I attended the July camp, and it would be reasonable to say that I was "surrounded by other ambitious, successful, practically-minded folks". Quite a few of the other attendees were entrepreneurs, though it was not targeted specifically at entrepreneurs like this one seems to be. Many others were computer programmers (like myself) and academics. The opportunity to interact with the other attendees was a valuable part of the camp.

It is the squared magnitude of quantum amplitude that is conserved, not the quantum amplitude itself (which is represented as a complex number). Otherwise, the Born rule would not produce coherent probabilities.

like folks whose books get reviewed here

This is an important point, we should be welcoming to people we talk about, and I'm not sure how that fits in to any scheme. Send out preemptive invitations when we talk about people? Who would keep on top of that?

I wouldn't mind associating my website with my account - I already do, now that that's an available field. But even fewer people have websites than phones.

Well, that was the result of me trying to find a mechanism that wouldn't exclude you. But if we let people associate their account with a phone or a website, we include more people. It would be better to have more options to be more inclusive, if we can think of more specific options.

Wouldn't some kind of IP address thing suffice to rule out casually created socks?

Yes, for certain values of casual. You can hide your IP address by going through proxies.

How would you feel about the $5 per account option?

Any other ideas on how someone could signal that the account they are creating is not yet another sock puppet or identity reset that you would be comfortable with? Maybe associating your account with your website?

I'm thinking the phone idea, if it is used at all, should be one of several options, so the user can choose one that works for them.

If you want to nuke trolling, use the Metafilter strategy: new accounts have to pay $5 (once). Troll too much, lose your account and pay $5 for a new one. Hurts a lot more than downvotes.

It's a good idea. Some variations, like associating accounts with mobile phone numbers, may slow good growth less. Maybe it would help to have multiple options to signal being a legitimate new user.

Casual users don't contribute to Less Wrong's mission: we need more FAI philanthropist/activists.

I would like to see more x-risk philanthropists/activists, but I don't want to make that a requirement for LW users. It would be good to have more users who want to be stronger because they have something to protect, rather than thinking rationality is shiny.

What if you had to associate your account with a mobile phone number, by getting an activation code by text message? It still has the effect of requiring some real resource to make an account, but the first one is effectively free. There may be some concern about your number being sold to scammers.

I have scheduled a week off of work to adapt to polyphasic sleep, so I don't have to worry about making mistakes while sleep deprived.

Following Matt's advice, I am not just adopting my desired schedule of everyman-3, but instead temporarily adopt a "uberman-12" schedule, that is, 12 20 minute naps a day, 1 every 2 hours. The idea is to train myself to get REM sleep during the 20 minute naps, because that is all the sleep that is available, while running off of reserves of slow wave sleep. I am going in expecting 3 hard days before I start getting the REM, at which point I start backing off the naps to 1 every four hours (standard uberman) until I run out of slow wave reserves at the end of the week when I add in the core and cut back to 3 naps a day.

I will also be skipping lunch and dinner on the day of my first night of adaption, which is supposed to help me adapt to a new sleep schedule. And keeping up an exercise routine. And I will have friends help keep me on schedule.

From Shannon Vyff in an email on this issue:

Let me explain what I heard from David. The notification of the Venturist status being on hold had been sent to an older address and not forwarded. David is looking into it and should have an answer on Monday. He is saying that it appears to be an error, since we were never notified that the tax status was on hold -and the reasons for it don't apply to our case. The reason was an automatic revocation from not receiving a 990 series form that the Ventursits had not needed to fill out for many years, so it looks like the issue will be resolved soon-within a week he thinks, he will also be writing you himself. The paperwork that said we were on hold, also says it may/or may not effect our tax deduction status--it looks like we just need to get the right paperwork in. The way the wording is, is that if we get the right form in our status is retroactively instated. I'm not sure when this started, but people were able to use donations to William O' Rights Cryonics Charity fund in '08 and '09 as a tax deduction.

Summary: There was confusion about paperwork requirements, and it should be resolved within a week.

(ETA: Shannon posts on this directly)

I sent her medical records to Jonathan Weissman

I was not actually able to read them where they were hosted. But unless anyone says they would trust my verification and not Shannon's I don't think it is important to fix this. I think the important thing was an explicit statement from the Venturists that they have checked this out.