I want to start following blogs across several platforms, by being able to view their new posts in one place. From what I can tell, I think this means I want an RSS reader. I use a Windows laptop that's not too old- does the computer, or Google, come with one? (This seems like something either ought to, but I don't know.) Do I have to download one, and if so, is there a best one?

Does anyone have any experience or thoughts regarding Cal Newport's "Study Hacks" blog, or his books? I'm trying to get an idea of how reliable his advice is before, saying, reading his book about college, or reading all of the blog archives.

What point is the "torture vs. dust specks" argument supposed to be supporting or illustrating? Is it just about being able to do the "moral calculus" or multiplication, or is there some some conclusion about friendly AI/singularities as well?

I took the survey! It was certainly the most interesting online information-gathering survey I've ever taken, mostly because of the end- in retrospect, not sure what I expected.

There's not a whole lot we can do now, so one thing I've heard suggested is to spread vegetarianism so that people will be more sympathetic to animals in general, and when we have the ability to engineer some retrovirus to make them suffer less or something like that, we'll care more about helping animals than not playing god.

Another possibility: nuke the rainforests.

Cognitive Biases

In the world, things happen for reasons. When anything happens ever, there's a reason for it- even if you don't know what it is, or it seems strange. Start with that: nothing has ever happened without a cause. (Here we mean "reason" and "cause" like how a ball rolling into another ball will knock it over, not like good or bad. Think about it- it makes sense.)

If you're interested in knowing more about the world, often, you want to know the real reason things happen (or the reason other things DON'T happen, which can be just as important!) If you do that, you can learn about a lot of things: why the land looks the way it does, all about the different stars, tiny things much smaller than you can see, even all about other people!

But your brain isn't the very best at doing this. Remember that idea about how animals change over time? How parents, and the parents of parents, all make a kind of animal change a little all the time, because of who lives and who doesn't? You know, the idea from the old man who said humans used to be just animals? Well, think about that- our brains let us think about so much, but they used to be just animal brains. And an animal doesn't need to worry so much about true reasons- especially for things that are too tiny to see, or big things up in the sky. Say, when an animal sees something big and bad, it would be bad if it stopped and thought about all the reasons it happened. It's best to just run away!

Human brains aren't any different, really, except in two ways: We don't want to just always run away, and we can change how we think about things! But if we don't learn how to think about real reasons, then we use animal-brain thinking- and that can make a lot of problems, especially when it's about things that animals never thought about.

If you want to learn about the real world, and real reasons, it's important to know about animal-brains and how they can be wrong. Remember, animal-brain thinking is hard to spot- if you don't look for it, it just seems like normal clear thinking. But when you see it. you can fix how it works in your own brain, and see the world a little clearer.

When I was a teenager I took a personality test as a requirement for employment at a retail clothing store. I didn't take it too seriously, I "failed" it and that was the end of my application. How do these tests work and how to you pass or fail them? Is there evidence that these tests can actually predict certain behaviors?

since raised animals are vastly outnumbered by wild animals

That doesn't sound true if you weight by intelligence (which I think you should since intelligent animals are more morally significant). Surely the world's livestock outnumber all the other large mammals.

In the effective animal altruism movement, I've heard a bit (on LW) about wild animal suffering- that is, since raised animals are vastly outnumbered by wild animals (who encounter a fair bit of suffering on a frequent basis), we should be more inclined to prevent wild suffering than worry about spreading vegetarianism.

That said, I think I've heard it sometimes as a reason (in itself!) not to worry about animal suffering at all, but has anyone tried to solve or come up with solutions for that problem? Where can I find those? Alternatively, are there more resources I can read on wild animal altruism in general?

Hello! I'm a 19 year old woman in Washington state, studying microbiology as an undergraduate. I was introduced to the "scene" when a friend recommended HPMOR in high school. I was raised in an atheist household with a fairly strong value on science, so it was novel if not mind-blowing- but still encouraged me to think about the way I think, read some of the Sequences, and get into Sam Harris and Carl Sagan. At college I began reading the rest of Less Wrong, and some related sites, and began identifying as a rationalist.

(Well, let's be honest here- I also moved from a math-and-science-oriented high school to a very liberal college, where my social identity changed from "artsy and literary" to "science-y and analytic". I would be lying if I said that trying to live up to it wasn't a compelling factor!)

LW and 80,000 hours also motivated me to change several of my long-held beliefs (at the moment, I can think of immortality and, well, er, most areas of rationality, which I guess is expected), and re-evaluate my career plans- changing my intended focus from environmental research or emerging diseases, to neglected tropical diseases (if this happens to be anyone's area of expertise, I'd be interested to hear!)

Anyways, I've been integrating the website into my head for some time now, and, equipped with the moniker of my favorite family of wasp, think it's about time to (begin, very slowly, to) integrate my head into the website. Nice to be here!