You meet an old wizened man, sitting by a fire. As you sit and talk with him, he shares his regrets - if only he were young again, the things he might do differently.
He challenges you to seek out and read a Lesswrong article called "bug hunt", which suggests writing a list of potential improvements to your life. You evidence you have done this by giving him the 25th word of that article. Well done, he rewards you with some experience points.
Next he gives you a bound leather tome, your own bug book. He teaches you two level one spells: "hope" which records a bug in the tome, and "surpass" which marks a bug as completed. Each time the latter is cast a short explanation must be given of what was done in the real world to beat that bug.
Come back, the man suggests, when you are a level higher. Then he will teach you "ambition", a spell to help overcome some bugs by setting a motivating goal. But you'll need more experience points before you're ready for that.
Or perhaps you find some bugs difficult because of internal fear. East of here, he claims, is a fearless warrior woman. She is difficult to find, but can teach you a spell called "approach". That spell allows even the most fearsome bugs to be attacked, by approaching them incrementally.
You leave the meeting eager to employ these new spells you have learned, empowered to improve your life step-by-step.
Does that example answer your question?
Could futarchy be used to run a business? Setting up a business is much easier than taking over the government of a country!
Bets could be proposed like: "If policy X is adopted then the share dividend on such and such a date will be higher than if it is not adopted". Bets with the highest support could then be adopted and over time, the share dividend would steadily increase.
Thank you for your positive comments, and particularly those interested in contributing to the code.
I've created a git repository here: https://github.com/rlp10/sitm. I've also written some initial documents outlining my ideas for how the code would be written: a README document, a TODO list, a list of ideas for plugins and a PLAN document giving my overall technical roadmap. All these are committed into the repository for you to read and comment upon.
I would be very grateful for people's comments on github regarding my plans for coding. I would like this to be a community effort. I've posted some questions already under "Issues".
I will post back here with our progress for those who wish to try using the program. All technical discussion will take place on github, rather than on lesswrong.com.
Let's work together to make this project a success and get ourselves more motivated and productive!
I've just spoken with the venue and unusually they're not opening until 12 noon!
There's another pub that's definitely open called The Belle Vue; It's just around the corner. The address is The Belle Vue, 46 St. Phillips Road, Norwich, NR2 3BL. The directions from The Black Horse are: walk up Heighman Road, take the first left onto Stafford Street and then it's on the corner of the fourth right turn which is called St Phillips Road.
I'll plan to stay at The Black Horse until 11:15am in case someone else shows up, and then walk up to The Belle Vue.
Alexey, you related this experience to me when I visited Cambridge a couple of weeks back. I've taken your advice and setup a meetup in Norwich this weekend. I only posted a week earlier on the website though, so perhaps next time I should post more in advance.
So, that's another benefit of the Budepest meetup, it encouraged at least one other meetup in another city.
As it happens, I have a pretty good-sized paperclip right here. So yeah, I'll pop that on the table if I arrive first.
I guess we're the only two LWers in Norwich (so far!).
I'm interested.
"Subreddits" were discussed here and you can see there some of the pros and cons.
Personally, I would support subreddits. I've been involved in one or two spinoff mailing lists, and it seems a shame that the content of those posts is not available to all on the LW site, if they want to read through them.
I believe that this is sometimes referred to as the 'ABC model' (antecedent, behaviour, consequence) and is the basis of cognitive behavioural therapy.
The book, Self-Directed Behaviour, is based on this model. I enjoyed it but, as I'm not academic in that area, can't really comment on the research behind it.
Hooray!