All of tinyanon's Comments + Replies

I agree getting told to eat less is not helpful advice.  Here is the Facebook post, which I don't think your steelman applies to.

 

1Logan Zoellner
By "not primarily behavioral" I mean the exact opposite of  While "eat less exercise more" may be fine advice at a personal level, it isn't a sufficient answer to the society-wide epidemic of obesity that we currently face.  If the root cause turns out to be pollution or microplastics or vegetable oil or whatever it is, calls to collectively increase our will-power instead of addressing this root cause are largely counterproductive virtue-signaling.
5dxu
This seems like a strange claim to make, considering the results of various controlled overfeeding studies. (It's also a strange framing on top of that.) Do you have any sources backing up the quoted claim?

Fair point that I didn't include as much detail as I could.

My belief is that most people react to "the average weight went up over 20lbs between 1980 and 2010" with "wow that's a lot, there must be something really weird going on we need a complex thesis with a scary name" but react to "the average calorie budget per day went up 200 calories" with "wow that's it? I'd expect it to be more given, ya know, everything".

My post was mostly just meant to put the magnitude of the change in perspective for them.

It would have taken me a lot longer than the 20 minute... (read more)

2AnthonyC
I think it's interesting that you label protein and vegetables as high-satiety foods, when that just isn't the case for me. Lean meats and veggies satiate me for longer than refined grains, but nor nearly as long as food higher in fat, as long as they're relatively healthy fats (olive or avocado oil, grass fed butter and cream, cheese, nuts and seeds, things like that). That result definitely varies somewhat between people, but my experience isn't out of the ordinary. Eating veggies or protein without fat just leaves me feeling full but unsatisfied, waiting until my stomach will let me eat more. I agree with your point about the magnitude of the change. People didn't suddenly start eating vastly more food after 1980. But that potentially cuts both ways: most of the other trends in diet and exercise were gradual and started much earlier, yet weight wasn't increasing at a population level then. So why would slight reductions reverse the trend now, when slight increases didn't generate it before? Why this recommend this specific slight intervention when so many other things have changed in our lives and environments, especially when you know that it just will come off as insulting to most people who've actually struggled to lose weight? Yes, sometimes it is that simple. I know people who've just cut our soda and/or started walking for half an hour a day and lost tens of pounds in a year. And I'm glad for them! But not everyone's body responds that way, and that's kinda the point.  Edit to add: also, if the amount of calorie variation needed to lose 20 pounds really were as small as you say, at the level of a single cookie weighing less than 50 grams, then no, intuition for portion sizes would not be sufficient for controlling food intake, and you really would have to measure things. That would mean that being off by a teaspoon of oil when grilling a chicken breast in a pan each day is worth 5 pounds of body fat over time, and that's just one part of one meal. Ditto

Aren't those types of ads usually pay per click? I've never purposefully clicked an ad* on a site so it's really no different to them if I use an ad blocker

*Not counting things like the front page of steam where I'm coming for the ads specifically

1[anonymous]
I think most ads these days are pay per view (they're trying to manipulate you via exposure, not by trying to get you to buy right away).

I've always felt weird about my contribution to ads.  Half the projects I've worked on at Microsoft were ads and I'm currently waiting to hear back from hiring committee at Google about working on some different ads for them instead.

I guess the part I'm not sure about is, are the people who purchase something in response to an ad better off?  The only purchase that stemmed from an unsolicited ad I saw was bugging my mom for some Heelys as a kid; but every time I've let an "almost ad" like a friend talking about something convince me to buy someth... (read more)

For me, five hours laying in bed and three hours of sleep is much closer to eight hours sleep than it is three hours. There have been some studies on how much sleep you can replace with meditation and I don't remember the exact conversation rate, but you did say low barrier to entry on comments. When I'm stressing at being unable to sleep, as long as I relax everything and meditate I wake up feeling as good as if I didn't have insomnia issues. Note that it took me a lot of practice to be able to relax everything, you often don't notice some of your muscle tension. It's also an interesting thing to note that I sometimes have rapid involuntary eye movements while doing things which makes me think something sleep like is happening.

1emily.fan
I'm thinking of looking into meditation this summer! Thanks for sharing :)

I'm finding myself wishing for more resources on picking where to live.  I'm in an uncommon situation: Single.  Enough money to not need to work anymore unless I'm in a high cost of living place so I want to take a few years off.  The only area that I have lots of friends in I already know isn't right for me due to seasonal depression.  Finding the right place to live through my own research will be long having to visit places for long enough to see what they're like but there just doesn't exist super great resources for researching things ahead of time unless I'm missing something.

 

In related news: I hear Atlanta has a decent dance scene.  Anyone live in the Atlanta area have comments?

