Dustin

Karma: 1,717

Dustin 31 Dec 2014 1:59 UTC
48 points
0
on: Dark Arts 101: Be rigorous, on average
I realized I like this post because I identify with LessWrong, contrarianism, highlighting wrongness of high-status individuals, and a handful of other related concepts.

I find myself disliking Steiner, scoffing at institutions that give him position and those who give his book a good review.

All that despite barely being aware that Steiner exists and certainly never having read a thing he wrote.

Kinda scary.

I mean the criticisms might all be valid, but all I have to go on is the five minutes I spent reading this post.

Dustin 4 Aug 2020 23:50 UTC
33 points
on: How Beliefs Change What We See in Starlight
I don’t think you’re saying anything here that longtime community members do not understand. Most here have discussed the basic human biases you’re describing ad nauseum. The pushback you’ve received is not because we do not understand the biases you’re describing. The pushback you’ve received is sourced in disagreements that scientists are doing the things that your analogies imply they are doing.

In this post you’re just reasserting the things that people have disagreed with you about. I recommend directly addressing the points that people have brought up rather than ignoring them and restating your analogies. A brief perusal of what people have commented on your posts seems to show remarkably little effort by you to address any particular feedback other than to hand wave it away.

This is particularly the case when most people’s priors are that the person disagreeing with the scientific establishment is the one who has a very strong burden of proof.

Dustin 5 Jun 2014 21:22 UTC
29 points
on: Curiosity: Why did you mega-downvote “AI is Software” ?
1. Your phrasing was pseudo-mystical.
2. You used non-standard meanings for words.
3. It was a bunch of assertions, without a meaningful way to springboard into more discussion.
4. My first thought was “why doesn’t this person recognize that something so out of the ordinary requires a lot more explication?”
5. I had to think much more than should have been necessary to even begin to grasp what you could even possibly have meant by saying things like “Software is becoming the new System”.
Basically, it came across as a very low-effort post that seemed explicitly designed to create poor quality discussion.

Dustin 10 Sep 2021 14:58 UTC
25 points
on: The Best Software For Every Need
Software: Microsoft Edge
Need: Web browser
Other programs I’ve tried: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave
I’ve stuck with Edge for about a year. I tried it out because they switched over to the Chromium rendering engine and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I’ll tell you my main reasons for continuing to use it but note that these can exist in other browsers but don’t work exactly like I want.
- Collections. This features lets you add web pages and snippets of information into persistent collections of info. Good for when you’re researching a specific subject. I use this either for small projects or as a lightweight interim step before moving stuff into my main research gathering tools.
- Vertical tab stacks. Instead of tabs along the top of the window, I have it set to put them on the side of the window. The bar containing them collapses down into just the favicons and autoexpands to a configurable width showing the page titles when I mouse over.
Web browsers are kind of weird. They’re all incredibly capable and needs-fitting and I would be very happy using any of them. Because of this I considered not posting about it at all, but in the end I decided “web browsers are all really good, but Edge has these features” is useful information.
What links here?
- callistus's comment on App and book recommendations for people who want to be happier and more productive by KatWoods (7 Nov 2021 19:39 UTC; 9 points)

DIY Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. Who wants to go first?

Dustin14 Mar 2012 16:58 UTC

24 points

35 comments1 min readLW link

Dustin 27 Oct 2021 23:15 UTC
24 points
in reply to: jasoncrawford’s comment on: They don’t make ’em like they used to
The Phoebus Cartel
The cartel’s grip on the lightbulb market lasted only into the 1930s. Its far more enduring legacy was to engineer a shorter life span for the incandescent lightbulb. By early 1925, this became codified at 1,000 hours for a pear-shaped household bulb, a marked reduction from the 1,500 to 2,000 hours that had previously been common. Cartel members rationalized this approach as a trade-off: Their lightbulbs were of a higher quality, more efficient, and brighter burning than other bulbs. They also cost a lot more. Indeed, all evidence points to the cartel’s being motivated by profits and increased sales, not by what was best for the consumer. In carefully crafting a lightbulb with a relatively short life span, the cartel thus hatched the industrial strategy now known as planned obsolescence.

