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Dumb question: how selective will the application judging be? I'm trying to determine how much time I need to put into my answers to the application free response questions.
Effective Altruism Summit 2014
In 2013, the Effective Altruism movement came together for a week-long Summit in the San Francisco Bay Area. Attendees included leaders and members from all the major effective altruist organizations, as well as effective altruists not affiliated with any organization. People shared strategies, techniques, and projects, and left more inspired and more effective than when they arrived.
More than ever, rationality and existential risk reduction are part of the Effective Altruism movement, and so I'm glad to announce to LessWrong the 2014 Effective Altruism Summit.
Following last year’s success, this year’s Effective Altruism Summit will comprise two events. The Summit will be a conference-style event held on the weekend of August 2-3, preceded by a smaller Effective Altruism Retreat from July 27-August 1. To accommodate our expanding movement and its many new projects, this year’s Summit will be bigger than the last. The Retreat will be similar to last year’s EA Summit, providing a more intimate setting for attendees to discuss, to learn, and to form lasting connections with each other and with the community.
We’re now accepting applications for the 2014 events. Whether you’re a veteran organizer trying to keep up with Effective Altruism’s most exciting developments, or you're looking to get involved with a community of people who use rationality to improve the world, we’d love for you to join us.
In response to
Effective Altruism Summit 2014
Space is limited, so we have to be pretty selective. I'd say it's worth taking some time to present the relevant information.
In response to
Open thread, 18-24 March 2014
Any tips on bailing out of an argument if you want to very nearly concede the whole thing without quite saying your opponent is right?
eg if you realise the whole conversation was a terrible mistake and you're totally unequipped to have the conversation, but still think you're right.
Should you just admit they're right for simplicity even if you're not quite convinced?
"Good point. I'll think about that when I have the chance."
In response to
Group Rationality Diary, March 16-31
Realized that if akrasia doesn't respond to "try harder", maybe I should try "quit not-doing the thing you're procrastinating on and do something else."
But "try harder" is extremely seductive. "Surely I can get tons of stuff done if I just try a little harder" might be more problematic than "no way I will be able to do this", because the former feels a lot nicer and therefore I'm less inclined to fight it.
I've had success by reframing these decisions from "crap, this is too hard (probably because I'm bad), I should give up" to "interesting, this isn't working, what's the best way for this to not work."
In response to
A vote against spaced repetition
What would be a good introduction to memory palaces? What did you use?
The video of Brienne's presentation at the South Bay meetup is the most useful guide I've encountered.
Costly signaling can also be very effective for convincing yourself, though.
If you have to prove that you are something, than you are doubting at some level.
There was a time where I spent a lot of effort into signaling that I'm confident. I think I'm now more confident where I don't do things to prove to myself that I'm confident.
To reach the Peaks of Countersignalling, one must first climb the Hills of Signalling.
It strikes that many of the suggested identities imply a high level of "openness to experience" - one of the "big five" personality traits. Now according to some studies openness to experience is 57 % heritable (highest of the big five). This suggests that it is not change your level of openness to experience, which means that if you're not open to experience, the identities suggested in this post would be hard to take.
Curious. I remember there being some evidence that openness to exerperience is actually relatively malleable; something like students spending some time abroad coming back with higher openness. My introspective experience seems to agree with this.
If it's 57% heritable, then ~40% of the difference is due to other factors, many of which you can control. Imagine someone at the 40th percentile of openness and contrast them with someone at the 80th percentile of openness. 40% is a lot.
In response to
Strategic choice of identity
For example, if you have a "shy person" identity, then going to parties or starting conversations with strangers can generate counterexamples for that identity, and help to displace it with a new one of "sociable person". Costly signaling can be used to achieve this - for example, joining a public speaking club.
Counterintuitively, I think that joining Toastmasters has actually made me identify more strongly as an introvert, mostly because my introversion is never more painfully obvious than when I'm there. So, observing myself attending Toastmasters isn't enough for the "sociable person" identity to stick; I'll have to get to the point where I observe myself attending Toastmasters and also observe myself not feeling terrible about the whole talking thing while I'm there.
I've had success in similar situations by reframing things and adopting the "extrovert in training" identity. Struggling at the limit of my ability reinforced that identity, even when that limit was low. For example, an extrovert wouldn't attend the first 45 minutes of a party and then get overwhelmed and leave, but an extrovert in training would. Meanwhile, the identity reinforced my desire to struggle at the limit of my ability (maybe I can stay for 75 minutes), which led to rapid improvement. The general heuristic of reframing from "I am having trouble with X" to "I am learning to X" has helped my motivation immensely.
Also, you are awesome for taking concrete steps to gain the skills you want. Have some positive reinforcement.
In response to
LessWrong Hamburg Second Meetup Notes: In need of Structure
Good summary. There's enough detail here that other organizers can easily learn from it. Triple bonus points for noticing a problem and taking a concrete action to fix it.
Lively discussions about off-topics eat time and can keep participants out - but also provide casual athmosphere.
If the group is large enough (say, six people or more), then one way to handle this tradeoff is to establish a social norm to encourage splitting into separate conversations when someone is bored. That way, interested people can delve deeply into a topic without worrying that they'll bore everyone else, and people can break away for off-topic chats when they feel like it.
the planned topic procrastication falling off the table until very late
Heh.
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I'll flag that I'm currently working on revisions to the holiday based on feedback from last time. Expect that to be posted soon.