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C&H also had the 'duplicator' storyline (about cleaning rooms and going to school, IIRC), which was the OP but much more so.
I read a lot of C&H growing up, and looking back at it, I'm surprised at how many interesting ideas it contains. I wonder how much of my present self was shaped by having these ideas implanted at age 8 or 9...
In response to
More intuitive explanations!
Steven Strogatz did a series of blog posts at NY Times going through a variety of math concepts from elementary school to higher levels. (They are presented in descending date order, so you may want to start at the end of page 2 and work your way backwards.) Much of the information will be old hat to LWers, but it is often presented in novel ways (to me, at least).
Specifically related to this post, the visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem appears in the post Square Dancing.
I would say that for instance I don't believe that most alt med stuff works but this is exactly the reason I care that others know this and how we know this. This attitude infuriates me.
The fact is that there are many battles worth fighting, and strong skeptics are fighting one (or perhaps a few) of them. (As I was disgusted to see recently, human sacrifice apparently still happens.) However, I also think it's ok to say that battle is not the one that interests you. You don't have the capacity to be a champion for all possible good causes, so it's good that there is diversity of interest among people trying to improve the human condition.
The amount of worry and anxiety some people have in regard to their problems (say, health or financial problems) might not be healthy at all, and might lead to depressive moods. And yet, avoiding those problems by avoiding to think about them would be really bad.
Rumination and worrying are a habitual, unmindful and irrational type of thinking. They are just replaying cached thoughts, and that shouldn't even be dignified by being called "thinking". It's not good for depressed people, for anxious people or for anyone else. I absolutely agree that one shouldn't dwell on such thoughts. I'm just saying that instead of automatically stopping your thoughts, or doing anything automatically, one should have at least one good look at those thoughts and think. And I mean think mindfully, rationally and critically. I'm not saying one should necessarily think about the "problem", but rather about the thoughts themselves. Are they rational? How would I think about that if I weren't depressed? And no, don't feel depressed about being depressed or worry that you will never stop worrying ;-). Once that's done, you can let that thought drop, but not before.
Thanks for the clarification, I see what you mean. The distinction between repetitive, droning thoughts and actively reasoning about the problem makes sense.
In response to
How to label thoughts nonverbally
I think there is a real danger of avoiding unpleasant thoughts/feelings. You mentioned meditation. When I find myself thinking of something during meditation, I try to reestablish my focus and in the process I just drop the thought. I think that's correct during formal meditation, but dropping an unpleasant thought after noting it in daily life is wrong, as it leads to avoidance.
See the emotinal acceptance article that eugman linked to on why avoiding bad feelings is bad. If you feel sad because your dog died, just not thinking about it might be acceptable. But if you feel anxious because there is a deadline coming, ignoring the situation only makes it worse. If not-thinking is an automatic habit you can't distinguish between those two situation.
So the first thing to do after noticing that you thought something that makes you feel bad should be to not flinch away. If it's an irrational thought, dealing with it rationally probably keeps that particular thought from arising again for a while. If it's a rational and valid concern you should probably do something about it! If you can't (say, you are at work, so you can't do your taxes) you might feel bad, but I think not training yourself to avoid the problem is worth feeling a little bad (otherwise you might not do you taxes even when you are home).
I think eugman is more referring to negative thoughts that cycle through a depressed person's head on a regular basis. They're messages that remind you that you're a failure, you let people down, you're not going anywhere, and they play through your brain almost all your waking hours.
The negative thoughts you described are the ones that healthy people encounter in real, negative situations that must be dealt with. In that case, rumination is appropriate and finding rational solutions is desirable. But when your brain is essentially buggy and constantly replaying cached, (often incorrect or completely out of proportion) negative beliefs, it might be entirely appropriate to forcibly jump to another track instead of dwelling on it.
Put another way, in a depressed brain, rumination and focus on the "problem" is the default mode of operation. Sometimes it eventually yields positive solutions, but frequently it's more of a death spiral. Short circuiting that kind of process seems entirely reasonable to me.
