I have had classes with them, asked questions. and met them personally. I should have anticipated disbelief. And yes, I didn’t notice that I categorized Marcello as non-math, sorry Marcello!
diegocaleiro
I’ve moved to the place in the planet where after years of deliberation, I decided suits me best (and guess what Dan Gilbert, I still think that! My prospectoscope did not fail!)… , In less than four weeks here, I 1) Solved half my income problem by finding a hack in the writing for money system and being paid aprox 200 dollars per hour of writing/re-writing, for about 5 hours per month. That is, I can pay rent with one day of work. 2) I solved the Visa problem, you don’t understand how valuable solving the Visa problem is if you are not a willing immigrant like a million people per year. 3) I got a scholarship, which can pay my life from 2015 to 2019 while giving me a prestigious PHD degree and save me loads of time to work saving the world on the side. 4) I’m living in a rationalist house with people, which was a dream of mine. I’ve met more and better some people in the rationalist community in the area, I’ve danced for 6 or more hours a week into trancendent bliss and merged with the universe.
And, to cherry top it all, I was just invited to be a TED fellow.
If life is a game, I basically won.
Tried. Don’t expect my results to be generalizable.
Once again, I have no reason to believe that same would happen to anyone.
In any case: Not many good medicines induce vomit. Most people who try it, use water, specially warm water, with mustard. This has all sorts of complications because mustard has a taste and a smell etc… nevertheless, no one in the pharmacy or wikipedia or friends who read pharmapapers had any other indication that would beat mustard water.
I wanted to stop liking chocolate. I waited for a while, so the organism would be sure it was not from lunch, and at dinner time I eat a lot of chocolate, and drank some mustard water. I kept looking at, smelling and thinking about chocolate, and would taste chocolate instantaneously after quickly swallowing the mustard water with my nose held.
It was obvious something bad was going on inside me, less than 10 seconds after the mustard. But my body is not a natural regurgitator. Long story short, I failed to even regurgitate. And now I can say that the weirdest meal I have ever had was composed of 120 grams of white chocolate, 100 grams of lindt milk chocolate, 100 grams of yellow mustard, 1,5 liter of water, and 50 grams of extra strong seedy mustard.
After that I started thinking about fighting for Monsieur Mangetout Guinness title for eating metals and glasses…
Some cool things I did this month. Lost 11 pounds in 15 days. Participated in invitees only party in Rio’s new years eve, by invitation of a billionaire. Caught up to philosophizing about existence with my best friend who lives in Brasilia now. Finished subscribing to all those snazzy PHD programs that can provide me a Visa and income at the place I want to live. Learned to deal with the other side of polyamory by feeling all those stupid, pointless, ridiculous feelings one feels when one’s partner finds happiness with someone else and our savannah minds take over—and did not give up, poly for the win! Finished a writing sample with commentary from Chalmers, Bostrom, Yetter-Chappel and others. Did more than 35 pomodoros in a row, twice. Had a good chat with Nick Beckstead and Nevin Freeman over skype, lovely decent smart gentleman working for the good of mankind, my favourite. Filled in more forms than ever before, and I’m as good at filling out forms as you are good at fishing with a spear. Oh, and I gave a friend advice he considered life saving, in the sense that he would have become a self he didn’t wish to be, had he not stuck with me to the end of my explanation. Oh, and I got 114⁄120 in the TOEFL test, which is better than 96 out of 100 test takers aprox.
Usually I brag about the great things. This time, I’ll brag about the small daily things.
I’ve spent time every day remembering how cool and nice is the place where I’m living, observing the view, the neighbours and of course, the Spa. I’ve send thank you notes to two of the world’s foremost primatologists. I’ve made a girl laugh uninterruptedly for the entire extension of a game in which Brazil lost to Holland. And she made me. I hauled a couch for a friend into his apartment. I sponsored the caffeine industry a lot. Told three people how beautiful their hair was. Entertained a young couple passing by SF for an afternoon for no particular reason, only to discover they were high, and would have been equally entertained by a goose or a mosquito for that matter.
(mild exaggeration) Has anyone else transitioned from “I only read Main posts, to I nearly only read discussion posts, to actually I’ll just take a look at the open threat and people who responded to what I wrote” during their interactions with LW?
To be more specific, is there a relevant phenomenon about LW or is it just a characteristic of my psyche and history that explain my pattern of reading LW?
No large N experiments. but Feynman in one of his autobiographies tests this with a friend. One of them hears numbers, the other sees them. They are unable to multitask within the domain they use to process numbers. I for one hear numbers. I can count while performing visual tasks. My father sees them. He cannot. He can speak and count, which I find amusing.
Have Two Screens
The only advice I feel qualified to give is this one. Having two screens is immensely better.
Wow, too big an inferential distance Phil. No idea what you are tallking about here “what we think of today as individuality, will correspond to information in the future.”
Would you mind giving a few more details? Curiosity striking...
