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Comment by gyokuro on 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey · 2013-11-22T06:46:55.428Z · LW · GW

Congratulations for putting the dilemma to test. That was the hardest survey I've taken since the 2012 one.

Comment by gyokuro on [LINK] Analysis of why excluding hostile people is worth it · 2013-07-10T20:26:56.916Z · LW · GW

I was specifically thinking of the worst group of all, the atheists of r/atheism who are both very vocal and very hostile. For an issue like this, there's hostile people on either end of the spectrum and being vocal helps makes them more so. A quiet and hostile person isn't particularly threatening and neither is a vocal and nonhostile person. I was not trying to suggest that being vocal alone makes someone hostile.

Comment by gyokuro on [LINK] Analysis of why excluding hostile people is worth it · 2013-07-10T02:10:33.930Z · LW · GW

The quiet, nonhostile atheists are not the ones heard about, so this is selection bias. The theists offended probably do meet unjustified hostility from the vocal and hostile atheists, so in this case it's a very weak sign of being deserving.

In some situations, such as leading a group, if you meet unreasonable hostility or dislike everyone, yes, there is something wrong with that your leading abilities. Labeling assholes as such would be making the fundamental attribution error.

Comment by gyokuro on Public Service Announcement Collection · 2013-06-27T20:59:22.171Z · LW · GW

Which might mean: By declining to do favors/tasks for people, you may feel like a selfish person, but limiting what work you take on you will reduce your stress, increase the quality of your work, and and increase your status. Plus you don't feel used or resent being helpful.

A good strategy could be to decline first, check schedules, then accept if possible: "I may be able to do that, but let me check my schedule first." Good for many situations.

Comment by gyokuro on Group Rationality Diary, June 1-30 · 2013-06-18T20:11:21.339Z · LW · GW

Thanks! The 7-minute workout sounds reasonable and I might consider adding elements of it into my 4-minute abs workout I have already. It wouldn't replace running altogether since 1) I enjoy running, so it is not time lost and 2) I'm training for 5k cross country races.

Comment by gyokuro on Group Rationality Diary, June 1-30 · 2013-06-17T18:51:58.150Z · LW · GW

I've been using HabitRPG for around a month now to increase the amount of exercise I do and decrease the amount of chocolate I consume. It's caused successful habit formation—I've reduced the motivation needed to do unpleasant strength exercises and 3+ mile runs, even on days where I get no points for completing them. I have little success with decreasing my chocolate consumption, partly because I eat first and pay for it with the game-gold later. I'll keep using this system.

HabitRPG may work for me because I have freakishly great self-motivation and this helps me channel it. It's also my to-do list, though the site crashes with annoying frequency.

Comment by gyokuro on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013 · 2013-05-04T23:31:33.328Z · LW · GW

The recent xkcd supports that small hacks have a large time-saving potential.

Comment by gyokuro on Four Tips for Public Speaking · 2013-04-16T00:15:30.598Z · LW · GW

(1) ties into the adage "Say it strong, even if you're wrong." Speaking quietly only compounds the problem.

Comment by gyokuro on Post Request Thread · 2013-04-12T00:54:45.889Z · LW · GW

Related: Should I alter my Big 5 personality traits?

Comment by gyokuro on Post Request Thread · 2013-04-12T00:52:52.079Z · LW · GW

Similar for music and other arts. Despite the lack of science, the successful teachers tend to produce the best students (or they wouldn't be successful). Yes, this forces each new teacher to start from scratch, but old, good teachers should be fairly trustworthy after years of internalized, natural experiments.

Comment by gyokuro on How do you interpret your "% positive"? · 2013-04-07T01:10:23.689Z · LW · GW

To find your older posts use Wei Dai's tool.

Comment by gyokuro on [LINK] Westerners may be terrible experimental psychology subjects · 2013-02-27T05:56:18.989Z · LW · GW

It's been repeated somewhat. Joseph Henrich explains his methodology in his paper here. He used UCLA grad students because of their similar community closeness, offering $160 (2.3 days of wages) vs 20 soles, which is supposedly the Machiguenga equivalent. It was compared to tests done by another group in other non-western locations (Tokyo and Java), which show similar results to those of the UCLA students.

Comment by gyokuro on The mathematical universe: the map that is the territory · 2013-01-09T01:01:46.810Z · LW · GW

As a teenager, I don't see how it can be horror. I thought it was inspiring, honestly.

