At low status, your flaws are given prime focus and your assets, while acknowledged, dismissed as unimportant or countered with “yes, buts” which turn any positive trait into a negative. (...) If you are in a position where people emphasize your flaws and overlook your achievements, you have low social status (...). If the opposite is true, you have high social status.

A big part of the problem is that programmers are constantly trying to one-up each other (...) and prove their superior knowledge, drive, and intelligence. From the outside (that is, from the vantage point of the business operators we work for) these pissing contests make all sides look stupid and deficient. By lowering each others’ status so reliably, and when little to nothing is at stake, programmers lower their status as a group.

When we like our work, we let it be known. We work extremely hard. (...) This means the happy ones don’t get the raises and promotions they deserve (because they’re working so hard) because management sees no need to reward them, and that the unhappy ones stand out to aggressive management as potential “performance issues”. (...) we allow this “passion” to be used against us. Not to be passionate is almost a crime, especially in startups. (...) What most of us don’t realize is that this culture of mandatory “passion” lowers our social status, because it encourages us to work unreasonably hard and irrespective of conditions.

Executives, a more savvy sort, lose passion when denied the advancement or consideration they feel they deserve. (...) They want to be seen as supremely competent, but not sacrificial. (...) Executives are out for themselves and relatively open about the fact. (...) What executives understand, almost intuitively, is reciprocity. (...) They won’t fall into “love of the craft” delusions when “the craft” doesn’t love them back.

I believe there is an imporant lesson in this. I emphasise this part because it's not just "managers have it better than programmers", but it tries to explain why; what are the mistakes to avoid.

The core problem is probably the servant attitude: "I will do my best, and hope that my master will notice! And if he doesn't, then I will work even harder to show what a good servant I am!" This doesn't work, because it gives the master exactly zero motivation to do anything; he is already getting from you whatever he wants. What's the point of giving you more money or better working conditions, if in return you are going to do exactly the same thing you were already doing?

Your negotiation doesn't have to end at the job interview.

At work, I launched the project that I've been working on for the last two years, which deleted over 100,000 lines of unmaintained legacy code and I got promoted for doing so.

Have Two Screens

The only advice I feel qualified to give is this one. Having two screens is immensely better.

This is my point. This a hundred or a thousand times over. That story, and the story of Emily and Control, and all his posts about conceptual superweapons, and the non-central fallacy, and so on and so on for a hundred or a thousand nuggets of awesomeness. That is why I make my plea.

I put a check for $10,000 in the mail earlier this week. (That said, I don't believe my donation is available for the 3x Thiel matching, as I'm a preexisting large donor. Likewise, my employer will only match $1,000 of it, since they have an annual cap.)

In general, I'm much happier with MIRI/SIAI as an organization now than I've ever been in the past. I'm highly supportive of more public facing research and more engagement with the academic community. The workshops appear to be producing fantastic results, like the probabilistic logic paper, and I'm hoping to see more things like that.

Premise: Quirrell plays the game one level higher than Harry Potter.

Observation: This entire incident is uncharacteristically sloppy. Why were the unicorn corpses found? Why was Quirrell discovered?

Observation: Harry Potter is now really pissed off that herds of unicorns to slay aren't standard procedure for stable-izing people with life threatening injuries. He has just been given another "if only" to fixate on. It has been brought to his attention in ways that wouldn't trip his "why am I being told this" sense.

Father had told Draco that to fathom a strange plot, one technique was to look at what ended up happening, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.

Hypothesis: Reminding Harry that there were ways the wizarding world could have saved Hermione was the primary effect. Possible secondary effects may include impressing on Harry just how ridiculously powerful he is. Perhaps implanting the desire to save Quirrell into Harry's mind? Quirrell may not actually need the blood right now, though I suspect it doesn't hurt.

Survey Taken.

I'm going to channel gwern from last year: give us a question that allows us to express disaproval about the handeling of the basilisk.

When I was interviewed about Friendship is Optimal, there was a minor side discussion in the comments on the interview. The comments were nonspecific enough that I think it's OK linking there; I'm pointing out that this is not going away since this came up with no prompting on something that only mentioned LessWrong. That interview is from 3 months ago, nearly a year after Yvain rejected having a basilisk question on the 2012 census.

This is still an issue. It will continue to be an issue. The way forward through this issue is to have something linkable that suggests that "XX% of LessWrongers (dis)agreed with the handling of the situation," so that the next time (Xixidu / RW / some internet rando) mentions the situation, we can point out that what the majority of LessWrongers actually think. (The phrasing there obviously suggests what I think, but if the results come back the other way, that too is useful information!)

