Crackatook

• Crackatook 21 May 2021 1:33 UTC

  10 points

  on: Sa­bien on “work-life” balance

  I thought work-life-balance is the term accusing the exploitation of workers: Chronic overtime work and frequent night work with strict penalty on late coming. Although I know such workplaces exist in America, I expect them to be much more frequent in Asia. If the author haven’t worked in those, he or she may not see the whole picture of the pursuit of work-life-balance. I generally agree about the point of the writing though.

• Crackatook 7 May 2021 4:05 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: niplav’s comment on: Open and Wel­come Thread—May 2021

  Well, I know it exists. At least in Korea.

  There is a symbolic example of your “nano-apartment,” called Goshitel. It is the cheapest form of rent, with about the area of 3.3 meter squared. The term “Goshi” is attached because it has been used by people who decided to spend every minute studying for the Goshi exam and become the public governor, the most sustainable job in the country.

  Therefore the first reason people need the nano apartment is to have the longest possible time while not working for their reasons: people who refused work. Well, the second reason is to just save some money: people who work. The third reason is that they don’t have money to escape: people who can’t work, like the homeless.

  I’ve seen some documentaries about these Goshitels and I think you can easily find one with that term. As Goshitel has a poor image, those are more focused on the difficulties of one and people inside. But as I described, it has a diverse demographic and the documentaries only show portions of it. Things to note is that it has an overall negative image of dirty facilities and depressed people. That can be why nano apartment was not spread outside Korea to America.

  Back to your question, I suspect some reasons that nano-apartments does not exist in the US while more frequent in Korea:

  1. Korea has much smaller land, compared to the US.The common housing form of Korean is an apartment(or “advanced apartment” with at least 10 floors. It is not exactly the one of America), while Americans usually live in detached houses. The degree of viewing a nano-apartment can differ a lot. -Counterargument: Both have extremely populous cities, where the land is always in shortage.

  2. The US has more restrictions on the housing structures. …but I know nothing

  3. The group of “Goshi” students would have been the obvious demand for such nano apartments in Korea. It would have brought proper development over decades. In the US, there are no exams that can be comparable to Goshi—that can guarantee the rest of one’s life, even during economic depressions. The exam also required students to attend prep classes, mostly in the expansive and populous Seoul area.

  4. Maybe the lifestyles of homeless people are different in America and Korea.

  One more:

  I just sparked some thoughts here and it may be insufficient to bring a complete concept. I realized explaining Korean stuff to America and bringing American stuff to Korea are extra time consuming, as you don’t know “Goshi″ and I don’t know housing in New York. But I enjoyed comparing cultural differences and hope you ask more for confusing parts.

• Crackatook 25 May 2021 19:50 UTC

  5 points

  on: Start­ing a Ra­tion­al­ist Meetup dur­ing Lockdown

  I love this post! This seems like not different from running a high school club haha.

• Crackatook 3 Jun 2021 2:16 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: DragonGod’s comment on: Car­diol­o­gists and Chi­nese Robbers

  There are a list of actual stories and descriptions of creepy sexual harassment. It was enough for me to frown and think to recommend people to choose other branches of medical doctor other than cardiologists. Although I consider myself sensitive to anecdotal evidence and confounding variables, my inner disclaimer didn’t make it explicit this time.

  So wow, the last paragraph is talking directly to me.

  I suggest this society help people with this issue, to the same degree as poverty, as it is hard to make out of it alone.

• Crackatook 14 May 2021 20:23 UTC

  4 points

  on: The Best Ed­u­ca­tional In­sti­tu­tion in the World

  There have been many derivations of education, focusing on optimizing the power of lecture and sharing of knowledge. this project focuses on dormitory, which has been just “side” and it seems very impactful and it is working. Also this tights several ideas I was thinking of—from creating a company, teamwork, renting a whole apartment, cheap life cost, “students should pay for the education?” etc. I’d like to join it when my time comes.

• Crackatook 25 May 2021 2:15 UTC

  3 points

  on: Ques­tions are tools to help an­swer­ers op­ti­mize utility

  • Answerers should generally try to figure out enlightened questions and answer those questions. This method is often the one that will be best for the asker’s utility.

  This takeaway makes sense to me, and I would suggest separating questions into different categories(contexts, characters, etc). In a large classroom, people often need clarifications than solutions, as thinking more than one minute here can be counter productive; Professor would answer directly and shortly, especially when questions are simple. In a problem-solving or thesis writing, people stuck, and enlightened-question-answering would help them a lot; People need different perspectives as well as solutions. In the case of daily life questions, like dentist appointment, the answerer would response, or notify in the morning as the answer is predictable, as you said above.

  In above 3 cases, the most benefit of enlightened-question-answering comes to the complex and advanced situations like problem-solving. This reveals that your model gives different viewpoints, over giving knowledges.

