• If something happens, that's evidence that it can happen.
• If something has happened a bunch in the past, that's good evidence that it will happen again in the future.
• Anything that goes by the label of "common sense"

I've got Categories for the Working Mathematician by Mac Lane; I will be going through this because I will be giving some talks on category theory to the math club here at my university. I pretty much don't have any logic and I want logic. I have Enderton's A Mathematical introduction to logic which is ok, though I think I want to find a new book. I also have Probability: The Logic of Science that I want to work through. I also want to go through MIRI papers. I am a math undergrad.

I would like to be a part of a study pair or a study group. There seems to be enough people that we can group together. I would like to learn from people, and teach people what I know (mostly pure math: category theory/abstract algebra/algebraic topology and basic calculus/real analysis).

Twist: Quirrell is Voldemort's mother.

• Subtopics, so that FAI, personal efficency, and effective altruism, for example, could be tracked separately by people who are interested in each.
• Different functionality for different types of posts: meetup planning, casual discussion, quotes repositories, welcome threads, advice repositories, etc. You might also add a method for adding and voting on excellent articles from outside LW. As-is, all functions are handled by the same post/nested-thread format, which is not necessarily the best suited for each one.
• Better layout design. It's best to get a design expert on this, but my sense is that the front page, and also other pages, are not laid out in a clear and appealing way.
• Social-networking integration. People use Facebook, blogs, etc. to connect nowadays, so make it easy for LW members to do this. E.g., users could optionally add links to FB and other social networks in their profiles, and you could make it easy to share/like/+1 a post.
• Rework the Discussion/Main distinction. As-is, this is very unclear. Best as I can tell, those who are supposed to post to Main know it, and everyone else is supposed to post to Discussion, after which the mysterious Lords of LessWrong promote a few posts. Is that how it is? In any case, a better way can be found.

"Three to the pentation of three".

While you're at it, you might as well practice getting up, getting dressed, making the bed, starting the kettle (or whatever you would do for breakfast), etc.

(Disclaimer: I haven't done this; I've only read about doing it.)

If idiots do exist, and you have reason to conclude that someone is an idiot, then you shouldn't deny that conclusion -- at least when you subscribe to an epistemic primacy: that forming true beliefs takes precedence over other priorities.

The quote is suspiciously close to being a specific application of "Don't like reality? Pretend it's different!"

"How do you not have arguments with idiots? Don't frame the people you argue with as idiots!"

-- Cat Lavigne at the July 2013 CFAR workshop

Does anyone know of a good textbook on public relations (PR), or a good resource/summary of the state of the field? I think it would be interesting to know about this, especially with regards to school clubs, meetups, and online rationality advocacy.

Explaining catastrophic risks to the audience of Fox News is perhaps equally difficult to explaining the risk of artificial intelligence to anyone.

This seems like an unnecessary Blue/Green dig, and frankly isn't even obviously true even if one buys into certain stereotypes. The standard accusations of Fox viewers emphasizes their level of worry and paranoia. In that context, existential risk would be something they'd be more likely to listen to for irrational reasons. But to be blunt, I suspect that explaining catastrophic risk will be about as difficult for CNN or MSNBC viewers also.