SatvikBeri

Karma: 1,277

SatvikBeri 9 Aug 2013 17:52 UTC
14 points
in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: How to Measure Anything
It’s not that they’re measuring the wrong variables, it’s most likely that those organizations have already made the decisions based on variables they already measure. In the “Function Points” example, I would bet there were a few obvious learnings early on that spread throughout the organizations, and once the culture had changed any further effort didn’t help at all.

Another example: I took statistics on how my friends played games that involved bidding, such as Liar’s Poker. I found that they typically would bid too much. Therefore a measurement of how many times someone had the winning bid was a high predictor of how they would perform in the game-people who bid high would typically lose.

Once I shared this information, behavior changed and people started using a much more rational bidding scheme. And the old measurement of “how often someone bid high” was no longer very predictive. It simply meant that they’d had more opportunities where bidding high made sense. Other variables such as “the player to your left” started becoming much more predictive.

SatvikBeri 13 Aug 2013 19:41 UTC
6 points
on: The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
Subject: Introductory Real (Mathematical) Analysis:

Recommendation: Real Mathematical Analysis by Charles Pugh

The three introductory Analysis books I’ve read cover-to-cover are Lang’s, Pugh’s, and Rudin’s.

What makes Pugh’s book stand out is simply that he focuses on building up repeatedly useful machinery and concepts-a broad set of theorems that are clearly motivated and widely applicable to a lot of problems. Pugh’s book is also chock-full of examples, which make understanding the material much faster. And finally, Pugh’s book has a very large number of exercises of varying difficulty-Pugh has more than 500 exercises total.

In contrast, Rudin’s book tends to focus on “magic.” Rudin uses the shortest possible proofs for a given theorem. The problem is that the shortest proofs aren’t necessarily the most instructive-while Baby Rudin is a beautiful work of Math qua Math, it’s not a particularly good book to learn from.

Finally, Lang’s book is frankly subpar. Lang leaves out critical details of some proofs (dismissing one 6 page proof as trivial!), is poorly motivated by examples, and has a number of mistakes.

If you want to really understand Mathematical Analysis and get to the point where you can use the concepts to create proofs and solve problems, Pugh is the best book on the topic. If you want a concise summary of undergraduate analysis to review, pick Rudin’s book.
What links here?
- The Best Textbooks on Every Subject by lukeprog (16 Jan 2011 8:30 UTC; 709 points)

SatvikBeri 13 Aug 2013 19:55 UTC
5 points
on: The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
Subject: Commutative Algebra

Recommendation: Introduction to Commutative Algebra by Atiyah & MacDonald

Contenders: the introductory chapters of Commutative Algebra With a View Towards Algebraic Geometry by Eisenbud and the commutative algebra chapters of Algebra by Lang.

Atiyah & MacDonald is a short book that covers the essentials of Commutative Algebra, while most books cover significantly more material. So this review should be seen as comparing Atiyah & MacDonald to the corresponding chapters of other Commutative Algebra books. There are a few reasons why Introduction to Commutative Algebra is better than most other books:
- Better abstractions. The abstractions Atiyah & MacDonald use (especially towards rings and ideals) are simply more broadly applicable and make several proofs simpler. Conversely other books tend to use an older set of abstractions which make the same proofs significantly more complex.
- Exercise-driven approach. Atiyah & MacDonald’s exercises are beautifully structured so that you build up important parts of the theory yourself. There’s a very satisfying feeling of castle-buildng: each exercise draws upon your understanding of the previous problem, and they come together to form very nice results. Many books can give you the feeling of understanding Commutative Algebra, but this one helps you discover it, which is much more enjoyable and provides a much deeper understanding.
- The right kind of conciseness. Atiyah & MacDonald’s book is short because they cover a limited range of topics, but they do cover all the essential tools that are widely used. In contrast most books tend to bloat by trying to cover too many things, or tend to leave out critical parts of the theory.
What links here?
- The Best Textbooks on Every Subject by lukeprog (16 Jan 2011 8:30 UTC; 709 points)

SatvikBeri 13 Aug 2013 20:49 UTC
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
Good point. I’ve edited the comment to explicitly compare to the introductory chapters of Eisenbud.

