Yes. I paid for the perfect stock photo to make this joke, so I’m glad you enjoyed it.
KenChen
Karma: 237
Personally, I don’t like this because it’s awkward. What do you call the community?
“The aspiring rationalist community”?
Plus, people are liable to drop the “aspiring” part anyway, because it’s a pain to say.
Don’t call yourself a rationalist.
FYI, Bug report: The push-pull experiment is illustrated by a diagram of the future discounting experiment.
EDIT: It is fixed now.
I think the Millennium Prize Problems isn’t the best example in this context, because for the one problem that was solved in that set, the prize was rejected.
Note that if the Fed raises interest rates, credit will become more expensive, demand will decrease, and prices will decrease (all else equal).
In the United States, mortgages with fixed rates are better right now (if you stay in your house) because interest rates are extremely low right now. If you take an ARM, you will lose if you stay in your house, because interest rates are bound to rise.
If you select a 30-year mortgage, you will pay more overall. But it turns out that you only need to beat a 2-3% annualized return (assuming you took out a fixed-rate loan at interest rates right now) with the extra money you save every month in order for a 30-year mortgage to beat a 15-year mortgage. Of course, that’s assuming you have the willpower to set aside that money every month and the time and effort required to invest it.
If you select a 30-year mortgage, you always have the option of paying extra each month. In fact, if you paid 45% extra each month, you would finish it off in 15 years, and it would in fact be equivalent to a 15-year mortgage, except costing only 8% more overall (or a mere 0.5% per year). The reason a 30-year mortgage costs more is not mainly due to the higher interest rate—it is because most of your initial payments go towards the interest, as opposed to the principal—the interest isn’t reduced at first, and it also has 15 more years to compound.
Consider getting a 30-year mortgage if you expect any sort of volatility in your financial situation, as the price for such convenience is quite cheap. Note that this only applies if you have either the willpower to pay the extra amount every month, or the energy to find a superior investment with the extra money you are saving. A 15-year mortgage would be better for someone with e.g., severe akrasia issues.
Look into purchasing as many points as you can on your mortgage if you plan on staying in your house for at least 11-14 years. Do some analysis to figure out the break-even point for your situation. Note that banks profit because most people overestimate how long they will stay in their house. The average in the US is 5-7 years.
Look at the amortization formula (or use the PMT function in Excel) and run the analysis yourself—it’s too important to not bother. Put in different amounts of down pay, different interest rates, different amounts of extra monthly payments, etc., so that you gain a feel of the relative effects of the different factors.
Finally, please call it a “house”, not a “home”.
If a statement is false, that’s the worst thing you can say about it.
-- Paul Graham
The thing is, when you pick your target, you’re going to pick someone who is unaware of their surroundings. By the time you’re stalking them, it’s too late for them. They’re not going to notice you because you’ve selected for that.
I meant to say don’t use your phone. Edited.
An exercise I learned from a martial arts class was to walk around at night, pretending that you’re an attacker. Stalk a few people, and try to get into the mindset of preparing for an attack by catching them unaware. Note down what types of people you are more likely to attack, and what types of people you are likely to skip.
Avoiding Factual Muggings
Event calendar.
Since this is a regular meetup, I added it to the meetup page on the wiki.
Shoe
Intensional: Article of clothing primarily designed to be worn on the foot.
Extensional: Hiking boots, flip-flops, snowshoes, Vibrams.
Hope
Intensional: Human sensation of the anticipation that a severe negative outcome will be avoided, when the circumstances are outside of one’s control.
Extensional: A student waiting to receive the result of their final exams, for which a passing grade is required to pass the course. A rationalist wishing that cryonics will be successful. A religious person praying to God to cure a family member’s cancer.
N.B. Perhaps it is useful to distinguish between hope and optimism. We may want to call a person who constantly looks at the positive effects of a situation optimistic; it seems more appropriate to use “hope” when the stakes are higher and there is an element of desperation.
