Posts

Need help with organizing philosophy event 2015-09-08T12:19:55.108Z
[LINK] Waitbutwhy article on the history and future of space exploration, SpaceX and more 2015-09-08T11:14:43.067Z
Meetup : Saint-Petersburg Meetup 2014-12-11T12:48:52.891Z

Comments

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 · 2016-01-07T19:40:48.184Z · LW · GW

I promise to take care of my rationality skills when the work is done

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 · 2016-01-07T19:36:27.638Z · LW · GW

Thank You! You are my hero, tho I'm not your princess

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 · 2016-01-07T18:40:53.388Z · LW · GW

oops seems like I misclicked, this was off course a reply to Clarity

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 · 2016-01-07T10:39:05.100Z · LW · GW

mate thank your for your help, I hope interpals would work out there for me, The thing is I don't want to go meta on this, it's just a reminder for myself and that's it, it wasn't designed as a solution for something else

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 · 2016-01-07T09:04:11.680Z · LW · GW

I want to have 'tsuyoku naritai' tattoo and wondering how it should be written properly on hieroglyphic

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 · 2016-01-05T19:02:07.232Z · LW · GW

quanto costa

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016 · 2016-01-05T18:55:41.287Z · LW · GW

sorry, not sure if this should be posted here, but I hadn't yet found more rational strategy for my problem. If any of you guys know someone who can speak and write Japanese please contact me, I would very appreciate any help

Comment by LizzardWizzard on HPMOR and the Power of Consciousness · 2015-11-25T11:56:06.661Z · LW · GW

Based on what I have just read you have nothing to worry about

Comment by LizzardWizzard on How could one (and should one) convert someone from pseudoscience? · 2015-10-07T17:44:02.140Z · LW · GW

Good point. However most of her opinions seem to be unfalsifiable, like how I can tell if Dao technic of Inner Smile doesn't work, maybe I'm smiling to my organs not sincerely enough

Comment by LizzardWizzard on How could one (and should one) convert someone from pseudoscience? · 2015-10-05T13:36:30.447Z · LW · GW

This topic is valuable me. Every time when me and my girlfriend getting involved in argument it ends up badly and we continue on holding prior beliefs. She blames me for being too rational (In hollywood sense obv, none of my efforts to convince that the word has different meaning payed off). She is absolutely sure that when you hold a skeptical position, you are getting trapped into it, so entry gate for outside view is closed and you are limiting the spectrum of possibilities. With this I'm okay because I like to think of myself as an open-minded person and I can assume that the universe is not objective. But I'm rapidly getting tired when it comes to secret meanings of events and perfect casuality and total misunderstanding of randomness. In her head there is a strange mash of esoterics, buddhism, astrology somehow combined with evolutionary biology in perfect harmony. I'm not sure whether I should try harder to convert her or give up. Maybe I gave up already, because it seems that open-minded people lack neuroplasticity

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Actually existing prediction markets? · 2015-09-03T12:34:44.602Z · LW · GW

There are some kind of forecasting tournaments provided by Phillip Tetlock mainly associated with politics issues, however I've found no info on how to enter one. Here is a short introductory course

In my opinion prediction markets are still very raw concept which doesn't grow and spread very well in its current form and needs capital transformation

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rational approach to finding life partners · 2015-08-18T11:34:22.723Z · LW · GW

I think it is a very bad idea. Can't imagine how rational sex would looks like. After all looking back at your life you will be asking a question I lived a life or I had existed

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes Thread July 2015 · 2015-07-29T10:07:23.533Z · LW · GW

Still makes me smile as I remember the context and nerdy philosophy professor. Hyperbolic but it doesn't make it any worse

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Support for book on finding terminal goals and higher purpose · 2015-06-09T11:24:27.469Z · LW · GW

The idea to combine happiness guide with rationality techniques and popularizing science seems appealing to me. Unfortunately video is not available for watching in my region. The book content I suppose have to be very introductory and written in friendly language opposing to "from ai to zombies" for example. Where I can see some of your previous publications? And why you want to crowdfund an actual hardcover book and not distribute it through Amazon e-books?

