Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

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Where do you fall?

I’ve been fiddling around with my new ‘about’ page ( http://blog.datapacrat.com/about/ ). I’ve taken three different two-axis political quizzes ( http://www.politicalcompass.org/ , http://uselectionatlas.org/TOOLS/POLMTX/thetest.php , http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz (though I had to flip the third one’s graph to fit the others)) , and they’ve all put me around the same area – ‘left libertarian’, extremely left socially, moderate-to-strong left economically.

My result from Political Compass:

Economic -6.12, Social -7.64

My result from Political Matrix:

Economic score:  -4.39
Social score: -9.57
Your score pegs you as economically moderately leftist and socially far-leftist.
Moderate economic leftists generally support regulation of free trade and business to assure that workers are fairly treated and prices remain stable.
Social far-leftists generally believe that the government has no business enforcing morality on most matters, instead favoring a government that intervenes only when absolutely necessary to avoid direct harm.  Many social far-leftists also look negatively on the government’s past attitudes toward groups they view as persecuted, although some simply oppose government intervention on utilitarianist grounds.

My result from World’s Smallest Political Quiz:

Your PERSONAL issues Score is 100%

Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 30%

Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded “safety net” to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

Just testing the technology. Isn’t it fun living in the future?

I’m obviously not much for doing much blogging.

Am thinking about doing some more. Probably won’t. We’ll see.

 

For some color, here’s my standard online avatar:DataPacRat's avatar

Original

Finally upgrading from Windows XP…

At least as a long-term experiment, to an OS that’s faster, more secure, smaller, and still full-featured. Plus, if I ever change my mind, I can just pull out the USB stick, and boot right back to the Windows on my hard-drive.

My current OS of choice: Puppy Linux, specifically Slacko 5.4, from http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm .

Puppy Linux Community Home – Getting Started
Home, overview and getting started with Puppy Linux, amazingly fast, fascinatingly complete and delightfully small Linux

Original

I have just received a message from my lawyer, regarding the preparations of my cryo-based will, power of attorney, and related papers. The most significant quote reads as follows:

Due to the complex nature of your wishes and the undeveloped area of the law surrounding cryogenics and the transportation of a human body out of the country, your file has required and will require further extensive time and research to prepare and draft the necessary documents to ensure that your wishes are correctly stated and that they will be carried out upon your death. As such, in order to complete any further work on your behalf we will require a retainer from you in the amount of $2,500.00. Please contact our office to arrange the payment of the retainer. This can be paid by cheque, cash, credit or debit. Upon receipt of this retainer we will proceed to draft the documents in a manner that best ensures that your wishes regarding cryogenics are carried out.

Continue reading ‘LessWrong: Cryo: Legal fees of $2500’ »

Original

I’m about a third of the way through “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber, and am enjoying the feeling of ideas shifting around in my head, arranging themselves into more useful patterns. (The last book I read that put together ideas of similar breadth was “Economix: How and Why Our Economy Works” by Goodwin.) “Debt” goes into the origins of debts, as compared to obligations; and related topics, such as exchanges considered beneath economic notice (“Please pass me the salt”), debts too big or unique to be repaid, peaceful versus violent interactions, the endless minor obligations that form the network of social connections, and even the basis of whole societies.

The reason I’m posting about this book here… is that it’s giving me some new perspectives from which to consider the whole cryonics subculture, and, for instance, why it remains just a subculture of a couple of thousand people or so. For example, a standard LessWrong thought experiment is “Is That Your True Rejection?”; and most of the objections people raise to cryonics seem to be off enough that, even if those objections were solved, those particular people still wouldn’t sign up – that is, they feel some fundamental antipathy to the whole idea of cryonics, and unconsciously pick some rationalization that happens to sound reasonable to them to explain it.

Continue reading ‘LessWrong: Cryo and Social Obligations’ »

Original

How much confidence do you place in the scientific theory that ordinary matter is made of discrete units, or ‘atoms’, as opposed to being infinitely divisible?

More than 50%? 90%? 99%? 99.9%? 99.99%? 99.999%? More? If so, how much more? (If describing your answer in percentages is cumbersome, then feel free to use the logarithmic scale of decibans, where 10 decibans corresponds to 90% confidence, 20 to 99%, 30 to 99.9%, etc.)

 

This question freely acknowledges that there are aspects of physics which the atomic theory does not directly cover, such as conditions of extremely high energy. This question is primarily concerned with that portion of physics in which the atomic theory makes testable predictions.

 

This question also freely acknowledges that its current phrasing and presentation may not be the best possible to elicit answers from the LessWrong community, and will be happy to accept suggestions for improvement.

 

 

Edit: By ‘atomic theory’, this question refers to the century-plus-old theory. A reasonably accurate rewording is: “Do you believe ‘H2O’ is a meaningful description of water?”.

Original

I’m not as smart as I like to think I am. Knowing that, I’ve gotten into a habit of trying to work out as many general principles as I can ahead of time, so that when I actually need to think of something, I’ve already done as much of the work as I can.

What are your most useful cached thoughts?

Continue reading ‘LessWrong: What are your rules of thumb?’ »

Original

“But don’t ask me, I just wrote the song” — Eric Idle.
More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p012qczg Professor Brian Cox examines the story of life through physics in a major new series for …

Original

I’ve heard it said that the difference between being a writer, and someone who writes… Is that the former can’t /not/ write.

My computer’s back in the shop to swap out a dodgy hard drive (for a new one 30 times the size), so that I’m keyboardless – my only input device is my phone’s on-screen keyboard, impossible to touch-type with.

Yesterday, I finished visualising a scene, and couldn’t /not/ write it – so, thumb-tap by thumb-tap, managed a couple of thousand words over a couple of hours. Maybe 15 wpm instead of a hundred, but it got typed out. … And one of my pre-readers called it, IIRC, the liveliest in the story yet.

I once owned a clever little butterfly-folding keyboard for a PDA, no bigger than the pocket-sized device itself, but allowing full touch typing. If I ever find something of the sort for my current device, within my budget… I just might turn into that hipster writing his novel at the park, the coffee shop, the bus… 🙂