ft. tactical guy

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The sound and the worry

There was recently a thread on r/slatestarcodex about “What life hacks are actually life changing”. One of the examples given was: Buy audiobooks to read much more books, listen at 1.5-2x speed This led to the following thread (later removed):...

(Excluding "please stop")

An old friend visited me a few weeks ago. And we soon got to chatting about—what else—how long will it be before all human intellectual work is automated. My position was: I dunno, because things are moving fast right now...

One-indexing problems in everyday life

Here's a sentence from Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: 'The Enlightenment is conventionally placed in the last two-thirds of the 18th century, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason in the 17th century and spilled...

Do extroverts have more martial confidence?

Thank you to the 966 people who filled out the survey. And thanks also to the strangely numerous people who read all the questions and wrote to me about them but didn’t answer them. (Though: why?)

(in which you are surveyed)

Hello, clever charming good-looking people. I am in need of a richer understanding of: you, the nature of reality, consciousness, ethics, dynomight internet website, and have therefore created a survey, which you can take it here. (You don't need to...

Or: Things where there's a case worth considering that they don't work all that well for most people.

1. Acupuncture. 2. Phenylephrine. 3. Multivitamins. 4. Phosphoric acid. (for nausea) 5. Tree-based knowledge organization. The physical world whispers to us to organize information into "trees". For example, say you write something on a piece of paper, put the paper...

Mean parents, graffiti, the youths, and BREATHTAKING design.

I made a graph of polling data in Finland on support for joining NATO from 1998 up through Finland joining NATO in April 2023.

16 queries and 6 language models

Language models, whatever. Maybe they can write code or summarize text or regurgitate copyrighted stuff. But… can you take ducks home from the park? If you ask models how to do that, they often refuse to tell you. So I...

Are fancy fragile solutions overrated?

I have an almost moral dislike for the four-wheeled suitcase. Bear with me here. Before 1972, luggage had no wheels. Then, Bernard Sadow patented this design with four small wheels and a strap: By all accounts, this design wasn’t great...

greater lesson unclear

1. There’s an early scene where Lawrence leaves a band of Bedouin people to go look for a man who was lost in the desert. He does this despite fierce warnings that after the sun rose, he would almost certainly...

Noise, Indian cheetahs, and Fighting Joe

I think the bluetooth speaker is a pox on our civilization. Random noise makes it hard for me to concentrate. I tried the obvious thing and created a passive-aggressive mathematical model, but that unexpectedly failed to make the problem go...

That's what she said, a rabbi resolves a dispute, and six categories in the Philogelos

I've noticed a disturbing phenomenon: Many people who only recently watched the US version of The Office seem to think that Michael Scott invented That's what she said. Of course, the actual joke was supposed to be a ghoulish delight...

A potent anti-humor technology

No soap, radio is a sort of prank where you tell a "joke" with a meaningless punchline. The hope is that your victim will laugh despite not understanding it, thereby enabling you to ridicule them. Apparently, this works best if...

Sixteen observations on Albania, Montenegro, and Macedonia

People say the cafes in Albania are great. This is true. They are similar to Italy but with environments that are more laid-back and… better? Standards are remarkably high even at roadside cafes next to petrol stations.

Gorillas, penguins, noise location, air quality, and a conversational pattern that needs a name

Has a gorilla killed a human? Gorillas, despite their immense size and strength, are not aggressive. They are vegetarian except for eating insects and occasionally small rodents. In 1986, a five-year-old child fell into the gorilla pit in the Channel...

More on teaching, hot in-laws, medical diagnostics, and some questions thrown into the void

Here's a collection of a few disconnected follow-ups plus some questions thrown into the void. Contra me on teaching. A couple of months back, I took issue with Parrhesia's proposal to make final exams worth 100% of the final grade,...

Meanwhile, in the multiverse...

In your particular branch of spacetime, you may see things like this: