Re: underestimating tech salaries, thanks for the corrections; I may have discounted similar information before because even senior software developers I know personally locally are <$30,000/yr, and "start at $100,000/yr" sounded much too good (this is retrospectively obviously a bad heuristic and I will now strive to do better). In retrospect, checking the salaries of relatives who migrated to the USA should have corrected this.
re: moving to 1st-world country as a goal, my wife has this as a goal (FWIW it's a common goal for a sizable fraction (which I haven't researched) of Filipinos, which should indicate just how lousy Philippines is), not so much mine. I personally feel that I should strive to make the Philippines better, and initially thought that staying here would be the best method, but I probably need to re-consider that, which is why I need to consider the option of working abroad, whether permanently or temporarily. I worry about decaying values if I leave the Philippines (i.e. would Gandhi drink a pill that has a 1% chance of making him indifferent to India), but maybe I just need a credible way of maintaining the values of my future self.
re: freelancing, yes, that was my analysis. My wife and I talked several months ago with a couple whose husband had successfully transitioned to a freelance software job here in the Philippines, although exact numbers never got mentioned (but it was obvious they were comfortably well off). So I took to guessing that maybe a freelancer would get 50%->80% of what a regular USA jobholder would get, and used my (flawed!) understanding of USA salaries to consider this. So maybe I should recompute this after all... Looks like freelance is a better option than I thought before.
As for my family's land, I'll have to check; it's possible it doesn't have Internet or electricity, haha (Internet access is expensive in the Philippines, and my understanding is that it's one of the more expensive rates in the world). FWIW I and my wife and children live at my wife's uncle's, since the building is rented out as residential units and my wife's current job is managing it; Internet is paid for by my wife's uncle since they communicate by Facebook and Viber (my wife's uncle emigrated to the USA), so I don't strictly speaking need to be at my own family's land as long as my wife keeps her job.
re: resume, I have a pdf copy. I was going to say that I don't have a website to put it up on, but then I remembered that I do have amkg.github.io, which means I really really really need to be a lot more aware of my options and resources, because seriously, a REAL PROGRAMMER (TM) without a website? Okay, I'll put it up there after I dredge up the instructions for updating that site.
(side note: NetHack is good rationalist training, because a lot of deaths there are in retrospect pretty stupid when you get "Do you want your possessions identified" and found out you had very valuable items you forgot to use because you didn't stop and think through your real options and take a good long look at your available resources... I need to treat real life more like NetHack, hahaha)
re: cryonics, I remember researching that maybe a decade ago and deciding that the total cost was too much for my salary then (and I'd have to contend with the possibility of relatives preventing me from being cryonically preserved anyway); I can't remember where I put the computations for that, though, sigh. Come to think of it, I haven't re-computed for my conditions now (I've been assuming the cost for me a decade later would be higher than the cost then, and cancel out my increase in purchasing capacity), which I obviously should do (damn cached thoughts), at least for my children if not for my wife and I... It's amazing how stupid a brain can be, I should have rethought that earlier.
re: CFAR, yes, that's my impression so far. Libraries in the Philippines are few and far between, but there are other ways to get the information (e.g. this website). I'd still like to attend one at some point in the future if only to see if they've gotten better, but obviously that has to come after I'm the smiling agent sitting on top of a heap of utilons.
Hmm, yes, my wife is suggesting Singapore too (she has relatives there, although I'd prefer not to impose). I've also suggested Canada. My wife wants it "nearby", so maybe I'll consider Singapore, Taiwan, and Australia more.
Re: geopolitical situation of China, I hope you're right ^^.
Thanks for the reply, I'll consider your advice more!
re: English, fluent writer, my spoken English is sometimes halting (it's not like I can go back and edit my vocal utterances, unlike in "written" English on a computer). re: Scheme, I'm not so sure if a Schemer would say I "contributed" to the Scheme language with SRFI-110 - there's significant resistance against indent-based syntaxes - but I know a few implementations have picked up SRFI-105 (Guile at least, I think a few others).
Jonvon, there is only one human superpower. It makes us what we are. It is our ability to think. Rationality trains this superpower, like martial arts trains a human body. It is not that some people are born with the power and others are not. Everyone has a brain. Not everyone tries to train it. Not everyone realizes that intelligence is the only superpower they will ever have, and so they seek other magics, spells and sorceries, as if any magic wand could ever be as powerful or as precious or as significant as a brain.
I prefer "disputation arena" because "group thinking" is too close to "groupthinking".
Is there a better term for "techniques for discussing things so that lots of thinking people can give their input and get a single coherent set of probabilities for what are the best possible choices for action" other than "disputation arena" or "group thinking technique"?
I do want to be precise, and "disputation arena" sounded kewl, but whatever.
Okay, so that's a sub-goal that I didn't think about. I will think about this a little more.
Still, assuming that group exists and needs to do some thinking together, I think techniques like Delphi are fine.
Anyway, I assumed that LW's groups are more cohesive and willing to cooperate in thinking exercises in groups (this is what I was thinking when I said "This makes it not only desirable to find ways to effectively get groups of rationalists to think together, but also increasingly necessary."), but apparently it's not as cohesive as I thought.
I suppose that works for pre-scientific, pre-rational thinking: back when you couldn't do a thing about nature, but you could do a thing about that schmuck looking at you funny.
However, now, as humanity's power grows, we can actually do something about nature: we can learn to predict earthquakes, build structures strong enough against calamity, vaccinate against pestilence, etc etc.
So the bias, I suppose, arises from evolution being too slow for human progress.
On 18 December 2012 09:13:14PM, user "aronwall" replied "yes" to the question "So you're saying that if the evidence goes against you, you are going to stop being a Christian and self-identify as atheist (note that we do not capitalize that word)?". This comment is to ensure that user "aronwall" shall not be able to disavow this reply; please ignore it otherwise.
shrug it's best practice at a particular time and place, but is it the best practice at all times and places?
I'll grant that the procedure "tell all participants: 'hold off on proposing solutions'" is a good procedure in general, but is it the best procedure under all circumstances? How about enforcing the "hold off" part, rather than just saying it to participants? (cref. NGT's silent idea generation).
Somebody suggested that people in LessWrong may be interested in my resume, and may be able to hire, so I updated my website on github.io to include my resume.
https://amkg.github.io/alan-resume.pdf