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Comment by PetjaY on That Tiny Note of Discord · 2016-12-03T11:15:34.138Z · LW · GW

"I can understand most of the paths you followed during your youth, but I don't really get this. Even if it's a good idea for Eliezer_2000 to broadcast everything, wouldn't it be stupid for Eliezer_1200, who just discovered scientific materialism, to broadcast everything?"

Usually when you broadcast your ignorance you get advice from people who know more. Being silent about your lack of knowledge helps you appear more knowledged for that moment, but slows down learning a lot, so in long run it is not a good idea.

Comment by PetjaY on Raised in Technophilia · 2016-11-20T19:29:49.211Z · LW · GW

Petrov wasn´t (probably) a non-retaliator, he just wanted to be more sure there was something to retaliate. That is is something we want to praise.

Comment by PetjaY on What Is Signaling, Really? · 2016-10-17T19:58:16.700Z · LW · GW

There´s a difference there though. Less & fewer mean same thing, so writer using those abnormally isn´t really an error, it´s just something people don´t usually do. They´re , there, their mean different things so correcting those really makes the world better.

Comment by PetjaY on Epilogue: Atonement (8/8) · 2016-10-09T09:57:32.583Z · LW · GW

True, but on the other hand humanity has been left alone for millions of years, so odds of some species conquering universe just after humans accidentally happen to meet them (while they are still very limited in size) seem low. If there would be nothing stopping such expansions, i would´ve expected seeing some species conquering universe millions or billions of years ago.

Comment by PetjaY on Interlude with the Confessor (4/8) · 2016-10-08T16:35:37.190Z · LW · GW

Legal does not mean "accepted". For us you could replace it with hugging: "Can I delay or prevent someone from getting from point A to point B by hugging them in the hallway? What if three people all decide they want to hug same person at once? Twelve people? A hundred?"

Most interaction between people is controlled by people losing social status when behaving wrong, and some mild violence (mostly pushing away) for more extreme misbehavior. Laws are only needed for really extreme cases.

Comment by PetjaY on Game Theory As A Dark Art · 2016-08-27T17:43:19.066Z · LW · GW

Also hidden in hostile takeover is that on those assumptions (other buyer only buys if he gets all shares, your shares are worth less than 90$ if neither buys them) you could just buy 1 share for 102$, and get rest for 90$, no need for that complexity there either.

Comment by PetjaY on How to learn soft skills · 2016-08-22T17:54:40.742Z · LW · GW

Well not in current situation, but if you believe it then you that would teach you to avoid dealing with people who were not praised enough as children.

Comment by PetjaY on Devil's Offers · 2015-12-01T20:50:14.383Z · LW · GW

When comparing travel safety you shouldn´t compare those statistics directly, if when traveling by car you don´t accept any pilots that are suicidal, on drugs (including alcohol), falling asleep, or wannabe racing drivers, your chance of accidents goes to ~10% of the chance that is used in those statistics.

Comment by PetjaY on Devil's Offers · 2015-12-01T20:31:36.337Z · LW · GW

Atleast in my social surroundings, lying has never been asked for when i have an non-acceptable opinion, just keeping my mouth shut about them would be enough.

Comment by PetjaY on Free to Optimize · 2015-11-08T09:22:37.263Z · LW · GW

I hope you mean taxing additional income that much, otherwise earning 40k$ instead of 1$ less would make you pay 40k$(25%-20%)=2000$ more in taxes, which means people would have to start checking how much they´ve earned when closing to yearend, and sometimes working less (or asking for less pay) to not go to the next bracket. Why not just use a function? Like, tax rate=lesser of: 0.25earnings,40% or something like that. My personal favourite is basic income+flat tax rate though.

Comment by PetjaY on Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization · 2015-09-13T19:14:30.234Z · LW · GW

Schools would have a lot to learn from videogames. Companies aswell (in motivating their employees) but especially schools.

Comment by PetjaY on Truly Part Of You · 2015-09-04T18:47:05.317Z · LW · GW

I have a similar way, which i find simpler:
9N=10N-N
That is, 9 8=10 8-8

Comment by PetjaY on A Priori · 2015-05-24T07:18:27.141Z · LW · GW

While people often often end debates without admitting defeat, if you discuss with them after a couple of days (or weeks) you can often see their opinions changed. This is because people need time to think before changing their mind, which they cannot do that well while debating. Especially people do not like admitting they´re wrong before they´re sure they are.

Comment by PetjaY on Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles · 2015-05-17T14:42:48.228Z · LW · GW

Until poetry everything you wrote could´ve come from me, but then i´ve never seen any beauty in poetry. So using same brain structures for hearing and reading, and enjoying poetry don´t always correlate

Comment by PetjaY on Disputing Definitions · 2015-05-03T09:51:32.450Z · LW · GW

"It will no longer be correct to say that something is (a color or similar property). One must say it "seems" a color, as well as to whom. Not "Snow is white", rather, "Snow seems white to me"."

I´d say this is not needed, when people say "Snow is white" we know that it really means "Snow seems white to me", so saying it as "Snow seems white to me" adds length without adding information.

My first fixes to english would be to unite spoken and written english with same letters always meaning same sounds, and getting rid of adding "the" to places where it does not add information (where sentence would mean same even without "the").

