sketerpot

Karma: 3,466

sketerpot 21 Apr 2010 18:26 UTC
52 points
0
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: Eight Short Studies On Excuses
I do give them assigned due dates, actually; I just make it clear to everyone that I’ll accept arbitrarily late work without penalty. I make a show of collecting papers on the date they’re due. About 80--90% of the students turn in their work on the due date.

Adding to the incentive scheme here is the fact that the classwork builds on earlier work, so if they just procrastinate for a few weeks, they’ll be in a pretty dire situation. If they have to go see a funeral or a concert, or they’ve been really busy some week with exams or a big project for another class, or whatever, then my method gives them enough flexibility for that, but the great majority of people do not procrastinate the way you might predict.

I guess you could call this system “obviously fictitious due dates”. Everybody knows that the due dates are made of handwaving and rainbows, but that doesn’t make them much less effective. And this way I don’t have to listen to any damn excuses, and my students don’t have to think of any; I just smile and recommend catching up before next week.
What links here?
- JGWeissman's comment on Eight Short Studies On Excuses by Scott Alexander (21 Apr 2010 18:51 UTC; 2 points)

sketerpot 20 Nov 2010 1:41 UTC
42 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Yes, a blog.
I used to TA a class whose covert purpose was teaching students how to think. The class encouraged everyone to use resources like Wikipedia whenever they didn’t know something, so that it could focus on things more interesting than merely gathering information. That class tried to get everyone to think about things, to use their existing knowledge to solve types of problems they’d never seen before, and to learn in a way that went way beyond memorizing facts and regurgitating them on the test. If the class covered probability, it would make students analyze card games or the lottery. If it reviewed trigonometry, students would have to derive some identities. In the labs, they had to write computer programs. And so on.

Many (most?) of the students were actively pissed off by this. Why were their questions to the professor answered with helpful links to Wikipedia or someone’s lecture slides, or a web page? Why did the class refuse to tell them exactly what they’d need to commit to memory to get a good grade on the tests? It went against everything they’d come to expect from “education”. And the computer programming was especially maddening; they couldn’t just pattern-match their way through it without thinking.

It was a required class for all freshmen in electrical engineering, and a lot of the graduating seniors said it had been one of the most valuable classes they’d taken. Not because of the material it covered, but because it had shaken them out of the bad habits they’d been given in high school “to prepare them for college.” It was an uncomfortable process for them at the time, though.

sketerpot 21 Jan 2010 2:28 UTC
40 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: That Magical Click
I’m still confused, but now my eyes are wide with horror, too. I don’t dispute what pjeby said; in retrospect it seems terribly obvious. But how can we deal with it? Is there any way to get someone to start expecting reality to make sense?

I have a TA job teaching people how to program, and I watch as people go from desperately trying to solve problems by blindly adapting example code that they don’t understand to actually thinking and being able to translate their thoughts into working, understandable programs. I think the key of it is to be thrust into situations that require understanding instead of just guessing the teacher’s password—the search space is too big for brute force. The class is all hands-on, doing toy problems that keep people struggling near the edge of their ability. And it works, somehow! I’m always amazed when they actually, truly learn something. I think this habit of expecting to understand things can be taught in at least one field, albeit painfully.

Is this something that people can learn in general? How? I consider this a hugely important question.

sketerpot 3 Jul 2012 1:49 UTC
35 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2012
Or, because running into heavy objects is a good intuition pump:

Reality is what trips you up when you run around with your eyes closed.

I think this was in a book by James P. Hogan, but a bit of Googling only reveals one or two other people quoting it but not remembering where it came from.

sketerpot 2 Feb 2013 6:13 UTC
33 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Rationality Quotes February 2013
The publisher selected that design. The author’s involvement almost always ends with the manuscript.

sketerpot 1 May 2011 1:40 UTC
32 points
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Mitigating Social Awkwardness
Everybody has heard this. Not everybody has heard a clear explanation of how you learn body language. It’s not a trivial thing, and most exhortations to learn body language come across as “Because you fail to operate your meat-puppet according to a long list of rules which I will not explain, many of which you don’t know that you don’t know, you are socially and morally deficient.” I know that’s not your intent.

