InquilineKea

Karma: 588

InquilineKea 14 May 2011 23:21 UTC
21 points
on: Scholarship: How to Do It Efficiently
What I do is to try to obtain as much information as possible in written form (this is also why I generally avoid lectures and colloquia unless I feel like they’re the only source of information on something). That way, I can refer to it months after I initially read it, and can also search for it (in my hard drive) as well. Furthermore, reading is faster than hearing someone say something, and you can always skip ahead if you want to.

This is also why I generally prefer email to real-life conversation, although I recognize that most professors prefer the latter right now (or they’re more responsive if you’re talking to them one-on-one).

I also try to post as much online as possible with my unique internet name (with my archiving utilities ready to archive them all) since it makes me easy to google what I’ve written. It also makes it easier for other people to find me, and sometimes they bring up things that I might have forgotten years ago. I’m not a scholar yet, but I can definitely imagine the potential for crowdsourcing if I become one.

==

I do appreciate tools like CliffNotes and SparkNotes. Other intelligent people may see those as signals of “low intelligence”, but my time is extremely important to me, and if I can learn something faster with those (or with a dummies book), then so be it. In fact, I do believe that a lot of things are deliberately inefficient just to sort out the “highly intelligent” from the “less intelligent”, but those things often impose an efficiency cost on the highly intelligent.

What’s often important is humility (and a consideration that some people may think you less intelligent). Oftentimes, for the sake of being efficient, you will have to ask stupid questions that are asked (mostly) be less intelligent people.

==

Also, forum debates are oftentimes useless, but sometimes, they actually give you the drive to explain+defend your position more clearly than you would on your own. Maybe your explanation will be lost on the other side (and on everyone else for that matter), but what ultimately matters is that you made it, and can use it somewhere else.

==

If you want more time, you can take it out of your sleep with modafinil. But this is risky, and I wouldn’t do it more than a few times a year until we know more about the connection between amyloid beta and sleep deprivation and alzheimers (there was a nature article about it last year that I can show later)

==

I’m not especially organized though, and that’s another thing to take into consideration: I rarely delete things, so I have to find creative ways to organize them (certain types of software really help though). But this is something I’m trying to find a solution to. Sometimes I’ll just create a folder (or section) that’s labeled “DUMP”. Sometimes I even put them at the end of my papers or powerpoint presentations. On occasion (probabilities of 1% build up over time), you might actually find a researcher who’s actually INTERESTED in what you’ve put in your DUMP.

==

Minimizing commute time is also EXTREMELY important (not to mention that commute times intensely increase stress). If you can read on the bus, then take the bus rather than drive (although I’ve taken the bus before, and I’ve found transfers to be IMMENSELY stressful since they disrupt my reading because I always have to look at what the bus is doing). Try to live as close to work as possible. There was a period of time when my parents forced me to commute to school rather than to live in the dorms, which wasted a significant amount of time due to the length of my commute (so I ended up only registering for “skippable” classes and often slept overnight in the undergraduate library)

==

Also, putting less emotional weight on things that don’t matter/things that can get others unnecessarily angry. So I put low emotional weight on most political issues of the day (and religion), even though I do have my views of what is “better”/”more effective”

==

Anyways, if anyone else wants to discuss strategies, feel free to PM me (or email me, or visit my page at http://bit.ly/lX4Tiu). This is something I actively think about (as a polymath who is also studying multiple fields, although I’m still younger and have less experience than most of you), and will ultimately write something about.

What i ultimately hope to do is to introduce forums as the primary mechanism of scientific discourse, rather than real-life. There are so many interesting and productive conversations that are now permanently inaccessible because they were communicated verbally, rather than online.

Just note that people sometimes don’t like my unorthodox routes (they even offend some people, so trying to avoid offense by ANYTHING is another important part of rationality). For example, I frequently skip class because it’s inefficient and prevents me from working on some of my other side projects. I’ve written more at http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-literature-that-one-should-read-in-order-to-get-a-broad-scientific-background/answer/Alex-K-Chen

InquilineKea 18 Sep 2011 0:41 UTC
14 points
on: Atheism & the autism spectrum
Their neurotypical comparison group was golivewire.com…

People who go on forums in the first place are frequently much less religious than average.

