Comment on Beyond Statistics 101

Thu, 09 Jul 2015 10:25:27 GMT

I am not giving up, and I hope I will still achieve some big success.

In the shortest term... I have a baby now, which turned my life upside down a bit, so I need to solve some logistic problems first (e.g. to buy a new flat) and get used to the new situation. It might take a year. -- Not complaining here; I always wanted to have children, but it's taking time and energy and money, so my options are now more limited than usual. I believe it will be okay in a few months, but today, I am rather busy and tired. Also, having a family limits my options; for example if I would decide that moving to another city would make my life better, it is no longer only my own decision. My hands are a bit more tied than they would be if I were 25 again.

I still didn't give up completely on starting a rationalist community in my own city, and I have two specific plans. (1) These days I am finishing the translation of the LW Sequences book; when it is ready, I will distribute it freely and try to make it popular, and hope that people who enjoy it will contact me. (2) In September, I plan to do some rationality "lectures" (advertising for LW and for the translated book) on at least one high school, and one university.

I will probably not do anything scientific, ever; that train has already gone. Cannot compete with 20-years olds with fresh brains and fresh memories of their university lectures, who don't have a family to feed. It would be wiser to focus fully on my personal life and making money, because that's what I have to do anyway. -- The current plan is writing computer games, because the entry costs are almost zero, and I can do it at home in the evenings when the baby sleeps. (I have to keep the day job to pay bills.) Later, when the baby grows up and starts attenting school, I may try something more ambitious.

But still, even if my plans succeed and I live till 80, I will not be able to do as much as in the hypothetical parallel universe where I would find a LW community as a teenager (and also live till 80). But it will still be better than yet another parallel universe where LW doesn't exist at all or where I am somehow unable to find it.

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