I'm also known as User:Simfish
http://www.quora.com/Alex-K-Chen - where I spend most my time now (as of 2011)
User pages of mine
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Simfish/Random_notes&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.orgview_html.php?sq=&lang=&q=User_talk:Simfish
Simfish is actually a Scarlet Macaw.
Simfish, like a Scarlet Macaw makes loud, low-pitched, throaty squawks and screams.
Main site: http://www.simfishthoughts.wordpress.com
books I've read: http://books.google.com/books?uid=13718804063927505694
delicious: http://www.delicious.com/inquilinekea
journal articles i've read (InquilineKea): http://www.citeulike.org/profile/InquilineKea
google profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/simfish
Google reader shared items: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/10516082170111880850
Science news: (URLs don't really matter anymore, just google the titles)
http://simfishthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/science-news/ Yes, I know I'm extremely mediocre in most of the things I do - I just like to try a lot of things out to see how they work (without investing too much time into them).If you have merely googled my name and came here, then go to http://simfishthoughts.wordpress.com/about/ for more info. Yes I know I'm immature. Okay and FYI, I live in Redmond, Washington (and am male) [and I came from Colorado]. In case you find other ppl by "simfish", ONLY the "simfish" that come from Redmond are from me. I care little for style so just keep in mind that most of what I write is fairly messy. I'm INTP, RLUEI, and Chaotic Neutral. a lot of people think of me as arrogant but it's really just that I want to maximize the amount of time I have while my fluid intelligence hasn't declined too much. I'm not "too good" for anything but I have to prioritize some things over others. The fact is that I'd do anything in possibility space if I had unlimited time. I appear to have no life - but really - I'm trying to exploit an empty niche that I may find someday.
E-mail: [email protected]. (I much prefer e-mail to anything else) [I need to replace this with a form field sometime]
AIM: InquilineKea MSN: [email protected] (I rarely go on)
Forum-wise, I have the highest post counts/activity at Heavengames and College Confidential. I don't really post on forums right now though.
If you want to look at my edits (all minor ones meh): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&contribs=user&target=Simfish&namespace=0 (without ego-edits)
Random stuff to read if you're bored and want to learn something: User:Simfish/Random or just http://simfish.googlepages.com/links
http://en.wikipedia.orgview_html.php?sq=&lang=&q=Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Simfish is a way i can archive my own posts on talk pages.
primary interest: Cognitive Science
List of personality tests: http://simfish.googlepages.com/personalitytests
Favorite blogs @ http://inquilinekea.blogspot.com
Awesome links: (specific to my interests)
http://delicious.com/inquilinekea/thoughtful%2Fprovocative?setcount=100
Awesome links: (more general)
http://www.edge.org/questioncenter.html
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/
http://makeanysense.blogspot.com
http://en.wikipedia.orgview_html.php?sq=&lang=&q=Special:MostRevisions
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Interesting Distinctions:
Practical, Theoretical, Applied
Diversity (in the general sense of the term - diversity like metabolic diversity, governmental diversity, operating system diversity, processor diversity, corporate diversity, neurological diversity, historical diversity, genetic diversity, Comparative law etc..)
also [word]+theory, topology, space, algebra, psychology, philosophy, history, . Suggestions? plz e-mail.
positive definition, negative definition
Theory vs Case study. examining case studies is often an excellent example of Kuhnian normal science.
Oxidizing environment vs Reducing environment
Acids \subset Oxidizing agents; Bases \subset Reducing agents
Always add the word "perceived" before anything where your knowledge is black-box type knowledge? e.g. perceived intelligence, perceived arrogance, perceived difficulty.
Psychology of how ppl parse sentences, words, and articles
Perception of insightfulness, perception of judgment, perception of interest, perception of arrogance.
Generality, Specificity. hm @ without loss of generality
Fine, Coarse; fine motor control, fine level of detail.
Big Picture vs. details
Normative, Descriptive, Prescriptive
Deontological, Consequentialist, Virtue ethics
Political realism et al.
Stronger (often = less general)/Weaker
Antagonistic, Additive, Synergistic
Inverse. A(A^{-1}) = I
Near transfer vs. far transfer
Necessary and Sufficient
Kuhnian normal science vs. Kuhnian revolutionary science
Ontology recapitulates phylogeny
Energy, Potential difference, mass-energy equivalence, Temperature
in personality, N vs. S
Generation of variation and selecting the most desirable elements of that variation. Creativity (Euler was good at this) and analysis (this includes proofs with traditional methods;creative proofs fit alongside creativity)
Superficial: more concerned with salient details than less salient but potentially more relevant details that may highlight stronger interrelationships with others. Taxonomy was originally superficial *relative* to the new genetic sciences. Black boxes are always superficial analyses.
Always think of the consequences of your actions in a different environment. Ceteris paribus, more generalizable actions are desirable.
For sake of moral relativity, use "desirable" in place of "good".
Good adjectives/adverbs for abstract nouns/verbs: contextual, potential, ostensible, malleable, X theory, X response, X threshold (significance threshold), with respect to/relative to, relevant/reliable, appropriate,
"while this isn't useless, it would take a creative person to find a useful function of this"
"it would take some creativity/imagination in order to reconcile this with something else" [implies that the something isn't useful given current context; but could have use later]. but it could be entirely useless too, since the most creative person can find a use out of EVERYTHING.
