Willa's Shortform

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Willa's Shortform

by Willa

21st Dec 2020

1 min read

213

2

This is a special post for quick takes by Willa. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

Mentioned in

6Voicing Voice

5Media Diet: Cultivating Voice, Deliberate Action, and Alive Time

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[-]Willa2y120

Shortform #66 Waht, where did 7 months go?

Working mostly, actually. So that was good, and I'm still enjoying my hospital technology related job quite a bit, but I've been sorely missing having other aspects of my life than work (despite enjoying the work a lot).

I experienced a truly wonderful thing tonight, and that was a Norfolk Rationalists meeting with great conversations between excellent people, we went for five & a half hours and only stopped because we all got too sleepy.

Re: Shortform #65: no, I probably will not go to medical school. I am happily focusing on technology jobs and quite enjoying those in the healthcare environment. I would still like to do research, but until a later stage of life and other job decisions, any research I do will have to be independent, which is fine. I have so much to learn about so many areas, even within very specific niches, not only for my profession but also the research area(s) I'm interested in. Such learning will keep me occupied for some time while I grind for knowledge that I must acquire for professional & personal development plus satisfaction. Here's to learning new things every single day!

I am eating healthier, driving far less, walking & exercising more, and have noticed that my general competency improves as I improve in those areas of my life. This feels great!

I did not listen to music while writing this post, it's quite late & I did not wish for the extra stimuli. The gentle hum of the air conditioning was sufficient.

Cheers,
Willa

[-]Willa4y100

ToDo #1

I have previously read media consumption diet posts on LW and elsewhere that I thought were quite good and helpful. I need to:
- Find the three most helpful to me such posts, search time cannot exceed 20 minutes.
Take a few minutes to assess the three chosen posts more carefully, identify where and how they ebb and flow in response to each other. Find the best flow and most correct-for-me ideas out of them.
Write 1st post detailing structured efforts for improving my media consumption diet to help improve my voicing voice capabilities.
- Decide time span between 1st post and 2nd follow-up, reflective, post. Set calendar notifications for end of time span to write 2nd post.
At the marked date, write and publish 2nd post.

re: Shortform #50 "These efforts should help me notice and cultivate my "voice", and give voice to myself. Developing my thoughts into refined ideas and producing them is highly aligned with my interests, goals, and more, so I'm excited for this! (note to self: the actual methods for how I do these things and what I actually do, plus what my successes and failures turn out to be are good source material for two posts: 1 post detailing the plan and ... (read more)

6Robbo4y

I enjoyed reading this and skimming through your other shortforms. I’m intrigued by this idea of using the short form as something like a journal (albeit a somewhat public facing one). Any tips, if I might want to start doing this? How helpful have you found it? Any failure modes?

2Willa4y

Cheers :) copied from bottom of post: "My #1 tip is to start writing shortforms, whatever you can do, give it a go :) try different strategies, write about different types of things, be more personal or less personal, fail publicly, and so on so you can see what works well for you and grow in the ways you want to grow!" Were there any parts you found particularly enjoyable, interesting, or even enlightening in some way? I'll share my experiences thus far writing these shortforms: * I definitely use these shortforms as a public journal or log, and I find that really helpful in several ways. * When I post something on the public internet (i.e. public http/https sites, not walled platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Discord, or otherwise) I find that it gives me more self-confidence, feels very "real" and tangible in a way that writing privately or posting on a private / walled platform does not (that realness and tangible "in the world" feel is good for me), and feels like a good avenue for "leveling up" in a variety of ways. * I value feedback, critique, suggestions, discussion, and so on from other people. I believe that a person becomes the best version of theirself, "levels up" more quickly and in a better way, and so on when practising their arts amongst a community of other practitioners, publicly. I don't do very well when it's just me by myself and while there are some forms of deliberate practice for some skills and arts that work okay-ish solo or require being solo occasionally, I'm at my very best when I'm learning and operating publicly in a community. So these shortforms help me learn and operate publicly in a community I care about and like being a part of, strengthen my efforts to learn and practise, and more. * These shortforms feel like a great way for me to practise writing publicly before doing the honestly scarier and more intimidating thing of writing a regular post here on LW that could go on main / the frontpage. Since I'm not that wo

[-]Willa4y100

Shortform #50 Voicing Voice

My consume vs produce ratio is not well balanced, I consume dramatically more media, information, entertainment, and other such things compared to what I produce. How can I even notice let alone refine my own thoughts and opinions amidst the ruckus and maelstrom of external inputs rummaging around my mind constantly? Furthermore, many if not most of those external inputs don't actually pay rent, though there are (and in some ways quite notable) exceptions (e.g. what I learned reading The Sequences).

In response to this problem, I am altering my media consumption "diet" to restrict non-deliberate consumption and increase deliberate, focused, helpful consumption plus increase conscious production efforts to generate significantly more outputs / products than I do now.

These efforts should help me notice and cultivate my "voice", and give voice to myself. Developing my thoughts into refined ideas and producing them is highly aligned with my interests, goals, and more, so I'm excited for this! (note to self: the actual methods for how I do these things and what I actually do, plus what my successes and failures turn out to be are good source material for two po... (read more)

[-]Willa4y100

Shortform #20 It's time to hunt down a job!

Today was marvelous :)

I walked 2.18 miles indoors while on phone calls; I did 20 pushups and 100 situps at noon.
I virtually co-worked for about 2 hours and made good progress towards writing my review of Gears-Level Models are Capital Investments.
I began organizing and packing up in preparation for moving.

