Regex

• Regex 4 Oct 2014 11:42 UTC

  −1 points

  in reply to: William_Quixote’s comment on: New­comblike prob­lems are the norm

  https://​​www.youtube.com/​​watch?v=DLTZctTG6cE

  I think “yay!” is a perfect comment when also given a certain shy pegasus.

• Regex 4 Oct 2014 16:24 UTC

  16 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)

  Ekke Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptangya Zoooooooom Boing Ni!

  I’ll be going by Regex. I stumbled upon this site due to a side story from the MLP:FIM fanfiction Friendship is Optimal: http://​​www.fimfiction.net/​​story/​​62074/​​friendship-is-optimal which is a bit weird, but I guess I’m weird. Yes, I like small candy colored equines. Ponies are my lifeblood.

  My life history in a nutshell: Highschool was spent mostly figuring out how terrible middleschool was and realizing my ability to control my environment. Learned basic coding, drawing, and organization skills. Found a path in life due to the launch of the Curiosity rover. Robots were cool. Installed Linux.

  I am currently a college sophomore pursing mechanical engineering: I’ve been inspired to create robots. Despite going for a ME degree I have more computer knowledge. My preferred OS is Linux, but I’m not skilled enough with it yet to do much beyond what I can do with Windows.

  I am quite interested in personal development, hence why I am here. A lot of the thought processes here seem to mirror my own far more than I’ve seen elsewhere, so there was kind of a “these are my people” moment. I have been lightly reading the site, but there is just so much I’ve been doing it in bits and pieces and digesting it as I read.

  I am also an artist of sorts, but I can’t do much beyond basic line art and sketching. Drawing from my imagination is much more difficult than copying something in front of me. I’ve had better luck with using programming to make patterns, but I like the ability to produce an arbitrary image by hand. Getting there.

  I am very good at organizing information (depending on the need), but I often fail to actually progress beyond that point and do anything with the knowledge gained. This is paralleled with the fact that I have a habit of hording media rather than watching it.

  I sing aloud to myself as I walk down the street. Whatever comes to mind. Very fun. I probably am a little inconsiderate of those around me when doing so, but I like to think I am adding a bit of mystery to their day. They’ll ask “what was all that singing about?” and never know. I also like smashing piano keys in whatever order sounds pleasing at that moment. More fun.

  I am interested in polyphasic sleep, and can currently fall asleep for a short nap basically whenever I please and reduce “core sleep” (aka the long 8 hour sleep block becomes a 4 hour block if I take 2-3 twenty to thirty minute naps during the day), but I didn’t go all the way to remove the core sleep.

  I consider myself “smarter than average,” but now try very very hard not to judge people based on their intellect. I recall once uttering the statement “better to be intelligent than a skateboarder” (I was convinced one cannot be both) in middle school to someone who later became a friend of sorts. This was because I had (still have?) a bit of a superiority complex, but also because I failed to understand where he was coming from and I had (have?) a tendency to misrepresent others in my mind to a significant degree. I have no doubt that those tendencies still lurk out of view.

  Regardless of how high or low I might compare to others I want to become better than I am.

  I’ll be around.

• Regex 5 Oct 2014 3:38 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Fluttershy’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)

  More fanfiction? Served up by a butter yellow pegasus? Don’t mind if I do. (I spent a whole month of my summer reading 5 million words of fanfiction. It wasn’t enough, but after a solid month it is really hard to justify reading more...)

  I’ll definitely give Mysterous Answers another look, and also see what that Credence Game is all about. My current methodology has been similar to browsing TVtropes: click the first article that catches my attention, then click all of the new links. I then save the links for later after I’ve browsed enough for the day. It is like a human based web crawling algorithm.

  Thank you. I suspect I’ll like it here.

• Regex 5 Oct 2014 18:09 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)

  I actually had lived for a whole month off of DIY soylent I made, but I eventually stopped because the process was actually slightly more time consuming (although a third the cost) than my regular methods. (While probably healthier, I didn’t really notice any difference) I suspect there are probably easier ways than I had been doing it though.

  One thing I’ve noticed is that LW doesn’t seem to be sending me email notifications when I get a reply. I see that I can tick a thing to get notifications of other people’s specific comments, but in my own there is what appears to be a deletion button. I would then assume it is supposed to be automatically notifying me. Fortunately I noticed the recent comments box.

  Definitely going to be liking it here. Thanks.

• Regex 5 Oct 2014 20:27 UTC

  2 points

  on: The Cluster Struc­ture of Thingspace

  Before reading this article, I had already been using this visualization technique to think of probability densities. I wonder how common that is? Probably happened because of exposure to statistics.

In­form­ing Others: Max­i­mally Effi­cient?

• Regex 11 Oct 2014 0:54 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: In­form­ing Others: Max­i­mally Effi­cient?

