I felt a lot of internal resistance and push back when reading this. I agree that this is NOT WHAT YOU SAID, but I feel like there is already a lot of memery and pressure to let the long term / Mission folks be social free riders and leeches in every other part of their lives and I don’t like it. My brain pattern matched this post into that meme space.
weft
Karma: 906
Book Review: How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen
The Scout Mindset—read-along
Community Capital
Whose reasoning can you rely on when your own is faulty?
Sophie Grouchy on A Build-Break Model of Cooperation
Amusingly, the example of humans that are scared of dogs most reminded me of my rescue dog who was scared of humans! Common internet advice is to use food to lure the dog closer to humans. That way they can associate new humans with tasty treats.
While this might work fine for dogs that are just mildly suspicious of strangers, it is actually bad for fearful dogs and reinforces the fear/stress response in the way Scott describes. Not knowing this, we tried the typical route and were surprised when our dog got even more reactive towards people. If she saw us talking to people, this was a sign that WE MIGHT MAKE HER GO TO THE PERSON (even though we never forced her, but luring her with treats was enough), so now just seeing us talking to people was enough to raise her stress levels and get a reaction.
I got a very good trainer, and she used the example of how if your boss hands you a paycheck while holding a gun to your head, the goodness of the paycheck doesn’t overcome the gun to your head.
Instead of trying to get her to go near strangers, we told all strangers to completely ignore her. We taught her to run away from strangers, and tossed treats away from the strangers. If a stranger is nearby or even talking to me, they won’t do anything scary like “look at her” (her previous life taught her that Attention From Humans is Dangerous), but instead she gets treats for running away.
Now she is still a little shy around strangers, and might bark once while running away if someone freaks her out a bit, but she volunteers to go up to people of her own will, and NOW we let strangers give her treats if she is willingly going up to them and sniffing around their hands without any prompting from any of us (and I continue to give her treats if she runs away as well)
If I were to come up with a Clever Title for some of this, I might call it The Trap of the Local Maxima.
I did childcare and disability care in college, because it was a better option than being a cashier or something. Then I graduated and it was a recession, but I could use my childcare experience to get nanny jobs. And so on, and so on.
Now I have about 15 years of childcare experience. It is REALLY EASY for me to get GOOD PAYING nanny jobs. I can literally go on to a website, send out 5-10 applications to what I think are the best jobs there, and be working within a week.
Every now and then I try to do something else, but it is harder to find other types of jobs given my resume, and when I do the job is usually harder than nannying, and pays less. (I was recently an Office Manager, which had expectations I couldn’t live up to, and paid less than nannying. Now I do some Virtual Assistant work that is mostly writing / social media which is nice and easy, and a similar amount of pay per hour, but not as many hours per day)
I don’t even LIKE being a nanny. I never CHOSE it as a career. I don’t PARTICULARLY like children (not in the way most people who choose childcare do). Kids are easy, but my people-skills are mediocre when dealing with e.g. parents or other nannies.
I tell myself someday I will semi-retire and be a dog walker.
The run on garden supplies is because people are bored and don’t have much else to do.
Unless you already have a good set up, growing your own food is expensive, both in terms of initial investment and time.
Sure plant a tomato or whatnot.
But if your goal is “have veggies in the future”, buying a second freezer and stocking it with frozen veg / stocking canned veg is going to get you way more bang for your buck (unless you don’t really put a value on your time, or enjoy it as a hobby)
Random thought:
Before working in operations, I was a nanny for many years. Before that I was doing research while in grad school. I’ve always been bemused by the differences between the way people perceive and treat me in my various roles over the years.
Particularly, operations jobs (and childcare jobs) are possibly not a great idea for people whose identity is strongly centered around being (perceived as) intelligent:
Most of your work isn’t the sort of work that proves how smart you are. Coworkers expectations of your intelligence will be much lower. The skills you need run towards conscientiousness and agreeableness, which are traits that people stereotype as correlated with lower intelligence. Because your tasks are so wide ranging, there will always be things you are brand new at, therefore less competent at.
I’ve pushed my identity over the years more into being “a responsible hard worker”, so that people’s opinions of my intelligence don’t feel meaningful at all. Given that I feel the need to have SOME sort of identity, this seems like a more useful one. Identifying as “smart” can’t do anything to change my underlying g factor. But identifying as responsible and hard working is likely to actually make me behave in those ways.
I’m mostly bringing this up because LW readers often highly value being regarded as intelligent, and it might be a thing to take stock of before aiming for a new career in operations.
I lived in DT and it was awful. OTOH I lived in quite a few other Rationalist houses (in both the bay and nyc) and they were all positive experiences.
I think making sure you filter for similar cleanliness levels, adultiness levels, lifestyle, etc is extremely important.
To me, living with random people you just vaguely like is still pretty good if they are a good lifestyle, etc match.
But it only takes ONE person to completely ruin a group house.
Multiple times on this thread I’ve seen you make the point about figuring out what responsibility should fall on Geoff, and what should be attributed to his underlings.
I just want to point out that it is a pattern for powerful bad actors to be VERY GOOD at never explicitly giving a command for a bad thing to happen, while still managing to get all their followers on board and doing the bad thing that they only hinted at/ set up incentive structures for, etc.
