I found out I won second place in an idea contest at work and am being granted ~$400 to spend at Best Buy (the web site for any unfamiliar). Originally, I believe the second place prize was going to be an iPad, but it looks like they've decided to just allow me to pick something in that ballpark price range.

I suspect there are a fair amount of tech saavy folks on LW and thought I'd inquire as to whether you've purchased a device or accessory (or anything from Best Buy-ish stores) that has brought you an increase in efficiency, usefulness, pleasure, etc. The idea of a tablet appeals to me, but I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with it. Also, a data plan is not in my budget, so many typical uses are not applicable in my case.

Anyway, just hoping to probe some collective knowledge about this decision. I'm not very knowledgeable on devices and/or how longer term usage/satisfaction matches expectations or even money spent.

Thanks for any assistance!

Edited 3/4/2012: I shortened up the summary a bit and add the following update:

Thanks for the lively comments. As a preliminary summary of things I've found quite useful/helpful:

• Shorten/transform the document (David_Gerard)
• Remove/postpone any reasons (TimS)
• Don't be so prosy/fake sounding (orthonormal)
• Show to religious people, not just LW (AlexMennen) -- doing that, btw
• Give reasons (Will_Newsome)

It's almost one year later, and I've finally made tangible progress on some of the input suggested in my post about being non-religious in a primarily religious environment. That is, I have a near-final draft of a "coming out" statement I plan to share with a majority of those who know me.

I was involved in two religious communities for about six years of my life (SPO and CCR). Two years post-deconversion from Catholicism, many of them still do not know I no longer believe in god. This can make for awkward interactions for myself, as well as for my wife, who's still a believer. She thought it would be helpful if everyone was on the same page, as did I.

I just returned from buying a multimeter at Menards and wanted to post my thoughts while they were still fresh. I hardly ever have the need to use a multimeter. In diagnosing my non-heating microwave, I fried my 2-3 year old meter (don't ask) and went out for another to finish the job. I had many choices. I essentially went with the best of the lowest tier: $14. The next options were $35 and then $55.

I got to the checkout register and was waiting at the end of the conveyor belt ready to swipe my card when the cashier came over to me, stood very close, and in an almost confiding sort of hushed tone, said something like so: "With anything fragile like this, electronics and other things, you want to be careful. Check it out. Make sure it looks good and works. If it doesn't you just bring it back within a year and we'll replace it, no questions asked. Just two ninety seven."

Now, I believe as he said that last part, he was kind of walking back toward the register and I almost reflexively said, "Okay."

Once that word was uttered and I saw him then start doing something with the register, the words I heard all of the sudden registered. I recall thinking, "Oh! He was selling me a warranty of some sort." I grimaced internally but didn't speak up about it.

On my way out of the store, I was angry with myself and feeling very stupid. I wanted a cheap multi-meter. My $14 was now $18 after tax. Using it once or twice a year and then having it sit pristinely in my tool box isn't even worth the $3 insurance policy, especially since it was so cheap to begin with. I tried to catch myself and stop being angry; I thought, "No, let's learn from this situation rather than just feeling stupid. What in the world happened back there?"

Here's what I noticed about the interaction:

• There was a sense of trust built just in him approaching me so closely
• The affirmative and hushed tone conveyed both that he was something of an expert and that he was looking out for me, almost as if doing so against the wishes of "The Store."
• The lack of the use of a currency value ("two ninety seven"), saying it as he walked away, and not using the word "warranty" kept me from registering that all of that walkthrough was really about a warranty. I was also just a little off guard in general, as it just never occurred that he would have any reason to approach me. 
• Though confused in following his instructions, it felt like standard social protocol to reply in the affirmative ("Okay")
• Once I realized I'd definitely not understood, I felt too foolish to renege, and the low cost of staying with the default didn't help that impulse

I was very interested in the Rationality Boot Camp, when it was announced, but the practical limitations for someone with kids, financial commitments dependent on a full time job, etc. made it completely unfeasible. I'm still very interested in something like this and wondered if there would be any interest in a "night class" version. Perhaps webcast or broadcast live via something like skype or similar? (I guess I'm not sure if it ever happened, was cancelled, or whether it morphed or inspired the Rationality Minicamp which I know did happen.)

I see benefit in pre-committing to something organized, as my own desires to read everything LW has to offer have been only partially successful (lots of random articles here and there, and only a partial sequence). A commitment, especially one that I've paid for, will up the ante for failure. But... I just can't deal with the travel, time away from work/wife/kids, etc. all at one time for something like a Boot [Mini]Camp.

