Chriswaterguy

• Chriswaterguy 14 May 2012 1:19 UTC

  13 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Pe­ti­tion: Off topic area

  Open Thread doesn’t quite do what the OP is looking for. Open Thread is: A. a bit hard to find (I didn’t know it existed, and only found it through the site search) B. a single thread at any one time. Makes it hard to find or follow a particular topic.

Dojo: Al­gorith­mic Creativity—Chap­ter 2

• Chriswaterguy 24 Jun 2016 13:12 UTC

  7 points

  on: Science Doesn’t Trust Your Rationality

  Libertarianism secretly relies on most individuals being prosocial enough to tip at a restaurant they won’t ever visit again.

  I’m puzzled that you gave that specific example, given that it’s obviously wrong. Most countries do not have a culture of tipping, and their economies don’t implode. They just have less headaches at bill time. And in many cases (a long way from libertarianism) their wait staff get paid a living wage.

  I’m also not sure what it means for libertarianism to rely on something, since libertarianism is not an actual functioning thing in existence. But if it did exist and function, it would not rely on tipping.

  EDIT: Seeing this comment 5 years later, I see I was misunderstanding the point.

• Chriswaterguy 8 Jan 2012 10:14 UTC

  7 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (2012)

  I’m 41, working on a wiki project for sustainability and development, which I love (and part-time on a related project which I like and actually get paid for). I use the same username everywhere, so if you’re curious, you won’t have trouble finding the wiki project.

  I’m a one-time evangelical Christian. I think it was emotional damage from my upbringing that made me frightened to let go of that, and I stayed a believer for 9 years, starting in my late teens. I took it extremely seriously, and there were good things about that. But with hindsight, I would direct people to other places for their personal growth than becoming a believer. Later, just a few years ago, I did the Landmark Forum, which was very powerful and mostly very positive, though I wouldn’t recommend that as a first step in working on personal development, unless you’re already pretty successful and mature. I’m also a big fan of Nonviolent Communication, and I’d recommend that to anyone.

  I learned about Less Wrong a year ago (from someone else on the wiki project) and loved it. I’ve been meaning to join, but the thing that prompted me now is that I need help, in the form of accountability, and this seems like a good place.

  I do a lot of work, but I find myself distracted from the work I most need to do. The persistence of the problem leads me to carry out a “lifestyle experiment” for the next 3 weeks. I’m calling it my “3 week Serious Focus experiment”, and the key ingredients are:

  • Being sensible: doing stuff that I need to do, that will have a big positive effect on my life, before doing other stuff, no matter how good or enticing

  • Being accountable: I’m posting here, and will do so on Facebook and G+, and will tell friends In Real Life.

  • Regarding it as an experiment: I’m only committing myself to 10-30 Jan 2012, so I can play at being hardline with myself, like it’s a bootcamp. I can extend or make new decisions at the end, but the time limit means it doesn’t feel like a trap that I’m desperate to escape from.

  • A focus on (a) livelihood—the stuff I’m already getting paid for, and (b) taking the wiki project to the next level, i.e. strategic work before maintenance or putting out fires.

  The rules for the Serious Focus experiment are:

  • Plan each night before bed—up to 6 items to work on the following day

  • 3 hours solid work on the one or two top items (livelihood and strategy) before looking at email (except perhaps work related—I have email filters for that) or at work-related social media, or at messages I get on the wiki site. (Only exception is if it’s so urgent that a colleague on the wiki project calls or IMs me—which is very rare.)

  • Any work I’m tempted to do on secondary things (not among the 6 items, and taking more than 5 min) to be written down and put aside until the 3 solid hours are done.

  • After the 3 hours are done, I loosen up a bit, but still focus on getting those items done.

  • All items must be done before checking personal social media at all. (I’m allowed to post any time, but not look at replies or other people’s statuses.) If I don’t get all 6 items finished, that’s ok—going without Facebook will do me good, even if I don’t get a chance to check it for the whole 3 weeks!

  I’m going to start now, but I’m making my official start date 2 days away, so there’s time for feedback on the plan and to adjust it if needed, before I launch the experiment.

  Glad to join you all at Less Wrong!

• Chriswaterguy 20 Nov 2015 21:41 UTC

  4 points

  on: Dark Side Epistemology

  I can’t answer your questions about /​ criticisms of my belief, but if you ask my guru (or read his book), he’ll definitely have the answers to all your questions.”

  (Or “her book” etc—but the examples I’ve come across have all used men as their infallible guru.)

