Hyphen-ated

• Hyphen-ated 2 Feb 2011 21:55 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: The Ab­sent-Minded Driver

  I slapped together some C++ in under ten minutes, with an eye towards making it run fast. This runs a billion iterations in slightly under one minute on my machine.

  #include <cstdlib>
  #include <ctime>
  #include <iostream>
  using namespace std;
  long long threshhold = 4 * (RAND_MAX / 9);
  int main() {
     srand((unsigned)time(0));
     long long utility = 0;
     long long iterations = 1000000000;
     for(long long i = 0; i < iterations; ++i) {
        if(rand() < threshhold)
           continue;
        else if(rand() < threshhold) {
           utility += 4;
           continue;
        }
        ++utility;
     }
     cout << "avg utility: " << (double)utility/iterations << endl;
     return 0;
  }
  

• Hyphen-ated 15 Sep 2011 4:28 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 9

  “187” is a slang term for murder, which comes from the California penal code. Is this a coincidence?

• Hyphen-ated 27 Dec 2011 10:22 UTC

  2 points

  on: Meetup : Port­land Meetup?

  I am interested in this.

• Hyphen-ated 10 Jan 2012 3:11 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: obfuscate’s comment on: Meetup : Port­land Meetup?

  How about we meet by the board games in the science fiction section? That’s in the gold room. If I remember right it’s near the asterisk on this map: http://​​www.powells.com/​​pdf/​​burnside_map_2011.pdf

  I am 6′3″, I will wear a black T-shirt with a realistic-looking lightning bolt on the front, and I will have a backpack with a helmet hanging from it.

• Hyphen-ated 1 Jan 2014 15:02 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: passive_fist’s comment on: New Year’s Pre­dic­tion Thread (2014)

  The big advantage over a monitor is immersion. When I tried out an oculus rift I felt like I was inside the virtual space in a way that I’ve never felt while playing FPSes on a monitor. That’s not a small thing.

  Another advantage is that it increases how many input axes you have. Think of games where you’re flying a spaceship or driving a car and you can freely look in all directions while controlling your vehicle with both hands. That’s impossible on a standard monitor.

• Hyphen-ated 2 Jan 2014 3:04 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: passive_fist’s comment on: New Year’s Pre­dic­tion Thread (2014)

  I know that; I’ve played FPSes with that control layout for thousands of hours. I said “while controlling your vehicle with both hands” which means, for example, with a steering wheel, a throttle+joystick, or a keyboard+mouse with the mouse controlling something besides camera angle.

• Hyphen-ated 29 Jul 2014 6:31 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: William_Quixote’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, July 2014, chap­ter 102

  -One who holdss it now, wass not born to name now ussed. -One who holdss Sstone iss repossitory of much lore. -Taught sschoolmasster many ssecretss.

  I’ve been under the impression through the whole story that Harry’s father’s rock is the philosopher’s stone. Is Quirrel just referring to Harry here?

  The Harry we know wasn’t “born to the name now used”, or really born at all, because his current self comes from a merger of the original Harry and Voldemort.

  Harry is the repository of much lore about science.

  Harry has taught Dumbledore many “secrets” about muggle science and rationality. (hasn’t he? I can’t remember any specifics because I haven’t done a reread in a long time)