virtualAdept

• virtualAdeptMay 20, 2011, 4:36 PM

  13 points

  in reply to: Manfred’s comment on: Seek­ing sug­ges­tions: Less Wrong Biol­ogy 101

  Oh, your suggestion makes me grin. Systems biology is essentially the theme of my academic career. I will definitely write about those things; the hard part will probably be shutting up about them.

Seek­ing sug­ges­tions: Less Wrong Biol­ogy 101

• virtualAdeptMay 20, 2011, 3:14 PM

  13 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: I want to save myself

  I’m trying to think how to frame my response to this. I will essentially never say that something shouldn’t be studied (unless the act of studying would cause more harm than good to intelligent test subjects), and I don’t know with certainty that vitamin C megadoses would not be helpful. I know a lot of reasons why they probably wouldn’t be, but that’s all I have.

  My major problems with the book itself (from what I can see of it online, and what I’ve read of the studies on the subject) are:

  1) It suggests (‘Cancer patients deserve to be offered this opportunity’) that some wrong is being done to cancer patients by not chasing this idea farther than it has already been chased. This is both somewhat sensationalist, and revealing that the authors either don’t know much about or have chosen to ignore the cognitive environment of cancer research. Cancer researchers would love to find a silver bullet, or even a reasonably effective bronze one. Quite aside from the good it would do for humanity, it would bring them an awful lot of immediate prestige. Existing biases in the field are therefore very much in favor of pursuing avenues of research that might be a bit of a stretch, if there’s any hope that it might lead to a breakthrough. This makes blind rejection of potentially useful ideas very uncommon, which strongly downregulates my estimate of the idea’s merit.

  2) If the authors think that this research has a high potential for payoff, why are they not conducting it themselves, instead of imploring others to do so? There is certainly a much higher personal payoff to be had if it were to actually work, if they were to do it themselves. (I do rather intimately realize that ‘doing research onesself’ is much simpler said than done, and therefore would accept it as an answer that they are making serious, concerted, and persistent efforts to begin the clinical trials they’re calling for.)

• virtualAdeptMay 20, 2011, 1:42 PM

  12 points

  in reply to: Pavitra’s comment on: I want to save myself

  I’m a graduate student studying metabolomics, and my lab mate is actually doing her thesis research on cancer metabolism. My knowledge base is strong in the biology involved, and weak in the politics of medical studies and treatment preferences, as I have no direct interface with MDs.

  Cancer has no ‘silver bullet;’ as is generally recognized in medicine nowadays, it is actually a collection of diseases with differing causes, that respond in different ways to various treatments because the mechanisms which promote cancer development, growth, and metastasis differ between forms. There is a consistent cycle in cancer research that pays homage to this fact—someone has good lab results with a new drug, everyone gets excited, and then it’s found that its utility is extremely limited (or more often, impossible due to deleterious side effects). This knowledge causes me to have a very low probability estimate for the truth (of the magnitude, at least) of these claims.

  Another red flag: If this was such a medical breakthrough, it would be backed up by controlled studies, and it would be a paper in Cell or Nature, not a self-published book announcing boldly that it has The Answer.

  If you would like more specific information about cancer, I can either answer questions or send links, later, but at the moment, I need to leave my computer.

• virtualAdeptMay 19, 2011, 4:43 PM

  3 points

  on: Should I be afraid of GMOs?

  Genetic engineering is simply a tool. A particularly malicious individual with an absurd amount of independent resources, ingenuity, and time on eir hands could use it to make something dangerous—but such a comic book supervillain aspirant could be far more effectively evil simply by making a lot of bombs and using them on densely-populated areas.

  In the non-comic book world where we live, genetic engineering is done in a veritable regulatory straightjacket. Development of products for human consumption and/​or those that will have contact with non-modified organisms must be exhaustively evaluated for risk potential and its expected benefits justified before the research even gets funded, in most if not all cases.

  So, no green goo, and no, you should not be afraid. (Interested in the regulatory practices that keep somewhat bullying-inclined corporations such as Monsanto in check, perhaps, but that has little to do with genetic engineering and much to do with corporate politics and asshattery.)

• virtualAdeptMay 19, 2011, 4:29 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Should I be afraid of GMOs?

  Food allergies tend to be a response to one compound, or a very small set of compounds. With respect to using genes from one organism to confer hardiness on another, the chances of conferring the production of a deadly allergen are diminishingly slim, but you’d better believe that if such a thing was to be done, the FDA (or analogous organizations outside the US) would have warnings plastered all over the derivative organism.

  The level of justification and background research showing how you’re NOT going to destroy the world that is required to even get funding for this sort of thing is.… large.

• virtualAdeptMay 14, 2011, 2:28 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Hul-Gil’s comment on: Ask LessWrong: De­sign a de­gree in Ra­tion­al­ity.

  Exactly that. Being able to think in explicit algorithms is extremely useful for decoding your own thoughts and being able to actually change your mind.