Use fuzzy logic as appropriate. So a pre-requisite is really a semi-prerequisite (some ppl can do by with very little). or just used "recommended X". but rarely does something apply to ALL cases
Power words: appropriate. (not irrelevant + not inappropriate to context + not offensive to audience + ), "are mediated, at least in part,"
epistemic significance (independent of human concerns)
desirable (not [not-good] + not irrelevant + not useless)
Criticisms of people: Malleable criticisms (add "ostensibly" as appropriate): lacks judgment, lacks perspective, lacks imagination, immature, lacks priority in one's tasks, inconsistent,
Perception of insightfulness, perception of judgment, perception of interest, perception of arrogance.
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Phrases I like:
spatial fate/temporal fate, lashed out, attentional allocation, rebound (@ UD), time sensitive, infinitely forgiving, intellectual honesty, intellectual freedom, possibility space, search space, potential ability, demonstrated aptitude/demonstrated potential, ad hoc, X + theory, incidentally, Bayesian prior, mutually exclusive, humor-response system (so x-response), noun verbs, verb nouns, domain specific, generalizable
emotionally salient learning experience
Putting considerations of signalling aside [no, actually, Signalling considerations aside...].
==
Nice neodenotations:
vandalize,
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Underappreciated things:
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Overrated websites:
MIT OCW (quite frankly, it's not really free until it releases its course textbooks [many of them rarely used outside of MIT) for free - and you can easily google course webpages for virtually ANY course by just using the "site:.edu" + whatever textbook you happen to have on hand].
The Teaching Company. you aren't going to learn a subject by listening to lectures. You might as well learn the material better from books. The lectures aren't high in quality and obviously can't give you charts or diagrams. Moreover, you *will* encounter rough spots in any difficult material, and it's harder to backtrack and go through rough spots (again) on audio tracks. Also, the marketing says that it's much cheaper than traditional courses, only if you ASSUME that the lecture is the most important part of the course. But really, it oftentimes isn't. That being said, it probably DOES provide useful listening material when you're on the car and doing nothing else, so that's sufficient reason to buy those tracks.
==
Underrated websites:
Weather Underground. MAN this website is awesome. It gives you EVERYTHING that weather is supposed to be about. Most websites only give you the numbers - the highs and lows in degrees - and that's it. And usually only in one location as well. Weather Underground, meanwhile, gives a MAP of temperatures around the site you've googled AND does not discriminate between national and international forecasts. Moreover you can check out charts of the history data (humidity AND temperature WRT time) on ANY GIVEN DAT. The ONLY problem with wunderground is that it doesn't give out snowfall amounts or record low maximums/record high minimums.
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Things I really like:
HAHA, commentary along with the book. I had to read the book once again just to see the entertaining commentary!! I wish this was included in more books - I wonder if any other books have commentary like that.
== really abstract articles:
[[1]]
[[2]]
[[3]]
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phrases that seem repeated often:
"taking xuzhou as an obligation"
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INTERESTING ARTICLES:
all the colonization of mars/titan/europa/blah articles
List of country subdivisions by GDP (nominal)
List_of_country_subdivisions_by_GDP_per_capita_(nominal)
Computer literacy - July 28, 2008 version
Biology:
Central dogma of molecular biology
Here are some articles that I find particularly interesting:
Differential susceptibility hypothesis
Epistemology - v. nice general picture article
Law of unintended consequences
Antisocial Personality Disorder and... evolutionary stable strategy
thought suppression => rebound effect
invisible hand <=> natural selection
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Articles on http://plato.stanford.edu:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-minimum/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/corruption http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-theory/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-probabilistic/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/common-knowledge/ http://en.wikipedia.orgview_html.php?sq=&lang=&q=Correlated_equilibrium http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reflective-equilibrium/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-foundational/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/coercion/ ==
Here are some thinkers who have influenced me: (this does not mean that I agree with them - it just means that I find them interesting. and yes I know some of them hate each other - they're just all interesting - thatz all)
http://en.wikipedia.orgview_html.php?sq=&lang=&q=User:Natalinasmpf
Also interesting: Dan Ariely, Ian Ayers, Randall Parker, Taneb, Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, Joe the Plumber, Mallard duck, Hyacinth Macaw, Orca, Alex (parrot), Koko (gorilla)
Not a fan of: (even though people might get the impression)
I have also been influenced by the environmental movement, the animal rights movement, and utilitarianism, even though I have rejected the premises of such movements. I also have been influenced by the meritocratic community of the open source movement, although I would prefer applying the logic of the movement to academia in general.
Academic Interests:
Cetacean interspecific interaction
Neuropharmacology of Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Acetylcholine
Asperger's Syndrome, Schizoid Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder
Romance of Three Kingdoms and Later Han
Pretty much anything within astronomy
Intelligence and Creativity, Fluid intelligence
Anything that correlates with that word I'm obsessed with, Nobel laureate
Scientific personalities