I'd like to see clearer in the issue of narcissism in the broader, not strictly in the clinical definition sense. It often argued that it is a typical problem in the current age. Lot of young people believe their parents are. But outside the typical stereotypes of narcissism, such as having flashy looks, in the broader sense, even something like being shy can be interpreted as a form of narcissism, as extreme self-consciousness, extreme self-awareness, thinking everybody is looking at you, in a disapproving way.

Can anyone recommend an article or ten to sort it out a bit? First of all I would like to see some borders drawn, beyond the clinical definition, what levels of self-consciousness or self-importance (even if it is in a negative, shy, low self-esteem way) are considered unhealthy, how to spot the narc and how to figure out you are one or not: again, focusing more on the less obvious, shy-type, insecure type narcissism, not the so obvious having 1000 Facebook photos in the most fashionable clothes possible type.

Another thing I would be interested in is social media. Are Facebook or Reddit engines for gaining narcissistic supply? Am I right when my narc detectors are buzzing when I see people brag about a good deed as trival as helping a dog clean himself, coming accross as a very insecure "look at me I am a GOOD GUY please validate me!" message?

Can someone recommend articles to sort it out (or has interesting in-depth opinions) ?

• Project Nim:

  Thorough documentary on a 1970s scientific project in raising a chimpanzee as a human to get it to sign true language. The project was very well documented with photographs and footage, so with all the archival footage and retrospective interviews, we get a vivid sense of Nim and the people around him. Specifically, we get a vivid sense of everyone involved as having absolutely terrible judgment and the people involved as fanatical nurturists - why on earth would anyone expect such a thing to work? Why would chimpanzees have evolved true language when they never use that in the wild, and why would you expect any sort of objectivity from the involved personnel? Early on, the daughter of the foster-mother comments that "It was the '70s!"; which does explain a lot.

  It goes about as terribly as one expects: there is bitter infighting over who is Nim's 'real' parents, the footage of Nim 'signing' is quite weak (I know a little ASL myself, and I was deeply unimpressed by what we see Nim do - the teachers' claims about Nim communicating seem to be a hefty heaping of anthropormorphizing, reading into random gestures, and wishful thinking; a nice example of which is how one male teacher comments how Nim loved to play with cats and would "quiver" with excitement holding it, while later on, we see this 'quivering' is actually Nim trying to dry-hump the cats, and they eventually are taken away lest he kill them). As Nim gets bigger, it's less that he became human than his caretakers became chimpanzee: the original foster-mother and the new female teacher compete for who can play with and supplicate Nim the most, and Nim successfully dominates the two men involved while the women applaud and enjoy the dominance contests. (The project lead, Terrace, comments at one point that most of the staff turned out to be women.) The film-makers seem to try to draw a parallel by noting that Terrace slept with the first foster-mother before the project started and with one teacher during the project, but it doesn't work too well since Nim clearly won their hearts long-term. Unrestrained, with no other males to keep him in check, it predictably starts going all wrong - the female teacher in question recounts how Nim put ~100 stitches into her (I counted her enumeration), and then the project shuts down after he tears open her face.

  After which, of course, he goes back to the primate colony. The documentary & people lay it on thick how Nim is being terribly treated in this, but they're so compromised that it's impossible to take them seriously; I was baffled when they described him being sedated, to transport him safely back to the colony in a plane as quickly as possible, as being "a nasty thing to do. Very deceitful." Seriously‽ A growing male chimpanzee nearly killed his closest caretaker and that is your reaction to an entirely sensible measure, a completely irrelevant concern about deceitfulness, as if Nim were some sort of athlete whose competitor cheated? Similarly, a big deal is made of the locked collars on the chimpanzees at the colony... which turn out to be on the chimps so if one starts trying to chew your face off, you have a chance to defend yourself by grabbing the collar and holding them off.

  While at the primate colony, Nim's minimal signing skills seemed to degrade even further and the primates eventually start being used in medical experiments; rather than take it seriously and ask whether the medical experiments were scientifically & medically useful, the documentarians choose to simply show decontextualized injections. (With an approach like that, routine operations in a hospital would look like ghoulish crimes against humanity...)