• virtualAdeptMay 13, 2011, 5:27 PM

  3 points

  on: Ask LessWrong: De­sign a de­gree in Ra­tion­al­ity.

  Since we’re taking students from varied and heterogeneous backgrounds and it’s an advanced degree, I’d have a list of required topics, with the students being able to place out of the area of their undergraduate study (if their undergrad major covered one of the topics).

  Core areas would include:

  • Probability/​statistics

  • Mathematics (at least through basic calc and linear algebra)

  • Computer science (at least basic programming, algorithms, and software architecture)

  • Natural science (chemistry OR biology OR physics)

  • Research experience in a natural science or engineering lab of choice

  • Psychology (emphasis on cognitive biases and memory)

  • Anthropology

  • Philosophy (overview course on historical perspectives)

  Also, added seminar courses with mini-units to tie subjects together and place them in context.

  Electives would be open-ended, pending an essay to justify their selection.

  Anyone have thoughts on whether a business or economics course should be included? I considered that, but I have not taken a formal course in those topics myself, and so don’t have a good estimate of their actual utility.

• virtualAdeptMay 13, 2011, 4:24 PM

  32 points

  on: The elephant in the room, AMA

  I’ve read your conversion story on your blog, and the answers you’ve posted here so far. The most salient question, to me, has become ‘what led you to alter your belief about the existence of a deity,’ specifically. Everything I have seen thus far has apparently relied on good feelings when you have participated in services and been around Mormons (and how nice they were/​are).

  I don’t think you could give a less convincing account of why you should believe a god exists than that. The Mormon student I know in the lab is a kind, helpful, delightful person to be around, but so are my Catholic labmate and my atheist friends. If the general Warm Fuzzies you felt are a major part of your reasoning, how do you control for other possible sources of Warm Fuzzies?

  If there are other reasons that caused you to believe in a god, those would be what I am reading this thread to hear.

  And of course, if I have incorrectly understood the point of your story on your blog, please correct me.

• virtualAdeptMay 13, 2011, 3:56 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: calcsam’s comment on: The elephant in the room, AMA

  What has led you to anticipate (for brevity, some of) these things? Including some benefits for you and the predicted detriments for your fraternity brothers.

• virtualAdeptMay 12, 2011, 5:08 PM

  9 points

  on: You’ll die if you do that

  Small electronic appliances often have some sort of safety warning tag that includes, in large text, “DO NOT REMOVE.” I remember being a bit horrified the first time I saw my mother cut one off a power cord, and only later actually thought through the logic that the hairdryer or whatever it was would be staying in our house, and none of us were going to try to use the thing underwater or something similarly unhealthy.

• virtualAdeptMay 12, 2011, 4:58 PM

  11 points

  on: The elephant in the room, AMA

  To what extent do you agree with the official precepts and practices of the religion—i.e., what do you actually believe? (I’m interested in both the abstract affirmation-of-faith-you-say-in-a-service beliefs and how they apply in a social and day-to-day context.)

• virtualAdeptMay 12, 2011, 4:45 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: XiXiDu’s comment on: The elephant in the room, AMA

  I don’t think that examples of people with fundamental, irrational beliefs being good at other things are relevant—calcsam has invited questions specifically about the belief whose rationality is being examined. If he was starting a discussion about mathematics and his points were dismissed due to his Mormon affiliation, your comment wold make more sense to me.

• virtualAdeptMay 10, 2011, 8:35 PM

  1 point

  on: “I know I’m bi­ased, but...”

  This common use of “I know I’m biased, but...” and its equivalent phrases is definitely a good thing to point out and work to avoid.

  The proposed catch-and-analyze method for when you say such things yourself would also be useful from the other side of the conversation, as a more explicit exercise: Your conversational companion says ‘I know I’m biased...’ and that’s a signal right there for you to ask ‘how/​why?’ and get them thinking and talking about it. I actually think that done right, it could be turned from an unproductive ‘please ignore my bad argument’ signal into a pretty good jumping-off point for a double-teamed analysis of the issue.

  In this vein, I actually find it useful to state my biases sometimes in conversation, as a sort of assisted sanity check—my friend might be able to catch connections from some of those biases to my arguments better than I, and in stating them, I explicitly remind myself what they are and that I should be dealing with them. If for instance I’m biased in favor of Idea X by my Inherent Trait Y (e.g. something like being a student, white, female, etc) Trait Y (hence the potential for bias) isn’t going to go away; therefore the most productive path is to a) acknowledge it and b) apply a correction factor to the weighting of arguments that link to that bias.

• virtualAdeptMay 10, 2011, 7:47 PM

  2 points

  on: Op­ti­miz­ing Sleep

  I have the same general proclivities that you describe. I’ve got some flexibility in my schedule (grad school is kinda awesome), but realistically speaking it’s not reasonable to go with a full schedule inversion—while sleeping during the day is not difficult for me, my lab and occasional classes make it necessary to be up in the morning sometimes.

