Big fan of this idea, but I need to be careful where/how I apply it. Otherwise:
“Why did you break up with your significant other?”
“Well, you see, their snoring bothered me but I didn’t want to use a deterministic strategy that destroys all the expected value, so I decided to roll a d20, and I got a 2.”
The “step-by-step what I did before each physics exam” sounds interesting and useful, would you be open to sharing it here?
Alas, people often don’t let you use them, such as this account where someone who was immunocompromised wasn’t allowed to use one on a flight, and thinks that’s how they got Covid-19.
Nit: Does the linked tweet say the person was in contact with an immunocompromised person, rather than immunocompromised himself?
I agree that 4 is a concern.
I disagree about 2. After having (a) participated in the weekend experiment and (b) done some “back-channel” references on Duncan, my impression is that he hates the fact that leadership will isolate him from the group he really wants to be a part of. I expect that if the experiment is successful, Duncan will eagerly set aside leadership and integrate himself with the group.
Going to class was not voluntary for me either. The consequences of not going to class included: parents screaming at me, parents kicking my ass (tiger parent style; we didn’t do “grounding” in my household), truancies going onto my “permanent record”, a full day of detention on a Saturday, etc. Things that people call “voluntary” don’t usually result in physical and emotional damage if you don’t do them.
Nonetheless, I skipped class a few times in middle school, and I suffered the consequences as a result. Were the consequences worth the glorious days of freedom that I spent skateboarding near the beach, sitting in a local comic book store marathoning manga, etc.? Maybe; maybe not.
But whether I go to class is a choice that I alone have the freedom to make. My parents and the school can set the consequences, and they can apply a lot of pressure to make particular options more or less appealing, but they can never take away my ability to choose.
What do you all think of “General Semantics”? Is it worth e.g. trying to read “Science and Sanity”? Are there insights / benefits there that can’t be found in “Rationality: AI to Zombies”?
For Linux users (or Mac OS X users that use the Terminal) who want to pick up a journaling habit:
I set up the following aliases to DRAMATICALLY reduce the “activation energy” for writing a journal entry:
alias jcd='cd <journal directory>'
alias today='jcd; vi `date +%Y-%m-%d`; cd -'
alias yesterday='jcd; vi `date -r \`expr \\\`date +%s\\\` - 86400\` +%Y-%m-%d`; cd -'
So if I want to write a journal entry, I just type ‘today’ and get started. Note that this also has the secondary benefit of keeping journal entries nicely organized by date.
BTW, I am no writer, but this technique has gotten me to write a decent amount over the years:
$ jcd; cat * | wc -w
92804
Here’s how I calculate 15% tips in my head. After getting used to this approach, I could consistently beat friends who were fumbling with their smartphones.
BTW, math majors have a reputation for NOT being able to do mental arithmetic, so being a math major who could do this was a fun and ironic way to defy stereotypes.
Preparation. Memorize the product of each digit with 1.5
1 x 1.5 = 1.5
2 x 1.5 = 3.0
3 x 1.5 = 4.5
4 x 1.5 = 6.0
5 x 1.5 = 7.5
6 x 1.5 = 9.0
7 x 1.5 = 10.5
8 x 1.5 = 12.0
9 x 1.5 = 13.5
Step 1. Round your bill to two significant digits (35.76 → 36)
Step 2. Recall the product of the first digit with 1.5 (3 x 1.5 = 4.5). The tip is going to be pretty close to the product you recalled (4.50)--you just need to adjust it upwards a bit using the second digit.
Step 3. Recall the product of the second digit with 1.5 (6 x 1.5 = 9), divide the product you recalled by 10 (9 / 10 = 0.9), and add it to the result of Step 2 (4.50 + 0.90 = 5.40) to get your final result.
Congratulations! You’ve just calculated your 15% tip to within an accuracy of 10 cents. If you want more speed, you can round your bill to just the first significant digit and skip Step 3--this will give you a 15% tip to within an accuracy of 1 dollar. Alternatively, if you want to impress your friends with more accuracy, you can keep more significant digits around and continue adjusting.
I wanted to stop using Facebook, so I deleted my account and then blocked the domain.
Now I don’t have any friends anymore, and I have a lot of free time.
I wanted to invest my money, but I didn’t want to waste any effort thinking or worrying about it, so I made an account on Wealthfront, set up a monthly recurring transfer, and then put it out of my mind.
I hope the quote didn’t come across as “travel sucks, period”. Admittedly, with the opening “Travelling is a fool’s paradise”, it’s hard for the quote to come across any other way. But my interpretation is not so much that Emerson is against travel; it’s that Emerson is against yearning for travel as the magic solution to all of your problems. No matter where you go, you bring yourself—so if the problems lie within yourself, no amount of travelling will let you escape them.
You sound like an awesome person who would love life even if you didn’t get to travel (perhaps less, but still). When you chose to set out on your adventures, what was your motivation (I would be pretty surprised if it was to “lose your sadness”)?
I sometimes wish I could drag various rationalists to my job at the ICU for a while, make them see the kind of teamwork and cooperation that happens in a place where cooperation is a default and a necessity.
Sci-fi plot brewing.
I’d be very interested in a story that goes into detail about the Cyprus experiment (fill an island with all “alphas”, instead of the usual “alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon” distribution, and see what happens) from Brave New World.
Better yet, fill an island with all “rationalists” and see what happens.
+1 for probably missing more criteria than any other suggestion given here.
You do need expensive equipment
You do need to be in a particular location (ninja school)
You do need special credentials (what, you think anyone can become a ninja?)
Good luck getting reliable information online
Good luck learning without a teacher
If you make a mistake, you don’t get “rapid feedback, leading to rapid growth”, you just die
How is ninjutsu intellectually stimulating?
Admittedly, I think I’ll have to grudgingly give you “unforgiving” and “badass”.
Upvoted. This is the 3rd time in the last week that I’ve heard someone mention sales as a useful skill, but how do you train it short of actually getting a job in sales?
This is a fascinating perspective.
For me, optimizing code (both style and performance) can, at times, almost feel like gardening (aka relaxing and theraputic). On the other hand, I really like math, yet I’ve generally found that it requires WAY more effort than programming.
Perhaps this is why you have a math PhD and I don’t ;-)
That… definitely explains my failure at “dating a single person for a long time” and my (relative) success at “chatting to someone you don’t know”.
What you say is absolutely true on a large scale.
When I say that programming is a very “independent” activity, what I’m trying to describe is the fact that at any time, I can think to myself, “I want do some programming”, and within 30 seconds, be doing some programming. In particular, I don’t have to call someone, convince them that “no, this will be fun”, fail, try convincing someone else, succeed, wait for them to head over, etc. etc., by which point my impulse to do some programming has completely disappeared.
You might be surprised how much of a difference this makes, especially for an INTJ like me ;-)
Why do you think something ought to be done about it?
Perhaps to remove “social pressure relating to gender roles” as a confounding factor, so that people can do a better job of finding roles that are good fits for their own individual characteristics?
What do you think that we ought to do about it?
Perhaps we can start by encouraging “sidekick-identified” males to speak up?
See also the visual novel Eliza, which explores a similar idea: https://www.zachtronics.com/eliza/