You should try giving the truth a try sometime, rather than pursuing the “correct” side of an argument. You might enjoy not being a duplicitous snake, figuratively speaking.
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You have some misconceptions about exercise. (Though it is true that improperly done exercises can injure you.) Since this is a rationality forum and not really the place for such a discussion, I will just point you and anyone else interested towards the /fit/ FAQ: http://www.liamrosen.com/fitness.html
This comment is a little late, but the last paragraph mentioned actually shouldn’t end in a double quote, because it’s the same speaker as the next paragraph. (This tripped me up while I was reading.)
I’ve only taken a half-dozen college-level math courses but I don’t think I’ve seen any cursive letters yet. If we were going to teach kids cursive in case they one day take higher-level math, we should also be sure to teach them the Greek letters because those are used all the time. Of course the vast majority of people don’t need to, don’t want to, and won’t ever take higher level math, so I’d say that teaching kids cursive is an utter waste of time. The time spent teaching cursive could be put to so much better use (e.g., more time devoted to science instruction), and while it’s a bit awkward to learn to write new letters at a later age, I much prefer it to the endless cursive drills.
Yvain, one very important question that I think you missed: Do you currently have an account on Lesswrong?
I personally don’t, and glancing through the number of ‘first post’ comments here, I believe that the ratio of lurkers to active users may be significant. (This is a throwaway account, and I am making an exception this once because there would be no other way to get information from the lurkers.)
You may be very interested in a document I came across a while ago, which is one man’s manifesto on note-taking that he compiled in a (free) ebook called “How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think.” You can find it here: http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/nb/
The program he sets forth is extreme, as he is quite literally trying to detail and commit to memory (on paper) his entire mind. But it contains a lot of useful advice on how to take notes that are useful, accessible, and memorable. I’ve implemented bits of his system and it has helped a lot in school—I’ve found that it’s much easier and more useful to take notes when there is some method to the madness.
Oh, and if you are at all a visual thinker, Always take notes on paper. Paper offers freedom that lines of computer text simply can not: arrows, diagrams, color of pen, relative sizing of text corresponding to its importance, arrangement of elements on the page, all of these things are immediate, intuitive, and completely your own. I’ll cite a paper that highlights the importance of this sort of visual language: http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/recent/artclNSFVisualLangv.pdf
- 2 May 2012 1:11 UTC; 0 points) 's comment on Open Thread, May 1-15, 2012 by (
There are a few reasons I haven’t joined OkCupid, but one of them is that I’m conflicted about the “drugs” question. I want to answer it honestly but don’t want employers (and other squares) to see the honest answer.
I could make it harder to find by making the profile visible only to other OkCupid users and not using my regular internet pseudonym, but my location and pictures would still be there.
(I’m using the “community throwaway account” to write this.)
Edit: I like your profile.
The status part can be worked around by using a throwaway account.
I occasionally do this as a routine for meditation/reflection/expanding perspective/entertainment/not sure what label to use, and I recommend it because I think members of the community will be able to do it.
I basically go outside and walk around looking around at trees the sidewalk and grass and trying to disassociate what I’m seeing from any notions of ‘tree’ or ‘grass’ object classes. Once I can get those I can usually extend it to everything in my perception. A sort of de-object-ification, trying to hold in my mind the notion that there are no boundaries between one thing and the next, and that ‘thing’ itself is a fundamentally false concept. If you read HPMOR, it’s Harry’s thought processes when he attempts partial transfiguration.
The effect is somewhat of an exhilarating experience of stepping out of the system and seeing it for what it is, and a peaceful intimate connection with the air around you, realizing that there really is no boundary between self and the world.
If I can point to anything similar, it would be Jill Bolte Taylor’s description of her stroke, and drug experiences I’ve had recounted to me, though I don’t have personal experience in either area.
I guess Feynman includes the Pauli principle as electric force. Remember, he got a Nobel prize for this stuff.
So? An actor’s behaviors would be convey no information if we did not already recognize them as real-world indicators of status. While the high-status/low-status continuum outlined in this post is constraining and is in no way a definitive representation of how people project status, it is a useful metric and broadly true. If we imitate actors, we are imitating a simulation of an appearance of how high-status people act, not a fiction.
To put it simply, high-status people do these things in real life and that’s why these behaviors are reflected in the movies.
A couple other thoughts:
Even if our indicators of status are socially learned, it doesn’t diminish their effect whatsoever.
(Warning: abstract speculation) To an extent social interaction is at its core a group of minds playing roles as various actors, exchanging emotional, physical, and intellectual information through the medium of this play called ‘social interaction’. This process is most fluid when it is all subconscious and there is no separation between the mind and its acting role, but we should not disparage actors as displaying ‘simulated’ behaviors when we ourselves are nothing but actors using the same sort of tools to express ourselves.
