Tem42

Karma: 507

Tem42 8 May 2020 14:43 UTC
7 points
on: What would you do differently if you were less concerned with looking weird?
Spend more time dumpster diving (treasure hunting is fun!)

Tem42 20 Apr 2020 20:39 UTC
4 points
on: What are habits that a lot of people have and don’t tend to have ever questioned?
The standard appliances. For example, most people in developed countries have a dishwasher, which may or may not be worth the cost and room used. Most people probably would want a refrigerator, microwave, stove, and washer/drier if they thought about it.… but most people probably haven’t thought about it. I personally do not have a dishwasher, microwave, or dryer because they are not worth the room they take up. I know some people who would do just fine with a chest freezer but no refrigerator, and/or with a microwave but no stove; I lived for a year without a refrigerator with no troubles (but I was in a part of the world in which no one had a refrigerator, which helps a lot).
This is particularly interesting habit, since many people spend a few years in college with few if any of these appliances, but automatically assume that they need them once they get a apartment/house.
(FWIW, I am not a radical minimalist nor particularly efficient; I have a rice cooker, electric kettle, and toaster oven, which are technically redundant since I also have a stove and oven.)

Tem42 20 Apr 2020 20:24 UTC
3 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: What are habits that a lot of people have and don’t tend to have ever questioned?
“The ways we use the toilet” is particularly relevant right now, with many countries seeing an increase in toilet paper shortages while maintaining the standard level of bidet shortages. If more people knew how to use a bodna/lota, people would be a lot less stressed now.

Tem42 20 Mar 2017 1:02 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: I Want To Live In A Baugruppe
Very interested, but not willing to move more than 2-3 hours away; am nowhere near CA.

Tem42 13 Oct 2016 23:23 UTC
0 points
in reply to: roland’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 10 - Oct. 16, 2016
If it is severe enough that you are posting here about it making you feel bad, it is worth trying to replace it with a mental habit that works equally well to prevent future errors but feels better.

It is good to gain control over your mental habits in general, and this sounds like a good place to start.

If those statements appear true to you, no other analysis of this behavior is likely necessary.

Tem42 9 Oct 2016 0:56 UTC
1 point
on: Fermi paradox of human past, and corresponding x-risks
It is interesting to note that if we quietly pass away and 50 million years later intelligent lungfish build up a civilization, they would presumably have good evidence that we were here, and would have good reason to assume that civilizations arise about once every 50 million years on average. Our effect on the Earth has probably been great enough that they will not have significant evidence from previous periods to contradict this assumption. In the case of large scale planetary civilizations, only the first one is likely to be in a position to reliably notice a delay in the appearance of previous civilizations longer than the pause between themselves and the immediately previous civilization. Therefore it may be reasonable to believe that, if 10 civilizations arise on the average planet, 90% of them will believe that they are probably midway through a long succession of civilizations.

Tem42 9 Oct 2016 0:26 UTC
0 points
on: Fermi paradox of human past, and corresponding x-risks

If we are the only civilisation to exist in the history of the Earth, then we will probably become extinct not in mild way, but rather in a way which will prevent any other civilisation from appearing. There is higher probability of future (man-made) catastrophes which will not only end human civilisation, but also prevent any existence of any other civilisations on Earth.

I don’t believe that this follows. It is surprising that we are apparently the only civilization to so far appear on Earth, but if we accept that we are, we should not assume that we have accomplished this by destroying the future.

However, while I feel strongly that this is this case, I do not feel confidant that I can express it in a way that would be understood by someone who does not agree with me.

If someone could explain clearly why I am right, or alternatively, why I am wrong, I would greatly appreciate it.

(For context, here is what I would write given my currently semi-formed understanding: “while it makes sense to compare ourselves to a time-line independent view of the world to test the probability that our assumptions about the world are correct, it does not make sense to assume that our assumptions about the world will guide the future.”)

Tem42 23 Jul 2016 2:41 UTC
0 points
in reply to: philh’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2016
A simple justification of a slightly less extreme position is easy enough: there were many sane people who did not predict the value of the internet, indicating that being sane and smart are not sufficient to predict such things.

There are plenty of quotes from people who were supposed to be experts (or at least well-educated) saything that heavier than air flight was impossible, computers would always be room-sized monstrosities of limited use, etc. I assume that this quote is pretty much the same idea (that future technology is unpredictable), but using a technology that is 1. more recent, and thus more relatable, and 2. not simply a matter of technology, but of adapted use; that is, most smart people might have guessed that the early internet could be made faster, webpages better, and the network more comprehensive. They simply didn’t see the value that this would produce, and so assumed that technology would not move in that direction.

Tem42 15 Jul 2016 5:13 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Nisan’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
May not be as effective as you hope. I experience this and find it vaguely annoying. The only people who have a reason to talk/post about it are the people who enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean that they are in the majority.

Tem42 15 Jul 2016 3:21 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Estarlio’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
I am an introvert and this effect is strong for me. But the best way to see if it works for you is to try it.

Tem42 15 Jul 2016 2:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: diegocaleiro’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

After 6 years one could then live fairly well in a relatively poor country on 15k.

Additionally, there are ways to get people to pay for your living costs in very poor countries. If you live in the US and are looking for a fun but not too easy early retirement, spending two years in the Peace Corps is not a bad way to go—if you do want to spend a few extra thousand on living expenses it will go a lot further than it would in America, and if you just want to let your retirement funds gather a few years of additional interest you can do that. The PC does take married couples and loves people with college degrees and work experience. No kids, though.

Tem42 15 Jul 2016 1:51 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Caspian’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
I have found that I wake much more effectively when the alarm is very quiet; rather than waking suddenly and having my brain rebel, I wake over the course of 30 second to 2 minutes. This works much better than it has any reason to.