2Yoav Ravid
Have you considered a mobile home? at the very least it should make trying lots of places before anchoring down much easier.

I actually think the fun part explains it even more.  I have a buddy I game with all the time.  I always end up better then them.  They ask for help.  I point out something I've identified as a fundamental in the game (the equivalent of aiming/positioning in FPS games, or building workers in RTS games) and some little practice method that I went away and did for 2 or 3 hours one day to get better at that fundamental.  Then, every time, they say "that would make it not fun" and just spam some games.  Because there's a fun ineff... (read more)

1asdfrty6
Yeah, this definitely doesn't explain my gold players who spend hours every day in Kovaaks. No, elo is not a flat distribution. Roughly 2-3% of accounts are in Grandmaster (4000+), the next 5% in master (3500-4000), the next ~10% in diamond (3000-3500), the next 30% in platinum (2500-3000), the next 30% in gold (2000-2500)... but this is skewed for a few reasons. Casual players are more likely to stick to Quick Play and not rank in Competitive, and higher-level players are significantly more likely to have multiple accounts, so the percentage of accounts in higher ranks represents a smaller percent of actual players. Sometimes the top 10 accounts in a region (Europe / Americas / Asia) are held by the same 3 people, playing on several accounts each. So 3500+ is much more of an achievement than top 20-25%. I genuinely think that the limiting factor for lots of people stuck below 3500 is related to conceptual understanding, learning or cognition. They can have fundamental concepts explained to them, but they don't really understand them, or they understand what you're telling them about one specific situation but can't generalise it to future situations. I also see lots of players with issues with tilt, mentality, attitude, multitasking, communication and general 'thinking speed'. I know a lot of people who will make the right decision on a 30-second delay, by which point it's a bad decision - that's not "reflexes", it's how well you can offload concepts to sys1 so you see things faster. Keep in mind this is from my perspective as mainly a scrim/tourney coach; I don't really see individual ladder games, so the play I tend to look at is significantly more strategic and less mechanical. There's a reason I specified I think they could scrim 3500. I see consistently poor group decision-making from teams below 3500.

Some general thoughts from a former masters SC2 player, who has also been decently highly ranked at many other games

There was a famous starcraft caster who was constantly being asked how to become a starcraft caster by people who said it was their dream.  He told them all "Go record yourself trying to cast 100 games then send me a message".  Literally only one person took him up on that, and now they're a famous starcraft caster.

My prediction is that people willing to do the work can get good insanely quickly and people who aren't won't.  I ... (read more)

2asdfrty6
Huh, my experience doesn't support this. I run an organization that has lower-ranked teams as well as higher-ranked teams. Many of my lower-ranked players have been attending scrims and reviews for years (definitely far more work than the equivalent of casting 100 games) and are still below average. I find that a lot of them don't have good mental tools for integrating information and applying it, or don't signal to me when they've fundamentally misunderstood something, or quickly forget things and reverse improvements, or aren't good at introspecting about how/why they make mistakes. I think most-people-don't-try-very-hard explains why people are bad at many skills, but it struggles to explain why people are bad at video games. Video games are fun, so it's not difficult to find someone willing to put in 1000 hours. I know lots of people who have put in over 1000 hours and are still bad.

I do have limits to how far I'd go.  The impression I have in my head is that the two ways to jump in line are 1) malfunctions where they have to give them away or throw them away 2) areas where the demand is so low that they're having to choose fairly lax rules or throw them away.  My hope is that there's a way to get a vaccine that wouldn't have gone to anyone truly in need without having to do anything particularly illegal

So, we know a small number of people have jumped ahead in the vaccine line by being at the right place at the right time when a freezer broke and there weren't enough eligible people.

How would one maximize their chance of jumping in line if they were limited to the continental united states?  What city would you spend your time prowling for unused vaccine?

Edit: I could get to 30 BMI in about two weeks.  Creatine + an overreaching block + stuffing myself on wings should get me that last 15lbs

2Randaly
Try vaxstandby.com
4ejacob
You can probably find a way to add 15 lbs without actually gaining weight. Sew some weights into your clothes, wear bigger shoes and fill the extra space with something heavy, etc.
0Ericf
If you're really serious about getting vaccinated ASAP, commit any one of a thousand different frauds, up to and including paying someone who looks kind of like you for their spot & use of their ID. Slightly less unethical would be actually getting a job that qualifies you - orderly in a nursing home; file clerk in a hospital; there are lots of options that don't require a medial credentials.

Prediction: The two most common notes would be "Note - Not jacobjacob" and "Note - Not Jacobian"

I took a bit to try and remember where all my identities came from and an interesting thing to note is how quickly external validation can change your identity.

