I think it's past time for another Stupid Questions thread, so here we go.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Please respect people trying to fix any ignorance they might have, rather than mocking that ignorance.
A question that has been asked before, and so may be stupid: What concrete examples are there of gains from CfAR training (or self-study based on LessWrong)? These would have to come in the form of very specific examples, preferably quantitative.
E.g. "I was $100,000 in debt and unemployed for 2 years, and now I have employment earning twice what I ever have before and am out of debt."
"I never had a relationship that lasted more than 2 months, but now am happily married."
"My grade point average went up from 2.2 to 3.8"
"After struggling to diet and exercise for years, I finally got on track and am now in the best shape of my life."
etc.
I want to point out that this question doesn't quite test for the right thing. One way an organization like CFAR can cause extreme life improvements is by encouraging participants to do extreme things generally in order to increase the variance of alumni outcomes after the workshops. That leads to potentially many extreme improvements but also potentially many extreme... disimprovements? And the latter are harder to notice because of survivorship bias. (There's also regression to the mean to watch out for: you expect the population of CFAR workshop attendees to be somewhat selected for having life problems and those could just randomly improve afterwards.)
I expect the main benefit of CFAR training should be that it improves median outcomes; that is, that it improves alumni ability to consistently win. But this is hard to test for by asking for anecdotes: it would be better to do statistics.
You're absolutely right. CfAR could get statistics by measuring quantifiable goals across its students: Grade point average, wealth, weight-loss; preferably with a control group. Until then, I'm just looking for any info I can get.
Within 3 months of attending a CFAR workshop I had left my job for one that I preferred and that paid 15% more. Within 6 months I had started exercising daily (previously once every few weeks), waking up consistently at 6am (previously varied anywhere from 8-10am), and eating significantly healthier (I also started eating vegetarian meals 2-3 times a week, previously 0). Independent of any of these concrete behaviors, I now have a very strong belief that I can intentionally construct/change my life and behavior in ways that will actually work.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, etc. I have a fairly strong belief that attending a CFAR workshop and interacting with the alumni community has been at least partially causal in me improving my life, but I don't think any of what I've said constitutes good evidence of that claim.
The first time I read the sequences, they were earth-shattering revelations that upset my entire life. The second time I read them, I could only make it few a few posts, because everything they said was obvious. So one gain for me is that existential/religious questions no longer bother me. I got answers that satisfied me, and I've moved on with my life. I suppose you could argue that I could have found the same answers somewhere else, but honestly, I doubt it.
Another big change is how I argue with people. One of my favorite Less Wrong ideas is the Taboo a word sequence. I use this all time. Whenever I encounter some vague statement like "Freewill is nonsense" or "We should live in a more just society" or something like that, I taboo the word and try something else. I approach words differently. I don't know if this has improved my life, but I no longer feel as though I am incapable of expressing myself and my position.
I think I may be more rational. I know, without a doubt, that participating in LessWrong has caused me to self-identify as a rationalist, more than I would have if I had not come here. I feel that this self-identity is enriching and has made me a better person.
I try and do something I have never done before every other week. This habit was inspired and reinforced by Less Wrong. This has made me less afraid to do new things.
I often catch myself rationalizing. This didn't used to happen, I think.
I've installed various mental habits from my time on Less Wrong. My habit of trying to notice rationalization as it happens, in combination with the "Tsuyoku Naritai" attitude, led me to become much more serious about physical fitness. In the last fourteen months, I've gone from moderately overweight and sedentary to lean, fit, and strong, with a minimum of the motivation issues that had previously prevented me.
I've never attended CFAR and am not especially deeply involved with LW, so this may not really be the kind of example you're looking for.
This may be long for a stupid question... and it's not really one question... but it seems like a safe first post kind of place! It has just been on my mind a lot the last few months.
I was recently doing a review of my workplace's management system and used personal life examples to demonstrate why the management system is (/would of been) effective. Instead of convincing anyone else, I convinced myself my life would be better off if I had a personal management system.
I've googled high and low and found nothing that I could draw on. The amount of self-help and motivational books I waded through though... that was impressive. I find it particularly interesting that it doesn't seem present regardless of culture, even for procedure-heavy ones like Japan and Korea (at least in business) or more direct/rigid like Germany. Life just happens and you muddle through.
After putting pen to paper, I realised many "deficiencies" in my own life. I don't have a records "policy" - my files are on hard drives, NAS's, couple of clouds and a drive in a bank deposit box. I have no idea how many copies of my tax returns are floating around out there. I used to track expenses, but w...
