In June 2013, I didn’t do any exercise beyond biking the 15 minutes to work and back. Now, I have a robust habit of hitting the gym every day, doing cardio and strength training. Here are the techniques I used to do get from not having the habit to having it, some of them common wisdom and some of them my own ideas. Consider this post a case study/anecdata in what worked for me. Note: I wrote these ideas down around August 2013 but didn’t post them, so my memory was fresh at the time of writing.

1. Have a specific goal. Ideally this goal should be reasonably achievable and something you can see progress toward over medium timescales. I initially started exercising because I wanted more upper body strength to be better at climbing. My goal is “become able to do at least one pull up, or more if possible”.

Why it works: if you have a specific goal instead of a vague feeling that you ought to do something or that it’s what a virtuous person would do, it’s harder to make excuses. Skipping work with an excuse will let you continue to think of yourself as virtuous, but it won’t help with your goal. For this to work, your goal needs to be something you actually want, rather than a stand-in for “I want to be virtuous.” If you can’t think of a consequence of your intended habit that you actually want, the habit may not be worth your time.

2. Have a no-excuses minimum. This is probably the best technique I’ve discovered. Every day, with no excuses, I went to the gym and did fifty pull-downs on one of the machines. After that’s done, I can do as much or as little else as I want. Some days I would do equivalent amounts of three other exercises, some days I would do an extra five reps and that’s it.

Why it works: this one has a host of benefits.

* It provides a sense of freedom: once I’m done with my minimum, I have a lot of choice about what and how much to do. That way it feels less like something I’m being forced into.

* If I’m feeling especially tired or feel like I deserve a day off, instead of skipping a day and breaking the habit I tell myself I’ll just do the minimum instead. Often once I get there I end up doing more than the minimum anyway, because the real thing I wanted to skip was the inconvenience of biking to the gym.

3. If you raise the minimum, do it slowly. I have sometimes raised the bar on what’s the minimum amount of exercise I have to do, but never to as much or more than I was already doing routinely. If you start suddenly forcing yourself to do more than you were already doing, the change will be much harder and less likely to stick than gradually ratcheting up your commitment.

3. Don’t fall into a guilt trap. Avoid associating guilt with doing the minimum, or even with missing a day.

Why it works: feeling guilty will make thinking of the habit unpleasant, and you’ll downplay how much you care about it to avoid the cognitive dissonance. Especially, if you only do the minimum, tell yourself “I did everything I committed to do.” Then when you do more than the minimum, feel good about it! You went above and beyond. This way, doing what you committed to will sometimes include positive reinforcement, but never negative reinforcement.

4. Use Timeless Decision Theory and consistency pressure. Credit for this one goes to this post by user zvi. When I contemplate skipping a day at the gym, I remember that I’ll be facing the same choice under nearly the same conditions many times in the future. If I skip my workout today, what reason do I have to believe that I won’t skip it tomorrow?

Why it works: Even when the benefits of one day’s worth of exercise don’t seem like enough motivation, I know my entire habit that I’ve worked to cultivate is at stake. I know that the more days I go to the gym the more I will see myself as a person who goes to the gym, and the more it will become my default action.

5. Evaluate your excuses. If I have what I think is a reasonable excuse, I consider how often I’ll skip the gym if I let myself skip it whenever I have that good of an excuse. If letting the excuse hold would make me use it often, I ignore it.

Why it works: I based this technique on this LW post

6. Tell people about it. The first thing I did when I made my resolution to start hitting the gym was telling a friend whose opinion I cared about. I also made a comment on LW saying I would make a post about my attempt at forming a habit, whether it succeeded or failed. (I wrote the post and forgot to post it for over a year, but so it goes.)

Why it works: Telling people about your commitment invests your reputation in it. If you risk being embarrassed if you fail, you have an extra motivation to succeed.

