Took the survey! Some very interesting questions; I look forward to the analysis.
Suryc11
Took the survey. Very interesting questions overall, especially the site-wide Prisoner’s Dilemma.
I’d like to note that I was very confused by the (vague and similar) CFAR questions regarding the possibility of people changing, but I’m assuming that was intentional and look forward to an explanation.
I’m disappointed by EY’s response so far in this thread, particularly here. The content of the post above in itself did not significantly dismay me, but upon reading what appeared to be a serious lack of any rigorous updating on the part of EY to—what I and many LWers seemed to have thought were—valid concerns, my motivation to donate to the SI has substantially decreased.
I had originally planned to donate around $100 (starving college student) to the SI by the start of the new year, but this is now in question. (This is not an attempt at some sort of blackmail, just a frank response by someone who reads LW precisely to sift through material largely unencumbered by mainstream non-epistemic factors.) This is not to say that I will not donate at all, just that the warm fuzzies I would have received on donating are now compromised, and that I will have to purchase warm fuzzies elsewhere—instead of utilons and fuzzies all at once through the SI.
I’ve already said this before but I’m certainly someone who became an atheist largely through Dawkins’ works, and particularly with the help of The God Delusion. Before, I was firmly religious, along with my family, peer group, and community.
Anecdotal evidence and all, but just as a data point for you—especially given how falsifiable your (strong) statement is.
And it’s not as if his books stand a chance of converting people who are already religious...the dismissive attitude that comes through in his writing is exactly what WON’T make people really change their minds.
Just as a data point, I’m somebody who became an atheist through reading Dawkins and I have a few friends who went through the same process. The attitude that you mention actually helped in forcing me to examine my beliefs. It could be true that people who have a religious faith deeply entrenched in their worldview might not change their minds, but young people, people who have a tenuous hold to religion, etc., certainly do stand a chance of de-converting because of a book like The God Delusion.
In any case, ‘New Atheists’ like Dawkins and Harris are raising the sanity waterline, albeit in a relatively confrontational manner.
- 20 Jul 2012 4:09 UTC; 25 points) 's comment on In Defense of Tone Arguments by (
- 20 Jul 2012 4:06 UTC; 0 points) 's comment on In Defense of Tone Arguments by (
I squatted 400 lbs at a bodyweight of 154 lbs!
I’ve been doing squats for around 7 months now, and been lifting seriously for slightly over a year total.
Okay, ready to be shouted down. I’ll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?) I’ll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I shouldn’t be here; you don’t want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn’t bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.
From her other posts, AspiringKnitter strikes me as being open-minded and quite intelligent, but that last paragraph really irks me. It’s self-debasing in an almost manipulative way—as if she actually wants us to talk to her like we “only want [her] to hate God” or as if we “really hate Christians”. Anybody who has spent any non-trivial amount of time on LW would know that we certainly don’t hate people we disagree with, at least to the best of my knowledge, so asserting that is not a charitable or reasonable expectation. Plus, it seems that it would now be hard(er) to downvote her because she specifically said she expects that, even given a legitimate reason to downvote.
I’m glad that this change happened, but I do have a few nitpicks.
This may only be true for me, but the repeated “community” in “Curated community blog” and “A community discussion board”, especially right next to each other in the graphic, is grating to read. Also, as John Maxwell IV mentioned, the edited rationality materials link is only applicable to a small subset of readers, and definitely not relevant for newcomers to the site (which is important so as to raise the sanity waterline). Initially, I actually thought that the edited rationality materials link was going to lead me to the main sequences or an index of the sequences.
I don’t have anything clever or insightful to say, just that I had not heard of this talk before so thank you for both bringing it back up and for transcribing it!
I just recently went through a break-up (SO broke up with me, it was a long-term relationship).
To be frank, this is not at all what you should be doing (i.e., doing a Bayesian calculation re the probability that she’s over you, or calling her and analyzing why she hasn’t called back), regardless of whether your goal is to get back together with her or to move on as quickly as possible.
The best possible piece of advice I could give you is to start a reflection document. Document your feelings, your emotions, everything. It will help, I promise. What also helps is to write down every single negative you can think of about your relationship/ex. (You will be tempted to idealize the relationship/ex, and writing down negatives that you may have looked past while in the relationship will help you.)
