dxu comments on Harper's Magazine article on LW/MIRI/CFAR and Ethereum - Less Wrong

44 Post author: gwern 12 December 2014 08:34PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 13 December 2014 12:18:09AM *  3 points [-]

But how can you take issue with our insistence [Edit: more like strong encouragement!] that people use hand sanitizer at a 4-day retreat with 40 people sharing food and close quarters?

So, I have noticed that I am overhygienic relative to the general population (when it comes to health; not necessarily when it comes to appearance), and I think that's standard for LWers. I think this is related to taking numbers and risk seriously; to use dubious leftovers as an example, my father's approach to food poisoning is "eh, you can eat that, it's probably okay" and my approach to food poisoning is "that's only 99.999% likely to be okay, no way is eating that worth 10 micromorts!"

Comment author: dxu 13 December 2014 02:56:38AM *  2 points [-]

I think that's standard for LWers

How large is your sample size? (I would consider myself around average as far as hygiene goes, but my sense of the average level of hygiene of the general population may be somewhat skewed by hanging around someone who regularly picks food up off of the ground and eats it, so...)

Comment author: Vaniver 13 December 2014 06:10:28PM 4 points [-]

How large is your sample size?

I've met probably ~100 LWers in person, but I notice that I was falling prey to confirmation / availability bias when writing the grandparent post. When I met up with Fluttershy for lunch in a restaurant, he took out the bottle of hand sanitizer he kept in his backpack, and that counted more heavily in my memory than the Seattle LW game night / group meal hosted at jsalvatier's place, where if I recall correctly people washed their hands in the sink if they wanted to, rather than there being some sort of explicit cleanliness norm, despite there being two LWers at the first event and ~twelve at the second. I can't recall a time when I thought a LWer was behaving in an obviously unclean manner, though, but that's rare enough anyway among people I'm around that I don't know how much evidence that is. (Thinking of the group I'm close to with the least overall healthiness, as evidenced by the prevalence of drinking, smoking, and (I'm pretty sure) promiscuity, even they throw out unrefrigerated leftovers with meat in it because of the influence of one of the members with a food service job (and thus the associated food safety training).)

Comment author: Fluttershy 13 December 2014 10:13:37PM 4 points [-]

Meeting you for lunch was fun! Normally, I would have just gone to the restroom to wash my hands; the reason I had left a bottle of hand sanitizer on the table for was that I had wanted to be able to clean my hands without getting up from the table immediately after sitting down, given that some people think that getting up from the table is slightly rude. Using hand sanitizer just happened to be a more visible method of cleaning my hands than washing my hands in the restroom would have been.

On a related note, at the LW meetup after lunch, I remember that Frances passed a bottle of hand sanitizer around the table while we were in the middle of a conversation about how being hygienic was a good thing. I appreciated that.

Comment author: Vaniver 14 December 2014 02:59:09AM 2 points [-]

Meeting you for lunch was fun!

Same! Let us know if you get another chance to come up to Austin; it'd be great to see you at the meetup again.