  You also concerned about people asking fewer questions to this answerer, partially because its answers are off-topic in its full force. Yeah, we don’t need diverse viewpoints everytime. It will be frustrating. but…

  Correspondingly, I imagine that as AGI gets close, people might ask fewer and fewer questions; instead, relevant information will be better pushed to them. A really powerful oracle wouldn’t stay an oracle for long, they would quickly get turned into an information feed of some kind.

  To me, this is already happening. First Youtube comes to my mind. Second is Lesswrong.com. The similarity of the two is that I use search bar rarely as contents are already displayed, by AI-recommender or by Human administrator. Surely this is the place where people want diverse viewpoints more and more.

  On the other hand I don’t use search bar because I don’t come with questions. When I have new keywords, I should use search bar to play Baba Yetu or to watch more clip of Thomasin McKenzie.(On the third hand, youtube uses cookies and reflects my recent interest on Sid Meier’s Civilization. It is becoming “the good enough”!!) It is not exact to compare your answer model and youtube recommendation, but this may show the changing paradigm of questioning.

• Crackatook 29 Aug 2020 4:20 UTC

  3 points

  on: How to teach things well

  While delivering knowledges is a major part of education, I just want to mention that post-education is very important because most students stop learning about subjects. When I was young, I joined a science summer camp and had fun and challenging time, but after camp my life hadn’t changed at all. Today I reflect past memories and think I may become different person if my learning is continued even after no teachers are around.

  Finding outside resources, planning a research or engaging with a community can be desirable habits for students. Also questioning a big picture and real-life applications help students learn about other subjects.

• Crackatook 5 Aug 2020 1:31 UTC

  3 points

  on: Chap­ter 45: Hu­man­ism, Pt 3

  after this chapter, I have one interesting thought: death becomes a secret.

  I know people all die one day at early childhood, and I believe current kids also know it (although it does not mean I understand what is it like to lost somebody). Death seems like a universal law that controls over all of life. But what if we can avoid death? So that kids and teens don’t know about the concept of death?

  it is going to be fun, I imagine

• Crackatook 29 May 2021 3:17 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: uncomputable’s comment on: Aphantasia

  After I posted the question, today I experienced a handful of moments when my brain didn’t work to visualize, even though I can. Also I am assured mental images are not the only source of creativity. Thank you for pinpointing out.

• Crackatook 22 May 2021 1:32 UTC

  2 points

  on: Covid 5/​20: The Great Unmasking

  My previous prediction was that if the CDC were to update its guidance in sensible ways, that elite opinion would fall in line with that. Those defending the old guidelines would shift to defending the new ones because their actual algorithm is to defend the official line, so opposition to a change before it happens is a very different thing from opposition to a change after it is announced.

  This striked my thinking algorithm. In the retrospect of the beginning of COVID crisis, I was in a huge favor of wearing mask because I thought myself was right when medias recommended the opposite. Mask was the correct choice, at the end.

  I am still in favor of wearing mask. I personally feel unsafe to unmask primarily because COVID is not over(I am not vaccinated yet). Then CDC announced unmasking, and it sounds logical because it is only for vaccinated, but this goes against my belief. Here I find that myself is somewhat biased to myself over official announcements. At least my brain didn’t work with the officials always. If there’s a conflict, I can imagine myself choose the side of me. So, by this time, I am opening more to this unmasking announcement with skepticism.

  Still you’ve written good points the objections to the unmasking and I agree with them. The CDC didn’t explain fully enough to convince people and this may go disastrous if something went bad. Although I expect unmasked people will generally comply well to returned masking policy if that’s the case.

• Crackatook 12 May 2021 23:20 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: niplav’s comment on: Open and Wel­come Thread—May 2021

  My guess would be that it’s different in Asia because there industrial development is much younger, and the population is more used to “poor” and less luxurious living conditions.

  You suspects there is an association between “industrial development” and “living conditions.” I can start from here.

  By the way, thanks for reply! My comment below contains mainly American evidences, so I hope this can fit to the situation of Europe.

  For people who want to live in city, but are poor, you brought up nano-apartment to fulfill the needs and wondered why it is not frequent. I thought about this again, and thought “wait, isn’t that why slums exist?” The existence of slums may explain why there was no demand for nano-apartment. So I started from it, then I looked back at the progressive era(1896-1916) and how Jacob Riis wrote “how the other half lives” to reveal the poor situation of tenements. These tenements are the actual example of a nano-apartment in New York city, with the overpopulation and shortage of housing. Basic history of tenements are well described in Wikipedia, but it doesn’t describe the current situation of tenements except the tenement museum part. Wikipedia also says tenements are not necessarily slums and By this time I don’t think any more people will choose to live in slums. According to this blog, I learned slum is not a thing anymore. Oh.

