If I am the only agent in my circle of knowledge, I want to believe so.

I aspire to model myself as the only "agent" in the system, kind of like Harry does in HPMOR (with the possible exception of Professor Quirrell). I'm the one whose behavior I can change most directly, so it is unhelpful (at least for me) to model circumstances (which can cause a dangerous victim mentality) or other people as agents. Even if I know I can make an argument to try to change another person's mind, and estimate I have a 50/50 chance of success, it is still me who is making the choice to use Argument A rather than Argument B.

In terms of an NPC/PC distinction, anyone whom I have the ability to reliably model accurately is an NPC to me, and the PC's are everyone else. Both have moral value to me, though people I consider PC's are obviously more interesting for me to hang out with. (Almost) Everyone's a PC to someone, though, so I definitely don't hold it against the people I consider NPCs.

For an example, I consider all three members of my immediate family (my younger sister, my father, and my mother) NPCs. They are all fervent evangelical Christians and that constrains their behaviors significantly. Nonetheless, spending time with them (well, sometimes) evokes positive emotions from me, and I happily do chores for them.

I thought quite a bit about how to measure whether I'm good at Salsa dancing on a particular night. I haven't found a measurement that's adequete.

I could use a measurement like: "How close do woman dance with me?" If a woman enjoys dancing with me she's likely to dance closer than if she doesn't. If I'm however measure my dancing skills on that variable I'm likely to dance with some woman in a way that to close for them and makes them uncomfortable.

I could use a metric just as counting how often a woman asks for my name. If I'm however using that metric I probably won't be the first to ask for a name to increase the chances that the woman asks on her own.

If I'm using a metric such as being asked by woman to dance, I'm less likely to ask on my own.

If I would hand a woman a sheet after a dance to rate my dancing, I would probably be seen as strange.

The average business school grad probably isn't doing very much Quantified Self on his own life. He doesn't know much about actually measuring what he cares about.

Women are not going to enjoy dancing with me more when I try to intellectual control their enjoyment by having a tight feedback loop about some proxy variable that I use to measure their enjoyment. It just doesn't work that way.

On the other hand, if I'm empathic, if I'm in a happy mood and get outside of my head I'm more likely to have success in making woman enjoy dancing with me.

The idea that being in your head and being focused on specific measurements is the only way to care is just flawed.

It can't be easy to adapt Reddit code to run like users here demand. Kudos to Matt et al at Trike Apps for the time and effort on having this site looking smart, working and improving the world.

It's interesting, but it assumes that human desires can be meaningfully mapped into something like a utility function, in a way which makes me skeptical about its usefulness. (Though I have a hard time articulating my objection more clearly than that.)

I don't see the value in creating a new group. It probably makes more sense to use the existing one where people who are experienced in polyphasic sleep participate: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/polyphasic

I generally prefer the more direct {lesson, evidence}. I have on several occasions thought that Luke has implemented this well.

But - I think we have evidence that EY is a particularly good writer of narrative. While also getting the content across. The epiphany hit is pretty sweet too.

Embedding lessons in stories (like the Blue and Green) makes the mind labile to their content and makes it easier to hang on to the memory and to retell to others. I imagine it comes at the cost to extra thinking and writing time to package lessons so.

Is that cost worth the marginal effort? I'm pretty sure the answer is 'sometimes'.

I generally prefer the more direct {lesson, evidence}. I have on several occasions thought that Luke has implemented this well.

But - I think we have evidence that EY is a particularly good writer of narrative. While also getting the content across. The epiphany hit is pretty sweet too.

Embedding lessons in stories (like the Blue and Green) makes the mind labile to their content and makes it easier to hang on to the memory and to retell to others. I imagine it comes at the cost to extra thinking and writing time to package lessons so.

Is that cost worth the marginal effort? I'm pretty sure the answer is 'sometimes'.

Related: math.ucla.edu/~scp/publications/mortality.PDF

Has anyone tried e-cigarettes as a method to quit smoking or at least ameliorate the effects of smoking?

I smoke about a pack or two a week (3 a day minimum, sometimes binging once a week) and would like to reduce that in order to increase my chances of living longer. Anyone have experience they can share?