D_Alex

• D_AlexOct 15, 2013, 3:36 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: aspera’s comment on: On the im­por­tance of tak­ing limits: In­finite Spheres of Utility

  I’d prefer to see this in Main, it is interesting and important.

• D_AlexOct 10, 2013, 8:22 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Sys­tem­atic Lucky Breaks

  I don’t know enough about martial arts to tell you which one is best.

  I’ll give you my perspective, I have experience in judo, ju-jitsu and tae kwon do.

  My evaluation criteria in order of importance:

  •Low risk of serious injuries

  Judo is best, ju-jitsu by far the worst.

  •It includes fights, that trigger evolutionary fears and allow you to overcome them as a form of exposure therapy

  Judo is best, it is the only one where you can actually exert yourself to the limit without risk of injuring your partner.

  •It increases your ability to coordinate your own body.

  All are good.

  •It’s useful for actually defending yourself

  Ju-jitsu is the best, but anything is much better than nothing.

  •It’s sport for cardiovascular purposes

  None are brilliant, play soccer instead.

  •It builds muscles

  None are brilliant, but judo is best.

  There is one other criterion, in which tkd excells—it is the only one of the three which you can seriously usefully practice on your own.

• D_AlexOct 9, 2013, 10:16 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: tut’s comment on: Open Thread, Septem­ber 30 - Oc­to­ber 6, 2013

  Hmm. What is the exact length of your, say, pen? Is it a rational number or a real number… I mean the EXACT lengh...?

  Note if the answer to the last question is “it is a real number”, then it is possible to construct the bet as proposed by the OP.

  Before you quote “Planck’s Length” in your reply, there is currently no directly proven physical significance of the Planck length (at least according to Wikipedia).

Su­per­in­tel­li­gence fic­tion—“Un­der­stand”, by Ted Chiang

• D_AlexSep 23, 2013, 3:59 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: Nisan’s comment on: Open thread, Septem­ber 16-22, 2013

  Dolphin trainer. Also fun for people without strong technical skills.

• D_AlexSep 23, 2013, 2:17 AM

  6 points

  on: The Ul­ti­mate New­comb’s Problem

  Numerical Lottery has randomly selected 1033...

  … if you try to factor the number you will be run over by the trolley from the Ultimate Trolley Problem.

  This game seems to have a roughly 50% chance of a fatality.

• D_AlexSep 9, 2013, 9:36 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: Tuxedage’s comment on: I at­tempted the AI Box Ex­per­i­ment again! (And won—Twice!)

  My theory is that you are embarrassed about how weak the AI argument really is, in retrospect.

  And furthermore, this applies to other games where participants refused to publish logs.

• D_AlexSep 4, 2013, 2:32 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Scott Garrabrant’s comment on: Yet more “stupid” questions

  I recommend pretty much anything by Jack Vance. If you like fantasy settings, read “Lyonesse”, “Cugel’s Saga” and “Rhialto the Marvellous”. If you like sci-fi settings, try “Araminta Station” , “Night Lamp” and “Alastor”. For a quaint mix of the two, try “Emphyrio” or “Languages of Pao”. Vance wrote a bunch of great stuff, so if you like his first book, you have heaps more to look forward to.

  Also “Name of the Wind” and “Wise Man’s Fear” by Patrick Rothfuss are pretty good.

  I also second “Ender’s Game”.

• D_AlexAug 29, 2013, 6:47 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Pablo’s comment on: What should a col­lege stu­dent do to max­i­mize fu­ture earn­ings for effec­tive al­tru­ism?

  I was going to answer “Say you found a cure for cancer while working for pharmaceutical company...”, but lets consider something more mundane.

  Say you are an engineer working for Unilever. With 3 months of diligent work, you design a shampoo bottle that costs 1 cent less to manufacture, maybe through reduced material usage. There are billions of these bottles made each year, giving a saving to humanity of tens of millions of dollars each year. Compared with savings of this magnitude, your actual salary will be insignificant.

• D_AlexAug 28, 2013, 6:17 AM

  0 points

  on: What should a col­lege stu­dent do to max­i­mize fu­ture earn­ings for effec­tive al­tru­ism?

  IMO, if you really care about us fellow humans do this: Generate utility wholesale, in bulk. Not in bite size chunks. Your actual earnings most likely will not be of any great significance. What you should aim for is to generate great ideas, products, social/​political outcomes, rather than a high salary.

  CS is a great option for this, provided you use it to deliver better communications, GPS, automation, etc, maybe even AI. If you go on to do crapola iPhone apps and banner ads, not so much.

  Scientific research, engineering R&D and the like are also great options, plus these fields are, IMO, exceptionally interesting.

  Conversely, GP medicine, dentistry, accounting for example do not scale well in terms of total utility produced, even though salaries can be quite high. Arts and legal occupations have potential, but overall end up barely worthwhile (my opinion!).

• D_AlexAug 9, 2013, 1:59 AM

  12 points

  in reply to: ChrisPine’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Au­gust 2013

  It explains lutefisk.

  Quote from Garrison Keillor’s book Lake Wobegon Days: Every Advent we entered the purgatory of lutefisk, a repulsive gelatinous fishlike dish that tasted of soap and gave off an odor that would gag a goat. We did this in honor of Norwegian ancestors, much as if survivors of a famine might celebrate their deliverance by feasting on elm bark. I always felt the cold creeps as Advent approached, knowing that this dread delicacy would be put before me and I’d be told, “Just have a little.” Eating a little was like vomiting a little, just as bad as a lot.

