conformity coaches

I think most people need non-conformity coaches.

I've found this Caplan post to be a pretty good example of what the world looks like in the status lens. It's not arguing that all motivations "really" boil down to status, but that when it comes to tradeoffs between status and something else, people almost always pick status (or weight it very highly).

I've been reading a lot of Robin Hanson lately and I'm curious at how other people parse his statements about status. Hanson often says something along the lines of: "X isn't about what you thought. X is about status."

I've been parsing this as: "You were incorrect in your prior understanding of what components make up X. Somewhere between 20% and 99% of X is actually made up of status. This has important consequences."

Does this match up to how you parse his statements?

edit

To clarify: I don't usually think anything is just about one thing. I think there are a list of motivations towards taking an action for the first person who does it and that one motivation is often stronger than the others. Additionally, new motivations are created or disappear as an action continues over time for the original person. For people who come later, I suspect factors of copying successful patterns (also for a variety of reasons including status matching) as well as the original possible reasons for the first person. This all makes a more complicated pattern and generational system than just pointing and yelling "Status!" (which I hope isn't the singular message people get from Hanson).

Do you think I should read all the posts I can find in the sequences, or only the ones in the core sequences, to begin with?

I've been trying to introduce you and y'all in Cambridge, it's pretty cool.

Keep in mind that it's more complicated than just singular/plural. There are three forms: you, y'all, and all y'all.

Until LessWrong 2.0 comes out, this is how I've been staying in touch with the Rationalist Diaspora. It took about an hour to set up and I can now see almost everything in the one place.

I've been using an RSS reader (I use feedly) to collate RSS feeds from these lists,

Rationist Blogs,

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/List_of_Blogs

https://www.reddit.com/r/RationalistDiaspora/

Effective Altruist Blogs,

http://www.stafforini.com/blog/effective-altruism-blogs/

Rationalist Tumblers,

http://yxoque.tumblr.com/RationalistMasterlist

And using this twitter to RSS tool for these LessWrong Twitters,

http://lesswrong.com/lw/d92/less_wrong_on_twitter/

This system is unsatisfying in a number of ways the two most obvious to me being 1) I don't know of any way to integrate the Rationalists on Facebook into this system and 2) Upvotes from places that use them like LW or r/rational aren't displayed. Nevertheless it is still much simpler for me to be notified of new material. If anyone has suggestions on improvements or wants to share how they follow the Diaspora that'd be most welcome.

I've been thinking of how to build on the #LessWrongMoreNice idea while taking some criticisms into account, and thought about something that seems to only have upsides - namely, creating a Gratitude thread. It would make the overall tone of LW more positive, without impeding the honest criticism. There's a lot of research showing that expressing gratitude improves mental and physical health. Thoughts?

Counterfactual Diaspora Question:

If Eliezer had written on OvercomingBias and gotten enough activity to create LessWrong, but the population was filled with different personalities (no So8res, no AnnaSalamon, no Yvain, etc.) do you think the diaspora would have occurred in the same way and on the same general timeframe that it has?

I' m curious about what parts of LessWrong's development you think were inevitable and why.

V jnf qvfnccbvagrq jura Uneel hfrq cnegvny genafsvthengvba gb fhecevfr Ibyqrzbeg, orpnhfr ur unq nyernql qbar gung va sebag bs Ibyqrzbeg qhevat gurve gevc gb Nmxnona, fb vg fubhyqa'g unir orra fbzrguvat frperg. Vg chyyrq zr bhg bs gur fgbel.

Rust, a video game, has a veil of ignorance

After you've had a character for a while, gender is imposed randomly and permanently.