Hi, I’m 15, so sadly cannot say much of my education yet, but at least I’ve read a fair deal. I find the ideas on this site somewhat unappreciated among my age group, but fascinating for me. I’ve lurked here for close to a year, but I’m irrationally shy of speaking over the internet. I hope to contribute if I find what I think interesting, regardless of my adverseness to commenting. Thank you for the welcome!
gyokuro
- 1 Apr 2012 4:57 UTC; 4 points) 's comment on Welcome to LessWrong (For highschoolers) by (
On this site, rube generally means ‘red cube’, and I had to look up the word to figure out what you meant here. Though this still makes a bit of sense—you can’t signal to red cubes either.
Which might mean: By declining to do favors/tasks for people, you may feel like a selfish person, but limiting what work you take on you will reduce your stress, increase the quality of your work, and and increase your status. Plus you don’t feel used or resent being helpful.
A good strategy could be to decline first, check schedules, then accept if possible: “I may be able to do that, but let me check my schedule first.” Good for many situations.
“I’ve never ever felt wise,” Derk said frankly. “But I suppose it is a tempation, to stare into distance and make people think you are.”
″It’s humbug,” said the dragon. “It’s also stupid. It stops you learning more.”Diana Wynne Jones, Dark Lord of Derkholm
Having to scroll down to see the rest of the information is annoying, and I can just barely see “Welcome...”, which seems like it should be the first thing I see. It could be a lot better, and I like the idea of halving the image.
The quiet, nonhostile atheists are not the ones heard about, so this is selection bias. The theists offended probably do meet unjustified hostility from the vocal and hostile atheists, so in this case it’s a very weak sign of being deserving.
In some situations, such as leading a group, if you meet unreasonable hostility or dislike everyone, yes, there is something wrong with that your leading abilities. Labeling assholes as such would be making the fundamental attribution error.
Related: Should I alter my Big 5 personality traits?
Similar for music and other arts. Despite the lack of science, the successful teachers tend to produce the best students (or they wouldn’t be successful). Yes, this forces each new teacher to start from scratch, but old, good teachers should be fairly trustworthy after years of internalized, natural experiments.
It’s been repeated somewhat. Joseph Henrich explains his methodology in his paper here. He used UCLA grad students because of their similar community closeness, offering $160 (2.3 days of wages) vs 20 soles, which is supposedly the Machiguenga equivalent. It was compared to tests done by another group in other non-western locations (Tokyo and Java), which show similar results to those of the UCLA students.
(1) ties into the adage “Say it strong, even if you’re wrong.” Speaking quietly only compounds the problem.
1) I’m 16, a sophomore in high school.
2) I thought that LW counted as enhancing my education, so a lot of that (good for disguised procrastination, but procrastination can be productive!) Also I go to a Music and Arts academy each weekend, where I learn music theory/history and volunteer. In the summer I want to volunteer for a professor at UCSB doing independent research, so I’m working on contacting a few. Besides that, nothing college application-noteworthy. In high school: I’m taking 3 AP classes and English 110 this year. In the summer I’ll take two city college classes, and in junior and senior year I’m doing the IB program (6-7 classes for two years).
3) My parents are highly educated and nicely skeptical of the world, so maybe rational, just not rationalists. I have a good friend who competes in the USAJMO and enjoys talking to me about what I read here, except has no interest in this actual site. I’d call him my chavruta.
4) Perhaps psychology? Or chemistry? Preferably a science. Living in academia for the rest of my life would be great. Right now I’m looking at the UC schools and a few private ones (Stanford, Ivy League), but I haven’t researched yet.
5) Ooh, I don’t think I want to skip college. I don’t have any good ideas right now, do you know where I can find some?
I’ve been using HabitRPG for around a month now to increase the amount of exercise I do and decrease the amount of chocolate I consume. It’s caused successful habit formation—I’ve reduced the motivation needed to do unpleasant strength exercises and 3+ mile runs, even on days where I get no points for completing them. I have little success with decreasing my chocolate consumption, partly because I eat first and pay for it with the game-gold later. I’ll keep using this system.
HabitRPG may work for me because I have freakishly great self-motivation and this helps me channel it. It’s also my to-do list, though the site crashes with annoying frequency.
To find your older posts use Wei Dai’s tool.
As a teenager, I don’t see how it can be horror. I thought it was inspiring, honestly.
I learned how to juggle three objects because I wanted to increase my coordination and skill at catching/throwing spherical objects (it didn’t help with frisbees). I can show off this new skill, and have more confidence that allows me to stop dodging balls thrown at my head and successfully catch them instead. It’s enjoyable, and I’ve started juggling in between working to move around and relax, hopefully increasing my mood/productivity (I haven’t measured).
It didn’t take very long to learn this basic skill, maybe 10 hours until the low-hanging fruit were eaten.
For fun, I learned to read rot13 semi-fluently. It’s an exercise that makes me look forward to spoilers so I can practice reading them. Serving its purpose? No, but it’s much more entertaining.
Plotting a story, a garden, or a plan? Only the garden one is truly off-topic.
100 pages left of GEB—the last few days I’ve read 300 pages, the only problem is not comprehending half of it.
Also, I started writing daily for 750words.com after hearing about it from OnTheOtherHandle in this. I’ve kept it up for 20 days so far and will try to keep doing it—My writing won’t improve by doing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness, but if I have emails/essays to write I draft them there. Since I procrastinate the most on writing tasks, this encourages starting right away. When school starts I might stop using it, but I hope I find time.
This happens to me as well—I was shocked recently when someone pointed out some people I interact with daily are on the black side of the spectrum. It just doesn’t occur to me.
Congratulations for putting the dilemma to test. That was the hardest survey I’ve taken since the 2012 one.