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Request for advices on small presentation about LW community · 2015-05-29T09:27:44.171Z · LW · GW

Also don't forget to introduce the biases and give some kind of shining example of fallacy. Maybe you should have an actor in the hall, or you just go with an improvisation of course. I mean asking someone from the audience about whether Linda seems to be more a bank-teller or a bank-teller and a feminist and similar stuff. With your 'raising awareness' goal it would be halfway if someone says oops

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Request for advices on small presentation about LW community · 2015-05-29T09:01:38.094Z · LW · GW

Liron Shapiro gave an introductory talk to kids about epistemic rationality, if I remember correctly.

Why you don't like to include ageless "Politics is a mind-killer" fable? This is I beleive part of the reason why rationale keeps failing in our world and views remain one-sided

BTW, gl mate!

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Brainstorming new senses · 2015-05-25T11:15:23.796Z · LW · GW

I can understand the compass part, it can be very useful and save your life onetime, but time-sense? For what the heck you might need this? In peoples world people wear watches or have timers on their smartphones, and in the world there's no people there's no time

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Stupid Questions March 2015 · 2015-03-22T09:08:49.797Z · LW · GW

Have you got an idea how to test this, without actually raising or destroying the rock? Or maybe you got some other piece of Buddha's hair in your grandma's cellar? Impermanence is the only permanent thing I guess btw it might not be helpful; And you are obviously right about that it is only the center of the mass that matters

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Stupid Questions March 2015 · 2015-03-20T12:01:57.387Z · LW · GW

I had an arguement with my gilfriend about how on earth golden rock doesn't drop over an edge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyaiktiyo_Pagoda)

I said there must be scientific explanation of course, that the rock is somehow heavier on the opposite side of the cliff, and that the monks probably knew some math, or just picked up this one trick from unknown piligrim

And she continues to argue that this is magic and it is the legendary Buddha's hair that prevent the Stone from falling...

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Stupid Questions March 2015 · 2015-03-10T09:12:59.362Z · LW · GW

But when it comes to messy gene expression networks, we've already found the hidden beauty - the stable level of underlying physics. Because we've already found the master order, we can guess that we won't find any additional secret patterns that will make biology as easy as a sequence of cubes. Knowing the rules of the game, we know that the game is hard. We don't have enough computing power to do protein chemistry from physics (the second source of uncertainty) and evolutionary pathways may have gone different ways on different planets (the third source of uncertainty). New discoveries in basic physics won't help us here

Doesn't the third source of uncertainty violate Fermi Paradox and The Rare Earth hypothesis?

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapters 105-107 · 2015-02-19T14:21:23.002Z · LW · GW

But quirell knows that Harry possesses the power which kills dementors, so it can't be related to prophecy from his perspective

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Learn Three Things Every Day · 2015-01-16T09:43:35.931Z · LW · GW

Thank you for reminder, I'm done with procrastinating for today

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Why you should consider buying Bitcoin right now (Jan 2015) if you have high risk tolerance · 2015-01-15T14:32:48.085Z · LW · GW

It seems that it not so easy to purchase bitcoins in Russia. If you have any reccomendations please contact me

Comment by LizzardWizzard on The Importance of Sidekicks · 2015-01-14T12:51:34.988Z · LW · GW

My choice of words was incorrect. i meant "more likely" to agree and to succeed at surviving

Comment by LizzardWizzard on The Importance of Sidekicks · 2015-01-13T14:15:53.861Z · LW · GW

I'd be very interested in a story that goes into detail about the Cyprus experiment (fill an island with all "alphas", instead of the usual "alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon" distribution, and see what happens) from Brave New World. Better yet, fill an island with all "rationalists" and see what happens.

2 rationalists must come to agreement if they are truly rational, so they have great chances of survival, whereas "all alphas" will never succeed at dividing their responsibilities and all will end up doing the same thing and die, because they were just born this way, and there are no lower class people to do low-class kind of work, it's to difficult for them to reprogram

Comment by LizzardWizzard on LINK: Nematode brain uploaded with success · 2014-12-24T08:56:21.674Z · LW · GW

I doubt that the experimenters themselves wrote the article. Someone has to popularize science to mere humans

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open thread, Dec. 22 - Dec. 28, 2014 · 2014-12-23T13:08:19.516Z · LW · GW

Thank you, this is awesome!

