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Review: Against the Grain
| 2834 wordsThe original goal was to review Against the Grain by James Scott in the style of Scott Alexander (who has already reviewed this particular book). However, I soon found myself unequal to the task. Turns out writing is harder than I thought and that I’m not as good at writing...
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These Are a Few of My Favorite Questions
| 870 wordsMuch of my progression as a thinking thing can be traced to internalizing questions that force rigor and care in thought and action. These are some that serve me well. Would this be a mistake? Sometimes, my bedtime approaches and I feel the urge to delay sleep to watch television....
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Review: Assorted Snacks
| 767 wordsI recently bought a bunch of snacks. While eating the snacks, I realized I had opinions about them. Japanese Peanuts The name of this snack confuses me. The description tells me these were invented by a Japanese immigrant living in Mexico. I am slightly less confused. These look like ovular...
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Plans Never Err
| 348 wordsI once tried to make sous vide mashed potatoes, where potatoes are cooked without introducing water. When I went to cook the potatoes, the sous vide machine broke. I boiled the potatoes instead, but I still added the same amount of butter as the original recipe called for. Since boiling...
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Three Things I've Learned About Bayes' Rule
| 887 wordsBayes’ Rule is important to me in the same way that decision theory is important to me. It is a theoretical idea, a description of perfection that I perpetually attempt to approximate. As such, I spend a reasonable amount of time comparing my thought processes to the Bayesian updates that...
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Stop Asking People To Maximize
| 207 wordsWhen getting to know people, people sometimes ask “what’s your favorite <category>?” (where <category> can be books, movies, tv shows, colors, foods, etc.) This question is not computationally kind - it asks people to maximize over all items in <category> and pick the one that they like best. It forces...
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Resonant Quotations
| 164 wordsThere is power in taking ideas seriously. The following quotations are phrases that capture ideas I take extremely seriously. On any given day, it is likely that I think at least one of them. In any given week, it is likely that I think all of them. Eliezer Yudkowsky There...
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Contextualized Norms
| 963 wordsThere are certain questions you’re not supposed to ask; “do disabled people have less moral weight?”, “does gender correlate with intelligence?”, or “are certain races more prone to violence?” are some examples. People that lack social savviness are really confused by why they aren’t allowed to ask these questions. People...
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What I Want To Do With My Life
| 616 wordsSometimes, people ask me what I want to do with my life. Usually, I say something like “I dunno, currently deciding between industry and grad school.” This answer is not technically false, but it is not the whole truth either. The first deception is that my answer doesn’t answer the...
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In My Culture
| 770 wordsBackground reading: In My Culture. In my culture, people say what they mean. If we’re deciding what to get for dinner and you say you don’t care, everyone will act as if you literally don’t care. They will decide where to go to dinner and you will be expected to...