Interesting stuff, thanks for the info! Subjectively it felt like “this is one of the most intense experiences of my life, my heart is pounding” etc. etc.
Davis_Kingsley
Karma: 1,405
[Question] How much COVID protection is gained from protecting your eyes?
Raw Data.
Yes—I think that all of the examples you mentioned are things that can become a dangerous virtual world for at least some people.
Dangerous Virtual Worlds
True, but the mechanisms that cause people to want to join the military (and elite military units in particular) are in my view in scope for this discussion. What would it look like for the rationalist community to be a thing that many intelligent, highly motivated people aspire to join?
[Question] Training Better Rationalists?
I’m curious, did this meetup actually happen? How was it?
[LINK] Luck, Skill, and Improving at Games
I use a P100 mask and have recently taken to stretching a cloth mask over the exhaust valve—I figure that way my exhalations are filtered about as well as they would be with an ordinary cloth mask, while my inhalations are far more protected.
The quality of these filters is really good, by the way—at one point I was standing near a small fire in a trash can and could not smell it in the slightest, to the point where I was quite surprised to smell the fire after pulling down the mask to be more clearly audible on a phone call!
I quite appreciate you writing this esp. given that it will obviously be unpopular with some. My own group house experiences have been broadly positive, but I nevertheless think it’s important to see people pointing out things like this instead of just giving the “rose-colored glasses” view.
Having soldiers handle logistics for themselves existed for an extended period, but had major problems. In practice this often looked like soldiers foraging/looting for food, which can work in the short term but has major problems. Foraging parties are vulnerable to attacks, can provoke the populace against you, and eventually deplete easily available resources.
An army relying on foraging/looting could (and some did!) find itself unable to stay in one place for too long as a result of these dynamics, which would be awkward in a siege or similar (sure, you can go plunder the countryside around the castle, but you might run out of stuff to plunder before the guys inside the fort run out of their food stockpiles...). Similarly, if you’re besieging the enemy but your guys won’t be able to scavenge for food effectively once winter arrives, you might be forced to withdraw prematurely.
[Question] Rationalists from the UK—what are your thoughts on Dominic Cummings?
Strongly agree and am excited to see this—this area seems deeply neglected.
Yeah, I should point out that not all cases of experiments without evaluation are “sneaking” by any means—sometimes one might have a well-intentioned idea for a change and just not go about testing it very systematically. However, in some ways the negative consequences can be similar.
Beware Experiments Without Evaluation
Charisma is a Force Multiplier
I’ve noticed a similar trend in a very different area. In various strategic games there has IMO been a major drop in quality of discussion and content thanks to the shift from “discuss strategy on old-style forums and blogs” to “discuss strategy on group chats (Skype/Discord/Slack) and Reddit”.
The former was much better at creating “permanent information” that could easily be linked and referred to; the latter probably has a higher volume of messages sent, but information is much more ephemeral and tends to be lost if you weren’t in the right place at the right time. It’s a lot harder to refer to “that influential Discord conversation a few weeks ago” than it is to link to a forum thread!
Sure, here’s the most recent completed one. I just used the same site I was familiar with from an old Netrunner league, it’s trivial to do. (This doesn’t show the tournament I ran at the end but that wasn’t especially hard either, I just sent people their pairings on Discord etc.)
To be honest, my impression was that it was well known that the eyes were a potential infection route and that this didn’t need much other evaluation—as I understand it risk of infection via rubbing the eyes was one of the main reasons that “don’t touch your face” was such prevalent advice early on.
I believe there are studies indicating glasses-wearers have a reduced infection risk (though obviously lots of potential confounds there), that face shields reduce risk if worn with a mask (though some of this may be blocking particles from making direct contact with a mask/filters), etc. but have not done an in-depth evaluation of that topic.