I expect these techniques can be generalized to work for many desirable habits: eating healthy, spending time on social interaction; writing, coding, or working on a long-term project; being outside getting fresh air, etc.

The Foundation for Blood Research has created an online course in Evidence-Based Medicine, aimed at "advanced high school science students, college students, nursing students, and 1st or 2nd year medical students." It focuses on evaluating research papers and applying statistics to medical diagnosis. I have taken this course, and it was useful practice in Bayesian reasoning.

The course involves working through a couple case studies of ER patients. Students will observe the patient, review research on relevant diagnostic tests, and calculate posterior probabilities given the available information. For instance: once case involves a woman who may have bacterial meningitis, but her spinal fluid test results are mixed. Students then read parts of a paper describing the success of different components of the spinal fluid test as predictors of meningitis.

The course is self-paced and highly modular, alternating between videos, multiple choice or calculation questions, and short written submissions. There is no in-course interaction between students taking the same course, but it is divided into "class sections" for the convenience of teachers who want to observe their students. It works well with Firefox and Safari, and slightly less well (but still easily usable) with Internet Explorer.

Anyone who is interested or wants more information, look at their website or ask me in the comments. Once a decent number of people have shown some interest, I will contact one of the site administrators and he'll set up an official class section for us.

EDIT: I have contacted the site administrator, we should have a class section available soon. Section name and info on how to log in will be posted shortly.

EDIT2: The course section is up: go to the http://evidenceworksremote.com/courses/ and then find the Less Wrong Community course. When you click on the course listing you will be asked to register. Once you receive the acknowledging email return to the course and enter the "enrollment" key: LW101 . I will be able to see your responses to the questions and possibly able to provide feedback. Once you have completed the course, Dr. Allan, who is one of the developers, would appreciate feedback by email.

GiveWell, LessWrong's most cited organization for optimal philanthropy, is currently re-evaluating its charity rankings with the goal of naming a new #1 charity by December 2011. Essentially, VillageReach (the current top charity) has met all of its short-term funding needs, to the point where it no longer has the greatest marginal return.

Our current top-rated charity is VillageReach. In 2010, we directed over $1.1 million to it, which met its short-term funding needs (i.e., its needs for the next year or so).

VillageReach still has longer-term needs, and in the absence of other giving opportunities that we consider comparable, we’ve continued to feature it as #1 on our website. However, we’ve also been focusing most of our effort this year on identifying and investigating other potential top-rated charities, with the hope that we can refocus attention on an organization with shorter-term needs this December. (In general, the vast bulk of our impact on donations comes in December.) We believe that we will be able to do so. We don’t believe we’ll be able to recommend a giving opportunity as good as giving to VillageReach was last year, but given VillageReach’s lack of short-term (1-year) room for more funding, we do expect to have a different top recommendation by this December.

EDIT: The new charities are up! They are the Against Malaria Foundation and the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative.

A while ago, some posters mentioned that it would be good if LW had a forum. Earlier this week I was planning a role-playing game with some other users and decided that a forum would be a good place for us and other groups to play online. And the Less Wrong Forum was born.

Currently, the forum has three boards: Gaming, Less Wrong/SIAI Related Topics, and General/Meta. The Gaming board is for RPGs, Diplomacy, Zendo, or any other games rationalists might enjoy playing together. The LW/SIAI board is for discussing any of the topics we normally discuss on Less Wrong. The General/Meta board is for random topics and discussions of the LW site or the forum itself.

EDIT: Looks like a supermajority of commenters don't want the LW board to exist because it would be redundant with the discussion section. I'll leave it up for a bit longer, and take it down if nobody says they support it.

I encourage everyone to check out the forum and help make it a fun and useful part of the online rationalist community. Please make suggestions in the comments (or on the forum itself!) about how it can be improved.

EDIT: Due to problems with trolls, registration now requires an invite. If you want an account, say so in the comments and I or the other admin (Armok_GoB) will get you one.

