I really liked this article!
Thank you. I admit I didn't understand most of what you said. Sorry.
I tried meditation once and it was terrible. Emptying my head allows all the negativity to come in :).
You're referring to http://lesswrong.com/lw/js/the_bottom_line/, yes?
It just seems like those situations don't present themselves very often. More often, a situation presents itself like this: A team member makes all the wrong arguments to support a thesis I disagree with. Previously, I would just fight against each of his arguments. Now, I don't do anything much (I'm not good at convincing people) but instead keep thinking "yeah, yeah, arguments, soldiers, written the bottom line, blah, blah" without it actually being useful.
That's not really re...
Huh, um, okay! ^^ I somewhat suspected that that is the case, but it's still hard to believe it. (thank you)
That's helpful, thank you! Your mention of Fluid Dynamics was particularly nice.
Happy to share.
Part of is what I replied to ChristianKl: that I feel like every important thing should be reduced to thinking about EA or AI. This makes me think that I can't find any new areas interesting because they're not good, or should be eliminated to divert resources into one of those two items.
Another part, I think, is that previously, I could always discover a... greater... area of interest once I grew out of the old one. When I got good at video games, I could move o...
Well, yeah, but it also gives a lot of answers and provides an argument to everything. Also it feels like reading from the community reduces everything to either effective altruism or AI. It may not be true but I've internalized it so much that now I can't listen to, say, any politician's statement on state budget, without EA or AI funding immediately coming to mind. Or even any economics or politics or important decision making without feeling like "this is all wrong and we shouldn't care about it". It's a little disheartening :)
Thank you ^^
Not neccessarily cause of depression.
I mean, I am suspicious and I believe it has something to do with it. At my worst during depressive periods, I keep thinking about death, altruism, rationality, AI etc. Also, there's these surveys that tell me that LessWrong members are unusually likely to have depression.
But I think my depression is mostly innate.
I keep doing that but it's kind of hard, and I can't easily get a proof of what's causing the problem.
Being around here has made me think that I know everything interesting about the world and suppressed my excitement and joy from many minor things I could do. I also feel like my sense of wonder diminished. As I write this, I am a little unhappy, and in a period of depression, but I had similar feelings, if less intense, even before this period.
I was wondering whether you have any advice on how to restore this; or even better, how to "forget" as much rationality and transhumanism as possible (if not actually forgetting, then at least "to think and feel as I did before I read the Sequences")?
I've tried Joylent Twennybars but not any other product. I found them very tasty, but I also got some stomachache. Maybe I would get used to that, though, or I may have been eating them incorrectly.
Addendum: I have just experienced the worst diarrhea I've ever had. However, I suspect it's unrelatd.
I order Joylent Twennybars in response to this. They are rather tasty.
Wow, thank you very much! I would have thought most LessWrongers would answer the question "Why does anything exist?" with the answer "That question does not make sense."
I didn't know there was such a range of options.
Is there a European alternative for a MealSquares-like product, i.e. one that is eaten, not drunk?
For what it's worth, I would enjoy reading about a squad of trained wizards raiding Voldemort's compound ^^.
We're consequentialists here, so I get all the credit for it even if it wasn't much effort, right?
^^
I made a video compilation of Japanese songs that include the words "Tsuyoku naritai".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtcXiT6An-U
I wasn't really convinced that this concept was really present in Japanese culture before but I suppose I am, now.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
How likely am I to die from taking SSRI's?
This review says:
...In conclusion, this review suggests the need for caution in the use of SSRI therapy, particularly among patients with other risk factors for bleeding and those taking NSAIDs. The estimated rate of hospitalization for upper GI bleeding in the US during the 1990s was ∼ 155 per 100,000 population per year [46]. The data examined suggests that the risk of GI bleeding may be increased 2 – 4-fold in patients taking SSRIs and 3 – 12-fold when combined with NSAIDs. However, one must recognise that the in
I know you are now an employee of Signal but, well, this comment reads so much like an advert that I had trouble focusing on what you say.
You were "disillusioned with traditional education" and once you tried out this new program, you were "amazed at the speed with which you were learning" and "astounded by progress you had made in just a few hours", in boldface, no less! And that's before we got to the redundancy and hyperboles.
I know I should be trying to be #LessWrongMoreNice, but your review really should be taken with a grain of salt.
I have taken the survey.
LessWrongMoreNice is now my favourite hashtag.
It's old news but I recently came across this article and found it quite cheerful.
Apparently you were right.
From Alcor:
"Some of you may be already be familiar with Tim Urban’s remarkable blog, Wait But Why. You might be among the 336,693 subscribers to Tim’s blog, or you might just have come across one of his stunning detailed and clever posts, such as on procrastination, the genius of Elon Musk, The AI Revolution, or Putting Time in Perspective.