It was pointed out to me that I keep working on a bunch of different things but haven't yet started searching for jobs, despite that finding a good job will enable me to move to Seattle and do more fun things in life. Point noted and taken to heart!

Job hunting is now my highest priority, and I will be focusing on that exclusively while virtually co-working plus will do that while doing productive stuff by myself too. I will continue writing my three reviews (for the LW2019Review) during non-workday hours / in my spare time, but my workday hours will be focused on job hunting.

Good luck y'all :)
Cheers,
Willa

[-]Willa4y100

2021 Week 1 Review 1 Jan - 9 Jan

This week saw rapid mood changes, a descent into depression, and many actions taken to combat the aforementioned things. I'm happy to report that the actions I took ultimately led to a significant improvement in and stabilization of my mood, the removal of depression and ascent to a slightly higher happiness set point than the week before, and I've learned some good things.

Most significant thing noticed or learned this week: Living alone is really bad for me. Runner up: The power of co-working!

Once I realized (noticed) that living alone is really bad for me, I talked with family and they accepted my request to relocate from where I'm living now to go live with them. Now that I have a plan that's actively being worked towards for combating the "living alone is really bad for me" thing, I've been much more capable of dismissing isolation or loneliness feelings and my mood has improved significantly.

I noticed that co-working (only virtual so far) can "rescue" a day that's going poorly or make an already good day a great day, because I enjoy the social interaction + getting shit done. This upcoming week I have to pack and organize a lot, but I will sched... (read more)

[-]Willa4y100

Shortform #16 The power of co-working!

Today was an excellent day :) I woke up late, but immediately started virtually co-working with a friend and during that time we both completed a nice amount of tasks. Jumping from "I'm finally awake now" to virtual co-working helped me stay on track this day, it was very effective and helpful.

I scheduled the January and February Houston Rationalists' meetups, replied to some messages, tidied up, walked for 30 minutes, and later hungout with a friend around a campfire outside, twas nice!

Tomorrow I will post my 2021 Week 1 Review by 13:00. I will also setup co-working sessions for next week, quite looking forward to those! Seems like I'll be getting a lot more extra physical activity starting tomorrow because I must start prepping to move cross country and that takes a fair bit of organization, packing, etc. physical effort.

I did not listen to music while writing this shortform.

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

[-]Willa2y90

Shortform #103 Friends are great!

Note to self, I really want to read "Friendship is Optimal", that along with a rather large number of other things are on my list. A list that would benefit from some pruning, curation, and possibly publishing.

I met with a new friend tonight at a lovely Japanese Fusion place for dinner, and we had ridiculously pleasant, deep, and good conversations.

Friends are amazing. Good night, I must sleep now.

6Yitz2y

Indeed they are :)

[-]Willa2y90

Shortform #94 Boundary Setting at work is suddenly much easier after attending Retreat

Prior to attending the organizer's retreat, I would let people send me tasks that fell outside of my primary responsibilities, even if they were mundane and not good learning opportunities and/or even if the individual in question actually had time to do the task. After the retreat, I noticed today, I haven't been doing that and have been saying no much more often, or enforcing better boundaries generally about work tasks.

I'm not sure what changed. My current job admitted... (read more)

[-]Willa2y70

Shortform #110 Studying | I vent some about work, but not...intensely, more of a light venting.

I was approved to work four 10 hour days this week meaning that I have Friday entirely free from my current employer! Huzzah! Huzzah! I will be spending the majority of the day studying for the professional cert I take exams for at the end of this month plus will meet with my co-organizer to figure out upcoming meetups. I am grateful that I've been able to study some at work, though not usually more than twenty minutes per day, still...the extra time there and th... (read more)

6Viliam2y

Let's hope that the computers will feel the same way about replacing humans.

1Willa2y

Indeed, indeed! Machines with strong utility functions against humans would not be a good outcome for our species :(

[-]Willa2y70

Shortform #100 Writing publicly considered beneficial, fun, and not that scary

After writing one hundred shortform posts, writing publicly no longer feels scary and really just feels like a habit more than anything else (especially because the last 33 posts were near daily or daily). A habit I intend to continue as these are fun to write (even when I feel grumpy or hit an ugh field before doing so) and occupy a nice role in my life, plus I love growing my writing & other skills when creating these posts.

I feel a strong desire to write bigger posts than ... (read more)

[-]Willa2y70

Shortform #88 Retreat Debriefing & Staying in Touch | I will review some AI Safety literature

Today was a bifurcated day, I spent the morning and early afternoon dealing with the remnants of travelling (picking up my car from my local airport and then my baggage from an airport an hour away from home because that's where my connecting flight had been routed to last night after the initial one was unexpectedly cancelled) then finally made it to my apartment to shower & recombobulate.

I met with my Norfolk Rationalists co-organizer (shoutout Yitz!!! ht... (read more)

[-]Willa2y70

Shortform #87 Travelling Occurred

Today I spent the entire day (other than a very lovely short morning breakfast at the retreat venue and a few last wonderful conversations) travelling. I am now safely in bed, time to crash and get some rest.

[-]Willa4y60

As expected, today was less productive than yesterday thanks to holiday stuff and doing an unexpected amount of physical activity. And that's okay! Tomorrow may be similar, sans the unexpected physical activity stuff probably.

