My understanding is that a USA programmer would start at the $20,000-a-year level (?), and that someone with experience can probably get twice that, and a senior one can get $100,000/year.

A pessimistic starting salary for a competent US computer programmer is $60K and senior ones can clear $200K. $100K is a typical starting salary for a computer science student who just graduated from a top university (also the median nationwide salary).

In the US market, foreigners come work as computer programmers by getting H1B visas. The stereotypical H1B visa programmer is from India, speaks mostly intelligible English with a heavy accent, gets hired by a company that wants to save money by replacing their expensive American programmers, and exists under the thumb of their employer (if they lose their job, their visa is jeopardized). I think that the average H1B makes less money than the average American coder. It sounds to me like you'd be a significantly more attractive hire than a typical H1B--you're fluent in English, and you've made contributions to Scheme?

The cost of living in the US is much higher than the Philippines. Raising a family in Silicon Valley is notoriously expensive. Especially if you want your kids to go to a "good school" where they won't be bullied. I don't know what metro has the best job availability/cost of living/school quality tradeoff. It will probably be one of the cities that's referred to as a "startup hub", perhaps Seattle or Austin. If your wife is willing to homeschool, you don't have to worry about school quality.

You can dip your toes in Option 1 without taking a big risk. Just start applying to US software companies. They'll interview you via Skype at first, and if you seem good, the best companies will be willing to pay for your flight to the US to meet the team. To save time you probably want to line up several US interviews for a single visit so you can cut down on the number of flights. Here are some characteristics to look for in companies to apply to:

• The company has a process in place for hiring foreigners.

• The company is looking for developers with your skill set.

• The company's developer team is "clued in". Contributing to Scheme is going to be a big positive signal to the right employer. You can do things like read the company engineering blog, use BuiltWith, look up the employees on LinkedIn to figure out if the company seems clued in. Almost all companies funded by Y Combinator are clued in. If your interviewer's response to seeing Scheme on your resume is "What is Scheme?", then you're interviewing at the wrong company and you'll be offered a higher salary elsewhere.

• The company is profitable but not sexy. For example, selling software to small enterprises. (You probably don't want to work for a business that sells software to large enterprises, as these firms are generally not "clued in". See above.) Getting a job at a sexy consumer product company like Google or Facebook is difficult because those are the companies that everyone is applying to. You can interview at those companies for fun, as the last places you look at. And you don't want to apply for a startup that's not yet profitable because then you're risking your wife and kids on an unproven business. I'm not going to tell you how to find these companies--if you use the same methods everyone else uses to find companies to apply to, you'll be applying to the same places everyone else is.

Of course you'll be sending out lots of resumes because you don't have connections. Maybe experiment with writing an email cover letter very much like the post you wrote here, including the word "fucking". I've participated in hiring software developers before, and my experience is that attempts at formal cover letters inevitably come across as stuffy and inauthentic. Catch the interviewer's interest with an interesting email subject line+first few sentences and tell a good story.

Actually you might have some connections--consider reaching out to companies that are affiliated with the rationalist community, posting to the Scheme mailing list if that's considered an acceptable thing to do, etc.

Consider donating some $ to MIRI if my advice ends up proving useful.

Is anyone from LW part of a high IQ society that's more exclusive than Mensa? Can you tell us what it's like?

Thanks for the links.

I do notice that the idea of trying modafinil does not result in the nearly the same degree of automatic internal 'no' as amphetamines. That would suggest my inhibitions are somehow related to the relative perceived potency, or potential health effects... or I'm disinclined to do something that could signal 'drug abuser', which I associate much more strongly with amphetamines than modafinil. Hm.

I've also been going around and asking the more conservative people in my circle about this situation as well, to try to give a more coherent voice to my subverbal objections. So far I've found that they actually support me trying things, which suggests I really should try to recalibrate those gut reactions a bit.

Upon reflection, I think I could actually get modafinil completely legitimately. I feel a bit dumb for not resolving to do this sooner, given that I was fully aware of modafinil- even to the point of very nearly purchasing some a while ago, before I knew it was schedule 4- and given that I was fully aware of what modafinil was often used to treat. At this point, the choice is pretty massively overdetermined.

Drugs are prescribed based on a cost-benefit analysis. In general, the medical establishment is pretty conservative (there's little benefit to the doctor if your problem gets solved, but if they hurt you they're liable to get sued).

