In response to Feeling Rational
Comment author: Benquo 17 August 2016 06:54:11AM 0 points [-]

"Since the days of Socrates at least, and probably long before, the way to appear cultured and sophisticated has been to never let anyone see you care strongly about anything."

I would strongly encourage anyone who wants a good counterexample to read Plato's Symposium, where the desire for wisdom is specifically linked with erotic desire.

Comment author: Benquo 31 July 2016 09:08:56PM 0 points [-]

Might want to correct "mortage" to "mortgage".

Comment author: CarlShulman 19 October 2007 02:22:32AM 0 points [-]
Comment author: Benquo 28 March 2016 07:28:39PM 0 points [-]

Maybe I should follow the same heuristic and find some magicians to listen to.

Comment author: shminux 18 August 2012 09:31:14PM *  3 points [-]

I'm wondering if there is any selfish reason to want procryostinators to sign up, other than hoping that more participants would improve the odds of your favorite cryo outfit surviving until the time revival becomes feasible, or that more research would go into it?

Comment author: Benquo 21 August 2015 12:19:43AM 3 points [-]

Some of them are my friends.

Comment author: JohnGreer 06 July 2015 06:24:45AM 8 points [-]

Hello!

I’ve lived in Berkeley for about six years. My girlfriend is going to medical school so we’re going to be moving to Boca Raton, Florida (most likely) or Columbus, Ohio in less than a month. I’m sad to be leaving the Bay Area but thrilled to be with my girlfriend when she starts such an exciting chapter of her life. I’m also very fortunate that I can handle nearly all my business online.

I co-founded a startup devoted to making a web game with an old buddy of mine. This same guy introduced me to LW.

Critical thinking and debate has been a focus of mine since I was quite young so LW fit right into my interests. I’m very interested in instrumental/practical applications of rationality. I’ve been lurking for many years and finally decided to make an account to get over my fear of online embarrassment given my unfamiliarity with a lot of the lexicon and protocol on LW.

Some passions of mine are movies, seeking out novel experiences (examples are shooting an AK-47, judging a singing competition, and visiting Pixar), and martial arts.

I’m also interested in effective altruism and AI research but still have a lot of learning to do, especially in the latter.

Comment author: Benquo 06 July 2015 01:47:45PM 1 point [-]

Welcome!

You may want to check out some of AnnaSalamon's old posts for some things to try as far as applied rationality goes, if you haven't already.

Have you been / are you interested in connecting with the Bay Area Rationalist or EA community while you're still here?

GiveWell event for SF Bay Area EAs

3 Benquo 25 June 2015 08:27PM

Passing this announcement along from GiveWell:

GiveWell is holding an event at our offices in San Francisco for Bay Area residents who are interested in Effective Altruism. The evening will be similar to the research events we hold periodically for GiveWell donors: it will include presentations and discussion about GiveWell’s top charity work and the Open Philanthropy Project, as well as a light dinner and time for mingling. We’re tentatively planning to hold the event in the evening of Tuesday July 7th or Wednesday July 8th.

We hope to be able to accommodate everyone who is interested, but may have to limit places depending on demand. If you would be interested in attending, please fill out this form.
We hope to see you there!
Comment author: Benquo 20 June 2015 06:53:45PM 1 point [-]

This is the conclusion I've recently drawn about my own social skills - I used to think I didn't have the native architecture for some things, but more recently I've noticed that it's pretty easy to internalize some social skills once I decide it's interesting to learn. Related is the kitten vertical vision experiment, where cats that from birth saw only through vertical slits couldn't track horizontal motion once the filters were taken off. (They recovered.)

Comment author: pnrjulius 27 May 2012 03:19:55AM 3 points [-]

I agree. In real life, when the trolley is about to run over the five children, you stop the trolley. You don't flip a switch that moves the trolley over to one other child, much less toss a fat man off a footbridge. And if you can't stop the trolley, you try to find a way; you don't give up and pick the slightly-less-bad option.

Comment author: Benquo 16 April 2015 10:01:01PM 4 points [-]

First you flip the switch, then you make an extraordinary effort to stop the trolley.

Comment author: Jost 13 March 2015 01:15:41PM 1 point [-]

Although in canon, Lucius (and the Malfoy family) falling into Voldemort’s disgrace was caused by several events which did not happen in HPMoR, including giving away one of Voldemort’s horcruxes (the diary in book 2), failing to steal the prophecy from a handful of teenagers (book 5) and Draco’s failure to kill Dumbledore (book 6).

In HPMoR, Lucius did not fail Voldemort that often.

Comment author: Benquo 13 March 2015 10:01:44PM *  0 points [-]

He hung Bellatrix out to dry:

"In retrospect," said Harry's voice, which seemed to be operating entirely on automatic, "you should have been suspicious when you managed to get that one Death Eater hauled off to Azkaban without a trial."

"We thought Malfoy was distracted," whispered the old witch. "That he was only trying to save himself. There were other Death Eaters we managed to get then, like Bellatrix -"

Harry nodded, feeling like his neck and head were moving on puppet strings. "The Dark Lord's most fanatic and devoted servant, a natural nucleus of opposition for anyone who contested Lucius's control of the Death Eaters. You thought Lucius was distracted."

Comment author: TobyBartels 13 March 2015 04:50:31AM 4 points [-]

Yes, Harry killed a half hour's worth of Draco without really giving it a second thought. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but I expected Harry to notice that this is a little bit of evil. (Just because Wizards do it all the time doesn't make it not evil, as Harry well knows.) But maybe we'll get Harry's perspective later.

Comment author: Benquo 13 March 2015 07:04:44AM 2 points [-]

No, they just put the memories in a Pensieve for later (if Draco becomes an occlumens and turns out to be trustworthy).

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