Enjoyable shivers down the back of the spine

First I heard that it might not be universal was someone's comment here a few days ago. Not sure if it's a mental or physical difference though.

I can't see anything immediately wrong with having an open thread where people can declare generalized Crocker's Rules and receive feedback. I'd encourage the 'actually declaring Crocker's rules' bit to lessen the risk that people will become offended (since we do happen to be primates.)

Talking about a norm in relation to this seems like a bit meta-off-the-deep-end. People can already declare Crocker's Rules if they want, and I don't really think we have a problem with a lack of critique in general.

Have you tried to see what Alcor.org might say? Such a practical primer seems like the sort of thing a cryonics organization might write. (Crazy, I know...)

A small, but common related occurrence:

When you are checking out at a grocery store, or sometimes at fast food joints, they'll ask you to donate $1 to charity. Of course it is some sub-optimal charity, but the looming discomfort of saying no factors in far more than it should. Plus, it is really hard to tell some random person "sorry, but the utilon-to-dollar ratio is insufficient".

It seems to generalize to a category of 1-of things that arise in social situations. You know it is sub-optimal to along, you know it would be uncomfortable to speak up, but (at least personally) you find it difficult to gauge the actual cost of doing so (in socialons), and wonder if you aren't just overthinking the whole thing - by which point, of course, the decision is already in motion.

I think you could have been clearer on when you're talking about physical sex and when you're talking about psychological gender. Are you advocating the elimination of psychological Gender Identity, or the elimination of Sexual Dimorphism?

As someone who has already successfully hacked himself to become Agendered, it is my belief that the former is entirely environmentally caused anyway, and a deep cultural change is what would be needed to address it. However, while I would strongly advocate seeking a future in which each and every individual can have exactly the body they want and not be judged for their preference no matter what it is (or at least no more so than people are judged today on the color of their clothing), I do not think making humanity less than it is by taking away one of its features is an acceptable solution to anything.

How to cryonics?

And please forgive me if this is a RTFM kind of thing.

I've been reading LW for a time, so I've been frequently exposed to the idea of cryonics. I usually push it to the back of my mind: I'm extremely pessimistic about the odds of being revived, and I'm still young, after all. But I realize this is probably me avoiding a terrible subject rather than an honest attempt to decide. So I've decided to at least figure out what getting frozen would entail.

Is there a practical primer on such an issue? For example; I'm only now entering grad school, and obviously couldn't afford the full cost. But being at a very low risk of death, I feel that I should be able to leverage a low-cost insurance policy into covering such a scenario.

Individually very minor, petty reasons, befitting a very minor, petty action:

1) It bored me.

2) Your research skills are very impressive and I'd rather them be directed towards CEV or the like.

3) Ugh field concerning this site and sex/dating questions.

4) There's no puzzle to it; you're not illustrating any broader methodological point or coming to any new conclusions, just acting as a clearinghouse for dating advice.

5) "A Rational Approach to..."

I'd estimate with high confidence that I'm higher than that. Subjectively, I've only met a couple of people in my life who seem definitely smarter than me. And I've barely met anyone who was malnourished or lacking in education. That said, there is the "everyone else is stupid" bias.

ETA: In case it wasn't clear from the outset, on the outside view, most people with this notion are wrong, and there's a recursive problem in justifying that I'm special. But intelligence tests, though imperfect, are a good hint.

This is great! I hope there's a big response.

It seems likely you're going to get skewed answers for the IQ question. Mostly it's the really intelligent and the below average who get (professional) IQ tests - average people seem less likely to get them.

I predict high average IQ, but low response rate on the IQ question, which will give bad results. Can you tell us how many people respond to that question this time? (no. of responses isn't registered on the previous survey)

I've been wanting to ask this here for a while: is there any (active or dead) discussion thread or article or something on the (rational :D) use of psychoactive substances? I've been very cautiously experimenting myself, and this is the only online community that I respect and whose goals seem to be inline with my own. There seem to be several exceedingly good reasons to partake, while all of the negative ones can be significantly mitigated with knowledge and precaution.

I'm a chaotic good, compsci undergrad doing research. Psychoactives haven't increased my research or programming productivity (yet); though the xkcd comic suggesting that alcohol may do so (http://xkcd.com/323/) seems to be true. It is very hard to ride that peak though.

I can make a small anecdotal contribution. Nothing in my life has had as profound an impact on my conscientiousness (i.e. fighting akrasia) as some of my more intensely positive drug induced experiences. This effect is typically profound for several days afterwards, and noticable for weeks. This is significant, for me at least, because akrasia seems to be much more limiting than my creativity or intelligence.