It’s been my experience that when I encounter someone using NVC, or that general area of speech-type, that they are Bad Actors who are using it as a… tool to enforce their will, or make it seem like they are being reasonable and making reasonable requests when they aren’t. And it often reads as general passive aggressiveness to me, even when people possibly don’t mean it that way (I prefer more directness). I don’t think it’s inherent to the tool, but I can see how it could attract those sorts of people.
Circling seems really interesting and possibly useful to me, but only in specific settings, and a random meetup group is NOT one of them (unless it’s staying really superficial, or I guess strangers you will never see again). For a closed group of friends, it sounds like it could be great though, and the sort of thing I’d be really into. If everyone was like me that would make it more difficult to spread, but then people with higher risk tolerances could go to larger/public circling events to learn and then take the skill back to their smaller/private groups.
If anybody DOES do it as a meetup topic, I strongly suggest that RSVP is required so that people can see who else is going, and can choose to stay away if an individual they specifically distrust would be in attendance (or can choose to go if they see that everyone who has RSVPd is a person they would feel comfortable with)
It seems like you are assuming historic gender segregation, eg men go out and go hunting together, women stay nearby gathering, etc.
There has been a lot of recent evidence that this isn’t so cut and dry, but rather that we were applying our own modern lens while interpreting the past.
Specifically, newer evidence is showing gender parity or near-parity in participation in large game hunting. For example I recall that there were many graves that were assumed male because they were warrior or hunter graves, containing weapons and the like. But when they went back and tested them, something like 30% of them were female.
A handful of sources:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd0310
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/science/anthropology-women-hunting.html#:~:text=In cultures where hunting was,to hunting as they aged.
I can’t tell if it is purposeful that this is set up in an adversarial/ winner-take-all kind of way. It’s really off-putting to me, and seems to encourage everyone being out for themselves, rather than collaboration. Particularly for such an inherently collaborative product. Maybe Nate and Eliezer just expect cooperation to fail?
Anyways, if people DO want to attempt some kind of collaboration… EDIT- Don’t join my Facebook group, join plex’s Discord linked in the comment below instead
But building flat-pack furniture is ADULT LEGOS!
Russian Food for Petrov Day
Cross-posted from FB:
During the 872 day long Siege of Leningrad, almost a million people died, mostly of starvation. Twelve of those people died while surrounded by food they refused to eat. They were the scientists and staff at the Institute of Plant Study, a seed bank containing the life’s work of Nikolai Vavilov.
Vavilov had already starved to death in a Soviet gulag, for holding to Mendelian genetic theory, as opposed to the false-but-government-endorsed Lysenkoism. It wasn’t just a principled stand either. Vavilov knew that the truth of genetics could help them feed the country with better crops, while the false theories would fail.
Vavilov’s absence left just his workers to guard the seed banks from destruction. They did their best, knowing that the seeds would be instrumental in rebuilding after the war. But the majority of the seeds still rotted, even as they were protected from the starving masses outside their door.
The workers starved rather than eat the seeds, but still most the seeds were lost.
That may make it seem like all a waste, but what did survive proved to be invaluable. Today 80% of Russia’s cropland is growing the descendants of the seeds from the Institute. Many millions, maybe even a billion people are alive because of the sacrifices of Vavilov and his workers.
Like many others, I’m currently fasting in honor of Vavilov Day. While it’s officially a one day fast, I’m vaguely aiming to make it to Saturday, which would make it my longest fast yet.
IDEAS THREAD:
-
Team up with friends who already play DnD or write glowfic. Less scalable but can grab the $20k.
-
Similarly, if you’re unemployed/ have lots of free time just sit down and write it yourself.
-
Recruit from a local University. This can be very scalable if you e.g. know the creative writing professor.
-
Recruit from roleplaying groups or online roleplaying forums. Requires a bit more filtering than the above.
-
Recruit from fiverr or similar. Requires lots of initial filtering but can end up with low price. Create a series of increasingly less automated tasks as a filter (eg start with a multiple choice quiz that’s automatically graded)
-
Ask a person who already does this kind of thing how they would go about it.
-
I don’t want to name names publicly here, but post on BR, or talk to MR to use his team.
-
Use the volunteers who are posting here.
-
Show this post to a whole bunch of people who you think might want to grab the $20k as individuals. Let them know that if enough of them make the $20k thing that you will all team up to churn out the $1m thing, split proportionally.
-
It’s sometimes hard for me to figure out exactly where my “cheerful price” is. So when I’m “negotiating” with people I trust, I often list a couple of prices, that are some set of:
I definitely would not do it at this price (without it being a favor/ social exchange)
The lowest price I think I would do it at.
My Satisfied Price: I am happy to do the thing for you! This is what I normally get paid for similar jobs
My Cheerful Price: I am excited to do the thing for you! This is more than my average, and I am actively happy about the opportunity!
My Ecstatic Price: My Cheerful Price is definitely lower than this. I would be ecstatic if you paid me $100 / hr to do laundry. This is an amazing deal for me.
This can help because finding the ONE SPECIFIC NUMBER that is your Cheerful Price feels daunting. But feeling out a range helps you narrow it down.
For example: “You want my blegg?? Well I definitely wouldn’t give it to you for $10. But if you offered me for $500 I’d think it was my lucky day and you were crazy. Normally I give people bleggs for about $100. I’ve never gotten more than $200 for a blegg, and I was really happy about that, so.… $200?”
And honestly I feel more comfortable giving someone that whole set of information than just throwing out $200.