You might be interested in the book Getting Things Done. It was written before smartphones and cloud syncing calendars but it can easily be adapted to To-Do lists and managing your life in the modern age.
A basic summary is thus: Every action you need to do but haven't yet done is an open loop in your mind. You have to keep thinking about it until you do it, and close the loop. However, lots of things can't be done except at specific times and places. You can maintain seperate to-do lists for things that can be done anywhere (Call a friend to schedule a movie, tie your shoe, etc.), and things that need you to be at your desk, at work, or at a grocery store. Storing all the myriad things that you need to do in life in your head is stressful and difficult to successfully accomplish. If you offload this information to contextual to-do lists, you can forget about the open loop and rely on your general system to remind you if it only if you can actually do something about it. This allows you focus on things you're doing in the moment, without worrying that you're forgetting a bunch of things you still need to do.
How do you actually get a first job? I haven't completed my degree, am struggling to live on my government provided student allowance, and don't have any experience to put on my CV.
Maybe too obvious but: Ask around. Ask your friends, family, acquaintances... Your personal network is a key factor to finding a job (especially if you're not picky about what job you want).
As for rounding out your CV, create a category called: skills. Skills your probably have: Fluent in MS Office, research (you're at university right now, no?), out-of-the-box thinking (you're on LW, after all, you'll be better than average at this), works well in team (if you did any sort of team sport or online game)...
If you can't come up with anything for the "skills" category, ask your friends and family. They should be able to help you out.
[Meta]
While writing my recent post, I was thinking that it would be great if there was a summary of all the best answers received from widely shared 'stupid questions' in Stupid Questions Threads. I'd call this post 'The Best Answers to Stupid Questions', or 'Frequently Asked Stupid Questions, and Answers', and it would be analogous to how NancyLeibovitz summarized conclusions on procedural knowledge gaps. I might include responses from this thread in such a post. I have some questions about how I/we might gauge the best (answers to) stupid questions, aside from upvotes, among others. Would I only include questions/answers that seemed most generalizable?
Also, if I wrote this, how much should I care about privacy? I notice I don't actually have a common sense in this regard, so I'm asking honestly.
If someone has already posed a question in a Stupid Questions thread using their account, is it fair to assume that it's fine to share it more widely by profiling it specifically in a post? Is this a non-issue?
If it's not fair to assume so, how should I go about seeking consent to include the Q/A in the post? What's reasonable?
I'm a year from completing a PhD in genomic science. I am now completely disillusioned with my field, and indeed professional life in general. I entered with ambition, and have been cleansed of it. I didn't quit early on because I lost all my self esteem and assumed the problem lay with me, and that I would be equally unhappy elsewhere. I'm now almost sure this is wrong, but I only have about a year to go, and no idea what to do next, and am fairly well paid, so quitting seems imprudent.
I have basic statistical and coding skills (whose usefullness in the real world I cannot assess) and honestly no idea what i want to do with my life. I cannot imagine enjoying a job anymore, but intellectually, I'm aware this is probably just a result of my present, rather toxic environment. I would like something socially valuable and/or lucrative, but will settle for something which has normal work hours and doesn't drain all the life out of me. My definition of socially valuable aligns well with that of the LW community, though I place much lower credence on a near term Singularity than most here, I think.
I imagine this is a common ish situation, and advice to me would be generally relevant.
1) Tell me if this is the wrong place for this kind of moaning 2) Advice? Sources thereof? Finding a job? Overcoming apathy? 3) How to assess the usefullness of ones skills? Low hanging ways of improving them?
Coding + stats skills + some biology = the world is your oyster (pharma, research labs/institutes, postdocing if you aren't sick of academia yet, bio startups if you feel you can get invested in something again, etc). I am sorry you had a toxic experience in graduate school. I know this does not help, but I can tell you these are very common, especially in your field.
Just wanted to say good job for realizing the problem was probably with this job, not with you. You may find it helpful, motivationally, to talk to friends/acquaintances and ask them what they like best about their job, so that "a job that doesn't make you miserable" feels more achievable and you feel more hopeful/driven about pursuing it.
I say this b/c a friend of mine was miserable at his job, and I realized how miserable when I told one funny story about my workplace, and he wondered if he could work there, specifically, because I didn't seem unhappy. It was clear he didn't alieve that you could be less unhappy than he was (throwing up every day) at most jobs. In that state of mind, it's hard to get excited about applying!
