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People guess the meanings of words and notations from context all the time. Especially when they aren't specialists in the field in question. Lots of interested amateurs exist and read things without the benefit of years of training before hand.
Some things just lend themselves more easily to guessing the accepted-meaning than others. It is often a good idea to make things easier to guess the accepted-meaning, rather than to fail to do so, if at all possible. Make it hard to fail.
I've learned a lot about interacting with adults by reading parenting books :D
I'll add one: don't ask if you won't accept a no
If you're requiring your child to do a task, and it's not actually acceptable to you for them not to do the task - then don't phrase it as a question eg "would you like to clean your room now?"
If they say no and then you make them do it anyway - you're teaching them that their preferences aren't respected.
I think we do the question thing to try to make the request feel more "polite", but it actually backfires in the long-term.
If no isn't really an option, phrase it differently "It's time to clean up your room now"
Or you can find a question that is acceptable "It's time to clean up your room. Do you want to do it now, or after you finish your <activity>?"
My working assumption is that the Flynn effect is mostly to do with improving the average eg by improved nutrition and wellness due to higher availability of food and health care. We're seeing improvements in the average because we're lifting up the bottom quartile, not the top.
Any updates on how well you think this worked, especially as compared with other vaccines now available?
Edit: never mind, I see the followup post now :D
So... did this eventuate? What were your learnings? Is it still going?
"finishing school" for rationalists... :)
Googling briefly...
https://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Stud/More/Health-Insurance
You get yourself private health insurance here. Unlike the USA where employers tend to pay for it... it is normal and expected that ordinary private individuals on normal salaries pay for their own private health insurance.
it is NOWHERE NEAR as expensive as in the USA. I'm currently 41 and pregnant, with some (small) existing issues and I pay around $140 a month for "hospital and extras" cover - which I've used.
For somebody young and willing to have just the bare essentials, it would be much less than that...
don't forget that our government healthcare is exceptional and cheaper that the US even when you have to pay full price. We don't have the horrific "pay $100 for a tablet of acetomenophin" style BS you regularly find in the US
We have similar compulsory Insurance here in Aus too... it's called "third party insurance" (or your Green slip) You pay it as the same time as you pay your registration. It costs nowhere near that amount, even for new drivers. I currently pay around $600 a year but I'm female and 40 years old. I have not been driving for that many years though.
A quick online google shows me that if I were Male and 23 years old.. the same insurance would cost $890 - even for a driver with 1 year of driving experience.
I spent $5800 on utilities last year... it happens when you live in an area that simultaneously gets below freezing point (and thus you need to spend on heating) and also gets above comfortable living point (and thus you need to spend on fans or air-con). I'm pretty reasonably frugal on both... I don't set the aircon super low, I don't set the heating on high... but utilities are pricey. I also count "internet" as a utility. When I lived in a warmer climate I spent $2800
"Misc house expenses" include things like fixing a broken toilet... or other general repairs. If you're renting you may not have to pay that. Or maybe you do if your landlord is dodgy.
I spent around $8K on "transport" - which includes car payments (I bought a new but small hatchback 3 years ago = $22k), fuel, insurance, repairs, servicing and parking costs. I can well imagine that a family with more than one person (and thus more than one car) easily pays twice as much as me.
So... how did this go? (Note: for all I know I've met you in person... I'm not good with names/pseudonym matching) :D
I'm coming in late to this discussion but... The nearest cryo group will be located in South East Australia... if you have a medical emergency, you'll be evacced to Adelaide - which isn't that far away.
Rational self-care
Agreed. My own epiphany of shopping came to me when I realised I could treat shops like art-galleries... containing many beautiful things that I could look at all day - but was under no obligation to actually buy and take home.
I guess you can assume that EN auto-downvotes by X and just adjust the origin down by that amount... eg your comment is at -8 - which (assuming EN downvotes by -10) means it's actually really at +2
I have exactly the same problem because I did an honours-year... which is halfway between a Bachelor's and a Masters.
Are you asking why adversity-to-success stories are so prevalent? in which case it's also partly because we (the ordinary people) want to hear them... because they are stories of hope, especially stories of what we hope for ourselves. Reading about a great success triggers our own feeling of succeeding, in small part.