  1. As a kid my only socialization was my mother, all she complimented was academics, I saw myself as the smart kid, studying was easy
  2. My first romantic success was related to depression commiseration, I started to see that as my identity, suddenly I became way more depressed, most things got harder (especially whenever I'm actively dating)
  3. I was an awful wrestler, then my one-trick-pony move started gett
... (read more)
3adamShimi
Yeah, this is definitely something I also fell. This goes back to what another comment points out: identities are dangerous beasts. I guess what I take from Atomic Habits specifically is that you can influence your identity more than I expected. These identity-based habits are not as flashy and reinforcing than compliments and positive social things, but in my experience they do pile up. And they have the benefit of being mostly in your control. For example, instead of me praising you for starting your side project, you could create a very small habit, like "Think for 5 minutes (set a timer) about what I could do in my side project". Maybe that'll help. ;)

Great work on the side project you started! I lack the words to even describe it. You don't seem at all like the type of person who lies around reading Reddit all the time, and I should know.

XD

Answer by tinyanon300

Problem: I'm depressed and bored. Covid took away dance/bjj and I need physical touch/play. I at least need something to be fixated on.  Single with no roommates and not close to family. All my friends have disappeared into their relationships. My job isn't fulfilling and I'm not even sure if I need any more money to make it the rest of my life so idk why I'm still in it.

  1. Join an MMO, I was happy when I had a good community in a guild
  2. Ignore covid, find a bjj gym that's already open
  3. Move to NZ where covid is over
  4. Host secret dance nights. Though I don't h
... (read more)
1amplemaple
I love so many of your ideas. Kink based dating apps. For me, 50 works okay but cant make up for too little social contact. 41 is great. 2 is good. I tried 1 but it took over my life.

I feel happy pulling up kattis and doing some algorithm questions so there is definitely joy to be had chasing technical questions.  Ben doesn't seem to be disputing that but is offering two other things you can chase. 

Rather than competing for an A+ on a hard problem, I could try to solve an easy problem as quickly as possible

I don't know if this is different person to person but for me gamifying a problem can make me care more about something but it can't make me care about something I don't care about at all

So don’t look for hard problems—impo

... (read more)

I'm so bored of my job, I need a programming job that has actual math/algorithms :/  I'm curious to hear about people here who have programming jobs that are more interesting.  In college I competed at a high level in ICPC, but I got into my head that there are so few programming jobs with actual advanced algorithms that if your name on topcoder isn't red you might as well forget about it.  I ended up just taking a boring job at a top tech company that pays well but does very little for society and is not intellectually stimulating at all.

2lsusr
* Quantitative finance has use for people who know advanced math and algorithms. (Though they are not known for doing great good for society.) * You can also get around this problem by starting your own ML startup. (I did this.) The startup route takes work and risk tolerance but provides high positive externalities for society.
4lincolnquirk
Have you read https://www.benkuhn.net/hard/ ? Curious what you think. (Disclosure: I started the company that Ben works for, which does not have hard eng problems but does have a high potential for social impact)

Most relatable post of all time.  I had actually been doing really good this year minus a depressed period right at the start of covid; then now I'm relapsed since a month ago when stand up was cancelled removing the only structure in my day.  I've been calling mine "adult onset akrasia" because before I was 18 I just was constantly working and extremely high achieving and then I just... broke.  I have a lot of theories as to things that contribute in my case.  Since it got even worse when I moved from college to my final job there will... (read more)

8Viliam
The Reddit/smartphone/etc is a separate problem. Even if you had a generous basic income and no job, it could be enough to ruin your life. In my experience, taking an offline vacation is a huge boost in productivity. (Even if that vacation includes taking care of two little kids all day long.) But I completely agree with your description of how job feels fundamentally wrong. Most of the complexity you deal with is accidental; after you solve it, you don't feel like you learned or accomplished anything substantial. The reward for completing some work is getting more work. Maybe if you work twice as hard, consistently for years, someone will notice and you will get a 10% raise, but then you are expected to keep working twice as hard forever. Productivity is generally a result of team effort, and if you become too productive, people will be removed from your team until it becomes sufficiently hard to meet the deadlines again. Vacation is too short to do your own project that would put some meaning into your life; the weekend is barely enough to relax a bit and do the necessary home maintenance. Anything you try doing in parallel with your job is interrupted every day, which makes it hard to focus on it. The only "win conditions" are surviving to old enough age to retire, or somehow saving enough money to retire early. The work is not really that hard, and there are many incompetent people around you who still somehow manage to keep their jobs, and yet it is somehow optimized to take away most of your time, attention, and energy. And everyone keeps bitching about the lack of competent software developers, but if you ask for extra vacation or part-time work at an interview, nope, they would rather wait yet another year to fill the position. Though I wonder how much of this feeling is true of jobs in general, and how much is specifically about software development. At some moment my wife noticed that those among our friends who complain about their work a lot, all happe

I think there are a few reasons this post got a comment like Rafael's but your others didn't.

