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Comment by Divide on Common sense as a prior · 2014-02-24T20:53:47.847Z · LW · GW

By and large, when people are unwilling to carefully consider arguments with the goal of having accurate beliefs, this is evidence that it is not useful to try to think carefully about this area. This follows from the idea mentioned above that people tend to try to have accurate views when it is in their present interests to have accurate views. So if this is the main way the framework breaks down, then the framework is mostly breaking down in cases where good epistemology is relatively unimportant.

That's one clever trick right there!

Comment by Divide on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey · 2012-11-08T07:34:59.359Z · LW · GW

I've been a bit confused by the relationships question. I'm currently seeing three people romantically on a semi-regular basis, so I put in 3, but I wouldn't say any of those relations qualify as "relationships", so I selected 'single'. I hope that's the preferred method.

Comment by Divide on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey · 2012-11-08T07:25:46.236Z · LW · GW

Thanks, and sorry. Fixed.

Comment by Divide on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey · 2012-11-07T02:54:23.505Z · LW · GW

If you use X11 you'll find that even though the selection clears just after releasing the mouse button, it's been nonetheless placed in the selection buffer (so you can middle-button it somewhere).

Comment by Divide on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey · 2012-11-07T02:47:59.774Z · LW · GW

33 - gurer vf n cnggrea ba qvntbanyf tbvat sebz fj gb ar: ubevmbagny, iregvpny, qvntbany. 34 - rnfl, artngvir va, cbfvgvir bhg, nqqvgvba. 36 - va rirel (ynetr) ebj/pbyhza gurer ner 9 juvgr obkrf, naq rnpu bs 5, 6 naq 7 bs bgure funqrf.

Anybody up to take on the others?

Comment by Divide on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey · 2012-11-07T02:39:04.649Z · LW · GW

I dunno, on my test it came up higher than expected (and higher than the result of a pro test they gave me in primary school once).

Comment by Divide on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey · 2012-11-07T02:34:13.069Z · LW · GW

Huh, I got the date almost right - sadly, the date of death.

Comment by Divide on My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination · 2012-02-15T03:21:56.051Z · LW · GW

Thank you for sharing. This seems so obvious, and yet, it has helped me and works wonderfully. I've been able to get started and quite far along the way already (in just a day or so) writing reports that were due months ago and I couldn't have brought myself to work on them even though I find the topic interesting.

Comment by Divide on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey · 2011-11-04T13:23:18.839Z · LW · GW

Just took it.

About the probability questions: I thought you were supposed to answer them instantly for your intuitive stance at the moment, without additional research, though I see some of responders apparently did research. Perhaps it should be better specified what is meant.

Comment by Divide on The benefits of madness: A positive account of arationality · 2011-05-07T15:30:46.405Z · LW · GW

drawing an analogy between my social networking behaviour and annealing

Could you elaborate on that?

Comment by Divide on The benefits of madness: A positive account of arationality · 2011-05-07T13:41:38.571Z · LW · GW

Would you be interested in writing up the results of your investigations? A structured article on tested useful drugs, if only with a terse summary of what each of them is good for, would be an interesting starting point for studying this topic further. Most such resources on the Internet seem to focus mainly on illegal drugs, which makes their use somewhat problematic.

Comment by Divide on Procedural Knowledge Gaps · 2011-02-08T21:24:05.782Z · LW · GW

Same in Poland; although many people do tip in restaurants. I'm always a little bit confused by the American tipping rituals whenever I see it in a movie or whatever.

How about the rest of Europe?

Comment by Divide on Dark Arts 101: Using presuppositions · 2011-01-03T16:34:45.899Z · LW · GW

We can only hope that this was an artful stroke made from the shadows by some great master of the Dark Arts, and not a mere snowballing of an ignorant question.

Actually, I'd hope quite the opposite. Perhaps it'd be a sad conclusion, but yours strikes me as potentially more dangerous.