Wire
Intensional: Piece of material designed to efficiently carry electrons (low-cost and relatively high sensitivity to changes in electric potential across distances) across its length.
Extensional: CAT-5 cables, power lines, circuit board wiring.
N.B. The efficient criteria implies the thinness and longness of the wire, relative to the wire capacity.
Green
Intensional:
A certain wavelength of light, the intensity of which directly corresponds to the signal strength of the human M-type cone when such light is shone upon it.
The attribute of an object that directly corresponds with the reflectivity of the aforementioned wavelength of light shone upon it.
Extensional:
Output of a green laser, the green spectral line of Mercury, the output of a light filter that only lets green light through.
The reflectivity of green paint, the reflectivity of grass.
Politician
Intensional: Person who is popularly known for having had a significant direct impact on politics (the policy and/or decision-making part of a government or otherwise a large, self-sufficient group of people with shared interests) and has done so for a significant amount of time.
Extensional: Chuck Schumer, Schwarzenegger, Gandhi, Deng Xiaoping
Apple
Intensional: (taken from Wikipedia, since I can’t come up with anything better and I don’t know much about taxonomy) The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family (Rosaceae).
Extensional: McIntosh apple, Granny Smith apple, Red Delicious apple.
N.B. For almost everything, including apples and genera, it is often more useful to think about whether something is more blegg-like than rube-like, than to think about whether an item is a blegg or a rube.
Difficulty of generating intensional definition (easiest to hardest): Shoe, Wire, Hope, Green, Politician, Apple
I found it very easy to generate extensional definitions once the intensional definitions were generated. However, this may have been a side effect—once I came up with examples that fit my intuition, but did not fit the intensional definition, I would revise the intensional definition to include it.
I found it easier to generate definitions when there’s a clearly defined purpose for the entity in question. It’s harder to define things when there are seemingly arbitrary boundaries (in the case of apple and politician).
My idea was to have some sort of calendar, where users can add events for one-shot meetups, or recurring events for the regular meetups. The events could then link to the appropriate post and/or mailing list.
Integration with Google Calendar / Apple iCal would also be awesome.
I commit to working on modifying the code to organize meetups in a way that makes more sense, if someone else is able to provide direction and authority. I haven’t worked on the code before, and I can’t promise anything except that I will attempt to work on it.
I have just read the github wiki. I will try to get an instance of the site running. What’s the next step after that? Who else should I be coordinating with?
You’ve been telling everyone at this cocktail party about this fantastic new rationality club, and how it’s changed your life. You manage to get a few people interested enough to actually listen to what you’re saying, a smaller subset to remember the name of the site, and a smaller subset to take the time to actually check out the site for an entire 90 seconds.
That’s all you got.
So, after telling a room full of people about the awesomeness of rationality, maybe you get one person who decides to visit the site. They are looking for a justification for why they should spend more time on your site. What do they see? What do you want them to see?
Hopefully something good. Something that will make them hunger for more. Something that will actually make them think (which is kind of the point of all this).
The about page is currently structured like this: Science is good. This site has science. Meta. Meta and code. Meta. Meta. Meta. Meta. Brought to you by viewers like you. Grid of juicy content. Link to Sequences. History. Code. Code.
The about page is great if you have been on LW already and want to know more about it. However, it is not a suitable front page. Unfortunately, it is not great even if you are already motivated to find out the core tenets of rationality.
IMO, there’s a distinction between regular meetups, and one-shot meetups. It wouldn’t make sense for a newcomer to see only one-shot meetups on the list, when a community in their city already exists.
Perhaps some sort of calendar would make sense, where anyone can post one-shot meetups, and regular meetups are represented by a recurring event.
As a quick alternative, would it make sense to create a promoted top-level post containing the Sequences, and “sticky” that post so that it’s the first thing newcomers see?
You could create a preference to not display it for logged in users, if that’s an issue.
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Another related post by Eliezer.