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Comment by irarseil on Phonology | Sekko · 2022-02-05T14:26:42.110Z · LW · GW

I know it's phonology and spelling rather than phonetics you're mainly talking about in this post, but you talk about allophones anyway, so I feel I may ask this. Will tone / pitch or stress play a role in the language?

Comment by irarseil on Why I want to make a logical language · 2022-02-05T14:21:43.622Z · LW · GW

Do you intend Sekko to be as expressive as natlangs? Where are you envisioning Sekko will get its vocabulary from?

Comment by irarseil on rhollerith_dot_com's Shortform · 2022-01-21T16:12:01.052Z · LW · GW

Is the order (pseudo-)random? Does it have a hidden meaning I might not be aware of? What's your purpose sharing this?

Comment by irarseil on Xylitol's Shortform · 2021-10-17T10:21:48.857Z · LW · GW

Fixed. Thank you.

Comment by irarseil on Xylitol's Shortform · 2021-10-15T15:03:59.616Z · LW · GW

(Formato edited) There could also be effects of decreasing demand for non-AI-generated analogues, because of potential consumers of this kind of content being satisfied with these virtual, AI-generated, no-one-was-harmed analogues, hence reducing harm. I can see how sex with real children leads to moral condemnation and to legal punishment. But if no real child is ever involved in this it seems to me that it's an instance of "disgust leads to moral condemnation leads to legal punishment / prohibition of the material".

Comment by irarseil on Learning in layers of muscle memory · 2021-07-23T14:47:47.466Z · LW · GW

I can confirm that my maths teachers at primary school were terrible: if you stepped a little bit outside what's in the book, they were absolutely lost.

They were a lot better in secondary school, possibly because they had a much stronger mathematical education (secondary school teachers usually have a university degree in the subject they teach or in a closely related field, at least in my country).

I also absolutely agree with what you say about overconfidence and the need to revisit a subject / layer instead of thinking "it's over for good".

Comment by irarseil on Ask Not "How Are You Doing?" · 2021-07-22T19:58:22.916Z · LW · GW

If 'what are you doing?' generalises, I'd say people would end up answering just the same way people answer to 'how are you?' or 'how are you doing?'. In fact, in Spanish '¿qué haces?' or in Greek 'Τι κάνεις;' (both literally meaning 'what are you doing?') can be used, depending on formality and closeness, as greetings, and the usual answers are as shallow as 'fine'. In other languages, 'where are you going?' is a customary greeting and again it's not expected to be answered with an honest description of where you're physically going to, but rather with another more or less fixed expression similar to 'fine'.

Comment by irarseil on Learning in layers of muscle memory · 2021-07-22T19:42:15.244Z · LW · GW

Here's one article which shows a different view on this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-school

FWIW, my experience is that I learn better going up and down the different layers, rather than exhausting and completely "automating" the lower layers before attempting to go to the advanced material on the upper layers.

Plus, some experience with something what you're learning is useful for is a great motivator and can help focus.

Comment by irarseil on MikkW's Shortform · 2021-06-13T20:35:53.988Z · LW · GW

You have an idea of how likely something is to happen, or an estimate of a figure, or a model of something in the real world (e.g: Peter is a guy who loves cats). You happen to get new information about this something (e.g: you see Peter viciously killing a cute kitten). You'd most likely update, with both epistemical consequences (you'd probably stop believing Peter is the cat-loving guy you thought) and instrumental or practical consequences (you wouldn't ask him to look after your cats while you are away on holiday). The way I see it, Bayes' Theorem tells you how much you should update your beliefs to take into account all the evidence you have, to be right as much of the time as possible, given the limited information you have. Obviously, as they say about information systems in general, "garbage in garbage out", which means you should worry about getting reliable information on the things you care most about, because even with the best possible update algorithm, if the information you get is biased, your beliefs and actions will not be right. I don't know if your criticism of the importance attached to Bayes' Theorem is because you feel other aspects are neglected or what exactly is your rant. Could you please elaborate a bit?

Comment by irarseil on What are your greatest one-shot life improvements? · 2021-06-05T23:33:35.129Z · LW · GW

I'd be curious to know if you kept on doing that and, if so, what the results were.

Comment by irarseil on (Trying To) Study Textbooks Effectively: A Year of Experimentation · 2021-05-28T18:51:50.605Z · LW · GW

A similar approach has worked for me better than a more split-time approach. I'm aware of the forgetting curve and I certainly forget a lot of the contents afterwards, but the global structure seems to remain in the brain and changes to the way of thinking or of solving problems after these intense study sessions also seem to remain for longer than the details.

I've also tried doing some incremental reading / incremental learning and although the contents stay for longer, I don't feel the same kind of enlightenment or learning taking place. It feels a bit like wasting time, even if I'm learning.

