Barry_Cotter

Karma: 1,132

Barry_Cotter 13 May 2013 14:09 UTC
44 points
in reply to: TeMPOraL’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
Tell us more. Much more, in excruciating detail. I am reasonably sure I remember reading Eliezer write about the impossiblity of what you just described, i.e. getting a Ph.D. without necessarily having an advisor, funding or a Bachelor’s degree.

Barry_Cotter 4 Mar 2012 11:33 UTC
36 points
on: How to Fix Science

We’ve also discovered the usefulness of peer review

I object, for reasons wonderfully stated by gwern here

Why do we need the process of peer review? Peer review is not robust against even low levels of collusion (http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.4324v1). Scientists who win the Nobel Prize find their other work suddenly being heavily cited (http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110506/full/news.2011.270.ht...), suggesting either that the community either badly failed in recognizing the work’s true value or that they are now sucking up & attempting to look better by the halo effect. (A mathematician once told me that often, to boost a paper’s acceptance chance, they would add citations to papers by the journal’s editors—a practice that will surprise none familiar with Goodhart’s law and the use of citations in tenure & grants.) Physicist Michael Nielsen points out (http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/three-myths-about-scientific-...) that peer review is historically rare (just one of Einstein’s 300 papers was peer reviewed! the famous Nature did not institute peer review until 1967), has been poorly studied (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/21/2784) & not shown to be effective, is nationally biased (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/295/14/1675), erroneously rejects many historic discoveries (one study lists “34 Nobel Laureates whose awarded work was rejected by peer review” (http://www.canonicalscience.org/publications/canonicalscienc...); Horribin 1990 (http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/263/10/1438.abstract) lists others like the discovery of quarks), and catches only a small fraction (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/280/3/237) of errors. And fraud, like the one we just saw in psychology? Forget about it (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...); “A pooled weighted average of 1.97% (N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45) of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices....When these factors were controlled for, misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others.” No, peer review is not the secret sauce of science. Replication is more like it. (Emphasis not in original)

Barry_Cotter 25 Nov 2012 0:56 UTC
23 points
in reply to: undermind’s comment on: LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance
I read an introduction to women’s studies textbook and it was all inside baseball commentary. It was not like reading this. At all. It was a survey of all the different fields that Women’s Studies engages with, but it did not teach this, it assumed it. This is consistent with some male acquaintances experience of some such courses as hostile to them. Also, Hugo Schwyzer is a dick.

Barry_Cotter 28 Mar 2014 10:09 UTC
22 points
on: What colleges look for in extracurricular activities

Kawoomba suggests that colleges’ statements on the first point below can’t be taken at face value. What do you think?

I find it alarming that you assumed honesty on the part of the admissions officers. It reduces my confidence in everything you wrote that you assumed honesty from people whose job it is to be gatekeepers to the American elite class.

Barry_Cotter 30 Aug 2011 22:23 UTC
22 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Polyhacking
I agree with everything you said, and with everything michaelsullivan said. They’re not in conflict. Barring a Friendly Singularity and CEV people with poorer social skills are going to have worse lives, and worse, improving your own social skills or improving other people’s social skills is not going to change the fact that there is a bottom 10%, and life is going to suck harder for them.

Life is a bitch and it is quite abnormal to act on any sympathy one may have with the creepy/awkward/annoying person near you.

For any young geek reading this, here are a few ways of improving your social skills/ decreasing mild to moderate social anxiety
- Work as barstaff or waitstaff, preferably both.
- Move someplace where people have similar interests to you and hang out in clubs/societies/interest groups.
- Drink until you feel comfortable talking to people. (Don’t go much further)
- (Relatively advanced) Work door to door sales or charity fundraising.
succeedsocially.com has a lot of reasonably useful advice too, and if you’re a romantically deprived male there’s plenty of instrumentally useful advice in the PUA subculture but the lowest hanging fruit is
- Shower daily and use anti-perspirant. That’s not negotiable. You needn’t use deodorant but honestly you probably should.
- Smile more, greet people i.e. say “Hi” a lot.
- The more people you talk to the more likely you are to make friends; the more girls you talk to, and know, the more likely you are to find someone you’re interested who is interested in you
- If you can get into an exercise regimen, most people can make relatively large gains pretty fast for not much time or work. This will make you hotter and more confident. Some people are fucked genetically but they’re a small minority. Try to get fitter
- Learn how to tell if clothes fit and never buy anthing that doesn’t fit again. There’s much more to fashion but that is the single biggest gain you can make and it will take well under two hours. There’s a guide here and plenty more good stuff here particularly in the sidebar.
Also, Everything gets better after you leave High School, and it can continue to get better for a looong time.

Barry_Cotter 18 Mar 2013 4:47 UTC
21 points
on: Recent updates to gwern.net (2012-2013)
Man, you are a machine. I go days without writing in a diary that lives in my pocket, you write well researched essays and do research. How many days do you not write something?

Barry_Cotter 18 Feb 2014 15:24 UTC
20 points
in reply to: JoshuaFox’s comment on: Don’t rely on the system to guarantee you life satisfaction
Amy Chua’s kids have two Yale law school professors for parents. Genetically and in terms of social capital they rolled a natural 20. I suggest reading Judith Rich Harris’s “The Nurture Assumption” and/or Bryan Caplan’s “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids” if Chua is getting to you.

Barry_Cotter 2 Oct 2013 0:51 UTC
15 points
in reply to: RolfAndreassen’s comment on: Open Thread, September 30 - October 6, 2013
Don’t deliberately screw yourself over. Don’t accept less than the average for your position and either point blank refuse to give them negotiating leverage by telling them your current salary or lie.