Any community that is about dating seems to attract the kind of people needed to turn it into /r/theredpill.  So I see the need to post places like here although they need to be more infrequent as not to turn this place sour in the same manner.  This is perhaps the inflection point where it has hit too many posts in too short a time.

There does seem to be more risk of violating "do no harm" here than your other posts.  You mention trying to seek out a... (read more)

I just don't feel anything.  I do have a certain logical appreciation that if I made a billion dollar company it would be impressive, I'd probably improve people's lives with it, and I could buy more stuff (mostly donate I guess?  I don't have much else I need...) but I don't feel anything.  Those are the words I feel flowing through my head but I don't feel any of the wordless feelings that make up my system 1.

Hell, I don't even feel anything thinking about the pleasure I'd get from getting a peach from my kitchen and there's a 95% chance t

... (read more)
5Viliam
I am not an expert, but this sounds to me like depression. Maybe there is a pill for that? Or maybe peer pressure if you could find the right group of peers which would push you in the direction you want to go anyway. (I wonder if you could rent such group. Maybe this is a business opportunity.)
2Adam Zerner
Ah, I see.

I feel like one of the people you're writing this for.  25.  900k NW yet still working a boring programming job for one of the top tech companies that I don't care about.  Last time I seriously tried at Tinder I had 5 dates planned in the first weekend and 112 matches in the first week yet I'm spending my time with a casual partner I'm lukewarm about.  Every time I start a side project I go two days and then think "eh, I bet nobody will care about it" and stop.  Besides the job the only reason to stay where I am is I like the swing

... (read more)

This might not be for you, but I found http://mindingourway.com/ to be very helpful in terms of finding motivation.

The other main thing I'd target would be to spend time around people who make you feel excited about stuff. Don't try to do it alone.

3Adam Zerner
I'm curious how you/your System I responds to high-risk/high-reward ideas. Startups are what come to my mind first: eg. startup ideas that maybe you think are unlikely to succeed, but would be billion dollar companies if successful.

Yep, I don't think you're completely wrong I just had those little bits to add. I support self-experimentation and liberal applications of the law of equal and opposite advice. Even towards my advice if you're feeling saucy.

I also recommend reading The Game not because it's actionable; but just because seeing the degenerate case when someone takes it too far and becomes an asshole instills some guard rails.

I don't think talking about this stuff should be disallowed. Romance is such an important part of life and the right advice leads people towards increased compassion while no advice leads to the red pill.

tinyanon*160

I think you're still missing two things

  1. We appreciate that cats are picky only after they pick us. The most charismatic people take slightly longer to smile when they see you, as if it was all the memories of you flooding into them and not just seeing a random person. We feel more heard when someone pauses slightly before responding. People don't want you to be unavailable. They want you to become available because of something special about them. That's incredibly validating. The solution isn't just to try and be less interested in people, it's to get g

... (read more)
2snog toddgrass
Thanks for the serious engagement with my argument, I have updated off of it! That's awesome! I should better explain my goals. My goal is not being perfectly attractive to every women, just to attracting more women/year. While lots of behaviors may appeal to types of women, picking the behaviors that work most often requires less updating and data and work. I want marginal gains, not perfection. Secondly, I have trouble getting a first or second date. I tend to keep em after the third date. I doubt my particular problem is in validation, which probably dominates the later stages of relationships. If I start being more aloof and teasing more and I get tons of first dates, but no 3rd dates, then I will revisit your advice. For a long time I understood dating by assuming people are instrumentally rational and coming up with complicated arguments to explain their behavior. I no longer use that strategy because people will rationalize any behavior they make. Revealed preferences predict future behavior, not rationalizations. I expect better predictions by building the simplest toy models that do not require complicated reasoning or non-hyperbolic discounting. Perhaps some people do like "picky cats that pick them" and this causes their behavior. I doubt it strongly determines first date choices. Basically, I don't think the picky-cats argument really turns women on. If I notice 3rd date attrition I will update and revisit the validation component. Yes strong emotions do cause people to bond. There could be some niche strategies there. I would love to hear your ideas! Yes being unavailable is one of many strategies. My experiences suggest that a reasonable does of unavailability is the most effective strategy in most cases for engendering initial romantic interest. There are lots of examples of people being not aloof and succeeding (I've done it several times). They are just less common. I can make marginal gains by being more aloof. Also, I come on really strong

Curious, what do you consider your bottlenecks?