This is definitely true for numerous non-autistic forum as well (I’ve conducted polls). Among online communities I know where an overwhelming majority of the population is non-religious...
- HeavenGames
- Interesting Nonetheless (INTL), an offshoot of HeavenGames
- Reddit
- Social Anxiety Forums
- College Confidential (though the ratio there is only around 60%)
- Digg (the old digg, anyways).
- Quora
- I’m pretty sure it’s true for Slashdot and Hacker News too
(Of course, LessWrong and Imminst are even more overwhelmingly atheist, but I wouldn’t consider them as reliable “NT” forums to compare with, as their philosophies are philosophies that only atheists would find more attractive—this is not the case for the communities above)

In any case, Go LiveWire might not even be a reliable sample. There’s such an overwhelming presence of atheists on many popular discussion boards (especially Reddit) that a lot of religious people are driven away and end up congregating more on places like LiveWire. Alternatively, they convert to atheism (I’ve witnessed numerous forumers on HeavenGames turn from Christian to atheist).

Plus, forums frequently homogeneize their views precisely because the people with less popular views get frustrated and driven out (this is especially true for anyone who has conservative views—I’ve seen many cases where conservatives get ostracized, leaving only a small percent of them who remain). Anyways, I’m a WrongPlanet poster myself, so I’ll post the study there and see what they say.

Also, wrongplanet is definitely not a representative sample of everyone with Asperger’s. The people there are definitely biased towards more extreme forms of the syndrome (and especially biased towards those who are especially lonely in real life). In terms of severity, my form is more severe than that of almost everyone I know in real-life, yet less severe than many of the posters there.

Another thing: most of WrongPlanet’s posters are adults—most of LiveWire’s posters are teens. They said they wanted to match for age-group, but they didn’t do a good job of doing that.

Despite the study’s flaws, I don’t doubt the conclusion. And I still found the article to be an intensely interesting read, and do want to see more research into this.

InquilineKea 15 May 2011 3:59 UTC
14 points
on: Talk about your research
My upcoming project (over the summer) is about studying the atmospheric dynamics of the Precambrian Earth using 3D atmospheric science models (probably using the CAM3 models often used for modelling the Earth’s atmosphere). I am then planning to move onto a project to model the 3D dynamics of Earth’s atmosphere around various types of stars, which should hopefully help us predict what the atmosphere of an Earth-like exoplanet should look like (spectrally) around various star types

So basically, my primary interests are astronomy and atmospheric science (I’m also really into computer science and statistics, which should help with both). I could say that astrobiology merges them all, but I’m unsure if anything astrobiologically significant will ever come out.

I’m also into super-long-term sustainability, which makes this very relevant (most of the shorter-term sustainability things are already clogged up with people)

InquilineKea 25 Apr 2011 21:39 UTC
14 points
on: Improving the college experience for students on the autism spectrum
Make it acceptable to skip a good portion of classes. Yes, some attendance at some classes may be important, but there are many cases when we just zone out and get absolutely nothing out of class (this is especially important for foreign language, although my university has been kind enough to give me a foreign language requirement exemption), even though we would do perfectly well (and learn even more efficiently) if everything was just distributed outside of class.

Some of the accommodations are not especially helpful—tape-recording lectures, for example, means that you often have to listen to the entire thing again and use up even more time, when in reality, we could learn the material in a fraction of the time (at a time when we are alert—the problem is that it’s hard to predict periods of alertness and periods of unalertness, and their periods vary from day to day) if we were given written access to the material at a time when we were alert.

My problem may be more related to ADD, but I have both, and there is said to be a large comorbidity between Asperger’s and ADD.

==

Also—more class discussion over class forums and less class discussion in class. Also, a school-wide online forum (or mailing list, or at least one for particular majors) would REALLY help for making connections (I know that some schools, like Wellesley, have school-wide forums, and other schools, like Caltech, have house-wide mailing lists). I have no friends here, and part of the reason for this is because there’s simply no online way for me to approach anonymous people in my major or school. This is especially relevant when you have the social skills to only be friends with, say, 0.01% of the population, and are trying to find ways to identify that small percent. Also, people with social anxiety also partake better in forums, and it would make it easier for us to meet those with social anxiety.