I read Zvi's COVID Update and oy vey. Thanks to Zvi for writing those updates, I've found them witty, insightful, helpful, and so on! This particular update earned those attributes too, but damn was the subject matter a bummer, if 2021 turns into another plague year that will suck...hopefully enough vaccines are distributed and that t... (read more)

4Ben Pace4y

I liked reading this :)

2Willa4y

Thanks! What in particular stood out to you / did you like?

[-]Willa2y50

Shortform #119 Art is Fun!

I hadn't played the piano in months, but decided to have a solo jam session where I let myself play whatever felt good to play, and wow was that nice! Some of the time I played existing songs, but most of the time I flowed from chord to chord and jumped around the octaves.

Recently I acquired a drawing tablet, I spent some time learning Krita and drew some things, it was cathartic and very fun at the same time.

I don't think I let myself just play around very much, nor spend much time doing art things that I enjoy. I would like to c... (read more)

[-]Willa3y50

Shortform #65 Work Work Work, jobs are nice | Thoughts about career and future things

I started a new job in October, it was about time, and I've greatly benefited from working again! I'm enjoying the work, the environment, the industry, and am looking for W2 fulltime positions (I'm contract at the moment) at the institution I'm at plus a similar few nearby. Turns out I quite like working at hospitals and medical institutions, even if I am still doing IT work.

I started a second job this week which is very different from my main job. Instead of working in pe... (read more)

[-]Willa4y50

Several very important to me people whom I love told me that they would rather die than live even a few hundred years or indefinitely, that they would not choose cryopreservation if life extension capabilities aren't advanced enough by their "natural time", and so on, when I asked them how they felt about immortality (scenario was: imagine that humanity figures out how to be immortal and there are no restrictions, anyone can have it if they want it, do you take it yes or no?).

There's too much deathism in this world, aahhhhhhhhh. I've already started to mou... (read more)

4Viliam4y

On average, as you grow older, your health gets worse. I suspect that many people make an interpolation of this process, and their idea of a 1000 years old person is kind of a zombie in a wheelchair screaming in pain. Arguably, a fate worse than death. (And if you are religious, or unable to talk, then choosing death is not even an option here.) So perhaps it would be better to talk about "more decades of youth" rather than extension of life-as-we-know-it. Another possible fear is of waking up in a bad future. (Which again may be worse than death, and suicide may not be an option.) I have no idea what are the actual probabilities here.

3Willa4y

I suspect that a good deal of people make that assumption too, about what living past a certain age would be like. Or the bad future scenario. I've encountered people who believe either or both things, but once I frame the question and scenario as immortality with perpetual youth then the first concern almost always disappears. The majority of people I ask the question / scenario to, keep bringing up concerns about population and where all these immortality people are going to live. That's not really something I'm worried about, because the universe is very large and an assumption I make is that humanity would spread throughout the stars if immortal, but I don't have a great specific answer regarding the population concerns people have mentioned. Actually, religious people with strong faith in their religion's conception of an afterlife are the most likely to choose eventual death over immortality in my experience, because they believe that one their time is up on Earth, they simply die and go to their religion's afterlife, and they find that very strongly preferable to living perpetually in the material world.

2Viliam4y

For the religious ones, perhaps a good frame would be "young for 1000 years", so that they can still enjoy the afterlife. More time to do the earthly stuff, and the afterlife is supposed to be infinite anyway. Population... the best case would be something like "people are young forever, but they can only have kids during the first few decades". Anyway, with exponential growth we would run out of resources even without immortality. And if there is ever a law against exponential growth, like "only 2 kids per a pair of adults", then immortality would mean a linearly growing population, which should be doable somehow. But yeah, this is difficult to explain, and requires some faith in either space travel or linear increases in food production.

1Willa3y

I made the following claim in reply to wunan's comment below: "I make this claim: Individuals with sufficiently strong religious beliefs in a religion that has an afterlife will more often than not prefer to die on the "mortal plane" and go to their faith's afterlife than continue living (even in good health and restored to youth, etc.) for [100 more years] [300 more years] [lots more years] [the rest of time]." I think there would be variation even amongst individuals with strong faith in the afterlife of their religion regarding how long they may wish to keep living when restored to youth, but I do think more often they would eventually prefer to die instead of living indefinitely. I think your point "More time to do the earthly stuff, and the afterlife is supposed to be infinite anyway" is a good one, and agree that it'd likely motivate some such individuals to keep living some amount longer, though for how long I'm not sure. I do think there would be some such individuals who would not choose life extension past humanity's current "natural" (scare quotes for a reason) lifespan though. As I mentioned in my reply to wunan, I don't want to make a claim and forever rely on anecdote to support it, so I'll look for some research on this topic and see if anyone has researched the sorts of questions one would expect for this topic and if so, what they found. I have a reactionary knee-jerk reaction against controlling peoples' reproductive capabilities / rights / choices, in addition to finding that idea pretty awful and horrifying, and would like to find a way for humanity to get immortality yet not have to place any sort of reproductive restrictions on anyone: I don't want to live in a world where there are such restrictions, because I think that's wrong and goes against some essential aspect of being human. But I do understand that figuring out resources for a potentially exponentially growing population is an exceptionally hard problem, that just means we should h

2Pattern4y

Arguably, self modification might be different from continuing to exist (comparatively) unchanged.

1wunan4y

They'll almost definitely change their minds once we have good treatments for aging.

1Willa4y

I know some will, but that's too optimistic and ignores the preferences / experiences of a huge amount of people, because there are categories of people who prefer death over immortality for whom the aging process doesn't factor in to their choice on that matter. Especially people with strong faith in their religion's afterlife.