For better, longer advice see ［Salary Negotiation for Software Engineers］(http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation)

Barry_Cotter 16 Jul 2012 14:34 UTC
15 points
in reply to: RobertLumley’s comment on: Open Thread, July 16-31, 2012
Poll time.

If it is time for a new welcome thread upvote this comment. There will be a child comment as a karma sink.

Barry_Cotter 30 May 2012 4:30 UTC
15 points
on: Group rationality diary, 5/28/12
In the past eight days I have gone to the gym seven times, swimming 1km each time. I have made some irregular progress in weightlifting, which mostly means I have figured out approximately my max lift for a few different basic lifts. I have missed one day but feel slightly bless annoyed with myself on that account because I swam 2km the previous day.

I have made more of an effort to follow up romantic opportunities. More is still not a lot.

In the past month I have dramatically increased the speed at which I’m learning Mandarin by the simple expedient of removing the books from my bag and the music from my mp3 player. This has left me with two alternatives for my commute; be bored or leisten to a learn Mandarin audiobook. I am very slowly becoming less shit.

Barry_Cotter 28 Jul 2011 0:31 UTC
15 points
in reply to: RobertLumley’s comment on: New Post version 2 (please read this ONLY if your last name beings with l–z)

It surprises me that your “rational” approach to getting women involves being largely dishonest about who you are to them. Why avoid talking about politics, math, programming, and religion if that’s what you enjoy talking about?

He’s optimising one of the steps in his funnel. If there are three steps you need to get through to form a relationship; flirting, dating/intellectual compatibility, relationship compatibility, and success in each is 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, it takes a thousand tries to get a success. If by improving your flirting skills you move to 0.3, 0.1, 0.1, you only need 333 tries.

And as I read it he wasn’t dishonest, he just optimised step 1, flirting. Flirting is fun, but with the majority of people it isn’t compatible with serious intellectual conversation. He didn’t hide his intellectual interests, he just didn’t present them at a time when it would be sub-optimal given his goals.

[LINK] Clothing as status signalling, logos and co-operation

Barry_Cotter2 Apr 2011 15:41 UTC

14 points

9 comments1 min readLW link

Barry_Cotter 20 Apr 2011 22:29 UTC
14 points
in reply to: novalis’s comment on: Official Less Wrong Redesign: Call for Suggestions
Make this an option in user preferences maybe. I personally find Markdown much, much, much more intuitive than HTML.

Barry_Cotter 21 May 2014 0:42 UTC
13 points
in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: Open Thread, May 19 − 25, 2014
One can read in one’s spare time or learn languages or act. If one does not come from wealth not majoring in something remunerative in college is a mistake if you will actually want money later.

He didn’t dismiss the humanities he said studying them at university was a poor decision.

Barry_Cotter 10 Sep 2012 14:38 UTC
13 points
in reply to: JoeW’s comment on: How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy

Moreover acting as if you need to justify yourself (or your group) to others already represents a significant loss of standing.

boggled] Isn’t that what we’re all doing here at LW? Arguing and justifying our arguments? Did you just lower your standing with your justification? At time of writing I see quite the reverse.

LW is a freakishly abnormal social setting, even for internet fora. Most people here care more about figuring out what’s true than winning arguments. This is unique in my experience of the internet. “facts” are not the primary use case for language., social politics are.

Barry_Cotter 13 Jan 2012 1:38 UTC
13 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Can the Chain Still Hold You?
The proportion of humanity held in slavery is probably the lowest it has ever been. And no human has been the legal property of another since the institution was abolished in Saudi Arabia in 1962. (I think. It was an Arabian nation in the sixties anyway.)

Barry_Cotter 18 Mar 2011 8:03 UTC
13 points
in reply to: CuSithBell’s comment on: Less Wrong NYC: Case Study of a Successful Rationalist Chapter

I don’t think it’s bad to analyze social phenomena.

Neither does anyone else. It’s just that if one actually analyses social phenomena instead of consciously or subconsciously taking the opportunity to judge/play ploitics, one pisses off many, many people very quickly.

I do think it’s bad to engage in or endorse (unwanted) sexually manipulative behavior.

I summon HughRistik! But even if I were to accept manipulation as a natural kind, which I don’t, rather than as a continuum with communication and influence, where are you going to draw the line?

I also think it’s bad to equate distaste for unwanted sexually manipulative behavior with distaste for analysis.

PUA is up there with psychology, sales and marketing in the ranks of useful insights into how people actually work. It is unfortunate that there are some desperate misogynists among them, but if one is to denounce it then sales, marketing, PR, they all gotta burn too.
What links here?
- CuSithBell's comment on Selecting optimal group projects and roles by calcsam (10 Aug 2011 1:06 UTC; 1 point)
- CuSithBell's comment on A Sense That More Is Possible by Eliezer Yudkowsky (8 Apr 2011 17:12 UTC; -2 points)

Barry_Cotter 28 Sep 2010 16:11 UTC
13 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread
Rubidium and Cesium in water

Very serious explodey

Barry_Cotter 22 Jul 2011 18:56 UTC
12 points
on: Experience with dual n-back?
gwern’s FAQ

Barry_Cotter 11 Apr 2011 0:29 UTC
12 points
on: Do meetups really have to go on the front page?
Geolocation to show only meetups near you?

Preferences option to hide meetups unless they’re within X km of you?

I do not support removing Meetups from the front page until such time as it can be assumed that there is one in every major city where large portions of the poulation speak English, conditional upon meetups not completely taking over the front page.

Barry_Cotter

[LINK] Cloth­ing as sta­tus sig­nal­ling, lo­gos and co-operation

[LINK] Clothing as status signalling, logos and co-operation