Basically, make as much content online as is practically possible. That is the single-most important thing, IMO.

Modernizing classroom instruction as well (more emphasis on interactive simulations when available, rather than on blackboard). I’ve made a list of them here: http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=470676

==

Also, some system to control variance in GPAs. A lot of us have higher GPA variances than others. The problem with this, though, is that an isolated 0.0 could totally destroy our GPAs (a 0.0 does far more damage than a 1.7, even though there is really little difference between the two), even though we may otherwise have very strong grades. And autistics are probably more likely to get these isolated 0.0s due to issues that arised in one quarter, or communication breakdown between student and professor.

InquilineKea 12 Jul 2011 13:29 UTC
11 points
on: Should Rationalists Tip at Restaurants?
Surprisingly, overtipping can be pretty rational (well, at least according to Yishan Wong, who is quite a rational person, based on his posts on Quora)

http://www.quora.com/Life-Advice/What-life-lessons-are-counter-intuitive-or-go-against-common-sense-or-wisdom

Overtip everywhere you go. Usually, the only way to be treated like royalty at restaurants and service establishments is to be a celebrity (or royalty). The other way is to be the person known for tipping well. Especially at places you frequent often, make a point of tipping extremely well—at least in the 20 − 25% range or more (especially for small-dollar amounts, where you can tip high percentages without spending a large absolute amount). The idea is to stand out as the person who tips significantly better than all the other customers. The employees there will get to know you astoundingly quickly, they will memorize your preferences, they will learn your name (even if it is a weird ethnic one), they will ask after your health, and they will make a point of asking if there is anything extra that you’d like (and sometimes comp you stuff) and generally go to great, polite lengths to make sure you are happy. You will feel like a celebrity and when you bring your friends, it will impress them that the proprietor knows you and treats you so well. Real celebrities don’t really come around that often (unless you’re living in L.A.), so you will end up being the special customer they lavish all their attention on—the local high-roller. Especially if you aren’t actually rich, you are just choosing to be a great tipper, it will make you seem like a really great person. All of this extraordinary service can be had by simply voluntarily marking up your own bill by 10% over the usual cost. Did you get a raise? If so, don’t go eating at a nicer restaurant, stay at the same restaurant you’ve enjoyed all along, and just pay more for better service.

InquilineKea 11 Apr 2011 5:02 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Louie’s comment on: Do meetups really have to go on the front page?
Well, like most of the readers here, I appreciate many of the things that other people write, but I’m still not sufficiently advanced enough to write posts that most people like (I’m only a college undergrad, after all). Most of my “intellectual” posts get very few upvotes, and surprisingly enough, my “neurotic” posts are the ones that get the most upvotes.

InquilineKea 26 Sep 2011 4:58 UTC
8 points
on: LessWrong gaming community
Why not create a Steam group for LW?

InquilineKea 29 Nov 2010 6:21 UTC
8 points
in reply to: Relsqui’s comment on: Link: Compare your moral values to the general population
Liberals tend to be higher on openness, and it takes openness to read websites like yourmorals.

In general, most websites that serve “nerdier” people tend to have very strong liberal biases (frequently with libertarians outnumbering conservatives). Conservatives are rare on most of these websites (it’s the same case for reddit, digg, slashdot, and scienceblogs readers). Of course, the audience of people interested in social science also tends to skew left.

InquilineKea 20 Nov 2010 21:30 UTC
8 points
0
in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: Yes, a blog.

In my own attempts to study philosophy, I’ve found classical monologue-based instruction almost invariably suffers in comparison to dialogues between multiple people genuinely trying to convince each other of their ideas. When the author cannot interact with and respond to their audience, it’s easy to become complacent. Dialogue forces one to refine both one’s ideas and the presentation of one’s ideas, and makes it much easier to realistically compare a point of view to the most compelling alternatives.

Definitely true. Might I add that forums/blogs are better than real life (verbal) discussions for developing insightful ideas, precisely because you must put in more time to develop a forum/blog post (and also because there are no distracting non-verbal stimuli that may make someone look “smarter” or more “authoritative” than someone else—so only the best ideas get selected, rather than the ideas from the most respected/most prestigious person), and also because it’s much easier to refute individual (quoted) points that way.

