Bryan-san

• Bryan-san 4 Jun 2015 4:23 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: ahbwramc’s comment on: Stupid Ques­tions June 2015

  Take people you spend time with to first aid, heimlich, and CPR classes. You will need their help if you are the one choking or unable to breathe.

  Build up enough stamina and physical fitness to run at both a sprint and for several minutes straight. Running away from a fight can be a very good strategy for not getting harmed.

  Read the “Influence: Science and Practice” chapter that discusses Social Proof. I think it was chapter 4. The suggestions involved help avoid the bystander effect where a person in need is left alone and unassisted by a group of onlookers. The chapter deals with a few examples of effectively communicating and prompting someone to help you in an emergency situation. This is especially necessary in an urban environment.

Meetup : San An­to­nio New Meetup

• Bryan-san 17 Jun 2015 14:41 UTC

  3 points

  on: Autism, or early iso­la­tion?

  I think that social isolation of the intellectually gifted is a harsh problem and I have encountered it several times before coming to LW. There are two different talks I’ve had to have with very intelligent people that I’ve met in the past.

  The first is the “You aren’t very good at social interactions so lets find some ways to improve that” talk which is often triggered by failures in communication that significantly upset people and require a mediator to explain the perspectives and motivations back to both parties. Social interaction is complex and full of pitfalls for those who simply aren’t in the know. The explanation of controversial ideas to those who are reluctant to change their minds on an issue requires social nuance and great care.

  The second talk is the “I haven’t ever had an intelligent conversation like this before” talk which other intelligent people occasionally bring up to me in the middle of a different conversation. The worry and concern I feel in this case is not because the individual is incapable or has difficulty interacting with intelligent conversation but because they are capable of it and have either abstained or not been exposed to it for a long time.

  Social interaction is important to anyone who is intelligent to increase the exposure of their ideas, improve their ideas by testing and growing them around others, and for their basic everyday rationality. One of the primary methods of determining whether your sensory inputs are working properly is by creating reference points through other people. “Does it feel cold in here to you?” “Does anyone else smell that?” Or one that happened to me this weekend while searching for a LW meetup location: “Does this coffee taste sour to you or is there something wrong with me?” (This was the second time I had tasted inappropriately sour coffee in the same day and I was starting to become concerned about the proper functioning of my taste buds/​personal health.)

• Bryan-san 17 Jun 2015 16:11 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015

  I don’t know anything about high-brow circles, but I am a big fan of swordfighting and weapon martial arts and would suggest trying that out. There’s been some resurfacing of the pasttime/​art/​practice in historical recreation groups though I got interested in it after getting a quarter of the way through Musashi’s Book of Nine Spheres and reading his assertion that it would be impossible to understand his book without practicing swordfighting yourself.

  I’ve tried out rapier-fencing and kali stick fighting (a stick in each hand) and have found it very intellectually stimulating. It’s also been interesting to explore the areas of my personality and body that involve high physical activity, mobility, agression, and composure under pressure. Fighting effectively while using a weapon in each hand has been described to me as similar to a combination of chess and tennis. (I don’t think it’s quite that difficult, but I’m also not the best swordfighter in the world nor do I practice against said greatest swordfighters.)

  Exposure to stimuli that add additional perspectives to everyday life helps as well. Real pressure in life doesn’t involve a spreadsheet deadline. It involves an angry large human attempting to painfully whack you over the head with a large stick (a remarkably refreshing experience) and attempting to deal with that situation as optimally as possible.

• Bryan-san 18 Jun 2015 17:17 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015

  HEMA/​Fiore is the rapier-fencing stuff that I’ve been doing. I’ve enjoyed learning footwork from the more formal setting I’ve found with the rapier people I know.

  The other stuff I’ve done (which makes up the majority) is more freestyle rattan dual-wielding and freestyle shinai fighting that uses a mix of japanese fighting (less kendo, more musashi), filipino stick fighting, and some HEMA twohanded sword fighting (this stuff is weird). This resembles the dogbrothers videos more than anything else (although we both don’t wear much padding and don’t hit anywhere near as hard as we could).

