I’m interested in part 4, and would likely pay $5-10 for a digital book that contains it, so long as it were favorably reviewed by other members of this community. (Other guides to this exist, I’m sure, but I’d rather pay $5 than spend the time to track down a good one.) I would probably skip part 1 entirely and skim parts 2 and 3 to confirm my impression that it contains nothing new for me.
ModusPonies
Karma: 1,317
Thanks for the link. I’ve just sent it to a coworker who I was telling about effective altruism the other day.
According to one estimate, the Gates Foundation has already saved 5.8 million lives
Does anyone know where this number comes from? I can find a whole bunch of bloggers repeating the claim, but I can’t find an original source.
I’ve seen exactly one, and it’s a private channel for the editorial staff of a blog that curates My Little Pony fanfiction. (Yes, this is actually a thing.)
Meetup : [Cambridge] Sunk Cost Kata
I think you just independently derived GWWC.
Welcome! I hope you find this community as useful as I have.
—As others have suggested, reading the sequences is extremely useful and I wholeheartedly recommend it. However, it’s also really long. If you want to start with something less huge, there’s some good stuff here.
—Consider saying more about yourself here or in this thread.
—Where do you live? There might be an in-person meetup nearby.
The moderators on this website?
Comically large amounts of networking. The connection that landed me a programming job was my mom’s dance instructor’s husband.
Jeff’s spreadsheet might help you evaluate the odds. (Although see the discussion of this approach.)
Can you think of any examples of LW brushing off outside views in an unhelpful way? I would be surprised if you could. The most upvoted post on the site is an outsider critiquing one of our sacred cows.
Keyboard covers can solve the hardware side of this problem.
Megameetup Announcement: Boston, July 13-14
20% chance I’ll make it.
This isn’t a clever way to accomplish something. This is a way of willfully misinterpreting definitions until you can claim success without changing reality.
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
—Woody Allen
This applies to many altruists, but I don’t think it applies to jkaufman. See here.
Well yes but we’re talking about unhappiness over things we can control and influence.
Anecdotally, this seems to work. I’ve become a much better writer while spending a lot of time in a writers’ irc channel.
Bupropion did nothing for me.
I suspect this is a special case of the general rule “if you have depression, seek appropriate treatment,” which is really really good advice.
If you are a human, then the biggest influence on your personality is your peer group. Choose your peers.
If you want to be better at math, surround yourself with mathematicians. If you want to be more productive, hang out with productive people. If you want to be outgoing or artistic or altruistic or polite or proactive or smart or just about anything else, find people who are better than you at that thing and become friends with them. The status-seeking conformity-loving parts of your mind will push you to become like them. (The incorrect but pithy version: “You are an average of the five people you spend the most time with.”)
I’ve had a lot of success with this technique by going to the Less Wrong meetups in Boston, and by making a habit of attending any event where I’ll be the stupidest person in the room (such as the average Less Wrong meetup).
Many countries make this possible. Is moving an option?