My impression from a few arguments I’ve been in is that there are people who simply don’t/can’t believe that health extension is possible, so they can’t assimilate arguments based on the idea of health extension. You say life extension and they hear miserable old age extension.
NancyLebovitz
Karma: 23,445
I think I’m on a waiting list.
Do I pay now, or when a space opens up?
It’s a fascinating essay, but non-automation isn’t all that great. In particular, Confucian China had foot-binding for nearly a thousand years—mothers slowly breaking their daughter’s feet to make the daughters more marriageable.
It’s possible that in the long run, societies with automation are even worse than societies without it, but I don’t think that’s proven.
This also implies that it’s a good idea to avoid houses with a history of mysterious deaths. The deaths were no longer mysterious when carbon monoxide poisoning was figured out, but before that?
I was very fond of this site. There were excellent essays, and the discussion structure suited me very well. I’m more of a short form writer. Also, the way it was easy to find old material and conveniently add to old threads is a feature that ssc doesn’t have.
The big block of unchanging recommendations at the top of LW2 gets on my nerves.
This being said, the resident troll squeezed a lot of the fun out of LW1, and getting to be moderator—and then discovering I didn’t have adequate moderation tools—gave me something of an ugh field about the place. And now it’s over. It was good when it was good.
I’m somewhat annoyed that this claims there’s a solution to becoming happier, goes on at some length, and doesn’t include the solution.
So, some years later, and I’m surprised I was upset. I consider this to be progress.
There’s an alternate approach I’ve seen in Neo-Paganism—have a structure for rituals, and a high proportion of people who can improvise within the framework.
I don’t know whether this would work for rationalist rituals (maybe if we start having smaller more frequent rituals), but I’m mentioning it for completeness.
Questions about the NY Megameetup
I think the long history of “getting the homeless ready for housing” rather than just giving them housing is an example of civilizational inadequacy.
New program can beat Alpha Go, didn’t need input from human games
“Suburbanization makes it costly to raise children humanely; parents are forced to choose between sending their kids off to a designated abuse facility, or designating at least one parent to be a full-time caretaker. This work cannot be shared among communities to realize economies of scale, because most adults are busy far away at work, and in any event you can’t let your kids run around freely because nearly every house abuts an active road with deadly automobile traffic.”
I believe another way that raising children outside the school system is that, while it’s possible to home school your own children, setting up a shared school with a few other families would require meeting a lot of requirements.
First, I’m seconding a couple of things. There should be a comment box.
And please don’t have huge pictures for static material at the top of the home page. There’s a lot to be said for tabs with words on them at the top. I realize three lines for a menu is fairly standard these days, but it still leaves me feeling as though the site is a puzzle which has to be solved.
In the spirit of experimentation, I tried out the numbers on the strip under the comment space. Being able to change font size and line spacing probably has its uses, but the one thing that isn’t offered is the ability to get back to the standard comment proportions. I’d have done that if I could.
I read Notes from an Apocalypse <a href=”https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/iuNSrBoX2W5qHCAAo/notes-from-an-apocalypse“>, which I think is a fair test of reading long form on the site.
I’m fine with the font with the serifs, but I found myself really wanting some indication of what site I was on. A little color, a border, something. This place is less distinctive than a mainstream news site.
I couldn’t get the submit link to work—that is, I entered the link and the title and hit submit, and nothing happened.
I’m in!
Thanks very much.
I’ve done that. Still haven’t gotten an email. I’ve checked my spam folder.
I didn’t get the password reset email.
LW2.0 doesn’t seem to be live yet, but when it is, will I be able to use my 1.0 username and password?
“One obvious candidate for such a generic cost effective safety intervention is a small but fully autonomous city on mars, or antarctica, or the moon, or under the ocean (or perhaps four such cities, just in case) that could produce food independently of the food production system traditionally used on the easily habitable parts of Earth.”
That sort of thing might improve the odds for the human race, but it doesn’t sound like it would do much for the average person who already exists.
There was someone who was interviewed on Tim Ferriss who recommended finding out what you care about and spending a lot more on that and what you don’t care about and spending a lot less on that. In particular, there was a suggestion to think about spending ten times as much on what you care about—you’ve got a chance of turning up improvements which aren’t nearly that expensive.