What if you put little electricity-generating windmills on top of an electric car. Could they produce enough electricity to help propel the car, or would the energy produced be counteracted by the drag added?

Take a video of me saying something along the lines of:

The current datetime is $whenever [ideally verify this with a clock in a public place], I'm not under duress, but I expect to die soon and for someone else to wake up in this body. You are that person. I'm trying to send you a message, but I expect other people to try to also send you messages pretending to be me. The sha256 hash of my message is $hash.

Here is a sample of your blood. You have a cut on your finger and no other recent injuries. If you do have other recent injuries, this communications channel may not be secure.

Then still (on video) cut my finger and put some blood in a glass vial. Put the video, the vial, and the message in a package and post it to myself.

I don't know how they would verify that that's their own blood, but my guess is that it can be done for a couple of hundred dollars.

My guesses

Common reasons:

• Feel pressure to be smarter and more successful. Could be internal or external.

Less common reasons:

• Poisoned by ambition.
• Trouble finding people smart enough that they could talk to and/or have a real relationship with (could refer to friend or romantic).
• Frustration with other people's stupidity.

Other possibilities:

• Stress that comes with overfocus on self-improvement + more awareness and frustration with flaws.
• Troubled by the suffering and unfairness in the world.
• Troubled by unanswered questions they have.

I don't drink (or do drugs or smoke). I've never tried drugs or cigarettes, and I've only tasted alcohol, never had a full drink.

I don't enjoy the taste of alcohol at all. The "alcohol aftertaste" is pretty unpleasant to me. And the one time I had a moderate amount of some type of harder alcohol (I lost a bet) I did not enjoy that warm/burning feeling in my stomach at all.

As for my palate, I'd rate my tolerance for spice at about a 3/10 and my tolerance for sour/bitter at about a 6/10. The sour/bitter is harder to judge - I love lemon and lime, but I don't like coffee at all. Well, I actually sort of like the taste of coffee, but only when it's part of one of those milk shake things. Any type of regular coffee with cream and sugar had been too strong for me.

As for the drinking/drugs thing though, another big reason why I don't do it is social/personal.

Social

The "alcohol environments" I've been exposed to have largely been American high school and college. People in this environment tend to be stupid and wild when they drink, and I don't find that fun.

Furthermore, they also seem to start acting immorally. For example, my freshman year of college, all the guys on my dorm floor were pretty close and really friendly with one another. They were a fun and relatively interesting group of people, and I enjoyed their company. When they drank, I actually still often had fun around them, but not always. One time some guys came back from some party with a huge wooden table, and were laughing and bragging that they stole it. Everyone around me was drunk and found it hilarious, seemingly because it was so random and weird. I was appalled. I don't find theft to be funny.

Also, a lot of drinking seems to happen in party/dancing environments, which I find myself moderately uncomfortable in. I also don't find those environments fun because of the noise and crowdedness (I'm a bit claustrophobic). Tim Urban does a good job explaining why these environments are so unpleasant, and I share his feelings.

Personal

There do exist more relaxed and sensible environments where people drink, so my complaints above don't explain why I don't drink in these environments (other than the fact that I don't like the taste, but let's put that aside for now).

The reason why people drink in these environments seems to be because it's a "social lubricant". Ie. it makes them uninhibited, and they could have more fun when they're uninhibited. But what does this actually mean?

Well, it means that a) there are thoughts they enjoy expressing that they're too afraid to express when they're sober. And/or b) there are behaviors they enjoy performing that they're too afraid to perform when they're sober. In other words, if you diff "things I say when I'm sober" with "things I say when I'm drunk", it returns something. And if you diff "things I do when I'm sober" with "things I do when I'm drunk", it also returns something.

Some of the things that turn up in the diffs are desirable. For example, it's probably a good thing that being drunk makes you silly, because being silly is fun (for some people; not me). But you don't want to be silly at work or when you go to the super market.

However, I think that a lot of the things that turn up in the diff are a result of you not being comfortable with yourself, and I think that this is undesirable. For example, people generally are uncomfortable talking to new people, especially when you have to do the initiating. Alcohol, being a social lubricant, can facilitate this and lead to a good time.

But to me, this feels very much like admitting defeat. The way I see it, if I'm afraid or ashamed to do something, there are two possible reasons why:

1) I'm ashamed about something that I should be ashamed about.

2) I'm irrationally afraid/ashamed to do something.

In case 1, I think I should fix it. I don't think it makes sense to be ashamed about anything you can't fix. From that it follows that the things I'd be ashamed about are fixable, and it's my feeling that "thus I should fix them".

In case 2, I think I should overcome these irrational feelings.

I don't think this philosophy of how to handle cases 1 and 2 is perfect though. I used to take it pretty literally, but I've since realized that it's unreasonable to think you could fix all the irrational feelings your brain produces. So as far as drinking goes, I'll give it a fair shot some time, but so far I haven't been motivated enough to do so.

Also, this approach to handling cases 1 and 2 is something I apply to life in general, not just to drinking. I try to never hide anything (that's why I use my real name everywhere on the internet) and I'm comfortable answering pretty much any sort of personal question (so AMA!). And even when I'm not comfortable, I try to do it anyway. It's my way of facing the truth. After all:

What is true is already so.

Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.

Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.

And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.

Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.

People can stand what is true,

for they are already enduring it.

Update: After reading Eliezer's Facebook post on doing things to make sure you're not falling victim to the bias towards self-consistency, I decided to go out and drink a beer. I thought it tasted awful and I had to force myself through it. I think I experienced some sort of buzz though. But definitely not nearly enough to outweigh the bad taste.

I drink fairly regularly. It makes social gatherings more fun. I have some rules for drinking: only drink at social gatherings and only drink an amount that does not impair my ability to operate the next day.

I think a good example of defeating the villain and not actually making things better can be seen in many of the Arab Spring revolutions, especially Egypt. It was the most stable country in the Middle East for decades, though it was ruled by a dictator. Egypt got rid of Mubarak, but the movement that did it had no kind of coherent plan for how they were going to create a stable democracy afterward. And now Egypt is a decidedly worse place to live than when Mubarak was in charge.

In descending order of importance:

1. Instrumental rationality.
2. How to actually practice becoming more rational.
3. Rationality via cluster thinking and intelligent imitation.

1) check that its locked, then write a reminder, note, etc in your phone that you locked it 2) If you say "That sounds really interesting, let me write that down so I remember to look it up later" that's not rude at all, its showing you're actually interested in what he's saying. 3)Put a giant yellow sign on the front that says 'check that I'm closed!' 4)If possible put it down on paper or in your phone. If not then make up a ridiculous story using the street names and turns, such that the non-sequitur helps you remember. 5) write up an outline of key points and memorize those, helping yourself remember them by creating an acronym from the letters that begin each point, so you'll be able to check whether you're about to skip one. 6) splitting it into three number chunks before memorizing it would help a lot, I think 7) I just get up, I've given up on this one. 8) Random associations, between firms and names and names and people would be my suggestion. 9)Read the book. Anki. Take a class on the same material while reading a different book on the same material. It worked for learning huge amounts about molecular biology in a short time for me.

This post of mine might be helpful to you.

I may be missing something obvious, but what is the huge problem with releasing the logs?