If anyone else would like to reschedule the meeting, please contact lw-pgh@googlegroups.com soon.
Matt_Duing
Karma: 193
Meetup : Pittsburgh Meetup 24 January 2014 06:00 PM
Pittsburgh Less Wrong meet-up April 22 7pm
The most important relic of early humans is the modern mind.
-Steven Pinker
The videos are basically explanations of investing terminology. On second thought, my suggestion was not really on point as a source of procedural knowledge.
Khan Academy also has a sequence of videos on stock market basics.
I figured out the non-existence of Santa Claus when I was about 5, I don’t remember how. Someone posing as Santa visited a relative’s Christmas party I was at and gave the children gifts and the local news in my city tracks “Santa’s current location” on the weather radar periodically on Christmas Eve, which kind of made it a pink goo moment for me. I was angry and confused, but mostly kept this to myself. From this experience I concluded that my parents were not completely reliable and that society has a significant disrespect for children, although I did not make much use of this information until years later. I summary of my thoughts on child deception can be found here.
Hi Kevin. You’re thinking of someone else but I’d very much like to meet you.
We had a good turn-out and some interesting discussion at the meet-up tonight. Pittsburgh is a vibrant tech/university center, and I think LW meet-ups should occur here regularly. It’s been suggested that future discussions should loosely center on a pre-determined topic, and I agree that this is a good idea. I invite anyone interested in planning further Pittsburgh meetings to PM me here, email me at mattduing at gmail dot com, or post on this thread.
Eliezer writes,
Note also that I have a general policy of keeping anything related to religion out of the >rationality book—that there be no mention of it whatsoever.
I just wanted to say that I think this is an excellent decision. I wish there was more material that challenges the practice of mental compartmentalization yet avoids triggering emotional bias.
Happy birthday Eliezer.
The examples on www.patrickjmt.com might help.
wrt sleep deprivation, according to a DOT driver’s manual, driving without having slept in 18 hours is equivalent in risk to driving with a .08 blood alcohol level. Driving without having slept in 24 hours corresponds to a .10 blood alcohol level.
“They never do tests. Not many real deeds either. Oh, conversation with your grandmother’s shade in a darkened room, the odd love potion or two, but comes a doubter, why, then it’s the wrong day, the planets are not in line, the entrails are not favorable, we don’t do tests!” -Tyrian, Dragonslayer
A troubling possible implication of this is if the impact we can expect to have on existential risks diminishes over time, then as the competence of our plans and actions increases, the expected importance of those choices tends to decrease.
I have the same problem also and it sounds like this will help. Thank you.
I live in Pittsburgh and would like to participate.
My feelings on this are mixed. I’ve found LW to be a refreshing refuge from such quarrels. On the other hand, without careful thought political debates reliably descend into madness quickly, and it is not as if politics is unimportant. Perhaps taking the mental techniques discussed here to other forums could improve the generally atrocious level of reasoning usually found in online political discussions, though I expect the effect would be small.
“Sanity is conforming your thoughts to reality. Conforming reality to your thoughts is creativity.”
-- Unknown
Thanks, fixed.