I’m hoping to sign up for cryonics when I can afford it, and I’m not sure which agency and treatment plan to get.

As of this Cryonics institute document, whole-body suspension with Alcor costs $200,000. Neurosuspension costs $80,000. With the cheaper but possibly lower quality Cryonics Institute, whole-body suspension costs $28,000 and they don’t do neurosuspension. American Cryonics Society is in between, costing $155,000 (again, no neurosuspension option).

What are the upsides and downsides of these options, in the eyes of people who are signed up, considering signing up, or know a lot about the subject? Also, I know there are some people here who have looked at cryonics and found it a bad decision. Input from them is also welcome.

Exercise for “Extensions and Intensions”

Give an intensional definition for each of the following words:

1. Shoe
2. Hope
3. Wire
4. Green
5. Politician
6. Apple

Now rank them from easiest to define to hardest.

Describe how you would give an extensional definition of the same words:

1. Shoe
2. Hope
3. Wire
4. Green
5. Politician
6. Apple

Again, rank them from easiest to hardest.

Are the two lists the same? If not, what tends to make something easier to define intensionally than extensionally and vice versa?

You can share your answers in the comments. I'm interested in seeing how similarly people think of these things. Please make suggestions as to how this could be improved or augmented and what to do the same/differently in future exercises. My current plan is to do more from the sequence "A Human's Guide to Words." This post will be edited in response to suggestions.

 Folktheory, RobinZ, and I are designing exercises to go with the sequences. Here’s my first one. Please make suggestions as to how this could be improved or augmented and what to do the same/differently in future exercises. My current plan is to do more from the sequence "A Human's Guide to Words." This post will be edited to in response to suggestions.

Exercise for “The Parable of the Dagger," "The Parable of Hemlock," and "Words as Hidden Inferences”

This exercise is meant to be worked on a computer. You can fill it out either in your head or by copying the text into a word processor. Please do not read ahead of where you are working. Where applicable, answers are posted in rot13.

1. List several properties which are common to crows. Here’s a picture of one to help you out:

______________________        ______________________       

 ______________________        ______________________       

______________________        ______________________       

Some of the characteristics you may have put down are “black,” “bird,”  “can fly,” and “caws.”

People in the time of Aristotle believed things were logically 100% certain to have all the properties that were part of their definition. For instance, they said they could be 100% certain that Socrates was mortal because humans are mortal "by definition."

Now, thinking like an Aristotelian and using those four characteristics, is that bird in the linked picture a crow?

Answer: Lbh pna’g fnl jurgure vg vf be abg. Lbh unira’g frra vg syl be urneq vg pnj.

2. Now, suppose I (assume I’m completely trustworthy) were to tell you that there is a crow behind that door. If your brain worked like Aristotle thought, you would be certain that it had all the properties listed above. Think of two ways that you could be wrong.

Some possible answers:

Gur pebj pbhyq or n ungpuyvat, jvgubhg erq srnguref be gur novyvgl gb syl.

Vg pbhyq or na nyovab.

Vg pbhyq or obea zhgr.

If you were able to think of any of those answers, that shows you weren’t really certain. The fact that answers exist shows that it would be incorrect to be certain. If you were, and you looked behind the door and saw an albino crow, you either would have denied it was a crow, and been wrong, or you wouldn’t have been able to believe it was white. Assigning something zero probability means you can never update your beliefs no matter how much evidence you see.

Saying an object belongs in a category does not force it to conform to the attributes of the category.

Gizmodo, a popular technology blog, posted this artice about SIAI. It's partly tongue-in-cheek, but also apparently thinks well of the Singularity Institute, claiming they are "a research organization that's as forward-thinking as most Gizmodo readers (read: sci-fi nerds)." More importantly, they link to Philanthroper, where you can donate and see your donation be matched. File this under "cultural penetration of Singularity memes" and also as a chance to make your donation more effective.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5787599/give-1-to-stop-terminators-seriously

Edit: Better link to the above URL

This post arose from this discussion in the "Philosophy: a Diseased Discipline" post.