Comment by gyokuro on You can't signal to rubes · 2013-01-02T00:01:10.873Z · LW · GW

On this site, rube generally means 'red cube', and I had to look up the word to figure out what you meant here. Though this still makes a bit of sense--you can't signal to red cubes either.

Comment by gyokuro on Notes on Psychopathy · 2012-12-22T21:41:37.474Z · LW · GW

Huh, I always assumed I was a psychopath, but now that seems like giving myself way too much credit for being mildly odd. Is there any test online to check?

Comment by gyokuro on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 · 2012-12-22T21:30:44.009Z · LW · GW

Do strands of hair really become thicker over time? I doubt this.

Comment by gyokuro on Open Thread, December 16-31, 2012 · 2012-12-16T19:47:55.017Z · LW · GW

Yeah, It wouldn't be a way to win, since in the original problem you could throw a coin and base your decision on that. Average gain of $500,500 isn't so bad, but not nearly as good as $1,000,000 from one-boxing. You're right, it's not a resolution to the paradox, but if the situation is changed it's a possible way of winning.

I guess I'm looking for ways to beat Omega, and I'm trying to figure out if this would be one of them. Something like "harnessing the power of random"?

Comment by gyokuro on Open Thread, December 16-31, 2012 · 2012-12-16T06:47:10.165Z · LW · GW

About Newcomb's problem + something non-deterministic:

If the contents of box B are increased so that B > A, it seems like by basing the choice of one-boxing or two-boxing off of a quantum coin toss, one could limit Omega's predicting powers from 100% accuracy to a mere coin toss with 50% accuracy.

Where A has $1000 and B has $2000, the average payoff would be $1500 the coin toss ($0 or $3000) versus $1000 by one-boxing and $0 by two-boxing in a way Omega can predict.

Has something like this been considered as a possible resolution?

Comment by gyokuro on Group rationality diary, 8/20/12 · 2012-08-21T20:51:21.794Z · LW · GW

100 pages left of GEB-- the last few days I've read 300 pages, the only problem is not comprehending half of it.

Also, I started writing daily for 750words.com after hearing about it from OnTheOtherHandle in this. I've kept it up for 20 days so far and will try to keep doing it-- My writing won't improve by doing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness, but if I have emails/essays to write I draft them there. Since I procrastinate the most on writing tasks, this encourages starting right away. When school starts I might stop using it, but I hope I find time.

Comment by gyokuro on Open Thread, August 16-31, 2012 · 2012-08-19T03:29:27.294Z · LW · GW

This happens to me as well-- I was shocked recently when someone pointed out some people I interact with daily are on the black side of the spectrum. It just doesn't occur to me.

Comment by gyokuro on Admissions Essay Help? · 2012-08-02T06:57:33.569Z · LW · GW

Ah, I was confusing the two. Thanks for the clarification.

Comment by gyokuro on Admissions Essay Help? · 2012-08-02T05:13:23.700Z · LW · GW

you might want to go to community college for a couple years and then transfer to UC Berkeley or UCLA.

The transfer program applies to all the UC's... except for UCLA and UC Berkeley. This summer I took two classes at a California city college, and most of the students were trying to transfer to UCSB, which also will be unavailable for transfer in the near future. The classes (PSY 100 and ANTH 103) were worse than the AP classes I've taken at the high school, and honestly some students thought Japan was Korea and India was Africa. Probably lamer.

Comment by gyokuro on Group rationality diary, 6/11/12 · 2012-06-17T18:13:42.419Z · LW · GW

I learned how to juggle three objects because I wanted to increase my coordination and skill at catching/throwing spherical objects (it didn't help with frisbees). I can show off this new skill, and have more confidence that allows me to stop dodging balls thrown at my head and successfully catch them instead. It's enjoyable, and I've started juggling in between working to move around and relax, hopefully increasing my mood/productivity (I haven't measured).

It didn't take very long to learn this basic skill, maybe 10 hours until the low-hanging fruit were eaten.

Comment by gyokuro on [META] Alternatives to rot13 and karma sinks · 2012-04-19T02:21:05.836Z · LW · GW

For fun, I learned to read rot13 semi-fluently. It's an exercise that makes me look forward to spoilers so I can practice reading them. Serving its purpose? No, but it's much more entertaining.