What I really liked about this article is that it breaks down some of the basics into pieces small enough for someone to learn and follow. That’s valuable.

sketerpot 3 Dec 2010 22:25 UTC
31 points
on: Rationality Quotes: December 2010
Mitch Hedberg on the distinction between labels and the things to which they are applied:

I just bought a 2-bedroom house, but it’s up to me, isn’t it, how many bedrooms there are? Fuck you, real estate lady! This bedroom has a oven in it! This bedroom’s got a lot of people sitting around watching TV. This bedroom is A.K.A. a hallway.
What links here?
- KrisC's comment on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010-2011) by orthonormal (4 Dec 2010 21:04 UTC; 0 points)

sketerpot 25 Nov 2013 4:52 UTC
30 points
on: 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Took the survey. Cooperated because most puzzles which explicitly use the words “cooperate” and “defect” have been created in such a way as to make cooperation the better choice.

(Considering my fairly low chances of winning, a deep analysis would have had only recreational value, and there were other fun things to do.)

sketerpot 2 Mar 2010 0:43 UTC
30 points
on: Rationality quotes: March 2010
“He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”

-John McCarthy, on mainstream environmentalism.

As someone who regularly gets into arguments about this, I can say that he’s definitely right; you wouldn’t believe the amount of nonsense that can be disposed of simply by looking up the relevant numbers and doing a minute’s worth of easy arithmetic.

For example, I’ve heard some people recently claiming that a combination of solar photovoltaics, electrolysis to produce hydrogen, and these new Bloom box fuel cells are cheaper than nuclear fission. Look up the costs of solar farms; about $3 per peak watt. Their average power output is less; we can very optimistically assume that they run at 20% of capacity on average. Efficiency losses from electrolysis and fuel cells are about 50%. Putting it all together, this would cost about $30 per watt of average power delivered. Not including the cost of the fuel cells.

A little googling will show that the total cost of building two new AP1000 reactors in Georgia is about $14 billion, and they average at least 93% of their peak power, and transmission line losses bring their average power delivered to about 1000 MW each. So their cost is about $7 per watt of average power delivered, or about 23% the cost of solar.

There’s a lot of extremely harmful bullshit out there, and defeating most of it doesn’t take any advanced techniques; it just takes a willingness to look up some relevant numbers and do a bit of arithmetic.
What links here?
- Richard_Kennaway's comment on Medieval Ballistics and Experiment by lucidfox (20 Dec 2010 18:18 UTC; 11 points)

sketerpot 21 Sep 2010 8:20 UTC
29 points
on: Less Wrong Should Confront Wrongness Wherever it Appears
Several years ago, I used to go to predominantly Christian conservative forums and get in arguments. It was mostly for entertainment, but it was also kind of an eye-opening experience. I did the same sort of thing, in different forums, for nuclear power. Most big controversial issues are so steeped in the Dark Arts that you’ll just get overshouted if you try to calmly lay out a reasonable and well-organized argument. As the saying goes, they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

It’s possible to be frightfully effective in such an argument, but the methods you have to use feel pretty dirty, because they are. If you can force people to defend indefensible implications of their position, you score points. If you can trick a bunch of opponents into saying something obviously stupid, you score points. If you can find a loud idiot and make a fool of them in public, so that the lurkers don’t want to be associated with him, you score big. And often pure typing speed helps; if you’re answering the same arguments again and again, you can fire off a lot of replies very fast, flying on autopilot. A handful of vocal people using such tactics can change the default views of a whole forum. It works.

