Posts

[Book Suggestions] Summer Reading for Younglings. 2012-05-12T16:57:51.953Z
[Link] ASPERGERS/PUA official university research project 2012-01-05T04:51:03.415Z
[LINK] Gödel, Escher, Bach read through starting on Reddit 2011-12-28T15:37:24.077Z

Comments

Comment by Karmakaiser on Open Thread: December 2011 · 2013-09-24T03:08:48.207Z · LW · GW

Still not regretting, what do I win?

Comment by Karmakaiser on Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] · 2012-11-18T01:40:09.393Z · LW · GW

One of the benefits of being way out on the fringe is that no one has bothered to make arguments against you yet, so you get to be right. You get to be a critic without being critiqued in turn. Good times.

I like this and I think I'm prone to forgetting this for a few months, then asking questions then realizing plenty of important bits haven't been thought through.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He's not.] · 2012-11-18T01:34:29.875Z · LW · GW

How resistant are these generalizations from fictional evidence?

Comment by Karmakaiser on Random LW-parodying Statement Generator · 2012-09-13T03:07:29.572Z · LW · GW

You're too conservative Konkvistador,

I'm to the right of Konkvistador and I think this is a fully general argument contra Konkvistador.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Random LW-parodying Statement Generator · 2012-09-13T02:21:08.025Z · LW · GW

No. Meta has a infinite regress or you just aren't meta enough about it.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Preventing discussion from being watered down by an "endless September" user influx. · 2012-09-13T00:47:26.163Z · LW · GW

Echoing komponisto, my job is incredibly non demanding of my cognitive resources so I constantly listening to audiobooks, youtube channels, and TCC/TMS Lectures at 2x speed. Over the course of an 8 hr work day I can finish about 200 pages at reasonable comprehension.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-08-31T18:41:36.389Z · LW · GW

I'll be frank.

The black dog is stronger than I. My mother died in May and I took on these projects in an attempt to stay busy and not depressed. Unfortunately all I did was damage my reputation by appearing flighty and flaky. After losing about 60$ on Beeminder, I realized that any special projects must be put on hold until I sort myself out. It's a good project to do, Hanson has a lot of unique insights, but I cannot, for now at least, do them.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-08-03T17:02:29.954Z · LW · GW

I got sidetracked by Evil Real Life Issues of Local Importance and didn't make much progress in July on a Comprehensive post about a topic (my first post was going to be about the topic "If truth is lovecraftian (that is there exist real basilisks, Why Use Truth, this the recent post as a fulcrum and using other posts to support the theme) that approach is proving to complex for my available time commitment so I'm just going to break it up into shorter posts. That should allow me to get something out next week and produce a summary of large-ish chunks of posts and how they relate to each other assuming the Evil Local Important Issues have truly gone away and I can get some hobby non work focus stuff done. Depressingly I didn't have enough time for Summer Projects as I thought so I'll only be able to sum up a small amount of the whole as classes begin in the fall and then I'll be juggling work/school life and I simply won't have energy for anything but short posts.

Sorry for the delay, but it looks like Hofstadter's Law has struck me. You'll most likely see progress intermittently with larger swaths being done during academic breaks. I honestly thought my summer was more free, again, whoops.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Links about naturalism · 2012-07-09T15:48:51.910Z · LW · GW

This sounds like Alain de Boton's Religion for Atheists without the bullshit Temple to Atheism and Agape Restaurants.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6 · 2012-06-22T19:27:48.096Z · LW · GW

This is a good idea. I am really in support of the graphs. There are not enough graphs here lately.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Blogs by LWers · 2012-06-22T14:27:07.382Z · LW · GW

My naive introspection says yes. I seem to remember someone being excited he was a LWer.

Comment by Karmakaiser on The Power of Reinforcement · 2012-06-21T17:40:59.245Z · LW · GW

I think I remember that. Weren't you replying to yourself over and over again taking different sides?