Comment by Divide on Confidence levels inside and outside an argument · 2010-12-16T22:57:11.776Z · LW · GW

Did he? I thought he just meant 'odds' when he said 'probability'.

Comment by Divide on Confidence levels inside and outside an argument · 2010-12-16T21:09:08.788Z · LW · GW

Try and do that with Rudy Rucker, I dare you. I only endured first thirty or so pages of his "Postsingular" before all that was left of my suspension of disbelief were sad ashes and smoke started to come out of my ears.

EDIT: Although, to be fair, I haven't tried his other books. I hear the 'ware' trilogy is quite good. I can't shake off the distaste after trying "Postsingular", though.

Comment by Divide on Rationality Quotes: December 2010 · 2010-12-06T17:58:26.305Z · LW · GW

Thanks for the explanation, wouldn't have thought about it from this angle without it. It's pretty good when read in this way. Upvoted.

Comment by Divide on Even if you have a nail, not all hammers are the same · 2010-10-28T18:52:35.263Z · LW · GW

Ouch. Comic Sans.

Good cookbook, though.

Comment by Divide on Something's Wrong · 2010-09-06T14:26:01.402Z · LW · GW

The stronger answer to many of those questions is "nobody knows."

Perhaps, but it would at best be a rethorical answer, and at worst an ignorant one.

Comment by Divide on So You Think You're a Bayesian? The Natural Mode of Probabilistic Reasoning · 2010-07-16T01:50:11.607Z · LW · GW

For example, 341, 0011001100110001, and XXXI all represent the same number using different systems of representation.

Okay, this is silly, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that number and those systems of representation are.

Comment by Divide on What Intelligence Tests Miss: The psychology of rational thought · 2010-07-14T00:15:05.008Z · LW · GW

That's not particularly well-formed, is it now?

Comment by Divide on Applying Behavioral Psychology on Myself · 2010-06-27T05:46:50.967Z · LW · GW

It should work now, please test. Sorry about that problem.

I needed to change the method to pick a random entity -- no easy feat in app engine, apparently. As a side effect, there might be some apparent nonuniformity in sampling when you have few todos. It will smooth out as you start/stop them and add more.

Comment by Divide on Applying Behavioral Psychology on Myself · 2010-06-26T04:32:19.086Z · LW · GW

Thanks for the report! I'll look into it.

Comment by Divide on Applying Behavioral Psychology on Myself · 2010-06-23T23:14:41.478Z · LW · GW

I thought I'd share my pick-thing-to-do-at-random app that helps somewhat. You just add things and then it shows you them at random. You can click to commit to do something for a while, or just flick to another thing if you can't do that now. I've added hundreds of both timewasters and productive activities there and it's quite cool to do this kind of lottery to determine what to do now.

Obviously it won't work if you just keep flicking until you happen upon a favorite timewaster, nor when you have something that needs to be done now. It's also essential to have clearly defined activities, even if it's just "think really hard about what to do about and make that a new activity" or whatever. Tell me what you think.

http://things-be-done.appspot.com/ (google login needed for persistent storage, but you can play without logging in, data will be associated with a cookie left in your browser (and will be transferred once you do login))

Comment by Divide on The Social Coprocessor Model · 2010-05-17T23:58:18.951Z · LW · GW

This is spot-on. That's exactly how I do it, although I seem to have a good coprocessor for emotional empathy (tuned towards the opposite gender, no less), which does help tremendously; I only have to do social in software and while I'm rather bad at it, the empathy compensates for that and makes people more forgiving for miscalculations.

Consequently I tend not to like and avoid my own gender, because the empathy processor fails there and what's left is pure awkwardness.

That, or I'm just rationalizing over competition anxiety.

(EDIT: BTW, I got 32 on the test.)

(Another edit: in case it's not apparent, note that I strongly prefer the opposite gender for mating. And, well, for pretty much anything at all.)

Comment by Divide on Blue- and Yellow-Tinted Choices · 2010-05-17T03:26:33.779Z · LW · GW

And here I thought lesswrong would be the one place on teh internets where I wouldn't get confused by obscure Harry Potter references and consequently feel out of place for not reading it.