...But none of this feels right. I feel like there ought to be a better way to influence people’s views, but I just don’t see it. This is part of why I like Less Wrong: people are actually looking for the truth instead of trying to fling a conclusion at the world. I don’t know if it’s even possible to have that kind of discussion in most places.

sketerpot 1 Dec 2010 23:06 UTC
28 points
on: Cheat codes
I’ve noticed that people who have a hard time in intro-to-physics classes usually fail in a fairly predictable way: they see a problem, don’t know how to solve it, and stop. But there’s a trick to solving physics problems when you’re not sure how. The general method is:
1. Make a diagram or something, to depict what you know about the problem and make it easier to figure out stuff you don’t know.
2. Look at the problem until you can derive something you don’t already know. Even if you have no idea how it will help (or if it will help) do the calculations, and write them down.
3. Repeat step 2 until you see how to get to the answer.
The problem is when someone, not seeing a way all the way to the solution, stops trying instead of looking to make incremental progress.

I’m sure this applied to more than introductory physics problems. It’s very similar to Terry Tao’s advice on how to do math:

I don’t have any magical ability. I look at a problem, and it looks something like one I’ve done before; I think maybe the idea that worked before will work here. Nothing’s working out; then you think of a small trick that makes it a little better but still is not quite right. I play with the problem, and after a while, I figure out what’s going on.

Most people, faced with a math problem, will try to solve the problem directly. Even if they get it, they might not understand exactly what they did. Before I work out any details, I work on the strategy. Once you have a strategy, a very complicated problem can split up into a lot of mini-problems. I’ve never really been satisfied with just solving the problem. I want to see what happens if I make some changes; will it still work? If you experiment enough, you get a deeper understanding. After a while, when something similar comes along, you get an idea of what works and what doesn’t work.

It’s not about being smart or even fast. It’s like climbing a cliff: If you’re very strong and quick and have a lot of rope, it helps, but you need to devise a good route to get up there. Doing calculations quickly and knowing a lot of facts are like a rock climber with strength, quickness and good tools. You still need a plan — that’s the hard part — and you have to see the bigger picture.
What links here?
- JenniferRM's comment on Cheat codes by sketerpot (2 Dec 2010 22:13 UTC; 1 point)

sketerpot 3 Sep 2009 18:17 UTC
27 points
in reply to: AllanCrossman’s comment on: The Sword of Good
My guess would be that Mordor is a totalitarian communist state, formed on promises of empowerment of the People, and then turned into a horrible labor camp with collective farms by lake Nurnen and armies of expendable mooks kept in line by harsh superiors (think Commissars), along with heavy racist and nationalistic propaganda so they hate their enemies more than they hate their own rulers. Remember the communist revolution that happened in the Shire while our heroes were out destroying the One Ring? It started out as a ham-fisted attempt at social justice, and before long people were disappearing for being enemies of the state. Imagine that, but on a larger scale, and many times worse, and festering for generations.

The orcs (et al) don’t have to be inherently evil for Sauronland to be an evil nation.

sketerpot 3 Jun 2011 20:02 UTC
26 points
in reply to: Document’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: June 2011
Man, that site is a funny time sink. Not the best source of rationality quotes, but there are a few that sort of count.

Greatgreen: I’m going to fail :(

NumberGuy: think positively

Greatgreen: I’m going to fail :)

sketerpot 21 Apr 2010 21:51 UTC
26 points
0
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: Eight Short Studies On Excuses
I hadn’t thought of that, but it turns out that yes, I do! I handle the grading in two phases; in phase one I assign grades, and in phase two I enter them into the grade book. The pain-in-the-ass aspect comes mostly in phase two. I don’t really mind grading late papers; it’s dealing with the school’s broken-ass computer system, Blackboard, that is really aggravating when I’m entering late grades. Or any grades, really, but late grades are worse.

Therefore the grades I assign should be fairly disentangled from any annoyance I may feel later in phase two.

(By the way, nice job thinking up that criticism. The ability to habitually see possible cognitive bias in everyday life is important, and needs to be lauded more.)

(Also, if you happen to be an educational institution, never use Blackboard. It’s the worst thing since BonziBuddy.)

sketerpot 15 Mar 2010 21:28 UTC
26 points
in reply to: FAWS’s comment on: Undiscriminating Skepticism
If it meant the former, I would take the loli pill if the (unlikely) circumstances called for it. Why not? If it meant the latter, then you would have to tell your libido “no” a lot, but it wouldn’t necessarily lead to doing bad things. I doubt it would be worth the hassle, though, except in very special circumstances.

