Capla

Karma: 1,027

Solving sleep: just a toe-dipping

Capla30 Jun 2015 19:38 UTC

64 points

35 comments4 min readLW link

Capla 25 Oct 2014 23:43 UTC
53 points
on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Done!

The “best” mathematically-informed topics?

Capla14 Nov 2014 3:39 UTC

24 points

113 comments3 min readLW link

What math is essential to the art of rationality?

Capla15 Oct 2014 2:44 UTC

23 points

63 comments1 min readLW link

Capla 2 Jan 2015 0:26 UTC
23 points
on: Overpaying for happiness?
How many people here put deliberate effort into tasting their food as they eat it?

Try this.

When you’re eating (alone). Take some food on your fork. Take a bite. Put down your fork. Don’t pick up your fork until you have finished chewing and swallowed EVERYTHING in your mouth.

Doing this is amazing to me in two respects. 1) The amount of flavor that you become aware of, when you make it your priority is astounding. The pure visceral enjoyment is easily doubled (as best as I can attribute to subjective and unincremented scale). 2) This is really hard. The habitual pressure to start gathering more food before you’ve finished what’s in your mouth is enormous. I sometimes have to force myself to push on the plate with my fork to prevent the thoughtless action.

I am interested to see how others’ impressions differ from mine.

Capla 10 Nov 2014 23:27 UTC
21 points
on: Open thread, Nov. 10 - Nov. 16, 2014
Does anyone know how Eliezer first met Robin? How did the first end up as a co-editor of the latter’s blog?

Capla 14 Nov 2014 3:41 UTC
18 points
on: The “best” mathematically-informed topics?
Basic statistics

Capla 14 Nov 2014 3:42 UTC
17 points
on: The “best” mathematically-informed topics?
Probability theory

Podcasts?

Capla25 Oct 2014 23:42 UTC

15 points

31 comments2 min readLW link

Capla 7 Apr 2015 17:36 UTC
15 points
on: Open Thread, Apr. 06 - Apr. 12, 2015
I’m leading a rationality training group. We’re working through the most recent CFAR curriculum, but I also want to work from parts of the sequences.

Which posts in the sequences were particularly impactfull for you? Not just ones that you found interesting, but ideas that you actually implemented in your thinking about object-level stuff.

I’m particularly interested in posts that we could spin out into techniques to practice, like noticing confusion or leaving a line of retreat.

Capla 24 Mar 2015 0:44 UTC
15 points
on: Rationality Quotes Thread March 2015
“The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.”
- Ursula k. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea

Capla 24 Nov 2014 2:16 UTC
15 points
on: Breaking the vicious cycle

So you getting health related issues as a cause of the viciousness you perpetrate—okay, that’s like repeatedly punching someone and then complaining that your fist has started to hurt.

I read this (from here), smiled and thought, “there’s some karma for you. In no way metaphysical.”

Then, I thought, “we have a literal karma system on this site.” I checked. He has karma in the quadrupedal digits, 75 percent positive. I don’t understand. If XiXiDu was so abusive, why is does he so upvoted? It seems like he must of said things worth saying, perhaps useful critiques. Is the karma system broken (or at least not designed to deal with this sort of thing) or are the accusations not as bad as they seem? Someone explain my confusion.

Capla 18 Nov 2014 21:17 UTC
14 points
in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: Neo-reactionaries, why are you neo-reactionary?
Star Slate Codex has a great perspective on this. The institutions that are beneficial depend on the context. Are we playing for survival and can’t afford risk or are we playing for flourishing and the risk is worth it because the gains outweigh the losses and we can afford to be nice?

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/

Memory Improvement: Mnemonics, Tools, or Books on the Topic?

Capla21 Nov 2014 18:59 UTC

13 points

30 comments1 min readLW link

Capla 18 Nov 2014 2:03 UTC
13 points
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Neo-reactionaries, why are you neo-reactionary?
That IANANR is an acronym and that I figured out what it means immediately, makes me laugh.

Capla 12 Jan 2015 5:43 UTC
12 points
on: Open thread, Jan. 12 - Jan. 18, 2015
Since no one answered on the stupid questions tread:

Why did LessWrong split off from Overcoming Bias?

Does anyone know?

Capla 4 Jan 2015 21:31 UTC
12 points
on: Inverse relationship between belief in foom and years worked in commercial software
I don’t know if you intend this, but when I read this, I sense that the implication is that a take off will probably be soft, given that the people with the most experience think so.

However, this could be an effect of bias: the people who have spent the most time working on software projects see how hard it is (for humans), and so predict that AI improvement will be very hard (recalcitrance high). For the people who have worked the the industry, the hardness of the problem is very available, but the intelligence and optimization power of of the AI is not, since no one has seen a strong AI yet. So they extrapolate from what they know, even though this misses the point of recursive-self-improvement.

Of course, this is saying that one group has a clear grasp of one of the two relevant variables (recalcitrance and optimization power) while the other group has a clear grasp of neither variable...and it’s the first group that’s biased.
What links here?
- Gunnar_Zarncke's comment on Inverse relationship between belief in foom and years worked in commercial software by NancyLebovitz (4 Jan 2015 22:48 UTC; 8 points)

Capla 17 Nov 2014 23:54 UTC
12 points
in reply to: Capla’s comment on: Neo-reactionaries, why are you neo-reactionary?
What are the downvotes for? If I don’t have great understanding, should I say nothing?

[Not a rhetorical question.]

Academic papers

Capla30 Oct 2014 16:53 UTC

11 points

25 comments1 min readLW link

The buildup to Jaynes?

Capla28 Dec 2014 9:38 UTC

11 points

23 comments1 min readLW link