  I’ve tried brazilian jiu-jitsu with a focus on very close sparring but I didn’t enjoy it very much at all and found it to have limited usefulness. I don’t think the place I went to gave very good instruction or had the right focus.

  I would rate the above as follows:

  Rattan dual-wielding fun 10 (12 if i can go above 10 in the 1-10 scale), fitness 8, feeling confident 9 , feeling sexy 8?,

  Rapier fighting fun 7, fitness 6, feeling confident 3 , feeling sexy 6? (dressing in armor probably contributes for 4 points and the other 2 are from actual rapier fencing)

  shinai fighting fun 6, fitness 5, feeling confident 4, feeling sexy 3

  brazilian jiu-jitsu (unoptimized dojo) fun 1, fitness 3, feeling confident 2, feeling sexy 0

  Rattan (kali stick) dual wielding wins by a large margin and is probably the most fun thing I do in my life. It accomplishes the all-important task among sports of creating a strong cardio and muscular activity that is fun to the point that you will do it for hours on end. It has also taught me a great deal about myself physically and about states of mind that I can use to achieve higher functionality when necessary. It has strongly boosted my confidence and gives a strong sense of physical empowerment (you might call this “feeling sexy”?) that has been a refreshing change in my life.

• Bryan-san 24 Jun 2015 16:39 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: William_S’s comment on: Open Thread, Jun. 22 - Jun. 28, 2015

  The Rejection Game using Beeminder can be a good start for social skills development in general

  If you’re interested in a specific area of social interactions then finding a partner or two in that area could help out. Toastmasters, pua groups, book clubs, and improv groups fall into this category.

  Alternatively, obtaining a job in sales can take you far

• Bryan-san 30 Jun 2015 15:33 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015

  Rattan dual wielding is more fun for me personally and complex in a way that is really fun. Kali stick fighting (which i have only learned informally) is interesting because it uses the rattan sticks as a practice weapon that can easily be replaced with something more dangerous (mace, axe, sword, etc.) or anything that you happen to find around you when you need it (pipe, stick, glass bottle, etc.). It builds coordination, control of your off-hand, and allows for a lot of creativity.

  The rattan sticks are useful instead of a metal stick due to their light weight, grip, and how easily they bounce off of other rattan sticks. (They also have a very satisfying sound.) Lots of the practice drills i’ve done involve both people using them and executing repeated patterns (occasionally with slight deviations) over and over and over until you fully engrain the response in System 1 and can do it as an immediate reaction to a given stimuli.

  Lots of things make it more fun than the fencing for me(which i haven’t done as much of). The extreme coordination, sensation of slashing rather than stabbing, and the strange moves i’ve learned to do with them are really fun. The creativity, spontaneity, the flow of body movements and impacts, the mental reactions, psychological warfare on the person opposite you (learning how to terrify people with a look or yell is fun), and entire experience is awesome.

  The fencing that I’ve done was more historical in nature rather than modern fencing. It used a rapier and a dagger rather than just a single foil. I don’t know if I’d reccomend fencing with a foil. It looks interesting but kind of boring. (I would likely learn it just to know how, but not want to do it often.)

  Dual-wielding itself is strange. I will have to write more about it a bit later.

• Bryan-san 2 Jul 2015 5:06 UTC

  7 points

  on: Stupid Ques­tions July 2015

  If you have no interest in eventually procreating, is serious dating worth the massive time and emotional investment necessary?

  Edit: part of the reason i am asking is for external belief checking

• Bryan-san 2 Jul 2015 5:13 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015

  Whoops. Forgot to post this:

  Dual wielding is strange, cumbersome, uncomfortable, and amazing since all of its starting flaws decrease as you build proficiency over time.

  Dual wielding requires coordination and ambidexterity but you build both of them as you practice regularly. I do practice swings with both arms every day independently and then together. When you dual wield you need to be a proficient fighter with each arm independently and with both arms together. When you fight you need to be able to (attack-left defend-right), (attack-right defend-left), (attack-left attack-right), and (defend-left defend-right) with each mode all being the same mode and switched in between seemlessly. This is harder and easier than it sounds. It also has major psychological benefits when fighting someone since any sort of “mode” that gets adjusted to can throw them off significantly when you switch to another.