Current Practice

There have been several conversations lately about the costs and benefits of scholarship, the effort of reading the sequences, and attempts to repackage the sequence material in an easier form [1]. There also used to be a practice on LW of telling newbies who weren't producing good content to come back when they'd read the sequences. However, David Gerard, who has been paying more attention than me, has noticed that this practice has stopped. One plausible explanation is that the stoppage is due to a rising awareness of the effort that reading the sequences takes. 

In an impromptu unscientific poll, 10 respondents said that they had read the sequences while still lurking on LW, 3 that they read them after creating accounts, and 8 that they had read them while they were still on OB. Nobody said that they still hadn't read the sequences [2]. So, assuming that this roughly represents the status quo, most LW posts/comments come from people who have read the sequences. The questions are: One, is this situation changing (are fewer people reading the sequences than in the past)? And two, should it change, and in what direction?

To answer this, one needs to look at the costs and benefits.

Costs

Length: The sequences comprise over a million words, not counting the comments. They cover material as diverse as semantics, quantum theory, cognitive science, metaethics, and how to write a good eutopia.

Interdependency: Each post in a sequence requires understanding of the previous posts in that sequence, and sometimes posts from earlier sequences. As well as being a source of intimidating and annoying tab explosions, this exacerbates the problem of length. It's hard to read the sequences except going through large chunks systematically, so they can't be broken up and read in a person's spare time.

Possible Memetic Hazard: Some of the ideas in the Sequences are controversial [3]. These points are often clearly marked in the posts and debated in the comments, so they won't sneak up on anyone; on the other hand, Memetic Hazard was used to describe controversial topics here, so at least someone thinks it's a problem. Some potential readers may not want to be exposed to treatments of controversial issues that argue for one side before they read balanced overviews. Also, discomfort has been expressed over the possibility of LW being a cult.  I don't want this post to turn into a forum for the is-it-a-cult conversation, so it's up here as something that may cause disutility to some people who read the Sequences.

Benefits

Usefulness: various people [4] have discussed the various benefits of rationality knowledge in helping them "Win at Life". These benefits vary widely from person to person, so there are many ways to take advantage of the sequences in one's own life.

Informativeness: On questions that don't have immediate practical relevance, it's still good for the community if everyone is familiar with the basic material. Discussions of uploading, for example, wouldn't go very far if people had to stop to explain why they believe that consciousness is physical. Having all participants start out with a minimum number of undissolved confusions improves the SNR of Less Wrong even when it doesn't directly help the individual members win.

A Common Vocabulary: on a forum where everyone has read the sequences, it's easy to refer to them in conversation. Telling someone that their position is equivalent to two-boxing on Newcomb's problem will quickly convey what you mean and allow the person an easy way to craft an answer. Pointing out that a debate is over the meaning of a word will do more to prevent it from expanding into a giant mess than if the participants hadn't read Making Beliefs Pay Rent. And using examples like Bleggs and Rubes or similar can connect a commenter's example to ver audience's current knowlege of the concept.

Please comment to suggest more costs and benefits, provide more info on the sequence-reading habits of commenters, share your experience, or explain why everything I just said is wrong.

[1] Some examples: The Neglected Virtue of Scholarship, Costs and Benefits of Scholarship, Rationality Workbook Proposal.

[2] This option in the poll was created after the others and would up being elsewhere on the page, so it is probably underrepresented. I'm just taking the results as a first approximation, and will edit this post if the comments suggest the status quo is not what I thought it was.

[3] Some examples: The Many-Worlds and Timeless formulations of quantum mechanics are still being debated by Physicists. Perhaps less importantly, as an average reader can understand the debate and form ver own opinion, issues like the Zombie World are still being debated by philosophers.

[4] See this post for an example: Reflections on Rationality a Year Out