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open thread, Dec. 15 - Dec. 21, 2014 · 2014-12-15T14:17:45.555Z · LW · GW

I don't like design and usability of the site. I think topics should be somehow divided, because not everyone is interested in soccer or currencies which are the most trivial things to predict

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes December 2014 · 2014-12-13T09:31:34.944Z · LW · GW

Maybe we should ask children more of these grande questions and gain factual answers instead of taking them as deeper as they are.

Indeed, I suppose their worldview are much clearer and in some ways unbiased than ours. When child is born he sees the world as it is, not through many prisms including our subjective value judgements

Comment by LizzardWizzard on [Resolved] Is the SIA doomsday argument wrong? · 2014-12-13T08:03:53.134Z · LW · GW

I guess you are confusing our universe with parallel worlds. It is very doubtful that there is a planet with the same geography and processes of evolution that completely replicated ours (even giving that evolution on Earth is the only way for life to emerge) so that there are ET humans who named one of their countries USA. So it is obvious that no one up there could share completely same experiences with us

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Harper's Magazine article on LW/MIRI/CFAR and Ethereum · 2014-12-13T07:46:55.296Z · LW · GW

Metamed sounds like a kinda promising startup)

I failed to understand through text why accused people and institutions are necessarily evil

I browsed venal tech-trade publications, and tried and failed to read Less Wrong, which was written as if for aliens

I wonder is this because most humans can't find joy in the merely real, praising deities and trusting in other supernatural stuff like signs and horoscopes, so disbelieving and living in reality is abnormal?

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes December 2014 · 2014-12-11T13:50:39.443Z · LW · GW

in a Pickwickian sense everybody does, only their payoffs varies

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Open thread, Dec. 8 - Dec. 15, 2014 · 2014-12-10T20:36:30.844Z · LW · GW

Em..change in policy I suppose, isn't all this protest business about it?

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Belief in Belief · 2014-12-10T08:54:31.613Z · LW · GW

Here's an example of what Doug Hofstadter writes in I Am A Strange Loop. Kurt Goedel discovered that Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell does provide reference to itself. So Russell in his book yields the propositions and their proofs, and then Goedel assigns specific numbers to proofs and therefore proves that there is a proof that they are in fact, provable

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes November 2014 · 2014-12-09T14:42:39.182Z · LW · GW

You forgot that an adjective хуевый means bad, for example instead of saying "I am feeling sick" u say мне хуево, but as parent points it out, the adjective formed from the same root "охуительный" means exactly the contrary - мне охуительно is the russian equivalent of "I am super fine"

As you can see it is quite complicated, but even people who never went to school are the great masters of the skill

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes November 2014 · 2014-12-09T13:47:58.091Z · LW · GW

I would argue with you, if someday I ever happen to write fanfiction named something like HP and the Methods of Russian Profanity as you put it, there would be prophecy suggesting "and he has the power of which the other does not know"

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes November 2014 · 2014-12-09T13:25:46.859Z · LW · GW

Yep, doesn't it sound awesome (or охуительно?) Your masters will be all kinds of rednecks, prisoners and other honorable authorities of the craftsmanship

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes November 2014 · 2014-12-09T12:18:59.221Z · LW · GW

ahahaahahahaha as a native russian speaker I can say for sure that u can define ANY concept just by slightly transforming words derived from "penis" or "cunt". There is almost infinite set of variations, each having particular meaning; u have no choice rather than to beleive me or dedicate lifetime into learning Russian filthy language

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes November 2014 · 2014-12-09T12:03:28.993Z · LW · GW

In same vein, no word for "challenge" that doesn't also mean "ordeal". The distinction seems to be also missing from Russian brains, a very peculiar phenomenon that Russian culturologists are always upset about.

to paraphrase, what is the meaning of challenge except "вызов" or "испытание"

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Stupid Questions December 2014 · 2014-12-09T10:30:45.357Z · LW · GW

I suppose that the problem emerged only because you communicate only with people of your sort and level of awareness, try to go on a trip to some rural village or start conversations with taxists, dishwashers, janitors, cooks, security guards etc.

