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Tips for a Better Life

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Re: Tips for a Better Life

#371

Post by WoodenChair »

hnhg wrote: post #365
WoodenChair wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than 89 I’m not impressed with the GPT-3 output here. In fact I would say it’s a good demonstration of the limits of this technology. While syntactically correct sentences that at the surface sound good, if you really think about them they’re not saying anything. They’re much more superficial and meaningless than the thinking that went into the original list.

I'd say that GPT-3 could probably beat a lot of the English-speaking (human) population at producing these though. I've read far worse on social media, that I've attributed to humans authors.

No doubt. Since it’s built out of a corpus of human produced text, it should be capable of producing human level text (but probably not often exceeding it). Yet many people are not capable of writing syntactically correct text.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#372

Post by meken »

> 56. Sometimes unsolvable questions like “what is my purpose?” and “why should I exist?” lose their force upon lifestyle fixes. In other words, seeing friends regularly and getting enough sleep can go a long way to solving existentialism.

Been seeing this for myself recently. I got really depressed continuing to search for answers to questions of why excel instead of stagnating, why work hard instead of slack off, etc.

I've come to the conclusion that there is no answer to these questions (unless you are deeply religious), and that just by doing the former set of things makes us happy, and non-depressed people just do them because it makes them happier.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#373

Post by mettamage »

jdhzzz wrote: post #350

When it comes to buying things I find my satisfaction is much higher when I spend money to remove an irritant rather than get something completely new. Our home has a long run from the water heater to basically anywhere it is used (This is in the USA where storage heaters are typical). When it died I had its location moved and got a model with a circulating system that loops around to the downstairs locations (kitche…

> When it comes to buying things I find my satisfaction is much higher when I spend money to remove an irritant rather than get something completely new.

Really true for me as well. I recently bought a new guitar that is fairly similar compared to my old guitar. My old guitar is perfectly fine. The issue is that my old guitar is in a weird tuning since I'm practicing finger style guitar on it. And I hate retuning my guitar to a normal tuning all the time.

I told myself, if I'm still as irritated about this a year from now, I'm buying a new guitar. It's 2 years later and I'm happy I did it.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#374

Post by nsb1 »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #16

"8. When buying things, time and money trade-off against each other. If you’re low on money, take more time to find deals. If you’re low on time, stop looking for great deals and just buy things quickly online." I'm finding, as I've gotten older, that almost every time I've chosen money over time I've made a bad decision. And I see this among my family and friends, too. There's a mentality that emerges when exchangin…

Relevant Malcolm in the Middle "Hal Replaces a Lightbulb" video. Sometimes I feel like this is my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#375

Post by fareesh »

> Those who generate anxiety in you and promise that they have the solution are grifters. See: politicians, marketers, new masculinity gurus, etc. Avoid these.

More provocatively, an interesting experiment is to try saying this:

"Bernie Sanders is a con artist" (replace placeholder Bernie with your fav person)

If this makes you upset or you vehemently disagree, you're probably brainwashed.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#376

Post by cik »

jdhzzz wrote: post #350

When it comes to buying things I find my satisfaction is much higher when I spend money to remove an irritant rather than get something completely new. Our home has a long run from the water heater to basically anywhere it is used (This is in the USA where storage heaters are typical). When it died I had its location moved and got a model with a circulating system that loops around to the downstairs locations (kitche…

Both are true, but at different times. Eliminating an irritant or stressor can be an excellent use of money. At the same time, I get tremendous, continued happiness simply having a reproduction of my favourite piece of art in the wall in my office. Some things are just things, others are layered happiness and value. The same is true of irritants.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#377

Post by not_knuth »

meken wrote: post #372

> 56. Sometimes unsolvable questions like “what is my purpose?” and “why should I exist?” lose their force upon lifestyle fixes. In other words, seeing friends regularly and getting enough sleep can go a long way to solving existentialism. Been seeing this for myself recently. I got really depressed continuing to search for answers to questions of why excel instead of stagnating, why work hard instead of slack off, e…

Same.

1. The philosopher's disease of always asking "why?" and critically evaluating things is a strange one. In Western countries this is how we are taught to think and it has many benefits, but physical happiness is seldom one. I have also found the line of thought to lead to a deadlock of "But why should we always ask why?". That question can ultimately only be answered by stating that "Asking why?" should be considered an axiom. And the matter of stating those axioms is up to everyone. In other words, like you say, trying to find answers to statements instead of questions is nonsensical.

2. I have come to like the idea that I am merely an organism programmed to survive and reproduce and all my needs and wants branch off from that. That may sound somewhat hollow, depressing and like giving up, but it has helped me a lot. Makes me question things a lot less. At least it gives me some kind of answer with which I can justify and understand my irrational behaviour.

Also, the moment I am around people more often I find that 1. flies out the window and I completely forget about it – only living by 2.

Just like point 56. says it does.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#378

Post by hnhg »

WoodenChair wrote: post #371
hnhg wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that GPT-3 could probably beat a lot of the English-speaking (human) population at producing these though. I've read far worse on social media, that I've attributed to humans authors.

No doubt. Since it’s built out of a corpus of human produced text, it should be capable of producing human level text (but probably not often exceeding it). Yet many people are not capable of writing syntactically correct text.

As well as being syntactically correct, it also reflects the contextual patterns of the tokens used to train it and then prompt it, which is perhaps limited by both intelligence and knowledge in humans.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#379

Post by unabst »

Jtsummers wrote: post #27

> 48. Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing. This is one I've been trying to emphasize with a few friends for a while. The act of labeling yourself is the act of restricting yourself to what you think fits that label. And unless that makes you happy , it's probably not what you really…

“I’m not the kind of person who does things like that”

This can also be not misbehaving or betraying your own values. It's not about you though. It should always be about actions. Not about "is" but about do's and don'ts

Self-identification manifests the ego. You want to identify yourself as others do, based on your actions and not an idea you have about yourself. And especially not an idea driven by impulses. These build the worst egos.

And those who generate ideas about others can be the most dangerous. They will embed an ego they can fight with their own, and even choose to fight it just so they can win.

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