Furthermore, people will forget points communicated verbally. Points communicated through forums/blogs will stay for a long time, where someone can search for them (and think about them) months later.

InquilineKea 17 Jan 2011 10:38 UTC
7 points
on: The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
It really depends on your learning style, and whether you learn best through examples=>generalizations or generalizations=>examples.

Similarly, some people may learn faster from a non-rigorous approach (and fill in the gaps later), while others may learn faster from a more rigorous approach. Some people might stare at a text for hours, but might be able to motivate themselves to learn the material much faster if they had some concrete examples first (using the Internet as a supplementary resource can help in that). I actually find it easier to learn molecular cell biology through Wikipedia articles than through textbooks, because Wikipedia articles often contain more of the information that’s more emotionally significant to many people (even if not epistemically significant).

For example, I really do feel that I would have learned physics and math much faster if I learned them through computer simulations (proofs could be done later—I tend to just stare at proofs if they’re presented first). I’m an inductive learner, not a deductive learner, and I tend to stare at texts that are overly deductive (part of it owes to my severe inattentive ADD, but maybe some non-ADDers are in the same boat as I am there)

In general, I find lectures extremely inefficient, unless there is space for significant amounts of one-to-one feedback, either through insanely small classes or a teacher who allows you to be their pet. Since these rarely happen in college, I generally find learning from textbooks more efficient. Podcasts/video lectures are often VERY inefficient ways to learn since you can read MUCH faster than you can listen, and it’s much more of a hassle to repeat a part you don’t quite understand.

Here’s a quote I really like:

“Similarly, no one has been able to confirm any certain limits to the speed with which man can learn. Schools and universities have usually been organized as if to suggest that all students learn at about the same rather plodding and regular speed. But, whenever the actual rates at which different people learn have been tested, nothing has been found to justify such an organization. Not only do individuals learn at vastly different speeds and in different ways, but man seems capable of astonishing feats of rapid learning when the attendant circumstances are favorable. It seems that, in customary educational settings, one habitually uses only a tiny fraction of one’s learning capacities.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Philosophy of Education

====

That being said, here’s a list of books I wish I had studied from instead of the standard textbooks: http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/R2BKS9X5I8D9Y/ref=cm_sylt_byauthor_title_full_1

Also, Razib Khan has collected some pretty amazing books (you can find them on http://www.gnxp.com).

InquilineKea 2 Jan 2011 23:31 UTC
7 points
on: Kicking Akrasia: Now or Never
Provigil/Nuvigil (aka modafinil). It keeps you awake and is generally regarded as safer than Adderall.

InquilineKea 16 Apr 2018 3:24 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: The Case Against Education
I know. I still feel psychologically wrecked/burned by it all and afraid to be proud of expressing myself (my strengths and weaknesses), and still overly judged by other people’s notion of what it means to make proper progress. It defines and tracks *everyone*, it limits our social circles (and confines us to permanent bubbles), and it makes us feel guilty over doing anything that’s different. I frequently feel like I’m on the defensive. I wish I could have a childhood I was fully proud of—that I want to show off to the rest of the world (and create value for others), but it has all been destroyed by my desire to please others. I also wish I could have an Internet history I was fully proud of.. rather than one I’m defensive about..
And because of the system, I still feel constantly on the defensive for justifying my current life path.
People should be proud of what they learn—they should want to show it off to the rest of the world, rather than throw all their assignments away. They should also be proud of how they’re unique/different from others (including their weaknesses that *others* can fill them up in), especially if they process the world in a weird/neurodivergent way (and can’t necessarily learn the same way that others do) or if they work best in a “support role” who make smart people feel comfortable. They should be unashamed of showing how they might be wrong (and how their thinking can be fixed in the future). They overrate independence and ability to be seen as “better than others”.
And they should take advantage of their comparative strengths when their neuroplasticity/fluid intelligence is at its *highest*, and receive feedback from older people who actually have experience interacting with the rest of the world (rather than in their own bubbles)
BTW—I took a unique extreme in going for maximizing my own knowledge rather than optimizing for the meta-game of figuring out what knowledge I should learn and what knowledge is best left in the heads of others (and I seem to have better memory for knowledge in the heads of others than most people do).