I’m 90% extrovert, live in São Paulo, am 27.
My experience of living with my father from 15-25 has been interesting for many reasons: Learning to accept that different people have different thresholds of tolerance for noise, dirt, social interaction, how active you are in the morning etc… More than anything dinner time was a time to share the perks and perils of our day, like many tribal societies do. We lead very different lives (philosopher and EA versus engineer at a big company).
Currently I live alone and my girlfriend comes over frequently. I don’t like living alone. Probably I should hate living alone, but the human mind is not that good at attaching the right emotions to the right consequences, as anyone in the EA movement, or anyone who ever ate unhealthy sweets can tell. Living alone puts the entire burden of responsibility on what I do with my time on me. All the thresholds are my thresholds. The house is exactly as I tolerate it to be (modulo when my GF comes), The daily happenings are exactly what I allow to penetrate my attention. Sounds like great for productivity right? but it isn’t. The LW study hall helps when the problem is just feeling lonely. But nothing helps when the problem is needing outside random input from someone whose ideas you care about.
Thus I envy people who live with friends. I envy them only less than people who work with what they love with friends. They have someone to talk to about the things they are excited without having to use the web or go out to meet a friend to do it. (in a big city, meeting someone could remove 1 hour from your day due to traffic). I’ve also heard people saying that the best heuristic is to live with friends who are not your very best friends, since cohabiting causes friction between close friends.
It amazes me that there is no “Sequence on how to make money in intelligent ways” or something of the sort in LessWrong. I wish there was something like “The Real 4-hour workweek” or something. I’d guess that 50-80% of people’s goals would be greatly enhanced in probability of achievement if they had, say, 10 thousand dollars per month to invest on them that ‘cost’ 20 hours a month. Thus near-passive income correlates with “winning” Thus it is rational Thus it should be sequenced about.
On how I see the issue with other people, I’d like to draw a caricature of how I see the world when I look at it with my dark gloomy glasses (which evolved into a long brainstorm that I only recommend you read after posting your own opinion about modes of living):
The world is a collection of an enormous amount of people who need love and attention. Unfortunately, everyone has a mental hierarchy of people in their minds and wants attention from the people who are on top of themselves in their hierarchy. Luckily each hierarchy is different though there are strong correlations. Sometimes a pair will hold each other as higher and thus interact for a while.
People spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to be interesting and engaging to the people they want to be around though mostly they do it at an unconscious level. Many do almost all they do so that others will find them prestigious and worthy of their love and attention.
Which is funny, because one of the things you need to do as you move up the partial ordering of those hierarchies, is either really pushing people away, or pretending you don’t need love and attention. Having a blaze attitude of I don’t care. Or, more likely in the world of people I hang around; having a “I don’t have time to talk unless it’s super important and will save the world within 21 hours” attitude.
Facebook made all that kind of peculiar. People post pictures of the few times in which they feel socially authorized to be in company of friends, and usually say nothing about the hours and hours they spend learning the skills that gave them friends, or simply were alone. Here is where living alone strikes. Every now and then people cry out for help in desperation. It is usually when they are alone and can no longer stand this loopsided ape logic of only looking up social hierarchies (and god forbid we had matching hierarchies, that would be the end of the world) .
My general impression is that loneliness is going to be one of the grand problems of the 21st century. More only children, architecture designed for living alone, big cities where it is physically hard to get to friends, different conceptions of what a family should be like, and easy web access to people who are awesome at some skill you like, but live half a world away from you are all factors contributing to this claim.
Once I was just the nerd chubby boy with glasses sitting at the edge of the classroom. A wallflower with some math intuition. I’ve grown in a very lucky environment, and now I have people that look up to me, quote me on their Skype phrase, feel nervous when talking to me or even avoid talking to me because my time is precious and I direct a small organization. An NGO that accepts my suggestions (I guess) mostly because of my past deeds, since no one is being paid.
So I’ve been on both sides of at least some person’s feeling of prestige, and desire for friendship, for co-working, for attention, love, etc…
Thus I’ve been on both sides, I still am on both sides for different people. And it doesn’t feel that different. For random interactions on my day to day life, seems to me I am bound to only see as emotionally and socially worthy a small subset of interactions no matter how much prestige I earn, lose or keep.
So… the secret seems to be (and I hope it is obvious that I’m thinking while I write, and I have no certainty of what I’m saying) to have many interactions of the kind “it’s a given”. If you are already in love, then that interaction is a given. If you work at adjacent desks, that is a given. Most importantly for the topic, if you live in the same house, it is a given. There is no social tension, no need to consult your mental model of hierarchies. You are interacting with that person because you live together which is completely legit. You don’t need to be proving yourself and testing them all the time.
Seth Godin gave a TED talk in 2008 saying that the internet has resurrected a mode of living that had not been practiced ever since the inception of cities with Oikos (family houses), the Tribe. I agree with that, and I think it is time for architecture, and people, to catch up.
