Comment author: D_Malik 10 May 2013 07:21:49PM 8 points [-]

Living in a van seems like it could decrease your cost of living a lot more than it decreases your quality of life. Getting set up in a van would cost about $12k, so it could pay for itself in a year. Here is a good guide on this.

One could also consider going completely homeless; here is an article by a math student who did that.

Comment author: Kevin 10 May 2013 10:17:23PM 11 points [-]

In the crazy economics of Bay Area housing, driveway parking for a van in a desirable location with electricity and shower access is $200-$300/month.

Comment author: Omid 10 May 2013 08:11:13PM 5 points [-]

Aren't antiperspirants unhealthy?

Comment author: Kevin 10 May 2013 10:03:48PM 2 points [-]

For something widely and intuitively believed to be true, I haven't seen the evidence.

Comment author: Xachariah 16 April 2013 03:20:34AM 5 points [-]

I have a couple of questions:
1) Does the $3900 cost primarily cover the cost of the workshop itself, or is it mostly used as a revenue source for CFAR to keep the doors open year-round?

2) What advantages does the weekend retreat system offer that other systems don't, specifically distance learning?

3) Are there any plans to expand into distance learning, for example into the Khan Academy, edX, Udacity model?

Everything you've mentioned sounds great, but I'm inherently skeptical of a weekend retreat format. After all, even gay cure camps 'work' and have their testimonials; how do you control for the self-help effect? Additionally, it seems odd to me to be building a program around teaching rationality in-person, when every other educational institution is trying to move in the opposite direction. I'm just curious about why you've chosen to structure the program the way it is.

Comment author: Kevin 10 May 2013 04:08:11AM *  2 points [-]

1) There isn't that much of a pragmatic difference between whether the money is going to the workshop cost or to keep the CFAR doors open year round. CFAR needs to keep the doors open year round in order to continue to be able to host workshops and keep developing and refining curriculum. The venues and food are always great, but not $1000/night nice.

2) There's something about the weekend retreat format that allows for a really strongly transformative experience. Your time at a CFAR workshop somehow feels more significant than your time in everyday life, like each moment is just pulsing with more of the very fiber that gives reality its existence. This also results in some optimization for remembering self -- the moments at the CFAR workshop feel like something that will be remembered and deconstructed for far longer than the experience itself lasts. And there is a neat change towards increased emotional openness that happens over the course of spending such an intense weekend with new friends. Also, the kinds of people that attend $3900 weekend workshops can make for incredibly high value networking.

3) I expect it will happen eventually, sure.

Comment author: scaphandre 07 May 2013 02:40:57PM *  2 points [-]

Interesting.

I don't know the mechanism of action, but it seems unlikely that this is acting as an antibiotic to have this effect.

More likely that minocycline is acting directly as a stimulant-blocker, dopamine-blocker or oxytocin-blocker.

Next experiment: examine the effect of stepped doses of modafinil and nasal administered oxytocin to see if they might 'rescue' the sweetness of the honey trap.

Comment author: Kevin 08 May 2013 03:18:16AM *  1 point [-]

Agreed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amfonelic_acid , an incredibly potent dopamine reuptake inhibitor, was discovered while investigating antibiotics.

In response to comment by tadrinth on Rationalist Lent
Comment author: beriukay 24 February 2013 06:10:52PM 2 points [-]

You're absolutely right. I've had a spot of trouble finding a source of fiber that won't expand and turn my version of soylent into a gelatin.

In response to comment by beriukay on Rationalist Lent
Comment author: Kevin 02 May 2013 02:41:07AM 0 points [-]

Inulin?

Comment author: Kevin 23 April 2013 04:45:29AM 6 points [-]

We could just have a meta thread on Less Wrong.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 20 April 2013 07:56:08AM *  11 points [-]

Bitcoin seems more relevant than Craigslist, PayPal, or other tech startups because it involved major technical and conceptual/philosophical advances on the existing state of the art, and these advances didn't originate from nor was likely funded/supported by academia, government or industry. Also, its social impact seems larger - if Craigslist or PayPal didn't exist, something essentially identical would have been created very soon anyway, but if Bitcoin didn't exist, another Bitcoin may not have been created for another decade, and/or may have been created with very different characteristics, for example it might have been coded with a monetary policy that emphasized price stability instead of a fixed supply of money.

