To further elaborate the question: What are the most universally and most useful skills one could learn at a university? Currently, I am studying physics as an undergraduate and I am thinking about my career options. I have gotten opinions in other forums as well but I would really like to hear your thoughts and I also think that other LessWrongers would find such a list useful. To give you a rough idea of what I mean I have two examples:

• Programming/Coding: Almost universally applicable seeing as if you can describe your process, you can automate it. It is a skill you can use in applied research, fundamental research or in a field not related to physics at all.
• Statistics, the mathematics and the use of R or SAS: Again, in all fields of science and many applications statistical knowledge is required. Having a firm grasp of the mathematical concepts involved and being able to use a statistics software can only be advantageous.

What are some other skills along this line that are universally useful?

I am studying physics and like math. I just finished courses in mathematical logic and probality theory and attended courses in calculus and linear algebra. I intend to learn theoretical informatics next semester. Any more suggestions for interesting mathematics? I started algebra this semester but dropped it because of my other commitments.

Disclaimer: English is a foreign language for me. If you find any mistakes please inform me.

I am currently looking for information on cryonics since I have the intention to sign up. My current organization of choice is the Cryonics Institute with their one-time fee of $1,250 at sign-up and $28,000 for cryo-preservation which is an excellent offer given my age. I understand that most people choose to pay for cryopreservation by life-insurance. Since the cost of cryopreservation is lower than the €30,000 most insurers here in Germany take as minimum payout I still would have money left and wonder if I could put this money in some kind of trust to pay for "revival" and have some money in that future. Do any of you have plans like that and could share their information?

Also, do I understand correctly that the $28,000 at the Cryonics Institute are for cryopreservation only and that $88,000 figure is for cryopreservation, standby and transport to Michigan? In that case I of course need to get life insurance with higher pay-out but at my age that should not be a problem.

Are there any other institutes that offer cryopreservation of at least the brain that I should consider? I know of Alcor (expensive, I do not see the benefits) and KryoRus (seems cheap and require continuous funding that could be handled by a trust fund). Are there more I should know of?

If you have ideas, information I should consider or question I need to have answered, please feel free to reply in the comments.

Disclaimer: English is not my mother's tongue so I am prone to make mistakes. Please correct and forgive me if I do.

In the recent LessWrong survey 1090 people responded. Sadly, information about the place of residence was not asked for but could have been very useful to people willing to plan a meetup. Since a similar questionaire in German was quite successful with 24 respondents I now translated the form to english and ask you to provide the information.

I ask you only to provide your country and general area of residence via postal code. The form is hosted at Google Docs and the spreadsheet will be published in a few days to ensure anonymity for the first few respondents. The data can not be traced back to specific individuals and would be useless in most cases.

• Link to the form
• Link to the responses

Have fun and please provide feedback in the comments.

Disclaimer: Since this article is directed at LessWrongers living in Germany, Austria or Switzerland it is written in German. It just asks where people live via asking them for their ZIP code, so it is only interesting for people there.

Der letzte Zensus von Yvain wurde etwas mehr als tausend mal ausgefüllt. Leider wurde nicht gefragt aus welchem Land die Leute kommen aber ich vermute dass auch einige aus deutschsprachigen Ländern dabei sind. Ein Treffen in München wurde bereits organisiert aber ich denke es ist sehr nützlich zu wissen wo in Deutschland Leser von LessWrong wohnen um zu wissen wo es sich lohnen würde ein Meetup zu organisieren. Damit die Daten an einem Platz sind habe ich bei Google Docs eine Umfrage erstellt und bitte euch dieses auszufüllen falls ihr aus Deutschland, Österreich oder der Schweiz kommt und an Meetups interessiert wärt. Falls ihr aus einem der angrenzenden Länder kommt und bereit wärt zu einem Meetup zu fahren, tragt euch in den nächstgelegenen Ort hinter der Grenze ein.

In der Umfrage wird nur nach Herkunftsland und Postleitzahl gefragt. Keine der Daten kann auf euch persönlich zurückgeführt werden. Das Ergebnis wird veröffentlicht werden so dass jeder der bereit ist ein Meetup zu organisieren auf diese Daten zurückgreifen kann.

Hier ist der Link zur Umfrage:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFBoN0ppTnlxUU5EUUJwMlJteHRvQUE6MQ

Viel Spaß bei der Umfrage und schreibt in den Kommentaren was ihr davon haltet.

Disclaimer and abstract: English is not my native language, so please notify me if you see grammatical or stylistic mistakes. This posting is mainly an account of my thoughts. It is highly informal and contains almost no advice but asks for it. I am relatively new to LessWrong and rationality but hope that I can contribute something useful. Here I suggest to give and gather advice to and from readers of LessWrong, sketch possible topics and list a few examples of such advice existing. Also, I present a provisional solution to gather this advice and a more sustainable solution. Sadly, I can not offer advice on the topics mentioned below as I am merely an interested amateur.

Benefiting from rationality

LessWrong is full of smart people who 'believe' in rationality. But you have to benefit from something to make it worth believing it, you have to make beliefs pay rent. This applies especially to rationality. But rationality benefits us heavily through the scientific method and thus the giant body of work scientists have produced throughout the centuries. Too much was written to be reviewed by a single individual so it seems rational to sum up the results with notes on confidence and consequences. It would be scientifically literate advice as opposed to anecdotical help. Such an effort, especially if it is made systematically would help draw attention to LessWrong and rationality.

Beginnings

Some scattered efforts are already made here on LessWrong on producing such advice as hinted at in the above paragraph. Look for example at lukeprog's articles on happiness. How they draw heavily from scientific articles and give concrete, simple to understand advices is how an article for rational advice should look like. In "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids" Bryan Caplan also draws heavily from scientific literature to prove that given today's parent's efforts, the majority of children's life outcomes are determined by environmental or genetic factors. He then concludes that today's adults perceive the cost of children as higher than it is and thus should have more kids.

Possible Topics

The topics people need advice on are mostly the same throughout the ages: Happiness, love, health money. But seeing as it is a recurring theme on LessWrong, advice can be given on cryonics, akrasia and social behavior in broader sense. Many more topics are possible of course and the above list is an outline for willing authors.

A provisional solution

LessWrong, obviously, has a discussion section and a tree based commenting system. This can, at least temporarily, be used for the purposes named in this posting. If you can provide advice, please head your comment with "[Advice]". If you have a request or an idea for advice, please head your comment  "[Request]". If you just want to comment on this article, just comment as usual. I think the voting system should automatically seperate useful from useless advice and requests. For clearer view, start for each topic a new comment, so that health advice on diet does not unnecessarily get mixed up with advice on exercise.

Of course it is useful too to link to existing advice.

A more sustainable solution

As I seem to notice, there is demand for such advice. It should be possible to create a sub-category of "discussion" to post exactly that advice and have it nicely seperated from the other discussions.