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Comment by Huera on Reason as memetic immune disorder · 2024-09-30T16:59:18.715Z · LW · GW

I feel like a lot more direct genetic evidence has surfaced: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Those first 4 links, I think, are pretty unconvincing in isolation, but this one is fine.

[Disclaimer 1: I just linked things that I remembered off the top of my head.]

[Disclaimer 2: I think that the case for hereditarianism was quite overwhelming even 14 years ago, so you should consider me biased.]

Comment by Huera on 2024 Petrov Day Retrospective · 2024-09-29T07:14:02.301Z · LW · GW

Were it not for the big red button™ , I probably would've opted in before reading what this year's Petrov Day was about (I didn't take part, since that would risk too much precious karma). I wonder whether it would be more fitting to make the opt-in option look maximally scary or nonthreatening.

Comment by Huera on Chronic perfectionism through the eyes of school reports · 2024-06-19T20:40:30.768Z · LW · GW

I wonder how many traits there are that, for most people, are acquired responses to their environment, but for a minority are essential qualities of their nature.

Considering the poor track-record of the nurture assumption when it comes to psychological traits, I would surmise that the answer might be: almost none[1]. Even perfectionism has at least moderate genetic influences[2].

  1. ^

    Excluding traits that have close to no influence on one's life.

  2. ^

    And I would argue that the study underestimates the heritability due to measurement error, which can be a non-trivial issue when measuring personality.

Comment by Huera on Awakening · 2024-05-30T20:51:20.784Z · LW · GW

What I previously thought of as "no suffering" was actually torment which I had just gotten used to.

I've read similar sentiments expressed before, but I never quite understood them. If one starts to perceive a particular state of mind as torment, why should the conclusion be that one was wrong before? What makes the "I gained a valuable spiritual insight" hypothesis more likely than the "my mind broke in very specific way" hypothesis?

Comment by Huera on [deleted post] 2023-08-19T11:55:47.147Z

I was cognizant that I am the architect of my own mind, and used those powers.

Could you perhaps elaborate on how exactly you managed to "exotically self-modify"? Was it just the "aha!" moment you mentioned, or was it the meditation?

When I tried to do something similar a while ago (albeit probably with different methods), I just got null results. So what did you do that produced such undoubtedly strong effects?

Comment by Huera on When do "brains beat brawn" in Chess? An experiment · 2023-06-28T19:07:53.229Z · LW · GW

(My current fide rating is ~1500 elo (~37 percentile) and my peak rating was ~1700 elo (~56 percentile)).

While I'm not that good at chess myself, I think you got some things wrong, and on some I'm just being nitpicky.

My rating on lichess blitz is 1200, on rapid is 1600, which some calculator online said would place me at ~1100 ELO on the FIDE scale.

I’m quite skeptical of such conversions, but I understand you had nothing better to go on. This website (made from surveying a bunch of redditors [1]) converts your lichess blitz rating into 1005, 869 [2], 828 elo for fide standard, rapid and blitz respectively. Your rapid lichess rating would indicate 1210, 1125, 1194. Make of that, what you will.

In comparison, a chess master is ~2200, a grandmaster is ~2700.

People above 2700 are customarily considered super GM’s. I wasn’t able to download the latest rating list of the Fide website, but according to the standard rating list from september 2022 the average GM fide rating [3] is 2498.

I also have some squabbles with the way you wrote about piece relative value, but I understand you’re just oversimplifying for a layman audience. 


 

 

 

  1. ^

    I wasn’t able to find the original post.

  2. ^

    The minimum fide rating is a 1000, so anything below that is Fide unrated.

  3. ^

    Only considering players that played at least a single rated game in the last 12 months, otherwise their fide rating becomes inactive.

Comment by Huera on Open & Welcome Thread - January 2023 · 2023-01-07T21:39:51.601Z · LW · GW

I recently figured out a great way of restoring my hands to baseline functionality after they‘ve been exposed to cold for an extended period of time. It goes like this:

  1. Put your hands under warm water for a minute or so. This will make your blood vessels dilate.
  2. With your arms extended, rapidly bring your hands up and down about 10-20 times. This motion helps to improve circulation by using centrifugal force to bring blood into your hands.

I've tried this technique a few times and it seems to be vastly more effective than just using hot water alone.

I hope someone finds this helpful during the winter.

Comment by Huera on What DALL-E 2 can and cannot do · 2022-05-02T04:59:24.019Z · LW · GW

Have you tried generating images with prompts that only describe the general vibe of a picture, without hinting at the content? Something like: "The best painting in history", "A very scary drawing", "A joyous photo".

Comment by Huera on Encouragement to Instill Confidence? · 2022-02-19T06:40:40.549Z · LW · GW

Could you elaborate as to why you think "need is a strong word"?

Comment by Huera on Voting Results for the 2020 Review · 2022-02-02T06:45:42.997Z · LW · GW

The lesswrong word counter tells me that this post is, 67927 words long. Is it a mistake?

Comment by Huera on How would you learn absolute pitch? · 2022-01-30T07:07:36.633Z · LW · GW

Could you elaborate on why this study is dubious?  Is it because of the small number of participants? Is the test that was used to assess recognition of notes deeply flawed? Or maybe valproate just can’t possibly increase neuroplasticity?

I’m asking because I read this around a year ago, and to this day I’m puzzled as to why no one tried to replicate the findings.