Does anyone know of any posts or resources that are targeted at rationalists that help with extracting yourself and recovering from an abusive relationship?

I've been a longtime student of LessWrong and related communities, studied physics at a top school, great at programming, very introspective etc. etc. All the regular boxes checked. Just a week ago I left a relationship that I realized has become extremely abusive (both emotionally and physically) and I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how I ever got in that situation. Having intensely strong signals from my rational side (RUN RUN) and even stronger signals from my emotional side (GO BACK, YOU HAVE TO HELP HER) is a very uncomfortable position for me to be in and something I've never experienced before.

I had a moment of clarity a week ago after my significant other threatened in a calm, honest tone to give me sleeping pills, cut off certain of my body parts, and then make me watch her put them down the garbage disposal. I opened up to my entire family about everything going on over a frantically intense few hours because I realized soon I would go back to hiding what was going on so that everyone would continue to love h... (read more)

Do any digital nomads read LessWrong? What region are you in? How did you setup your remote work? What is the best/worst feature of the lifestyle? What was the biggest surprise? Is anyone else thinking about trying out the lifestyle?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-interleaving-effect-mixing-it-up-boosts-learning/

Argues for mixing up what you're learning (at least within a subject) rather than trying to just focus on one thing at a time.

I had a realization today that does not grant a separate thread.

I'm reading RAZ and got to Mysterious Answers, specifically Explain/Worship/Ignore?

I have kids. Most people know that kids love the question "why?" (If you didn't know - now you do. My family of origin has a joke that the last question of a longest stretch was number 37: why is mummy chewing on the carpet?)

When my daughter asks "why", I give her some answers usually pondering how I can influence the direction of the questions and information that I give her*. But in light o... (read more)

Are there any lesswrong-like sequences focused on economics, finance, business, management? Or maybe just internet communities like lesswrong focused on these subjects?

I mean, the sequences introduced me to some really complex knowledge that improved me a lot, while simultaneously being engaging and quite easy to read. It is only logical to assume that somewhere on the web, there must be some articles in the same style covering different themes. And if there are not, well, someone must surely do this, I think there is some demand for this kind of content. ... (read more)

I find myself occasionally in conversations that aim at choosing one of two (or more) courses of action. Here are some patterns that arise that frustrate me:

A: We'll get to City in an hour. When we're there, do you want to do X? Or maybe Y?
B: I haven't thought about it yet, I've been dodging sheep and potholes. What do you want to do?
A: Whatever you're comfortable doing.
B: Umm ... Which is easier to get to?
A: I don't know. Or, we could do C, D, or E?
B: Now I'm getting choice paralysis.
A: Well, I wanted to see if you were really enthusiastic for any of them... (read more)

Meta: This thread was late; the usual guy was busy. I guess I am volunteering to do it for MrMind.

Heh. Qualify this under "crazy ideas". Chinese tech companies are motivating programmers by hiring cheerleaders. It would be interesting to know if this increases productivity. Do cheerleaders help improve results sports teams?

Suppose someone offers you the chance to play the following game:

You are given an initial stake of $1. A fair coin is flipped. If the result is TAILS, you keep the current stake. If the result is HEADS, the stake doubles and the coin is flipped again, repeating the process.

How much money should you be willing to pay to play this game?

How many rationalists live in Africa, and especially South Africa? I'm kind of surprised that there is no LW meetup anywhere in Africa, I would have guessed that at least South Africa or Nigeria are sufficiently developed and have sufficiently prevalent internet access to have one. Should somebody who has more conscientiousness than I do (at least for now) start one here in South Africa?

I'm going coldturkey on compulsive porn, music, junk foods, procrastination, negativity, worry, approval and gambling, all of which have been conceptualised as addictions, for at least one year and hopefully life. I've tried this moderation approach fmany times and failed, so this is it.

Is it bad to sleep in a hunched over or crunching or hooked kind of position?

yyay charity

I've always been annoyed by how icky traditional sunscreen makes me feel, so I was happy to find out that there's a roll-on sunscreen that works reasonably well. I've used it a couple of times now, and while I wasn't outside for long enough that I would have burned when I used it in either case-- and therefore can't comment on the effectiveness of a single layer of the stuff-- I would say that applying it was much quicker and easier than applying traditional sunscreen. While applying sunscreen isn't the lowest hanging fruit in health interventions out ther... (read more)

I have an impression that conscientiousness feels like an outside force. Instead of "I choose to tidy up/proofread my writing/tip the server", it's more like "the situation requires that I do the right thing".

Does this match other people's experience? Does conscientiousness feel more like an outside force than other behaviors?

This might be of interest to LW.

From the abstract:

Intellectual ability may be an endophenotypic marker for bipolar disorder. Within a large birth cohort, we aimed to assess whether childhood IQ (including both verbal IQ (VIQ) and performance IQ (PIQ) subscales) was predictive of lifetime features of bipolar disorder assessed in young adulthood. ... There was a positive association between IQ at age 8 years and lifetime manic features at age 22 – 23 years

Slouching is unbecoming and say say it increases back pain. I have chronic lower back pain. When I feel like slouching or hunching, because I'm too tired to sit up straight, what are some alternatives where lying down is inappropriate?

I'm very confused about something related to the Halting Problem. I discussed this on the IRC with some people, but I couldn't get across what I meant very well. So I wrote up something a bit longer and a bit more formal.

The gist of it is, the halting problem lets us prove that, for a specific counter example, there can not exist any proof that it halts or not. A proof that it does or does not halt, causes a paradox.

But if it's true that there doesn't exist a proof that it halts, then it will run forever searching for one. Therefore I've proved that the pr... (read more)

Has anyone got opinions on Clifford Geertz? He's supposedly the most-influential American anthropologist. I began reading his famous book, Interpretation of Cultures, and I'm struck by how illogical it is. He has interesting insights into his own perspective, but he's consistently completely unable to comprehend anyone else's perspective. Odd, for someone who says that's the purpose of his own profession. He fails to draw even caricatures or straw men of behaviorism and cognitivism, his main opponents, and just says they're wrong, then tells entertain... (read more)

A few nutrition-related questions:

• Why does Soylent 2.0 have so much fat? They appear to be going for 45% of calories from fat, whereas the typical recommendation is 10%-35%.

• Why does the Bulletproof stuff include so much saturated fat? It appears that the consensus is that saturated fat significantly increases blood cholesterol and arterial plaque formation - curious why such a deviation here.

How many of the following do you identify with, strangers?

  Is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost.

   Shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion (e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met).

   Is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships (not accounted for by obvious economic necessity).

  Is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inf

Is sexual relationship between two consenting adult siblings ethically okay and should it be legal? It's an interesting ethical problem because there are so many complicated dimensions and it could go either way. I think generally when it comes to social issues our society seems to head in a right direction, people are becoming more tolerant of people who choose differently and so on, but incest between siblings seems to become maybe more taboo even though there are some rational justifications you could make for it.

Some have made parallels to homosexualit... (read more)