0wunan4y

What I mean is that they haven't really considered it. As I'm sure you're aware, your mind does not work like most people's. When most people consider the question of whether they'd like to die someday, they're not really thinking about it as if it were a real option. Even if they give detailed, logically coherent explanations for why they'd like to die someday, they haven't considered it in in near mode. I am very confident of this -- once they have the option, they will not choose to die. Right now they see it as just an abstract philosophical conversation, so they'll just say whatever sounds nice to them. For a variety of reasons, "I'd like to die someday; being immortal doesn't appeal to me" sounds wise to a lot of people. But once they have the actual option to not die? Who's going to choose to die? Only people who are suicidally depressed or who are in very extreme cults will choose that.

1Willa3y

I wonder what the research area for "finding out whether people with strong beliefs in a religious afterlife of some kind change their minds near death regarding wanting to die vs wanting to go to that afterlife" is called? I do think you underestimate the strength of religious individual's convictions and the impact of that on their decisionmaking especially near death if they have significant faith in their religion's conception of an afterlife (assuming it has one). Still...staring imminent death in the face does spur many changes whenever an individual experiences that, so maybe that does shake things up...but, I'm not sure how much hope I place in that idea without seeing some research around the topic. I make this claim: Individuals with sufficiently strong religious beliefs in a religion that has an afterlife will more often than not prefer to die on the "mortal plane" and go to their faith's afterlife than continue living (even in good health and restored to youth, etc.) for [100 more years] [300 more years] [lots more years] [the rest of time]. I make that claim because of my experiences interacting with individuals who have very strong faith in their religious beliefs, including interacting with such individuals when they are near death. I need to figure out what kind of research people have already done that points in the direction of that claim and see what others have found, then I can pursue this inquiry further. I don't want to make a claim and forever rely on anecdote to support it!

-1Dagon4y

Talk is cheap. Someone who says "I want to die eventually" isn't actually invested in the answer - it's just them justifying to themselves why they're not exercising, eating right, and otherwise planning for a long future.

3Viliam4y

This is very uncharitable. For many people, living forever is simply not a realistic option. Heck, many rationalists give it a chance around 10%, and that already involves a lot of belief in progress, which many people don't have. Also, people are not automatically strategic. For example, religious people believe that sin can bring them eternity in hell, and they still keep sinning.

2Pattern4y

Arguably that's internal conflict. (Or, alternatively, what point is there in the religion if religious people are perfect?)

1garbageactual4y

Believing in hell is the strategy against sinning.

3Willa4y

You're assuming a lot about other peoples' experiences and motivations, the internal experience that my aforementioned love ones have described to me looks not at all similar to what you said. While their internal experiences and their desire for eventual death are alien thought processes, emotions, and experiences to me, I do notice that the people-space of people who prefer eventual death to immortality contains a pretty wide variety of reasonings and internal experiences for why they prefer that eventual death...including surprisingly well thought out and sophisticated and logically coherent answers. Some people genuinely want to die eventually rather than live indefinitely, and that mindset / preference is so alien to mine own that it's a struggle to accept that people believe such things and have such preferences, but I keep encountering people who do so it seems to be true. However, I can see how what you said might be an internal experience for some people within people-space, it does check out and pass my anecdotal experience test at least (I've encountered some people who, per their description of internal experience, are likely similar to the mindset you described). I like to ask people their preferences on this matter, so I've heard a lot different answers to the "death vs immortality" questions, and while I've encountered some people who have a strong or neutral preference for immortality, I've encountered a surprisingly high amount of people who would prefer death, and that sucks.

[-]Willa4y50

Shortform #41 Feeling Good

Today was an excellent day :)

I walked a little over 3 miles (~7200 steps) today plus ate decently.
I felt great upon waking up in the morning.
I was virtually social for ~2 hours today.
I tore through the garage and got most of the old tech stuff out of their various boxes and almost ready for recycling. (PLEASE RECYCLE YOUR OLD ELECTRONICS, do not throw them away; most cities or metropolitan areas have somewhere you can take most if not all of your electronics for recycling. Please please please recycle that stuff, throwing it

... (read more)

[-]Willa4y50

Shortform #38

Today was a good day :)

I successfully dialed back the Worm reading and only read for a few hours instead of many hours. I was virtually social for about 2 hours, took care of some moving related tasks, wrote this shortform, and am going to bed at a decent time.

To tomorrow!
Willa

5mingyuan4y

Good job! I often have trouble limiting my fiction consumption, so I'm proud of you for noticing the problem and then addressing it so quickly!

1Willa4y

Thanks! It's difficult, but noticing is an important first step :) That being said, I read more today than yesterday, so a little progress lost, but, I read less than on the 1st, so a small victory nevertheless.

[-]Willa4y50

Shortform #25 Work Work Zug Zug

I enjoyed today!

I practised more CS fundamentals via coding in Swift for about 5 hours and 30 minutes.
I spent about 3 hours being virtually social, it was nice.
I spent 1 hour doing chores and miscellaneous < 5 min tasks
I logged my calories today, ~2226kcal
I successfully used gtimelog to log my time for the day, but I found copy + pasting the whole log to the shortform onerous and not that valuable, so I'm only mentioning the time spent doing things congruent to stated goals.

Unfortunately, I did not exercise today. ... (read more)

[-]Willa4y50

Today was a lovely but very tiring day, I had a great day!

