Louie

Karma: 2,191

Louie 14 May 2010 0:44 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Nick_Tarleton’s comment on: Blue- and Yellow-Tinted Choices
Thanks for providing that image. This is a very powerful effect.

For instance, I have to focus on it very hard to temporarily not see it.

Can anyone NOT see this effect easily? Or is it fully universal?

Louie 14 May 2010 1:51 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Alexandros’s comment on: Is Google Paperclipping the Web? The Perils of Optimization by Proxy in Social Systems
I think you talk about current SEO well. Good content and links to that content are still state of the art.

I got a lot out of thinking about the computational / human-bandwidth asymmetry of Google vs content creators.

But have you considered how the fear of being Sandboxed plays into things?

My first thought was that it improved value of the proxy somewhat by making people who know the proxy will change over time be less cavalier. Most people engaging in serious SEO have lucrative websites. You have to be very risk-seeking to go after those small marginal gains at the risk of losing all your cash flow permanently. There aren’t that many large players that it gets driven down to a Nash Equilibrium quicker than Google’s algorithms can change.

But the more I think about it, the fear of being penalized also tends to make legitimate content producers even more concerned that doing ANY SEO is bad. That may make things doubly-worse.

It’s impossible to not do SEO. Every site is optimized for something.

For instance, lesswrong.com is optimized for:
- vote
- points
- permalink
- children
- password
Think about that next time you lament that lesswrong is overwhelmingly less popular than other sites with clearly inferior content.

Louie 31 May 2010 10:01 UTC
12 points
in reply to: ata’s comment on: On Less Wrong traffic and new users—and how you can help
Compete is just wrong.

I’ve seen our actual traffic data. Compete is using an outside tracking method that both underestimates our previous traffic and overestimates our current traffic.

It is the case that the new users coming through from HP fanfic are more “sticky” than other users… meaning they are much more likely to use the site more. And they are a very diverse crowd from more geographical areas, which I think is how compete is overcounting them.

Louie 1 Jun 2010 2:02 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Leonhart’s comment on: On Less Wrong traffic and new users—and how you can help
I’m who you want to talk to. Just sent you a PM.

Louie 11 Jun 2010 0:59 UTC
3 points
on: Your intuitions are not magic
Having just pressed “Send” on an email that estimates statistics based on my intuitions, this feels particularly salient to me.

Really well written. Great work Kaj.

Thanks for reminding me that my thoughts aren’t magic.

Louie 7 Jul 2010 23:12 UTC
9 points
on: A Taxonomy of Bias: Mindware Problems

people are often blind to their own biases, because they incorrectly think that biased thinking on their part would be detectable by conscious introspection

The illusion of a unified, transparent self seems to constantly undermine our thinking.

Is this a problem with our language or our culture? Has a culture / language ever been studied that didn’t suffer from this as badly?

Louie 7 Sep 2010 2:51 UTC
−1 points
on: Something’s Wrong
When read in context, Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech explains why criticism without suggestion is useless and deserving of dismissal.

There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Even though I disagree with your conclusions, I’m glad you wrote this post because the reasoning that went into it is a common failure mode of the “cowering from life” bloc of LessWrong. Encouraging naked dissent without trying to improving things is applause lights for the most cynical, life-disengaged readers who would rather have a satisfying intellectual contempt for others than try and actually solve real problems.

Louie 9 Sep 2010 1:06 UTC
3 points
in reply to: simplicio’s comment on: Something’s Wrong
These are great suggestions. Thank you. I think I just changed my mind.

My model didn’t account for someone actually pointing out flaws using their own reasoning in novel situations. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone actually do this.

In my experience, criticism in the wild is the art of finding and repeating another thinker’s reasoning to re-attack a clearly wrong idea again without adding anything new to human thought or attempting to do something tangible to improve things.

The reason that I dismiss critics like this is because they are engaging in an enjoyable, negative-sum activity by sitting around and sniping at people for “being wrong” while not engaging in the less enjoyable, positive-sum activity of actually trying to do something better. People who actually do things understand this which I think is what Roosevelt was getting at in pointing out that it is unhelpful to mindlessly repeat inadequacies of the best functioning plans without attempting to invent and/or implement alternatives.

Louie 9 Sep 2010 1:20 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Jonathan_Graehl’s comment on: Something’s Wrong
Lack of suggestions signals a lack of engagement with the implementation of ideas in the space a critic is discussing which signals a lack of correct understanding.

People who only think about ideas but do not try to carry out any plans related to them lack the required knowledge to actually understand problems so their criticisms are systematically over-simplified, brittle, and worthy of, if not outright dismissal, at least severe discounting.

Also, criticism costs critics (almost) nothing and is enjoyable on a basic human level to the critics, so there’s good reason to expect heavy criticism of all ideas… including correct ones.

Louie 15 Sep 2010 2:37 UTC
4 points
in reply to: pjeby’s comment on: Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality
Wait. You’re claiming that the goals chosen by your executive function just happen to correspond to a succession of enjoyable activities for the rest of your brain? I know there’s a lot of diversity in brain-space, but there’s not so much that you couldn’t find 100,000+ people with a nearly identical motivational system. What if I’m one of them? If so, I’ll gladly pay you $500/mo for the privilege of doing all your fun work… and will successfully complete all your goals as a by-product! Boom! Win-Win! Then you can free yourself up to do something more high-value. And if your next goal turns out to be as fun and exciting, Boom!! -- you can do it again and get another customer like me to pay you for the pleasure of taking on all that work too.