1Thomas Kwa
I just wrote up a quarterly life review and will edit in relevant information soon. For now, I can say that I spend much more of my time feeling busy (e.g. reading LW, writing quarterly life reviews, checking emails) but the vast majority of this time is not highly productive. I want a more regular sleep schedule (already take melatonin at 9:30pm daily), and a way to get exercise that is pleasant, I can do every day, and takes less than an hour (baseline is walking on hilly streets). I occasionally miss important administrative things, but my system is improving fast enough that I might not benefit from suggestions.

I have almost no experience with drugs. Used weed twice, have had maybe two dozen drinks in my life mostly separated by at least 3 months, and only had a month or so period in my life where I drank coffee.

I developed visual snow after spending a lot of time working with computers. If I can stay away from screens for a few days it goes away. I've been told by a doctor that it's just eye fatigue leading to a poor ability to see contrast so solid colors look snowy with contrast that isn't actually there. I don't know enough about eyes to know for sure if that's a plausible statement.

1Logan Riggs
When reading up on this, lots of people said these mild hallucinations were associated with tiredness, migraines, low light levels, and other things. I assume you've recently spent a lot of time working with computers, and you still see visual snow now? If not, can you see it with the instructions given?

Under The Law of Equal and Opposite Advice I'm going to say that some people spend too much dakka on things that are actively harmful and I'd recommend literally the opposite.

I use Google Fi so I can text/call from anywhere I have internet on any device and then I simply leave my phone off hidden in my car for emergencies. I keep a small pocket notebook for anything I need to write down. I do take my phone out for podcasts or audiobooks while cleaning but that's it. If you have kids you probably do need to get a dumb phone to keep on you ... (read more)

5Zvi
Mad respect for this position. I do try to be at zero phones on me whenever it makes sense to do so, but alas my life doesn't really allow this. Also I listen to a lot of podcasts, which I don't regret at all.

Somewhat unrelated to that comment but:

After reading that article and the comments I still don't buy monogamous relationships expecting their partner to fulfill all their needs. I have two besties, one male and one female, who both provide me things that I often lack in relationships. It still feels like the only difference between poly with a primary partner and monogamy is the sex/kink/cuddling* stuff. It feels like a strawman argument; but if I'm wrong this wouldn't be the first time I misinterpreted someone in a situation like this.

*I... (read more)

3Matt Goldenberg
I think the "getting your needs met by one person" thing is more of a failure mode of bad monogamous relationships. As you mentioned, it's especially a problem if a person has varied sexual needs, as those are things you're only allowed to get from one partner in a monogamous context, however a common failure mode of monogamy is to also expect your partner to provide for all social needs. I think for different types of monogamous relationships this also varies. For instance there's a thing called "emotional cheating" in which partners don't have physical relationships with the opposite sex, but have a particular type of a emotional closeness that people are only expected to get from their partner. This can be an example of the failure mode.

Topping from the bottom is more like backseat driving. Going in with the intention of being submissive and then micromanaging things during the scene. Knowing what you want, seeking it out, and describing it exactly before hand is just good communication.

I don't think we need to find a way to describe why that kink would be evolutionarily advantageous or good sexual selection. People's feelings leak from one part of who they are into every part of them so it's completely possible for it to be a nonsexual part of them requesting to add tha... (read more)

Answer by tinyanon120

"We don't have replication crisis in exercise science because nobody expects any of the studies to replicate" - paraphrased joke from Eric Trexler. PhD, >30 publications in the field, pro bodybuilder, professional coach

So, a lot studies related to health&fitness are horrible. Without funding they are run on 20 random college students for the duration of a single semester. Measuring what they actually want to measure is usually expensive to impossible, so usually a proxy will be chosen without any formal proof that the proxy is accu... (read more)

I've saved all the links for this weekend. Thanks for the post btw, the post/comments from you/Hazard have helped and given me a lot to think about. This is all kinda a new realization after a year where I handled this all really poorly so I'm happy to get opportunities to explore it like this.

I haven't read it yet but I've saved all the links for this weekend.

I'm still not sure how "real" the dichotomy is for me. I think I understand and agree with what you're saying about s1 and s2 just being different types of processing. But sometimes while control is transferring between me and notme it really feels like there are two people in my head. It's not like how I can make two imaginary people to represent two subagents I know I have, it's like a person who is already there and doesn't need to be creat... (read more)

3Oxytocin
FYI I have had a very similar experience to what you're describing. You're not alone. I too found that being kind to notme instead of shouting at them is helpful. And, I've found one of the things that helps most is feeling really seen/heard by others, so hopefully this helps!

Well, notme has REALLY great examples for everyone being fragile. He can't really come up with good reasons why hurting them is worth negative infinity points to me other than "Can you blame me?". Which, no, no I can't. He did the best one could expect of someone that age.

If I talk with notme about how not everyone is fragile, the only thing I have to offer is a hope that I'm just in a filter bubble and there's some way to get out where people aren't like this. He only gives a vague admission that's a possibility... (read more)

he's slightly more open to lowering the weight when I acknowledge his venting a bit more first.