I continued reading Steve Silberman's NeuroTribes for a bit today, but otherwise didn't read much at all today because of all my time going elsewhere. Looking forward to settling in for a few hours of reading tomorrow though :)

My time spent exercising today was much lower than yesterday, but that's because most of my time was spent with family, plus I got roped in to help clean for a few hours (which counts as some physical activity, yay!). After cleaning for a few hours I stole 30 minutes to run ou... (read more)

[-]Willa2y40

Shortform #92 Woohoo for Organizing :)

Houston Rationalists now have an in-person local organizer! Thank you David M for organizing, I look forward to seeing how the group grows and supporting how I can from afar.

Norfolk Rationalists will become Virginia Rationalists this week! We are still meeting in Norfolk, but the name change should reduce confusion amongst people I or others speak to about the group. Plus, I would like to provide infrastructure & support to organizers in other parts of Virginia and support as many Virginia groups as possible, let's... (read more)

[-]Willa4y40

I have attended 2 CrossFit classes each week for the past two weeks! I will attend 2 classes this week and push for doing 3 classes a week starting next week. Finally getting into a habit of regular exercise each week (it's still not a huge amount, but I'm growing that habit!) makes me feel fantastic, and I'm so happy I've done this.

I'll be in Las Vegas later this week to party and have some fun :) If you're reading this and have recommendations for what to do, where to go, etc. I'm happy to hear your recommendations.

You should listen to the "Having a succ... (read more)

[-]Willa4y40

Shortform #10

Writing that weekly review yesterday challenged me motivationally, but I pushed through the ugh and wrote it anyways, I'm very happy about that, it was quite helpful to write.

Perhaps one of the most valuable products of writing that weekly review was that of noticing.

Reviewing my past week, the shortforms from that week, and other things focused my attention on things I would have otherwise missed, and thus helped me notice what I improved, what I completed, what I failed at, what was challenging, and so on. I'm deliberately incorporating more... (read more)

[-]Willa4y40

I'm taking a few minutes now to write what comes to mind, reflect on my day, plan, organize, blah blah blah.

Today was a good and productive day!

I successfully avoided Hacker News, didn't doomscroll at all on any site, and completed >50% of things I listed in yesterday's shortform!

Didn't read much today outside of light LW post skimming and chugging through a book while sitting in the car and waiting (had to wait a few times for >5 minutes in the car today but that's why keeping a book in the car at all times comes in handy; note: I always shut the en... (read more)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortforms will resume on Monday 3 October.

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #134 Cloud Atlas

It is possible that Friday evenings after working all week may not be my most effective evenings for focused study.

Instead of studying anything tonight, I watched Cloud Atlas for the first time and wow, what a movie (how's the book? haven't read it). I was confused at first, because the movie begins by throwing multiple characters in different locations in time and space at you completely independent of context or exposition, but my confusion lessened as the movie progressed and I found the whole experience quite novel and deeply ... (read more)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #127 CoWorking is Great!

I don't have much slack in my life right now, so working in the same space as a friend plus taking occasional breaks to talk is great. I get some amount of social hangout time and am able to work.

Problem: I'm hecking exhausted from working hours a day on other things in addition to my day job. Really need to change something in the next few months I think. I'm enjoying the work at least :)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #115 Christopher Nolan's Tenet

I watched this movie tonight and had a blast, it was actually quite a bit of fun keeping track of the timeline stuff and whether someone or an object was operating "inverted" or "non-inverted". Is the premise absurd? It definitely feels that way, but the movie was fun and kept my attention well occupied for its duration. One provocative takeaway from the movie: be careful with rigidity of thought & not updating your priors. It felt like the movie was mostly about rapidly updating your priors and not just for usua... (read more)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #108 Tool use, software, and digitising operations

How does one as a human being stay relevant and able to solve enough problems that others experience to earn a living? No, AGI does not seem to be here yet, but our lives are governed, shaped, impacted by, and sometimes even ended via machine algorithmic decision making.

What tools are you using as prosthetics to augment your capabilities? Do you care about privacy or should privacy be given up to allow a closer integration with digital operations & support from machine algorithmic decision mak... (read more)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #107 So much to build, do, and create...so little time in a day!

I have moved from "wanting to do things" to simply doing things and getting a lot done each day. This feels fucking fantastic, I love turning my attention to X things and plowing through them! Scheduling and time block planning are helping quite a bit, but I'm still looking for room to optimize my workflows & cut out time sinks.

Here's what I'm thinking of:

either pay out of pocket for laundry wash & fold delivery service once I obtain a job upgrade this month or next month -

... (read more)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #102 Consistent sleep & wake times experiment

I'm tired of being tired so much during the day, to an extent that is genuinely life & job performance interfering. Time to improve my sleep quality & habits!

I commit to this experiment for one month, the experiment begins tomorrow 11 August, 2022. The experiment will be reevaluated on September 11, 2022. I will be asleep by 10pm each night and awake at 6am each morning, no exceptions for weekends or holidays.

Happy for any suggestions or comments about other ways to improve sleep quality to... (read more)

2jam_brand2y

No specific suggestions other than maybe to consider perusing the sleep tag here and perhaps this article from the EA Forum last year. Best of luck with your experiment! :)

1Willa2y

Thanks! I'm familiar with some of the items in the sleep tag, especially Guzey's writings about sleep, those were good. Checking out the EA Forum article and more things from the sleep tag tomorrow or Sunday. I appreciate the well wishes :)

2Phil Scadden2y

Well I battled with insomnia and the first bit of dealing with that is good sleep hygiene. Not exactly secret, but this would be rules like: 1/ regular bedtime. 2/ Use bed only for sleep and sex 3/ Relax before bed 4/ Room dark, quiet and comfortable temperature. What are you issues with sleep quality exactly? Wakeful spells? getting to sleep?

