging the conscious experience of LessWrong
All but three of your definitions are exactly the same as the definitions that I would give.

Split notes are what novice brass players produce. To hammer a note is to play a note that is loud and sudden and short. Music is flowing if every note feels like it is the natural continuation of the notes before it. So an unanticipated discord or pause or change in volume will break the flow, but if it feels like the music is building up to a sudden change then the flow will be broken by not having this sudden change.

Angela Pretorius 9 Mar 2023 21:01 UTC
3 points
0
on: The Kids are Not Okay
A few thoughts…
Have schools dropped all the fun activities so that they can spend more time catching up on the lessons missed during covid?
The teen suicide rate was declining over the 90s and early 00s. Then the No Child Left Behind act came into effect in 2003. Then the suicide rate gradually started increasing again. It is highly plausible that the no child left behind act would cause an increase in suicides, but I’m not sure why it would cause a gradual increase over many years rather than a sudden jump in suicide rates?

Angela Pretorius 10 Feb 2023 23:36 UTC
3 points
0
on: Schizophrenia as a deficiency in long-range cortex-to-cortex communication
I still think that the dopamine system is involved in psychosis.

It is quite difficult for the brainstem to reward accurate perception. If dopamine production by the brainstem is in any way dependent on information that is coming in from the neocortex rather than from the brainstem’s own sensory areas then there is the potential for things to go wrong.

One part of the neocortex might get dopamine for detecting danger, and it can rewire itself to maximise its dopamine reward by hallucinating evil spirits.

Another part of the brain might get dopamine when social status increases, and it can rewire itself to maximise its dopamine reward by finding evidence that said individual is the messiah.

Another part of the brain might get dopamine whenever it comes across a really interesting hypothesis. Of course, the most interesting hypothesis is rarely the correct one.

Angela Pretorius 1 Oct 2022 13:25 UTC
3 points
0
on: Prioritizing Parental Sleep
Here is the secret to successful co-sleeping: Get a large playpen that can fit a double mattress. Then once the baby is asleep you can slip out and go to the loo/have sex/get a glass of water.

More tips:

If the baby needs changing after a night feed then first roll him onto his tummy, then change him, then roll him back onto his back. My boy would usually sleep through nappy changes so long as he was changed on his tummy.

Put the baby to bed in leggings rather than sleepsuits, so that nappy leaks can be dealt with without waking the baby.

Angela Pretorius 9 Sep 2022 12:11 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Differential reproduction for men and women.
Do you have a reference for the claim that Y-chromosomal Adam and mitochondrial Eve lived around the same time? The only information that I could find online was a bunch of studies that found various estimated ages for mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam that all disagree wildly with each other. Most of them have error bars of at least 50,000 years.

Angela Pretorius 20 Dec 2020 20:04 UTC
3 points
on: Gauging the conscious experience of LessWrong
Here’s one thing I’ve always found puzzling:

Everyone seems to knows what it means when a music teacher describes a passage as ‘flowing’ or ‘full of energy’ or ‘treacly’, or describes a note to be ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ or ‘bright’ or ‘split’. Yet some people say that they don’t have synaesthesia and there are even people who say they have no imagery at all.

Are there people who instinctively know what a ‘bright sound’ is yet don’t automatically visualise such sounds as being brightly coloured? Or who instinctively know what a ‘hammering note’ is without feeling any physical pain when they hear one?

Angela Pretorius 22 Sep 2020 18:17 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Rohin Shah’s comment on: Forecasting Thread: Existential Risk
I agree. I mean, when would you say that the existential catastrophe happens in the following scenario?

Suppose that technological progress starts to slow down and, as a result, economic growth fails to keep pace with population growth. Living standards decline over the next several decades until the majority of the world’s population is living in extreme poverty. For a few thousand years the world remains in a malthusian trap. Then there is a period of rapid technological progress for a few hundred years which allows a significant portion of the population to escape poverty and acheive a comfortable standard of living. Then technological progress starts to slow down again. The whole cycle repeats many times until some fluke event causes human extinction.

Angela Pretorius 4 Feb 2023 1:27 UTC
2 points
in reply to: jpyykko’s comment on: [Intro to brain-like-AGI safety] 13. Symbol grounding & human social instincts
When my little one was a newborn he was just as happy being handled by strangers as he was with mum and dad. It was around four months that he started showing a preference for mum and dad and disliking strangers. I’m sure that he could recognise us long before the four month mark though.

Geese need to imprint from birth, whereas there is no immediate need for a baby who is not yet mobile to imprint on it’s parents. So if babies have an ‘imprinting window’ then it probably occurs later, after a baby has learnt to reliably recognise familiar faces in spite of changes in make-up or clothing.

Aside: Babies prefer to look at faces while still in the womb https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2017/babies-preference-for-faces-begins-before-birth-/.

Angela Pretorius 13 Jan 2023 23:51 UTC
2 points
0
on: On Cooking With Gas
I would have thought that toasters would cause more indoor air pollution than gas stoves? I’m not sure if this is the most accurate way to measure air pollution but toasters smell fume-y whereas gas hobs don’t.

I also wish to point out that the flame on a gas hob is blue all the time, except for the first second or two after ignition. Whereas the bunsen burners we used at school were put on a sooty yellow flame much of the time. I wonder whether chemistry teachers have an unusually high rate of asthma?