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.org/wiki/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: simfish@gmail.com. (I much prefer e-mail to anything else) [I need to replace this with a form field sometime]

AIM: InquilineKea MSN: simfish@hotmail.com (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)

Latest edits:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&contribs=user&target=InquilineKea&namespace=0

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.org/wiki/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://www.cato-unbound.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MostRevisions

==

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.

Black box <=> Inverse problem

Statics, Dynamics

Bottom up, Top Down

Feedback Control

positive definition, negative definition

With respect to, relative to

Theory vs Case study. examining case studies is often an excellent example of Kuhnian normal science.

Bayesian vs frequentist

Oxidizing environment vs Reducing environment

Acids \subset Oxidizing agents; Bases \subset Reducing agents

Special cases

Embedded

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

Phenomenology (science)

Fine, Coarse; fine motor control, fine level of detail.

Natural, Artificial

Big Picture vs. details

Normative, Descriptive, Prescriptive

Deontological, Consequentialist, Virtue ethics

Political realism et al.

Interpretation

Entitlement

Selective, Consistent

Malleability

Stronger (often = less general)/Weaker

Monophyletic vs Paraphyletic

Concrete, Abstract

Combinatorial

Antagonistic, Additive, Synergistic

Possibility space

Inverse. A(A^{-1}) = I

Categorization

Near transfer vs. far transfer

Copenhagen interpretation

Necessary and Sufficient

Kuhnian normal science vs. Kuhnian revolutionary science

Ontology recapitulates phylogeny

Energy, Potential difference, mass-energy equivalence, Temperature

Revolution, Rotation

Pedagogy

Rhetoric

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.

==

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,

==

Underappreciated things:

Potential difference Hertz

==

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.

==

Things I really like:

http://www.threekingdoms.com

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]]

==

phrases that seem repeated often:

"taking xuzhou as an obligation"

==

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)

Matthew effect

signalling theory

return on investment

Horizontal gene transfer

Computer literacy - July 28, 2008 version

Biology:

Central dogma of molecular biology

Superoxidase

Tinbergen's 4 questions

Here are some articles that I find particularly interesting:

Differential susceptibility hypothesis

Precautionary principle

Bait and switch

Streisand effect

Schelling point

Epistemology - v. nice general picture article

Philosophy of value

Stockholm syndrome

Survivorship bias

Attentional allocation

prisoner's dilemma

Principle of least effort

Cetacean intelligence

Avian intelligence

Cephalopod intelligence

Relativism

Analysis paralysis

Selfish Gene

The Extended Phenotype

Information asymmetry

Diffusion of responsibility

Law of unintended consequences

Stanford Prison Experiment

Antisocial Personality Disorder and... evolutionary stable strategy

Schizoid Personality Disorder

modafinil

nootropics

free ride

tragedy of the commons

Biological determinism

thought suppression => rebound effect

Consilience

Off-by-one error

List of cognitive biases

Gambler's Fallacy

Inattentional blindness

Representativeness heuristic

invisible hand <=> natural selection

==

Articles on http://plato.stanford.edu:

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)

Razib Khan of Gene Expression

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Natalinasmpf

Rational egoism

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)

Ayn Rand

John Stuart Mill

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

Sociobiology

Neuropharmacology of Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Acetylcholine

Asperger's Syndrome, Schizoid Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder

Stellar astrophysics

Big Bang Cosmology

Romance of Three Kingdoms and Later Han

Chu-Han contention

Political psychology

Psychology of science

Dunbar's number

Astrobiology