My suggestion is to continue with this route. Receive his venting, seek to genuinely empathize with it, try to understand and acknowledge his position as well as you can. Remember that understanding his position doesn't mean that you would need to act according to all of his wishes: you can validate his experience and perspective without making a commitment to go along to everything. Just seek to understand as well as possible, without trying to argue ... (read more)

Sometimes you scrape your knee really badly and don't notice. It's nice to not feel the pain, but also you just bled all over the carpet and now your mom is mad at you because she has to scrub the carpet for 20 minutes to get the dried blood off it.

If you could notice you scraped your knee immediately, make a fair assessment as to what care the scraped knee needs, and then turn the feeling off that is a super power. Sometimes I do that and it's awesome. But I don't have the power to turn them back on. They turn back on when they wan... (read more)

2Raemon
Thanks, appreciate this writeup a bunch!

I relate to this a lot. Gonna skip over the young childhood stuff that started me on this path, but this really became an issue starting in high school. I was really stressed out trying to manage my girlfriend's fragile mental state. Developed acid reflux and thought I was having a heart attack because I ate through the inner lining of my esophagus and breathing was extremely painful. So I picked up meditation. And without a teacher I only focused on quieting my "monologue of upsetness". I had some symptoms of depersonalization before,... (read more)

I feel you so much on depersonalization seeming super awesome until you realize you’re cut off from life itself in many ways. I’m still mad how much the outside world seems to appreciate when you’re half-dead inside...

4Slider
Seems to connected to this sort of belief network I had issues where it would be very painful and akward to explain my odd seeming behaviour. If I would describe a psychological quirck I had that was connected with psychological damage I would aplogise for being that way and the excesive restrictions what I was allowed to be started to be problematic. I eventually worked up to a position where it is seen very valuable that if you have trauma/damage quirks that you acknowledge and treat them and trying to pass as "normal" to not trigger the "offence" of being "mad" was seen as super-antigood. In the exreme the position that I previously thought was a good but came to think of as antigood (or bad) that people have a duty to not be brkoen/ get driven mad by pressures of life. In the area it has become more important for me to highlight the analogy between physical and mental injuries. If your stomach is open and you are bleeding profusely people have the instinct to block the flow of blood to outside the body. People do not start blaming you why you have gotten your stomach open, if they ask questions it's to clarify what interventions are effective in treating the damage. Even in the case when the injury is self-inflicted peoples pirmary message is not "you should not have done that". I guess one of the more plausible challneges to this characterization would be a emergency services medical profession accepting a gunshot wound victim in a city infested with gangs. The position of "This guy got himself shot doing stupid gangbanging". But I think even in cases like these it would not be professionally or ethically proper for the treater to be the one opining "you should stop gangbanging" althought education about the adverse efffects of bullets in stomachs would be within task scope. And even if physical intentonal huritng is criminal in some cases, that is not a totally blanket rule. Assault exists sure. But surgery is just medical violence and that is allowed. And i
3Hazard
Thanks for sharing your experience! Though I haven't written up a set of norms, I really like when someone engages with my posts by sharing the experiences they've had that relate to the ideas I'm talking about.
6Hazard
If you haven't I'd read it I'd totally recommend Kaj's Multi-Agent Models sequence. I used to have a mind model of "There is me, the smart goal oriented s2, and then s1, the fast and primitive lizard brain. Of course I shouldn't have disdain for s1, but really the game is about getting my s1 to do what I (s2) want" Now my model is different. I think of s2/consciousness as a type of information processing my brain can do, and I think I is my self-concept (which is stored and maintained in very distributed ways), and S1 is just "all other types of information processing" and in my mind there's room for lots of sub-agent like entities.
3Kaj_Sotala
What happens if, instead of trying to prove to notme that it won't happen, you ask notme to show you (in a way which won't overwhelm you, in case the belief emerges from some particularly nasty memory) why it thinks it will happen?
Raemon220

Something I'd be interested in from this comment and maybe the OP is more clearly spelling out the bad thing that happened, as a result on "turning off emotions."

I happen to agree with the frame you and Hazard have here, but if I imagine a person who's currently thinking "yeah I can turn off my emotions it's great!", this post and comment doesn't quite articulate what they're missing or sacrificing. (To be clear, articulating this seems quite hard, just noting that it'd be useful if you could manage it)

Is there a book or source you recommend? I really like the axises it chose so even if I end up disbelieving it I think I'd really enjoy knowing enough about it to discuss with people what ways they do/don't fit.

Edit: reordering the columns to change my perceived importance of each column has -vastly- improved my opinion of the system and my interest in it has gone up. Except now this list says I'm grull (red/green) which has never appealed to me. Black/green/blue all the way.

