Tried this last night. Interesting personal results.

I was surprised by just how difficult it was. My brain is very noisy, and I kept thinking. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on my breath, memories of earlier in the day or plans for tomorrow kept intruding. Or music loops. Or recollection of the instructions written here. Or frustration that I couldn't concentrate on my breathing, and meta-thinking about all the thinking I was doing instead of concentrating on my breathing. It was really quite shocking - I considered it a success (and a RARE one) if I could get two breaths in a row without my mind jumping to something.

But much more surprising was the repetitive nature of my thinking. It was like my brain was stuck on a loop. I kept coming back to the same 4 or 5 thoughts/memories/plans, and kept replaying the same small slices of songs. I even came back several times to being shocked/annoyed by how repetitive my thinking was. If this reflects my normal mental processes, then I waste a TON of energy simply re-thinking thoughts over and over.

I found this very interesting, and plan to keep doing this for a while. I have no idea what the term "vibrations" is supposed to mean, and it sounds very New-Age-Woo to me, so I have doubts I'll experience any of that. But the experiment was easy and produced novel results quickly.

Anyone else get anything similar?

This probably doesn't interest many of you, but I'd be curious to know if I'd hear here any suggestions to inspiring works of fiction with hypercompetent characters in them. Watched the Bourne trilogy in the middle of reading this post, now I want more! :)

My own ideas

Live: -James Bond Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace/Skyfall -House MD -Sherlock

Anime: Death Note Golden Boy

I agree: this post felt like a self-congratulatory collection of applause lights. (I wonder if the habit of linking to previous posts every other word is an indicator of this. Most people aren't going to follow those links, they're just going to think, "Ah yes, a link to a Sequence post. That must be an accepted thing!")

I also think there's a worrying tendency towards ideology here. Luke suggests that "levelling up" in rationality led him to a bunch of beliefs, which are, coincidentally, fairly widely accepted views around here. Cue a round of back-slapping as we all congratulate ourselves on how rational we are.

But rationality doesn't necessarily lead you anywhere: the evidence should do that. And if the evidence starts pointing somewhere else, you should move. And so I'm a bit wary of the tendency to draw too close a link between any particular beliefs and rationality. You never want to be in the situation where you're trying to persuade someone of your views and you find yourself saying "But it's the rational thing to believe!" instead of presenting the evidence.

Also: hints of the No True Scotsman fallacy.

When genuine curiosity tore down those walls, it didn't take long for the implications of my atheism to propagate.

Woe betide you who don't come to the same conclusions as Luke: your curiousity clearly isn't genuine!

Now this may all sound a bit harsh, but frankly I really wish Luke would stop writing posts like this and start doing some hard-headed thinking about some actual problems.

Holy crap. I've never had a comment downvoted this fast, and I thought this was a pretty funny joke to boot. My mental estimate was that the original comment would end up resting at around +4 or +5. Where did I err?

Wow. Some of your other posts are intelligent, but this is pure troll-bait.

EDIT: I suppose I should share my reasoning. Copied from my other post lower down the thread:

Hello, I expect you won't like me, I'm <group you dislike for allegedly irrational reasons>

Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective 'manhood' is threatened if react normally (eg saying "trolls fuck off").

dont want to be turned onto an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should

Insulting straw man with a side of "you are an irrational cult".

I've been lurking for a long time... overcoming bias... sequences... HP:MOR... namedropping

"Seriously, I'm one of you guys". Concern troll disclaimer. Classic.

evaporative cooling... women... I'm here to help you not be a cult.

Again undertones of "you are a cult and you must accept my medicine or turn into a cult". Again we are challenged to take it seriously.

I just espoused, it'll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world.

I didn't quite understand this part, but again, straw man caricature.

I'd rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don't agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Not that any of you (especially EY) WANT that, exactly. But anyway, my point is, With Folded Hands is a pretty bad failure mode for the worst-case scenario where EC occurs and EY gets to AI first.

Theres a rhetorical meme on 4chan that elegantly deals with this kind of crap:

implying we don't care about friendliness
implying you know more about friendliness than EY

'nuff said

Okay, ready to be shouted down. I'll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all.

classic reddit downvote preventer:

1. Post a troll or other worthless opinion
2. Imply that the hivemind wont like it
3. Appeal to people's fear of hivemind
4. Collect upvotes.

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

again implying irrational insider/outsider dynamic, hivemind tendencies and even censorship.

Of course the kneejerk response is "no no, we don't hate you and we certainly won't censor you; please we want more christian trolls like you". EDIT: Ha! well predicted I say. I just looked at the other 500 responses. /EDIT

I'll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don't know why I'm doing this. I shouldn't be here; you don't want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap. EDIT: Oh and the bit about hating God is a staw-man. /EDIT

This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn't have to be.

Trolling is a art. and Aspiring_Knitter is a artist. 10/10.

Is there any data supporting the idea that dvorak/colemak/some other new keyboard layout are actually better than qwerty. Like, actual data collected by doing research on actual people that type stuff, how their layout of choice affects their health and typing speed. I do know that you get figures like "on average your fingers travel twice the amount if you type on qwerty as compared to some other layout", but actual data from actual typists?

Anyone have an estimate or range on how long it takes to switch from QWERTY to DVORAK? I copy at about 80 wpm and compose at about 30 wpm, and have invested about 100 hours in learning / drilling / exploring QWERTY techniques. How long should I expect to spend learning DVORAK?

Hello. I expect you won't like me because I'm Christian and female and don't want to be turned into an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should. I've been lurking for a long time. The first time I found this place I followed a link to OvercomingBias from AnneC's blog and from there, without quite realizing it, found myself archive-binging and following another link here. But then I stopped and left and then later I got linked to the Sequences from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

A combination of the whole evaporative cooling thing and looking at an old post that wondered why there weren't more women convinced me to join. You guys are attracting a really narrow demographic and I was starting to wonder whether you were just going to turn into a cult and I should ignore you.

...And I figure I can still leave if that ends up happening, but if everyone followed the logic I just espoused, it'll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world. I'd rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don't agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Not that any of you (especially EY) WANT that, exactly. But anyway, my point is, With Folded Hands is a pretty bad failure mode for the worst-case scenario where EC occurs and EY gets to AI first.

Okay, ready to be shouted down. I'll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?) I'll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don't know why I'm doing this. I shouldn't be here; you don't want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

"Ylioppilasaukio 5"? I can't find Cafe Picnic at an address like that

I'm interested, and most likely I'll be there.