  Quote from Garrison Keillor’s book Pontoon: Lutefisk is cod that has been dried in a lye solution. It looks like the desiccated cadavers of squirrels run over by trucks, but after it is soaked and reconstituted and the lye is washed out and it’s cooked, it looks more fish-related, though with lutefisk, the window of success is small. It can be tasty, but the statistics aren’t on your side. It is the hereditary delicacy of Swedes and Norwegians who serve it around the holidays, in memory of their ancestors, who ate it because they were poor. Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people. It is reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog or the world’s largest chunk of phlegm.

  Interview with Jeffrey Steingarten, author of The Man Who Ate Everything (translated quote from a 1999 article in Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet): Lutefisk is not food, it is a weapon of mass destruction. It is currently the only exception for the man who ate everything. Otherwise, I am fairly liberal, I gladly eat worms and insects, but I draw the line on lutefisk.

  • the above is from Wikipedia entry on lutefisk. Believe it or not.

• D_AlexAug 1, 2013, 7:05 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: sketerpot’s comment on: A thought on the value of “ra­tio­nal­ity” as a value

  The [very, very good ] thing is when you habitually recognize the most common forms of human irrationality, and easily steer away from them.… … …it doesn’t require any real effort, in the moment.

  I agree! But you will encounter situations, pretty often at first and ever more rarely as you get experience in recognising irrationality, where your willpower will be tested. And then it is easier to expend the needed effort if you feel good about the process you are going through.

• D_AlexJul 30, 2013, 9:49 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: A thought on the value of “ra­tio­nal­ity” as a value

  No, no—the objective is not to have “the nice feel”, the objective is to get the nice outcome, presumably such as you get by behaving rationally. “The nice feel”, as described above, is just a thing that happens to help you, under certain circumstances.

• D_AlexJul 30, 2013, 9:45 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes from peo­ple as­so­ci­ated with LessWrong

  For any event that has some episolon>0 probability of happening, it’s gonna happen eventually if you give it enough chances.

  This is not true (and also you mis-apply the Law of large Numbers here). For example: in a series (one single, continuing series!) of coin tosses, the probability that you get a run of heads at least half as long as the overall length of the series (eg ttththtHHHHHHH) is always >0, but it is not guaranteed to happen, no matter how many chances you give it. Even if the number of coin tosses is infinite (whatever that might mean).

  Interestingly, I read the original quote differently from you—I thought the intent was to say “any bloody thing will be brought up in a discussion, eventually, if it is long enough, even really obscure stuff like G.I.T.”, rather than “Gödel is brought up way too often in philosophical discussions”. What did you really mean, nsheppered???

A thought on the value of “ra­tio­nal­ity” as a value

• D_AlexJul 30, 2013, 6:08 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Anatoly_Vorobey’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes from peo­ple as­so­ci­ated with LessWrong

  I like your example, it implies that the longer the discussion goes, the less likely it is that somebody misquotes G.I.T. in any given statement (or per unit time etc). Kinda the opposite of what the intent of the original quote seems to be.

• D_AlexJul 25, 2013, 2:46 AM

  13 points

  0

  on: low stress em­ploy­ment/​ munchkin in­come thread

  I am curious… you don’t seem lke a lazy person through the lens of LessWrong site, yet the impression I get from this particular post is that you would resent every one of the 20 or so hours you would spend working. IMO that really need not be the case.

  Supposing you meet your stated goal—what would you spend your “free time” on? Could you make that activity generate income? eg. being a lifeguard on that beach you’d like to laze on?

• D_AlexJul 19, 2013, 2:06 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: DanArmak’s comment on: The WASH-1400 Re­ac­tor Safety Study

  In three ways you learn wisdom. By reflection, which is the noblest. By imitation, which is the easiest. And by experience, which is the bitterest.

  • Confucius, I think.

• D_AlexJun 14, 2013, 8:43 AM

  −2 points

  on: Do Earths with slower eco­nomic growth have a bet­ter chance at FAI?

  Eliezer, this post reeks of an ego trip.

  “I wish I had more time, not less, in which to work on FAI”… Okay, world, lets slow right down for a while. And you, good and viruous people with good for technological or economic advancement: just keep quiet until it is safe.

• D_AlexJun 14, 2013, 8:14 AM

  5 points

  in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Do Earths with slower eco­nomic growth have a bet­ter chance at FAI?

  I have a few thoughts.… Naturally first question is what does “optimise for insight” mean.

  1. A society which values leisure and prosperity, eg the current Scandinavians...? Evidence; They punch well above their weight economically, produce world class stuff (Volvo, Nokia, Ericsson, Bang&Olufsen spring to mind), but working pace from my experience could be described as “leisurely”. Possibly best “insights/​manhour” ratio.

  2. A society which values education, but which somehow ended up with a screwed up economy, eg the USSR...? Evidence: first man in space, atomic power/​weapons, numerous scientific breakthroughs… possibly best “Insight/​stuff” ratio.

  3. A wealthy modern capitalist democracy which values growth, eg the USA...? Evidence: more “science” and inventions produced in total than anywhere else. Possibly best “insights/​time” ratio.