Posts

Comments

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on What's the easiest way to currently generate images with machine learning? · 2022-02-25T15:52:14.302Z · LW · GW

My favorite one to play around with has been this Google Colab notebook: https://is.gd/artmachine - totally free if you don't mind it being slow (i.e. 10-20 minutes per image).

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Analog rewritable tablet · 2022-02-15T15:20:30.553Z · LW · GW

I need to +1 the reMarkable, especially the older version if you can find one. My wife has spent years looking for the perfect notetaking experience and the reMarkable blew everything else out of the water, especially with the fact they embrace and encourage homebrewing.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Sex Versus · 2022-01-06T15:44:53.833Z · LW · GW

Without endorsing any other points (not because I agree or disagree, simply because I haven't done my own research on them), I'd like to +1 the sentiment of, "Let us not tolerate status jabs/mocking others."

I feel that the ideal rationalist writing will as a side effect avoid mocking, so it always feels a little out of place and unwarranted to me.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on A good rational fiction about IT-inspired magic system? · 2021-12-27T18:36:03.592Z · LW · GW

Ra by Sam Hughes is the most austere version of the idea I've personally read. It intentionally starts with the premise, "What if magic worked like computer science?" The story then moves more to answering the question, "....Wait, why is that the case?" but you get lots of fun exploration of the premise along the way.

https://qntm.org/ra

Magic is real.

Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There's magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It's what's next after electricity.

Student mage Laura Ferno has designs on the future: her mother died trying to reach space using magic, and Laura wants to succeed where she failed. But first, she has to work out what went wrong. And who her mother really was.

And whether, indeed, she's dead at all...

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Rationalism for New EAs · 2021-10-18T18:47:30.421Z · LW · GW

It's more than 2 hours of reading, but Steven Pinker's Rationality has been an awful pleasant and thorough read for me, especially in a, "Yeah but how do we make all this stuff work for taking care of humans?" context. As the book review on here said recently, there's nothing you haven't already seen if you're on LessWrong, but it covers everything important in his signature charming style.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Coordination Schemes Are Capital Investments · 2021-09-07T16:35:21.475Z · LW · GW

I agree, though I feel this framework helps me put into words how it is both important and difficult to actually negotiate/haggle. In particular the advice for engineers.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on What are some triggers that prompt you to do a Fermi estimate, or to pull up a spreadsheet and make a simple/rough quantitative model? · 2021-08-01T23:23:24.832Z · LW · GW

Hrm, that is a good point. I suppose if I try to be more strict, it's when there is a question of what to do, there are two or more approaches, and there is some difference in quantifiable risk and/or reward between the options, and I haven't already pre-determined a best approach in advance that applies to the situation.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on What are some triggers that prompt you to do a Fermi estimate, or to pull up a spreadsheet and make a simple/rough quantitative model? · 2021-07-25T07:09:19.276Z · LW · GW

The rule I try to apply for myself is: whenever it is at all possible to open a spreadsheet and/or calculator app. On the rare occasion it's not possible (or would be impolite) the extra experience and intuition will be valuable. There's much more risk that I will underuse it than overuse it.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Decision Duels · 2021-07-23T16:45:02.788Z · LW · GW

I like it, sounds like it's just a debate format that works well in a virtual setting.

I wonder if there's a way to add an opening ceremony that helps determine whether this is a question of fact (proceed with the duel) or a question of politics/axioms/goals (cancel the duel).

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Less Wrong needs footnotes · 2021-06-22T13:51:10.234Z · LW · GW

Came here to mention/upvote gwern style sidenotes.

I footnotes are useful too, for citations, etc., but sidenotes are more what I want most of the time.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Murphy’s Quest Ch 5: Fail Gracefully · 2018-03-07T01:36:02.093Z · LW · GW

I was a little disappointed that the ROT13 didn't translate to "accented modern English" as the story stated.

But I'm loving this story.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on set of cards · 2018-03-06T03:01:02.476Z · LW · GW

I'd be interested in seeing the output, yes! I'd be willing to help with the graphic design so you could throw them up on Game Crafter or something.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Interactive Bayes Theorem Visualization · 2018-03-03T16:45:06.175Z · LW · GW

Snapping to whole percentages might be better too. Having a displayed value of "87.23%" overstates how much control I have in choosing a specific value, given how the sliders work and how finicky per-pixel selection is.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Interactive Bayes Theorem Visualization · 2018-03-03T15:08:18.470Z · LW · GW

I love this! I can imagine myself using this as an ad hoc calculator, especially when I need to explain my estimates to someone unfamiliar with probability. For that purpose it might be useful if I could fill in my own labels for all the variables. So instead of "E1/E2/..." the page could literally display "Drew a black marble/drew a white marble/..." or whatever I put in.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Inconvenience Is Qualitatively Bad · 2018-02-27T03:58:51.972Z · LW · GW

You can also grate butter, as in with a cheese grater, and that helps too.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Explicit Expectations when Teaching · 2018-02-04T16:12:41.231Z · LW · GW

Thinking about how to decide whether or not to highlight a given statement; I think I'm going to try go through and look for things that are the "end" of a line of thought, and those are the greens. So once we get to a green, that's the end of a line, and a good spot for listeners to stop and ask questions before continuing.

On the other hand, some lines are "length zero" and are just a dangling green presented on their own, with the assumption being that you've already encountered the lines leading up to it somewhere else in your life.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on Explicit Expectations when Teaching · 2018-02-04T15:42:24.766Z · LW · GW

I really like this, and I'm going to be trying this in an upcoming training at work, with the implict rule of "stop me if you don't understand anything in green" made explicit.

Comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (trevor-hill-hand) on How I accidentally discovered the pill to enlightenment but I wouldn’t recommend it. · 2018-01-03T04:49:13.443Z · LW · GW

Loved the narrative structure; lots of interesting insights that I felt like I was having right along with you. Towards the end you start making some pretty strong claims though; do you have any articles handy that measure the effects of vasodilation on psychological outlook?