I don’t buy lottery tickets.. but I still dream about what I’d do if I won. I realised a while back that i don’t actually have to pay to have those dreams.
taryneast
Karma: 2,083
I completed the survey. I also like the new format—easy to read, good instructions etc.
Great post—lots of useful information about the program, where it’s headed and how it’s been going the last few years. Thanks. $150
Low Hanging fruit for buying a better life
As a non-US citizen, I can state that the irrational over-reaction was exactly the response that the terrorists were aiming for. Lots of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt—lots of panic and mindless reaction… it has also greatly debilitated the effectiveness (and no doubt the profitability) of the entire world’s air-transport system, without actually enhancing security thereby.
There is no deterrent here
IMO this would not in any way discourage future attackers—but encourage them.
Done… I’ve been away from LW for a few months due to Other Life Stuff… but happy to fill in another survey.
yay—done.
MM should be understood in context… the fighting style he talks about is caught up in a whole lot of issues about “honour”.
Fights are to the death because they are over the matter of honour. So he doesn’t even bother to talk about fights that are intended to dis-arm only. It makes sense (for him) to talk only of the fights that involve “killing the enemy” as the ultimate goal.
What you describe above is actually exactly what he was talking about. If you are thinking two thoughts (eg “I must not die” AND “I must kill the enemy”) - the two goals conflict… and in a fight—you kinda only have time for one goal. As somebody who also has a lot of experience in medieval swordcraft, I can attest to that.
A sword comes at you—do you parry or lunge? … you hesitate, you die.
So, you must pick one goal over the other.
All things being roughly equal, if you pick “I must stay alive” and your enemy picks “I must kill my enemy”—then your enemy will probably win, because he gives no thought to protecting himself (except insofar as it allows him to strike back next time and kill you) and is willing to take more risks in achieving his goal than you are.
I think that was MM’s point.
If you’re at all familiar with the SCA, one of the three peerage orders is that of the Pelican: http://www.sca.org.au/pelicans/ it awards people for outstanding service (seriously, to get one, you have to have run many events over a decade, and worked damn hard making people happy to get it). You are unlikely to get one unless you consistently, and sustainedly want to serve the needs of others for long period of time.
You strike me as potential Pelican material...
Note: The fact that this community (the SCA) consistently gives accolades for service is, I think, one of the reasons why it is so successful at being a Community.
By contrast, the other two peerages: Chivalry (for sword fighting) and Laurels (for making cool stuff) are both “Look what I did/made” orders… full of heroes (the former more than the latter, in my mind). Which is great and necessary and really cool… but without the Pelicans, the Society as a whole wouldn’t exist.
My suggestion: adopt and help sustain a community of rationalists near you.
I have successfully gone for a run three times a week all month.
Some of the comments here are addressing the wrong problem. For example the idea of “what to do with the kids while the parents attend”.
it’s an important question, to be sure.… but it’s stage- 2: after you’ve already attracted the parents, how to keep the kids entertained so the parents can attend.
You still need stage 1: how to actually attract the parents in the first place.
I am a mid-30s female who is getting ready to have kids in the not-too-distant future. I also have lots of friends who already have kids. I am in just inside your target demographic, so let me tell you what I’d like to get out of LW WRT my age-group and family aspirations. FWIW
There’s a hell of a lot of stuff here on the site for me personally, ie how do I, personally change myself to become more rational.
The thing that’s missing for parents, is how to educate their kids into rationality.
The articles on this site are way too high level for young kids. I’d estimate you’d need a teenager—or extremely smart tween, to read any of them… and not every kid will match this profile.
Simply dumbing it down may be part of the answer… but there’s also the aspect of when kids are ready to learn certain “lessons” in rationality. Kids go through extremely irrational early-learning stages, eg its tough to get a three-four year old to even realise that other people don’t have access to the same knowledge that they have (remember that experiment where a kid is shown what’s in a box and is asked what the other kid thinks is in the box?).
What I’d like as a future parent… are some/any ideas for age-graded lessons I can teach my (potential) kids that will get them up to a higher rationality-level quicker than I did.
If we have these available—that will, hopefully, attract the kinds of parents that want their kids to have the best chance in life (ie most parents). Specifically you can probably attract the same kind of “parent-demographic’ that currently goes for “make your baby smart” accessories.
I’ve been trying to think about what I can contribute myself, in this area… but hitting the fact that I myself am still very much still learning this stuff myself. While I have been putting together some ideas on how to teach the basics of chemistry in the kitchen… I have yet to figure out ways to teach the basics of rationality.