A few days ago, Tim posted what is possibly the single best piece ever written on cryonics. Warning: It is long and, once you start reading it, you will find it hard to stop. Please use it ...
It's not silly. I still find these newer comments useful.
I think their argument was that they don't support Pascal's Mugging and they don't see any proof of medical research within reach that could end aging with a significant probability.
EDIT: ...and I should have read the comment in more detail. You are talking about stuff such as donating to curing diseases. I think they just didn't assign analysts to this yet. I guess it's hard to measure scientific progress.
I understand that death is an important part of the Solstice celebration so perhaps that's why it's there.
Nate Soares says there will be some collaboration between OpenAI and MIRI:
This comment deserves far more upvotes than it has.
Wait a minute, comments are upvoted based on quality rather than agreement? Until now, I thought that if a comment had, say, nine points, it meant that there existed at least nine LessWrongers who agreed with everything the comment author said. That is not so?
It's both. There are no "official" guidelines on how you should up/downvote, but a commonly expressed heuristic is "upvote what you want to see more of, and downvote what you would like to see less of". In practice, people vote to signify all kinds of things: agree/disagree, true/false, cool/uncool, interesting/boring, oooh/eeew, etc.
The one-sentence description for the Enlightened is something like "use technology to improve humanity". I did not hesitate.
You are awesome.
Since I now don't have any unmet material needs and what needs I do have are mostly Steam wallet funds which my family doesn't like to provide, I also suggested they donate to a charity in my name.
They refused. Their argument was along the lines of "no, I don't want to help other people, I want to give something that will make you happy". But since they don't want to give me video games, making me happy is probably not really what they want to do.
I guess I'll just make a December donation off my own funds instead.
I understand that the quantum physics sequence is controversial even within LessWrong.
Generally, though, all of the sequences could benefit from annotations.
I liked this part:
"Participants were also given an attention check. For this, participants were shown a list of activities (e.g., biking, reading) directly below the following instructions: “Below is a list of leisure activities. If you are reading this, please choose the “other” box below and type in ‘I read the instructions’”. This attention check proved rather difficult with 35.4% of the sample failing (N = 99). However, the results were similar if these participants were excluded. We therefore retained the full data set."
When will be the next LessWrong census and who will run it?
I think the most plausible is that he does shake hands and he does not use anti-bacterial wipe, merely that he mentioned to the reporter "I prefer not to shake hands to keep myself safe" and that the reporter exaggerated.
Maybe this should be posted in Discussion? That way more people will see it.
I'm not sure I would trust that calculator. I'm not used to US units so I put in 84kg (my weight) and it said "with that BMI you can't be alive" so I put in 840 thinking maybe it wants the first decimal as well. Now I realize it wanted pounds. And for this, 840lbs, it also outputed 70 years.
I'm not sure where the calculator gets its data from.
Wow, I would have never guessed that.
On the internet, but especially on the HPMOR subrreddit, I find notations such as "Canon!Harry" or "Vampire!Durkon" or "HPMOR!Quirrell". Does the exclamation mark simply stand for a space, or does it have additional meaning? And more importantly, where does the notation come from? Where was it invented?
I also ask myself these questions and I'm unable to answer them. In the end, I exercise and modify my diet as much as my will allows without causing me too much stress.
As for valuing years of life, if I considered that the very best outcome of cryonics (as HungryHobo described) is certain, then, well, even for very small values that will result in cryonics giving me far more utility than exercice. I don't value later years of my life that low.
Yudkowsky believes that cryonics has a greater than 50% chance of working, and that we will be able to have fun fo...
The tone of its Wikipedia page is strongly against its usefulness.
Do you know of any remedy or prevention for hiccups? I can't get anything trusthworthy out of the internet nor out of friends and family. All just anecdotes.
To the question, the average age is 27.6; the average level of study is a completed Bachelor's degree.
Do any of you do anything nontraditional to improve your health/longevity? What I'm thinking about is radical lifestyle changes, such as using dozens of supplements like Kurzweil or mixing one's lunch out of raw ingredients like Bostrom, or avoiding all car travel and similar stuff, not exercise.
When I switched dentists three years ago, the new dentist claimed to have found several issues during initial check-in and also said that my wisdom teeth need to be torn out as soon as possible. So I have that experience as well. Although, since then, she never complained about anything even though my flossing routine worsened considerably.
The WHO guidance is that the person who is infected uses a mask as much as possible, that they use the bathroom for evening routine last (after you) and that they clean it/disinfect it after use.