Are there any others who might find something like this beneficial?

Can anyone from the "teacher side" of the Rationality Camp speak to the feasibility of something like this? Any interest? What would the cost need to be to make this worth while? Would typical bandwidths allow for something like this?

I suppose another route would be to conduct another Boot/Mini-Camp and make the recordings available afterward?

I think in the end, it's the personal "tutor" aspect that I appreciate so much about something like this. There's something to the notion of a flesh and blood guide that really appeals to me. I could probably do the same by reading something and posting a million discussion posts on questions I have, but one who has mastered a topic just has the wonderful ability to explain it such that it finally clicks at which point all makes sense. Sometimes, without the ability to pester and prod, I can't get that with every LW post.

'Nuff rambling about this. Thoughts/comments/suggestions?

I'm about 2/3 through an apologetics book that was recommended to me, Menssen and Sullivan's, The Agnostic Inquirer, and was quite surprised to run into a discussion of Bayes theorem and wanted some input from the LW community. The book is quite philosophical and I admit that I am probably not following all of it. I find heady philosophy to be one of these areas where something doesn't seem quite right (as in the conclusion that someone pushes), but I can't always identify what.

In any case, the primary point of the book is to attempt to replace the traditional apologetics method with a new one. The status quo has been to appeal to "natural theology," non-theological areas of discussion which attempt to bring one to the conclusion that some kind of theistic being exists, and from there establish that Christianity is the true formulation of what, exactly, this theistic being is/wants/does, etc by examining revealed theistic truths (aka the Bible). Menssen and Sullivan attempt to suggest that revelation need not be put off so long.

I don't want to get too into it, but think this helps set the stage. Their argument is as follows:

(1) If it is not highly unlikely that a world-creator exists, then investigation of the contents of revelatory claims might well show that it is probable that a good God exists and has revealed.

(2) It is not highly unlikely that a world-creator exists.

(3) So, investigation of the content of a revelatory claim might well show it is probable that a good God exists and has revealed.

(4) So, a negative conclusion concerning the existence of a good God is not justified unless the content of a reasonable number of leading revelatory claims has been seriously considered. (p. 63)

Issues Menssen and Sullivan have with Bayes applicability to this arena:

Then they begin trying to choose the best method for evaluating revelatory content. This is where Bayes comes in. The pages are almost all available via Google books HERE in Section 4.2.1, beginning on page 173. They suggest the following limitations:

• Bayesian probability works well when the specific values are known (they use the example of predicting the color of a ball to be drawn out of a container). In theology, the values are not known.
• The philosophical community is divided about whether Bayesian probability is reliable, and thus everyone should be hesitant about it too if experts are hesitant.
• If one wants to evaluate the probability that this world exists and there are infinitely many possibilities, n, then no matter how small a probability one assigns to each one, the sum will be infinite. (My personal take on this is whether a literal infinity can exist in nature... 1/n * n is 1, but maybe I'm not understanding their exact gripe.)
• In some cases, they hold that prior probability is a useless term, as it would be "inscrutable." For example, they use Elliott Sober's example of gravity. What is it's prior probability? If such a question is meaningless, they hold that "Has a good god revealed?" may be in the same category and thus Bayesian probability breaks down when one attempts to apply it.
• There are so many components to certain questions that it would be nearly impossible or impossible to actually name them all and assign probabilities so that the computation accounted for all the bits of information required.
• If Bayes' theorem produces an answer that conflicts with answers arrived at via other means, one might simply tweak his/her Bayes values until the answer aligned with what was desired.

There seem to here have been a fair amount of meetups posted with no times, and then re-posted with added times or slightly adjusted wording. Perhaps Google Reader is the problem (how I follow the top-level), but not only are there a lot of meetups (which has been talked about quite a bit lately), but these changed post titles show up as two separate entities. (Example)

For planners, please think carefully when announcing your meetup and post the time and the title you want on the first try, if possible. Thanks.

Perhaps a standard title format could be proposed that handled such things?

Meetup: [City/State/Country] [Time] [AM/PM] @ [Venue]

Or something like that? This would have the benefit of helping planners not forget anything important, but might have the added benefit that if a future implementation of some sort makes a meetup page or auto-scraped list of happenings, a standard format will make this easier.

I've been reading through the sequences, and am currently working through the Intro to Bayes' Theorem (by the fact that I'm reading the Intro to Bayes (finally), you can tell that I'm pretty early in the process). It's been quite thought provoking. I'm finally getting questions right more reliably, and wanted to share one of the visualization tools that helped me, at least. There are many "applets" strewn about, written in Java, that help one to visualize what the various probability components are doing. In the mammography example, at least, an the idea of a sieve popped into my head as a neat way to think about what the test is doing.

