Posts

Comments

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Seed Study: Polyphasic Sleep in Ten Steps · 2013-07-31T23:06:55.765Z · LW · GW

Do you remember how long it took until you stopped needing alarms?

Comment by VincenzoLingley on More "Stupid" Questions · 2013-07-31T23:03:58.958Z · LW · GW

Click "Show all comments", wait for more comments to load, repeat. I suspect that there is a limit to the number of comments it loads in one go, probably to ease the load on the server.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Seed Study: Polyphasic Sleep in Ten Steps · 2013-07-11T16:25:22.431Z · LW · GW

Do you expect to reach a point where you don't need an alarm clock?

(People already doing this: do you need an alarm clock? How long have you been doing this for?)

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Preparing for a Rational Financial Planning Sequence · 2013-05-22T21:01:15.326Z · LW · GW

Criticism of posted work is common, but I don't have the impression that discouraging people from doing and posting the work is particularly common.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Preparing for a Rational Financial Planning Sequence · 2013-05-22T19:19:01.352Z · LW · GW

Interested.

I'm surprised by all the discouraging comments. If what you end up writing isn't good enough, chances are that the highest-voted comment will say so (and why). So I support the suggestion that you write a post and consider the reception.

That said, I can't help but notice that you've so far ignored the questions about why you consider yourself qualified.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions · 2012-10-21T00:23:15.125Z · LW · GW

I've removed that paragraph and I apologize for it.

If I may indulge in a bit of nitpicking, you misquoted me: "privacy-related procedures" is very different from "privacy issues", and I maintain that my touchiness is consistent. It is a valid position that the information leak already happened with the publication of the file (so Yvain cannot tighten security when it comes to that file), and that drawing attention to specific breaches of privacy is generally the best way to force people to think about privacy. But your position is valid too, and it was stupid of me to act as I did in a place full of people sharing your position. (Extra stupidity points for me since the place is heavily moderated.)

Comment by VincenzoLingley on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions · 2012-10-20T19:34:21.394Z · LW · GW

As long as you mean "round to the nearest in this list", sure.

But if you mean "round 8838 to 8850", the number of people per 'option' gets too low in the high karmas. Look at the top ten disclosed karmas from the last survey: 7500, 7830, 8838, 9000, 12000, 14000, 14612, 18000, 26084, 48000.

In fact, everyone over 10000 should probably be lumped together just to account for Eliezer (so that he isn't alone in his category). He didn't disclose his karma last time, but I'm strongly in favor of a system that works regardless of the users' carefulness.

Edit: here used to be a paragraph about how a specific LW user of interest could easily be identified in last survey's data. I apologize for invading his or her privacy in my thoughtless irritation.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions · 2012-10-19T17:10:06.727Z · LW · GW

If you plan to release the individual answers as you did last time, please keep in mind that karma alone is sufficient to identify a lot of people, so removing other identifying information makes more sense if you also round the karma (e.g. to nearest power of 10 or 5 or some other number).

You could do this when generating the xls file, or you could give karma ranges as options in the survey. If you do the former, some (small number of) people will lie about their karma to prevent you from identifying them.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on How To Have Things Correctly · 2012-10-17T20:45:48.011Z · LW · GW

I find the following difficult to parse:

I think people who are not made happier by having things have the wrong things, or have them incorrectly.

The phrase "having things have the wrong things" is a grammatically valid noun phrase, and it took me >10s to figure out why the sentence [looks to me like it] is missing a predicate.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on 2011 Survey Results · 2012-08-09T07:48:49.540Z · LW · GW

For the next survey:

160 people wanted their responses kept private. They have been removed. The rest have been sorted by age to remove any information about the time they took the survey. I've converted what's left to a .xls file, and you can download it here.

Karma is sufficient to identify a lot of people. You could give ranges instead (making sure there are enough people in each range).

Comment by VincenzoLingley on New book on atheism, transhumanism, and x-risk · 2012-07-13T03:12:03.906Z · LW · GW

but chapter 20 discusses cognitive enhancement and mind uploading, and chapter 20 discusses

Was one of the 20s supposed to be something else?