I did not select that option, but I know people that identify this way. The sorts of people that do vary considerably, from an atheist who believes in ghosts or spirits, to people that believe that we can have telepathic and/or empathic connections and can achieve this through eg meditation etc. People that believe in "magic as a form of willpower making things change in the real world" consider themselves spiritual, but atheist. etc etc.
I really liked things like "option for people who aren't in the US and want an option to choose" plus I think I recall one like "I like clicking on options" :D
You've got a slight lisp there ;)
My garden makes me happy.
Right now the leaves are turning yellow and there's a new, autumnal bite in the air that I find invigorating.
The birds are still visiting, and every now and then I'll feed the king parrots and rosellas seed and watch them twitter at each other, all colourful plumage and huffed-up self-importance. I think they sound like guinea pigs, which always makes me laugh :)
In my experience, people who are not the likely victims of a kind of danger are much less likely to spot the warning signs of that danger than those who are. Women spot potential-rape more frequently, the same way that soldiers that have been stationed in the middle east are more likely to spot potential IEDs - not every discarded thing on the road is an IED, and not every "man roughly handling a women" is a potential rape... but some are... and some women have gotten better at spotting the latter due to either being trained to do so, or having had the experience themselves...
In other words... just because many people didn't see it for a potential-rape... doesn't mean it can't easily be interpreted as pattern-matching on exactly that kind of situation.
To some extent, it doesn't even matter that it was not the original intent of the author to represent rape. It was close enough that it was a plausible interpretation (specious or no) for those who know what to look for. I expect the author has learned something about how people can interpret things even when they are unintended...
Interestingly, and vaguely related, there's an ongoing debate about the Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes series: apparently many women interpret the relationship between Holmes and Watson as containing a lot of sexual tension... and a lot of men (and the writer(s)) think that idea is rubbish.... it all has to do with how close they stand to each other, and the way they are portrayed to gaze at each other.
I completed the survey. I also like the new format - easy to read, good instructions etc.
As explained it doesn't fit the definition given: playing house does not have "definite rules" and does not have a defined beginning/end.
I thought it was a deliberate technique on the part of scammers to use bad grammar/spelling in order that their marks self-select for people that are less intelligent/educated etc It is plausible that the scammer actually has excellent diction.
This can be solved by only using it in aggregate (ie not releasing it in the final CSV)
I reckon you should include touchable voxels (3D holograms made in thin air):
it'd be great to have links for all these - so we know what we're looking at - also so we can go look up more info.
Re: quantum computing, I think it might be referring to this: http://www.gizmag.com/silicon-quantum-computer/39711/
"Quantum computing breakthrough: Qubits made from standard silicon transistors"
If I were magically put in charge of distributing the next year's federal budget - I would still allocate resources to domestic welfare (supporting others that, through no fault of their own, have fallen on times of hardship), even though a larger portion went to foreign aid.
"whether they're worth the cost of keeping alive." and this highlights the differences in our views.
our point of difference is in this whole basis of using practical "worth" as The way of deciding whether or not a person should live/die.
I can get trying to minimise the birth of new people that are net-negative contributors to the world... but from my perspective, once they are born - it's worth putting some effort into supporting them.
Why? because it's not their fault they were born the way they are, and they should not be punished because of that. They need help to get along.
Sometimes - the situation that put them in their needy state occurred after they were born - and again is still not their fault.
Another example to point out why I feel your view is unfair to people: Imagine somebody who has worked all their lives in an industry that has given amazing amounts of benefit to the world.. but has only just now become obsolete. That person is now unemployed and, due to being near retirement age, unemployable. It's an industry in which they were never really paid very well, and their savings don't add up to enough to cover their ongoing living costs for very long.
Eventually, there will come a time when the savings run out and this person dies of starvation without our help.
I consider this not to be a fair situation, and I'd rather my tax-dollars went to helping this person live a bit longer, than go to the next unnecessary-war (drummed up to keep the current pollies in power).
"sentient minds are remarkably easy to create"
I'm not sure I agree with this. It takes quite a lot of resources (time, energy etc) to create sentient minds at present... certainly to bring them to any reasonable state of maturity. After which, the people that put that time and effort in quite often get very attached to that new sentient mind - even if that mind is not a net-productive citizen.
