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Ok, I read through the Wikipedia entry, and yes. It has proven to be very helpful. Thanks.
Cannabis allows connections to be made between concepts which normally seem unrelated.
Which leads to the problem of thinking up connections between ideas that are actually unrelated. Creative, interesting, neat-sounding insights are not always true insights.
Also, I suspect that different brains respond differently to this kind of experience. I know that a friend of my parents' is a mathematician by profession and frequently smokes marijuana to "help his thought process." As for myself and the small amount of personal experience I have, the feeling of being high isn't an unpleasant one and can even be fun as an experience in itself, but the quality of my thought processes drops quickly and if I'm actually trying to accomplish any kind of specific goal, being high (or drunk) quickly becomes irritating.
I do think your idea might be valid in the sense that anyone brainstorming under the influence of drugs is likely to produce more ideas than someone who is sober. Even if a lower percentage of those ideas are useful, someone whose sober thinking process is rigid or self-censored, and who thus has trouble coming up with any ideas during a brainstorm, might benefit from a little de-inhibition.
At the Ohio meetup I speculated that marijuana may be useful for getting a higher score on creativity tests such as Guilford’s Alternative Uses Task.
I have not tested this idea, just speculated about it. For all I know, the experiment has been performed already.
and for the sake of completeness:
Thinkbest
Thinkbest is an evil cybernetics corporation from D20 Modern's Cyberscape sourcebook.
Decision Tree
Decision Tree Foundation.
How about 'The Decision Tree'?
The government security clearance manuals have documented what can be reduced to procedures and rules and whatnot. I know a guy who worked for the CIA a few years ago and he tells me the most trusted positions are the guys who do the security clearance evaluations. He said over half of them were Mormons. (Friend of a friend information is inherently untrustworthy.) One of the greatest spies in American history, James Angleton, was apparently paranoid to the brink of mental illness. It is generally a very difficult problem.
Upvoted for bringing up the intelligence community's viewpoint on trust. I would say we could find some very interesting research on trust from that area. I think that because the intelligence community seems to be adversarial to a large degree. The problem of the double agent or mole, for example, would very likely lead intelligence agencies to invest heavily in metrics of trust.
The last job fair I went to I looked into a career with the CIA. I found they have extremely strict rules on who they hire, up to and including personality traits like patriotism.
I hate breaking my routine. It makes me anxious, and I have to spend more energy motivating myself, and in general it’s hard. I tend to only depart from that routine when forced.
One of the most important things I consider myself to have ever done is break out of my routine. It is scarring in a serious and personal way, but it's necessary if you want to excel at anything you put your mind to.
Besides, what can guarantee that some catastrophe might break your routine against your will? Pre-empting the break is a way of ensuring that you've got a thick skin in case catastrophe strikes.
Thank you for this post! You have an unusually high level of introspection, and I haven't noticed any of the standard fallacious justifications anywhere in your story. Maybe you are naturally rational, that's why LW has not changed your life much. Or maybe it enabled you to write this excellent analysis of your feelings and motivations.
Would you consider yourself naturally rational, shminux? I am curious where you stand on the nature vs. nurture divide, particularly regarding rationality.
I assume you mean far-away-in-Indiana, not right-across-the-border, ten-minutes-away Indiana, yes?
Let us know if there comes a time you could work in a meetup. For example, if there was a weekend that you were visiting family in Cincy anyways!
NEW IDEA EDIT- Somewhere like Brookville, OH (north-west of Dayton) seems to be within an hour and a half of Cincy, Cbus, and Indy. How would you feel about that?
I think this would be great. I don't live in Columbus anymore, I live in Springfield, so Brookville is very close to me. I could show up very regularly!
I'm a first-year graduate student in Plant Biology at Penn State University. I just got married in August, and we live in a one-bedroom apartment with two cats. One of them is nocturnal and incredibly skittish; the other one is incredibly friendly and behaves like a dog in many ways. I like to rough-house with her. My wife and I met through swing dancing, which we continue to do intermittently. I studied martial arts for 8 years, but I am now trying to get into parkour. I enjoy wasting time with video games, so I try to limit that activity when I have important things to achieve. I used to play tabletop RPGs but don't have anyone to play with anymore. I consider myself pretty nerdy, but I try to be a charismatic one like Feynman. I'm writing this intermittently in class, so I've lost the flow and am going to end it really abruptly.
Fin
Feynman is a good one to try to imitate. Sagan seems like a good choice as well.
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First, thanks to lukeprog for posting this discussion post. The Ohio Less Wrong group has been discussing elevator pitches, and the comments here are sure to help us!
I often end up pitching LW stuff to people who are atheists, but not rationalists. I think this type of person is a great potential "recruit", because they WANT a community, but often find the atheistic community a little too "patting ourselves on the back"-ish (as do I). My general pitch is that Less Wrong is like the next step: "Yeah, we're all (mainly) atheists, but now what??"
Here's an example from a recent facebook comment thread:
Then I point them to Methods of Rationality, and hopefully now to our meetups.
I too am a member of the Ohio Less Wrong group. I was quite surprised to see this topic come up in Discussion, but I approve wholeheartedly.
My thoughts on the subject are leaning heavily towards the current equivalent of an 'elevator pitch' we have already: the Welcome to Less Wrong piece on the front page.
I particularly like the portion right at the beginning, because it grabs onto the central reason for wanting to be rational in the first place. Start with the absolute basics for something like an elevator pitch, if you ask me.
I might cut out the part about 'human brains' though. Talk like that tends to encourage folks to peg you as a nerd right away, and 'nerd' has baggage you don't want if you're introducing an average person.