The idea that doctors who describe Adderal to ADHD patients are conversative about prescribing it seems to be an extraordinary claim.

How many doctors do you think get sued for giving patients adderal?

There a lot of money from drug companies who lobby that drugs like Adderal don't get perscribed in a conservative fashion.

For a while now, I have been working on a potentially impactful project. The main limiting factor is my own personal productivity- a great deal of the risk is frontloaded in a lengthy development phase. Extrapolating the development duration based on progress so far does not yield wonderful results. It appears I should still be able to finish it in a not-absurd timespan, it will just be slower than ideal.

I've always tried to improve my productivity, and I've made great progress in that compared to ten or even five years ago, but at this point I've picked most of the standard low hanging fruit. I've already fiddled with some extremely easy and safe kinda-nootropics already- melatonin, occasional caffeine pills- but not things like modafinil or amphetamines, or some of the less studied options.

And while thinking about this today, I decided to just run some numbers on amphetamines. Based on my current best estimates of market realities and the potential success and failure cases of the project, assuming amphetamines could improve my productivity by 30% on average, the expected value of taking amphetamines for the duration of development comes out to...

...a few hundred human lives.

And, in the best-reasonable case scenario, a lot more than that. This wasn't really unexpected, but it's surprisingly the first time I actually did the math.

So I imagine the God of Dumb Trolley Problems sits me down for a thought experiment and explains: "In a few years, there will be a building full of 250 people. A bomb will go off and kill all of them. You have two choices." The god leans in for dramatic effect. "Either you can do nothing, and let all of them die... or..." It lowers its head just enough for shadows to cast over its features... "You take this low, safe dose of Adderall for a few years, and the bomb magically gets defused."

This is not a difficult ethical problem. Even taking into account potential side effects, even assuming the amphetamines were obtained illegally and so carried legal liability, this is not a difficult ethical problem. When I look at this, I feel like the answer of what I should do is blindingly obvious.

And yet I have a strong visceral response of "okay yeah sure but no." I assume part of this is fairly extreme risk aversion to the idea of getting anything like amphetamines outside of a prescription. Legal trouble would be pretty disastrous, even if unlikely. And part of me is spooked about doing something like this without expert oversight.

But why not just try to get an actual prescription? For this, or some other advantageous semi-nootropic, at least. Once again, I just get a gross feeling about the idea of trying to manipulate the system. How about if I just explain the situation in full, with zero manipulation, to a sympathetic doctor? The response from my gut feels like a blank "... no."

So basically, I feel stuck. Part of me wants to recognize the risk aversion as excessive, and suggests I should at least take whatever steps I can safely. The other part is saying "but that is doing something waaaay out of the ordinary and maybe there's a reason for that that you haven't properly considered."

I am not even sure what I want to ask with this post. I guess if you've got any ideas or insights, I'd like to hear them.

Academic Torrents site, for large scale database transfers

http://academictorrents.com/

http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-alternatives-to-library-nu

Scribd, Oyster, and Kindle Unlimited all give you a "netflix for books" type experience where you pay a monthly fee of about $10 and read as many books as you want (not newer books, unfortunately). (Kindle Unlimited might be better if you have a non-Kindle-Fire kindle device it will work well with, but since publishers don't like Amazon it will never have as good quality of a selection as the other two.) Your local library may also have ebook lending options.

BTW, if you want papers rather than books, this thread (actually, use this more recent one) may be of interest, esp. this site or this site or http://reddit.com/r/scholar or the #icanhaspdf twitter hashtag

Note when using libgen search engines, gwern writes: "I've noticed the Libgen search engines seem to have problems with long titles and/or colons" so you may wish to strip those.

Another cool site. reddit discussion of book piracy. List of LibGen mirrors. EBook search engine? Another list of sites. And another even longer one. Quora thread compiling sites. Another list.

I happen to be working on that at the office. Here is a snapshot of the opinion landscape (all from PubMed):

Iwamoto J. Vitamin K₂ therapy for postmenopausal osteoporosis. Nutrients. 2014 May 16;6(5):1971-80.

DiNicolantonio JJ, Bhutani J, O'Keefe JH. The health benefits of vitamin K. Open Heart. 2015 Oct 6;2(1):e000300.