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes November 2014 · 2014-12-09T09:54:19.552Z · LW · GW

Really fascinating! But my russian brains can't grasp this one thing, could you please at least try to explain what is this mysterious additional meaning of the word 'challenge' that can't be translated into Russian, and doesn't mean "summon to contest" or "high degree of difficulty"

Comment by LizzardWizzard on December 2014 Bragging Thread · 2014-12-06T09:57:58.403Z · LW · GW

Finally I mastered the skill) The trick was to put effort and make you sys2 to come up with a stories and then decode them into numbers again. I don't have deep mathematical and programming understanding like most of people here, so I had to use word almost time after time, for example "727" is almost Boeing 737

Comment by LizzardWizzard on December 2014 Bragging Thread · 2014-12-03T08:59:16.934Z · LW · GW

You made up this stories in a minute? Wow, fast system 1

Comment by LizzardWizzard on December 2014 Bragging Thread · 2014-12-02T08:47:52.958Z · LW · GW

Yeah I understand what are you talking about, such patterns can be found in many random numbers, but sometimes there's nothing to hook, numbers don't repeat, ascend or descend in vivid order. In this case we move to the next level where "non-storiness" becomes the memorable feature?

Comment by LizzardWizzard on December 2014 Bragging Thread · 2014-12-01T11:44:53.581Z · LW · GW

Did u use any special mnemonic technique? Or you succeded just because of continiual repetition?

Do you memorize digits by groups of 2 or 3, or it depends on a context of actual output number?

Comment by LizzardWizzard on I'm in a really dark place right now, I think I need help. · 2014-12-01T10:23:38.498Z · LW · GW

Probably your current reality map should be updated, try taking some other views on the situation, and don't forget that yourself being the center of the universe is nothing but an unavoidable illusion. Watching some films about cosmos often reminds me how miserable my own problems are) Also the best psychotherapist I can offer is Mr. Weedman - he can give you valuable insights about your own cognition and thinking and it won't cost very much.

Oh, and after dark there always comes light, you might be skeptical about this at the moment, but when you'll see it for yourself I hope you smile

Comment by LizzardWizzard on Rationality Quotes November 2014 · 2014-11-12T13:31:10.742Z · LW · GW

вызов

Comment by LizzardWizzard on What's special about a fantastic outcome? Suggestions wanted. · 2014-11-12T11:58:05.434Z · LW · GW

Oh thanks, now I see it, these almost-there cases looking somewhat holywoodish, like the villain obligatory should pronounce lingering monologue before actually killing his victim, and thanks God hero appears in last moment.

Okay, Skynet which won't instantly get rid of humanity is improbable, if really superintelligent, and if it has this goal.

We can easily imagine many kinds of possible catastrophe which can happen, but we are not equally good at producing heavenlike utopian views, but this is an evidence only about our lack of imagination

Comment by LizzardWizzard on What's special about a fantastic outcome? Suggestions wanted. · 2014-11-12T11:01:56.521Z · LW · GW

Yeah I was talking about that terminator guy in terms that AI got ultimate control and used its power against humans, but was defeated, it is not obligatory to include here cyborgs time-travellers.

How you do measure, besides your gut feelings, realisticness of these kinds of scenarios? There is no way to assign probabilities accurately, all we can and should do is imagine as much consequences as possible

Comment by LizzardWizzard on What's special about a fantastic outcome? Suggestions wanted. · 2014-11-11T13:02:50.948Z · LW · GW

Unfortunately our brains lack capacity of thinking about superior intelligence. As I understood you want to describe particular examples of what lies between scenarios 0 (stands for human extinction) and 1 (mutual cooperation and new better level of everything)

First, there are scenarios where human race is standing on the edge of extinction, but somehow ables to fight back and surive, call that Skynet scenario. Analogously, you can think of a scenario where emergence of FAI don't do any great harm, but also don't provide too much new insights and never really get far beyond Human-level intelligence