I'm planning to take fairly extensive notes (more about that in a soon-to-come post), but thought I'd share a little "re-write" of that problem with a graphic in case it's of any use, and also in case I've blundered in my understanding. Re-writing things in my own words helps make them my own -- I realize that this is probably going to come across as really, really, incredibly, simplistic, but it's where I'm at!

In case it's not intuitive... it's supposed to show 100% of women broken into their measured partitions of 1% with cancer and 99% without. Those respective groups are then "sifted," and the known reliability of the sieve for each of those groups is used to determine p(cancer|test+).

I'm open to aesthetic critiques as well -- I enjoy making things like this and knowing how intuitive it is to look at is helpful. It didn't turn out how my mind visualized it, but I figured it was decent enough for a start.

This was made using emacs org-mode, LaTeX, and TikZ.

Update: per some comments, I tried to make things more clear in a redo. The original picture shown is HERE.

----- Click for bigger picture or download -----

Update: We're up to 9 participants. Per jsalvatier's suggestion, I have created a Google Group for this. It looks like we have 8-9 total, and the move toward finalizing groups and dates/times is now at the Google Group thread HERE.

I plan to ask if I may take meeting minutes for whatever group I end up in and report back on how it goes. If we have multiple groups, we could all combine notes afterward and give a summary. Perhaps interest will grow in this type of activity.

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There's been a decent amount of talk lately about whether or not people have read the sequences, the costs and benefits of reading the sequences before posting, bringing back the sequences, other formats of "sequence-intake," and potential exercises coming down the pipes.

In other words, it seems that many are still interested in the sequences.

I happen to be 1 out of about 19 who has not read the sequences. (Gasp!) I'm working on remedying that.

Something else that's been frequently discussed as of late is the importance  of  community (and the desire/need for it).

Well, something occurred to me that might be of interest: combining interest in the sequences with the need for community. I'm inquiring about interest to have video (or audio) online conferences about the sequences, particularly for "n00bs" like myself who may not have been through the sequences. I'm in the midst of Map & Territory myself and am currently working though the Intro to Bayes.

Is anyone in a situation where they'd like to read a chunk of these and then have an online discussion? No one seems to be near enough to meetup in Minnesota, so perhaps the "online" route might work for others physically isolated from LWers.

I can see some hangups for this: bandwidth, moderating/getting off-topic, law-of-diminishing-returns, etc. I'm thinking a group of 3-5 per virtual discussion might be best to start. Skype or some other protocol (iChat, jabber, etc.) should work for most people.

Lastly, while my initial thought was to have some post-processing discussion regarding specific sequences... I could also see this as being a neat idea for those with no meetup groups near them, like myself. I thoroughly enjoy discussing with others here, and suspect that even were the discussions not to be explicitly on rationality, it would be very enjoyable to "meet" others here, hear about their lives, share about mine, and discuss, say, goals in life, how we're applying rationality to daily life, etc.

Pretty much anything could go -- start a discussion post for a virtual meetup on a particular topic, see how many are interested in the comment thread, and then perhaps divide people into groups of 3-5 based on availability, time zone, etc.

So, what's the interest in this?

Obviously, also share critiques, pitfalls, objections, or whatever else comes to mind!

Edit/Update: Wow, not even a day later this has had quite the number of comments. Hopefully more will come in, but I'd like to thank those who have contributed so far. The suggestions that I think I'm really going to run with are:

• Finishing my "statement" (in progress already) and deferring to that when specifics are requested (Yvain)
• Have a suggestion of a convincing book or online article to which I can refer challengers (David Gerard)
• Reminding myself that I haven't eaten any babies, to date, and that questioning is/was okay (jsalvatier, RobinZ)
• Just try to avoid the topic (pretty much what I already do) (Risto Saarelma, thakil, MinibearRex)
• Focus on the point of a "quest" -- enough confidence to practically advance, not pursuing a question so far that no progres is made anymore or because doubt/uncertainty seems virtuous (Desrtopa, Vladimir_Nesov)
• Come to accept that since such a large amount of energy and time was invested in this particular belief system, the nagging I feel about my research into it might never go away/take some time to go away (beriukay)

I'd like to "honorable mention" a suggestion begun by James Miller that I could just pretend to believe for the sake of preserving relationships and social satisfaction. I see some merit to this but think it might have been based on thinking that my closer/est friends/wife didn't already know (they do). The comment made for some interesting comments, but I think I'd just feel like a phony and even more miserable if I were to really implement this suggestion for any extended period of time.