Dustin 17 Jul 2021 20:06 UTC
22 points
on: Reflecting on building my own tools from scratch and ‘inventing on principle’
20 years ago I always did all of this and actually use some of those tools still today. I heartily recommend it to everyone who will listen. There is no better way to really understand, say, web frameworks, then to build one yourself. Nowadays, I don’t do this as much because I understand more things and have already built many of the bespoke things I want/need.
I also heartily recommend throwing your tools in the trash...or at least very seriously considering it. Once you’ve understood the problem space, it’s very often better to use something battle-tested. Sometimes you’ll have understood the problem space thoroughly enough before you’ve even finished your own tool (lol at ever finishing a software project).
On the one hand, you’ll be able to use the already-existing tools better and more effectively once you’ve built your own. You’ll be able to take advantage of all the little things that have already been built that are just boring or hard to do yourself.
On the other hand, sometimes (but not usually) it’s harder to make an existing tool to fit exactly what you want to do then it is to build a tool from scratch to do exactly what you want.
On the gripping hand, people who build their own tools often overstate just how special a snowflake they are and just how great and needs-fitting their tools are.
There’s two hard things I encounter in this area: convincing people to build their own tools, and convincing people who’ve built their own tools to throw away their precious creations.

Dustin 21 May 2015 22:38 UTC
22 points
0
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Leaving LessWrong for a more rational life

it is also curious to me that many here point me to articles written by Eliezer Yudkowsky to support their arguments

It’s been my experience that this is usually done to point to a longer and better-argued version of what the person wants to say rather than to say “here is proof of what I want to say”.

I mean, if I agree with the argument made by EY about some subject, and EY has done a lot of work in making the argument, then I’m not going to just reword the argument, I’m just going to post a link.

The appropriate response is to engage the argument made in the EY argument as if it is the argument the person is making themselves.

Dustin 29 Jul 2011 23:01 UTC
22 points
in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die
I like that theory of Vassar’s because it fits my personal experience.

I was raised in an extremely religious household which caused me to miss out on advanced education. The internet has alleviated that to a degree, but the credentialed part certainly hasn’t been alleviated. By the time I “woke up” from the indoctrination of being raised in such a religious household, I was already approaching 30 years old and relatively unwealthy while at the same time being stuck with the work skills I was taught while growing up...that is construction and remodeling of homes. While I have made the best of that by being self-employed, it certainly has kept me from doing what I really would like to do when I “grow up”.

The internet has really been a boon for me as I self educated in software development and am slowly working to transition over to making my living from doing that. That’s closer to what I would rather do, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to get to the point where I can do what I really would love (research in any of the scientific fields I’m interested in...CS/medicine/AI/physics). At times this can be quite depressing and it feels like the person I was, was wasted.

However, all this makes me more of a fan of cryonics. Second chances and all that.

Dustin 19 Jan 2010 19:59 UTC
21 points
on: Normal Cryonics
Well, crap. That’s something I hadn’t even thought of yet.

I’m currently struggling with actually signing up for cryonics myself so this angle hadn’t even crossed my mind.

I’ll face very strong opposition from my wife, family, and friends when I finally do sign up. I can’t imagine what kind of opposition I’ll face when I attempt to sign my 3-month old daughter up.

I’ve been planning a top-level post about the rational thing to do when you’re in my position. What position you ask? You’ll find out in my post. Suffice it to say for now that I don’t think I’m a typical member of the LW community.

Dustin 10 Jan 2015 17:20 UTC
19 points
on: Productivity poll: how frequently do you think you *should* check email?
This depends entirely on how you use email.

I do almost zero personal communication via email. It’s all notifications, receipts, etc. Thus I check it maybe 4 or 5 times a week.

