Comment author: carey 09 November 2012 02:09:23AM 0 points [-]

I am looking for rationalist pdfs, ebooks and audiobooks for an upcoming flight. If anyone can bring any of these this Friday, that will be appreciated. (I've finished reading the Sequences)

Comment author: gwern 21 October 2012 01:30:42AM 1 point [-]

Is it useful to learn to REM-nap even though I don't plan to sleep polyphasically? Is it worth going through adaptation?

I don't entirely follow... Is there such a thing as 'learning to REM-nap' without the proposed mechanism of the pressure of sleep rebound forcing a REM rebound during the space of a nap?

Comment author: carey 21 October 2012 02:58:00AM *  0 points [-]

I mean I am interested in undergoing adaptation through sleep deprivation, then something like uberman then everyman.

It would not be viable for me to stay in a polyphasic schedule next year. Ultimately, I will have to return to something largely along the lines of segmented or monophasic. Still, I have heard that undergoing polyphasic-style adaptation can help you to become acclimatised to getting REM sleep in a 20-30 minute period, something I currently can't do, but might be useful if I have a sleep debt or if I know I'm going to do an all-nighter etc.

So the idea is adapting to polyphasic then switching back to segmented or monophasic. Would I expect to nap better afterwards? Is this likely to be useful or worthwhile?

Comment author: RobertLumley 01 October 2012 03:14:58PM 0 points [-]

Meta Thread

Comment author: carey 21 October 2012 02:52:23AM 1 point [-]

Great thread.

Separate movies from TV I think. I am trying to find movies for LW/THINK meetups and all I see is anime. Lots of appealing premises end up being of too short a length to be able to share in a meetup environment.

Comment author: carey 20 October 2012 04:12:19PM *  1 point [-]
  • Is it useful to learn to REM-nap even though I don't plan to sleep polyphasically? Is it worth going through adaptation?
  • where is a summary of the evidence for polyphasic sleeping, and likewise for paleo diets?
  • do you think rationality is a more contagious idea than effective altruism?
Comment author: carey 20 October 2012 10:00:30AM *  2 points [-]

When will there be another online optimal philanthropy meetup?

Comment author: carey 16 October 2012 07:32:22AM *  0 points [-]

Summary of this post: heuristics differ from biases in amount (of predictive power), not in kind.

Or perhaps they differ by some combination of predictive power, utility and directness of relation to their prediction (susceptibility to be screened off)

Comment author: carey 14 October 2012 10:47:09AM 0 points [-]

Note Carl Shulman's counterargument to the assumption of a normal prior here and the comments traded between Holden and Carl.

"If your prior was that charity cost-effectiveness levels were normally distributed, then no conceivable evidence could convince you that a charity could be 100x as good as the 90th percentile charity. The probability of systematic error or hoax would always be ludicrously larger than the chance of such an effective charity. One could not believe, even in hindsight, that paying for Norman Borlaug’s team to work on the Green Revolution, or administering smallpox vaccines (with all the knowledge of hindsight) actually did much more good than typical. The gains from resources like GiveWell would be small compared to acting like an index fund and distributing charitable dollars widely."

Comment author: MixedNuts 15 September 2012 10:10:09PM 6 points [-]

If I understand virtue ethics correctly, which I don't, virtue ethicists want to have good autopilots. They don't give themselves much credit for doing good things, except inasmuch as it shows they do them and makes them more likely to continue to do so. Likewise, they don't do slightly bad things, because that would condition them to do bad things in other circumstances.

Comment author: carey 27 September 2012 06:47:45AM *  1 point [-]

I think a more distinctly virtue ethicist way of putting it is that they don't do slightly bad things because that would condition them to have bad dispositions, or to be bad people, something that is intrinsically disvaluable.

People who avoid doing slightly bad things to prevent instilling unhelpful habits, and to prevent themselves from bringing about future harm are (roughly) global utilitarians.

Comment author: carey 25 September 2012 12:21:01PM 0 points [-]

This month's meetups have been excellent. Look forward to seeing you all next Friday, and Matt, thanks for the venue.