---

This issue has been negatively affecting me for quite some time and for lack of clear solutions on my own and knowing that some here have traversed the same stream, I thought I'd ask for help and suggestions. If you're interested, some background information about my story exists here, here, and here.

Background

For the sake of having at least some information here, the brief synopsis is like so: 

• In my middle school/high school years, I was quite insecure, attention-hungry, and had poor methods of dealing with emotional burdens. This manifested itself in highly addictive tendencies, specifically my use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana as often as possible. This led my parents to send me from my hometown of Milwaukee, WI to a twelve-step boarding school in upstate NY.
• After being there a year,  I ran away, broke into a house to get drunk, managed to find someone in a town seven miles away to get me high, and was found and captured after boarding school staff after two days. I underwent subsequent legal proceedings and was eventually sentenced to a mere three years of probation and a youthful offender status rather than a potential third degree burglary charge (and possible prison sentence).
• This rapid rebellion, breaking a serious law for a substance (something previously foreign to me), and apparent "fortune" of a sentence brought about a strong conviction that god had provided me with another chance to live a "good life" in service of him as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous whose purpose was to get to heaven and spend an eternity with him.

Yes, that last conclusion had some more contributing to it, but for the sake of brevity, just accept that this was my stance. Following the outburst and relatively minor consequence, it was almost like my "second chance" holy life was just waiting there to be lived. I had a renewed sense of purpose and ran with it.

I built the next seven or so years of my life completely around god and my Catholic faith. Much of this is covered in the link above to my blog, where I've written down a rough draft to my story. In short, I married who I did because of god/religion, went to the college I did because there was an extremely active Catholic outreach group connected to it, and a couple years ago even professed a lifelong commitment to a lay association of Catholic families who pledge themselves to live their lives with a common vision, attend bi-weekly events, complete [theological] education courses [taught by members of the same community], attend a couple of retreats together each year, and more.

Then I, literally out of the blue, a question popped into my head; I wondered whether other historians had written about Jesus. I googled the question various ways and was surprised/disappointed to find out that none had in the manner I expected. The rest is history. It's about 15mos later and I'm a non-believer.

What now?

I'm posting as trying to navigate the social implications of my deconversion has been quite difficult. My close friends were some of the first I informed, probably within a month. This community, however, is probably ~300 members strong. I know a lot of acquaintances via our [former] common religious beliefs.

I find myself quite fearful when I see these individuals. I'm afraid something will come up that will be awkward or that I'll be in a large-group setting and somehow a lot of individuals will find out about my non-belief at once in an "untactful" manner. Some of this is due to a sense of friendship -- if someone learns something more serious about my life, I'd prefer that it be from me.

A bit more irrationally, I fear how their opinions about me will be affected. I already think some think I'm "broken" somehow. In fact, I had a member of my former men's group tell me I was "crazy" (verbatim) when I told him it may very well be possible that some or all of the gospels were made up. I felt talked to like a small child by my men's group leader as a result of my non-belief. Heck, some might think I'm possessed by a demon. My wife and I turned our mattress a couple weeks ago and there was some sort of religious trinket (maybe a scapular?) under my side of the mattress on the box spring. She said someone suggested that it might be helpful...

I also find myself balancing between insecurity and anger. I'm insecure because I just plain wish I was more secure in my non-belief... yet I find myself looking back over my shoulder wondering if I've made a wrong turn in my reasoning, if I've simply pendulum-swung over to the opposite extreme as a result of my initial doubts, or if there's some remaining book that would answer my questions. I read mostly atheistic material, though I have read a couple books per the requests of those close to me. I've also been adding books suggested to my list. I admit, though, it's been far more rewarding to do woodworking than analyze the latest solution of the problem of evil. I guess I'd just say that it's been hard to "fully let go" and just walk away from my past belief, hence the insecurity.

On the other hand, I am easily angered in certain situations, perhaps resulting out of feeling insulted and addressed by hypocrites. Those around me want to know if I've read x, y, and z books by a, b, and c apologists. They want to remind me of how hard this is on my wife (who's still a believer). They would like to make the case for my wife raising our children as believers due to the incredible gravity of the future of their souls. And this all from, as far as I can tell, the comfort of ignorance of the theological/apologetical landscape. Some are fairly educated, but the average individual who would like to critique my path could not provide anything in the way of even a summary of the various topics and arguments involved when trying to answer the question of god's likelihood. That's frustrating.