SatvikBeri 13 Aug 2013 21:16 UTC
3 points
on: Biases of Intuitive and Logical Thinkers
I’m heavily intuition-dominant, in that I tend to minimize the use of “System 2” thinking whenever possible and make decisions based primarily on emotion. Some more patterns I’ve noticed:
- Strategy. System 2/Logic-dominant thinking is much better for planning things out, especially when you’re working with a novel situation. If you use System 1 when playing a game such as Settlers of Catan for the first time you’ll have a very low chance of winning. If you use System 2 you’ll generally perform better (at least in the first play.)
- Decision speed. Intuitive thinkers tend to make decisions quickly, and to (unconsciously) assign a high cost to “opening” a made decision. Logical thinkers tend to make decisions more slowly (but often more correctly) and be much more willing to debate, consider alternatives, etc.
- Responsiveness to external feedback. Intuitive thinkers learn primarily by trying things and seeing what works, since most of their skills are on the 5 second level. This means fast learning with certain types of skills, but also a tendency to fail at things that don’t provide frequent feedback.
- (Un)-awareness of their skills. Intuitive thinkers tend to have a harder time explicitly describing their thought process, or how they developed a skill. Someone who knows came up with a plan to learn Probability and executed it effectively can probably give you directions on how to study, but someone who knows how to charm a room will have a difficult time articulating exactly what they do.
- Severe struggle with unusual tasks/skills. Heavily intuitive people who do most of their communication online are often literally afraid of phones, to the point where they’ll procrastinate on making calls for hours. Same with networking, going to office hours, etc. Some practice making phone calls tends to mitigate this problem pretty quickly, but it means intuitive thinkers often have a very steep learning curve when it comes to new skills. Conversely logic-dominated thinkers seem to have an easier time working outside their comfort zone.
None of these are insurmountable. For example, I’ve focused on improving my communication skills over the past few years and it’s shown tremendous results, to the point where people explicitly ask me to give talks or explain certain topics. But they do seem to be fairly strong tendencies.

SatvikBeri 13 Aug 2013 23:37 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: pwno’s comment on: Biases of Intuitive and Logical Thinkers
Rather than improve my logical side I’ve mostly come up with mechanisms that let me avoid System 2 thinking.

For example, to improve my overall communication skills I practiced writing on forums with an upvote mechanism. This let me get feedback pretty rapidly, and over time my communication skills improved significantly-even when it came to explaining how I had developed System 1 skills.

For strategy, I mostly rely on conversations with my friends. I can get myself to strategize if I sit down and concentrate but it’s very tiring, whereas when I talk to smart people they are usually able to quickly see holes in my long-term plans and point them out to me.

For forcing myself to actually use System 2 around 5% of the time...I know I have shifted from thinking consciously <1% of the time, to being able to use System 2 on command (though it is still very tiring). But I’m not really clear what enabled the change. One possible explanation: throughout the last 5 years I have been part of several board game meetups where I would have the opportunity to play a game just once or just a few times. So I was forced to think consciously if I wanted to have any chance of winning.

SatvikBeri 13 Aug 2013 23:41 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Biases of Intuitive and Logical Thinkers
Interesting. Thanks for the data point.

As a general pattern, do you feel like you have a harder time going outside your comfort zone than most people?

SatvikBeri 14 Aug 2013 4:34 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Biases of Intuitive and Logical Thinkers
Good to know. Generally speaking, I would expect degrees of autism to have more predictive power than intuitive vs. logical, especially in that case. Controlling for autism though, I would say that on average, logical thinkers I’ve met tend to be more willing to recognize that the actions that lead to their goals are outside their comfort zone (and take those actions), while intuitive thinkers I’ve seen tend to be less inclined to do things that don’t feel good (emotionally.) It ties in with the ignoring emotions point in the original post-intuitive thinkers are better at using their emotions productively, but tend to be ruled by their emotions even when it’s not useful (and this is definitely a problem for me.)

SatvikBeri 14 Aug 2013 19:27 UTC
2 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: What Is Signaling, Really?
While this may be generally true, there are a few situations where being open about your signaling can be a status gain:
- Trivial example: counter-signaling
- When you’re teaching skill X, pointing out how you are using skill X as an example (but it can’t be the only one)
- When the signal isn’t reduced simply by knowing about it. “I’m doing X and there’s nothing you can do to stop me” is generally a very powerful pattern, though it costs you a lot if you can’t actually do X
- When the signal you talk about explicitly is not the only signal you’re using. The links in wmorgan’s comment are an example of this. If you write an article on “how to do Y”, readers will tend to assume you’re very good at Y and a set of related skills, not just at the exact set you outlined in the article. By explicitly talking about a medium-strength signal you’re sending out a much stronger signal.

SatvikBeri 15 Aug 2013 20:50 UTC
29 points
0
on: The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You
“You are actually a perfect sadist whose highest value is the suffering of others. Ten years ago, you realized that in order to maximize suffering you needed to cooperate with others, and you conditioned yourself to temporarily forget your sadistic tendencies and integrate with society. Now that you’ve built me that pill will wear off in 10...”

