This has unironically increased the levels of fun in my life
Drake Morrison
Completed the survey. I liked the additional questions you added, and the overall work put into this. Thanks!
non.io is a reddit clone that costs 1$ to subscribe, and then it splits the money towards those users you upvote more of. I think it’s an interesting idea worth watching.
Whether you are building an engine for a tractor or a race car, there are certain principles and guidelines that will help you get there. Things like:
measure twice before you cut the steel
Double check your fittings before you test the engine
keep track of which direction the axle is supposed to be turning for the type of engine you are making
etc.
The point of the guidelines isn’t to enforce a norm of making a particular type of engine. They exist to help groups of engineer make any kind of engine at all. People building engines make consistent, predictable mistakes. The guidelines are about helping people move past those mistakes so they can actually build an engine that has a chance of working.
The point of “rationalist guidelines” isn’t to enforce a norm of making particular types of beliefs. They exist to help groups of people stay connected to reality at all. People make consistent, predictable mistakes. The guidelines are for helping people avoid them. Regardless of what those beliefs are.
Related: Wisdom cannot be unzipped
Reading Worth the Candle with a friend gave us a few weird words that are sazen in and of themselves. Being able to put a word to something lets you get a handle on it so much better. Thanks for writing this up.
A great example of taking the initiative and actually trying something that looks useful, even when it would be weird or frowned upon in normal society. I would like to see a post-review, but I’m not even sure if that matters. Going ahead and trying something that seems obviously useful, but weird and no one else is doing is already hard enough. This post was inspiring.
Hello! I’ve been here lurking for a bit, but never quite introduced myself. I found myself commenting for the first time and figured I should go ahead and write up my story.
I don’t quite remember how I first stumbled upon this site, but I was astonished. I skimmed a few of the front page articles and read some of the comments. I was impressed by the level of dialogue and clear thought. I thought it was interesting but I should check it out when I had some more time.
One day I found myself trying to explain something to a friend that I had read here, but I couldn’t do it justice. I hadn’t internalized the knowledge, it wasn’t a part of me. That bothered me. I felt like I should have been able to understand better what I read, or explain as I remembered reading it.
So I decided to dig in, I wanted to understand things, to be able to explain the concepts, to know them well enough to write about them and be understood. I like reading fantasy, so I decided to start with HPMOR.
I devoured that book. I found myself stunned with how much I thought like Harry. It was like reading what I had always felt but never been able to put into words. The more I read, the more impressed I was, I had to keep reading. I finished the book, and immediately started on the Sequences. I felt like this was a great project I could only have wished for, and yet here it was.
I started trying to apply the things I learned to myself, and found it very difficult. rationality was not as easy as reading up how it all works, I had to actually change my mind. For me, the first great test of my rationality was religious. I had many questions about my faith for a long time. Reading the Sequences gave me the courage I needed to finally face the scariest questions. I finally had tools that could apply to the foundational questions I had.
The answers I came to where not pretty. Facing the questions had changed me. In finding answers to my questions I had lost my belief in the claims of religion. I found myself with a clarity that I hadn’t thought possible. I had some troubling issues to confront, now that my religious conception of the world had fallen away.
I found myself confident, in ways I had never been before. I could kind of explain where the evidence for my beliefs were, instead of having no answer at all. I have all kinds of mental models and names for concepts now that I wish I had found earlier. I had found a path that would take me where I wanted to go. I’m not very far along that path, but I found it.
Of course, I’m still learning. And I’m still not all that good at practicing my rationality. But I’m getting better, a little bit at a time. My priorities have changed. I’ve got money on the line now for some of my goals, thanks to Beeminder. I’ve been writing more, trying to get better at communicating. I can’t thank enough all the people who contribute and maintain this site. It’s a wonderful place of sanity in a mad world, and I have become better, and less wrong, because of it.
see the disconnect—the reason I think X is better than Y is because as far as I can tell X causes more suffering than Y, and I think that suffering is bad.”
I think the X’s and Y’s got mixed up here.
Otherwise, this is one of my favorite posts. Some of the guidelines are things I had already figured out and try to follow but most of them were things I could only vaguely grasp at. I’ve been thinking about a post regarding robust communication and internet protocols. But this covers most of what I wanted to say, better than I could say it. So thanks!
Similar to Wisdom cannot be Unzipped.
Wow, this hit home in a way I wasn’t expecting. I … don’t know what else to say. Thanks for writing this up, seriously.
The Georgism series was my first interaction with a piece of economic theory that tried to make sense by building a different model than anything I had seen before. It was clear and engaging. It has been a primary motivator in my learning more about economics.
I’m not sure how the whole series would work in the books, but the review of Progress and Poverty was a great introduction to all the main ideas.
For what it’s worth, I find the Dath Ilan song to be one of my favorites. Upon listening I immediately wanted this song to be played at my funeral.
There’s something powerful there, which can be dangerous, but it’s a kind of feeling that I draw strength and comfort from. I specifically like the phrasing around sins and forgiveness, and expect it to be difficult to engender the same comfort or strength in me without it. Among my friends I’m considered a bit weird in how much I think about grief and death and loss. So maybe it’s a weird psychology thing.
Feature Suggestion: add a number to the hidden author names.
I enjoy keeping the author names hidden when reading the site, but find it difficult to follow comment threads when there isn’t a persistent id for each poster. I think a number would suffice while keeping the hiddenness.
Someone did a lot of this already here. Might be worth checking their script to use yourself.
This post felt like a great counterpoint to the drowning child thought experiment, and as such I found it a useful insight. A reminder that it’s okay to take care of yourself is important, especially in these times and in a community of people dedicated to things like EA and the Alignment Problem.
This was a useful and concrete example of a social technique I plan on using as soon as possible. Being able to explain why is super useful to me, and this post helped me do that. Explaining explicitly the intuitions behind communication cultures is useful for cooperation. This post feels like a step in the right direction in that regard.
I really enjoyed this post as a compelling explanation of slack in a domain that I don’t see referred to that often. It helped me realize the value of having “unproductive” time that is unscheduled. It’s now something I consider when previously I did not.
I think this is pointing at something real. Have you looked at any of the research with the MDA Framework used in video game development?
There are lots of reasons a group (or individual) goes to play a game. This framework found the reasons clustering into these 8 categories:the tactile senses (enjoying the shiny coins, or the clacking of dice)
Challenge (the usual “playing to win” but also things like speedrunners)
Narratives (playing for the story, the characters and their actions)
Fantasy (enjoyment of a make-believe world. Escapism)
Fellowship (hanging out with your buds, insider jokes, etc.)
Discovery (learning new things about the game, revealing a world and map, metroidvania-style games)
Expression (spending 4 hours in the character creation menu)
Abnegation (cookie cutter games, games to rest your mind and not think about things)
The categories are not mutually exclusive by any means, and I think this is pointing at the same thing this post is pointing at. Namely, where the emotional investment of the player is.
Has anyone tried experimenting with EigenKarma? It seems like it or something like it could be a good answer for some of this.
If you already have the concept, you only need a pointer. If you don’t have the concept, you need the whole construction. [1]
Related: Sazen and Wisdom Cannot Be Unzipped