1-2 mg of Melatonin ~20min before you wish to fall asleep

2 hours per day seems like way too much. I work out 3x per week, 1 hour each time. (Though I did start 4x per week, 1 hour each, when I was initially losing weight). Just make sure to keep it high intensity. When I'm tempted to slack off I ask myself if I'm here to kill some time by moving around, or if I'm here to achieve a damn objective as efficiently as I can so I can get back to doing other things. If after an hour is up I'm physically capable of continuing for another hour, I obviously was just wasting my time.

Planet Money is fantastic, I never miss it. Savage Love is equally fantastic, and on a topic too many people neglect because they don't think there's much to learn.

Welcome to Night Vale is quirky and fun. Plus quite popular, so gives you something to talk about with other geeks you run into at random.

Some assorted thoughts:

• Virtual PVP games with permadeath (or even progress permaloss) are relatively rare.

• There's currently no virtual PVP game that allows destruction of the game world, e.g. restarting and wiping a server triggered by an in-game event.

• Some real-world PVP games (e.g. racing or MMA fighting) have their risks, but injury or death are relatively rare because these games are regulated. The percentage of the population willing to compete in such games is tiny. There must be unregulated PVP games with permadeath, but I'm struggling to imagine them taking place anywhere outside a Colombian prison - and I don't think the participation there is fully voluntary.

• A CEV implementer can set limits to human conflict. For example, status games, Red vs Blue, bickering and insults are OK, but hurting / killing each other or degrading / destroying the environment are not allowed or impossible. Or, players could simply set the limits of acceptable loss in real-world PVP - or even limit themselves to PVE-only. No doubt there would be 'hardcore PVP characters' of various extent, but I think they would be in a minority.

Barring catastrophe, I shall indeed be there!

Has anyone posted about Seth Dickinson yet? I don't keep up on the open threads as much as I'd like, but my google-fu says no.

Last year I was blown away by a short story by Seth Dickinson called A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed). Recently I went and checked out Seth Dickinson's other works. I've read over half of them now, and I gotta say - I STRONGLY recommend this author. Many of his works have a very strong transhumanist message, and some could be called rationalist. I'm kinda surprised I haven't already heard his name brought up on LessWrong, or SlateStarCodex, or /r/rational. I'm fixing that this week.

A few of my favorite stories:

Economies of Force - A post-GAI story where humanity made AI that almost captures our values, but not quite, and it results in the sort of utopia you might expect from that sort of failure. Shades of Amputation of Destiny and Bostrom's Empty Disneyland. If anyone can figure out the significance of the name "Loom", please let me know. It must have been chosen for a reason, but I'm not making the connection.

Sekhmet Hunts the Dying Gnosis: A Computation - A rather literal take on Meditations on Moloch, and/or An Alien God

Morrigan in the Sunglare - Like Bayesians vs Barbarians, told from the PoV of the Barbarians (sort of).

Kumara - a seriously beautiful post-singularity transhumanist story. Just... really beautiful. And murderous.

A lot of fiction which is popular when it is contemporary is not read 200 years later, but that's not a sign that fiction is contemporary and loses perceived value over time, it's a corollary of Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is crap, and that extends to 'fiction which is currently popular'. No one thinks that Twilight will be popular and lasting; the penny-dreadfuls and most Victorian novels weren't. Dickens was, though. Most of the plays of the Elizabethan era were bland and samey, and other than Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, only Shakespeare has had any lasting popularity.

What exactly will be lasting and popular from our time, I don't know; it probably won't include Eliezer or Harry Potter. But some things will; that's reliably true.

But why would I want to read one of Margaret Atwood's books? Although there might be some humor value in contrasting her estimates about what the target audience for her books will be like with how history actually turns out.

I liked this post overall. Minor nitpick: I found the use of "guy who VERBs" to be a little jarring. Saying "person who VERBs" would be more inclusive.

I've written a short fiction piece that has been accepted for publication. My first ever professional publication will appear in February's issue of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.