What I'm looking for

• Have any of you been in a situation like this? How did you "come out." I think I may be approaching a time when this may be advised. It just might help me be more at ease if at least everyone knew. I've thought of writing up some kind of "cumulative case summary" and then making it widely available somehow. What did you do, primarily for the "acquaintance" types who were the last to know?
• I'd very much appreciate suggestions for dealing with my intellectual insecurity. How could I be more at ease? When can one rationally conclude that they've "done enough", at least for the present moment and apply their energies elsewhere? I've felt like this is such a large question with respect to one's "life framework" that I've pretty much been consumed with this one question because it seems like the answer would affect so much else going forward. Were it conclusively answered (or perhaps better phrased, could I be convinced that I'm aligned with the truth), it might be easier to pursue applying rationality to other areas of life (I also do this, but think much more biological CPU/RAM could be freed up).
  • The solution to this might honestly be that I just need to move on. While insecure about my justification, there is nothing insecure about stating my current state. I think god is quite unlikely, at least in the theistic sense. Perhaps the solution is to see that I'm irrationally favoring the prospect of certainty in this one area while ignoring the fact that there are tons of other areas I'm not certain about that don't even cross my mind in daily life. I'm not sure why this one bothers me so much -- perhaps the social aspect of it, recentness, and affect on daily living make it more acute?
• For those associated with primarily religious communities (still or in the past), do you have any suggestions about how to engage on-the-fly discussions? For example, I've thought than an elevator-pitch about my non-belief would be helpful... but I have found that previous conversations almost always degrade into pointless debate. How might I clearly express my stance while avoiding the pitfall of purposeless ruffled feathers? It's so darn natural for the conversation to flow like so: 
  • Me: "I don't believe anymore." 
  • "Why?"
  • Me: "Well, many reasons. Since you asked, one would be X."
  • Followed by extremely long summary of why X is, in fact, incorrect, list of apologists who've covered this topic, suggestion of a few older Christians this person knows that I should schedule time with, etc.
  • Me: I respond in any number of ways... perhaps saying that I might check out such a book later, or simply that I'm not convinced by the response.
  • "But didh't you hear? So-and-so covered this. The answer is already in his book! Also, from talking to Mr. X, he clearly knows his stuff an also agrees."
  • So clearly the conversation isn't going anywhere. It's like being asked for money to support a cause you just don't currently support, having your pockets stuffed with pamphlets, again stating that you just don't support the cause at the moment... and the person continues to stand in your way, palm outstretched for money as if you might instantaneously change you mind because of the pamphlets.

For my own part, I'd say that I need to do more work brainstorming through possible conversation paths, and especially identifying why this all bothers me so much. Or perhaps the latter is simply obvious -- I don't have any close friends anymore who think I'm rationally justified in not believing in their deity. In writing that out, I suppose that is a pretty heavy social hit to take. Even after having these friends for seven years, I'm more "at ease" talking with those at Minnesota Atheists meetups that I've only been attending about 1-2x/month for less than a year.

This ended up far longer than I expected. I knew that was a potential issue when I started it and tried revising some bits and pieces, but I think I'll leave it. For one, this is the discussion area and I'm not necessary trying to present a well-thought out proposal; this is a request for input, ideas, support, and especially suggestions from those who may have been through something similar.

Also, I have to say that writing this out is slightly like talking to the close friend I don't really have. Much of my "real feelings" about this whole issue are kept inside because I simply don't want to hurt those around me by expressing them or bringing it up. My relationships go far better when god just doesn't come up at all, or at least stays to "meta-discussion" like, "How's this all going for your wife and you?" vs. "Here's this new book you should read which will definitely prove you are wrong." As a result, my outlets for bouncing these questions and difficulties around are a bit limited.

I'm not sure what interest others will have in this, but I developed a spreadsheet-based time-tracking tool a bit back for a friend. He wanted to see where he was spending his time -- work, sleep, time with his wife, recreation, kids, etc. I used it myself for a while, too, and found it informative. I think the primary benefits of doing something like this are:

• Examining what you think you value compared to what you show, in practice, that you actually value in order to identify areas of improvement concerning time usage.
• Improve efficiency. Target an area, implement an reduction method, and see how your efforts track with time spent on that area.
• Self-policing. I found that just by tracking my time, I was able to reduce time spent in the "wasted time" category (stupid browsing, non-beneficial wiki-hopping, etc.), especially while at work being paid to do something else.

The spreadsheet is available HERE, and consists of three tabs, one for time input and two for statistics.