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I am looking for rationalist pdfs, ebooks and audiobooks for an upcoming flight. If anyone can bring any of these this Friday, that will be appreciated. (I've finished reading the Sequences)

3matt12y

There is, of course: http://hpmor.com/ Eliezer recommends The World of Null-A (which I've not yet read) and Eliezer and I recommend David's Sling. Eliezer recommends Lawrence Watt-Evens's fiction. I merely point it out (it's not particularly well written or engaging, but it is nice to watch a protagonist be completely derailed from a quest to set up a business because he sees an opportunity).

Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012

carey12y00

I mean I am interested in undergoing adaptation through sleep deprivation, then something like uberman then everyman.

It would not be viable for me to stay in a polyphasic schedule next year. Ultimately, I will have to return to something largely along the lines of segmented or monophasic. Still, I have heard that undergoing polyphasic-style adaptation can help you to become acclimatised to getting REM sleep in a 20-30 minute period, something I currently can't do, but might be useful if I have a sleep debt or if I know I'm going to do an all-nighter etc.

So... (read more)

0gwern12y

O. I dunno. I have some more doubts about polyphasic sleep these days; last time I checked in the Zeo forums, no one had posted a complete writeup demonstrating a polyphasic lifestyle much less accompanying metrics that the lifestyle hadn't hurt them (I'd particularly like spaced repetition statistics). And since Zeos provide real data, much more so than blog posts claiming successful adaptation...

October 2012 Media Thread

carey12y10

Great thread.

Separate movies from TV I think. I am trying to find movies for LW/THINK meetups and all I see is anime. Lots of appealing premises end up being of too short a length to be able to share in a meetup environment.

Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012

carey12y20

Is it useful to learn to REM-nap even though I don't plan to sleep polyphasically? Is it worth going through adaptation?
where is a summary of the evidence for polyphasic sleeping, and likewise for paleo diets?
do you think rationality is a more contagious idea than effective altruism?

0Curiouskid12y

I made an outline of polyphasic sleep recently. Feel free to read it or contribute stuff that hasn't been added yet. https://workflowy.com/shared/5c919540-f8e7-a677-bbf9-e4ebe18b2948/

2gwern12y

I don't entirely follow... Is there such a thing as 'learning to REM-nap' without the proposed mechanism of the pressure of sleep rebound forcing a REM rebound during the space of a nap?

Notes from Online Optimal Philanthropy Meetup: 12-10-09

carey12y30

When will there be another online optimal philanthropy meetup?

Fallacies as weak Bayesian evidence

carey12y00

Summary of this post: heuristics differ from biases in amount (of predictive power), not in kind.

Or perhaps they differ by some combination of predictive power, utility and directness of relation to their prediction (susceptibility to be screened off)

The Optimizer's Curse and How to Beat It

carey12y10

Note Carl Shulman's counterargument to the assumption of a normal prior here and the comments traded between Holden and Carl.

"If your prior was that charity cost-effectiveness levels were normally distributed, then no conceivable evidence could convince you that a charity could be 100x as good as the 90th percentile charity. The probability of systematic error or hoax would always be ludicrously larger than the chance of such an effective charity. One could not believe, even in hindsight, that paying for Norman Borlaug’s team to work on the Green Revo... (read more)

1Mass_Driver12y

The problem with this analysis is that it assumes that the prior should be given the same weight both ex ante and ex post. I might well decide to evenly weight my prior (intuitive) distribution showing a normal curve and my posterior (informed) distribution showing a huge peak for the Green Revolution, in which case I'd only think the Green Revolution was one of the best charitable options, and would accordingly give it moderate funding, rather than all available funding for all foreign aid. But, then, ten years later, with the benefit of hindsight, I now factor in a third distribution, showing the same huge peak for the Green Revolution. And, because the third distribution is based not on intuition or abstract predictive analysis but on actual past results --it's entitled to much more weight. I might calculate a Bayesian update based on observing my intuition once, my analysis once, and the historical track record ten or twenty times. At that point, I would have no trouble believing that a charity was 100x as good as the 90th percentile. That's an extraordinary claim, but the extraordinary evidence to support it is well at hand. By contrast, no amount of ex ante analysis would persuade me that your proposed favorite charity is 100x better than the current 90th percentile, and I have no problem with that level of cynicism. If your charity's so damn good, run a pilot study and show me. Then I'll believe you.

[study] Ego depletion might disappear with age

carey12y20

I think a more distinctly virtue ethicist way of putting it is that they don't do slightly bad things because that would condition them to have bad dispositions, or to be bad people, something that is intrinsically disvaluable.

People who avoid doing slightly bad things to prevent instilling unhelpful habits, and to prevent themselves from bringing about future harm are (roughly) global utilitarians.

0MixedNuts12y

I'm such a utilitarian, I don't understand the difference. What's a bad person with bad dispositions, if not someone who does bad things?

Meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality

carey12y00

This month's meetups have been excellent. Look forward to seeing you all next Friday, and Matt, thanks for the venue.

LESSWRONG
LW

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