All of Strangeattractor's Comments + Replies

Advice regarding the health issues of new mothers is even more lacking. Whoa Baby by Kelly Rowland and Tristan Bickman is a book I liked on the topic.

Another book for new parents, about relationships, that I liked: And Baby Makes Three by John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman.

I enjoyed seeing Sydney Lallier's performance that won La Voix Junior, the Quebec version of The Voice Kids. She rapped a song that has verses in French and choruses in English with lyrics that seem timely in 2017.

The song she rapped is called La Force de Comprendre, which means The Strength To Understand.

http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2017/11/19/le-grand-gagnant-de-la-voix-junior-couronne

If you can physically get to a university library, then going to the section about the topic and looking at each book from the shelf until you find something that is comprehensible or otherwise meets your criteria, could be a good strategy.

I've found some good books that way.

It might help to cultivate your curiousity. Who are these people? What are they doing in the moment? What are they good at that you could learn from? Why are they in the same place as you? What are they up to when they are not at the same place as you? What are they enthusiastic about?

Sometimes when I talk to people I don't know well and I'm not thinking up many comments or questions based on our shared circumstances or environment, I'll ask some questions like "Have you read any good books lately?" or "What have you been thinking abou... (read more)

Do you mean where she hacked herself to become polyamorous? If so, you may be looking for this post http://lesswrong.com/lw/79x/polyhacking/

I like some poetry. Often in the form of song lyrics, or Shakespeare's plays.

One thing that I find helps with getting clear goals in my mind is to think of it in chunks of time, and revisit it every now and then, for example every 4 months. I think of them more as priorities than goals. For the next 4 months, my priorities are 1) X 2) Y 3) Z 4) A. Or I think of things in smaller chunks of time, such as 2 weeks, especially when there is more uncertainty in my life.

I think sometimes people get hung up a bit of thinking of goals as being eternal never-changing things. And there might be some like that, though I categorize those as aspirations.

I don't live in the Bay Area, nor do I wish to move there, but I have some thoughts.

It may be that the way to accomplish this is to start a housing co-operative, or a non-profit organization.

The Rochdale principles, which many co-operatives adopt are: Open, voluntary membership. Democratic governance. Limited return on equity. Surplus belongs to members. Education of members and public in cooperative principles. Cooperation between cooperatives.

If that seems like something you can live with, then you might want to go the co-op route. If you want to have m... (read more)

You say "intellectual masturbation" like it's a bad thing. :)

I think the impression you have of the people may have been influenced by seeing them primarily through social media. Have you talked to them in person? It might be different. The format of social media makes having nuanced discussions difficult, and emphasizes the more tribal posts.

Another thing to consider is that their priorities may have changed more than their approach to life. They may be applying empiricism to how to advance in a career, or how to be a good parent. There is a limited amount of time in a day, and they may have enough time to do... (read more)

I once went to a workshop on Sumi-e painting at the local Japanese cultural centre, and it changed how I look at paintings. So I'd recommend taking a Sumi-e class, or these days, I suppose watching Sumi-e tutorials on Youtube might do.

In general, getting an idea of how different cultures look at visual arts can be eye-opening. In addition to learning by doing, going to different museums and galleries can be a way to learn about art from many different time periods and cultures in different mediums.

Another thing that changed my perspective is a book calle... (read more)

Alan Macdonald has autopsied brains of people who had dementia and Alzheimers, and has pictures of the cystic form of Borrelia bacteria in those brains.

http://alzheimerborreliosis.net

And The Weak Suffer What They Must by Yanis Varoufakis https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/books/and-the-weak-suffer-what-they-must/nation-books-us-edition/

This is the book that Yanis Varoufakis wrote after resigning from being Greece's finance minister in 2015. It gives his perspective on the events he was part of, attempting to negotiate with the European Union and other creditors on behalf of Greec, and also on the history of the failed policies leading up to those events.

Women Who Love Psychopaths by Sandra L. Brown, Liane J. Leedom is a book that I wish I'd had years ago. It might have saved some of my friends from learning about what it's like to date a sociopath the hard way. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3234469-women-who-love-psychopaths

The dynamic described in the book also seems sadly relevant to what's going on in the political realm these days.

