pinyaka

Karma: 695

pinyaka 22 Feb 2016 22:22 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Gleb_Tsipursky’s comment on: Conveying rational thinking about long-term goals to youth and young adults
Thanks, Gleb. I will look into this more.

It really seems like you have gone out of your way to not actually share any content until I give you personal information. After looking at a few of your pages I still have no idea what you’re offering except that it’s something to help people find meaning in their lives using methods that (probably) have one or more scientific study to back them up. This is the kind of sales pitch I usually associate very strongly with scammers. The main differences between the way you look and the way a scammer looks are:

a) I found your recommendations on Less Wrong and you are an academic at an accredited university b) You are charging very little for your material by requiring time watching videos, contact information, or nominal fees (~$2-$3)

If you’re open to it, I would suggest writing up a summary or description of what your methods actually are (or if you have such a thing already, prominently link it somewhere). Generally, if you’re unwilling to make your methods known to this community it looks like you’re not really open to feedback or criticism about them.

pinyaka 8 Feb 2016 22:17 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Gleb_Tsipursky’s comment on: Conveying rational thinking about long-term goals to youth and young adults
My wife and I are the high school youth leaders at a UU church. Most of our youths are atheists or agnostics. I looked over the page you linked and subsequent pages on the course itself as I am very interested in helping our youths to think more rationally about goals. As the course is outlined now I would not suggest it to our youths because:

a) The course requires a lot of time and there’s not enough information about how that time can be broken up. We meet for two hours per week and could maybe spare an hour of that for a program, but it’s not clear that it can be broken up like that. Also, there’s no way they would agree to do this for 7 weeks anyway. An abbreviated course that involved 2 or 3 1 hour sessions with maybe 20-30 minutes of homework in between sessions would be more realistic for our group. Most of our youths are very competitive academically and do not have lots of spare time to do stuff.

b) I have no idea what you’re suggesting the youths should be taught because all the actual content is hidden behind the registration. Given that I see no way to get the youths to agree to the course (because of the time thing above), I am not inclined to hand over personal information to get details about the courses actual content.

I hope this helps.

pinyaka 28 Jul 2015 20:01 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Epictetus’s comment on: The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
I purchased Shilov’s Linear Algebra and put it on my bookshelf. When I actually needed to use it to refresh myself on how to get eigenvalues and eigenvectors I found all the references to preceding sections and choppy lemma->proof style writing to be very difficult to parse. This might be great if you actually work your way through the book, but I didn’t find it useful as a refresher text.

Instead, I found Gilbert Strang’s Introduction to Linear Algebra to be more useful. It’s not as thorough as Shilov’s text, but seems to cover topics fairly thoroughly and each section seems to be relatively self contained so that if there’s a section that covers what you want to refresh your self on, it’ll be relatively self contained.

pinyaka 14 May 2015 18:22 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Salemicus’s comment on: How to come to a rational believe about whether someone has a crush on yo

If you aren’t good at reading other people’s signals, then the following heuristic is a pretty good one: If you like A, and you are wondering whether A likes you, the answer is no.

This heuristic is terrible if you’re trying to find a romantic partner since following it consistently will always lead you to believe that the people you’re interested in and whose reciprocal interest isn’t clear to you are not interested in you. If you live in a society where your potential partner isn’t supposed to make overt signals about their romantic interests (because of gender roles or something), this may result in never finding a partner.

Also, suggesting that people who “aren’t good at reading other people’s signals” should condition anything based on the presence of uncertainty about reciprocal interest seems like it’ll produce inconsistent results at best. In this case, I think they should take the potential failure mode and increase signaling until A (or a trusted friend) gives a unambiguous signal.

pinyaka 19 Mar 2015 15:31 UTC
3 points
in reply to: WalterL’s comment on: HPMOR Q&A by Eliezer at Wrap Party in Berkeley [Transcription]
Well, maybe.

pinyaka 16 Mar 2015 19:37 UTC
1 point
on: Calories per dollar vs calories per glycemic load: some notes on my diet
Mixing the high glycemic load foods with the low glycemic load foods will result in a lower peak insulin concentration than if you ate them separately.

Also, millet has a slightly higher glycemic load (12/100g) compared to quinoa (10/100g), but has almost the same calories (~120) and is usually significantly cheaper (in my area, it’s about a third the cost when purchased in bulk). It’s probably comparable to the basmati brown (which I don’t like the taste of).

pinyaka 16 Mar 2015 19:27 UTC
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Calories per dollar vs calories per glycemic load: some notes on my diet

I never feel full on meat + vegs, but adding a bit of bread does the job. Conversely, I never feel full on bread or rice or generally carbs only, adding a bit of meat does the job. It seems I need the combination.