1Willa2y

I've got 2, 3, and 4 covered, so I think my main sleep quality issue is 1. I've never in my life had a set bedtime & wakeup time, it has always varied some or wildly. Keeping my comment short because in three minutes I must away to the bedroom for sleep. Other possible issue: health related sleep issues that a sleep lab could find out. I will rule this out or in depending on how well my experiment with 1 works out: if my sleep quality issue is solved, then I likely don't need to go to sleep lab, else, go to sleep lab.

2Phil Scadden2y

A number of smart watches detect snoring, sleep apnea/oxygen level type issues. Sleep lab sounds expensive. Good luck with regular hours. My first job had 5:30am starts which quickly ended my wild night-owl antics of varsity. Have had regular sleep hours ever since (and became a morning-person to my surprise). Insomnia issue in later life had another cause.

1Willa2y

Thanks for the well wishes :) And the reminder; I've taken my Apple Watch out of storage and will use that each night for sleep tracking, it has all those sensors you mentioned. Oh wow! That's an intensely early start time, my current job is only 8am, but have had as early as 6:30-7am start times in the past. What caused insomnia issue(s) later in life? If you're okay sharing.

1Phil Scadden2y

One of those behaviour spirals. Noticing that if brought back to alert before fully asleep (eg by hynpojerk or disturbance) then hard to get to sleep. Then starting to panic if it happens, then worrying about the insomnia etc etc, down you go.

1Willa2y

Ah! That sounds frustrating, are you still experiencing that spiral? If not, what helped overcome it?

[-]Phil Scadden2y110

Some self-administered CBT. The VA CBT-I app helped, as did understanding the issue via the free course at https://insomniacoach.com/. Complimentary was doing some mindfulness stuff. There was key things that worked together and never looked back since.

2Willa2y

I'm glad you were able to work through that :) Thanks for sharing! I've bookmarked that course and will keep it in mind if I develop a bout of insomnia or other sleep related difficulties. My sleep experiment is going surprisingly smoothly, I get very sleep right around the correct time and fall asleep within 15 minutes usually, already. Waking up is getting easier and easier too, I love it!

5Phil Scadden2y

Excellent! Not feeling tired makes it a lot easier to enjoy life.

1Phil Scadden2y

Given the no. of upscores on this, then maybe I should expand. Firstly, if don't suffer from insomnia then chances are that you get into bed, close your eyes and go to sleep. You are not counting sheep or some more sophisticated exercise in an effort to get to sleep. If you do suffer from insomnia, then this is this the destination you are aiming for. The sleep hygiene stuff is important because you want to train your brain that this place, this time is for sleep. But shutting off bad brain behavior is more complicated. Understanding the feedback loops is key to breaking them which is why I highly recommend the insomniacoach.com short course. But other key things for me were: 1/ the golden rule: Never toss and turn. Get out of bed and read for 15-20 minutes instead. This is surprisingly hard to adhere to but seriously, do it. 2/ mindfulness has thing of focusing on something (eg breathing) and when mind wonders off, then bringing it gently back. Your mind wanders off when going to sleep and if it wanders into a worry area, then it will stop you getting to sleep. Learning the trick of gently refocusing really helps that. It never worked for me to try mindfulness exercises in bed (other people have different experiences), but learning the trick by practice at other times helps. 3/ Body scan is an exercise you find in CBT-I and some mindfulness/meditation disciplines. This seemed totally counter-intuitive to me. Eg when I was struggling with sleep, I noticed body discomfort and if you start worrying about how your arms are arranged, then you are lost. However, what it actually teaches you (eventually), is how to ignore those body signals. Again, never worked for me to actually do this in bed. Not instant fixes, but things that eventually work with practice and repetition.

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #101 Conversation experiment: Tabooing $topics after previously discussed for $time

Do you ever find yourself talking at length, sometimes repetitively about the same topic(s)? Do you notice others around you doing similarly? Experiment with tabooing that topic or topics (with consent of your conversation partner(s), of course) for an evening (or whatever your time interval is) and see what happens!

Spur of the moment tonight, I asked my friend after we finished coworking and were hanging out if they wanted to try the conversation topic taboo exper... (read more)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #80: immortalityisgreat.com go live date is 28 August, 2022 | Meetup Organizer's Retreat

While filling out my information on the Meetup Organizer's Retreat get to know each other document, I included a commitment that I would launch immortalityisgreat.com by 28 August. For a bit of further challenge, a friend & cohort member from the Guild of the ROSE created the following prediction market page: https://manifold.markets/XidaRen/will-willas-website-go-online-by-au Here we go!

My goal with the aforementioned site is initially quite small: create... (read more)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #77 Decreasing personal maintenance time: haircut edition!

I like to increase the time I have for things I enjoy or bring about professional, intellectual, personal, social, or other growth. My hair had grown ridiculously long (went almost all the way down my back), was consuming a not insignificant amount of time to maintain per week, and was annoying me. I decided to stop procrastinating and finally do something about that, so I went to the salon and now I have short hair that doesn't even reach my shoulders. FINALLY! Now I will have better look... (read more)

[-]Willa2y30

Shortform #71 A Restful & Productive Saturday | Brief rough thought about AI Alignment & Politics

Today I slept in, studied for my cert exam, finalized my V3 character sheet, virtually hungout with friends, and had a pleasant time puttering around the house.