• Chriswaterguy 27 Aug 2012 13:43 UTC

  4 points

  on: What Is Sig­nal­ing, Really?

  I appreciate the value of the illustrations, but it would be good to find a version that doesn’t assume that women are merely materialistic, assessing prospective mates solely on their net worth. Geek communities are often not friendly places for women—some readers will accept the assumptions for the sake of argument, but some are likely to take offence.

  Edited when MixedNuts pointed out how confused the original version was. My apologies.

• Chriswaterguy 14 Mar 2022 5:38 UTC

  3 points

  on: Lies, Damn Lies, and Fabri­cated Options

  I think I’d like a different term for this profoundly important idea, something more immediately clear than “fabricated options”, especially to people outside our own rationalist-leaning communities.

  “Imaginary options” seems more immediately clear. Unfortunately it sounds like it carries a note of mockery, so I don’t think it works.

• Chriswaterguy 25 Oct 2021 22:10 UTC

  3 points

  on: De­liber­ate Play

  An archetypal example might be Richard Feynman:

  Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing – it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with.

  Which led to looking at spinning plates, which led to him developing a diagram for analysing their movement, and ultimately led to his Nobel prize.

• Chriswaterguy 15 Dec 2017 12:28 UTC

  3 points

  on: Beta—First Impressions

  Feedback on the mobile site.

  Using Chrome on a Nexus 6P running Android 8.1.

  The suboptimal:

  • The mobile view has no margin at all on the sides, which makes it unpleasant to read. [Screenshot](https://​​image.ibb.co/​​jwaHaR/​​Screenshot 20171215 223941.png)

  • I had to write this comment in my text editor app then pasted it, because oh god, the editor is so slow (on my phone) that it’s unusable. THEN, paste didn’t work in the comment box. So I had to use the desktop site in Chrome (on Android), which allowed me to successfully paste.

  • I can also enter text semi-successfully in desktop site mode (still on my phone) but it’s still laggy and half the words disappear after I enter them—it’s a lot like trying to comment on Facebook using the desktop site mode on my phone.

  • If I’ve begun reading a page page and it reloads (e.g. I reopen the browser or I switch tabs and come back) I find myself back at the top of the page. I don’t know any other site that does this. This also occasionally happens randomly – maybe I’m tapping something accidentally?

  • Search: if I hit the little x, it doesn’t delete my search text – it hides the search box.

  The good:

  • Pretty!

  • Nicely organised, making it easier to delve into the good stuff. I’m currently reading the Codex.

  • Gives me hope that the Less Wrong community has a bright future, because there is a desirable place to gather. Also because the Less Wrong 2.0 project itself seems to have brought people together and created common purpose.

• Chriswaterguy 1 Sep 2012 16:23 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: MixedNuts’s comment on: What Is Sig­nal­ing, Really?

  Sorry, I left an extra “not” and an extra “but” in. What a horrible sentence—I apologize.

  Did you mean: “This version assumes that women are materialistic—worse than just materialistic, it assumes that women assess prospective mates solely on their net worth. It would be good to find a version that doesn’t assume that.”?

  Yes—thank you.

• Chriswaterguy 22 Mar 2012 15:02 UTC

  3 points

  on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 11

  Nothing original just now—I just want to go on record as saying that HP:MOR is amazing, brilliant work—I really enjoy it, as well as learning from it.

Meetup : Ra­tion­al­ity Dojo & Pic­nic in the park

Meetup : LW Melb Ra­tion­al­ity Dojo. In­clud­ing: “Crit­i­cal Thoughts on Nutri­tional Recom­men­da­tions”

Meetup : Melbourne So­cial Meetup—November

Dis­cus­sion: Rais­ing the San­ity Waterline

Re­mem­ber­ing names and us­ing Ham­ming prompts: Ra­tion­al­ity Dojo

• Chriswaterguy 8 Jan 2016 12:04 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Open Thread, Jan­uary 4-10, 2016

  Thank you. (In hindsight I should have done a page search for “edit”.)

• Chriswaterguy 29 Dec 2015 11:03 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Skill: The Map is Not the Territory

  As an experiment, a couple raised their child without telling them what colour the sky was. When they eventually asked, the child… thought about it. Eventually… “white”. (I’d assumed it was a clear sky. Just realised it’s a pointless story if it was cloudy.)

  Why Isn’t the Sky Blue? - starts with colours in Homer.

Meetup : June Ra­tion­al­ity Dojo

Meetup : Soldier Mind­set and Scout Mind­set