One start was a challenge-article written a while back here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3c/rationalist_storybooks_a_challenge/
Challenging us to write a rationalist storybook for kids. I think I love that idea… we need more like this.
But even if you can’t think up stories yourself, I’d love contributions to these two questions:
1) what are the most fundamental, necessary basics on which to build?
2) how can we write these in the simplest possible way (without adult language or assumed understanding)?
$50 - it’s definitely a different cause to the usual :)
As near as I can tell, my knowledge rarely vanishes for no good reason
...age will eventually remedy that. ;)
having to kowtow/kiss-up to bullies because they’re part of a hierarchy (eg in business), rather than being treated with respect as a human being. Further—being expected to also treat your subordinates badly and thus perpetuate the hierarchy.
Some ideas of mine: both things that I already have, or am thinking about buying:
a nice pedometer/fitbit—measuring your daily activity is the first step towards making sure you do it more regularly, and a good pedometer (with software to see your progress) is within the price range
a waterpik (to make flossing more interesting and thus more likely)
a really good-quality umbrella (for areas that are rpone to bad weather) because struggling with flimsy ones is more pain than it’s worth to buy a quality one.
a good quality laptop bag/airline carry-on bag (especially if you lug your heavy laptop around a lot...)
healthy snacks for while I work (jerky and dried fruit)
an Ingress addiction (makes me walk a lot and it’s free)
a shoe rack (i have a habit of tossing them all over the floor, and it’s an easy way of tidying up the floor while remaining easy to dump my shoes)
sleep-tracking software and sleep-cycle alarm clock (to wake me up gently during REM cycle—these are often free)
large prints of nice pictures to stick on the wall behind my computer monitor so I have something nice to look at while working
do a defensive-driving course (driving safety is always useful for longevity)
take some meditation classes (for the ability to notice when being distracted and be better able to focus when needed)
take a toastmasters course (so as to be more confident with public speaking which is an importnat part of being a social leader)
take up a regularly scheduled low-impact exercise (eg tai chi)
Actually, I had a number of “aha” moments along these lines when I read a book called “Hardball for women”. It’s a book about how to explain the cultural difference of business to women—another notoriously all-male province. It really changed the way I thought about a lot of things—pointed out the alternative point-of-view etc.
There are some really great anecdotes about differences between male and female culture—which are somewhat US-centric, and very generalised, but worth thinking about.
The one I can most easily bring to mind is that in general, boys, while growing up, rough-house a lot when they play. So they learn that a bit of ribbing is just in fun… whereas a lot of girls never do—the only exposure girls have to either physical or verbal roughness is when they get told off for doing something wrong… so they learn that when it gets rough, they’re in for trouble.
I recognised in myself that when my boss told me I’d done something wrong, I had a really strong negative reaction compared with most of my male colleagues. They had realised that the boss was just letting them know what not to do, so it didn’t happen again. I’d automatically gone into “fear and shame” mode, when really I should have just recognised my mistake and moved on.
What the book pointed out was that this difference in thinking can actually be systemic… cultural, if you will. There is nothing wrong with the way I reacted—I was just reacting out of context to what was actually going on. Once my context was realigned… well, I can’t say it was easy, but at least I realised that it was “me, not you”.
Addendum: Note that this insight was in the context of a huge behemoth of a culture that isn’t likely to change (ie business culture).
LW has the near-unique trait of being a bunch of people who are actively trying to change… therefore it’s entirely possible that we can avoid the at-first-blush-alienating-to-the-majority-of-women approach that is common in other masculine-only cultures.
There’s nothing wrong with the masculine culture. But it isn’t the only way we could be.
There should be room for all of us. :)
Designing serious games—a request for help
I quite liked the post, I only have one niggle:
“For example, in heterosexual dating the man is expected to ask for the date, plan the date, and escalate sexual interaction. A woman expects that she will be pursued and not have to approach men, that on a date she should be passive and follow the man’s lead, and that she shouldn’t initiate sex herself.”
this is an extremely US-centric view of dating culture.
In Aus, women do not expect men to pay for dates, and while the bias is still weighted towards the men being more likely to ask woman out or to initiate sexual advancement… it’s not the expectation.
It’s only one data point, but most of my BFs I pursued, rather than the other way around—and most of my girl-friends have similar stories.
Ya, that and “A Bayesian superintelligence is forced to derive laws from the observable world, but it will never have a breakthrough, we have the luxury of imagining laws and just wait for falsification.”
ie “humans have a magickal ability to think outside the box—which an AI can never have and thus can never think new thoughts”
I donated $100 (AU$140)