The Marcus 2012 paper references a 1999 Human Rights Watch report that has a few more details:

"The propagandist proposes two techniques that were to become often used in Rwanda. The first is to "create" events to lend credence to propaganda. He remarks that this tactic is not honest, but that it works well, provided the deception is not discovered. The "attack" on Kigali on October 4-5, 1990 was such a "created" event, as were others – the reported discovery of hidden arms, the passage of a stranger with a mysterious bag,... (read more)

This paper by Kenneth Marcus describes a rhetorical technique called Accusation In A Mirror, which was used in Rwanda in the events leading up to genocide. Here's a quote which summarizes the technique.

"The basic idea of AiM is deceptively simple: propagandists must “impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do.” In other words, AiM is a rhetorical practice in which one falsely accuses one’s enemies of conducting, plotting, or desiring to commit precisely the same transgressions that one plans to commit against them. For ... (read more)

It's a good article. Schneier makes good points.

I like Cory Doctorow's perspective on the Internet of Things, including the EFF's Apollo 1201 plan to get rid of DRM within 10 years. Here's one place where he talks about it. http://craphound.com/news/2016/08/25/talking-about-the-pro-security-anti-drm-business-model-on-the-oreilly-radar-podcast/

I also read the Internet of Shit twitter feed to keep up with the latest security flaw-ridden monstrosities. :) https://twitter.com/internetofshit

I think you are going to have to find the relevant information yourself by looking through scientific papers. I don't think that asking your doctor will be sufficient. It is rare to find a doctor who keeps up with reading all of the newest scientific journal articles.

Where your doctor might help is in explaining the mechanism by which the infertility may happen, to help you get more keywords with which to look stuff up.

It may be that quantitative answers for your questions are not available at all. From the link you mentioned, it says that as of 2009 th... (read more)

It varies a lot from culture to culture. That's part of what a culture is, what is thought of as default or background knowledge, or something people will know. So...who is your audience? What cultures or sub-cultures are they from? It's not going to be the same from country to country, or different regions within a country, or rural vs. urban, or age group or educational background.

When authors write books about a culture they are unfamiliar with, sometimes they hire someone from that culture to read over the book, and give feedback about what they co... (read more)

Farming is a completely different type of job than software development or designing integrated circuits.

When you program a computer, it does what you tell it to. You can diagnose what's wrong and fix it. Whether you can fix things is based a lot on your own skill and knowledge.

If you become a farmer, you can do everything skillfully and still have a crop fail. You are at the mercy of the weather.

Have you even grown a small vegetable garden? That might be a first step to get some idea what you are facing if you go into farming.

Don't assume farming will... (read more)

Sometimes a change is as good as a rest.

If you want to use your sense of wonder again, it might be good to seek out something completely new to you. Learn about something new, develop a new skill, or go to some place that you haven't been before. Then spend some time being quiet and observing or practicing.

Or spend some time in person with people who are enthusiastic about things you are not enthusiastic about, and get curious about why they like it, and listen to what they say.

I'm pretty sure you still have a sense of wonder in there, waiting to be used... (read more)

Something that might help is writing things down. For example, if you had a notebook where you wrote down things that you had figured out, every time you came to a conclusion, and any details that might help you remember why you came to that conclusion. Then, whenever you encounter a problem you can read over the notes in the notebook from a variety of topics, and see if any of them match. Also, if you keep it updated frequently then when you go to write something down that would be another opportunity to review the notebook and see if anything matches ... (read more)

"What do you think is the biggest problem here?" is a different question than "What do you think I could have successfully started to address in one conversation?"

If he kills himself, he hurts only himself. If he's violent toward other people, he can end up doing a lot more damage than that. He mentioned that one incident, but given his casual attitude toward it, there are probably more. It wouldn't surprise me if he was beating his girlfriend. Domestic assault (I call it domestic because it was against someone he lived with, even though housemate is not as usual a target as partner or child) is a huge huge huge warning flag. He had a bad day, and trouble sleeping, and suddenly someone else has to deal with the ... (read more)

First of all, I think the concept of TheProblem is flawed. I don't think there is necessarily just one problem that is "the bottom of the problem" whatever you mean by that.