My subjective experience is that starting a meal with a small amount of insulin spiking carbohydrate and then moving on to protein and fat results in feeling full faster than starting with the protein/fat and moving on to the carbs. I generally have a rule about portioning my food out at the beginning of the meal and not going back for more until 20 minutes after I finish the first portions. Usually this prevents me from overeating, although eating imbalanced meals almost always leaves me hungry long enough to get second helpings.

pinyaka 13 Mar 2015 17:14 UTC
33 points
in reply to: iarwain1’s comment on: Rationality: From AI to Zombies
You should send that to errata@intelligence.org.

pinyaka 6 Mar 2015 15:27 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Good_Burning_Plastic’s comment on: Stupid Questions March 2015
True enough. Tea or water would definitely be better choices.

pinyaka 6 Mar 2015 15:25 UTC
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Stupid Questions March 2015

Apparently, one reason more intellectual people (typical Silicon Valley types) have less of an addiction problem is that they enjoy their work and thus life enough, they don’t need to quickly wash down another suck of a day, so they can have less euphoric hobbies in the evening, say, drawing or painting.

I don’t think this is exactly right. There is a correlation between intelligence and addiction, but it’s not so strong that you won’t still find a lot of addicts among the intelligentsia. Chemical addiction is a process whereby you ingest chemicals to stimulate your reward center. Smarter people who are wired in such a way that they can get the same jolt of reward-juice from working hard or whatever may be able to substitute that behavior as their trigger rather than a chemical like alcohol, but it doesn’t mean it’s not caused by the same kind of chemical deficiency. Also, as pure anecdota, I believe there is a probably a largely unmapped dependence on illegal stimulants (like ADD meds, not cocaine) in cultures like those found in Silicon Valley. I am currently a graduate student in Chemistry and have noticed a large percentage of my fellow students use such stimulants citing their performance enhancing properties despite evidence that such drugs decrease performance for neuro-typicals.

With regard to points A) and B)

A) There’s no non-chemical boost that I can think of that will match the chemical boost. If you’re into games on your phone, Minecraft PE is pretty open ended and may provide some of the stimulation you’re seeking, but it sounds like you’d like a substitute for whatever fix addiction provides and if there’s something like that it may be dependent on your neuro-chemistry. Common substitutes (according to google) include overeating, exercise, and burying yourself with work.

B) Whether it’s possible to just get used to not having that stimulation may also be dependent on your neuro-chemistry. I have done it and I know several other people who have done it, but I’ve also met quite a few who haven’t been able to do it. I don’t know of a foolproof method to stop an addiction.

You’re saying that you want quick jolts that don’t require an investment. I don’t have any good ideas for that. Learning to meditate seems to help reduce the importance attached to cravings for some people. Exercise certainly triggers a lot of the same pleasure and reward chemicals. You can also read through the some of the relevant material here on LW (How to be happy(short), Be Happier(longer)). The long term effects of addiction are usually pretty bad, so I’d say it’s worth making the investment, but it’s a lot easier to say that than to do it.

pinyaka 5 Mar 2015 19:48 UTC
0 points
in reply to: V_V’s comment on: In memory of Leonard Nimoy, most famous for playing the (straw) rationalist Spock, what are your top 3 ST:TOS episodes with him?
If they had BDSM vampire zombies in space I would totally watch that. Once.

pinyaka 5 Mar 2015 17:06 UTC
4 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Stupid Questions March 2015

as my after-work fluid intake is mostly beer, I realized that now my brain cannot tell the difference between thirst and alcohol cravings.

Does your at-work brain confuse thirst with alcohol cravings too?

One idea would be thirst-like feeling → drink water → re-examine, but water is not a very good thirst quencher.

So test this by drinking something that isn’t beer or water but matches your other criteria for good thirst quenchers. Carbonated water with lemon or lime juice in it will meet the criteria that you listed, but actually staying hydrated with water will just prevent you from getting thirsty in the first place. Seriously—ginger ale, lemon-lime or orange soda, etc.

I am toying with the idea to alternate alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer in the evenings to de-train the association

What? You’re suggesting that you should train yourself to associate the taste of beer with satisfying your craving for hydration here, so the association that you’re trying to de-train is the one between beer and satisfying alcohol cravings? That’s crazy, dude. Look at how much energy you’ve put into thinking about ways to keep drinking beer while avoiding satisfying alcohol cravings and put the same amount into thinking about ways to not drink beer. That will be an easier way to decouple the satisfaction of your cravings for hydration alcohol.