  My problem though is that if I were to instead convince others to do said donating, then I would overall push more dollars in that direction that the amount I personally could contribute by working. If that is indeed more effective, then more effective still would be to train advocates to convince people in my stead. I think it becomes a question on how much more effective. CFAR does look legit though. Thank you.

• Regex 11 Oct 2014 0:56 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: In­form­ing Others: Max­i­mally Effi­cient?

  An engineering salary for mechanical engineering is ~ 100k/​year (http://​​www.mtu.edu/​​engineering/​​outreach/​​welcome/​​salary/​​), After paying off student loans and rent and food I would donate maybe 70k of that each year. (assuming I satisfy none of my other values). If I could convince ten people to give 10k a year then I would have done better than working full time as an engineer. This seems reasonable given a year, no job and access to the internet. Even better still if I could instead convince five people to convince three people each.

  Your example breaks down because I am not trying to build the house, but rather directing others’ income towards its construction. I might also additionally direct others’ career paths to create a high quality construction company such that when the time comes the quality of the house is even higher than it would be otherwise. We do have thirty years or so after all.

• Regex 11 Oct 2014 1:34 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Fluttershy’s comment on: In­form­ing Others: Max­i­mally Effi­cient?

  (whoops can’t figure out > quotes quite yet, so quotation marks will have to do.)

  “Are you already familiar with 80,000 Hours and GiveWell?”

  I had seen links to them, but hadn’t gotten around to reading about them. I’ll keep them in mind. Thanks.

  “I do think that it is possible to actively work towards becoming a better conversationalist. ”

  Very true. When I learned about brain plasticity I was truly shocked at how much rewiring is possible. Did you know that you can lose either side of your brain as an infant and still live mostly normally? We can definitely improve ourselves significantly. The question there is which things when trained will provide the most utility.

  “Your results may vary, but I have found that it is hard to get people to care about things which they do not already care about, unless they already have a lot in common with you, intellectually and philosophically.”

  I was planning on putting these in the engineering buildings mostly. I would argue that it is much easier to convince engineering types at least first to explore rationality, and then as they explore the site then they would have to deal with the money issues themselves.

  “I think that speaking with friends who might enjoy LessWrong might be a better idea than spreading fliers across your campus.”

  I will agree that conversation is almost certainly the most effective route to convince a particular person, but many people aren’t even aware than LW exists, so they might not even need convincing to explore. By putting it out there I catch people I don’t even know, or couldn’t possibly meet. This method has the disadvantage that I can’t personally talk to them about it (maybe I could put my username on the flyer),

  “I might only feel that way about flier-posting because flier-posting is far too bold of a thing for anypony named Fluttershy to do”

  Silly pony.

  “it does seem to me that messages spread by such means are cheapened by being circulated in such a manner.”

  To a certain degree yes, but not if the messages direct them to better manners of message circulation. The message I was thinking of was something along the lines of “Less Wrong: improve your critical thinking skills! Think smarter, not harder. Discuss ideas, philosophy, and rationality” which would hopefully be more as an invitation to a conversation with self-improvement than an introduction into a cult that wants their money. Maybe rather than a flyer per-say it could be a tiny little square piece of paper with sparse details inviting curiosity.

  “Also, for what it is worth, I think that HPMoR appeals to a much larger set of people than the LessWrong sequences do, though people who identify closely enough with the “LessWrong culture” might benefit the most from being directly introduced to LessWrong.”

  I’m not really sure how much that is the case. HPMoR is like 500k words long, and is fanfiction. Readers of fanfiction don’t care, but those that don’t read it would be turned off. 500k words is nearly two full days days of straight reading for even me. I wouldn’t call it particularly accessible either (haven’t read it yet though. I’ve sworn off fanfiction for the moment after The Month of Fanfiction).

  LW I would argue is significantly better, but has issues in that it is jargon filled and has kinda weird ideas. It has a tvtropes like effect on me at least. I read a thing which links to a dozen more things so I never leave. As I am focusing on the engineering types I should expect similar results. Probably should actually tell people about it and see what happens. You are right that a specific introduction is almost certainly more effective than a piece of paper floating around.

  “Good luck in your endeavors!”

  Thanks, I appreciate it.

• Regex 11 Oct 2014 2:12 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: In­form­ing Others: Max­i­mally Effi­cient?

  If I were to do it professionally then you are correct on all fronts, but I was thinking of a far more informal approach.

  Literally just talking to people, getting them to read the materials, and discussing the nuances of rational thought. The point here was supposed to be less about the money, and more about the value of producing more rational individuals. I don’t necessarily have to convince people to donate to one charity over another, but by exposing them to the ideas of the site they would seek out such optimizations on their own.

