Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

D_Malik

A Munchkin is the sort of person who, faced with a role-playing game, reads through the rulebooks over and over until he finds a way to combine three innocuous-seeming magical items into a cycle of infinite wish spells. Or who, in real life, composes a surprisingly effective diet out of drinking a quarter-cup of extra-light olive oil at least one hour before and after tasting anything else. Or combines liquid nitrogen and antifreeze and life-insurance policies into a ridiculously cheap method of defeating the invincible specter of unavoidable Death. Or figures out how to build the real-life version of the cycle of infinite wish spells.

It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.

So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.

Thus spake Eliezer:

A Munchkin is the sort of person who, faced with a role-playing game, reads through the rulebooks over and over until he finds a way to combine three innocuous-seeming magical items into a cycle of infinite wish spells. Or who, in real life, composes a surprisingly effective diet out of drinking a quarter-cup of extra-light olive oil at least one hour before and after tasting anything else. Or combines liquid nitrogen and antifreeze and life-insurance policies into a ridiculously cheap method of defeating the invincible specter of unavoidable Death. Or figures out how to build the real-life version of the cycle of infinite wish spells.

On the contrary, high-status people can countersignal by publicly changing their mind on things in light of new evidence. You just have to show the evidence as well as the changing of your mind. I mean, if someone's right, that's one thing - but publicly changing your mind distinguishes you from people who are merely right by demonstrating the process behind getting things correct.

On the contrary, high-status people can countersignal by publicly changing their mind on things in light of new evidence.

I agree. And there's a trick to it, which you described pretty well. I'm just giving that as an example of how big a deal status is: if you don't know the trick for changing your mind and staying high status, then it can be hard to change your mind, and difficulty changing one's mind may be the #1 rationality failure mode in the general population.

7wedrifid13y

Sometimes. In particular circumstances. With difficulty. Even in circumstances that are abnormally in favour of sanity the status signal is still arguable. But note that effectively gaining social power isn't about just signalling high status a lot. It's about navigating social interactions with whichever signals are most effective. Someone who only signals high status comes across as 'rigid' or 'brittle'. I suggest that much of the signalling benefit for mind changing is actually signalling competence and increasing likeability rather than by directly signalling high status in the moment.

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Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

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Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

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