  I have tried two extremes in how I handle sleep, and liked neither of them: forcing myself to a slightly abbreviated ‘normal’ schedule of 7 continuous hours of sleep from ~12-1 to 7 or 8 AM, and burning the candle at both ends and just existing on 3-4 hours a night, and ‘catching up’ for a 12 hour binge on Saturdays.

  The first, as you might expect, annoyed me because I feel like my evening’s only just starting by 10 or 11 PM; the second doesn’t work well because it brings down my baseline functionality during the week. I’ve considered trying out one of the popular polyphasic schedules, but my work is variable enough as to make that difficult or infeasible to implement.

  The best solution I’ve found is this: Starting from the basic knowledge that human sleep ‘cycles’ (in which you go into and then back out of REM) are considerably shorter than the ~8-9 hours that’s considered a ‘full night’s sleep,’ I experimented with different shortened sleep amounts (or, more accurately, in undergrad when I was often getting only 3-4 hours/​night anyway, I kept track of the exact times I slept and how I felt the next day). I found that, for me, I feel like absolute crap if I wake up after 3 hours, or after 4.5, but somewhere between 3.5 and 4 there’s a sweet spot where I can wake up fully and have high functionality through most of the day afterward.

  Since that ‘high functionality’ doesn’t last all day, it works best if I grab a half hour (in my case) nap in the late afternoon/​early evening.

  Staying slightly sleep-deprived (this is fairly slight for me; I just never have slept a lot when left to my own devices) allows me to shift the schedule essentially as needed (whether for work or to account for social activities), since I can always fall asleep when I want to, and I make sure I get one or two 8-hour periods (essentially inserting one extra cycle) a week to keep the debt from climbing.

  Lately I’ve lengthened the ‘night’ to more like 5.5 hours, which seems to work well, as successive REM cycles tend to be shorter, but still generally running on less sleep than most people. YMMV, of course; the flexibility afforded by a short ‘night’ has always been worth the slight energy hit for me, with the trick being to avoid losing mental clarity as well. (Hence where figuring out what shortened cycle is best for you comes in.)

• virtualAdeptMay 9, 2011, 9:24 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: falenas108’s comment on: But But­ter Goes Ran­cid In The Freezer

  Microbial interaction is only responsible for some instances/​types of rancidification. Oxidation and hydrolysis reactions can occur without microbes, although again the question becomes one of how quickly these reactions would occur at cryogenic temperatures (very slowly, but we are looking at potentially very long timespans here) and availability of species.

• virtualAdeptApr 26, 2011, 11:37 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: jwhendy’s comment on: Non­mag­i­cal Powers

  Like how I quoted you?

  Wow. Yeah. My brain remembers looking for something like that, but I think it’s only attempting to justify its embarrassment. Thanks!

• virtualAdeptApr 26, 2011, 9:46 PM

  1 point

  on: Non­mag­i­cal Powers

  For whatever reason, I’ve always had a very strong memory for sounds - it’s a relatively common occurrence for me to express knowledge of what a friend or family member had done on a particular day and time, based on hearing them bang about from another room. This tends to surprise them since I was not physically there to observe. The only other person I know who does this often is, fittingly, my mother.

  More humorously, my office mates and I have jokingly accused our PI of teleportation; while it’s usually extremely easy to hear someone coming down the hall long before they reach our door, he always manages to appear with no warning (even when someone’s anticipating his arrival). He walks very quickly and wears quiet shoes, and is apparently the only person in the department who does the latter.

• virtualAdeptApr 26, 2011, 9:26 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: KrisC’s comment on: Non­mag­i­cal Powers

  [The solution is to approach new situations critically.]

  This is a skill that can be honed in reading rather easily—I became explicitly aware of doing exactly as you’ve described when I began to have to offer up explanations and critiques of scholarly papers whose topics I wasn’t innately familiar with on short notice. And it was just as surprising to my peers when I could come up with quick, cogent answers to complex questions about them on the spot.

  Edit: Damnit, I fail at quote tags—is there a list somewhere of the tags the site uses?

• virtualAdeptApr 25, 2011, 8:37 PM

  3 points

  on: Elitist Jerks: A Well-Kept Gar­den

  Are you posting about this here looking for input/​ideas, or simply as a case study of what Eliezer described?

  What kind of answers are being given to “is this the community we meant to create”?

  I’m a retired (feels funny to say that in regard to anything at 23...) mod of a large-scale, cross-guild raiding community, and that kind of question comes up in relation to policy issues, but seldom in concern about a lack of liveliness on our boards. But then, our boards serve more of a social and organizational function than anything else—the players who want to read up on their classes, unsurprisingly, do that over in your garden.

  WoW theorycraft is definitely not a difficult problem. Is there any talk of expanding EJ to go beyond number-crunching? Since my organization (Leftovers of Silver Hand) is such a prolific breeding ground for leadership styles to be honed and compared (thanks to our semi-independent charter group system), I’ve always been curious to see some kind of organized discussion of the human engineering aspect of running a raid/​raiding guild.