The downside is that a very quiet alarm is easy to miss, and if there is environmental noise at the same time as the alarm goes off (from the air coming on to trash pickup), it’s much too easy to sleep through. The solution that worked best for me was to run a white noise generator (actually an air filter) all night; this raised the noise threshold so that a louder alarm was needed to still be a quiet-but-audible alarm; the louder alarm is loud enough to be heard over the white noise, and thus loud enough to be heard over any environmental noise that is not also loud enough to wake me.

Another useful trick, albeit slightly more painful, is to get up at the same time every morning. This means also on weekends. It really does help, but requires that you are willing to actually wake up enough to get out of bed. Once you are ‘up’, you may decide to just read Facebook for 5 minutes before going back to bed (I usually just went to the bathroom and then read in bed for 15 minutes before falling back to sleep). I only use this when I have a significant change in schedule, and only for a couple of weeks.

Tem42 9 Jul 2016 15:13 UTC
0 points
in reply to: iDante’s comment on: November 2013 Media Thread
I’m just starting arc 9, and am ready to give up. It’s fun enough, but there doesn’t seem to be any rationality here. I would buy an argument that the author is rationalist, but not any of the characters so far. (The backstory does suggest there the characters have done research and thought deep thoughts, be we see none of that.)

If it suddenly improves please let me know—I’ve heard enough good things from enough people that I kept going this far, and it’d be a pity to quit just before things get interesting. But I’m almost a third of the way through, and still nothing :-/

Tem42 1 Jul 2016 15:34 UTC
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Rationality when Insulated from Evidence
Yes… but this is not an issue of GMO. This is an issue of additives. You should require information that is clearly relevant to health regardless of GMO status. GMOing is a way of adding nutrients, but we would want additives labeled regardless of how they are added.

Or, to put it another way, this is a case where the GMO change is something that should be labeled, because there is a possible effect on health. But the factor under consideration isn’t that it is GMO, it is that it there is an possible effect on health.

Tem42 1 Jul 2016 15:22 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Ishaan’s comment on: Rationality when Insulated from Evidence
Point #2 is a big important point. The media does not select relevant issues, they chose issues that play well to the public. Sometimes these overlap, but often they do not. GMO is a good example, because it is reported as monolithically important, but each genetic modification has to be considered individually; considering GMOs as a unified group is not very useful. Likewise, if you are interested in health and nutrition, you should also look for vegetables that are grown to be nutritious, which includes many GMO but not others: many plants are modified to look better, not be healthier; but many plants are modified to be more nutritious, not look better; etc. Moreover, you can also get some benefit in nutrition by ignoring the GMO debate and looking at things like soil health (organic works as a vague proxy for this, but again, ‘organic’ is a media chosen label, and so is touted as Very Relevant In Every Way and also does not limit itself to soil health) or time-since-harvest (locally grown, proxy, media pollution, etc.)

Tem42 1 Jul 2016 15:00 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Rationality when Insulated from Evidence

Do you believe that people shouldn’t know whether or not their rice has added Vitamin A? I think it’s very worthwhile for people to know about it.

You are jumping topic. GMO risk is different from GMO labeling. However, it is true that labeling nutrition information is good, regardless of GMO status, and that GMO may have more variation in nutritional content (positive and negative) than non-GMO.

Tem42 17 Jun 2016 16:07 UTC
0 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Open Thread May 30 - June 5, 2016

Let’s assume that everyone has a fixed budget of attention and empathy.

This is a bad assumption. I could spend more time empathizing than I do—for example, when I chose to read a nonfiction book, I am likely to emphasize less than when I read a fictional tear-jerker. Moreover, the media spends a lot of time trying to increase your attention and empathy budget, getting you very engaged (attentive and empathetic) to their characters, whether these be fictional or political personages or whatever. Anytime that you stay up late watching Football (rather than go to sleep) you have increased your attention and empathy for that day.

However, it is true that TV and internet have strong money-making incentives for gaming your attention and empathy, and your neighbors probably don’t. So on the A&E market, it is reasonable to expect that large powerful players will often outperform small local players. The fact that the market is flexible rather than fixed is probably a factor that makes it worse.

Tem42 17 Jun 2016 15:57 UTC
0 points
on: Buying happiness
Slightly of topic, but relevant. Nothing in this nor any of the comments mentions what percent of your “happiness level” might be expected to come from a form of spending money. Presumably, some significant percentage of your happiness comes from things that do not directly involve spending money.

You cannot have a true idea of how much happiness money can buy if you do not adjust (downward) the value of money-bought-happiness based on the fact that it will account for only a portion of your happiness pie chart. Most of us do this to some extent, automatically weighing in the value of an extra hour of sleep or hour of unstructured family time into our happiness calculations, but if you are looking to maximize your happiness you should look at non-money sources of happiness as rigorously as you do moneyed.

Tem42 17 Jun 2016 15:40 UTC
1 point
on: Avoiding strawmen
Assuming that you are engaged in conversation/argument/debate with a specific target, perhaps the best way to edit out spurious strawmen is to mentally append “except in this case....” to any objection.

Thus:

Them: “It’s important to be yourself.”

You: “Except in this case, because John is a psychopath.”

(Or, You: “Except in this case, because John is a fine, upstanding young guy… oh… nevermind.”)

Not only should this eliminate most straw men, it should help keep the discussion on track.

Tem42 17 Jun 2016 15:24 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ThisSpaceAvailable’s comment on: Attention! Financial scam targeting Less Wrong users
Surely scammers will be more motivated to find good signals, and will have more opportunity to experiment with what works and what does not. Someone effectively signaling that they are a non-scam should be a hallmark of a scam.… which is why smart people like us need a long thread like this to explain to us how the scam works.