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Comment by RobFack on Solving sleep: just a toe-dipping · 2015-06-30T20:30:02.292Z · LW · GW

For unknown reasons, there is a dip in the circadian alerting about 8 hours after the beginning of the cycle. This is why people sometimes experience that “2:30 feeling.”

Hunh. That makes sense. I didn't realize that I was why I feel tired in the afternoon. I thought it was because of eating lunch just before.

Comment by RobFack on Rationality Quotes Thread May 2015 · 2015-06-26T23:48:40.275Z · LW · GW

Talking at length about the good old days is hardly a way to make progress on local problems.

Comment by RobFack on Rationality Quotes Thread June 2015 · 2015-06-26T23:34:27.532Z · LW · GW

This is true, but maybe you want to explain why?

Comment by RobFack on Rationality Quotes Thread June 2015 · 2015-06-26T23:22:10.099Z · LW · GW

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”

  • George Bernard Shaw
Comment by RobFack on Open Thread, Jun. 22 - Jun. 28, 2015 · 2015-06-26T22:57:21.762Z · LW · GW

some of Google's projects are reproducing high-level quirks of the human visual cortex.

While the work that the visual cortex does is complex and hard to crack (from where we are now), it doesn't seem like being able to replicate that leads to AGI. Is there a reason I should think otherwise?

Comment by RobFack on Cryonics: peace of mind vs. immortality · 2015-06-26T22:49:31.372Z · LW · GW

I get the sense that many of the people who have signed up have done it less for the increased survival chances or the sense of comfort, but as a sort of flag waving. It is pretty good signalling that you are opposed to death and part of the ingroup that is opposed to death. Those little medallions are badges of a refusal to submit to the awful thing.