I’m an alcoholic and have been sober for about 7 years now so take that into account. My advice is that you quickly try all the ways you can think of to control your drinking. Make notes about what you’re trying and how well it works. Track stuff like servings of alcohol consumed, etc. so that you can look at how well your control mechanisms work. Spend some time with no control mechanism in place and just track your consumption for a baseline if necessary (maybe even do this for a week or two in between trials to see if your baseline fluctuates). Make notes about things that trigger cravings. If something works, tweak it or stick with it. If none of them work, consider that you’ll either need to abstain entirely from alcohol (and avoid things that trigger cravings for a little while) or that you’re just going to slide further into alcoholism and make the necessary adjustments in your life to do those things. Gather information and be honest with yourself.

pinyaka 5 Mar 2015 16:30 UTC
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Stupid Questions March 2015
I guess what I mean is how do you know that it was that tactic that worked? How do you know that the people who showed compassion afterwards did so because it was demanded of them and not because people making angry demands made them feel more safe openly showing pre-existing compassion? I tend to agree with your first impression. I certainly don’t respond to hostility by handing over control of my emotions to hostile people. I get defensive of my position.

Of course this is probably me committing the typical mind fallacy and trying to avoid thinking about the question by finding ways to disqualify it. So, one mechanism that comes to mind is that people who are more prone to guilt may see angry protesting as signaling an issue that their guilt can attach to and then subsequently act compassionately to alleviate their guilt. That’s not very charitable since it assumes a kind of mental defect on the part of the compassionate, so maybe people who were not really aware of another groups suffering and don’t feel too defensive about it once they’re made aware of it and don’t have any particular problem with the defining feature of the suffering group might feel that the angry demands are justified and come to feel/act compassionately for that reason.

pinyaka 5 Mar 2015 0:30 UTC
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Stupid Questions March 2015
Why do you think that angrily demanding compassion works?

pinyaka 4 Mar 2015 15:51 UTC
5 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Stupid Questions March 2015
Extrapolating from just the American civil rights movement and Indian independence movements, both of them were accompanied by barely contained violent movements with the same goals. Acceding to the demands of the peaceful protests provided a way to give the status of winning the conflict to the peaceful people while meeting the demands of the violent. Conversely, the recent Occupy movement had no real violent wing to speak of and while a lot of people showed up for the protests and there was a lot of awareness raised, there was no legislative impact at all.

pinyaka 3 Mar 2015 22:44 UTC
2 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Getting better at getting better

Meanwhile, in the US, the life expectancy of homeless people.

I think you forgot the rest of this sentence. From the context, I would expect that you were going to say that it’s going down, but that’s not clear from the linked articles.

pinyaka 27 Feb 2015 19:10 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: If you can see the box, you can open the box

Any example I could give could be disputed because it’s always possible to reverse cause and effect and say “he only lacks empathy because of X” rather than “he believes X due to lack of empathy”.

Fair enough. It does seem like it would be difficult to tell those two things apart from the outside.

And my impression is that empathy towards only the in-group is a normal human trait and that it is often affected by society only in the trivial sense that society determines what the in-group is.

Also true (probably).

If you’re trying to get the best match between map and territory though, it’s worth looking for the motive for each particular evil. If you’re trying to reduce evil in the above-defined sense of enjoying causing involuntary suffering, doesn’t it make more sense to treat this as outgroup persecution rather than terminal “evil.” I guess my point was that I don’t think evil as a terminal goal exists in most people. There may be terminal goals for which evil is a hardwired strategy, but it’s more important to look at what those goals actually are if you’re going to try to minimize the evil. Maybe we can tweak the definition of outgroup. Maybe we can make the ingroup value something that the outgroup doesn’t and then “deprive” the outgroup of that thing as our form of persecution. Just saying that “evil” exists and is a driving force feels like a mysterious answer.

pinyaka 27 Feb 2015 18:39 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: If you can see the box, you can open the box

But individuals who have empathy with some others, but not other others, are more common. They can have terminal values to cause suffering for that portion of the population they don’t have empathy with.

I’m having a hard time getting this. Can you provide an example where the lack of empathy for some group isn’t driven by another value? My impression is that empathy is a normal human trait and that socializing teaches us who is worthy of empathy and who isn’t, but then the lack of empathy is instrumental (because it serves to further the goals of society). People who actually lack empathy suffer from mental disorders like psychopathy as far as I know.

pinyaka 26 Feb 2015 20:36 UTC
1 point
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: If you can see the box, you can open the box
Of course empathy-lacking individuals exist, but make up a small portion of the population. It seems more likely that any given instance of one person enjoying harming another is due to instrumental value rather than terminal.

pinyaka 26 Feb 2015 16:54 UTC
10 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: If you can see the box, you can open the box
It took less time to highlight “Why We Are Fighting You” and search on Google than it took for you to ask for a source. Literally it took three clicks.

Full text of bin Laden’s “letter to America”