Comment by PetjaY on The Cluster Structure of Thingspace · 2015-05-02T18:22:42.248Z · LW · GW

Reading Eliezers quantum physics sequence should help with configuration spaces and thingspaces, probably some other physics references aswell.

Comment by PetjaY on Typicality and Asymmetrical Similarity · 2015-05-01T19:40:48.889Z · LW · GW

When you count percentages, you always count percentages of something. In this case you count percentages of 100 in one case, and percentages of 98 in the other, which explains why you get different numbers

Comment by PetjaY on Feeling Rational · 2015-02-21T17:52:42.021Z · LW · GW

"For example, our emotions don't seem to work in a time-consistent manner, and we often later regret actions that we take based on strong emotions, when those emotions eventually fade away."

There is a rational explanation for this, i will use anger as example: People try to not anger people who easily get angry and violent, so anger has benefits. However this can also cause other people to want to punish angry person for his violence, and here regret comes in and lowers the punishment that angry person gets. Imagine a trial where a man found his wife sexing another man, and hit them both until they were almost dead. Which explanation will lead to a lower punishment? "I do not know what went in to me, and have regretted doing it ever since, i hope they will some day forgive me for losing my mind for a moment" or "By beating them i try to make sure that both my wife and people that know us will not attempt this or any other thing that might upset me badly again"

Comment by PetjaY on Absolute Authority · 2015-02-07T13:34:49.093Z · LW · GW

I would rather say that for normal people certainty is ~90% propability, you can notice this noticing that people who say something is certain aren´t willing to act in ways that would cause serious harm if they were wrong.

Comment by PetjaY on Privileging the Hypothesis · 2015-02-01T21:04:35.784Z · LW · GW

That is correct, and even more importantly "When answering a question with a large enough number of possible answers, any single possible answer will have a bigger chance of being a false positive than true positive if tested"

Comment by PetjaY on The Third Alternative · 2015-02-01T09:13:05.733Z · LW · GW

The important question is not whether sweatshops are good, but what changes can be made, and will those changes make the world better or worse. So when considering if sweatshops should be banned, it is a very important argument that those working there have decided that the sweatshop is better than any alternative they have, and if you ban the sweatshop they will be worse off.

Comment by PetjaY on Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies · 2015-01-24T18:02:55.866Z · LW · GW

Many different things can cause similar movements, you could detect something pulling those atoms in 1 direction, and something else pushing them back at the edge of the pebble which is closest to earths center of gravity. But you would not know what is causing that pull, only from where it is coming and how strong it is.

Comment by PetjaY on A Rational Argument · 2015-01-07T20:57:15.022Z · LW · GW

First you need to decide what gives utility points to you, which is a moral problem. I consider most computer programs to be sentient, with their work memory being sentience, i also see pain as just a bit of programming that makes creatures avoid things causing it, not different from some regulators i have programmed. Therefore i don´t care if fetuses are sentient or feel pain, so for me that does not affect the utility calculation. But most people do not agree.

Comment by PetjaY on A Rational Argument · 2015-01-07T20:43:29.177Z · LW · GW

You only need to have better information than average voter for your vote to improve result of election. Though then again, effect of 1 vote is usually so small that the rational choice would be to vote for whatever gives you more social status.

Comment by PetjaY on The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence · 2014-12-29T17:59:12.411Z · LW · GW

Universe seems to be doing that, only problem is that instead of us getting results we are only part of them.

Comment by PetjaY on Guardians of Ayn Rand · 2014-12-25T15:00:36.579Z · LW · GW

Atleast Atlas Shrugged is written in a way that suggests cultishness. All good people are good at everything, good looking and always right. Enemies are stupid, wrong and ugly. There are no bad sides in good ideas or good sides in bad ideas.

Comment by PetjaY on Guardians of the Gene Pool · 2014-12-24T21:23:25.642Z · LW · GW

"But can you have YOUR child, while eugenics prevent you from breeding? Not in genetic sense, but it seems deeply flawed to base parent-child relation simply on genetic code. It's upbringing that matters. Adopted child is in any meaningful way YOUR child."

Treating people not genetically your children as if they were is a big minus in our evolutionary game these days. It also helps bad behaviour (making children and letting others raise them), so i´d say that it manages to be bad both for yourself and population, though the second part depends on why the child was given for adoption.

In general improving gene pool would be a good idea, but finding collective solutions for it that don´t cause more bad than good seems hard. Also if our evolution gets rid of the heuristic that sex=children=good which isn´t working anymore and replaces it with something like "acts that lead to you children=good" we then get people spending their money smarter, which increases reproductive success of richer people who tend to be >average intelligent.

Comment by PetjaY on Guardians of the Truth · 2014-12-24T19:26:15.173Z · LW · GW

Science has much to say about morality. It can say which morals different groups of people have, what are probable causes for morals, and which morals are useful on an gene|individual|group|society|planet level.

Comment by PetjaY on How accurate is the quantum physics sequence? · 2014-12-09T13:40:19.491Z · LW · GW

To better understand why it is used imagine a map, going right is +, going left is -, going up is i, going down is -i. Turning left is multiplying by i, turning right is multiplying by -i. So i is used to calculate things where you need 2 dimensions.