InquilineKea 11 Apr 2011 0:31 UTC
6 points
in reply to: David_Gerard’s comment on: The Importance of Research
Actually, cracked.com is often surprisingly really good at finding really obscure research that I could never find from Wikipedia or any other source. They found an amazing article about deer that raided bird nests to get calcium, for example (http://www.cracked.com/article_19126_5-adorable-animals-that-are-turning-to-dark-side.html).

For another article, for example, they really managed to scour many obscure sources from google books.

Plus, it’s often the best means of communicating research to other people who don’t like reading science articles.

InquilineKea 16 Nov 2010 14:29 UTC
6 points
on: Article on quantified lifelogging (Slate.com)
I really appreciated those URLs. I liked it how the camera is now just available for several hundred dollars (although the storage space would be a bigger pain).

On the topic of lifelogging, what strategies do you currently use to lifelog?

I don’t really have an income yet, so I can’t buy much storage for these cameras (the real constraining factor is the sheer number of TBs that lifelogging for any more than a few days would cost).

What I do right now: I try to talk to people over e-mail/IM whenever possible (so that I can search archives). I also save every notable webpage I come across (since people often take down webpages). Sometimes I even use Httrack/Downthemall to download all my old posts from various forums. I also use a tape recorder, although I don’t use it very much right now.

InquilineKea 5 Apr 2009 1:32 UTC
6 points
on: Why Support the Underdog?
Might I add Dunbar’s number to this? Large powerful groups have a tendency to split (especially hunter-gatherer ones). And once they split, they often become each other’s enemies. Oftentimes, it’s better for the individual to be the underdog when the underdog is a group that is less likely to split.

Alternatively, let’s ponder this situation: you’re part of a group, a single one of many possible groups. Your group has interests in supporting the weaker groups if your group wishes to survive (of course you may be okay with having your group absorbed into another group—but remember—in hunter gatherer days, it was often difficult to be absorbed in another group with an entirely different culture from yours).

This, incidentally, reminds me a lot of the scene in Romance of Three Kingdoms where the minor warlord Zhang Xiu was wondering whether to join Cao Cao (the underdog) or Yuan Shao. His brilliant adviser told him to join Cao Cao, who ultimately toppled Yuan Shao.