Comment by gyokuro on Rationality Quotes April 2012 · 2012-04-10T00:49:18.831Z · LW · GW

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force -- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

--Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Comment by gyokuro on Welcome to LessWrong (For highschoolers) · 2012-04-01T04:57:42.392Z · LW · GW

1) I'm 16, a sophomore in high school.

2) I thought that LW counted as enhancing my education, so a lot of that (good for disguised procrastination, but procrastination can be productive!) Also I go to a Music and Arts academy each weekend, where I learn music theory/history and volunteer. In the summer I want to volunteer for a professor at UCSB doing independent research, so I'm working on contacting a few. Besides that, nothing college application-noteworthy. In high school: I'm taking 3 AP classes and English 110 this year. In the summer I'll take two city college classes, and in junior and senior year I'm doing the IB program (6-7 classes for two years).

3) My parents are highly educated and nicely skeptical of the world, so maybe rational, just not rationalists. I have a good friend who competes in the USAJMO and enjoys talking to me about what I read here, except has no interest in this actual site. I'd call him my chavruta.

4) Perhaps psychology? Or chemistry? Preferably a science. Living in academia for the rest of my life would be great. Right now I'm looking at the UC schools and a few private ones (Stanford, Ivy League), but I haven't researched yet.

5) Ooh, I don't think I want to skip college. I don't have any good ideas right now, do you know where I can find some?

6) My intro post

Comment by gyokuro on New front page · 2012-03-30T05:03:34.929Z · LW · GW

The sequence articles have so many links to other articles that it's impossible for me to read one without spawning five distantly related ones from different topics or sequences. Even if I wanted to be linear... (has no control when it comes to links)

Which makes reading them awesome. But patchwork-y

Comment by gyokuro on New front page · 2012-03-30T03:38:20.586Z · LW · GW

Having to scroll down to see the rest of the information is annoying, and I can just barely see "Welcome...", which seems like it should be the first thing I see. It could be a lot better, and I like the idea of halving the image.

Comment by gyokuro on How would you take over Rome? · 2012-03-29T00:54:54.310Z · LW · GW

I know plenty of smart people, and I'm intelligent as well. I'd like to believe I'd gain power by cult-godhood, seduction, etc, but I can't see my smart friends succeeding at a high rate in my mental model of how they would behave. That makes me reluctant to believe that I would have any better chance. Some of the comments sound cocky, and require much too many things to go right. If we were properly pessimistic...

That being said, a 21st century timetraveler has a significantly greater chance of winning than an average Roman, just not a good one.

Comment by gyokuro on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12 · 2012-03-28T02:20:19.525Z · LW · GW

404 not found, something is wrong here..

Edit: never mind, now it is found! Thank you.

Comment by gyokuro on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 · 2012-03-18T00:41:24.047Z · LW · GW

Plotting a story, a garden, or a plan? Only the garden one is truly off-topic.

Comment by gyokuro on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10 · 2012-03-15T02:45:37.459Z · LW · GW

I was annoyed that I wasn't catching the clues about H&C other people pointed out, even after rereading some chapters.

But it did make me wonder if there are definite clues at all, and if Eliezer had written so far with a specific person in mind. When he chooses to reveal who it is, he could have a list of plausible H&Cs and randomnumber it. The clues are vague enough that massive hindsight bias seems possible.

Now, he probably wouldn't do this, considering that writing five plots is much harder than one, but if I were a talented enough writer I would try. Then laugh at everyone attempting to guess ahead of time.

Comment by gyokuro on Rationality Quotes March 2012 · 2012-03-02T04:39:18.652Z · LW · GW

"I've never ever felt wise," Derk said frankly. "But I suppose it is a tempation, to stare into distance and make people think you are."
"It's humbug," said the dragon. "It's also stupid. It stops you learning more."

Diana Wynne Jones, Dark Lord of Derkholm

Comment by gyokuro on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) · 2011-12-26T19:31:18.697Z · LW · GW

Hi, I'm 15, so sadly cannot say much of my education yet, but at least I've read a fair deal. I find the ideas on this site somewhat unappreciated among my age group, but fascinating for me. I've lurked here for close to a year, but I'm irrationally shy of speaking over the internet. I hope to contribute if I find what I think interesting, regardless of my adverseness to commenting. Thank you for the welcome!