Standard break-up advice: do not contact her under any circumstances (No Contact), remove anything that reminds you of her (includes things like unfriending ex on FB), go to the gym (or engage in other activities that’ll keep you busy), and talk to friends and family.
Think of a break-up as going through withdrawal: every time you break No Contact, you’re relapsing and making it much harder for your brain to get used to being without her. Another way to think about it is that your break-up is a wound, and each time you break No Contact, you’re ripping up the forming scab and peeking under it. No Contact is also ideal for getting back together with her (distance makes the heart grow fonder, etc.), if you truly still want that .
Take the Outside View. Lots of people have gone through break-ups thinking that they’ll feel crappy forever and then are fine just a few months later. Time really does help.
If you’re anything like me, going through a break-up will really make explicit the disconnect between your reptilian, System 1 self and your more deliberative/rational System 2 self.
One final piece of advice: closure does not help in the vast majority of cases. Often, a desire for closure is just your subconscious justifying a desire to talk to her again.
EDIT: If it helps at all, given that it was a 3-year relationship and that the break-up seems pretty recent, she’s probably not over you. She may be trying to maintain distance to avoid feeling guilty and confused, and so that she won’t feel tempted to second-guess her decision. Also, usually the dumper has been considering this for a while, so even if you feel like she doesn’t care or isn’t hurting, it may just be that she started the grieving/moving on process earlier than you did (for some insight into how many dumpers think: http://np.reddit.com/r/BreakUps/comments/1htfcn/is_it_true_that_dumper_check_out_of_the/).
- 23 Jul 2013 5:07 UTC; 16 points) 's comment on Open thread, July 23-29, 2013 by (
I am also still working to overcome the consequences of my parents, other adults, and peers constantly telling me (up through high school) that I was so very smart. The effect is compounded when one grows up in a small American town in the south. It was not at all unusual for a high school peer to believe that because I skipped a grade in junior high school and was graduating high school a year early, that I was somehow on the path to curing cancer or destined for a Nobel Prize. The sanity waterline still has much room for improvement.
What ended up happening was that I was forced to transfer—and forgo a full scholarship—after a semester at a top-15 university (by US News and World Report). I realized there that I simply did not know how to study efficiently, or even at all. Essentially, early association of approval and accomplishments to innate talent led me to disregard the value of hard work and determination.
Another consequence is, of course, having an overblown sense of superiority. At many good, but not necessarily elite, universities, quite a few freshmen come in who were top of their class in high school and have to adjust to being in the middle of the pack.
I implemented the Secret Weapon—a productivity system that combines Evernote and GTD—and have been making use of it quite effectively. I also have kept up on my recently started gratitude journal.
In other news, Evernote is simply awesome.
I posted this comment on how to optimally (in the vast majority of situations) handle a break-up.
Since the parent thread was massively downvoted and my comment itself received relatively positive feedback, I thought it may be beneficial to post a link to the comment here.
Also, I’d like to note that LW massively helped me in getting through my break-up. It seems like a sort of trivial/silly situation to talk about on LW, but (at least for me previously) it’s tough to understand just how painful heartbreak can be until it actually happens to you. If it were not for concepts like the Outside View or distinguishing between System 1 and System 2 thinking, I’d be in a worse place than I currently am; so, thank you.
Harvard Prof. Richard Moran touches on this in a humorous manner:
“As to ’experimental philosophy, I can’t claim to be very well versed in it, but it seems to be a research program in its early days. I think that by now, even its practitioners are beginning to realise that simply asking people, outside of any particular context, about their “intuitions” about some concept of philosophical interest is not really going to be informative since without any philosophical background to the question, the respondents themselves can’t really know just what question they are being asked to answer, what their responses are responses to. There are just too many different things that can be meant by a question like, “’Was such-and-such an action intentional or not?”, for example. And without further discussion or further analysis, the experimenters themselves can’t know what answers they are being given by the respondents. It’s not good data. So I can imagine experimental philosophy evolving in a way to account for this, and starting to include some philosophical background to the investigation, perhaps even some philosophical history, to provide the needed context to the particular intuitions that they are trying to expose and test for. At that point, the experimental situation might also become less one-sided, with a researcher examining a respondent, and could allow for the experimental subjects themselves to ask questions of the experimenters, including questions of clarification and disambiguation, and perhaps even challenges to the way the experimenter has framed the questions.