Comment by Karmakaiser on Thwarting a Catholic conversion? · 2012-06-19T15:09:47.857Z · LW · GW

I'm actually going to the July rationality minicamp,

Please, please, please blog this. I would love reading it.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Glenn Beck discusses the Singularity, cites SI researchers · 2012-06-13T12:59:47.463Z · LW · GW

Beck's rant proposing that the political left is aligned with a nebulous big-government/big-business anti-technological movement may be mostly rhetorical hot air, but it did make me wonder . ..

I get the same feeling with Thiel noticing our lack of techno-optimism in our culture compared with our optimism at 1950. Doesn't he largely blame entrenched interests putting up regulation to stop new start ups?

Comment by Karmakaiser on Rationality Quotes May 2012 · 2012-06-13T12:55:35.884Z · LW · GW

I asked Konkvistador if he endorsed the Moldbuggery statement in IRC and he liked it. But I think I want to decontextualize the attitudes toward bias and debiasing So I can better fit different authors/posters together. :/

I've come up with /fatalism/pessimism/elitism/rational schizophrenia/optimism . With that breakdown I can put Konvistador in the same category with Plato. I love the name rational schizophrenia too much to give it up.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Glenn Beck discusses the Singularity, cites SI researchers · 2012-06-13T06:59:28.784Z · LW · GW

It will go boom and look bright. I dunno what else, I just clear the floors.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Glenn Beck discusses the Singularity, cites SI researchers · 2012-06-13T06:45:49.923Z · LW · GW

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Strikes me as just statement statement not over or under (I'm assuming this is your reference?)

Comment by Karmakaiser on This post is for sacrificing my credibility! · 2012-06-13T06:28:42.648Z · LW · GW

What do you think of the Greek Othordox? Nassim Taleb endorses them for aesthetic reasons and for the fact that their understanding of God is Apophatic primarily and thus doesn't intrude on real world near beliefs.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Glenn Beck discusses the Singularity, cites SI researchers · 2012-06-13T05:26:56.987Z · LW · GW

Disregard me: This is an inaccurate statement, not an understatement. I still maintain the understatement of the century probably happened sometime around WWII.

Better candidate:

This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. - Neville Chamberlain

Comment by Karmakaiser on Glenn Beck discusses the Singularity, cites SI researchers · 2012-06-13T05:24:30.988Z · LW · GW

Every Right Wing Neo Reactionary Lesswrongian is now under suspicion.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Glenn Beck discusses the Singularity, cites SI researchers · 2012-06-13T05:23:42.953Z · LW · GW

I have been impressed on his understanding of Hayek. He knows his Road to Serfdom.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-06-11T19:46:00.681Z · LW · GW

My education/math level is college sophomore with an intro C and calc I class under my belt so anything I do would have to be basic grunt work. My private projects were just goign to be getting a head start on fall classes with SICP and Calc II.

Within those parameters of my own usefulness, yea I'm cool doing stuff for LW/SIAI/CMR . PM me if you got suggestions.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-06-11T18:01:02.110Z · LW · GW

No problem if he approves I'll post a top level discussion thread letting people know what's going on and what shape he would like it to take etc.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-06-11T17:49:32.554Z · LW · GW

My email included a link to this comment chain so he'll be aware of all this. I'll let him dictate how and where the summary is posted for the RH sequences.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-06-11T17:36:47.409Z · LW · GW

Cross post sounds good. Every important sequence index could follow a "Humans guide to words" like summary.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-06-11T17:25:12.272Z · LW · GW

Eh, it's his blog so I'd feel better making it for his site and just linking his index in the sequences.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-06-11T17:14:20.121Z · LW · GW

EY also posts links to other useful posts of his for reference but I find reading the sequences in indexed order is easier than reading tags or chronological order. Every blogger has important ideas that they want to say and sometimes tags don't do everything you need them to. Like EY's posts, he installed a karma/voting system late in his blogging career and so his early posts in particular may be unduly ignored.