Actually, the biggest drawback to either version of the loli pill would probably be how society would react if they ever found out. It probably wouldn’t matter if the one you’re sleeping with is really 700 years old; you’d still get put on every sex offender registry out there, and shunned vigorously, at the very least. People are damn tense on this subject. Just look at how much trouble Christopher Handley got in for his manga collection.

Edit: I felt pretty uncomfortable writing this post, even though I know I shouldn’t be. Looks like this really is a good question.

sketerpot 7 Apr 2013 5:34 UTC
25 points
on: Fermi Estimates
There’s a free book on this sort of thing, under a Creative Commons license, called Street-Fighting Mathematics: The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving. Among the fun things in it:

Chapter 1: Using dimensional analysis to quickly pull correct-ish equations out of thin air!

Chapter 2: Focusing on easy cases. It’s amazing how many problems become simpler when you set some variables equal to 1, 0, or ∞.

Chapter 3: An awful lot of things look like rectangles if you squint at them hard enough. Rectangles are nice.

Chapter 4: Drawing pictures can help. Humans are good at looking at shapes.

Chapter 5: Approximate arithmetic in which all numbers are either 1, a power of 10, or “a few”—roughly 3, which is close to the geometric mean of 1 and 10. A few times a few is ten, for small values of “is”. Multiply and divide large numbers on your fingers!

… And there’s some more stuff, too, and some more chapters, but that’ll do for an approximate summary.

sketerpot 4 Aug 2010 19:10 UTC
25 points
on: Rationality quotes: August 2010

If you do experiments and you’re always right, then you aren’t getting enough information out of those experiments. You want your experiment to be like the flip of a coin: You have no idea if it is going to come up heads or tails. You want to not know what the results are going to be.

-- Peter Norvig, in an interview about being wrong. When I saw this, I thought it sounded a lot like entropy pruning in decision trees, where you don’t even bother asking questions that won’t make you update your probability estimates significantly. Then I remembered that Norvig was the co-author of the AI textbook that I had learned about decision trees from. Interesting interview.

sketerpot 14 Aug 2011 21:22 UTC
24 points
on: Rationality Quotes August 2011

Our headlines are splashed with crime, yet for every criminal there are 10,000 honest decent kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up, business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries—but it is a force stronger than crime.

-- Robert Heinlein, on selection bias. From this big list of quotes.

sketerpot 30 Jul 2013 4:24 UTC
23 points
in reply to: Tenoke’s comment on: Rationality Quotes from people associated with LessWrong
There’s a theorem which states that you can never truly prove that.

sketerpot 14 Aug 2011 20:38 UTC
23 points
on: Rationality Quotes August 2011
From Wintersmith, on the ability to notice confusion rather than rationalizing:

“And now I shall tell you something vitally important. It is the secret of my long life.”

Ah, thought Tiffany, and she leaned forward.

“The important thing,” said Miss Treason, “is to stay the passage of the wind. You should avoid rumbustious fruits and vegetables. Beans are the worst, take it from me.”

“I don’t think I understand—” Tiffany began.

“Try not to fart, in a nutshell.”

“In a nutshell I imagine it would be pretty unpleasant!” said Tiffany nervously. She couldn’t believe she was being told this.

“This is no joking matter,” said Miss Treason. “The human body only has so much air in it. You have to make it last. One plate of beans can take a year off your life. I have avoided rumbustiousness all my days. I am an old person and that means what I say is wisdom!” She gave the bewildered Tiffany a stern look. “Do you understand, child?”

Tiffany’s mind raced. Everything is a test! “No,” she said. “I’m not a child and that’s nonsense, not wisdom!”

The stern look cracked into a smile. “Yes,” said Miss Treason. “Total gibberish. But you’ve got to admit it’s a corker, all the same, right? You definitely believed it, just for a moment? The villagers did last year. You should have seen the way they walked about for a few weeks! The strained looks on their faces quite cheered me up!”