Also, try to do nice things for yourself, generally. Being as unhappy as you sound in your job is kind of like having walking pneumonia -- it's a big energy drain on everything else you're doing. You may find it helpful to ask "What would I do to be kind to a friend who had walking pneumonia?" and then do those things for yourself. You'll wind up in a new job eventually, but, in the interim, you may want to make sure you treat the symptoms, as well as the root problem.
There are a lot of things wrong, I don't know which of them is the most important...
1)I have zero control over my own work. I am working frantically all the time to complete analyses requested by other people, most of which turn out to be useless or ill thought out. People generally don't understand programming and stats enough to know how long things should take.
2)My boss is widely regarded as a bit of a tyrant. I have a powerful aversion to interacting with her in any way, and she has extremely poor communication skills. Our relationship is terrible. I think this is my fault as well, I work a lot but seem to get little done, and whenever I'm around her I feel a crushing sense of guilt and insecurity (this is all pretty melodramatic and childish - any my issue more than hers, but there it is).
3)The culture in my lab is about producing papers, not discovering things. I have the impression that almost none really give a crap about what we're studying.
4)I'm in a small town in a foreign country which I hate.
5)I have no belief in the value of the work we do. Nor do many of the smart people I've talked to. Many of these smart people have quit the lab recently. I was attracted to the lab...
What's a good place online to ask questions about sex and sexual problems? LessWrong feels a little too public to me...
How do I stop being a hipster? I saw Bryan Caplan advising his readers to read Scott Alexander and my first reaction was "Oh no, a well-known blog is recommending people read my favorite little blog. Now more people will read it and I won't be as special." I know this feeling is irrational, but how can I overcome it?
I think you want to be special -- that's an entirely legit and useful desire. The part that needs adjusting is deriving your specialness from obscurity of your interests.
Index funds have been recommended on LW before. I have a hard time understanding how it would work investing in one, though. Do you actually own the separate stocks on the index of the index fund, or do you technically own something else? Where does the dividend money go?
(I'd be remiss if I didn't link this Mr. Money Mustache post on index funds that explains why they are a good idea)
To buy an index fund, you buy shares of a mutual fund. That mutual fund invests in every stock in the chosen index, balanced based on whatever criteria they choose. Each share of the mutual fund is worth a portion of the underlying investment. At no point do you own separate stocks - you own shares of the fund, instead.
Toy example: You have an index fund that invests in every stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The fund invests in $1,000,000 of stock split evenly among every stock on the NYSE, then issues a thousand shares of the fund itself. You buy one share. Your share is worth $1,000. You can sell your shares back to the fund and they will give you $1,000. Over the next year, some stocks go up and some stocks go down. The fund doesn't buy any more stock or sell any more shares. On average, the nominal value of the NYSE will go up by about 7%. The fund now owns $1,070,000 of stocks. Your one share is now worth $1,070.
The dividends go wherever you want them to. The one share of a thousand you bought above entitles you to 1/1000 of the dividends ...
There are two typical ways to invest in an index fund, plus one way that isn't.
Buy a mutual fund that mimics the index you want to buy. You technically own shares in the mutual fund, which is an undivided right to a tiny percent of the whole pool. To get your money out, you have to redeem your shares, which happens at the fair market value. (It used to be that redemptions happened at fair market value at market closing price; I don't know if that is still true.) To fund redemptions, the fund has to keep some cash on hand, so some small percent of your money isn't actually invested. If you invest in mutual funds in a taxable account, the churn in fund holders' redemptions create trades that cause capital gains, which creates taxable income for the fund as a whole. It will be a small percent, but it will still be there (on top of taxation of any dividends). This is because the legal model applied to your investment is like you are a partner in a partnership, where you get an allocation of profits and losses that are separate from your receipt of cash.
Buy an exchange traded fund that mimics the index you want to buy. These are still mutual funds in operation. The main difference h
Interviewers encourage interviewees to ask questions. And people holding presentations are asking for questions. Also people in general seem to like it if you ask questions about them. But not all of them. How do I choose good questions to ask in an interview, after a talk or with a person, especially when the interview answered all of my obvious question, as did the talk?
Is continuing to write the story I started, that's turned into a novel, a good use of my time, or am I suffering a version of the sunk cost fallacy, and I would do better abandoning the story and starting something new (and presumably more properly rationalist), now that I've gotten my writing muscles properly exercised and in working order?
