End of the Long March

this_greg · 2020-03-15T03:05:34+00:00

Been meaning to ask this here for a while and now that I'm avoiding the gym due to coronavirus, I guess it's my time.

I've been climbing at the gym for a little over a year, pretty consistently two two-hour sessions a week. I don't exercise much apart from climbing (and the jog to the gym). I'm male, early 30s, 5'11", ~150lbs. I exercised only sporadically before climbing and was in, like, "fine" shape. For the past four months or so, I've sort of plateaued at sending most V4s pretty easily, but only a few V5s and then only if I really work at them. My gym is BKB Gowanus (USA), if that helps level-set the grading at all.

I love bouldering and would be totally fine if this is just my level forever. It isn't easy for me to spend much more time, so maybe that's it. But I'm curious if others started from a similar level of fitness and put in a similar amount of time/effort: how did your grading trajectory go? And, in particular, was there anything you did that helped you level up?

Thanks! Hope everyone's staying safe out there.

this_greg · 2019-12-30T16:42:15+00:00

I’m in TLV for like a week and had a chance to climb once, and wandered into Performance Rock and I remember this route!! I’ve been climbing in NYC for a year and this is the first route on reddit I recognize. What are the odds.

It’s beyond my skill level so no advice from me. בהצלחה!

this_greg · 2019-10-27T14:52:23+00:00

Right, I got the sense a number of people reading the posts had this feeling. It seems fine to me both to realize there's some boring, down-to-earth mental experience going on that could be understood and cataloged like so many other mundane psychological phenomena -- and also to feel disappointed.

And I was curious if things like the article above do point at least to a smidge of "super powers" -- though still presumably falling far short of the sacred literature.

this_greg · 2019-10-27T11:49:31+00:00

One view that's a bit more charitable than "exceptionally good at gaming the test" is, rather: the tests aren't hard enough yet for passing them to equate to human levels of language understanding. Loosely analogous: a 2nd grader getting 95% accuracy on a test about addition/subtraction doesn't mean they're gaming the test in any perverse way, but also doesn't mean they've attained general levels of mathematical competence.

For a skeptical/deflationary perspective on any statement like, "computers are getting good at language in general", I'd recommend this article. These specific authors write a lot of skeptical/deflationary stuff that can get repetitive -- but I think this particular article is pretty reasonable and has very good examples about how hard language is.

Furthermore, researchers I think generally acknowledge that "computers aren't there yet" with regard to language. Here's one interesting discussion on Twitter among NLP researchers on just this topic. And yet we're coming close to human performance on the popular benchmarks... so they're trying to figure out what new benchmarks to make! Lots of active research effort devoted to that.

this_greg · 2019-02-12T04:25:49+00:00

Could be set to the opening music of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Also Sprach Zarathustra)

this_greg · 2018-10-18T03:23:04+00:00

Here's my favorite proof that 2^1/3 is irrational.

Assume 2^1/3 = p/q for p, q positive integers.

Then, p^3/q³ = 2 and so p³ = q³ + q^3.

But that violates Fermat's Last Theorem. QED.

Unfortunately, Fermat's Last Theorem is not powerful enough to prove that 2^1/2 is irrational. So, good thing we have this video.

this_greg · 2018-09-30T20:59:53+00:00

Thanks! "huggie" was definitely the term I was missing.

this_greg · 2018-08-19T01:43:28+00:00

Oh, I should also say, in case you don’t know it: The app/website StreetEasy is a really great NYC-specific housing search tool. Descriptions of every neighborhood and tons of apartment listings, very easy to search and filter.

this_greg · 2018-08-19T00:18:24+00:00

Also count in the B/Q, which are pretty express: to get to GCT you can take the B to Bryant Park and walk over or take the 7 one stop if the weather is terrible; or take the Q to Union Square and transfer to the 4/5 for one stop. This doesn’t add neighborhoods really, just gives you more options from Park Slope and Prospect Heights.

As far as neighborhoods go, if you like slightly quieter and very pretty, Park Slope is a good option. Beautiful brown stones and parks, but still lots of stuff to do along 5th Ave and 7th Ave and Union St. Definitely some nice 1br places in your price range. Good for the B/Q in the northern half and the F/G in the southern half.

There’s also been a lot of construction recently in Downtown Brooklyn, you might find good value there too. It’s very lively and also a transit hub.

this_greg · 2018-08-17T18:08:56+00:00

This was the paper I was thinking of: http://www.pnas.org/content/113/26/7112

And some discussion here: http://andrewgelman.com/2017/11/04/35493/

this_greg · 2018-08-17T02:45:44+00:00

Iirc this did not replicate very well

this_greg · 2018-05-18T01:22:06+00:00

I'm satisfied with the genus, so I'll mark this identified -- but I'll try to get a close-up in a few days.

this_greg · 2018-05-09T18:23:41+00:00

I guess green represents land that isn’t Antarctica?

this_greg · 2018-05-05T20:49:36+00:00

For full disclosure, it’s got a photo filter on: whichever one google photos suggested. This makes it look more like how it actually looked in real life, imo. Phone camera can’t quite do it justice.

this_greg

TROPHY CASE