2Alexei
I actual don’t know! I kind of learned it from people / a bit from the official site.

Simic here: Never heard of enneagram before. I generally model people based on their fear so I like the axises it uses to evaluate people; but honestly every one of them feels like they fit except one and even then I could stretch it to kinda fit. Kinda like the Forer Effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect ). Posting mostly to combat publishing(?) bias where I expect you to only be able to find posts by people who fit the system really well.

2Alexei
When I first ran across enneagram and read about it myself, it also felt like all the types kind of fit. But then a friend was describing the true meaning of Peacemaker to a group of us and it... felt like he was reading my essence. Then I went home, took the test, and sure enough that was my type. So I think the descriptions out there are not that great and it's better if you talk to someone with a strong understanding of the system and they can help you figure out your type.

5 years powerlifting, 5 years wrestling, 3 years BJJ, 2 years dancing (normally don't count that, but for Beat Saber I guess it's relevant?), and a spattering of other sports like climbing/hiking for shorter time periods. Have helped a small handful of friends get fit, the biggest success story dropping 100lbs and now being pretty decent at BJJ where he initially couldn't walk over half a mile without a long rest.

Little formal training but I enjoy reading about the theory. I don't have any particularly compelling example to give here.... (read more)

I put on Backside by Think Twice and grabbed some 2.5/5/10 lbs weights and did some playing around. I tried optimizing for including shoulder movement.

Safety:

10 lbs I wouldn't do without a lot of working up to it. The thing to watch for is when you can't stop the momentum of the weight then it's time to lower it because the momentum can keep carrying a movement past your limit. I think 10lbs would probably actually give you tennis elbow if you consistently did it to a song that wasn't super slow. 2.5lbs and 5lbs both felt fun and sa... (read more)

5Raemon
Thanks! This was quite helpful. (A lot of my motivation was time-efficiency of workouts. Sometimes I enjoy and have time to do fast-paced songs for 30 minutes, and sometimes I'm just trying to get in a 5-10 minute workout in before going to work) I am curious what you consider the epistemic status of both comments to be? i.e. you come across like you know what you're talking about, but I could imagine a random overly confident layman coming across that confident. Curious how much background you have re: exploring the epistemic state of fitness as an overall field?
Answer by tinyanon170

*What is the injury risk*

To establish what the concern is: 1) the next joint up is the elbow* and that is the one that will have extra stress 2) "joints" tends to either mean tendons or ligaments. I doubt there are any studies on Beat Saber, but this is similar to tennis. In tennis you hold an object of ~1lb at the end of your arms; plus when you hit the ball there is much more force than just weight of the racket. I expect any injury from the weights would be similar to tennis elbow, which is inflammation of the tendon in the elbow.

I wouldn... (read more)

3Raemon
Mostly I want to improve my cardiovascular health (and, this is optimized a lot around "what I'm empirically actually willing to do a lot of that makes me actually sweat. Previously I've tried more typical weightlifting or other activities, but this one I actually stick with." Does your "eh, doesn't matter to much one way another" takeaway stay the same if the weight is increased? FWIW, I think "efficient" beat saber playing tends to focus on elbow moves, but because I'm optimizing a bit for workout I think I move my shoulders more than usual.

One interesting thing with WoW, or at least pre-cata WoW, is that the longer you play the higher amount of social interaction is needed. Up to level 15 you play almost completely alone. Then you start being pushed into meeting some randos; maybe having joined one of their guilds by 30. By 50 you're playing mostly with the same people, and by 60 you look forward to scheduled interactions with those people one to five times a week.

I haven't played the new versions, but my impression as to why the recent versions are less addictive:

1) More time w... (read more)

2Wei Dai
As I recall, at level 60, after you finish the 5-person content, you were forced into 40-person raids, where the amount of specialization/coordination/order-following required to make progress made it more like a tedious job than a game, at least for me. Curious if anyone has any insights into the design choice there, e.g., what was the thinking behind the end-game being 40-person raids, why wasn't there more of a ramp-up between the near-end-game and the actual end-game, did most WoW players not find it so tedious, etc.? In theory it seems like massively multiplayer games would be a good way for people to develop/practice social/coordination skills, and I think WoW and MUDs before it did help me a lot in that regard. (Before, I was really anxious of talking to people.) But I'm not aware of any games that go beyond trying to coordinate 40-person raids, scaling into hundreds or thousands or more. (And as I mentioned, even the 40-person content was tedious to me.) I wonder if there is any way to make larger scale coordination fun.
2Said Achmiz
This matches my experience with WoW.

