There’s an (unfinished) set of posts about rationality and drawing written by Raemon, Drawing LessWrong p2 p3 p4 p5 that might answer your questions (in the articles or comments.)
JayDee
LessWrong tends to remind me more of usenet. Probably just due to the threaded comments.
I’d happily read this site with a newsreader.
Hmm, I’m not entirely sure. I can find old usenet comments—like my nethack YAFAP—from 2005 to 2008, but as far I can tell they were all made with Google Groups. I do vaguely recall using a newsreader, maybe trying to set up Thunderbird? It certainly would have been in character, “real men use newsreaders, and never top-post” kind of thing was a big part of the appeal. Possibly I could only get read-only access through whatever free provider I found.
At the time, the communities discussing interactive fiction and roguelike games were still centered on usenet (rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.roguelikes.* respectively) although iirc half the conversations were on the need to move on, to web forums or whatnot.
there’s always someone on github who could use help with their open source thing.
Any chance you could point me at one or two?
Background: I enjoy coding, but run into problems with high-level motivation. Point me at something to do, I’ll do it (and likely enjoy myself) but when it comes to doing the pointing myself I draw a blank. Most of the code I’ve written in the last year has come from frustration with inadequate tools at work, which is productive for learning but not for sharing.
I’m currently most proficient with Python, have dabbled in C++, and commit to spending an hour each with the first two open source things anyone points me at. (2x 25 minute pomodoros, this weekend.)
In this case, it’s deliberately non-gendered language. Lower-effort, as kalium says. In my case because I cultivated the habit, in years past.
As both you and Douglas_Knight point out, there are tradeoffs involved. In the case of not gendering pronouns I expect I’ll continue thinking it worthwhile.
But it’s a helpful thing to consider- I’ll bet there are other habits I’ve developed that I’ve never considered if it’s worth the costs. Especially when I contrast my teenaged self – “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me” + “I’ll choose my words for my own aesthetical pleasure” – with the me of today – who does care, and on balance values communication higher than self-expression. I doubt my conversational habits have shifted as far as my preferences have.
I’m also interested by what you say about details. It’s not something I’d’ve thought of, worrying I tend more to being too verbose. But I like to write, and concrete detail / description is the area I’d consider my weakest there. I can think of some ways to practice this (started playing tabletop RPGs recently, for one.)
Thanks. Perception I thought was the main contribution in the past. But after a recent party my partner commented to me about people speaking over me.
And testosterone, that makes me curious. I wonder if I can get levels of that tested without too much hassle...
Fair enough. At this stage I’m curious as to which specifics I should be looking at. Or what kinds of things are key (to speaker priority in groups of 5-10).
The various elements of body language given, and your notes on content (I can be too verbose, for sure) have given me what I need to go on for now.
Thanks. These are things I’ve learnt or tried learning in the past. I’d guess there are good odds that I’m reverting to past (shyer) behaviors in some situations.
I’ll make an effort to be aware of my body language and focus next time.
Question about a low-level social thing:
I’ve noticed that I have low priority in at mid-large group conversations. What I mean is that in situations where I’m one of two people talking, I’m (generally) the one who stops and the attention of the “audience” (people-who-aren’t-speaking) is predominantly on the other person even before I stop speaking.
This used to cause me considerable distress, but no longer. I’ve accepted it as a fact of the social universe. But I’m still curious and would like to change it, if possible.
I suspect that this is something that varies by social group, and more strongly suspect that some behavior of mine is key.
I’m interested in (being pointed to) discussion of this type of thing, especially if it contains actionable advice.
Looking back, so did I.
When I saw the film I enjoyed it for being very pretty. And was pleasantly surprised (and surprised by my surprise) at how the plot led toward the original film.
I’d add studies to that list, and possibly hometown / homeland / travels, if you are likely to be meeting students and travelers respectively.