Comment by VincenzoLingley on [SEQ RERUN] When (Not) To Use Probabilities · 2012-07-10T14:27:12.177Z · LW · GW

I don't want to sound rude, but what is the point of this rerun? Looking at the reposted articles from the last month, most have fewer than 10 comments each.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on This post is for sacrificing my credibility! · 2012-06-02T21:31:31.176Z · LW · GW

The comments on this post have significantly influenced my opinion on a number of people. Thanks, Will.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Focus on rationality · 2012-06-02T20:27:49.992Z · LW · GW

We already have separate Main and Discussion. Any reason not to add more? With separate feeds (and perhaps separate karma) for each, I just don't see the downsides.

LessWrong may have started as a blog about rationality, but now it is a community of like-minded people. It is natural that some members of the community want to discuss less on-topic topics with the rest of the community.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Share Your Checklists! · 2012-05-30T19:46:54.432Z · LW · GW

Do a quick reality check to see whether I'm dreaming.

How do you do that? How reliable is it?

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Share Your Checklists! · 2012-05-26T16:09:31.192Z · LW · GW

It would be interesting to see checklists on less important topics too. The particular example I have in mind is travel (i.e. what to pack, what to research, what backup plans are needed, etc). In what other mundane scenarios do people find checklists useful?

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 · 2012-04-13T06:17:04.080Z · LW · GW

Yes... this is a fact of combat.

Not in what we have seen so far. IIRC, neither Quirrell nor Dumbledore have pre-cast shields in TSPE, which (IIRC) is the only piece of serious action by competent people in MoR. I don't remember canon well, but I would have noticed consistent pre-cast shields.

"Accio frontal lobe."

This is the same idea as hover charm.

Or "Imperio, kill yourself."

Imperio can be resisted.

Or for that matter "Obliviate."

No idea how obliviate works, so maybe.

But all 3 are spells with instantaneous effect. I think/agree that spells with instantaneous effect are overpowered. But the fact is that we haven't seen anyone use or mention such ways of killing, which makes me think that they must somehow be impossible. Hence the initial question.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 · 2012-04-13T05:55:06.867Z · LW · GW

it takes several casters

Several first-year casters. Quirrell stuck 50 people to the ceiling. You might say that he has better ways to use his power - but the killing curse is not one of them. His killing curse is little better than anyone else's.

Also, it seems unlikely at best that the Hover Charm can accelerate people downwards

There's got to be a spell for that, and it it likely to work similarly to the hover charm, i.e. instant effect.

Also, it's possible that the Hover Charm could be blocked by a pre-cast shield

If by a specific anti-hover shield, then one needs to always keep up a large number of shields against various spells. If by a generic shield, well, that isn't in my mental model of shields, but I guess it's possible. In which case I agree that the killing curse is superior agains a raised shield, but it is still inferior against an unsuspecting enemy.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 · 2012-04-13T05:43:10.078Z · LW · GW

Are you assuming it can't be shielded against?

You would need to always have a shield up.

And if you can catch your opponent before he casts any shields there are easier ways to kill someone.

For example? Most purpose-built spells are in the form of a bolt that you have time to see and dodge.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 · 2012-04-13T01:32:47.399Z · LW · GW

Also, I don't think it gets deadlier than the Killing Curse by definition - it is unblockable and kills instantly.

It can be dodged. My point was that if the hover charm is instant and cannot be dodged, then accelerating the victim into something (e.g. sky then ground) can kill them without giving them time before the spell hits. And with sufficient acceleration, the victim won't be able to react.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 · 2012-04-12T23:32:20.404Z · LW · GW

I was rereading the new chapters and got very confused about what happens between casting a spell and its effects.

Hexes are slow enough to be dodged from almost point-blank range. Chapter 78:

But Granger flashed and whirled around the Tooth-Lengthening Hex, and then her own wand came around and leveled at almost point-blank range This suggests slow bolts of light, like in the movies.

But some spells have instantaneous effect. Chapter 78:

Neville was falling toward the ground and screaming "Chaotic landing!" and the Chaotics were wrenching their attention away from fights to cast the Hover Charm

(There is no way that could have been safe given normal reaction times and current values of g)

Then there is wandless magic, which (I think) is instantaneous in canon, but that would be far too overpowered for MoR. Actually even the hover charm, assuming it is instantaneous, could be deadlier in the hands of a powerful wizard than the killing curse.

Comment by VincenzoLingley on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 · 2012-04-04T19:36:22.183Z · LW · GW

In HPMoR too

Quirrell was planning to teach it.