I imagine it'd be boring to index your own posts in your blog into an ebook like format since you already know your ideas. Since I haven't read all of OB it might even be fun for me to do it. I wouldn't be procrastinating to read OB anymore. It'd be working. Yay!

I'll let RH be the final arbitrator since it's his blog and just email him asking if he wants something like this done. I'm a bored undergrad in need of a project so why not?

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-06-11T15:51:05.137Z · LW · GW

Speaking of OB, We have an expansive list of Eliezer's posts organized by topic but no such sequence exists for Robin Hanson. His posts on status seeking are incredibly important for human rationality.

I purpose that we produce a sequence devoted to RH's posts. If someone who read most of his posts can point me in the right direction I volunteer to do it. My summer's off from classes, I just have work and then my private projects and public project would be good for me to signal usefulness to LW, OB and the communities associated with them.

EDIT: RH gave me his blessing. I'm reading OB. Just crossed through to 2007. Writing major themes and interconnections as I go.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Intellectual insularity and productivity · 2012-06-11T15:44:53.658Z · LW · GW

On your math point:

Patrick offored in september last year to do tutoring

http://lesswrong.com/lw/7vd/free_tutoring_in_mathprogramming/

Maybe we should build a network of people who'd apply enough peer pressure and guidance to replicate the level of pressure present in a classroom to get stuff done and learn math. We shouldn't overload Patrick but would it be helpful to have LW affiliated University of Reddit, or Udemy or even just Skype class.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Rationality Quotes May 2012 · 2012-06-09T16:58:17.520Z · LW · GW

I really like summarizing to make sure I get things right. Watch as I prove it!

When dealing with real world morality and goal seeking behavior we seem forced to stare in the face the following facts:

  • We are very biased.

  • We could be more rational

  • Our rationality isn't particularly good at morality.

Complicating this are the following:

  • Heuristics generally work. How much rationality do you need to out compete moral and procedural heuristics?

  • Just how rational can we get. Can low IQ people become much more rational, or are we forced to believe in a cognitive and rationality based elite?

  • Should we trust moral reasoning or heuristics at all?

I've seen the following conclusions drawn so far by people who take bias seriously: (There may be more, this is what I've encountered. Also the first two are just jokes I couldn't resist)

  • Lovecraftian: The world is ruled by evil Gods beyond imagination. I have seen too much! Go back into the warm milkbath of ignorance! Chew your cud you cows and never think of the slaughter to come!

  • Existientialism: Everything sucks forever but let's not kill ourselves because it's better to push a rock up a mountain or something. We can never know anything and nothing can ever mean anything so we should talk about it forever. Give me Tenure! Linkin Park and Tenure!

  • Moldbuggery: Bias is bad, real fucking bad. The current systems don't encourage rationality all that much either. Only a cognitive elite can ever become debiased enough to run things and they should only be trusted if we get a system that aligns with the interests of the subjects. (Ex: Aurini, GLADOS, Konkvistador, Moldbug, Nick Land)

[I had a section on Robin Hanson, but I don't think I understand it well enough to summarize on reflection, so "This Page Left Blank"]

  • Old Whiggish: We are very biased and ought to trust intuition, tradition and reason roughly in equal measure. We pride reason too much and so people who try to be perfectly rational are worse reasoners than those who allow a little superstition in their life. Our Heuristics are better than we think. If it works, we should keep it even if it isn't true. (Ex: Taleb, Derbyshire, Burke, Marcus Aurelius. Almost Jonathan Haidt post "The Righteous Mind" but not quite)

  • Rational Schizophrenia: A pure cynicism about how things are should be combined with an idealism of how to act. [See above for Multithreaded's advice]

  • Yudkowskyianism: Bias is very bad but our prospects for debiasing is less pessimistic than either of those make it out to be. Rationality is like marital arts, any can learn to use leverage regardless of cognitive strength. Though there are clear ways in which we fail, now that we have Bayesian Probability theory derived from pure logic we know how to think about these issues. To abuse a CS Lewis quote: "The Way has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." Try it before giving up because something is only undoable until somebody does it. (Ex: Lukeprog, Yudkowsky)

How does that strike you as the current "Rationality landscape?" Again I'm largely new here as a community member so I could be mischaractizing or leaving ideas out.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Rationality Quotes May 2012 · 2012-06-09T14:39:14.851Z · LW · GW

I thought about this on and off the rest of yesterday and my belief is that these two statements are key.