The frequency I would check my email would vary if I did personal conversations, or business conversations, or support, or etc.

On top of that, with GMail (or Google’s Inbox), you can set up all sorts of filters and searches. My phone notifies me of new emails from my wife, whom I know doesn’t abuse email, but new emails from my mom whom is likely to be forwarding me something...mom-ish...get read when I do my several-times-a-week look over my inbox.

Dustin 7 Nov 2014 3:35 UTC
19 points
on: The Danger of Invisible Problems
A chiropractor?

Am I delusional or am I correct in thinking chiropractors are practitioners of something a little above blood letting and way below actual modern medicine?

I mean, there’s always the argument that you should do whatever it is that makes pain go away, but is there a reason to have a chiropractor do this rather than a medical professional?

I don’t want to diss this post which seems quite good, I just wanted to highlight this point.

My first google result led me to this: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/science-and-chiropractic/

However, I haven’t done any real research on this subject. The idea that chiropractors are practicing sham medicine is just kind of background knowledge that I’m not really sure where I picked up.

Dustin 22 Feb 2010 19:51 UTC
19 points
in reply to: Tiiba’s comment on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
1 year ago, I would have completely agreed.

Then we had a baby, and now I see cuteness in babies all over the place. None as cute as my baby, though.

Dustin 5 Apr 2022 23:21 UTC
18 points
on: Explaining the Twitter Postrat Scene
I liked this in an anthropological sort of way.
I do feel like it sort of hovered around a level of “explaining the twitter postrat scene” that would not be super helpful for people coming from two almost opposing standpoints:
1. People who want to get into the scene. Who do I follow, what buttons do I click...what’s the actions I should take?
2. People who don’t understand why anyone would care about the scene.
Reading between the lines a little bit, I think this is probably intentional.
On the other hand, it feels like it it is helpful explaining to people who already have some sort of idea that the scene exists and posts and already have some sort of at least slightly negative opinion about it.

Dustin 1 Aug 2021 18:06 UTC
18 points
on: Who decides what should be worked on?
However, I always get a bit frustrated when trying to answer it, because I know that it is really not the right question to be asking.
When I ask these questions it is to interview you (or, really, the company). What is the company implicitly and explicitly teaching it’s employees about how decisions get made?
In other words, I already know the answer, I’m seeing if you do!
That being said, I would guess that the more inexperienced you are, the more earnest the question asker is about the question.

Dustin 5 Aug 2020 22:56 UTC
18 points
in reply to: nixtaken’s comment on: How Beliefs Change What We See in Starlight
o I did that in this post, but then I was told by dustin that I’ve written something too glaringly obvious yet clearly incorrect and controversial.

No, I’m not qualified to gauge whether you are clearly incorrect. I am qualified to comment on whether you’re making a convincing argument. Your arguments are not convincing largely because you do not really engage with people who question you.

The Ghost of Joseph Weber, the response was a series of gish gallops by gjm in which he argued that organizing random data according to a criteria called ‘weirdness’ was scientific. (It is not.)

And this is the problem. You could, for example, have a good and through discussion with gjm about this specific point. But you won’t, and I find it disappointing.

Look, here’s the deal for me:
1. Bringing up that human bias could be the cause of a scientific result is not sufficient nor necessary to negate that result...the bias is beside the point of whether they are right or not. You have to engage the results.
2. Most people, no matter how smart, do not have the background, time, or energy to engage on specific points of the technical subjects you have raised in your series of posts. (Of note, this is why you would do better to focus on single, specific technical points rather than shotgunning a non-physics-expert audience with every single technical thing you think is wrong with advanced physics experiments.) (This is also why, to most observers you are the one who started out with a gish gallop.)
3. These technical points are the only thing you have to hang your hat on.
4. gjm, to all appearances, seems to actually have the background to engage you on these points.
5. Instead of engaging on any point gjm raised, you basically just dismissed all of them out of hand.
6. Because of this, to an outsider of the field, you are now the one who looks like the one who has succumbed to unknown-to-us biases.
7. As far as any outsider can tell there are a lot of plausible explanations for your position, and only one of them has to do with you being right...and you lowered my priors in the “this person is right about all of this physics stuff” explanation for your posts by rejecting engagement with the main person trying to engage you on a technical level.
8. gjm could be full of shit. I don’t know, but I do know that it doesn’t seem like he’s full of shit. I do know that a few of the factual things he brought up that I do have the background to check on...like him saying you were misquoting others seemed spot on. Add on to that your refusal to engage, and you’re obviously going to be in the position you’re in now.
9. You may very well be correct but you’re doing us all a disservice by arguing your points poorly.