You presented a conversation, and asked us to read between the lines. So, I did. If I was actually attempting to figure out what was going wrong, if I was going to take action about it, I'd need way more information than this one conversation. I wouldn't describe anything I said as conclusions. My procedure for concluding these is "I didn't conclude them."

What s... (read more)

The most alarming part of that conversation for me was "A few weeks ago I punched a housemate in the face ten times, breaking her nose;"

If I was having the conversation, I would ask him more about this, and talk at least a little bit about how he could stop hurting other people.

I'm not sure what you mean by the bottom of the problem. I will say some things that I think are problems. These are speculations. I don't have enough information to be confident in these answers.

1) I think it is a problem that, as far as I could tell, no one intervene... (read more)

I just looked at the Cambridge prices for overseas students and it made me feel poor. Might as well seen a 500,000 ILS debt in my bank account.

You might be able to get financial aid or scholarships, so I wouldn't rule out an expensive university right away. If you apply and get accepted, which admittedly itself costs some money, then you could have some talks with the financial aid people. And their first answer may not be the final answer, or there may be alternative sources of funding, so you may have to repeat yourself and keep talking to them for ... (read more)

Yes, there are differences.

I talked to a person who was hiring for tech jobs in Silicon Valley, and he said that the Ivy League schools in the United States get a much better quality of training than other United States schools in the fields of engineering and computer science. For example, the Ivy League schools would have 3 hour exams where you have to show how you arrived at an answer as well as the answer. Most of the other schools had 1 hour multiple choice exams.

The situation is different in other countries. In Canada, unlike in the US, engineeri... (read more)

I think it depends on X. It may be something you have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis. I think if X was something that could have consequences for high-stakes or ethical decisions, I would prioritize working on it rather than working around it.

Pushing through it may not be the most effective strategy to deal with it in the long term. "Defeat X" may not be the most helpful metaphor. Defeat vs. work around could be a false dichotomy.

You may be looking for a general rule or rule-of-thumb for something where generalizations do not make sense. ... (read more)

The city you live in may have more impact on you than which particular company you start at.

Banks and consulting companies may pay you more than a company focused on a software product, but the work is generally unsatisfying for software developers. Avoid those, unless high pay is more important to you than happiness. Though if you are choosing between them, banks are better than consulting companies. If you can find a company that has some understanding of how to treat software developers well so that they can do good work, and that makes money by rese... (read more)

There are software programs that have databases of drug and supplement interactions. Also, pharmacists tend to know more about these things than doctors. So, you could find a database and search it, and/or ask a pharmacist. There isn't as much information available on supplements as there is about drugs, so it's hard to answer the question with a lot of certainty.

I think this is usually defined as being in a state where what you observe is liable to create negative emotions in you (or in some definitions, a variety of emotions).

I think that the variety of emotions definition makes more sense. It's about being open to possibilities, even if some of those possibilities are heartbreaking.

In other words, it is about taking emotional risks. I suppose it would be possible to go through life taking as few risks as possible....but such a life would be stunted in some ways. Risk-taking is not always valuable, but it is sometimes valuable.

I read about pre-mortem-like questions in a book called Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

I've been reading a lot about the UK's referendum about whether to stay in the European Union. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was undecided for months, but finally decided to vote in favour of Brexit.

All of his articles about the referendum have been good. Here is the one where he reveals his decision.

Brexit vote is about the supremacy of Parliament and nothing else: Why I am voting to leave the EU http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/12/brexit-vote-is-about-the-supremacy-of-parliament-and-nothing-els/

On Twitter, he is @AmbroseEP https://twitter.com/Amb... (read more)

I learned techniques for lucid dreaming and dealing with pain from what was called at the time the Silva Method course, taught by Marilou Seavey and Gerald Seavey.

I also sometimes use a Tibetan Buddhist technique called tonglen, explained by Pema Chodron in her book When Things Fall Apart.