Later it might be found useful to conduct such experiments in small groups rather than individually, with one experimenter and one subject, and instead the respondents could be encouraged to discuss the questions among themselves as well as with the experimenter. People could meet in these groups two or three times a week and perhaps some relevant reading could be assigned, to clarify and expand upon the question, and the respondents would be given time to do the reading, and asked to write something later on about the question in connection with the reading and the discussions they have had. Then the experimenter could provide “comments” on this writing for the experimental subjects themselves. I think grading the results would be optional on such an arrangement, and probably of no experimental interest, but other than that I think something like this could be the future of experimental philosophy. It’s worth trying anyway.”
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/keeping-sartre-and-other-passions/2/
Interesting article, but do you have any empirical evidence that people’s thinking styles can be divided so neatly into intuitive vs. logical?
On its face, you seem to be taking this thinking style distinction for granted.
Reflecting on this some more, is an intuitive thinker synonymous with one who primarily uses System 1 style thinking and a logical thinker synonymous with one who primarily uses System 2 style thinking? If so, it’d clarify things quite a bit (for me at least) if you made that clear in your post.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see the AMA announcement on Reddit’s frontpage, given how relatively non-mainstream the S.I. is and how many page views Reddit gets (and gives).
Also, although there is a large inferential distance between Luke and most Redditors (as siodine noted), I thought Luke did a great job trying to bridge the intuition gap—with the usual abundance of links and all.
At a bodyweight of 145 pounds, I deadlifted 350, squatted 305, benched 225, and overhead pressed 145 pounds!
I now also frequently receive compliments on my clothing style and muscles/physical appearance.
Not that brag-worthy, perhaps, but still feels good after a tough break-up a few months ago.
This post has a number of useful insights, but I’m not so sure about this:
Beginning with Plato and Kant (and company), as most universities do today, . . . teaches people to revere failed philosophical methods that are out of touch with 20th century breakthroughs in math and science.
As someone who is currently studying philosophy at the undergraduate level—and thus has first-hand knowledge of what it is like to start with Plato and Kant—I don’t quite see where you’re getting the claim that starting with ancient philosophers either (1) in fact teaches students to revere them/their methods, or (2) is at least meant to teach students to revere them/their methods. My own experience, what I’ve heard from fellow students, and the academic papers that we are actually assigned to read all run counter to your claim.
First, one of the primary, if not the main, purposes in starting with ancient philosophers is precisely to discuss how and where they went wrong. The professor does not just tell us whether a certain philosopher is right/wrong, but has the students critically evaluate that philosopher’s claims both in papers and in discussions. Second, there are numerous academic articles written on their claims (just by virtue of the fact that they are ancient philosophers), which in turn means that those articles—and their arguments—combined with the students’ own analyses provide a substantial foundation for ‘critical thinking.’ Third, regardless of the ancient philosophers’ specific claims, the manner in which they argue for their conclusions and critically think themselves is tremendously helpful—both as a model to emulate and to not emulate—for students just starting to learn what constitutes a good argument. A charitable reading, which in particular recognizes the historical context, will show that many of the ancient philosophers do make good arguments, and value precision and rigor in so arguing; of course, many specific empirical claims are wrong, but insofar as those depend on context and not on poor argumentation they are irrelevant.
I do think that there is much wrong with philosophy, but that specific claim you made is a little shaky (and underspecified).
Anecdotal support for exercising:
Exercise (specifically weightlifting) has been the single most valuable lifestyle change I’ve implemented. It’s drastically improved my confidence and self-esteem, instilled in my self-identity usually beneficial characteristics like “able to persevere through hardship for some goal,” and greatly increased my social status.
Highly, highly recommend it.
(Cred: meet conditions 375/245/425 @ 140 lbs.)
Took it!
I am impressed with Yvain’s thoroughness overall in drafting this survey.