  Finally, Nim winds up at a horse-rescue farm, where as a reminder of why Project Nim had to be terminated, we're told how he casually killed a dog one day and how, when the original foster-mother visited she, apparently still under many illusions, enters the cage to visit him and is attacked (one interviewee commenting, "The fact that he didn't kill her meant a lot, 'cause he could have." I see.)

• The King of Kong: fascinating in part because the stakes are so low, and the skullduggery so calculated; the access of the filmmakers to key players is so thorough that at times you're given a god's-eye point of view and it feels fictional (eg when you watch both sides of a telephone conversation happen).

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. -- Phil Karlton

Without focusing on the first problem, is there a path to get better at naming things?

Do you have experiences to share where you think you improved on the skill?

Exercises to recommend?

Books and articles to recommend?

One of the ongoing patterns in HPMoR is how certain spells require people to believe certain things or to be in certain emotional states. Harry can perform partial transfiguration because he actually believes in timeless physics. Harry can cast Patronus 2.0 because of his beliefs about life and death. Avada Kedavara requires hate (or indifference).

I see no references to the conversation between McGonigal and Quirrell. "Professor Quirrell made a sharp gesture, as though to indicate a concept for which he had no words." McGonigal reacts. That there is a concept that these two characters know of, but have not actually explained to the reader. I expect this to play a part in the grand finale.

Almost everything related to Quirrell is related to death. There are simply too many instances to list exhaustively; this is just things that immediately come to mind. Voldemort was all about death during his reign; "mort" is in his name. He talks about stars dieing on multiple occasions. He brings the dementor to Hogwarts. He brings Harry to Azkaban. Hermione. Unicorns. The actual outcome of the conversation above that I linked to is that McGonigal whispers to Harry, "I had a sister once," and then leads to Harry going on his field trip with Lupin, which is about the Peverell brothers, which is about death. He has made his own wasting away prolonged and visible. Over the last few chapters, he has done certain things that would be counterproductive if his goal was to merely obtain the philosopher's stone.

My final prediction: Everything in the last few chapters which shows him being a sloppy carton villain is a ruse, is being done deliberately to manipulate Harry. Quirrell plays the game One Level Higher Than You. Quirrell's plot is to manipulate Harry into a certain mental state, which is directly related to the gesture he made to McGonigal, which is one of the major unresolved questions.

As to what end, there I am slightly hazy. My roommate believes that Methods is a retelling of The Sword of Good, and that Quirrell is at minimum the antivillian seeking positive utilitarian gains, possibly by vanquishing death. I think that's likely but am not confident enough to bet on it.

While we are at it, where are the Deathly Hollows? Quirrell took the Cloak of Invisibility. I presume that he has the Resurrection Stone if he's plotting something related to death. As far as I know, Dumbledore has the Elder Wand. Hey, didn't Quirrell say that he had a plan to defeat the Headmaster if he showed up?

The obvious question is, why did Quirrell cause Harry to believe that Quirrell is Voldemort? As a background assumption, Quirrell plays the game one level higher than Harry. Quirrell is able to model people very accurately, and has recently been uncharacteristically sloppy. Quirrell is also obviously prepared for Harry to figure this out (gun, smile, etc.), and I would think it likely that he could craft a plan so that he would successfully avoid suspicion, so I'm expecting that Harry believing that Quirrell is Voldemort is part of the plan.

What's his game?

The only thing that comes to me instantly is that Harry is now more likely to just accept whatever Quirrell villainously monologues next as true. I'll note that people are already accepting this as some sort of confirmation that Harry is Tom Riddle. CONSTANT VIGILANCE, PEOPLE! All we have seen is Quirrell say "Hello, Tom Riddle," to Harry!

Vitalik Buterin mentions LW in his latest, On Silos:

I consider economics and game theory to be a key part of cryptoeconomic protocol analysis, and consider the primary academic deficit of the cryptocurrency community to be not ignorance of advanced computer science, but rather economics and philosophy. We should reach out to http://lesswrong.com/ more.

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Politically, the traditional left is broadly correct.

Vitalik Buterin, one of the guys behind Ethereum, talks about the positives and negatives of futarchy, and how digital autonomous organizations (corporations that live on the blockchain) could use them as a system of governance.

Sent a check for $15,000.

I'm glad to see that publishing the Sequences is being prioritized. LessWrong is, sadly, dying and I'd love to have a published, edited version of Eliezer's original work that I can send to people.