The Silva Method used to be a collection of useful techniques taught in a secular context. However, at some point after I took the course, the organization that coordinated the Silva Method courses became more religious. So a lot of people who were teaching the Silva Me... (read more)

There are herbs that can encourage lucid dreaming. I've experimented a bit with hyssop flower, also known as ezov, but it didn't change my experience of dreaming much, except I woke up feeling like I had been sorting things through and having insights in my sleep. I didn't recall what I had figured out, but I had the feeling of figuring things out. But I could lucid dream before I started taking it, though I don't do it often, and I remember my dreams often and write them down. Keeping pen and paper by the bed and writing down dreams can be a way to st... (read more)

When the pain gets intense, it helps to remind myself "Not all days are as bad as this." It can feel overwhelming in the moment, and it distorts the view of the future. So I remind myself of that too. "What I'm experiencing right now is a distorted view of the future. So I'm not going to make any major decisions based on it."

It can be hard to look forward to the future when I'm not enjoying the present, when it's so awful, and there's no known path or plan to make thing better. It can be extremely frustrating to just endure. It ca... (read more)

Regarding validation, I don't think it's useful to combine that idea with romantic self-esteem. They seem to be different things to me, though somewhat related.

If it is just romantic self-esteem, then I'm confused. If the goal is to be aromantic, why care about romantic self-esteem at all? It seems like the level of romantic self-esteem is a measurement or variable that is irrelevant to the non-romance-based life that you are building. Like, sure "that person is checking me out" or "their partner just tagged me as a threat and staked the... (read more)

I've been reading livetweets of the Oracle vs Google trial by jury, presided over by Judge Alsup, who learned to code. In a previous trial, Judge Alsup had declared that the software API in question was uncopyrightable. However, his decision was overturned by the federal court, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. So now they are redoing the trial with a new jury, with the premise that an API is copyrightable, in order to decide whether Google's reimplementation of a Java API from Sun at the time (later bought by Oracle) was "fair use&q... (read more)

How to build a brain by Chris Eliasmith is one possibility.

What non-english content do you consume?

I watch the Quebec French version of The Voice, called La Voix https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=la+voix

I also listen to some french language podcasts, such as those from the CBC (SRC in French), and sometimes I'll watch documentaries in other languages, such as NHK documentaries in Japanese.

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In terms of encouraging crossposting, what do you think would be the benefits and drawbacks of something like a RSS aggregator of rationality blogs on the Less Wrong site, especially if the posts on other blogs have a Creative Commons license, or something similar? That could make it relatively easy for someone with a blog elsewhere to share with Less Wrong, instead of manually crossposting all of the time.

Thanks for more details. Yay for the Scientific Method.

So, is your goal to find an individual researcher and some doctors to start a study, or a few studies, along the lines you have described here? If you want to make it happen, you may need to get together some money to fund that. Or it's possible you could take some time to find the people who would be interested and capable and talk them into doing it and find some other people with money and talk them into funding it.

Or is your goal to change in general how medicine and medical research is done? T... (read more)

in order that someone with real expertise in this area takes this idea seriously enough to have a go at refuting it?

What would it look like if someone did take the idea seriously? What do you want to happen?

EITHER (2.1) CFS/FMS/Hypothyroidism are extremely similar diseases which are nevertheless differently caused. OR (2.2) The blood test is failing to detect many cases of Hypothyroidism.

I don't think 2.1 and 2.2 are mutually exclusive. Both could be true.

I like John Gottman's books. He has written several, any would be good. My favourite is "And Baby Makes Three." He is a therapist who studies married couples in a lab, and can see what works and what doesn't.

I've read a book that delves into these issues. It's called The Critical Villager by Eric Dudley. I recommend it.

If I understand what you're saying, you think that some subset of people with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia have undiagnosed thyroid problems that do not show up on standard tests, therefore treating them with dessicated thyroid could help.

I think that is plausible, and more reasonable than something like "all CFS and fibromyalgia can be explained by endocrine problems". It also seems to match the experience of some doctors who treat a lot of patients with these conditions.

There is also a difference between "helps to some extent... (read more)

I would explain about blocking, how people can be matched up by profession, socio-economic status, smoker or non-smoker, and various other traits, to make comparisons where those factors are assumed to be equal.

Your comment made me think, and I'll look up some of the recommendations. I like the analogy with musicians and also the part where you talked about how the analogy breaks down.

However, I'd like to offer a bit of a different perspective to the original poster on this part of what you said.

To summarize: the math I think you're looking to learn is proofy, not computational, in nature.

Your advice is good, given this assumption. But this assumption may or may not be true. Given that the post says:

I don't care what field it is.

I think there's the p... (read more)