  I tried to look up tenement development over time, and at history.com, I found FDR’s First House project, which included slum-clearing and building public housing. I looked up a New York public housing site and it seemed like a good replacement for tenements.

  I’ve settled on a mixture of “it’s the regulations” and “not *that* many people want it, but it’s still available for the ones who do”.

  So I can credit government efforts to replace nano-apartment and this reasonably explains why it is not popular, even in populous cities. There are options to choose other than a nano-apartment. It is important to point out that there is no necessity, distinctive from just preference.

  In Korea, I have another interpretation. It is true Industrial development was recent, starting from the 60s. But that brought urbanization late, too. When my mom was young, she lived in a detached house in Gangnam-gu, now the most populous and expensive area in entire Korea. Therefore by the time the “K-tenement” was developing, I guess Modern technology and mindset did not make it too inferior to make the government intervene. Even in the final stage of industrialization, I don’t think Goshitel will go away.

  But I think Korean population is obviously used to small apartments, for another reason. Again, Korea is small. South Korea is even smaller. That’s why high/​low rise buildings are the default in Korea. I hope you can see it is not necessarily “‘poor’ and less luxurious living conditions” but just small and dense. People can have ideal housing after suburbanization, but urban houses will still be small and become old.

  Lastly, I want to caution you about generalizing to Asia, because it is really large and developments are still vigorous in many countries. I think the situation of Korea differs a lot from those of even China and Japan, as they went through industrialization in different time periods. Southeastern Asia? I have no clue. Media has portrayed Southeastern Asia as underdeveloped countries for a long time but haven’t updated their developments and improvements.

  p.s. Last Sunday I wanted to write history essays to prepare for my exam, but in a less wrong-way. I did not want to write just a summary of contents, so I appreciate you asking this question. I feel I wrote something not a summary:)

• Crackatook 3 Jun 2021 1:07 UTC

  1 point

  on: How I come up with ideas

  Some desires are universal among humans.

  • I want to be rich without putting in much effort.

  This is particularly meaningful message to me. It is about a year ago when I found a youtube channel talking about “small work big money.” It isn’t just a discussion channel, but they try to carry their desire to action, by drawing characters, making hoodies, and communicating with users and running and expanding their business; it was just impressive that they stretch their ability in the theme of “small work big money.”

  Since then, I believe human desires have the potential to influence people, even if it is just a dream.

• Crackatook 31 May 2021 15:57 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Mary Chernyshenko’s comment on: Aphantasia

  My gaining here is that people without aphantasia still have weakness in creating mental images. Aphantasia people just have more. Writing a visual description, creating a mental image for art, or remembering every moment of life are obviously difficult tasks to normal person, while trained aphantasia person may be able to. In my experience, intention of creating mental image directly turn to the “feeling” of creating the image(most people stops here), which can be scattered easily if I try to look up the image clearly.

  Based on unreliable online source, aphantasia comes from the error of response from visual part of brain. Then brain’s memory ability can be unrelated issue. Well, it is intuitive to remember something we know well and vice versa. We can lead to more memory issue.

• Crackatook 29 May 2021 4:06 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: mingyuan’s comment on: Aphantasia

  I suspect personality, skill level, and now aphantasia in your case impacted on fiction writing. Right now, I put personality as the top reason for this. I like comic books and web comics, thus my fiction consists of a series of images and motions in my head, and I don’t really write them down in texts. In this path, I am also not confident of writing a description with a variety of vocabulary. Oh, at the end, lack of time is the main issue, sadly;)

• Crackatook 29 May 2021 3:54 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Aphantasia

  Normally I would say it happens and people forget details. But his case seems like he has a biological issue. I think something serious is happening to him.

• Crackatook 29 May 2021 3:51 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Mo Putera’s comment on: Aphantasia

  The essay has several shocking parts. I enjoyed reading it.

  Besides being aphantasia, I like short, easy and clear writings, few sentences summarizings, and facts without decorations. Generally that is journalism writing. And if this is related to aphantasia...that’s interesting.

  Although I am not an aphantasia, I agree that fiction writing will be impacted by it, in addition to limited vocabulary, lack of practice, etc. And the graphic art will be the same case, as reference images and its mental processing are important.

• Crackatook 26 May 2021 3:32 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: ozziegooen’s comment on: Ques­tions are tools to help an­swer­ers op­ti­mize utility

  Oh this post surprises me! Similar thoughts are going on your next post and this one.

• Crackatook 11 May 2021 5:24 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: CraigMichael’s comment on: Open and Wel­come Thread—May 2021

  I think he will be fine as he mentioned faith and open-mind, but your story also helps us with some glance of faith experimentation. Expansion with faith seems exciting, partially because it is restricted. Thank you for sharing:)