GOOD. Especially this one: http://www.howtolearn.com/2011/02/demystifying-algebra

But I don't recall ever getting that in my classes. Also, the illustration of "first step going from true equation to false equation" I think is also important to have in there somewhere.

1) If you embrace SSA, then you being you should be more likely on humans being important than on panpsychism, yes? (You may of course have good reasons for preferring SIA.)

2) Suppose again redundantly dual panpsychism. Is there any a priori reason (at this level of metaphysical fancy) to rule out that experiences could causally interact with one another in a way that is isomorphic to mechanical interactions? Then we have a sort of idealist field describable by physics, perfectly monist. Or is this an illegitimate trick?

(Full disclosure: I'd consider myself a cautious physicalist as well, although I'd say psi research constitutes a bigger portion of my doubt than the hard problem.)

I love Redshift myself, but he didn't mention taking any such precautions.

(As for difference - well, I've been randomizing use of Redshift since 11 May 2012, so in a few months I'll finish the experiment and look at the results.)

I love Redshift myself, but he didn't mention taking any such precautions.

(As for difference - well, I've been randomizing use of Redshift since 11 May 2012, so in a few months I'll finish the experiment and look at the results.)

Between 9 and 11PM, I shut off my laptop, don my robe, light scented candles, and draw a bath. Exactly like that, every single time.

Glad it works for you, but I don't have 2 hours a night that I can spend not doing anything.

Then again, I don't have a huge amount of difficulty regulating my sleep schedule. It takes me a long time to fall asleep (I would say 45 minutes on average) but it always has and it doesn't stress me out–it's awfully comfy lying in bed. I tend to get tired fairly early–in fact, I'm often pretty tired all the time, because my schedule is insane, thus the lack of 2 hours a day for bedtime rituals.

Every once in a while I'll pass my bedtime while engaged in a superstimulus, like reading a good book, but most of the time I look at when I have to wake up, count back eight to nine hours, and put myself to bed at that time. If not a ritual, this is definitely a strongly reinforced habit–it doesn't take much willpower to get myself off my laptop 10 minutes before bedtime, because I know full well how good being in bed will feel, and how I'll feel the next day if I don't go to bed on time.

Between 9 and 11PM, I shut off my laptop, don my robe, light scented candles, and draw a bath.

I'd point out that there's a plausible physiological mechanism here: aside from a nice hot bath being relaxing (no doubt there's research on this), avoiding electronics may also mean avoiding blue light which suppresses melatonin secretion.

Love this.

How do you feel about using rituals to reinforce habits and create momentum for new policies? It's basically outsourcing willpower to past selves.

For instance, I've always had a hard time regulating my sleep schedule. It's not always that I can't sleep, but that I seldom want to go to sleep and lack the willpower to not do whatever I want to do instead, no matter how sleepy I am. What finally worked was a ritual that served as both positive reinforcement and physiological manipulation. I love bubble baths, and they put me in a relaxed mindspace where much less willpower is required to go to sleep. Bubble baths are now my bedtime ritual. Between 9 and 11PM, I shut off my laptop, don my robe, light scented candles, and draw a bath. Exactly like that, every single time.

It's not difficult, in part because a ritual doesn't really feel like my decision. It feels more like an external way the world is, something it would take effort to change, like the lunch meeting scheduled for Wednesday. Taking a bath is the last thing I'm allowed to do before sleeping, and it's something I always look forward to. Sleeping is simply the conclusion of the ritual.

Obviously, rituals are dangerous, especially in group contexts. But they're dangerous because they really are powerful. We can delude ourselves with rituals, but we can also use them as cheat codes for winning. We just have to use them judiciously.

There are so many comments here about what does and doesn't count as a "cult", and whether Lesswrong is cultish. People, it doesn't matter. The point is that that's not the point.

Why are we wary of cults? Because they're harmful in various ways. There are particular ways in which they're harmful, and particular things that cause them to be harmful in those ways.

Suppose that the inclusion criteria for "cult" had nothing to do with the harmful parts and consisted entirely of beneficial features. Suppose, for instance, that a cult is merely "any social thing that tends to make participants happy". Then it would be a good thing to be in a cult, and any harm done by the activities of the cult would be due entirely to the harmful activities and not to its status as cult.

When we try to pin down how our real notions of cult differ from that scenario, we end up with a list of features. Some of those features are harmful, and some are beneficial. Moreover, some of the features are both harmful and beneficial. We can circle those features. Then, regardless of what we call ourselves, we can avoid the items on the list that are merely harmful, mitigate or eliminate the potential damage done by the items that are also beneficial, and thereby create a kick-ass thing that helps us win. Whether it's rightly called a cult is irrelevant to whether it's a good thing.

The point is not to avoid being a cult. The point is to avoid causing the damage cults tend to cause, especially while borrowing their most useful strategies. Remember: "Do not lose reasonably. Win."

My position is that we need a plan. A long-term, comprehensive strategy to maximize the utility of our individual efforts toward making the world a more rational place. We need not only to study the best ways of teaching rationality on the level of personal interactions and small classes, but to plot a path from the current state of society to a world in which people are trained from childhood in the methods of rationality. I'm giving a talk on this very topic to my university's secular student alliance. My main message is simply that "we need a plan", but here's the specific proposal I'm going to toss out there for consideration.

• Use the grassroots movement(s) in secularism, humanism, science advocacy, etc. to prepare the memetic landscape for education renovation.

--Broaden conceptions of science.

~~Let "science" include the analysis, interpretation, and implementation of information gained through empirical inquiry.

-The positivists have a narrower conception, but it's not very historically accurate anyway.

-The broader conception lets us teach parts of rationality in science classes as science that the one infected by positivism doesn't.

~~Get the paradigmatic "scientist" out of a lab coat and into the Real World so that everyone's a scientist and the people who design space ships are simply professionals.

--Get involved in math education reform. See Hemant's efforts. Mathematical methods are methods of rationality. Math is not graphing parabolas. Math is creative rigorous problem solving.

--Learn about and promote cognitive science. Popularize the term "cognitive psychology". I know it kinda hurts to drag down cog sci like that, but the plan is to sneak the study of heuristics and biases into high school psychology classes.

• Insert rationality into math and science classes. Focus psychology classes toward cognitive science. (It may prove more feasible to add cog sci to the options for science classes along side chemistry, physics, etc., but I think this will be easier at least early on.)
• Slowly increase the number of schools with philosophy so that extra-empirical methods get their own spotlight.
• Get states to adopt curricula that focus on higher order information.
• Implement such a curriculum on the national level.