I completely agree. My point was not that one should display these behaviors to become high status (though there is value in fake-it-till-you-make-it, going out and doing these is a quick one-way ticket to looking like a disingenuous sleaze, you would be far better off working on inner game), but rather that these do have a basis in reality.
In light of your response, I had misinterpreted your original post. I took
If you imitate that list of things in real life, you’re copying a simulation of an appearance of a fiction.
as
Any imitation of this in real life is a copy of a simulation of an appearance of a fiction.and it was that that I was addressing.
The only thing is, once you have enough time turners to control most of the volume of the market, there are no longer any linear-time causal inputs (read: people) deciding what directions the market will take. Market fluctuations would literally come from nowhere, though it might be best said that they would come from Time. And given Harry’s previous scary experiment (DO NOT MESS WITH TIME, ch. 17), I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to let Time be the one to control this.
By the way if you’re looking to get Modafinil, a redditor just opened a new site selling it (shipped from India). I can’t personally vouch for it, as I just placed my order a few days ago, but /r/nootropics is having a field day.
Edit: removed the direct link to the site—I’m not an affiliate, just someone who thinks that people in this community would be interested in this information. Read that reddit discussion for more info.
So be cautious. But don’t use generalized evidence when you have specifics. I personally trust this specific site because of the testimonials of some long-standing reddit users who have ordered it. You should decide on your own if that’s good enough for you.
Also note that 75% of fake drugs originate in India, not that 75% of drugs from India are fake.
Edit: It came in a while ago and I’ve used it a few times. Works for me.
Unrelated to the post, but I’m not sure where else to suggest rationality exercises. So I’d like to revive an idea I saw here a while back called ‘What Did You See?’ (I can’t take any prize if it’s selected because it’s not mine). I think it would be a wonderful game for developing curiosity and noticing specifics. But above all its purpose is learning that you can learn, which I think even in the rationality community is an important lesson that helps to reignite the inquisitive spark.
At home there was a game that all the parents played with their children. It was called, What Did You See? Mara was about Dann’s age when she was first called into her father’s room one evening, where he sat in his big carved and coloured chair. He said to her, ‘And now we are going to play a game. What was the thing you liked best today?’
At first she chattered: ‘I played with my cousin . . . I was out with Shera in the garden . . . I made a stone house.’ And then he had said, ‘Tell me about the house.’ And she said, ‘I made a house of the stones that come from the river bed.’ And he said, ‘Now tell me about the stones.’ And she said, ‘They were mostly smooth stones, but some were sharp and had different shapes.’ ‘Tell me what the stones looked like, what colour they were, what did they feel like.’
And by the time the game ended she knew why some stones were smooth and some sharp and why they were different colours, some cracked, some so small they were almost sand. She knew how rivers rolled stones along and how some of them came from far away. She knew that the river had once been twice as wide as it was now. There seemed no end to what she knew, and yet her father had not told her much, but kept asking questions so she found the answers in herself. Like, ‘Why do you think some stones are smooth and round and some still sharp?’ And she thought and replied, ‘Some have been in the water a long time, rubbing against other stones, and some have only just been broken off bigger stones.’ Every evening, either her father or her mother called her in for What Did You See? She loved it. During the day, playing outside or with her toys, alone or with other children, she found herself thinking, Now notice what you are doing, so you can tell them tonight what you saw.
She had thought that the game did not change; but then one evening she was there when her little brother was first asked, What Did You See? and she knew just how much the game had changed for her. Because now it was not just What Did You See? but: What were you thinking? What made you think that? Are you sure that thought is true?
When she became seven, not long ago, and it was time for school, she was in a room with about twenty children – all from her family or from the Big Family – and the teacher, her mother’s sister, said, ‘And now the game: What Did You See?’
Most of the children had played the game since they were tiny; but some had not, and they were pitied by the ones that had, for they did not notice much and were often silent when the others said, ‘I saw . . .’, whatever it was. Mara was at first upset that this game played with so many at once was simpler, more babyish, than when she was with her parents. It was like going right back to the earliest stages of the game: ‘What did you see?’ ‘I saw a bird.’ ‘What kind of a bird?’ ‘It was black and white and had a yellow beak.’ ‘What shape of beak? Why do you think the beak is shaped like that?’
Then she saw what she was supposed to be understanding: Why did one child see this and the other that? Why did it sometimes need several children to see everything about a stone or a bird or a person?
Doris Lessing, “Mara and Dann”
Are you replying to the right comment?
He might not know what a Virtuist is—it may be an arbitrary label for the purpose of this test, in which case the answer would not change.
Eliezer has retracted that comment, and has stated that such retractions should be spoilered as they are no longer common knowledge.
We can’t force you to ROT13 your original comment as well as this one, but you’re not being fair to the spirit of the fanfiction and you should expect to take a karma hit if you don’t.
Eat less and your stomach may stop hurting. No need to project the source of your pain on others.