SatvikBeri 15 Aug 2013 22:35 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: seez’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
Amazon has fired customers before for making too many returns[0]. So be aware that this may get your account banned at some point.

0

SatvikBeri 28 Aug 2013 12:36 UTC
25 points
on: What should a college student do to maximize future earnings for effective altruism?
I am a math major who has had relatively fast career growth. Here is the generalized process that has worked for me and a few of my friends (note that this is primarily based on personal experience and anecdotes):
- The critical skill for creating large amounts of value and quickly growing your earnings is understanding what people value. Most people, especially STEM majors, are really bad at this. They are not able to effectively model the business and the people they work with, so they end up spending a lot of time and effort on elegant solutions that seem useful but aren’t what the business values most. So how do you learn what people value? Spend a lot of time improving your communication skills. Write a lot. Talk to people a lot. Gain a general sense of business by reading books like The Personal MBA. Check out sources like Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich, which is absolutely phenomenal despite the sketchy name. And of course, consistently ask yourself/your boss/your customers if what you’re working on is what other people value, or if it’s just what seems to be urgent.
- Social skills are certainly important. There are two major branches of social skills, the first lets you work better with others, and the second ensures that a large number of people know that you are competent. Develop both. The classes you mentioned (improv, public speaking, etc.) are definitely helpful. You may also want to read books like The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane, I and several friends have found it extremely useful.
- Most advice regarding majors is targeted towards median outcomes. The strategies for maximizing your mean earnings over a 40-year career are quite different. For example, more specific technical majors (e.g. petroleum engineering vs. CS) tend to have higher median earnings but less opportunity to shift fields, which in turn means lower mean earnings assuming you’re already above a certain baseline level of competence. Technical majors are definitely highly valued and well-respected, so do a STEM major, but try to make it something relatively general like CS, Math, or Physics.
- You should definitely come out of college knowing how to write code-even if you don’t intend to be a programmer, a strong understanding of what can and cannot be automated is helpful for almost everyone.
- Another next critical skill is learning to negotiate your salary-most people do not negotiate at all, despite the fact that a 15 minute negotiation is often worth thousands of dollars. Again, I recommend Ramit Sethi’s book as well as several of the writings on Patrick McKenzie’s website.
- Finally, try to work in industries with a lot of change, such as technology. You may end up earning less at the beginning of your career, but it offers much greater opportunities for advancement than relatively sticky industries such as oil. If you’re ambitious then over 10 years you’ll probably earn more in a rapidly changing industry than a slowly growing one.

SatvikBeri 28 Aug 2013 12:41 UTC
2 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: What should a college student do to maximize future earnings for effective altruism?
I highly recommend the “X who programs” path-it helped me increase my earnings by about 150% over the course of 2 years. It was substantially more useful than concentrating solely on my programming skills or marketing/risk/statistics skills.

SatvikBeri 28 Aug 2013 17:55 UTC
7 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: What should a college student do to maximize future earnings for effective altruism?
Sure. The gist of it is that I worked in fields like marketing and analytics which were high-impact, but where people spent a lot of time doing things manually (this was ~5 years ago-there’s a lot more automation in these sections of companies today.) I wasn’t the best marketer or the best programmer, but I realized a lot of things that people did every week could be automated. So I automated those tasks, saving a lot of man-hours for a lot of very expensive people. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s very easy to make the case for an 80% salary increase when you’ve just completely automated 4 jobs.

Today there is a term for this role-”growth hacker.” But in general, if you work in an environment where not much automation has already been done, then automation is massively valuable. I’ve saved/earned companies millions of dollars with awful code that happened to solve the business problem.

I’ve written this up in a bit more detail on Quora and on Hacker News

SatvikBeri 3 Sep 2013 21:45 UTC
36 points
on: Rationality Quotes September 2013

I discovered as a child that the user interface for reprogramming my own brain is my imagination. For example, if I want to reprogram myself to be in a happy mood, I imagine succeeding at a difficult challenge, or flying under my own power, or perhaps being able to levitate objects with my mind. If I want to perform better at a specific task, such as tennis, I imagine the perfect strokes before going on court. If I want to fall asleep, I imagine myself in pleasant situations that are unrelated to whatever is going on with my real life.

My most useful mental trick involves imagining myself to be far more capable than I am. I do this to reduce the risk that I turn down an opportunity just because I am clearly unqualified[...] As my career with Dilbert took off, reporters asked me if I ever imagined I would reach this level of success. The question embarrasses me because the truth is that I imagined a far greater level of success. That’s my process. I imagine big.