The Alt Right is correct in it's diagnosis of societal cancers [...]

In short, I love idealism.

What I get from this is the divide between epistemological and instrumental. Using that classic lesswrong framework I've come to this as a representation of your views:

In order to understand the world, if you are going to err, err on the side of Cynicism. But, if you are going to live in it and make it better, you have to err on the side of Idealism.

Cynicism is epistemologically useful but instrumentally desctructive (Explained by the fact you agree with alt-right in the pessimistic view of the world and the reasons things are not as good as they could be.)

Idealism is instrumentally useful but epistemologically destructive. (Explained by the fact you regard ideology-as-faith as vitally useful, but that doesn't make faith true.)

Is this a fair reading?

Comment by Karmakaiser on Rationality Quotes May 2012 · 2012-06-08T15:38:35.685Z · LW · GW

What positive beliefs about politics do you have in light of your fear of necromancy and cancer? My intuition says some form of pragmatic Burkean conservatism but I don't want to typecast you.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Rationality Quotes May 2012 · 2012-06-08T15:23:38.744Z · LW · GW

I'm following you from your links in "Nerds are Nuts" and I would like to restate your second paragraph to make sure I have your beliefs rights.

The reason the alt-right is scary is not because they are wrong in their beliefs about reality, but because they are correct about the flaws they see in modern-leftism and this makes their proposals all the more dangerous. Just because a doctor can diagnose what ails you, it does not follow that he knows how to treat you. The Alt Right is correct in it's diagnosis of societal cancers but their proposals look depressingly closer to leeching than to chemo-therapy.

Is this an accurate restatement?

Comment by Karmakaiser on Son of Shit Rationalists Say · 2012-06-05T18:12:42.718Z · LW · GW

For some reason my elephant desperately wants a Portlandia type series set in SI headquarters.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Rationality Quotes June 2012 · 2012-06-05T17:20:42.942Z · LW · GW

Jaynes begins it with a caution that this is an upper undergrad to graduate level text, not knowing a great deal of probability in the first place, I stopped reading and picked up a more elementary text. What do you think are the core pre-reqs to reading Jaynes?

Comment by Karmakaiser on Seeking ethical rules-of-thumb for comparison · 2012-06-04T17:24:46.534Z · LW · GW

You are not disturbed by things, but by the impressions you have of those things.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Rationality Quotes June 2012 · 2012-06-04T15:41:30.576Z · LW · GW

Doubtful. Money already exists, but it doesn't exist my pocket.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Seeking ethical rules-of-thumb for comparison · 2012-06-04T14:58:06.106Z · LW · GW

A more nuanced view of going meta might be the Hansonian method of collecting a large amount puzzles and only going meta to find explanations that leave the fewest mysteries and greatest number of accurate predictions. The exhortation to wait until you have a large collection of mysteries that may have common threads seems to be essential to the way he thinks.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Computer Science and Programming: Links and Resources · 2012-05-30T20:43:11.271Z · LW · GW

Additional Resource:

A organization of textbooks complied from an /r/compsci thread

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vMZCJl5lsMYxnBnYPj24DjrCL7qjN9tEVqxv2N9VWdY/edit?pli=1

Comment by Karmakaiser on Most transferable skills? · 2012-05-17T14:14:58.107Z · LW · GW

Do you advise associating with those who can form a mentor/student relationship or do you advise focusing on a high status friend/ lower status friend relationship?

Comment by Karmakaiser on How many people here agree with Holden? [Actually, who agrees with Holden?] · 2012-05-17T14:06:23.460Z · LW · GW

Could you expand a bit more on why you think the epistemic habits are suspect compared to previous staffers?