My office desk is currently two stacks of three boxes per stack with an old Apple Xserve stretched across them for stability. I used my two existing desks for my setups in the loft to great effect, now I need to focus on finalizing my office setup...so, purchasing three desks is my next step ther... (read more)

3Willa2y

Ooh, adding https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CQAMdzA4MZEhNRtTp/human-values-and-biases-are-inaccessible-to-the-genome to my reading list for tomorrow / soon. Germane to my interests in politics, AI, and values.

[-]Willa3y30

Shortform #61 In Which Half a Month Passed, Unexpectedly

Whoosh is the best way to describe the last ~17 days. Time to make some adjustments, it's not pleasant nor desirable when time goes by so quickly while barely noticing it passing. A surprisingly illegible and inscrutable 17 days, unfortunately.

Adjustments:

daily shortform writing: this will increase legibility and potential for reflection regarding each day(s) and week(s)
increase fruits & vegetables consumption: this will improve my nutrition
step back down one increment on X: the increase of on

... (read more)

[-]Willa3y30

Shortform #59 The Great Outdoors and Good Conversations; Hammertime Days 6 (Mantras) and 7 (Aversion Factoring)

Yesterday we went hiking for 3 hours around the absolutely stunning hills / mountain surrounding Devil's Lake, Wisconsin. The road trip there and back was fun and picturesque too, Wisconsin is gorgeous. We had dinner with one friend's friend at a grand café in town and that was lovely, great food and great conversation.

Today we went to an excellent brunch at one friend's friend's house and spent several lovely hours there eating great food and hav... (read more)

[-]Willa3y30

Shortform #55 Alons-y; Hammertime Day 1 - Bug Hunt

I spent the first ~10 minutes of my workday creating my day's agenda. It turns out that setting a timer for 10 minutes before doing any work for the day to create an agenda for the day is a most excellent and helpful ritual, so I'm doing that from here on out.

I scheduled very aggressively and didn't leave buffer time, so tomorrow I'll add 5-10 minutes of buffer time between each non-travel-required / other unavoidable time sink item on my schedule and see if that's enough. Despite the no buffer time and mul... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Shortform #49 Specificity

I mostly talk about my own life in these shortforms, and I'm partly okay with that, because doing so has been nice and helpful for me thus far, but I want to talk about other stuff too. So, I'll work other sorts of topics into these posts as I desire: right now I want to learn more about and discuss specific life interventions others have tried and the resulting effects from said interventions. Time to ask that question via the site's "New Question" feature!

If you haven't yet read Liron's Specificity Sequence you should go check it... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Shortform #40 Egads! A Title, but not a real Title.

Today was nice :)

I was virtually social for >4 hours today. This includes the 3 hours I attended and facilitated the Houston Rationalists meetup, which was quite a fun and nice meetup, I had a good time and we had a few new members!
Today's step count was ~9871 steps, for about 4.1 miles of distance walked. A large part of that came from walking around a field for an hour or so during the afternoon, it felt great to go walking outside again.
Completed initial onboarding for a new project, excited to s

... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Shortform #34 Unable to Formulate Title

Today was an excellent day :)

Had a morning interview and it went well! I'm now doing volunteer software development for a cool place, and am excited for that :) It is very helpful and good experience for me to gain.
My neighbor brought us over taco soup and cornbread, and it was fantastic, thank you to her!
I walked 5.3 miles today, 13,263 steps
I was virtually social for a few hours.

I am continuing to read Worm and am really enjoying it!

Yay for the weekend :)
Willa

[-]Willa4y30

Shortform #29 Almost Back on the Wagon!

Today was an excellent day :) I did not stick to the schedule I put together, but writing it last night was helpful since I had it for reference today. I allowed myself to sleep in and that seems to have helped considerably in many ways.

I logged my calories today, totaled ~2230kcal
I was virtually social for >4 hours via phone calls
I was up and active for the majority of the time I was on the phone, I spent >5 hours packing and organizing things today. (including but not limited to, boxing up all 375+ of my b

... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Shortform #26 Oh wow, a marathon of posts! Also, mild ranting.

Today was good, but felt very split into three pieces. The morning, the trip into town, and the rest of the day: I did productive things for almost three hours in the morning, then drove into the nearby big city for my doctor's appointment, and several hours passed before I got home. The doctor's appointment was great! All good things, but when you have to drive for so long there and back, that does take quite a chunk out of the day. The rest of the day started around 15:30 and went nicely too :... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Shortform #22 Packing, Organizing, and Preparing.

Today was a good day.

I spent most of it going through things, throwing away, organizing, sorting, and packing said things depending on what they were, and got a lot done in preparation for moving because of that. I'm looking forward to finishing up my resume tomorrow and getting feedback on it then finishing up my profile on the job sites I made an account on.

I've enjoyed watching the most recent season (part 3 IIRC) of Disenchantment as well, and apparently The Magicians has a new season too, exciting!

Happy... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Shortform #21 Functional strength training and job hunting, oh my.

I had a most excellent day :)

I created accounts on job posting sites and started hunting.
Joined a discord video call with two friends and we did 30 minutes of functional strength training together, I am now really sore, but am happy I worked out!
I did virtual co-working for ~3 hours.