I am very afraid of bugs. I have to psyche myself up to get close enough to a bug to smash it. I have, on more than one occasion, decided to go to work without showering because there was a spider in the bathroom. Ants and flies don't bother me for whatever reason, but spiders/moths/beetles/grasshoppers/silverfish and almost anything else bug-like are very disconcerting to look at or be near.
This only rarely interferes with my life, but it is very frustrating. I'm not sure if I'm looking for a way to remove the irrational fear, or a coping strategy. "Keep gloves and lots of RAID around the house" is my current best idea.
Hi everyone, I have a question related to the possibility that we live in an infinite universe, and the ethical implications that follow. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've looked over Nick Bostrom's paper on infinite ethics which, if I understand it correctly, suggests that in an infinite universe containing infinite positive value (good) and infinite negative value (evil), it appears to be the case that nothing we do can ever really matter ethically because all we can do is a finite amount of good or evil (which has no impact on an infi...
how can it be that it matters if the amount of positive value and negative value in the universe is infinite.
Not sure if infinities really exist. Pretty sure it's important to not be a dick.
Suppose you have a suit of events A1, A2, A3 ... An, that correlate with event B with varying strength. You want to calculate the aposteriory probability of B using the Bayes theorem, and obtain a set of numbers. How do you decide which one is the correct one? Or you just must do these calculations several times and then pick the best indicator? Sorry, I suspect there is a simple answer...
Is it less annoying if, instead of asking to borrow your brains, I propose to play DM in a tabletop campaign where you're playing a character who looks suspiciously like me? Is it better if there are actual Akratic Goblins instead of just keeping things 99% realistic? (Couching it in Dungeon Punk metaphors might kinda break the point, which is to trick my brain into doing a better job at communicating the problem(s), and to trick at least one stronger brain into taking the challenge so's I can borrow the winning strategy. But if there's a necessary engagement tradeoff to overcome my general lameness, then I should try to make it?)
If I add a comment to an old Sequence article or respond to a comment on an old Sequence article, will my comment get noticed by anyone? I've seen comments added years later that did seem to get noticed, but how do people notice them?
Meta: I didn't read this thread for some time and only later got back to it (when I ran out of comments :-). On reflection I think it is due to the negative connotations with 'stupid'. We can hope that everyone here is immune to the halo effect. Or we can look for a better title.
'Simple questions'
'Quick questions' (implies urgency)
'Naive questions' (still connotations but not so strong ones)
'Less available Answers' (putting the idea on its head)
The reason for calling it stupid questions is to reassure people that they won't lose reputation or be insulted for asking questions that might be obvious to other people.
Is the following (conspiracy?) theory implausible? Could it be that Google and the other big players are well aware of the dangers of AI and are actively working to thwart the dangers internally? They could present an image of no concern so as to not spark any government intervention into their affairs or public concern getting in the way of their business plans. But should we not believe that they have considered very thoroughly whether there is immanent danger from AI, and are running their business in accordance to the resulting utility function? ...
How do you approach a huge pedantic writing project like a thesis or a review paper? Despite reading some self help on the on the subject, I feel completely stuck, overwhelmed and don't know where to begin each day. If I manage to do some part of the project I do it way too thoroughly and waste time. I don't seem to have terrible problems with akrasia with other kinds of projects, it's just that I've never done anything this big that requires intense self monitoring from the beginning to the end.
Examples of how you approach different kinds of big projects like programming an application are welcome too.
A few premises
a) Some animals matter
b) Not all animals matter, some extremely simple animals don't matter.
c) There are anti-correlations of the form: the more cows there are, the fewer insects (or rodents) there are. - that hold true in our world in which one of the species is substantially more cognitively capable than the other.
d) There is currently no consensus on how simple a mind or cognitive system has to be for it to matter. Arguably this consensus cannot be reached, since different hypotheses will use different correlates to try and find the mora...
I've read the posts upon group selection and decided this is kind of relevant. I don't know math deeply, so this will be qualitative.
There are mutually beneficial symbioses - flowers + pollinators, roots + mycorrhiza, that kind of thing. They are robust not because they allow for altruism, but because they are mutually beneficial (usually). I think it is worthwhile to look into the meta-question of how to measure their efficiency, if AI ecology is comparable to non-intelligent things' ecology. Is fitness of symbiosis equal to the sum of (maybe weighted) th...
