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Done! The survey has been a progressively smoother experience each of the past three years. And it's nice to have a time to think about the past month's habits in a structured way during the school year.
What product do you use? For good posture, I want the monitor(s) to be much higher than the surface the keyboard lies on, but most standing desks I've seen have just one surface.
I use a cardboard desk from chairigami.com. Single-surface, but I'm in the process of setting something up for less neck strain. The desk itself was very cheap and portable.
In response to
Group Rationality Diary, September 1-15
Wanted to experiment with working more often while standing (since I estimated a 40-50% chance this would be a good overall choice, between potential health gains and potential productivity gains). Winced at the thought of buying a $100 piece of furniture that would make this possible. Realized that this equated to about 25 cents a day, even at a relatively conservative value of how often I'd use it. And I would absolutely pay 25 cents per day to RENT this thing.
And now I own the thing! And I'm happy every time I see it, and so far I feel good on days when I use it. Odd that one of my lasting gains from CFAR is being better at spending money.
Good books for incoming college students?
My sister (and about 2.5 million other people) are headed to college in the fall.
I gave her a copy of Cal Newport's How to Win at College as a graduation gift, but given that her life is about to change more than it has in any of the past 14 years, one book probably isn't enough.
What books do you think incoming/recently arrived college students should be reading? You can assign reading with any motivation you'd like, but I'm looking especially hard for books that meet the following criteria:
- An average to somewhat-above-average college student can read them without much struggle.
- They have some practical application in college life/job seeking/being a good adult (rather than just being a personal favorite book).
- They are easy to find and budget-friendly (free online/cheap on Amazon/probably in the college library).
- They are not Oh, The Places You'll Go, just to head you pranksters off at the pass.
Bonus points if it's a book that you read in late high school or college and you can tell us what impact it had on your life at the time!
My suggestions would include Getting Things Done, Thinking Fast and Slow, Redirect, and The Charisma Myth. What would you suggest?
This was Lukeprog's suggestion in the linked post, but they seem to have rejected it based on the difficulty of picking up motivated clients that way. Jonah phrased it as "teenagers and young adults are often rebellious and don't want to do what their parents tell them to". I think that this is something of an exaggeration - kids take test prep seriously after all - but it's true that the value of the service is more difficult for teenagers to see than something like exam tutoring.
Is it worth spending time mentoring kids that aren't interested and so won't get much out of the service, in order to get to the x% of students that will take it seriously? I would have thought so, but from this post it seems they've concluded that the answer is no, at least after you take into account the switch in focus (more personal advantage, less effective altruism) needed to get parents to pay for the service.
I'd think it wouldn't be too hard to have a selective set of clients. A single screening interview makes sense here, and might even help appeal to parents who want to think that their child is being treated as special -- which wouldn't be a bad thing, if the child actually was special.
As an SAT tutor, I've tried to impart life lessons along with bubble-filling lessons (on how to look at tests in general, how to hack studying, etc.), but the scope of those has necessarily been limited, both by the demands of the SAT and by the types of students I work with (I do more 1100-to-1500 transitions than 2000-to-2300).
Still, I feel that the "life lessons + advice for incoming college students" part of my work is much more valuable than the basic subject tutoring. And parents don't seem to object to my sharing their "turf" as far as lessons go. But this may be because I'm still young enough (20) to seem more like a high school student than a surrogate parent. And the life lessons were always a bonus in addition to SAT work; as a primary business, perhaps not so good.
Anyway, I'm sure the Cognito guys have considered all this -- I just hope that someone gives you the chance to pick up the work again in the future (and maybe hire me to help). Thanks for the Quora work, and good luck with your future endeavors!
In response to
Rationality Quotes May 2014
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.”
― Douglas Adams
Wonderful question! I spent some time recently interviewing religious converts on my very un-religious campus, and I think you'll find your discussions fascinating, if not particularly epistemic-rational.
Some topics I'd bring up: Second CronoDas on "why are you not a Jew/Muslim?", as well as "what evidence (especially scientific evidence) could lead you to dramatically change your belief in God, if not stop believing altogether?"
Finally: "If you stopped believing in God, what do you think would be the consequences in your present life on Earth?" Many believers I've met seem to believe out of a desire for comfort/reassurance, which makes far more sense to me than believing based on evidence.
Should I take an academic class on rationality?
This would count toward my major, and if I weren't going to take it, the likely replacement would be a course in experimental/"folk" philosophy. But I'd also like to hear your thoughts on the virtues of academic rationality courses in general.
(The main counterargument, I'd imagine, is that the Sequences cover most of the same material in a more fluid and comprehensible fashion.)
Here is the syllabus: http://www.yale.edu/darwall/PHIL+333+Syllabus.pdf
Other information: I sampled one lecture for the course last year. It was a noncommital discussion of Newcomb's problem, which I found somewhat interesting despite having read most of the LW material on the subject.
When I asked what Omega would do if we activated a random number generator with a 50.01% chance of one-boxing us, the professors didn't dismiss the question as irrelevant, but they also didn't offer any particular answer.
I help run a rationality meetup at Yale, and this seems like a good place to meet interested students. On the other hand, I could just as easily leave flyers around before the class begins.
Related question: Could someone quickly sum up what might be meant by the "feminist critique" of rationality, as would be discussed in the course? I've read a few abstracts, but I'm still not sure I know the most important points of these critiques.
In response to
Rationality Quotes April 2014
"Throughout the day, Stargirl had been dropping money. She was the Johnny Appleseed of loose change: a penny here, a nickel there. Tossed to the sidewalk, laid on a shelf or bench. Even quarters.
"I hate change," she said. "It's so . . . jangly."
"Do you realize how much you must throw away in a year?" I said.
"Did you ever see a little kid's face when he spots a penny on a sidewalk?”
Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl
So as to keep the quote on its own, my commentary:
This passage (read at around age 10) may have been my first exposure to an EA mindset, and I think that "things you don't value much anymore can still provide great utility for other people" is a powerful lesson in general.
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A question that has been asked before, and so may be stupid: What concrete examples are there of gains from CfAR training (or self-study based on LessWrong)? These would have to come in the form of very specific examples, preferably quantitative.
E.g. "I was $100,000 in debt and unemployed for 2 years, and now I have employment earning twice what I ever have before and am out of debt."
"I never had a relationship that lasted more than 2 months, but now am happily married."
"My grade point average went up from 2.2 to 3.8"
"After struggling to diet and exercise for years, I finally got on track and am now in the best shape of my life."
etc.
Search "Rationality Diaries" on LW to see a huge archive of examples from recent years. (Those are places where users upload recent stories of victory from their lives.)