but chapter 20 discusses cognitive enhancement and mind uploading, and chapter 20 discusses

Was one of the 20s supposed to be something else?

I don't want to sound rude, but what is the point of this rerun? Looking at the reposted articles from the last month, most have fewer than 10 comments each.

The comments on this post have significantly influenced my opinion on a number of people. Thanks, Will.

We already have separate Main and Discussion. Any reason not to add more? With separate feeds (and perhaps separate karma) for each, I just don't see the downsides.

LessWrong may have started as a blog about rationality, but now it is a community of like-minded people. It is natural that some members of the community want to discuss less on-topic topics with the rest of the community.

Agreed that there's a lot of mostly-untapped potential in checklists and generally in the area of "deliberately, consciously applying advice from system 2". I often feel like there's a big gap between reading some bit of wisdom on LW and actually applying it in real life. And not just because of akrasia. For instance, I read Gwern's page on melatonin probably at least a year ago, but only a few months ago did I actually get around to buying some. This wasn't because of akrasia - I just read the page, went "good points, this is definitely worth doing" and then completely ignored my own carefully-gathered advice. I think this is partly due to general forgetfulness (for which: Anki), and partly due to the fact that I don't actually really take ideas seriously enough, perhaps because I'm not used to my decisions actually leading to big real-life consequences (I've never had to make big grownup decisions about employment, where to live, etc.), which I'm still trying to fix.

I've lately been trying out running my life more on what my conscious thought processes output. Specifically, by using checklists that I refine by making them SRS cards and then think about and optimize and memorize every time they come up for review (and fail if I forgot them or made significant changes). I now have quite a lot of checklists, including a checklist for making checklists. Most of them are pretty trite or me-specific, so I'll just put a few good ones here.

For conversations:

• Look at their eyes.
• Ensure you're fully present, ie not thinking about what to say next. (So you don't interrupt, so you pause before speaking, and so your facial expressions update quicker.)
• Unobtrusively mirror body language.
• Match tone and speed of voice.

This is from this book, which I skimmed a few months ago. It's pretty useful. The book has more tips, intended mainly for male executives who want to convey an impression of power and charisma.

When my motivation's flagging (on a timescale of days, not minutes):

• Do a few hours on a stationary bike while listening to angry rap or dance music.
• If I'm unable to do that, try disconnecting whatever distraction's sapping my energy. (The internet, for instance. My short-term subagent is too dumb to realize that it should object to my going into /sbin and doing sudo rm if* iw*.)
• If all else fails, take some caffeine. This'll only work if you haven't built up a tolerance. I haven't had to resort to this since discovering the wonder of cardio exercise.

Now of course these all require motivation to start, but I find them to be pretty self-sustaining, in that once started they generate enough willpower for me to keep going. About disconnecting distraction: I strongly advocate a program of active warfare against your akrasia-inducing subagent. I don't have internet on my main computer, for example. I've sabotaged the power plugs in my bedroom so I can't lie down while working on my laptop (for longer than the 30min it takes for my pathetic battery to run out). I have to sit on the stationary bike, even if I don't cycle, and that makes it a lot easier to start actually cycling. That's enough to get me cycling, but if it wasn't I could get someone to hide my laptop battery and only give it back when I really need it (so I have to run the laptop directly from the power plug). When I tell people this, they think I'm silly and eccentric until they realize I'm burning 2000 kcal a day and they're not :)

Other things that seem to boost willpower:

• Shaking off sleep debt with a bottle of melatonin and a week of ten-hour nights.
• If male, not masturbating may help.
• Fasting seems to help, though this may be more because I'm feeling powerful because I'm disciplined enough to not eat.

At the start of every hour, when my watch beeps:

• Do a quick reality check to see whether I'm dreaming. (If so, use the chance at a lucid dream.)
• Visualize that every person on earth is a p-zombie, except me. Doing this well is an instant boost to motivation and confidence for me, and it creates the right munchkinly mindset. It's easy to do things if the only things watching you are heaps of atoms.
• Apply mental contrasting (which I learned about from here) for increased motivation and more focus on higher-order bits. This nicely complements the p-zombie visualization.

I think there's a lot more in this. For instance, I think I can usefully model myself as having only four or five emotional states, each useful for different things. There are some things I can do deliberately to shift myself into some of these states. I think it would be productive to experiment with different mental procedures to see which are most effective for what. So I've been writing lists of mental procedures I can try out, and I intend to start systematically working through the list and noting successes and failures. (This is how I came up with the idea of considering everyone else p-zombies.) I'm planning to make a topic about this here, and we can share our ideas and experimental results (but it'll take me a month, so if someone wants to beat me to it, go ahead).

It would be interesting to see checklists on less important topics too. The particular example I have in mind is travel (i.e. what to pack, what to research, what backup plans are needed, etc). In what other mundane scenarios do people find checklists useful?

You would need to always have a shield up.

Yes... this is a fact of combat. Not sure why you said this.

For example?

"Accio frontal lobe."

Or "Imperio, kill yourself."

Or for that matter "Obliviate."

Edit: Actually, I'm pretty sure Somnium is invisible. It doesn't kill immediately, of course, but that's easily rectified.

True. But that would have to be an extreme amount of acceleration, whereas in MoR it takes several casters just to fully counter the effect of gravity on one teenage boy. Also, it seems unlikely at best that the Hover Charm can accelerate people downwards - and if you lift someone high enough for a fall to kill them, you give them time to react while they fall.

Also, it's possible that the Hover Charm could be blocked by a pre-cast shield - in fact, this seems likely, otherwise people could just get around non-spherical shields by lifting the target and then shooting them from underneath.

Are you assuming it can't be shielded against? That seems unlikely. And if you can catch your opponent before he casts any shields there are easier ways to kill someone.

It seems to be different for different spells. For example, some spells can't be dodged because of the missile shape rather than because of speed (e.g. wide blasts rather than beams or missiles). Likewise, some require physical contact (Transfiguration) while others affect everyone in the vicinity irrespective of location, targeting or obstacles (Muffliato, the one that stops people overhearing you).

Also, I don't think it gets deadlier than the Killing Curse by definition - it is unblockable and kills instantly. Any other spell we know of can be blocked by a good enough shield and/or have its effects undone before they are fatal (by an ally if not by the target themselves).