  I’ll grant you that it is probably a minority of the population who would change, but the sum of the changes from people whose lives change dramatically could offset that 20k a year. For example, if I were to find one other person who then decides to donate 20k a year, I would have done as much good as if I were working. Even if I stopped talking to people entirely.

  There is of course nothing stopping me from also doing this while working, but if it is actually more effective then if I were able to survive without working it would become the ideal. Realistically it ends up making a bit more sense to work for at least a decade while simultaneously doing this, build up enough cash to survive for a good long while, and then quit working and convert people with the rest of my life.

• Regex 11 Oct 2014 2:39 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: In­form­ing Others: Max­i­mally Effi­cient?

  The argument seems to be: By becoming another level of meta I would simply be redirecting the flow of money rather than producing value.

  I would argue however then that the vast majority of those charities are inefficient and therefore not worth donating to. Hence by directing money away from them value is actually being produced by the reduction of inefficiency. Thus if I can reduce the inefficiency by more than my donation amount I doing more social good than if I were to donate to them myself. Additionally, if I convert people to become more rational they may produce value which would have been lost to inefficiencies otherwise, and that might total greater than my personal work would.

• Regex 11 Oct 2014 21:29 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: In­form­ing Others: Max­i­mally Effi­cient?

  Probably.

  I realized elsewhere my main pont wasn’t so much about donating, but rather that by converting people to a more rational way of thinking would lead them to convince themselves to donate as an optimal strategy. Then again, if it really is most rational to improve the rationality of others, then that is what they would do rather than donating. (One also has to work enough to eat, but constraints are different for everyone so I am ignoring that)

  There is an additional issue in that we are not totally rational, and also value other things than the reduction of human suffering.

• Regex 12 Oct 2014 4:31 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Hopefully_Anonymous2’s comment on: Open Thread

  Maintaining certain principles? Currently our legal system is based on maximizing corporation profit with a bit of a front saying “justice”, so I’d say that is a much better alternative. We definitely do a shitty job with criminals in the USA as the system is set up to get people to repeat behaviors rather than change them. Social norms aren’t exactly controllable as far as I know. Unless you are also suggesting a mass brainwashing campaign armed with modern psychology I don’t see how we could change that much. Then again, it would also be insanely difficult to change the legal system. If we make a lunar or martian colony then maybe?

  If such experiments could be carried out as effectively and efficiently as possible then I would agree that such experiments shouldn’t be disallowed. After all, if at some point we are going to be uploading minds we better get started replacing bits of people’s brains that they’ve lost.

  Where I disagree is compulsory drafting of otherwise healthy happy individuals. Such a draft would lead to serious terror throughout the populace. Depending on how extreme the experiments effects are (read: death) it may lead to serious anti-science activists backed by personal tragedy.

  There are plenty of people in the world who are living on the streets, or otherwise who suffering terribly from lost limbs, missing organs, ect, and would be happy to get a hot meal and a place to sleep in exchange for some experimental proceedure. There are enough maimed people that we don’t need to inflict additional damage.

  I admit that there may be some areas where we need 100% healthy individuals, but it is more rational to move a quadriplegic to a robot body instead of someone with control of their limbs. Then again, by focusing on minorites, even a large number of them, we may skew our findings somewhat.

  (edit: haha whoops replying to something from 2007)

• Regex 3 Jan 2015 3:48 UTC

  2 points

  on: Group Ra­tion­al­ity Diary, Jan­uary 1-15

  Polyphasic sleep by the end of the year. Probably Dymaxion. I just made a REM-detecting alarm, and will be testing it after I recover from my wisdom teeth removal. (takes ~ 6 weeks for the healing to complete properly...)

• Regex 1 May 2015 3:52 UTC

  18 points

  in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: The pa­per­clip max­imiser’s perspective

  It reads to me like a human paperclip maximizer trying to apply lesswrong’s ideas.

On­line So­cial Groups?

• Regex 1 May 2015 4:51 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: casebash’s comment on: On­line So­cial Groups?

  Awesome Google Hangouts is also a fantastic idea. I gave the IRC chat a look, and the Skype group idea is still open as that is more of a smart-silly-chatroom according to the people there, but it is a really good first order approximation. Thanks!

• Regex 1 May 2015 7:36 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Elo’s comment on: On­line So­cial Groups?

  Western United States, Oregon Specifically. Good idea. Will do.

• Regex 1 May 2015 16:59 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: CheckDavid’s comment on: On­line So­cial Groups?

  Casebash pointed that out already, but I appreciate you for trying to help.

• Regex 3 May 2015 0:45 UTC

  1 point

  on: A map of LWers—find mem­bers of the com­mu­nity liv­ing near you.

  There appear to be two maps going on. I was directed to this one from the lesswrong IRC chat: https://​​www.google.com/​​maps/​​d/​​u/​​0/​​edit?mid=z7pdD8yOaU8k.kfXVK4eolpdA I suspect we should consolidate them.