I don't know how you'd approach maintenance for skills you acquired but forgot. Sometimes I've learnt something which has the skill I want to review as a prerequisite, using the same method, but reviewing the old material as needed, and it sort of did the trick.

Comment by irarseil on (Trying To) Study Textbooks Effectively: A Year of Experimentation · 2021-05-28T14:15:28.991Z · LW · GW

Thank you for the interesting article. I completely agree that curiosity ("the spark") is an important component of learning, and no technique will give it on its own. Have you experimented with learning one textbook or article at a time vs learning several concurrently (alternating between them)? If so, what are your conclusions on this? I know the relevant results of spaced repetition, the test effect, distributed practice vs massed practice, interleaving... but in practice how does it translate to a sustainable learning routine? How often do you change subjects when studying more than one thing at a time?

Comment by irarseil on [deleted post] 2021-05-17T23:13:18.256Z

Your comment looks surprisingly fit for https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SfbesWBQQY3RJkJKa/what-would-you-store-to-maximize-value-in-100-years-a, which makes me think your intention may have been to submit it on the other post.

Comment by irarseil on Anger · 2021-04-26T17:43:42.424Z · LW · GW

I'd say 'anger', as many other such psychological constructs, is ambiguous and can refer either to a trait / feature (an anger-prone person, a person who tends to become angry easily) or to a state (a person who is momentarily angry). The same distinction can be made vis-à-vis other emotions (sadness, happiness, disgust, anxiety...) and perhaps personality traits. I'd propose the terms 'momentarily angry' and 'anger-prone' (and similarly for the other emotions: momentarily sad and sadness-prone, etc) if there's a need to disambiguate, but not being a native English speaker I'm not really sure of them being fit.

Comment by irarseil on Language Learning and the Dark Arts. · 2021-04-25T21:08:11.137Z · LW · GW

Duolingo now has more languages than when the OP was written, among them Mandarin Chinese.

Comment by irarseil on All is fair in love and war, on Zero-sum games in life · 2021-04-17T09:02:38.031Z · LW · GW

Is this sentence correct, or is a verb missing after 'employee'? 'every extra dollar the employee is a dollar that the employer could have and vice versa'

I also think one of the are's is extra: 'Two questions that are worth asking: How important are the results of these games are to our well-being?'

Comment by irarseil on What are examples of 'scientific' studies that contradict what you believe about yourself? · 2020-08-04T16:07:34.575Z · LW · GW

The science about how commuting long distances makes us unhappy and less healthy made me change my beliefs and also take action. I used to downplay the amount of suffering and health issues that accompany regular commuting, plus the risks of e.g. driving a car on a daily basis, especially very early when I was still incompletely awaken.


Reading about this and all the invaluable articles by lukeprog on lesswrong ("How to be happy" and others) made me form a more accurate belief of what really brings about happiness and satisfaction to our lives.


I looked for the flat I currently live in a walkable distance (c. 15 minutes) from my office, and my life has been vastly improved: better sleep, more exercise, more free time, and a better mood overall.

Comment by irarseil on What are examples of 'scientific' studies that contradict what you believe about yourself? · 2020-08-03T16:17:45.796Z · LW · GW

The evidence seems to be mixed, with successive experiments contradicting (or at least nuancing) one another, as a quick 'Spoilers reduce enjoyment' Google search shows. For example: https://www.livescience.com/amp/53126-spoilers-can-ruin-movie-enjoyment.html

I really appreciate your bringing this topic as it has allowed me to update in the direction of worrying less about the possibility of coming across a spoiler: upon further reflection, I conclude that, at least for me personally, they do not seem to affect my enjoyment as much as I thought they did, and in some cases, they even add to the experience rather than subtract from it. I have an issue with face recognition, which leads me to getting lost in the plot of e.g. movies with a lot of different characters. Knowing part of the plot in advance helps me being engaged.

This was supposed to be a reply to the comment by Mati_Roy, but I am not familiar with the interface and have ended up creating a new 'orphan' comment. My apologies.

Comment by irarseil on Gratification: a useful concept, maybe new · 2019-08-27T23:27:06.677Z · LW · GW

In which ways is the concept "gratificación" different from the well established "intrinsic motivation", where you like doing an activity for its intrinsic enjoyment rather than for its usefulness as an instrument towards a goal or its leading to an external reward?

Comment by irarseil on Thomas C. Schelling's "Strategy of Conflict" · 2012-06-30T15:14:23.533Z · LW · GW

I think you should be aware that lesswrong is read in countries other than the USA, and writing about "our planes" in a forum where not everyone is American to mean "American planes" can lead to misunderstandings or can discourage others from taking part in the conversation.