InquilineKea 29 Apr 2022 4:40 UTC
5 points
on: Virtue signaling is sometimes the best or the only metric we have
Sometimes, people generically hate on the general principle of virtue-signalling as an indirect way of signalling which virtues they disagree with OR which virtues are policed—eg polarizing virtues (while being able to maintain plausible deniability on what specific virtue signals they disagree on). Sometimes, this generic hatred of “virtue signalling” is also a generic hatred/dislike of “lawful good” [or “those more successful than them”], or those they perceive as having “higher pain tolerance than them” (a generalized hatred of all associated with virtue signalling led to the backlash culminating in the 2016 election, as Trump epitomized the intense hatred of BOTH republican and democrat forms of virtue-signalling—“signals” that the working class was unusually receptive to b/c there seems to be a difference in the capacity between “privileged” and “less privileged” in bearing the costs of virtue-signalling.) Trump once said “I LOVE the uneducated”.
[Moloch-worship is another form of virtue-signalling, esp among those who always did better in the system than everyone else—eg seen by those who consistently “defend the administration”—eg BG at Caltech lol]. When I was surrounded with the noise of middle school/high school, I used to bond with Moloch-worshippers b/c I thought they were the ONLY people who had any intelligence or straightforwardedness in them...… (that was way way way before I finally discovered the “chaotic”/edgy technologists in elite universities/the SF Bay Area, who have since then become the base of my friend group.[1])
The “felt costliness” of “virtue-signalling” is higher in the working class than it is in richer elites.
[it should be said that the biggest explicit haters on virtue-signalling tend not to be working-class-voters, where the term “virtue-signalling” isn’t popular” [though they definitely feel a NOTION of the thing that Trump felt]. Explicitly stated intense hatred of “virtue signalling” is SUPER-COMMON among those who obsess with Peter Thiel.
(hatred of virtue signalling also can come from outsiders, as “virtue-signalling” is often a mesa-optimizing strategy to get “acceptance within the group”, especially the more authoritarian members of the group).
I also think the choice of “vegetarianism/veganism” as an interesting choice in the OP of “virtue-signalling”, because vegetarian/vegan virtue-signalling is the LEAST Moloch-aligned form of virtue-signalling, and thus different from ALL other forms of virtue-signalling. It’s also the form of “virtue signalling” I’m most guilty of (whereas I historically had “thieltard” reactions to its other forms).
as of 2024, it really does seem that Trump represents a backlash to all the “woke/virtue signaling” in the US again, and unless we address people’s collective anger on this [rural white rage, yes, but the rage has become multiracial in its manifestation too—many disaffected people go to Trump as the purest expression of rage against “the system”], we will have the existential catastrophe of the next Trump administration… People feel rage because this virtue-signaling “picks out winners [0] and losers”, and the “losers” of this game (those not in what Laurens Gunnarsen describes as “the cult of conscientiousness” )have pure pure rage and no one to turn to, except Trump. Trump called out the entire system for what it was—“rigged”. Maybe the 2020 election was not rigged, but everything upstream of it was.
And this backlash also is why many in that group hate the virtue-signally Mitch McConnell as much as the “woke Democrats”, just as Trump turned on McConnell
And as LLMs become more open-source, these losers figure out how to integrate thie rage into the LLMs. Maybe this can be stopped, maybe not, but in the likelier possibility that the open-sourcing of rage-filled LLMs like GPTchan, why not try to do some trade where you actually respond to their rage in a more understanding matter? Understanding them matters for reducing all the risk of existential catastrophe, especially as they have all the free-time to fill up the world with [and… LLMs will become even more addicting and cause more people to fill themselves up with screentime]. The disaffected think that only “Trump can hear their unheard voices”—after all, he constantly yells [unless we can get sympathetic GPT to hear them BEFORE he does]
Virtue signalling will cost Democrats the 2024 election…
[related -http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/why-i-am-no-longer-anti-trump/ ]
[Unless...]
Roko on X: “The desire to virtue signal is stronger than the desire to not be exterminated by the machine god” / X (twitter.com)
[0] eg goody two-shoes people who succeed in all the g-and-conscientiousness mini-games of school [what Laurens Gunnarsen describes as “the cult of conscientiousness”]
=====
[1] Lol, a lot of intense visceral strong emotion/anger/trauma/edginess in this history has been removed from this post… which is like.. a LONG FASCINATING STORY… I had a uniquely high level of hatred against the system for denying me entrance to the gifted program. The system assigns “winners and losers” based on the dumbest criteria ever, this system affects your entire life, and only the disaffected feel this, and their rage against this is why they would uniquely vote for Trump over anyone else—b/c Trump is the biggest most virtue-free loser ever, and yet has still “won in the most important way”. And people need this shoved in the face of the “woke elites”—if only the “woke elites” could be neuroplastic or open-minded enough to recognize this, unless… [who is it who can convince @sama to actually enlighten them? Is No Labels enough to wake the Dems up? It’s a step in the right direction, but it still is not]
So also I feel other people’s anger/rage at schooling (or anything associated with “virtue signalling” that is associated with the system). Michael Gibson does, too, but his book just does not have reach. What if… his book could be an easter egg in a video game like The Elder Scrolls Skyrim..?
it also hasn’t quite ended, because a new force came out that has a small but emotionally salient enough chance to completely obliterate the hierarchy of how I emotionally factor ALL of Moloch/techno-progressivism/edginess/elite universities/drugs/ADHD/”narcisssism”/Bryan Caplan/Thiel Fellowship [and the person who turned out to become my ALL TIME FAVORITE THIEL FELLOW]/Hillybilly Elegy/insecurities/intelligence/Stanford Duck Syndrome/Michael Faraday/Michael O Church/CP Snow’s “two cultures”/cancel culture/”narcissism”/trauma/Sarah Constantin/Stephen Hsu/two of my friends who dated each other for several years and then had the most epic breakup ever..… ⇒ ALL WHICH HAVE ELEMENTS RELATED TO HOW PEOPLE EMOTIONALLY INTERACT TO VIRTUE-SIGNALLING
[but much of my intense historical trauma came from me TRYING TO mesa-optimize/virtue-signal, and failing at it because I came from a shitty school. Then I FINALLY found and sought out the edgelords at elite universities + finally turned someone into a Thiel Fellow, and NOTHING EVER WAS THE SAME EVER AGAIN]
(so much emotional intensity was factored out of this post, but one has told me I have a moral duty to write out the story at last).