Work in the 80′s used to be interact for 6 hours, read, think focused for 2 hours, then go home and rest because finally you can be with yourself. Now work is 8 hours in front of a computer. Sometimes in your cubicle, sometimes home. But emotionally alone nevertheless. The trend has reversed. It is time to get back home so you can finally see some real squishy people and talk about plans and goals.
People should live in Goal Tribes, aka intentional communities. Effective Altruists and eco-friendly folk around the world have realized that, and I wonder to what extent can that success case be generalized.
I don’t mean to cut the party short, but living for years in a poor country is not as awesome as it sounds. What seems awesome instead is to go for poor countries for 6 to 8 months per year, and live with your parents or someone who loves you a lot in the other 4 months every year. I’ve met a Slovenian programmer who did that, knew 10 languages, worked in London for 4 months per year and seemed to have pretty much nailed the “maxing out on hedons” lifestyle.
Work: I’ve written several texts on less wrong, in particular one about effective altruism under such extreme flow, that 6 hours elapsed before I checked the time.
Love life: I’ve had three romantic encounters with three beautiful and magnificent human beings, full of magnetism, balance, and sexual energy.
Bureocracy: I can’t overstate how proud I am that I have already managed to subscribe to two scholarships and UC Berkeley, and if I keep the current rate, it looks like I’ll actually not fail miserably in subscribing to the 10+things I need to. I have been known to lose hundreds of opportunities because I can`t go through forms. So this is the major Winner.
choose your hobbies wisely. take ecstatic dance in oakland, for instance. its not very expensive, it will make sure your body stays a little fit, there will be great cahances to socialize and flirt. and you wont die.
compare that with motorcicle racing. it is competitive, male oriented, hard to find time and a place to do it, way more expensive, there are no women, it pollutes the earth, and you have to keep a motorbike in good conditions. not to mention you’ll live 15 minutes less per hour ran, according to tegmarks old website.
The advice above of getting hobbies is a good one, but choose activities that are physical, social, and will make you healthy and sexy, unless you really, really, really love playing magic the gathering, like i do, then just nerd your money around and leave the other things to another time.
What are the reasons to go to family meetings, and meet the subset of family members who happen to be (1) Stupid (2) Religious (3) Non-rationalists (4) Absolutely clueless about reality (5) Pushy about inserting their ideas/ideals/weltenshaaung/motifs into you?
Of the top of my mind: [1] Avoid losing inheritance money [2] Avoid losing reputation with related family members who are not so silly [3] Avoid losing reputation with other people who may give you inheritance money [4] It is an investment in the far future, if you break a leg, or something, family members are more likely to take you to a hospital
These 4 reasons do not seem sufficient to me. Personally I don’t think (a) You owe them, for their past good deeds towards you (b) Sharing genes is an important property or (c) One should love one’s relatives.… have any truth in them. So do you have any extra arguments besides the 4 above that may be more convincing? Or should I abdicate the meetings alltogether?
- 15 Sep 2013 3:38 UTC; 3 points) 's comment on Notes on Brainwashing & ‘Cults’ by (
- 9 Sep 2013 10:58 UTC; 1 point) 's comment on Open thread, September 2-8, 2013 by (
- 16 Sep 2013 7:10 UTC; -5 points) 's comment on Notes on Brainwashing & ‘Cults’ by (
There were more than two hundred applicants in GWWC last time they opened places for a position (or two) where you have no security and hold nearly no income. That is a hundred probably well connected, smart people in the effective altruist community fighting for the tiny little one space and little money there was available for them. (Source: Personal conversation)
This seems to me to be evidence in favour of earning to give…
What is the smartest group/cluster/sect/activity/clade/clan that is mostly composed of women? Related to the other thread on how to get more women into rationality besides HPMOR.
Ashkenazi dancing groups? Veterinarian College students? Linguistics students? Lilly Allen admirers?
No seriously, name guesses of really smart groups, identity labels etc… that you are nearly certain have more women than men.
- 21 Apr 2013 9:07 UTC; 7 points) 's comment on LW Women Entries- LW Meetups by (
If you have nothing to comment, but think that I should go with and make the movie, click Upvote in this comment
Decisions aren’t physical.
The above statement is at least hard to defend. Your decisions are physical and occur inside of you… So these two-boxers are using the wrong model amongst these two (see the drawings....) http://lesswrong.com/lw/r0/thou_art_physics/
If you are a part of physics, so is your decision, so it must account for the correlation between your thought processes and the superintelligence. Once it accounts for that, you decide to one box, because you understood the entanglement of the computation done by omega and the physical process going inside your skull.
If the entanglement is there, you are not looking at it from the outside, you are inside the process.
Our minds have this quirk that makes us think there are two moments, you decide, and then you cheat, you get to decide again. But if you are only allowed to decide once, which is the case, you are rational by one-boxing.