The conjecture you offer here has been floating about in philosophy and psychology circles for some time. It was a view heavily promoted by Freud, who used the term sublimation to describe the diversion of unfulfilled (sexual) desires into constructive pursuits. A search of this term may yield further findings.
childofbaud
Did he misrepresent the paper’s contents merely in the headline, or in the body text as well?
Ambiguous headlines are standard fare in journalism, and can often serve to draw in and win people over to your article/cause, people who might not otherwise have given you, or the topic you wished to exposit, the time of day. I believe they call it “bait and switch” in certain circles.
I think I’ll save the world first, then worry about a girlfriend.
Plus, the available dating pool should be that much larger with that accomplishment on my resume.
On a similar note, from the same author:
Breaking out of bad habits, rather than acquiring new ones, is the toughest aspect of learning.
—Edsger Dijkstra (EWD1036)
A formula is worth a thousand pictures.
—Edsger Dijkstra
“A proverb is much matter distilled into few words.”
—R. Buckminster Fuller
On a similar note, but from a different author:
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
—Socrates
I can’t remember the exchange verbatim, but the way I interpreted it was as a way to cope with the analysis paralysis phenomenon that can occur when one is confronted with a lot of information.
According to Greene’s quoted maxim, it is always advisable to act before all the data has been gathered (presumably because one can never gather all the data).
Slight rewording: “Save the world with Craigslist”.
This rephrasing puts the reader at the forefront rather than Craigslist (while maintaining the collaborative aspect of the venture) and reduces the number of verbs to one.
Fix the system, not the users.
Presumably the people who said those things about your brother might have said similar things about Socrates, Buddha and Jesus. All three of those personages have had their share of critics during their lifetimes. Few of those critics’ names or ideas (to say nothing of their wives, houses and belongings) survive to the present day. The few that did are mostly preserved and presented as negative examples and antagonists.
Based on the description provided, I am not sure I would say there was something missing in your brother’s make-up; no major desirable traits, anyhow. Have you ever considered that your brother’s sense of perspective may have far surpassed your own?
As to words, how about ‘ascetic’?
Toronto is listed twice under 7,000+ visitors… this is clearly an error, but what is not clear is whether there are 7,000 or 14,000 aspiring rationalists in town.
I’d love a TO meetup but I’m too much of an introvert to organize a social gathering. If anyone steps up to the plate, let me know.
- 11 Feb 2011 18:20 UTC; 3 points) 's comment on Toronto Less Wrong Meetup—Thursday Feb 17 by (
Odd, I posted something related to this about two days ago. Coincidence?
I can attend on February 16th and 17th. Can’t make it on the 18th-19th. 20th might work too, but I have to look into it.
Locale doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not too noisy, which would, in my mind, defeat the purpose.
Also, I’m rather ignorant about general pub etiquette, due to my lack of experience in this particular setting. I don’t drink. They don’t kick you out for that, do they?
Hopefully Skatche has skimmed the Starting a LW meet-up is easy entry and will bring along a sign.
But it’s always good to have a contingency plan in place. Mine is to buy and scratch a lottery ticket in a highly visible manner, while keeping my eyes and ears open for dissapointed head shaking and sighing.
Also, Anna Salamon and Carl Shulman have indicated they might attend the meetup. Both have bios and pics online at the SIAI website, under the About Us > Team and Research Program > Visiting Fellows sections respectively.
Kurzweil’s money does not materialize out of thin air.
I don’t know if he is rich enough to sustain himself, but he is certainly not giving away his futurism books, his longevity supplements, or his lecture talks for free. The people paying for Kurzweil’s products and services also have to believe in his statements and predictions, and that Kurzweil is the one who deserves their money.
If I were to single out one of these two parties for having a greater financial incentive in the perpetuation of their ideas, my money would be on the businessman/entrepreneur, not on the research fellow working for a charity.
I don’t know if recyling the sequences to the front page is the solution, but you do have some valid points.
It would be nice if some kind of sequence “book-club” functionality existed within the LW platform that enabled people to form reading groups, depending on how far along they were with their readings, and engage in fresh active discussion.
On the other hand, the sequences will likely be distilled into book format in the near future, according to the SIAI website, so there might not be much incentive to do anything about them at this point.
There is no evidence that he could get a lot of money differently.
I’m not all that familiar with Yudkowsky’s accomplishments, but let’s see… He can read, he can write, he can compute. And from what I can tell, he can do all of these things rather well. They may seem basic skills, but it’s no coincidence that they make up the three constituent parts of most modern academic standardized tests (GRE, SAT, ACT, etc.). And very few people bother to actually master those skills, or to keep them sharp.
He can bring people together and shape communities (e.g. sl4.org, SIAI, lesswrong). He can do original research. He can synthesize information. He has highly developed skills of elocution and is very good at methodically picking apart people’s flawed arguments, while defending his own comparatively sound ones (look him up on bloggingheads.tv). He can popularize esoteric and implausible-sounding ideas.
This is likely not an exhaustive list, but it wouldn’t be out of the question to monetize even a lesser subset of these skills, if he was so inclined. And if he was really desperate, he could peruse the Optimal Employment thread for inspiration.
A general suggestion is to not put too much emphasis on money. The good schools will work with you, and if you demonstrate financial need, they will shoulder at least some of the burden.
Furthermore, student loans may seem scary, but graduating from a top tier school with loans is often preferable to graduating from a more mediocre one in the black, because your earning potential will be that much greater. There are websites that track graduate salaries according to alma mater. The difference is often quite large, even more so when you consider how it adds up over the years.
Plus there are all the intangible benefits you will obtain from the more prestigious institutions. Access to world-class faculty and facilities, beneficial social opportunities while on campus and alumni networks afterwards, the brand name of the school, etc.
What do you mean by flexibility?
That would undermine whatever value the whole karma system may have at this point. Not punishing, or perhaps even rewarding mediocre posts seems likely to encourage complacency on behalf of the users.
A race to the bottom would likely ensue as well, since new negative achievements would become possible: who can get away with the most trolling? Who can get the most karma with the least effort?
In fact, I think the system, and most people, are far too lenient already, on the whole.
I wonder if posts shouldn’t start out with a slight negative value from the outset, to reflect their high potential for introducing arbitrary complexity (noise) into the established information pool (mostly signal… though that may be up for debate) of the site.
Another idea: the more posts a user makes, the greater that initial negative value should be, to reflect the higher standard that is expected of them as time goes by. :-)
Yeah, that would require pretty complex algorithms.
Before you pick up anything in this thread you would be well advised to peruse How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. This is doubly recommended if reading is one of your primary ways of acquiring knowledge.
The book was published some time ago, but books, and the reading habits associated with them, haven’t changed all that much. The authors make the point that most people, even college graduates, read at an elementary level, and that many educational institutions make no effort to improve this. Elementary reading is characterized by a passive and linear approach to reading, and often mistaken assumption about the process, such as that knowledge contained within a book will somehow be retained after a first superficial exposure. The authors introduce more advanced techniques of analytical and active reading, and offer interesting ideas regarding reading material of all kind—though unfortunately the book was written before the internet era—with a major focus on expository works.
Actually, there are many things in this book that I disagree with, and others that I suspect are just downright wrong. But I’m not aware of anything better on the subject, and the most important thing is that it will get a reader thinking about an act that most of us spend very little time reflecting on, despite the fact that we constantly engage in it.
How to mark a book is a short article by Adler that may give you a taste of what to expect.