Huang ZB, Wan SL, Lu YJ, Ning L, Liu C, Fan SW. Does vitamin K2 play a role in the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis for postmenopausal women: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Osteoporos Int. 2015 Mar;26(3):1175-86.

Falcone TD, Kim SS, Cortazzo MH. Vitamin K: fracture prevention and beyond. PM R. 2011 Jun;3(6 Suppl 1):S82-7.

Maresz K. Proper Calcium Use: Vitamin K2 as a Promoter of Bone and Cardiovascular Health. Integr Med (Encinitas). 2015 Feb;14(1):34-9.

Hamidi MS, Cheung AM. Vitamin K and musculoskeletal health in postmenopausal women. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2014 Aug;58(8):1647-57.

Stevenson M, Lloyd-Jones M, Papaioannou D. Vitamin K to prevent fractures in older women: systematic review and economic evaluation. Health Technol Assess. 2009 Sep;13(45):iii-xi, 1-134.

Fang Y, Hu C, Tao X, Wan Y, Tao F. Effect of vitamin K on bone mineral density: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Bone Miner Metab. 2012 Jan;30(1):60-8.

Vermeer C, Theuwissen E. Vitamin K, osteoporosis and degenerative diseases of ageing. Menopause Int. 2011 Mar;17(1):19-23.

Azuma K, Ouchi Y, Inoue S. Vitamin K: novel molecular mechanisms of action and its roles in osteoporosis. Geriatr Gerontol Int. 2014 Jan;14(1):1-7.

Hamidi MS, Gajic-Veljanoski O, Cheung AM. Vitamin K and bone health. J Clin Densitom. 2013 Oct-Dec;16(4):409-13.

Shah K, Gleason L, Villareal DT. Vitamin K and bone health in older adults. J Nutr Gerontol Geriatr. 2014;33(1):10-22.

Iwamoto J, Takeda T, Sato Y. Menatetrenone (vitamin K2) and bone quality in the treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis. Nutr Rev. 2006 Dec;64(12):509-17.

Pearson DA. Bone health and osteoporosis: the role of vitamin K and potential antagonism by anticoagulants. Nutr Clin Pract. 2007 Oct;22(5):517-44.

Gundberg CM, Lian JB, Booth SL. Vitamin K-dependent carboxylation of osteocalcin: friend or foe? Adv Nutr. 2012 Mar 1;3(2):149-57.

Bügel S. Vitamin K and bone health in adult humans. Vitam Horm. 2008;78:393-416.

Booth SL. Vitamin K status in the elderly. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2007 Jan;10(1):20-3.

Shea MK, Booth SL. Update on the role of vitamin K in skeletal health. Nutr Rev. 2008 Oct;66(10):549-57.

Iwamoto J, Sato Y, Takeda T, Matsumoto H. High-dose vitamin K supplementation reduces fracture incidence in postmenopausal women: a review of the literature. Nutr Res. 2009 Apr;29(4):221-8.

Iwamoto J, Matsumoto H, Takeda T. Efficacy of menatetrenone (vitamin K2) against non-vertebral and hip fractures in patients with neurological diseases: meta-analysis of three randomized, controlled trials. Clin Drug Investig. 2009;29(7):471-9.

Iwamoto J, Sato Y. Menatetrenone for the treatment of osteoporosis. Expert Opin Pharmacother. 2013 Mar;14(4):449-58.

Cranenburg EC, Schurgers LJ, Vermeer C. Vitamin K: the coagulation vitamin that became omnipotent. Thromb Haemost. 2007 Jul;98(1):120-5.

Guralp O, Erel CT. Effects of vitamin K in postmenopausal women: mini review. Maturitas. 2014 Mar;77(3):294-9.

Yes, Muflax's site is the one I was thinking of. Sad that they deleted it, it had some very good articles on it as I recall.

I have spent 9 years writing texts about x-risks prevention. I spent a lot of money on it and lost a lot of business opportunities. I have been cheated all the time, in business, relationship and even science field. I have been humiliated in sexual field many times. I thought about suicide even I consider it impossible because of quantum immortality.

I thought to stop doing it many times. Nobody reads my texts and even if some one is reading it has zero influence on total probability of extinction.

But... I just return to my computer and continue to work on the texts in mornings, and try to have parties in evening. In fact solving complex intellectual problems provides me with consistent many hours pleasure. Relationship thing do the opposite.