InquilineKea 22 Oct 2011 23:07 UTC
5 points
on: [LINK] Loss of local knowledge affecting intellectual trends

meshes well with findings that the more children parents have the less they subscribe to nurture, since they finally, possibly for the first time ever, get some hands on experience with the nurture (nurture as in stuff like upbringing not nurture as in lead paint) versus. nature issue

Interesting - where are these findings reported?

I agree—though since most people have gross misunderstandings of genetics, then they might also think—“Well—they have the same parents and yet they’re still so different!”- so then they might ascribe less to heredity too (and more to birth order or certain other environmental influences)

InquilineKea 2 Jun 2011 13:48 UTC
5 points
on: [Link] Enhanced Autodidacticism for the Chronically Lazy and Hyperactive
Haha, as a student with ADD, this completely describes who I am. I actually have lots of other tips I’ve gathered over the years—maybe I’ll finally compile them somewhere.

http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-students-academics/ is also a really good resource

My philosophy: Optimize transaction costs Distilled into empirically-wrought principles, my high-level advice is:

Reduce transaction costs to engaging in productive behavior. Erect transaction costs to engaging in counter-productive behavior. Minimize opportunity cost. Do what you’re best at doing, and partner with specialists when you need to do something else. [This is the hardest principle for engineers to accept. We feel that if we can do something, we should.] In short, mold your life so that the path of least resistance is the path of maximum productivity.

People are shocked when I tell them I’m lazy. I don’t try to change the fact that I’m lazy; I exploit it. I try to make sure that the laziest thing I can do at any moment is what I should be doing.

As an anecdote, I’ll offer my experience with doing pull-ups. I wanted to start doing pull-ups, so I attached a portable pull-up bar to the door outside our bedroom. Every time I passed by, the transaction cost of a pull-up was near zero, so I did some pull-ups. Moreover, I didn’t have to remember to do pull-ups, because I saw the pull-up bar all the time. One day, for whatever reason, the bar was taken down and placed on the floor. It’s been on the floor for months, and I haven’t done a pull-up since. It would take about ten seconds to re-install the bar, but I’m often in a rush, and that ten seconds has become a transaction cost.

InquilineKea 26 May 2011 1:20 UTC
5 points
in reply to: thejash’s comment on: Peter Thiel announces the 20 talented people he will pay to drop out of college to pursue innovative scientific and technical projects
As for “unrealistic” projects, the thing is—many “unrealistic” projects have long time-horizons, so they need external funding in order to continue. But after some time, the payoffs can be huge. Agencies like DARPA are typically the agencies that fund projects that sound unrealistic, but we need more than just DARPA. And Thiel wants to demonstrate that maybe there are alternative ways of getting long time-horizon projects (like aging prevention) supported.

In the words of Thiel Fellow Laura Deming...

Too often, researchers design quick incremental projects to please grant-making bodies instead of taking on risky, long time horizon problems. With her fund IP Immortal, Laura plans on commercializing anti-aging research, bringing therapies out of the lab and into the market sooner.

InquilineKea 10 Mar 2011 1:01 UTC
5 points
on: [Link] Your genes, your rights – FDA’s Jeffrey Shuren not a fan
I agree with Razib as well. The medical establishment is really a sham for those of us who read research papers on our own, and who don’t need a middle man to interpret what’s best for us (which often is not what is best for us). With the rapid pace of research, most medical textbooks get outdated very quickly. But these are still the same textbooks that doctors use to get their degrees.

And this is the first time I’ve ever seen Razib visibly angry (over 4 years of reading his blog), so it clearly means a lot.

By the way, does anyone have any more information about the Personal Genome Project? I got recruited as part of the 1k cohort back last October, but I still haven’t heard anything back from them.

And does anyone know how I could get a MRI for as cheap as possible? (i tried doing clinical research, but they won’t give me the results of the MRI)