Dustin 4 Apr 2012 23:56 UTC
18 points
on: Cryonics without freezers: resurrection possibilities in a Big World
I like this post! Two comments barely related to the post:
1. I would be interested in those calculations about how big the universe would have to be to have repeating Earths if anyone recalls where they saw them.
2. A meta-LessWrongian comment: A great part of the value I get out of LessWrong is that there’s always someone out there writing a post or comment tying together various thoughts and musings I’ve had into coherent essays in a way I don’t have the mental discipline to do. So this is a big thanks to all of you writing interesting stuff!
And a comment more directly related to the post:

I can only assume that some other type of intelligence would be bemused by our confusion surrounding these issues in much the same way I’m often bemused by people making hopelessly confused arguments about religion or evolution or whatever.

Other Intelligence: “Of course continuity isn’t important! There’s no difference between waking up after a coma, being unfrozen, or your clone in a Big World! Sheesh, you humans are messed up in the head!”

(Or maybe OI would argue that there is a difference.)

Dustin 20 Apr 2011 23:18 UTC
18 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians
Wife, child, family, friends, business.

Dustin 11 Feb 2022 18:09 UTC
17 points
on: No, human life was not a misery until the 1950s
People like being alive. They show this by their actions. Very few people kill themselves.
This reminds me of a couple of comments I made on another post. I think the most appropriate quote from my comments is this:
I don’t think I agree that suicide is a sufficient proxy for whether an entity enjoys life more than it dislikes life because I can imagine too many plausible, yet currently unknown mechanisms wherein there are mitigating factors. For example:
I imagine that there are mental processes and instincts in most evolved entities that adds a significant extra prohibition against making the active choice to end their own life and thus that mental ability has a much smaller role in suicide “decisions”.
In the world where there is no built-in prohibition against ending your own life, if the “enjoys life” indicator is at level 10 and the “hates life” indicator is at level 11, then suicide is on the table.
In, what I think is probably our world, when the “enjoys life” indicator is at level 10 the “hates life” indicator has to be at level 50.
What’s more, it seems plausible to me that the value of this own-life-valuing indicator addon varies from species to species and individual to individual.

Dustin 13 Oct 2021 23:27 UTC
17 points
on: Zoe Curzi’s Experience with Leverage Research
While I’m not hugely involved, I’ve been reading OB/LW since the very beginning. I’ve likely read 75% of everything that’s ever been posted here.
So, I’m way more clued-in to this and related communities than your average human being and...I don’t recall having heard of Leverage until a couple of weeks ago.
I’m not exactly sure what that means with regard to PR-esque type considerations.
However. Fair or not, I find having read the recent stuff I’ve got an ugh field that extended to slightly include LW. (I’m not sure what it means to “include LW”...it’s just a website. My first stab at an explanation is it’s more like “people engaged in community type stuff who know IRL lots of other people who communicate on LW”, but that’s not exactly right either.)
I think it’d be good to have some context on why any of this is relevant to LessWrong. The whole thing is generating a ton of activity and it feels like it just came out of nowhere.

Dustin

DIY Tran­scra­nial Direct Cur­rent Stim­u­la­tion. Who wants to go first?

DIY Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. Who wants to go first?