The strategy that you choose to follow in how to divide up resources to sentient minds may be based on what you perceive to be their net-productivity... and maybe you feel a strong need to push your ideas on others as "oughts" that you think they should follow (eg that people ought to earn every resource themselves)... but it's pretty clear that other people are following other strategies than your preferred one.
as a counter-example, a very large number of people (not including myself here) follow that old adage of "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs" which is just about the exact opposite of your own.
I'd lay a high likelihood that you have quite a few more advantages than the kind of person I'm thinking of. You probably have your fair number of disadvantages too, but you've (through being lucky enough to have good health, intelligence, time and/or money for education and maybe good friends/family for support) been able to overcome those "on your own" (except for the aforementioned support)... which means you are categorically not the kind of person I'm thinking of when I am talking about people that need more support than others.
Some people need extra, and those people do try to pay for their extra.. but even so... some of them will still not be able to, due to circumstances that isn't their fault.
Do you condemn to death?
Yeah - I'm pretty sure defensive driving course in Australia are all hands-on, not just a safety lecture. I could be mistaken in that, but when I went looking, that is what I found - courses that get you actually driving in different conditions. Of course, there could also be dud courses out there in Aus too, and I happened not to find them because they don't tend to drift upwards in google searches... ;)
I'm willing to suspend judgement pending actual results. Demonstrate it does what you claim and I'll be very interested.
Note you probably already know this, but in case you don't: AFAIK the Halting problem has a mathematical proof... you will require the same to prove that your system solves it. ie just showing that it halts on many programs won't be enough (Turing machines do this too). You'll have to mathematically prove that it halts for all possible problems.
Can you explain what you did?
I finished Couch to 5K today!
(The Zombies run version)
I've been working on this since February.
Where did you get the impression that by "it's far safer" that I meant "it's far safer... than driving"?
i am completely ignoring your anecdotes - they cannot be taken for actual data. I have friends that have been in extremely dangerous car accidents. I have a friend who was killed in a car crash. Anecdotes are a bad idea on this.
I'd be happy with real data on the actual base rates of this stuff, and yes, perhaps the bike lanes are not sufficient to overcome the danger of riding off the bike lane. But I don't think it's quite as bad as you're making out. It definitely depends on where you need to get to by bike... but my experience with riding in Perth was that I could ride from the outer suburbs to the city without going through traffic. The same for large portions of Sydney (once you hit the main bike routes along the freeways). If you're riding into the CBD, but get off your bike before hitting the main CBD streets themselves (ie choose your route carefully), then you can get to a goodly portion of the city without hitting the (I agree) utterly ridiculous bad bike lanes
...and that's before even considering Europe.
But yeah, if you have some real data, I'm happy to change my mind.
wow - amazing.
I donated $100 (AU$140)
Note, this is the same event as http://lesswrong.com/meetups/1bx But we've noticed there are two names for it... so we have it twice
Note: this is the same meetup/camp as: http://lesswrong.com/meetups/1bt We just noticed that there were two competing names for it... so now we have both, just in case.
The event is also on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/739163932864385/
I have successfully gone for a run three times a week all month.
I think this depends strongly on whether the person you're explaining-to is initially open or closed to your ideas.
An example - if a new-earth creationist approached me to talk about their ideas on the creation of earth - I would not want them to spend time explaining their ideas until they showed me sufficient evidence to warrant my expenditure of time.
By comparison, most people on LessWrong I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and let them explain the idea, then go look up evidence to confirm whether it has a solid foundation.
Keeping in mind that tendency to auto-accept ideas told to us...
It does (#justonedatapoint)
curious: how would this help?
They were prominent then too (I was there then too) :)
Yes, that is a plausible pathological case. But... some people definitely have specific diet-related triggers (sulfates is a common one) and if you have those... it's worth finding that out.
If you're worried about false-positives - then go see a dietician to do it however the proper way is to make sure.
Seafood is only one possibility. If you're going to try diet-related control, you'd be better off using an elimination diet (google the details) - where you basically cut down to some very bland things, and see if the effect stops... then start adding things back one at a time until one thing triggers it (and then don't eat that thing)... continue until you know all your triggers.
In your case - if you cut down to the bland diet and stay that way for a week, and you're still getting migraines - then it wasn't your diet.
HPMOR wrap-party being a good example of an exception where it worked fairly well... but I'd be curious about your experience with examples that didn't work.