What are the arguments for/against owning a house in a given city, vs eg renting, travelling between multiple cities/couch surfing, and other possible ways of living?
Is breaking a Karma score of 1,000 still considered a threshold of becoming a 'real' member of LW?
I've got over 1000 and pretty much feel like an observer that periodically gets massively upvoted for injecting biology and astronomy information and analysis, which just happens to more than cancel out my negative karma from frequent jibes at local phenomena I find amusing or troubling.
If one were to accept a dualistic interpretation of the hard problem of consciousness, to what extent would or would that not increase the probability of some aspects related to theism (e.g., that there may exist some completely non-material conscious being(s), that said being(s) may have power to interact with the world arbitrarily, that the non-material aspect of the mind might survive death, etc.)? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. Specific references appreciated.
I notice that I become more attached to LessWrong (again). I habitually open the LW page when I start PC work and check for new posts and messages (and karma). The last time this happened I controlled it by placing 'minor inconvenences' around LW (block in /etc/hosts). Do others notice this too? Is this normal in some way? What should I do about this?
My google skills totally failed me and I know this should be easy but...
I read a story years ago about an emperor and shogun. The emperor was nice and the shogun was harsh, and when they switched places the people loved the shogun and respected him but hated the emperor. I'm telling it poorly.
Anyway I have been totally unable to find it again to cite or pass on. Anyone willing to lend me their Google mastery? Feel free to make fun of me for how easy it was for you ;)
I want to start following blogs across several platforms, by being able to view their new posts in one place. From what I can tell, I think this means I want an RSS reader. I use a Windows laptop that's not too old- does the computer, or Google, come with one? (This seems like something either ought to, but I don't know.) Do I have to download one, and if so, is there a best one?
How do people who sign up to cryonics, or want to sign up to cryonics, get over the fact that if they died, there would no-longer be a mind there to care about being revived at a later date? I don't know how much of it is morbid rationalisation on my part just because signing up to cryonics in the UK seems not quite as reliable/easy as in the US somehow, but it still seems like a real issue to me.
Obviously, when I'm awake, I enjoy life, and want to keep enjoying life. I make plans for tomorrow, and want to be alive tomorrow, despite the fact that in betwee...
Can I learn to consciously lower my heart rate? I don't think there's anything wrong with my heart rate generally, but I've been having problems for the last few months with my pulse skyrocketing in the very specific context of the pre-blood-donation screening,and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to stop it. I think I may have become entrenched in a horrible feedback loop of knowing I'm going to fail that part of the screening, causing me to be nervous about it, causing my pulse to speed up, causing me to fail. I've toyed with various relaxation ...
I've read that the CEO of Levi's recommends washing jeans very infrequently.
Won't they smell? I have a pretty clean white-collar lifestyle, but I'm concerned about wearing mine even once or twice between machine washing. Is it considered socially acceptable to re-wear jeans?
Why would people in the 27th Century want to revive other people who went into some kind of biostasis in the 24th Century? Wouldn't that make the 24th Century people selfish or narcissistic for wanting to take advantage of the more advanced health care of the 27th Century?
Hi everyone, I have a question related to the possibility that we live in an infinite universe, and the ethical implications that follow. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've looked over Nick Bostrom's paper on infinite ethics which, if I understand it correctly, suggests that in an infinite universe containing infinite positive value (good) and infinite negative value (evil), it appears to be the case that nothing we do can ever really matter ethically because all we can do is a finite amount of good or evil (which has no impact on an infinite value).
But I have seen discussions of multiverse ethics on Less Wrong where commenters are seemingly talking as if they are able to act in an ethically meaningful way in an infinite cosmos, talking about something referred to as their "measure", and of increasing their measure. I'm afraid I do not understand at all what they are talking about.
Can someone please explain in layman's terms what this sort of talk is all about (sometimes the discourse at Less Wrong is over my head, so as simply and clearly as possible please!). What is "your measure" and how can it be that it matters if the amount of positive value and negative value in the universe is infinite? Sorry if I am misunderstanding something basic and this question is stupid. Thanks!
In math, "measure" is a way of assigning a "volume" (or length, area, probability) to infinite sets. The "cardinality" of the set of numbers between 0 and 1 is the same infinity as that of the set of numbers between 0 and 2, but the standard "measure" of the latter set is twice as big. You can sum up certain types of functions defined on a continuum by "integrating" those functions values using the appropriate measure.
If there turns out to be a continuum of possible universes created by, say, a particle d... (read more)