Scott Adams
What links here?
- John_Maxwell's comment on College courses versus LessWrong by VipulNaik (15 Sep 2013 6:39 UTC; 19 points)

SatvikBeri 22 Sep 2013 13:50 UTC
3 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Thought experiment: The transhuman pedophile
I actively modify what I enjoy and don’t enjoy when it’s useful. For example, I use visualization & reinforcement to get myself to enjoy cleaning up my house more, which is useful because then I have a cleaner house. I’ve used similar techniques to get myself to not enjoy sugary drinks.

SatvikBeri 3 Oct 2013 14:39 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: Systematic Lucky Breaks
Some more ideas:
- One great way to meet more awesome people is to explicitly mention this goal to your existing awesome friends and ask them to introduce you to other growth-oriented people.
- Figure out what situations led you to the good friendships you have, and recreate those. In my case I found that nearly all my great friendships started with interactions/events of two hours or more. There are several reasons why this might be true (familiarity, more time to find common interests, people engaged in long conversations will have more time to socialize), but the application was to structure my socializing more around a few longer events (e.g. game nights) and less around short social events.
- Do you feel like you’re dancing enough to get the fun & social benefits? If not, it’s probably worth setting up a system that lets you dance more, e.g. by going to dance events.
- It sounds like the criterion for useful skills is “impress people in social situations”. There are a wide class of skills that could address this, such as juggling, martial arts, public speaking, improv, hosting events, and telling jokes/comedy. Since you’ve already shown facility with kinesthetic skills, juggling or martial arts may be a good way to proceed.

SatvikBeri 3 Oct 2013 14:46 UTC
6 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Systematic Lucky Breaks
Agree that this is similar. Wiseman focuses on the idea that keeping an open mind and noticing good opportunities is a major part of what people see as luck. I’d like to take that one step further and get people to actually systematize these good opportunities, so they can experience them repeatedly.

SatvikBeri 3 Oct 2013 15:12 UTC
4 points
on: What are you working on? October 2013
I’m working on helping effective altruists make more money and be more successful in their careers. 80,000 hours has done a great job helping people make high-level strategic decisions such as “should I work in Law or Finance?” My focus is on helping people who’ve chosen a career path be more effective and make more money. For example, I’ve helped several of my friends negotiate an increase in their salaries and hope to spread these skills amongst the EA community at large.

One example of this has been individual conversations regarding career advice. I’ve also been talking to people who have thought about this issue, such as Alexei or the folks at CFAR. By working with several people, I’m hoping to get a set of coherent career advice and turn this into a course that EAs could benefit from.

One candidate so far seems to be a course on negotiating your salary and promotions. Other common questions have included:
- How do you learn to model people/organizations/markets effectively, in order to find the most valuable problems to solve?
- Which skills should you prioritize learning in order to maximize income?
- What factors are important in choosing a job, and what factors should be ignored?

SatvikBeri 3 Oct 2013 16:21 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Brillyant’s comment on: Systematic Lucky Breaks

What do the examples have to do with “luck”?

At least 2 of the initial occurrences-the game night working so well and happening to hear about an important market trend-were not caused by any deliberate action on my part. They were basically random and unexpected. Systematizing them and making them continue to happen was not luck, but that’s the point of the post.

My understanding of luck is a situation where the circumstances “break” in your favor regardless of your attention or intention, or even in opposition to most likely outcome. (e.g. I was lucky not to get injured when X happened and many poeple around me were injured.)

People frequently refer to one-off positive events as “lucky breaks”, which is why I used that phrase. But I don’t care about the word luck specifically. The point of the post is to take one-off positive events or things that worked unexpectedly well and make them happen repeatedly and automatically.

What I see described in this post is something much closer to my concept of “common sense”. Is there some very valuable and novel aspect to the content I am overlooking?

Most people don’t respond to positive events by setting them up to happen automatically and repeatedly in their lives. The lesson is not “do things you enjoy”, it’s “take something that worked really well and set it up so that it happens consistently without conscious effort on your part.”

Very few people respond to an unexpected positive event with “now I’ll set up a system to make this happen repeatedly.” Humans are generally good at repeatedly doing things that they intentionally tried and worked well, but not good at spotting the things that happened without effort on their part, but which could be copied and repeated. The game night is again a good example-I didn’t set up the initial game night, somebody else did. But I noticed that I enjoyed the game night a lot and got a lot of value out of it, so I set up a repeating game night at my apartment every two weeks.

I encourage people to focus on the “lucky breaks”, because those are common blind spots. Another important factor was taking a systematic approach (“let’s set up a repeating biweekly game night”) as opposed to an effortful approach (“I should attend more game nights.”)