Brigid

Removing the less competent officers is obviously a good call, but how does that call get made? How is it different than what is currently being done?

I disagree with the logic that being given stronger incentives will help senior officers win wars. What kind of incentives/disincentives could be offered? Increasing monetary rewards or job promotions could lead to ethical violations, while at the same time not necessarily helping our performance.

Fear of losing their job? I would guess that the most common reason for a senior officer gets kicked out is... (read more)

"A 70 percent solution now is better than a 100 percent solution later" ~USMC

(You may disagree, depending on your field).

Such as?

As a former Marine, in addition to the difference pointed out by jsteinhardt, the flexed arm hang works your arms only, not your back. Pullups require an overhand grip, whereas the flexed arm hang (and chinup) focus on your biceps.

I also advise that between jumping pullups, you return to a faux-deadhang position (even if this requires you to bend your knees to fit under the bar). Again, you will get tired of jumping pretty quickly and then will start to rely on your arms and back.

There are numerous serious lifting forums on the web that will critique your beginner cleans (for free) out of the goodness their hearts. You just need to film it and upload the video. So do this with lighter weights and see what people say., make the adjustments and ask again. Also, definitely start with cleans--they are a lot safer than snatches and much easier to master.

As someone who has been in this situation, pullup negatives have worked for me. I would also add regular jumping pullups, without the negatives. As you do more, your jumping abilities will decrease and youll start to rely more on your arms/back, thus building those muscles. Most gyms also have an assisted pullup machine.

If you don't care about walking on ice, get a nice pair of some lined duck boots (Sorbel, LL Bean). Expensive but totally worth it I think.

I recently found out about the disposable hand and foot warmers. Not perfect but they do a decent job for being so inexpensive (around $1-2).

On a related note, am I the only person who struggles with the search system on Less Wrong? There have been a few times where it takes me unusually long to find the article I am looking for, even if I remember a direct quote or concept from that article and use that in my search.

Is there a way to only search for articles, or only search for comments, or only search for articles written by a specific person? This might help solve my problem.

Is it possible that she could suggest to the Cryonics Institute that they could set up an account in her name and we could donate directly to that account, cutting out the middleman but still directly contributing to this girl?

Also, I think that if it was a scam choosing cryonics is probably a bad choice since plenty of people even in an atheist forum seem to be against it, and thus its not as likely to generate as much sympathy. I think she could have said "I want to go on a safari in Africa" or some sort of trip that is moderately expensive (just like the skydiving comments claim) and received more funding.

Fair enough. :)

That's a great point that I didn't consider.

While Planned Parenthood clearly could be biased, they state (noteably without a reference) that " Women typically pay between $15 and $50 a month in co-pays for birth control pills — $180 to $600 a year." Even $180 is pretty expensive.

They also claim that " More than one-third of all women voters have struggled to pay for prescription birth control at some point in their lives, and have as a result used birth control inconsistently."

Finally, "On average, a woman spends 30 years of her life trying to avoid pregnancy. That means 30 years of paying for birth control."

People who are pro-life in the abortion debate should also be pro- free birth control pills (those not requiring a co-pay).

If pro-lifers were more pragmatic, they would rank the issues that they care about from least-bad to worst. Most would agree that abortion is worse than pre-marital sex. Therefore, they should support efforts to eliminate the need for abortions (not just seek to eliminate the ability to have an abortion). As access to birth control reduces the likelihood of the need to have an abortion, free birth control pills would reduce the over... (read more)

I would make a list of specific fears; even though you said your fears were general, I'd bet that you probably have some fears that pop into your head. For example, list of all the fears you have about applying for a job. Then, if you have a close friend or family member, show them the list and ask them to evaluate the fears for you. That might help you to identify the unlikelyhood of something terrible happening; their advice might help you realize that a lot of your fears are unfounded or highly unlikely. And it might help you to figure out which fear... (read more)

This reminds me of an episode of The West Wing, where President Bartlett is inspired by Kennedy’s To the Moon speech, and decides that he wants to make a similar dramatic statement. In his case, it was to have a cure cancer in ten years. In my mind, curing cancer is similar, in intent at least, to universal healthcare—essentially, using medicine to help more people live longer, healthier lives. However, I think that curing a disease a disease or providing everyone with basic healthcare, while extremely beneficial to society, is not quite as inspirationa... (read more)

As much as you don't think school size matters, from personal experience, it can matter a lot. As you are interested in the sciences, I would recommend not attending one of the smaller colleges, even if they are top ranked (Haverford, Swarthmore, Amherst etc). If you look at their course curriculum, they don't have the number of students or resources to have a wide variety of upper level courses.

A larger research university, while it might have lower admissions standards, would have a much more diverse set of classes to choose from and more research op... (read more)

It is encouraging avoidant behavior, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Given a job you don't want to do at work? See if someone will trade with you; they might not mind it so much. Assigned a task for what you consider a bad reason, like covering someone's a**? Come up with a more productive solution and try to convince your boss. Trying to "get out of something" isn't negative; sometimes it just means convinving others to use common sense or pooling your resources (time, effort) with someone else.

The Marine Corps has two maxims that I find useful in beating akrasia:

-If you can’t get out of it, get into it.

-False motivation is still motivation.

If you have to do something, you might as well find a way to make it fun (even if its a stupid way). Being ridiculously overenthusiastic about whatever it is you don't want to do is often enough to make the activity enjoyable. In the Marine Corps, this usually amounts to Marines yelling silly sounds at the top of their lungs or doing things as fast as they can or in a overly exaggerated manner, but I can attest to the fact that the maxims work well in the my rest of life too.

You are correct in that my number was wrong . I think the percentage of males increased (or females decreased) because 52% was the number that was always thrown around when I was in college (I went to a women's college so yes, it was thrown around quite a lot).

My number was about females in the US, not worldwide.