> But then again, maybe the reason why I don't like most people and find them shallow is my lack of empathy, so the causes and effects might be tangled up here.

http://agentyduck.blogspot.com/2015/05/tortoise-report-3-empathy_16.html

A good read for anyone who thinks they might have that problem (which was my problem up until about two years ago)

If you're informing me of something I prefer bullets. If you're persuading me of something I prefer paragraphs. I find that bullet points lose out on the ability to include story type data that my system 1 responds to. My ideal world would be each article started with bullets for if it's something I already mostly agreed with and ended with stories about it for if it was something I'd need convincing of.

I find that bullet points lose out on the ability to include story type data that my system 1 responds to.

That's an advantage, in my opinion. I have a habit of turning articles into bullet point summaries, and I've found that the more difficult something is to turn into a bullet-point summary, the less actual content there is in the article. Ease of transformation into bullet points is a quick, yet remarkably effective heuristic to distinguish insight from insight porn.

Raemon140

This is an interesting point.

In the LW2.0 context, where mods draw a distinction between "explaining" and "persuading", I think it's worth noting that a good explanation can still rely on story-type-data to illustrate concepts, even if it's trying to let you ultimately make up your own mind about it.

Give me a month to make a fitness one. I train a bunch of my friends including one rationalist friend that has been pushing me towards writing some analyses of studies; so I have a good amount of experience trying to find ways to get people into fitness who've had issues fighting against their baser urges just to sit down and conserve calories.

My post are badly-argued. For instance, the Effective Egoist one was very short and implicit, and did not give any precise/well-justified arguments.

I've only read two of your posts but this is the thing I noticed. For Effective Egoist, the farther something is from the accepted set of priors for a community the more justification it needs. The only way I could see that article changing my mind is if I already bought the original premise and just had to slightly shift my conclusion. Your arguments were each only a few sentences long and you didn... (read more)

3Elo
This might be a structural problem that comes with practice. Unfortunately for readers, recognizing structural problems and being able to point them out and describe them is also a skill that comes with practice.

I think it's more about situations that have insufficient information. The initial example has him being called "rapey" for a light tap on a friends shoulder for the first time. It's different if he were to slug them hard and it's different if the recipient already expressed they aren't interested. But if the first time someone taps their friend on their shoulder is compared to actual rape in any way then we clearly need to reevaluate something.

A bit about my history that colors this - I grew up being taught in a way that I... (read more)

As someone who is here mostly to improve my personal life (and perhaps since that tends to generate a surplus, get some EA done along the way) it's definitely worth it for me. A few points on the things in your list

  • Think of your practice:theory ratio for a thing you're good at. Think of how often you deliberately practice conversational skills like connecting with other people. Realize you should be doing less reading more doing. Feel scared to start. Go somewhere nobody will know you and practice anyways.
    • Side note: I feel like there must be
... (read more)

" …the next year would automatically be composed of approximate copies of today? "

This one was interesting to me. If you ask how I want to spend the next year my answer involves almost no hedonism, lots of hard work, and a scarily high chance of burn out. But when you phrase it this way my first response is "...I would try really hard to get laid by the end of the day" and it takes me a second to realize I actually want to accomplish things with that year too.

Possibly has helped me accept that adding more hedonism to my life could be ... (read more)

Very helpful, I've been trying to generate better ideas for restful leisure since too many of my activities are the kind of things you record yourself often and focus improvement and I often feel tired even after my "rest" activities. I'd be really interested for more people to say what they do at each level. For me I think the list would look like

1. Laying down, meditating

2. cooking something I know by heart, sport I don't think hard about (hiking, lifting, climbing, sometimes dance), driving without GPS, human interactions with... (read more)

I don't necessarily disagree that this dichotomy exists; but this way of looking at it feels exagerated. People tend to do what gets rewarded. We get rewarded for saying factually correct things, so we build maps around what is factually correct. Other people get rewarded for saying emotionally correct things, so they build maps around what is emotionally correct. It is still a map though. I'm not necessarily certain it's a bad map. It makes them happy, it can build a good sense of community, and generally matches something humans have ... (read more)

2Bound_up
Insofar as we are "overthinking things," they seem to agree that they think less in certain ways. That's purely descriptive, which was my whole purpose. Normal people tend to use system 2 and abstraction less, near as I can tell. If I were to get prescriptive, I'd agree that nerds tend to use System 2 at some times when they should use System 1. Neither system is unequivocally superior, though, since it's a spectrum, I wonder if there are some lucky souls who's dispositions land at the sweet spot in the middle. As for calling the normal person's system of caching thoughts according to social advantage...it doesn't seem very map-like to me. I mean, you can call it a map if you like, but the key distinction to understand is that at one extreme, we have an attempt to accurately describe the universe, and at the other extreme, an attempt to maximize social status, with real people falling somewhere in the middle, and the minority which are strongly biased towards accurately describing the universe called "nerds."