I've been working on understanding and using hypnosis, which is better described as conditioning arbitrary associations through mind games.The theory and results have been quite promising, to understate it.

There has been a lot written on LessWrong about how one should think, but relatively little on how to actually implement these thinking patterns. One of the directions that I want to take this is helping people take these skills and actually implement them on the 5 second level. I also want to see if I can develop a viable 'rationality seed' by installing a gut level appreciation for the importance of taking ideas seriously (and in particular, the idea that rationality matters) as well as a few other select habits.

I've made a ton of progress and I feel like it's almost a new branch of engineering. I have concrete ideas to test and avenues to explore and not enough time to explore them all at once.

I'm looking for other people that would be interested in being brought up to speed on the theory and then running experiments with me. I'm excited to see where this can be taken :)

PM me if you are interested.

For over a year now, making full use of my body has been a big hobby. To this end, I am learning silly human tricks. It has taken a few weeks of sporadic effort and I am now able to snap my fingers consistantly. My next goal is to be able to whistle. I have made little progress so far and am not yet able to whistle particular notes. Previously successful projects of this type were refining my senses of smell and temperature. Now I can reliably tell the temperature of water or air to the degree C with a range of roughly -20 to 45C. Calibrating my sense of temperature was easy enough; I would feel something, guess the temperature, then read off a thermometer. If I was wrong, I might say something like "Oh so that's what 23 degrees feels like." and then feel it again.

Other ongoing projects of this sort are to smell relative humidity and to sneeze only in the presence of a bright light. I've lost a bit of progress since last thread, now darkening my field of vision works to prevent a sneeze, but I still sneeze occasionally at normal indoor room brightness. When I feel like sneezing I look at a bright light until I either sneeze or stop feeling like I need to. It could be that the CFL I normally use is not bright enough for my purposes. "Hazards of Light" by Cronly-Dillon et al. suggests that I would be safe using a much more intense lamp.

I am working on finishing up a philosophy paper about whether "fine-tuning" (the claim that the physical constants and initial conditions that permit the evolution of life and conscious observers are rare in the space of physically possible parameters) supports "multiverse" hypotheses according to which the cosmos is huge and is heterogeneous in its local conditions. One major argument for the view that fine-tuning does not support multiverse hypotheses is due to Ian Hacking, who claimed that this inference is analogous to an "inverse gambler's fallacy" where a gambler enters a casino, witnesses a roll of dice resulting in double-sixes, and concludes that the people must have been throwing dice for a while.

While going through Nick Bostrom's book Anthropic Bias, I've found his discussion of Hacking's argument (and of an significantly improved recent version by Roger White, available here ) somewhat unilluminating, although I thought there must be something wrong with the argument. Going through the existing replies to this argument in the literature I've found counterarguments that either fail straightforwardly or (more commonly) render fine-tuning irr... (read more)

Been coding a seed AI. Halfway there - it's already superintelligent and has taken over the universe, just need to work on Friendliness now.

I'm working on becoming more physically attractive. Towards this end, I've been 1) upgrading my fashion based on recommendations from one of my highly skilled roommates, 2) implementing Tim Ferris' 4 Hour Body system to lose weight and gain muscle, and 3) handling random small things having to do with my physical appearance. Towards this end I've 1) bought new shirts and a watch, 2) have been eating paleo and working out twice a week (as per the recommendations from Ferris) for the last 3.5 weeks, and 3) bought new shaving cream, new facial moisturizer, hydrocortisone for eczema, cryotherapy for a wart on my toe.

My goals for the respective sub-projects are 1) new jeans, shoes, and shirts so I can wear my new style 5-7 days a week, 2) drop fat while gaining muscle until I'm under 190 for weight and have a visible 6 pack, and 3) handle the wart and have the items available to get into a constant schedule of maintaining my peak appearance in terms of skin quality and minor things like nose hair. Perhaps I'll make a weekly checklist.

I'm working on this because I made major updates this summer about the importance of physical beauty for men, for relationships and for career reasons. Se... (read more)

Finding a job that will allow me not to live in Waco, my first priority. Plus, other neat stuff like the recent contest that interferes with that.

I just finished learning how to type properly, which I had neglected to do in high school. I finished reading Foundations of Neuroeconomics with another LWer. We're deciding what to read next.

I'm currently trying to become competent at mathematical proofs. I've hired a tutor and I'm practicing about an hour a day. My goal is to understand probability theory as I think it will help me correct some subtle issues with a statistical package I've designed (which I am otherwise very pleased with). I'd also like to better understand some advanced MCMC techniques.

I'll be doing the free online Stanford AI course.

Oh, and yesterday I were feeling to ill to do anything actually productive like hang on internet forums, so I started messing around in python and got a fair bit into an experimental, and I quote, "brain machine interface using only hardware available on a normal PC" through a bunch of neurological tricks mostly learned from this site. It's crazy enough that it might actually work, in which case it's a pretty rad shortcut to IA and getting yourself a codeic cortex for the price of only a beeping-induced aching head and a seemingly-pointless-circular-movement-induced aching hand. I may or may not work on this again.

I've made progress in two areas:

• An intermediate goal of accumulating money & power
• A primary goal of dating successfully

I situated myself as the lead for my company's sexy new product. On Tuesday I led a well-received demonstration to a potential customer, and on Wednesday I told my boss that I wanted a new title with more pay. He's a much better negotiator than I am, but we're still talking, anyway. The details of the agreement we reach or don't reach will determine where I live and work in 2012.

I continue to accumulate cash despite my best effort... (read more)

link to previous threads is broken. It's not set up as a relative link.

Improving social skills: I have made a number of new friends over the summer, took notes, started using alcohol as a social tool, and hit on and picked up a number of young women successfully.

Mathematics: I have been reading Silverman's "Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves" and attempting all of the exercises at the behest of my advisor, and attending number theory seminars at Stanford.

Practical: My computer's keyboard is having problems so I tried to fix it but I may have to replace it (every time I type "p" it also goes back a space, and ot... (read more)

In this comment I set myself four goals. Here is a short update:

I'm teaching myself Java. My goal is to complete an app for analyzing raw genotypic data from personal genomics services (like 23andme) by summer 2012.

I'm currently 17% done working my way through Introduction to JAVA Programming, by Y. Daniel Liang.

I'm training 6 days a week to score 300 points on the USMC PFT (I have no intention of joining the military, I simply think it is a good goal in terms of overall physical fitness). I am increasing my running speed at a rate that is 75% slower

I have been trying to invent an AI for over a year, although I haven't made a lot of progress lately. My current approach is a bit similar to how our brain works according to "Society Of Mind". That is, when it's finished the system is supposed to consist of a collection of independent, autonomous units that can interact and create new units. The tricky part is of course the prioritization between the units. How can you evaluate how promising an approach is? I recently found out that something like this has already been tried, but that has happen... (read more)

A programming language that has the semantics necessary to elegantly express a new kind of garbage collector. A rudimentary prototype of the collector, written in C++ with a terrible interface, appeared to confirm the idea.

At least, that was the initial goal. The more I investigate the design choices involved in programming languages, the more room for improvement I see.