American; Explosions in the Sky released a new album/OST:

• "The Line on the Road that Lead You Back Home" (Explosions in the Sky & David Wing; Prince Avalanche OST)
• "Dear Madison" (Explosions in the Sky & David Wing; Prince Avalanche OST)
• "Send Off" (Explosions in the Sky & David Wing; Prince Avalanche OST)
• "Alone Time" (Explosions in the Sky & David Wing; Prince Avalanche OST)

Besides that, I ran into a chiptune album 'Fake the Bitters' by 8bit Betty and liked it enough to buy. I kept, in album order:

• "Everything Changes (prelude)"
• "Adventuring"
• "The Hedgehog's Dilemma"
• "Keep the Dream Alive, Lil' Red"
• "The MTA (a love song written by an avid cyclist after having been doored)"
• "Requiem For Pluto"

(Each is available on YouTube if you prefer to use their player.)

Japanese:

• "おかあさんの唄" (Takagi Masakatsu; Wolf Children OST)
• "オヨステ・アイナ" (Takagi Masakatsu; Wolf Children Original Soundtrack {2012}) [classical/instrumental]

I finished playing Umineko. The soundtrack is one of the strong points, and I wound up liking quite a few of the tracks; in alphabetical order from the game soundtracks ("Requiem" is from the anime, see the discography torrent):

• "Apathy"
• "Dead angle"
• "Discolor"
• "Dread of the Grave"
• "GC-01"
• "HANE"
• "Happiness of marionette"
• "Happy Maria utam"
• "Hope"
• "Hope v1.00"
• "Look Back"
• "Monochrome clock"
• "Moon"
• "Mother"
• "okuslowoke"
• "Praise"
• "Rebirth"
• "Requiem"
• "sirabe mx"
• "u2_nighteyes"
• "Victima Propiciatoria"
• "オルガン小曲第2億番ハ短調"
• "継接キメラ"

Doujin:

• "White Love" (TAK-sk & hiro.na; ぽっぷ！EP？ 2010) [vocal]
• "Komm Susser Tod", chiptune version (WE ARE (NOT) ALONE)

Touhou (version 17 of the mega-torrent is out, BTW), reverse order:

• "Sorrow of Chen" (Floating Cloud; Nersery Stories {C84}) [Celtic]
• "Koishi's Favorite?" (Floating Cloud; Nersery Stories {C84}) [Celtic]
• "Hopefull" (Floating Cloud; Nersery Stories {C84}) [Celtic]
• "Road to the moon" (Floating Cloud; Nersery Stories {C84}) [folk]
• "指先チョコレイト" (senya; アノ華咲クヤ {R10}) [vocal]
• "五重変奏「永夜の報い」" (RD-Sounds; 徒 {R10}) [folk]
• "空から見た人里" (O-Life Japan; 激写人妖録 {R10}) [instrumental]
• "竹取飛翔 ～ Lunatic Princess（2nd Spell -Fullmoon-より)" (xi-on; 東方志奏 Ex2 Spell -Regeneration- {R10}) [instrumental rock]
• "春の風は、まだ" (うっちー; 東方奏華響 ～Trip in Distance～ {R10}) [jpop]
• "春色小径 ～ Colorful Path" (あきやまうに; 東方心綺楼 ～ Hopeless Masquerade {R10}) [instrumental rock]
• "ALIVE!" (stack; REAL WORLD -to the beginning 01- {R10}) [jpop]
• "神さびた古戦場 ～ Suwa Foughten Field" (pizuya; 瑞雲 {R10}) [jazz]
• "厄神様の通り道 ～ Dark Road" (pizuya; 瑞雲 {R10}) [instrumental]
• "整然たる侵食" (taste; Blue Regret {R10}) [orchestral]
• "PK" (すぎやま & 松井庸; ultramarine {R10}) [instrumental]
• "Portrait" (松井庸; ultramarine {R10}) [postrock]
• "星降る街" (イチ; ultramarine {R10}) [vocal]
• "the spirit" (松井庸; ultramarine {R10}) [postrock]
• "change" (556t; Do not distract the eye in the here and now {R10}) [vocal]
• "mirror" (556t; Do not distract the eye in the here and now {R10}) [vocal]
• ときかけエオリア album (Foxtail-Grass Studio {R10}) [instrumental]
• "西行寺かな" (イワクラコマキ; FLOWERs:2 {R10}) [instrumental]
• "lunareclipse" (ほたる; Mindless Act {R10}) [vocal]
• "the Unleash" (Pizuyas Cell; _Clair de Lune {R10}) [drums & bass]
• "片頬ついて" (鯛の小骨; Cafe de Touhou 4 {R10}) [jazz]
• "Phantom Regiment 2013Remix" (Tokyo Active NEETs; BEST of NEETs {R10}) [jazz]
• "東方ウインナ" (Tokyo Active NEETs; BEST of NEETs {R10}) [jazz]
• "2 keys -Rock ReArrange" (cold kiss; Dancing Dollz {R10}) [rock]

Thanks very much!

I would also like to affirm that thread's claim that "if what you really want is ponies, the Truly Friendly AI will in fact give you ponies." ("Really want", of course, requires lots of unpacking.)