Folks should be cautioned that SCP entries may be more upsetting or triggering than typical horror-sf.
There's a lot of body horror, some disturbing images (although they tend to avoid animated "shockers"), plenty of violence, occasional mindfuckery, and at least one pretty damn disturbing implied rape/torture scenario.
I read a couple of these last night (I've read others long ago), not particularly scary ones - 427 and 682... and then dreamt I read more, including one that did have a "shocker" animation (after which I remember cursing you for suggesting they were rare!), and then one with a high-res gif/video of a complex artifact I can remember the vague form of - somewhat like a grey bowling-pin with brightly colored shapes rotating along its axis - abstract, but almost clownish and mundane, but still creeped me out in-dream far more than any actual article.
Bring your problems, worries, and knowledge gaps, great and small, and we will apply our communal knowledge to solving them - and try to recognize when we're committing the Typical Mind Fallacy.
It will likely help to write down some problems beforehand! Feel free to post them here as well, to get our thoughts going. If anyone is particularly eager to go first, they have priority - otherwise we will choose randomly, and if all goes well, continue working through others as part of future meetups. The format will be:
11/17, 7:00 PM, at the House with the Red Door, 2411 N Roxboro St, parking on Ellerbee. Hangouts, libations, and/or games to subsequently ensue in-situ or at Fullsteam!
More vivid dreams is common, and for some people the dreams are nightmares. (Not for me, though.)
I did have more vivid and "weirder" dreams, especially in the morning (perhaps memory bias), and a handful of them were quite disturbing, far from my norm. But, this lessened after a couple of weeks of off and on use.
I don't see what the rush for signing up for cryonics is all about.
My understanding is that while I'm young, accidents are the most common cause of death, and it's hard to cryopreserve someone after an accident & cryonics works much better if you die in a hospital. So being covered for cryonics isn't that useful when you're young.
Once you accept that premise, it seems like you're better off just putting more money in to your retirement fund or other investments in order to pay for your suspension when you're older. Putting money in your retirement fund has tax benefits, and you'll actually make money through the interest you earn rather than losing money to an insurance company. (Insurance companies are only profitable because they take more money in through premiums than they pay out, while the stock market has historically gotten decent returns, at least in the US.) I don't find Rudi Hoffman's reasons to fund your suspension through insurance very convincing.
As an added benefit, you can put off the decision of whether you want to go for plastination or not, whether you're wealthy enough for full-body Alcor as opposed to head-only CI, and maybe other things until you have more information about cryonics technology and how much money you're going to earn over the course of your career. (Another possibility is that the cost of cryonics will drop drastically and you'll end up with way more life insurance than you wanted.)
Even if signing up through insurance is marginally better, it seems like a relatively small optimization, and I feel like I've got much better things to do at this stage of my life.
(FWIW, an LWer friend of mine who is a finance professional with a history of achieving above-market returns did a fairly thorough analysis of this, factoring in the possibility of an early un-suspended death, and independently came to the same conclusion I did.)
I would like to hear rebuttals of this reasoning, since it is a big contributor to my current cryocrastination and choice-stress.
The other big contributor is the article (written by Rudi himself) which insists that the cost of the procedure will increase significantly in our lifetimes and thus encourages you to fund your insurance as much as possible, rather just up to the current coverage costs.
Is there a better term for this than anything usually associated with a cold and ruthless blood-sucking nocturnal killer?
That is possible, but I do not think that damaged bodies are any more likely to be last than they are likely to be first.
Why? It seems obvious to me that the first recovered bodies will be those that were frozen shortly before the recovery procedure was available, with the best freezing procedure at that time.
It seems to be pretty well decided that (as opposed to directly promoting Less Wrong, or Rationality in general), spreading HPMoR is a generally good idea. What are the best ways to go about this, and has anyone undertaken a serious effort?
I came to the conclusion, after considering creating some flyers to post around our meetup's usual haunts, that online advocacy would be much more efficient and cost effective. Then, after thinking that promotion on large sites with high signal to noise is mostly useless, realized that sharing among smaller communities that you are already a part of (game/specific interest forums, Facebook groups, etc.) might increase likelihood of a clickthrough, due to an even modest amount of social clout and in-group effect (as opposed to creating an account just to spam). And, posting (and bumping) is a very trivial inconvenience - but if you are still held back by the effort of creating a blurb, I'm happy to provide the one I used.
Here's something that my friend suggested, and which I've been finding useful:
One thing that helped me, when I was learning to keep the place clean, was the following suggestion: learn to take stuff to its place whenever you are moving around the apartment. For example, if you get off the couch to go to the toilet and kitchen is on the way, pick up a few dishes and drop then in the kitchen sink/washing machine.
Or if the bookshelf is on your path, pick up a book you are not actively reading and put it on the shelf.
It takes a few weeks to learn this, but once it starts flowing, it really reduces the amount of work you need to do to keep the place tidy.
Similarly, to remind myself to do stuff with an object, I put that object where I will find it when I prepare to go out.
If my hamper is full, but am going to bed or leaving for work, I just put the hamper in front of my door so I will remember to do it immediately when I get home.
I also put stuff I need to take with me next time I leave the house on top of my wallet (or my shoes, or hanging from my doorknob, depending on size).
Has anyone created anything like a flyer or advertisement (or even a simple Pitch) for HPMoR, optimized for increasing visits to the website?
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The willpower group, and terminal value exercise sound very interesting - Please share notes or write up articles about these (or if the stream ends up working, please share a link to the record)!