Comment by Karmakaiser on A wild theist platonist appears, to ask about the path · 2012-05-16T18:56:42.657Z · LW · GW

On first blush that seems to be a semantic argument. It doesn't seem you actually disagree with EY, but rather you seem to object to the use of the Physics and put in its place "Physical law" and put "mathematical objects" in place of "mathematics."

Is this an accurate description of what you are trying to say?

Comment by Karmakaiser on [Book Suggestions] Summer Reading for Younglings. · 2012-05-13T03:57:03.002Z · LW · GW

The level is Boxcar Kids, Nancy Drew, RL Stein etc. Some suggestions have been hugely useful, some will be useful in middle school. No big deal.

I've already downloaded all the series she likes so I'm willing to put things above her reading level (it's not like she won't learn to read at that level eventually).

It was a good catch though that I was asking specifically about reading level and not just age. For her age she's about average, thought she does lag in math (I'm making sure she picks that ground up), but she does have the blessing of enjoying books.

Giving her a respect for rationality and science would be nice. But really I'll be happy if she stopped talking about the Bieber. I just can't compete with the guy's hair helmet.

EDIT: In Before Ender's Game is higher than her reading level.

I know. I know. I'm putting your above reading level stuff in there too. She'll have a small library in her pocket and I'll forever be the favorite uncle. Muahaha.

Comment by Karmakaiser on On Juvenile Fiction · 2012-05-13T02:59:08.984Z · LW · GW

For the majority of kids, the best way to stop them from reading a book is simply to leave it on a bookshelf and not mention it.

Comment by Karmakaiser on [Book Suggestions] Summer Reading for Younglings. · 2012-05-12T21:56:54.984Z · LW · GW

Sold!

Comment by Karmakaiser on [Book Suggestions] Summer Reading for Younglings. · 2012-05-12T21:07:54.998Z · LW · GW

Why is sci-fi preferable here at all?

Pure Uncle Bias in this case.

Comment by Karmakaiser on [Book Suggestions] Summer Reading for Younglings. · 2012-05-12T18:09:53.224Z · LW · GW

I intend to not be too pushy. Just recommending books that have themes I know she'd enjoy. Thanks for the recommendation (books are currently on the reader now) and thanks for the warning, I'll keep it in mind.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Most transferable skills? · 2012-05-12T17:55:30.315Z · LW · GW

As a practical matter Theater has been shown to increase empathy for those on the Autism spectrum (hi!) so if you consider yourself particularly bad at empathy (also hi!) then I would personally recommend theater and improv.

http://www.sensetheatre.com/pdf/researcharticle.pdf

Comment by Karmakaiser on Most transferable skills? · 2012-05-12T16:38:20.788Z · LW · GW

Why was this downvoted? It provides a link that community insiders will be aware of (the only reason I can generate for why OP is downvote worthy), but community outsiders would be completely ignorant of lukeprogs self-help posts.

Comment by Karmakaiser on Most transferable skills? · 2012-05-12T16:35:10.468Z · LW · GW

Potential Options for Measurement:

  • Length of time spent in continual focus, or flow. Extra points for activities you normally don't enjoy and thus are hard to get into flow.

  • Amount of work done deemed to be of publishable quality where publishable is not necessarily books, but can apply to code, financial reports etc. Anything that achieves a point of quality worthy of showing off to others. The quality bar will no doubt be raised over time so the amount of quality work will fluctuate but some sense of progress can be gained.

  • The amount of times a habit is attempt before it becomes automatic. How many times have you tried to exercise before it finally stuck? How many times have you decided "I will write for X hours a day" before that became routine? As one becomes better at general improvement the amount of failed attempts will go down.

  • How many habits do you lose when things become stressed? I know I failed this around finals, my room became messy, my cycling habit fell apart and my general nutrition became chicken-bacon pizza, beer, and Adderall. So for me personally this seems to be a sticking point as I can accrue good habits until a certain level of stress where maintaining them becomes hard.