Drinking alcohol is very necessary for connecting with people.

This is so obviously wrong.

Alcohol may aid in connecting with some people some of the time.

For me recurrent sleep paralysis turned out to be associated with sleep apnea. Both were reduced but not eliminated by adjusting sleep position (side rather than back as others have already mentioned), wearing a mandibular adjustment device (holds the jaw in a slightly different position to avoid airway obstruction). Similarly, some changes in consumption habits reduced occurrence: reducing alcohol intake and large/rich meals shortly before sleeping.

in my case these symptoms were the result of some abnormalities in my throat cartilage which eventually required surgery, but the above behaviour changes reduced occurrence substantially (approx 5 instances per week of sleep paralysis or choking to 1.2 based on 3-month diary). I made all the above adjustments together so cannot give any further indications about which of them might have helped. Or indeed, fully ruled out a placebo effect!

I didn't recognise the association between sleep paralysis and apnea but it was one of the first things the head & neck specialist asked.

What makes it a problem for you? What's the problem of having a bit more conscious time while your body is at rest?

Have you tried the normal sleep hacks of going every day at the same time to bed and sleeping 8 hours, having no red light an hour before bed, sleeping in a pitch black room and taking a bit Melatonin?

It could be worse. Rationality essays could be attracting a self-selected group of people whose bottleneck isn't rationality. Actually I think that's true. Here's a three-step program that might help a "stereotypical LWer" more than reading LW:

1) Gym every day

2) Drink more alcohol

3) Watch more football

Only slightly tongue in cheek ;-)

Do you guys know how you can prevent sleep paralysis?

A lot of Californians like those big open spaces. Others don't want developments that make it easier for poor people to live around them (due to fear of crime, "bad schools" or other unpleasantness.)

From 1969 onward in California, “progressivism” has chiefly been about preserving privilege, especially the privilege of living in an uncrowded bucolic manner in the finest landscapes (typically, the coast in Southern California, the first valley in from the coast in Northern California) by blocking on environmentalist grounds developments that would make these regions more affordable to more people.

San Francisco is now one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world, and the populace wants to keep it that way.

The user most likely to engage in retributive downvoting are those who engage in hostile debate and subsequently have low karma ratio's themselves (VoiceofRa has 68% favourability). Perhaps you could disable downvoting functionality for those with a karma ratio lower than 80%? Considering that poor quality of contributions is another big factor for low karma ratios this measure would have the added benefit that our most competent users have more power.

Effective altruists care.

Effective altruists care about effectiveness. If the claim we're assessing is "Zuckerberg is only pretending that this money will be used to do good; actually it's a pure tax-avoidance scam and it'll all end up being spent on his family" then sure, effective altruists care. But if it's "Zuckerberg really is putting all this money into trying to improve the world, but his motive for doing so is that he wants to look good" then no, effective altruists shouldn't care why he's doing it, only what he's doing.

... But: our visibility of "what he's doing" probably isn't very good, so our estimates of "why he's doing it" may actually factor into our guesses about what will actually end up being done with the money. (E.g., if what he mostly cares about is looking good for giving away a lot of money, he doesn't have much incentive to make sure it really does have good effects. On the other hand, if he cares about looking good for saving lots of lives, he has the incentive.) So to that extent the critics may have a point.

Here's some less optimistic articles.

I remark that the last one is from the Daily Mail. If the Mail printed a story saying that the sky is blue, I'd look out the window to check it hadn't actually turned green. (The Atlantic has a better reputation. I know nothing at all about the Irish Examiner.)

What terrorists want is irrelevant. "Don't play into enemy hands" is irrelevant. The entire discussion is irrelevant.

The correct response to enemy action is the response that furthers your own ends. It doesn't matter what effect this has on your enemy, good, neutral, or positive; your long-term ends matter.

"The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this." A particularly relevant quote from Musashi, used by Eliezer on at least one occasion in the sequences.

Avoiding doing what the enemy wants is mere parrying. Stop mere parrying, and cut.

support this change; have no idea how easy it is to do.