Fitness: The military fitness test is a good idea. There are also a variety of all-around fitness tests designed for different groups (e.g. police, firefighters, athletes), plus general measures of different types of physical fitness (e.g. VO2 Max, beep test). I could generate a fairly lengthy list if you’d like (I was, once upon a time, a certified fitness trainer). Fitness doesn’t really seem to me to require a group to practice, although groups can be useful to keep you motivated.
Social: The social bit came up at our first Ottawa Meetup (our group actually appears to be headed in the exact direction you desire, by the way), and Cyan recommended volunteering at the Distress Centre. I checked it out and it seems like they offer interesting training on handling “exotic bad situations”. Maybe something similar exists in SF?
For general social skills, Dale Carnegie is my go-to for drop-dead basics. This book is intended to be the fundamental textbook on getting on with folk, and in my opinion it does a pretty good job. Implementing its suggestions is straightforward (i.e. it’s quite close to first principles), and I think it could be really valuable to get group feedback on this kind of stuff.
Strategy: I’m currently reading Tempo and Thinking Strategically. Both have myriad ideas that could be turned into exercises and worked on in a group setting. Lionhearted, aka Sebastian Marshall has set himself the goal of being history’s greatest strategist, so I’d imagine he might have something to contribute to this conversation.
I’m extremely interested in seeing this happen. I’ll contribute further in the near future.
I think that pick-up artistry is a really limited subset of social fitness, if it even applies at all. It seems from the small amount that I’ve read on it that they target a subset of women (women that go to bars and hook up), and that it might not really generalize well. Carnegie looks like a much better start.
I have other thoughts that seem too unformed to put down here yet. They’re too nebulous, and it’s annoying… I can see there being a use for some sort of systematic approach to testing and evaluating people and techniques, but I’m not sure how it would work. (v_v)
Really, you’ve articulated my actual, underlying desire (i.e. Getting More Awesome) quite well in the OP. Why don’t you have a go at articulating your “nebulous” thoughts. Consider it brainstorming, don’t worry about it being neat or perfect!
I think that pick-up artistry is a really limited subset of social fitness, if it even applies at all.
Sure, but that’s irrelevant. I just think they’ve provided a decent example of a group getting together to figure out how to work on a particular social skill. In the article I linked, I was advocating copying their learning methods, nothing more.
I actually tried to write them out several times in the reply before I gave up. I’ll need more time to think about them when I’m not distracted by impending life.
I think a list of goals for fitness will help a lot. It may not need a group but doing it in a group will hopefully make us more of a community. Motivation is good too, of course.
Do nutrition and cooking fit in with fitness? People seem to have good results with various diets, and I think that there have been a number of threads on them here. Is there a reason we couldn’t eventually put together a ‘Less Wrong Diet’? We have lots of smart people, I wonder if we couldn’t set up some kind of automated double-blind system that gave us diet suggestions and tracked results? (Since beating akrasia is important too, perhaps focusing on the effect that suggestions have at first might be best, since advice that doesn’t get followed is pretty useless...)
Word, I agree!
Fitness: The military fitness test is a good idea. There are also a variety of all-around fitness tests designed for different groups (e.g. police, firefighters, athletes), plus general measures of different types of physical fitness (e.g. VO2 Max, beep test). I could generate a fairly lengthy list if you’d like (I was, once upon a time, a certified fitness trainer). Fitness doesn’t really seem to me to require a group to practice, although groups can be useful to keep you motivated.
Social: The social bit came up at our first Ottawa Meetup (our group actually appears to be headed in the exact direction you desire, by the way), and Cyan recommended volunteering at the Distress Centre. I checked it out and it seems like they offer interesting training on handling “exotic bad situations”. Maybe something similar exists in SF?
For general social skills, Dale Carnegie is my go-to for drop-dead basics. This book is intended to be the fundamental textbook on getting on with folk, and in my opinion it does a pretty good job. Implementing its suggestions is straightforward (i.e. it’s quite close to first principles), and I think it could be really valuable to get group feedback on this kind of stuff.
Strategy: I’m currently reading Tempo and Thinking Strategically. Both have myriad ideas that could be turned into exercises and worked on in a group setting. Lionhearted, aka Sebastian Marshall has set himself the goal of being history’s greatest strategist, so I’d imagine he might have something to contribute to this conversation.
I’m extremely interested in seeing this happen. I’ll contribute further in the near future.
I think that pick-up artistry is a really limited subset of social fitness, if it even applies at all. It seems from the small amount that I’ve read on it that they target a subset of women (women that go to bars and hook up), and that it might not really generalize well. Carnegie looks like a much better start.
I have other thoughts that seem too unformed to put down here yet. They’re too nebulous, and it’s annoying… I can see there being a use for some sort of systematic approach to testing and evaluating people and techniques, but I’m not sure how it would work. (v_v)
Edit—please disregard this post
Really, you’ve articulated my actual, underlying desire (i.e. Getting More Awesome) quite well in the OP. Why don’t you have a go at articulating your “nebulous” thoughts. Consider it brainstorming, don’t worry about it being neat or perfect!
Sure, but that’s irrelevant. I just think they’ve provided a decent example of a group getting together to figure out how to work on a particular social skill. In the article I linked, I was advocating copying their learning methods, nothing more.
ETA: Well, this is certainly timely!
I actually tried to write them out several times in the reply before I gave up. I’ll need more time to think about them when I’m not distracted by impending life.
Edit—please disregard this post
I think a list of goals for fitness will help a lot. It may not need a group but doing it in a group will hopefully make us more of a community. Motivation is good too, of course.
Do nutrition and cooking fit in with fitness? People seem to have good results with various diets, and I think that there have been a number of threads on them here. Is there a reason we couldn’t eventually put together a ‘Less Wrong Diet’? We have lots of smart people, I wonder if we couldn’t set up some kind of automated double-blind system that gave us diet suggestions and tracked results? (Since beating akrasia is important too, perhaps focusing on the effect that suggestions have at first might be best, since advice that doesn’t get followed is pretty useless...)
Edit—please disregard this post