What traits do you look for when making friends?
Also, what clues or tells do you use to identify these specific traits?
Bryan-san
Karma: 239
Starting University Advice Repository
A few points:
I would hate to see LW close and I don’t think that would be a helpful step in getting people exposed to rationality unless a new central hub rose to take its place. I found LW through HPMOR just this year and have very little idea of what LW looked in it’s supposed glory days. Things aren’t great now, but if LW had been completely dead I likely wouldn’t have moved from wanting to be rational to reading 600+ pages of Rationality:From AI to Zombies, making tons of connections and rationalist friends, attending CFAR, starting a LW meetup in my area, and more. A completely dead website would have given the impression of a dead philosophy that was abandoned by the people who followed it because it wasn’t actually that useful after all.
Decreases to the level of polish, rigor, and rationality knowledge publicly deemed necessary before posting in the various areas could be helpful (in current LW or a LW 2.0). I mainly post in Open and Stupid Question threads because of this.
People here can be pretty cold and harsh in their replies. I’ve also heard of issues regarding downvote brigades or mass downvoting of people’s posts due to personal disagreements. If this place really is full of “unquiet spirits” then a method of removing them, discouraging that kind of conduct, or changing them into kind benevolent spirits should be included in the works.
•Discourage/ban Open threads. They are an unusual thing to have on a an open forum. They might have made sense when posting volume was higher, but right now they further obfuscate valuable content.
I don’t think this is a practical idea. The site is hostile enough to new users who lack much rationality knowledge and perspective on the content. The Open threads (and even moreso the Stupid Question threads) give people a place to pose questions and try out ideas that they aren’t confident enough in to make into Discussion posts. People are less harsh in those threads (although I’ve seen people be harsh in stupid questions threads) and it provides a chance to participate in content without having read the 1700 pages of The Sequences or having lurked on the site for 2+ years.
At the end of the day, I hope this will have been a cowpox situation and lead people to be better informed at avoiding actual dangerous information hazard situations in the future.
I seem to remember reading a FAQ for “what to do if you think you have an idea that may be dangerous” in the past. If you know what I’m talking about, maybe link it at the end of the article?
Finally completed my dieting goal of losing 20% of my original body weight.
Does that include the grade inflation at major universities or the universities with specific classes that have their difficultly increased and grading deflated so that they fail out students at a more regular rate? (I know some universities do the second type on the introductory science courses while others do it at 3rd year courses.) Or were you referring to something else like bribes?
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.
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
80000 Hours
The 80000 Hours Career Guide
An impressive career guide that helps people maximize future impact and future earnings. It gives lots of strong advice on a variety of career choosing topics as well as looking in-depth into a few specific ones. (This website was created for Effective Altruists, but can be used by others very easily.)Adulthood Fallacy?
This is purely me talking. Do not trust someone to be wise, emotionally mature, responsible, or trustworthy just because they are old. This applies to everyone you meet in the future and everyone you already know. There are people older than you who are worth going to for advice, but they are rare and you will need other heuristics to figure out who these people are.
This is part of Argument from Authority but I think it could be a useful distinction. Most people are not experts on life anyway.Social Skills and Networking Social skills and networking are extremely important for long-term success. People start building their skills and networks either in high school or university. Start early. I don’t think I am qualified to give specific advice in this area, but I am confident in saying that these things are very important and worth spending time building and learning.
Outside LW Links:
Three Things to Unlearn from School by Ben Casnocha
What You’ll Wish You’d Known by Paul GrahamLW Links:
Two More Things to Unlearn from School
College Discussion Thread
Interesting critique of British education by outgoing advisor
What Are Useful Skills to Learn at University
Which College Major
The Best Textbooks on Every SubjectVarious books to read:
The Sequences (Start here)
Influence: Science and Practice (very important to learn how to stop other people from influencing you and from influencing yourself through the use of biases)
Thinking: Fast and Slow
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.
I think it’s far from ideal, but that
doxingthings similar to doxing are at least 100x worse as a community norm.
I’m curious: what were your direct motivations for posting this in a thread instead of as a comment in the Open or Media threads?
Nate Soares’ recent post “The Art of Response” on Minding Our Way talks about effective response patterns that people develop to deal with problems. What response patterns do you use in life or in your field of expertise that you have found to be quite effective?
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!
Because I am occasionally terribile at phrasing questions (though my odd phrasings usually get me the answers I’m searching for anyway)
Because the question was more of a ramblingly phrased question than a highly specific and carefully crafted framing
Because I have no intention of ever having children and the question pertains to me
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.