I would consider Bitcoin to have failed with regard to its monetary policy (because the policy causes high price volatility which imposes a heavy cost on its users, who have to either take undesirable risks or engage in costly hedging in order to use the currency). (This may have been partially my fault because when Satoshi wrote to me asking for comments on his draft paper, I never got back to him. Otherwise perhaps I could have dissuaded him (or them) from the "fixed supply of money" idea.) I don't know if it's too late at this point to change the monetary policy that is built into the Bitcoin protocol or for an alternative cryptocurrency to overtake Bitcoin, but if it is, then Bitcoin is similar to self-improving AI in that it may be critical to get the first one right and it offers evidence on how hard it is for an individual or small group working outside the mainstream to do that.

Since I have a personal connection with Bitcoin I'm probably tempted to read more into it than I should relative to other evidence such as other tech startups. I'm curious what your impression is after reading the above, and whether there is other specific evidence that I should be paying more attention to.

Comment author: Kevin 20 April 2013 08:40:13PM 0 points [-]

See this (somewhat unreasonable) speculation from Paul Graham that bitcoin was created by a government. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423

Comment author: wedrifid 04 April 2013 09:05:35AM 0 points [-]

I have heard that the acquittal of Amanda Knox has been overturned. The sources I have found have mentioned the possibility that Knox could be extradited from the US back to Italy and don't rule that out as a possibility. I am hoping someone with an interest in the Knox case (Komponisto) or someone familiar with US laws could tell me whether that is a possibility.

This is relevant to me since simply labeling Italy as a corrupt state that I wouldn't ever visit costs very little (I have no particular reason to visit Italy). However if Knox is (or even could be) extradited from the USA then that is a problem with the legal system of the United States of America, not just of Italy. The USA is a place I may consider returning to so isn't so easily written off. The prospect of extradition means visiting a country carries all the risks of flaws in that country's legal system as well as all flaws in any country with which it has extradition treaties (subject to whatever filtering the details of those treaties entail).

I am also interested in whether the criticism of the wikipedia coverage is accurate. Wikipedia is a source that I frequently rely on for information. Anything which should increase or decrease the amount of trust I place in wikipedia as a source is useful to me.

Comment author: Kevin 04 April 2013 10:00:20AM 1 point [-]

It's a possibility, I think, but it would be a very political issue if it happened, and I would expect the US Department of State to intervene to prevent it.

Comment author: Kevin 07 March 2013 05:27:09AM 5 points [-]

You can hire remote assistants (typically in the Phillipines) to do this for you via a Skype window for about $1/hour. I thought someone from here was doing that?

Comment author: gwern 25 February 2013 04:53:06PM 19 points [-]

The real irony is that Eliezer is now a fantastic example of the commitment/sunk cost effect which he has warned against repeatedly: having made an awful decision, and followed it up with further awful decisions over years (including at least 1 Discussion post deleted today and an expansion of topics banned on LW; incidentally, Eliezer, if you're reading this, please stop marking 'minor' edits on the wiki which are obviously not minor), he is trapped into continuing his disastrous course of conduct and escalating his interventions or justifications.

And now the basilisk and the censorship are an established part of the LW or MIRI histories which no critic could possibly miss, and which pattern-matches on religion. (Stross claims that it indicates that we're "Calvinist", which is pretty hilarious for anyone who hasn't drained the term of substantive meaning and turned it into a buzzword for people they don't like.) A pity.


While we're on the topic, I also blame Yvain to some extent; if he had taken my suggestion to add a basilisk question to the past LW survey, it would be much easier to go around to all the places discussing it and say something like 'this is solely Eliezer's problem; 98% disagree with censoring it'. But he didn't, and so just as I predicted, we have lost a powerful method of damage control.

It sucks being Cassandra.

Comment author: Kevin 26 February 2013 02:16:43AM 1 point [-]

At this point it is this annoying, toxic meta discussion that is the problem.

View more: Prev | Next