If your work is always fun, you have either

a) Aimed so low in life that referring to what you do as “having goals” is laughable

or

b) Deluded yourself that your work = enjoyable for signaling and/or motivational reasons

FACT: The #1 trait of effective people is being able to consistently do things they don’t want to do.

Not all of your work should be awful, but if a non-trivial part of what you do isn’t boring or stressful, then your goals would already be fulfilled by others. And if other people fulfilling your goals doesn’t work for your particular goals, consider the possibility that what you have are not goals, but simply desires.

Louie 15 Sep 2010 3:00 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Will_Newsome’s comment on: Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality
Isn’t Jaeggi mode the one that ends with a series of the same letter in the center every session to make sure there’s an equal number of matches in each session?

Most of the arguments I could imagine for that being superior are pretty tortured. You should ask Justin for the config file we used. I’m pretty sure we turned Jaeggi on at first but then turned it back off due to that artifact. I certainly found it more stimulating/difficult after Jaeggi was turned back off.

Louie 15 Sep 2010 8:27 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: RHollerith’s comment on: Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality
Exactly. It’s not really a goal when you don’t care about the results. If the dominating term in your decision to do something is that the result be YOURS (i.e., profit being created in YOUR bank account, YOU making your wife happy, credit for YOU achieving something, etc), you might as well just call it “shit you want to be yours”.

Most people are referenced in all their “goals”. But that’s because most people don’t actually have goals in any meaningful sense beyond wanting a ton of shit to be theirs. If you notice that most all your goals wouldn’t be desirable if they didn’t include you, maybe you should look into actually finding something you care about besides yourself. I know you can do it—heck, even most PUAs end up caring about things outside of themselves (after they try everything else first and it doesn’t work).

Just remember, if it’s actually a goal, you wouldn’t care who achieved it and you would gladly welcome more effective or efficient ways to achieve it… including other people doing it in place of you.

Louie 2 Oct 2010 20:50 UTC
3 points
in reply to: keefe’s comment on: Open Thread September, Part 3
Yes. Thank goodness I’ve fixed downvoting. It’s my favorite part of this site.

Currently Buying AdWords for LessWrong

Louie30 Oct 2010 5:31 UTC

18 points

32 comments1 min readLW link

Louie 31 Oct 2010 2:16 UTC
2 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Currently Buying AdWords for LessWrong
Funny thing about that… Philosophy is actually a major cosmetics brand these days. Who do you think owns philosophy.com? I’ve actually been to their stores and it always occurs to me that most of the store’s patrons probably don’t know the other meaning of the word.

Louie 31 Oct 2010 3:31 UTC
4 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Currently Buying AdWords for LessWrong
People don’t search for terms like Bayesian or rationality. What they search for is answers to specific questions—which we don’t actually ever come up in searches for.

I’ve looked at the analytics and I know. Most people coming to Less Wrong through searches are clearly regular users trying to find specific articles or just using the search bar as a URL bar (so they don’t have to remember if it’s less wrong dot com or dot org or whatever).

Louie 31 Oct 2010 3:36 UTC
2 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Currently Buying AdWords for LessWrong
I’m buying ads for Policits is the Mind Killer already. That’s one of the other few I’m experimenting with. I don’t think people search for “politics” in general. Again, people search for very specific things and already have their minds made up.. so it’s more likely that someone would search for “proof that Obama is a Muslim” or “why do liberals hate America?” than something as neutral and high-level as “politics”. So coming up with decent keywords for this one has been harder than expected.

Louie 31 Oct 2010 3:52 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Pavitra’s comment on: Currently Buying AdWords for LessWrong
I agree that posts like these would be the best sort to promote for exactly the reasons you like them. I guess the problem with those two is that they don’t answer a question someone might have or solve a specific problem. Hmm...

Can you think of keywords or ads that might work for either of those pages?

Louie 31 Oct 2010 15:04 UTC
4 points
on: Ben Goertzel: The Singularity Institute’s Scary Idea (and Why I Don’t Buy It)
Check out SIAI’s publications page. Kaj’s most recent paper (published at ECAP ’10) is a good 2 page summary of why AGI can be an x-risk for anyone who is uninformed of SIAI’s position:

“From mostly harmless to civilization-threatening: pathways to dangerous artificial general intelligences”
What links here?
- Perplexed's comment on Ben Goertzel: The Singularity Institute’s Scary Idea (and Why I Don’t Buy It) by Paul Crowley (31 Oct 2010 15:56 UTC; 8 points)

Louie 31 Oct 2010 15:09 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Unnamed’s comment on: Currently Buying AdWords for LessWrong
Thanks. This was very helpful. I’ve started ads for 3 new pages I found off of these.

Louie

Cur­rently Buy­ing AdWords for LessWrong

Currently Buying AdWords for LessWrong