I had reservations about including that sentence, because I only have a vague idea which completely lacks details about mechanisms. And flushing seems like a folk-explanation rather than a science-explanation.
The other vague idea was that drinking more water means the toxins are more dilute, but I have even less confidence in that.
One reason for the myth about dehydration would be due to “drinking plenty of water” still being one of the most effective things to do: If it’s about the liver breaking down alcohol into toxic Acetaldehyde, drinking lots of water to flush it out.
Understandable mistake to go from “more water fixes the problem” to “problem must’ve been not enough water (dehydration.)”
This was how it was discussed in my university chemistry class. Also mentioned: a similar breakdown (same enzymes or whatnot) happens with methanol, and the breakdown products (formaldehyde and then methanoic acid) are stronger / more toxic than those of ethanol (acetaldehyde / acetic acid.)
During my 2013 review, I’ve noticed one habit I’ve strengthened over the year: a certain curious skepticism.
When people share interesting facts with me, I’ve moved from responding “wow” or “I didn’t know that” etc and filing the fact away to share myself, to something like “how fascinating, I wonder if that’s true?” or “huh, I want to know more about that!” followed by taking out my phone and googling (or making a note to research it later.)
This includes wonder the same when I’m the one sharing the fascinating fact—“hang on, I’ve never checked if that’s actually true.”
I’m quite proud that to the best of my knowledge I can do this without offending people, or dropping out of the conversation.
On a related note, I’ve sometimes spent my morning compute write carefully phrased rebuttals to junk my family / friends share on facebook. Asked mum recently if I have been successful in arguing respectfully, learnt that I had, and in fact had caused something to be taken down. “Yeah, I hadn’t looked deeply into that.”
Reread Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Highly recommended, it has most everything I like about cyberpunk in a modern day real world setting. Without losing the Gibson world-building, world-building as a collage of interesting ideas and perspectives on things.
When I first read it, I thought this was his best book, right up until the end of chapter 37, I disliked chapters 38+ about as much as the epilogue of HP: Deathly Hallows. (And with similar belief that the book would be far better with those pages removed.)
Since then I’ve re-read the Bridge Trilogy, and read the sequels to Pattern Recognition. And this time I didn’t find the ending frustration at all. Maybe because I could see the shape of things to come, or because I had different expectations.
The metaphor that struck me is that the structure of this book is like a certain kind of origami; much folding and unfolding, leaving you—just before the climax—with a flat sheet of paper covered in creases. Then all of a sudden it crumbles up, or seems to, but in actuality it all comes together in a new and unexpected shape.
I would recommend the Best Textbooks on Every Subject thread, rather. This comment (upvoted, incidentally) very almost meets the requirements there:
There have been other pages of recommended reading on Less Wrong before (and elsewhere), but this post is unique. Here are the rules:
Post the title of your favorite textbook on a given subject.
You must have read at least two other textbooks on that same subject.
You must briefly name the other books you’ve read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them.
I use certain videogames for something similar. I’ve collected a bunch of (Nintendo DS, generally) games that I can play for five minutes or so to pretty much reset my mind. Mostly it’s something I use for emotions, but the basic idea is to focus on something that takes up all of that kind of attention—that fully focuses that part of my brain which gets stuck on things.
Key to this was finding games that took all my attention while playing, but had an easy stopping point after five minutes or so of play—Game Center CX / Retro Game Challenge is my go-to, with arcade style gameplay where a win or loss comes up fairly quick.
More generally, you are a perfect employee if you did something extremely similar to what your new employers wants to do, for the last ten years.
Thank you, especially for this. I’ve been contemplating “looking good to potential future employers” type things, and it hadn’t occurred to me until just now to frame it as “consider exactly what it is said employer wants, minimise the distance between that and me (as presented by resume / portfolio / etc)”
When I ran into something similar, my theory was that Feedly used what everyone else had saved to identify the RSS or atom feeds. Based on it being more obscure things that would fail for me.