  Idealy every movement involves both arms simultaneously. However,i’m not quite there yet so there’s a lot of switching between which arm is my attacking arm (with the other defending) back and forth. (With both arms attacking occasionally or when there’s an opening, of course.)

  Dual wielding has a reduction in reach compared to a twohanded weapon but it also provides you a constant extra source of defending yourself and harming an opponent which most competent fighters will approriately be very careful against.

  The actual experience of fighting with two weapons at once is likely beyond my abilities to describe. It’s quite different from everything I’ve put in my posts and may be very different for me than it would be for you.

• Bryan-san 2 Jul 2015 5:19 UTC

  4 points

  on: June Monthly Brag­ging Thread

  Met several rationalists online, met two at an Austin meetup, and started a meetup myself in San Antonio.

• Bryan-san 2 Jul 2015 16:45 UTC

  15 points

  in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: Stupid Ques­tions July 2015

  This is a stupid question thread and I intentionally asked a question I thought was stupid. I think that lifelong companionship and emotional intimacy would be amazing. However, none of my attempts at achieving those resembled anything like that and when I look at people around me in relationships I don’t see it there either.

  This doesn’t make me bitter or get weird stupid ideas about relationships like completely basing them on sex or abstaining due to not being interested in procreating. It doesn’t make me draw any conclusions and it doesn’t stop me from wanting a fulfilling relationship with someone else. All it made me do was stop for a second and double check (in a thread for stupid questions) that real, fulfilling relationships are a thing that actually exist within reality, not some sort of Hollywood bullshit, and are worth the effort to obtain and maintain. I can imagine all sorts of things, but checking that this sort of thing is actually real seemed like it could be worth a 30 second forum post.

  Additionally, do you have experience of or have evidence that the benefits of companionship and emotional intimacy are worth high emotional and time investment costs? I am genuinely curious.

• Bryan-san 2 Jul 2015 17:43 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: Elo’s comment on: Stupid Ques­tions July 2015

  I considered spending half an hour crafting my question so that people could understand me perfectly and clearly but sometimes I just throw a question out there and see what sort of responses I get. On the internet people respond more often to short questions than giant blocks of text anyway. (Maybe I should change my policy a bit on LW as compared to other locations? Probably.)

  You answered one of the questions within the question that I was asking and thank you for that! People have lots of motivations and my motivations are occasionally different than other people’s. I don’t have the same hyperintense motivations in this area that other people have.

  Your fourth paragraph is something that resonates with my brain a bit and I will be sure to think on.

• Bryan-san 2 Jul 2015 17:45 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: Stupid Ques­tions July 2015

  1. Because I am occasionally terribile at phrasing questions (though my odd phrasings usually get me the answers I’m searching for anyway)

  2. Because the question was more of a ramblingly phrased question than a highly specific and carefully crafted framing

  3. Because I have no intention of ever having children and the question pertains to me

• Bryan-san 2 Jul 2015 17:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: MrMind’s comment on: Stupid Ques­tions July 2015

  Do you think the sex alone makes it all worth the time and emotional investment?

  Separately (and now we’re getting completely hypothetical), what if sex was unavailable or impossible, would it still be worth it to you?

Meetup : San An­to­nio, TX

• Bryan-san 5 Jul 2015 14:56 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: Ishaan’s comment on: Stupid Ques­tions July 2015

  So there are some relationships where you gain emotional energy from the time you spent with the person? This is different from basic extroversion ‘recharging’?

  I am very glad I asked this question because I did not realize that was even an option. Thank you very much!

Meetup : Meetup : San An­to­nio Meetup

Meetup : San An­to­nio Meetup

• Bryan-san 16 Sep 2015 16:54 UTC

  4 points

  on: How To Win The AI Box Ex­per­i­ment (Some­times)

  Thank you for posting this. I think it goes a long way in updating the idea that a sane person with average intelligence would let an AI out from low chance to very high chance.

  Even if a person thinks that they personally would never let an AI out, they should worry about how likely other people would be to do so.

Meetup : San An­to­nio Meetup—Discussion