Comments by maia - Less Wrong

maia on Effective Altruism Through Advertising Vegetarianism?

2013-06-16T21:06:20.514976+00:00

Fair enough. I've never encountered it elsewhere, myself.

maia on Effective Altruism Through Advertising Vegetarianism?

2013-06-16T19:31:40.897130+00:00

I was vegetarian for a while in high school–oddly enough, less for reducing-suffering ethical reasons than for "it costs fewer resources to produce enough plants to feed the world population than to produce enough meat, as animals have to be fed plants and are a low-efficiency conversion of plant calories, so in order to better use the planet's resources, everyone should eat more plants and less meat."

Oddly, this sentence is more or less exactly true for me as well. Only on LessWrong...

maia on Rationality witticisms suitable for t-shirts or bumper stickers

2013-06-17T05:10:25.641845+10:00

So, you think it is bad for rationality to be a) strongly associated with a person's identity, and/or b) create a sense of exclusivity, or belonging to a group. Is that right?

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but... why do you think this is a bad thing?

maia on Rationality witticisms suitable for t-shirts or bumper stickers

2013-06-17T00:05:23.696315+10:00

I just don't associate T-shirts with religion as strongly as you do, I think.

This might be because I see a lot of people wearing nerdy T-shirts, or T-shirts associated with various interests/groups, like DnD, heir fraternities, or professional groups (chemical engineering society, etc.). From that perspective, having a rationality T-shirt just falls into one of those categories, and is therefore OK. It's just another medium that some people with certain interests use to signal to each other.

Like I said: do you see it differently? Are most of the T-shirts with slogans you see people wearing religiously-related?

maia on Rationality witticisms suitable for t-shirts or bumper stickers

2013-06-16T13:34:29.459884+10:00

People's brains might associate rationality with other concepts that are often seen on shirts, such as Jesus and Guns.

Oh no. We'd better stop writing in words. They might associate us with literate religious people.

Seriously though, do you live in a place where you see a lot of people wearing religious or gun-related T-shirts? I have only ever seen one person wear a T-shirt explicitly about Jesus.

maia on Rationality witticisms suitable for t-shirts or bumper stickers

2013-06-16T13:31:44.283946+10:00

I would think twice before concluding that they have decided that is beneficial.

I dunno. Brands can be a pretty effective status symbol. (That reasoning might not be explicit, though.)

maia on Rationality witticisms suitable for t-shirts or bumper stickers

2013-06-16T02:28:45.651054+10:00

I think this depends very much on your social circle and social goals. Wearing clothing with slogans on it is a high variance strategy: high attractiveness to a few people, low or even negative attractiveness to others. Wearing slogan-less clothing is more low variance; probably no one will object, but likely none of your responses will be as positive as the maximum positive response from wearing a T-shirt with a slogan on it. Both strategies can be useful, depending on what you are trying to accomplish.

Personally, I wear shirts with nerdy slogans on them, and anecdotally have had several positive interactions with people who came up to me to say "I like your shirt." (And I doubt I've lost much by turning people off.)

Also, I'm unconvinced that, in a casual context, wearing a shirt with a slogan on it is as negative as you suggest. I see people wearing shirts with slogans I don't get all the time, and I think I just ignore them, or occasionally ask what they mean (which rarely gets me very far conversation-wise, but doesn't cause me to dislike the person).

On the other hand, if you're trying to project an aura of Serious Grownup, it's probably a bad idea.

EDIT: Unless you're talking about shirts with controversial slogans, I suppose. That's even more high-variance, but again, in some contexts could still be a good idea. (I was thinking of things like "Engineering: It's like math, but louder.")

maia on Open Thread, June 2-15, 2013

2013-06-07T21:35:24.912815+10:00

Writing about things you are still learning would probably be a great idea, actually. It would likely help you learn them better (research shows that in peer-to-peer tutoring, the tutors benefit more than tutees). And you can always leave in placeholders that give you more to write about: "I don't know why this is yet, but I'm going to look it up and write about it later."

You might also have an unfair advantage, in that since you have newly learned it, you'll have a better perspective from which to explain it to people who aren't familiar with the material.

maia on A Viable Alternative to Typing

2013-06-07T09:10:05.643443+10:00

There are a lot of existing BCI hardware systems out there

Could you give an example/link? It never occurred to me that this might be something I could buy as of now.

maia on Open Thread, June 2-15, 2013

2013-06-03T04:47:17.093068+10:00

A very good point, and I've considered that. So far I have a very short credit history (I am young and haven't had much time to establish one), so the interest on the credit card I have is quite high and the limit is (relatively) low. There's some possibility I could borrow from my parents, but I'd prefer not to depend on that too much.