Comment by Divide on Blue- and Yellow-Tinted Choices · 2010-05-17T03:21:25.055Z · LW · GW

I agree, all that good grammar just gets in the way. There's too little appreciation for bad grammar here on lesswrong.

Comment by Divide on Navigating disagreement: How to keep your eye on the evidence · 2010-04-26T06:15:47.721Z · LW · GW

“is an accurate belief” is a property of the belief only

Technically, it's a property of the (belief, what-the-belief-is-about) pair. Beliefs can't be accurate by themselves; there has to be an external referent to compare them with. (Only-)self-referencing beliefs degrade straighforwardly to tautologies or contradictions.

Comment by Divide on Too busy to think about life · 2010-04-24T09:03:21.935Z · LW · GW

That's the remaining 10%. You know, the part which isn't covered in 'teach yourself GTD in one hour' audiobooks.

But seriously, there's much stuff about higher levels of planning in GTD. See 'someday maybe' lists, monthly review, putting analysis tasks on monthly lists, analysing farther horizons periodically, etc.

Comment by Divide on Too busy to think about life · 2010-04-24T09:00:06.832Z · LW · GW

I'm not quite sure that's what the parent meant. I understood it literally and it does make sense as well.

Comment by Divide on Attention Lurkers: Please say hi · 2010-04-19T22:22:28.432Z · LW · GW

Hi!

(Lurking since Eliezer had still been writing his sequences on OB.)

Comment by Divide on Levels of communication · 2010-03-25T21:25:17.875Z · LW · GW

In Poland there's a whole genre of jokes based on one-upping such ad hoc status markers. It could well be "my husband is so stupid that he...". "I'm so ill that..." fits the genre perfectly.

Comment by Divide on Individual vs. Group Epistemic Rationality · 2010-03-11T18:48:36.809Z · LW · GW

I reckon it is public good anyway, insofar as public libraries are public. In fact, you can most probably access many of those journals for free at your nearest public library, even if not necessarily by direct web access, but by requesting a copy from the librarian.

EDIT: Of course if you want convenience, you have to pay. (Perhaps) luckily enough people and institutions are willing to.

Comment by Divide on Rationality quotes: March 2010 · 2010-03-02T01:12:52.264Z · LW · GW

I think he meant people doing self-surgery on their own. Ie. you can't go to a pharmacy and buy lidocaine just because you want to implant an RFID chip in your hand. As for why, well, that's perhaps another point.

Comment by Divide on Rationality quotes: March 2010 · 2010-03-02T00:55:50.013Z · LW · GW

But five hundred years ago ancient Greeks hadn't lived for centuries already.

Comment by Divide on Working Mantras · 2009-08-25T07:43:03.102Z · LW · GW

Any pointers to those studies?

Comment by Divide on Are You Anosognosic? · 2009-08-06T15:22:27.686Z · LW · GW

Is it to say, if you had to make such a bet (at a gunpoint, if you will), you'd be indifferent and might as well flip a coin to choose? If so, fair enough. If not, what's more to it? (Assuming you don't want to get killed on refusing to take the bet.)

Comment by Divide on Are You Anosognosic? · 2009-08-04T23:48:12.811Z · LW · GW

For satisfying SoullessAutomaton's curiosity I think phrasing it differently would have been better: which one would you bet (say, $100) if you had to do and could only pick one? (Assuming that both questions would get truthfully answered immediately after making the bet. It's just so that you wouldn't pick one of these just because the question seems more interesting.)

Comment by Divide on Rationality Quotes 26 · 2009-07-15T02:41:23.102Z · LW · GW

s/D端hring/Dühring/. Perhaps review OB->LW conversion scripts?

Comment by Divide on No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices · 2008-08-13T12:57:09.000Z · LW · GW

How about corporate AI evolution? You'll find a clever depiction of such (runaway) evolution in Accelerando, www.accelerando.org. Great book, that, btw, in other respects, too.