Edit: Using the word "strategic" is probably misleading. Eliezer proposes a particular strategy - vote for someone you actually like, regardless of popularity or perceived likelihood of winning.
More to the point he rejects using "strategic voting" that is based off strategies for survival when votes are all public and retaliation is expected - where the consequences of the guy you didn't vote for getting in are far more serious than whether it is the guy you prefer. This is rejected in favor of pulling the rope sideways.
Are there any good examples of the long strategy working? Ron Paul seemed like a potential case of exactly that, and in 2008 he was rallying support on the internet and raking in serious political campaign contributions. He got a small chunk of the popular vote and raised the profile of libertarianism a little. However, a few years later the media have still apparently decided that he is unelectable and give him far less coverage than the "mainstream" candidates. (I'm not a Ron Paul fan myself, but he should appeal to the fiscal conservative base and he seems to be a man of integrity.)
It might just be that I disagree with him, but I find this post out of character for Eliezer.
My prediction: You did not read the post. Your reply only makes sense if I assume it is based off the one paragraph quoted - and then only if I pretend the quotes around "strategic" are not present.
i read it, and I disagree. I think it's irrational to expect everyone to do what he suggests, and it only works if everyone does it.
Edit: Using the word "strategic" is probably misleading. Eliezer proposes a particular strategy - vote for someone you actually like, regardless of popularity or perceived likelihood of winning. It's still a strategy, and voting is still a game. So the argument isn't really about whether or not to vote "strategically", it's about which strategy one should use.
In my original comment I argue for the meta-strategy of changing the electoral system to one that isn't as broken as plurality systems are. As well, I argue that it still makes sense given the current system to continue to vote for the least evil candidate who has a shot at winning.
In response to
[SEQ RERUN] Stop Voting For Nincompoops
It might just be that I disagree with him, but I find this post out of character for Eliezer. He argues against being strategic or using game theoretical approaches, which is surprising to me. How can that possibly make sense? Shouldn't I try to maximize the value of my vote given my expectations of the game I'm playing and the people I'm playing with/against? Essentially, I think he's arguing for an idealistic solution instead of a pragmatic one.
I guess I should admit that, in a perfect world, voting for whom you actually want, regardless of perceived popularity, might work well. However, it seems more important to me, having identified that the electoral system seems to consistently produce these kinds of results, to try to identify the problem. Is the problem really with the voters, or is it inherent in the structure of the rules?
What should democracy produce, ideally? It should produce election results that closely mirror what people actually want. It turns out that the plurality voting system, which we use in most places in the US, is well known to support a two-party stranglehold as a failure mode. It is very likely to produce an outcome which leaves most people unsatisfied. Why not work on fixing the system that produces this result instead of just hoping for everyone in the country to suddenly agree to play the game by different rules? (In San Francisco, we use "instant runoff" voting rules that produce an outcome more in line with what people actually want. Of course, it's not perfect.)
Essentially my question is, why would you insist that people shouldn't vote strategically, when it is clearly in their best interests to do so? If you strongly believe (for example) Rick Perry would be a threat to your well being, why would you go vote for a third party instead of doing your best to ensure Perry doesn't win?
What percentage of educated Westerners would you guess are to the right (as operationalized below) of you on economic questions?
Sorry, I find this survey terrible. I don't know how to answer most of the questions. Questions like the above require me to have more knowledge than I personally have (about the internal state of billions of educated Westerners). You are supposed to do this work for us by asking 5 to 10 representative questions with which we can strongly agree/strongly disagree, etc, and then use that information to categorize responders.
The way this survey is written I don't even feel comfortable submitting my response, because the percentages are wild guesses. Further, I don't even know what it means to be "left" or "right" on race and gender issues. Also, the categories in the first part contain multiple, sometimes conflicting labels. It's really hard to know how to respond to those, as well.
I say all this as someone with concrete political beliefs! If you asked me specific questions, I would happily answer them. But I'm not comfortable speculating about the political beliefs of people occupying an entire hemisphere.
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"UFO" has a colloquial sense that does, in fact, mean aliens (or trans-dimensional beings or what have you). I would posit that this is the sense of the word Eliezer used in the quoted text.