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[silverspawn]

There are at least 20 keys on my keyboard that are far less useful than an en-dash key. The number of time I've spent googling for, and then copying the en dash symbol, if it were all pasted together into a single block, may be enough to watch a feature-length movie.

[silverspawn]

In fact I bet that "en dash" is the thing I've googled most often in my life

[silverspawn]

Dennett's book really is a demonstration of everything that's wrong with human reasoning. You have this philosophical idea of how consciousness works, which is wrong, and the universe was actually nice enough to provide you with fairly straight-forward evidence falsifying your model (just as blindsight, filling-in, visual agnosia, or synesthesia). So what do you do? Well, you write long chapters about most of these points until the web of concepts is sufficiently complicated that most reader's philosophical understanding is incapable of recognizing that you didn't really make an argument. And then... profit!

[Awaclus]

There are at least 20 keys on my keyboard that are far less useful than an en-dash key. The number of time I've spent googling for, and then copying the en dash symbol, if it were all pasted together into a single block, may be enough to watch a feature-length movie.

Alt+0150.

[silverspawn]

There are at least 20 keys on my keyboard that are far less useful than an en-dash key. The number of time I've spent googling for, and then copying the en dash symbol, if it were all pasted together into a single block, may be enough to watch a feature-length movie.

Alt+0150.

My keyboard has no numpad

[Awaclus]

There are at least 20 keys on my keyboard that are far less useful than an en-dash key. The number of time I've spent googling for, and then copying the en dash symbol, if it were all pasted together into a single block, may be enough to watch a feature-length movie.

Alt+0150.

My keyboard has no numpad

Does it have programmable keys?

[silverspawn]

uhh probably not?

[silverspawn]

A fundamental problem with conversation is that it's both easier and, maybe more importantly, more fun/rewarding to spend your time figuring out your own position better than to understand your opponent's position. And it becomes an even bigger problem when you spend a lot of time arguing with people who don't have any ideas on a topic that you haven't already considered, in which case there's legitimately not much to be gained from trying to understand them better. That can put you into a habit of only trying to think about your own side, which then backfires when you talk to someone who actually does have a position that you don't understand

(totally unrelated to anything in this thread)

[Awaclus]

And it becomes an even bigger problem when you spend a lot of time arguing with people who don't have any ideas on a topic that you haven't already considered, in which case there's legitimately not much to be gained from trying to understand them better.

You can fix this part of the problem by arguing with people on MasN Hub.

[silverspawn]

So making poker puzzles is much harder than making chess puzzles, but I randomly thought of a pretty good one.

Suppose you're at the River (i.e., there are 5 cards in the middle). How would you choose your hand (of 2 cards) and the 5 cards on the board such that the number of other possible hands that beat you is as large as possible?


You may think that giving yourself 23 and making the board sth like 45789 is optimal, since then every hand other than 23 beats you (and if you choose suits appropriately, then some 23 hands beat you as well). But there's something better!

Board is 22223, your hand is 33 (suits irrelevant). Now you don't beat the board (it's just quad 2s and a 3 high card), but every hand with a 4 or higher does beat the board since it has a better high card, and since there is only one card left that's smaller than 4, that means 100% of other hands beat you!

Alternatively, the board could be 33332 and your hand 22. I believe these are the only two solutions, modulo suits, but I'm not sure.

[silverspawn]

If I were Nikki Haley right now and wanted to win the race straight-up, I would do nothing but talk about Trump's cognitive gaffs all day. The alternative strategy would be to try not to anger him and just hope he gets disqualified, but it seems like that ship has sailed

[silverspawn]

Not the "he might get disqualified" ship; that one is still in harbor, but the "don't anger trump" ship.

[silverspawn]

the irony was difficult to miss

[silverspawn]

The youtube algorithm is pretty fascinating. Seems much better than the Netflix algorithm to me (when I was still on Netflix), though admittedly it also has more data to work with.

[silverspawn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF5V9r7_ZHI

*-*

[silverspawn]

I did not know homological algebra and it looks pretty dope. The most basic type of object you study seems already more advanced than anything you'd cover in a basic calculus or Linear Algebra course

[silverspawn]

I'm trying not to link most Shinzen videos I watch, but this one is fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky7vMFB4iAs

[silverspawn]

sounds legit

[silverspawn]

Alright I think I'm done with poker. Either that or I'll do one last tomorrow. But then I'm done. I'll get back into it in a month or more.

Current agenda is to meditate as much as possible and finally attain the first jhana again.

[silverspawn]

If I were Nikki Haley right now and wanted to win the race straight-up, I would do nothing but talk about Trump's cognitive gaffs all day. The alternative strategy would be to try not to anger him and just hope he gets disqualified, but it seems like that ship has sailed

Seems like Nikki is reading my blog whateverthisis. If you want to hire me as a political advisor, I charge 100$/hour.

[silverspawn]

Part of the chart of my ggpoker earnings by hand



I think we can safely conclude from this that I'm just ridiculously awesome at playing 64o. Whenever I get 64o I play with such utter brilliance that they are profitable despite being a garbage hand. If I only had 64o everywhere I would only make money. #statistics

[silverspawn]

Also this is nuts:



You're supposed to be negative in the blinds and positive everywhere else. These stats are completely bonkers. Hard to say how much of that if anything is platsyle rather than variance, but maybe i do raise too much in MP

[silverspawn]

The main thing poker teaches you is just the utter randomness of everything

[silverspawn]

I continue to be extremely weirded out by the people who are anti-Trump  but argue that he shouldn't be disqualified. It just makes no sense to me on any level. It makes no legal sense to me (obviously I'm criminally underqualified to judge this), it makes no consequential sense to me, and it doesn't make virtue-ethical or deontolical sense to me, either.

- Some argue it would be anti-democratic if someone who millions of people want to vote for would be disqualified in that way. But how on earth is it not way way more anti-democratic if someone who engaged in an insurrection was elected? I mean I guess it's literally more "democratic" in the sense that the majority gets to speak, but it'd be way worse for the institutional health of the country. The amendment was put there with the intention to prevent someone like Trump from holding office, and yeah it's bad if we're in a situation where it applies, how is failing to apply it in such a situation not way way worse than applying it?

- Some argue that it would be bad because of the backlash from MAGA people. But how on earth is it not infinitely worse to give these people the presidency? This argument is just so unbelievably stupid I can't even

I mean yeah there would be a lot of outrage. But to cave in to prevent that just seems like an incredibly bad idea... and also honestly completely pathetic although I don't like to say that because it's bad epistemics, and I know that sometimes caving in to threats is justified. But not here! If Trump gets disqualified by a majority conservative supreme court, then we just upheld the constitution! let there be outrage. Two years after the election Trump will likely be in prison and the whole MAGA thing will recede indefinitely

- People argue that the court won't do it anyway, and the attempt will politically backfire. This makes more sense to me than the above, which is to say, very little. The judicial system seems way way less corrupt and partisan than the legislative system, so declining an opportunity to decide things there seems crazy. And I don't particularly buy the backlash either; why would a moderate be outraged that this argument was taken seriously? If they're actually a moderate, it shouldn't seem all that unreasonable. Moderates won't like January 6 at all.

It seems like no one is willing to admit that there is a legitimate basis for hope. It's all very perplexing to me.

[silverspawn]

I guess if you think the Court is <1% likely to rule against Trump, the last argument would make sense even with small backlash. But imo that's just as crazy.