My resume is out of date and pretty bad, I'll fix it up tomorrow using RMarkdown and other nice R things so that my newly created resume will be up to date AND pretty / well styled. I'm meeting (virtually) ... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Shortform #11

Welcome to the new year! ~~same as the old year~~ As promised, I am resuming my daily shortforms :)

The last 4 or 5 days were simultaneously the worst and best days I've experienced in quite awhile.

Best: Hanging out with great friends on the 31st and 1st, this was fantastic, I had an amazing time. (yes, we all tested negative for COVID prior to deciding to hangout) | Having an emotional breakthrough realization

Worst: The descent into cripplingly bad depression from loneliness late on the 1st once I was alone again. Feeling shattered from isolation ... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Holidays are great, I'm extending my enjoyment of this one through the end of the weekend. Shortforms will return with #11 on Monday the 4th :)

[-]Willa4y30

Today marks day 7 of daily shortform writing, tomorrow will mark day 8, and so on :)

Yay for one week of daily shortform writing! Feels like a nice accomplishment, now I'm aiming for one month.

In an "ironic for 2020" turn of events, I did not contract COVID from the family Christmas gathering, no, that test came back negative thankfully. I contracted the plain ol' flu instead, and this is probably why I was so tired yesterday and why my ear has been hurting. Much of today was spent resting and the other half of it was spent at the doctor trying to get diagn... (read more)

[-]Willa4y30

Much shorter update for today, since today was quite bifurcated. Morning to early afternoon were chaotic and all consuming until I dropped my parents off at the airport. Afterwards I was tired and settled down on the couch for a bit, but eventually got up, took the dogs to the field (the grass was less soggy today than yesterday), and walked for two miles. That's all the exercise I did though, and it was quite a leisurely walk, so I think today was my "rest" day. I'm happy I went walking outside, that was fun plus the dogs enjoyed it too!

I did some virtual... (read more)

[-]Willa1y20

Solve easy problems & what's your default query tool?

I am committing to solving at least five problems in my life per week that aren't just regular chores. Here's the current list: (most of this list is: I am tired of seeing my deadname around too frequently)

Done: requested name change with US Department of Education
Done: requested new card from $bank1 so my name is correct on it
Partial: Called $bank2 about name change and they are snail-mailing me the paperwork for that.
To do: Call $university1 & $college1 to do name change at both places

... (read more)

[-]Willa2y20

Shortform #129 More test taking

Tomorrow morning I take the second out of two exams for an IT cert I'm pursuing. I've studied well and know the material thoroughly. I'm excited to take that test and obtain that cert as it will help with short term survival with getting better IT jobs while I figure out how to transition to doing different work. Not much else to say tonight, the exam is the main thing on my mind. I'll gain some slack back in my life by obtaining the cert, so that's a nice thing too.

Be well,
Good night!

[-]Willa2y20

Daily shortforms shall resume on Monday 5 September, 2022. I am taking IT certification exams this weekend and need to focus.

[-]Willa2y20

Shortform #106 Four Days of Consistent Sleep & Wake Times: going well!

Waking up at 6:13am on Thursday & Friday felt like normal work wakeup time but with more energy & less tiredness than usual because of falling asleep by or slightly before 10pm.

Waking up at 6:13am on Saturday and Sunday made my weekend feel like it was unbelievably long in a great way. I wasn't tired at all, felt plenty energetic, and immediately after waking up both mornings spent a solid two or three hours working on important personal tasks or projects. I really am sharper... (read more)

[-]Willa2y20

Shortform #78 Design Matters: The Triumph of the Curved Shower Rod | Lighting: Hedonistic Adaptation

For those of you suffering from narrow tub-shower hybrids with shower curtains that inevitably brush up or press against you while showering, for (new retail price) $30-$60+ you can become the proud owner of a curved shower rod that dramatically increases the horizontal space you have in such a shower. I've just installed one (do measure your tub-shower hybrid's length from wall to wall before buying one, that measurement does matter) and the result is a muc... (read more)

[-]Willa2y20

Shortform #76 Noticing mood, behavior, & energy impacts from food types consumed

When I eat processed sugar, I take a negative hit in all three categories mentioned above.

When I eat mostly vegetables, some carbs, and none or a smattering of meat, I feel great. As the meat to vegetables ratio increases, the worse I feel.

When I eat fruits, the impact from their non-processed sugar is not the same as the impact I have from processed sugar: usually there's little to no impact and sometimes I even feel better from eating the fruit.

When I eat processed foods,... (read more)

[-]Willa3y20

Shortform #56 Travel; Hammertime Day 2 - Yoda Timers

I followed my media diet today except regarding Discord, plus didn't get in my full reserved hours of work. On the whole, I was reasonably productive, but didn't focus my actions very well today.

This evening we had a Houston Rationalists virtual meetup which went quite well! Had a new attendee, several regulars, and great discussion. We focused a lot of the discussion on timelessness, or, why is it some ideas, cultural practices, books, etc. survive over the long term whereas others do not (yes the lindy ... (read more)

[-]Willa4y20

Shortform #19 Meetups are great!

Today was an excellent day :)

I spent about 4 hours on direct messaging and caught up on almost all my inboxes! The time per day required for giving timely responses to each person will now decrease thanks to being caught up. I enjoyed talking with everyone I talked with, and look forward to those continuing conversations :)
I walked indoors for 2.3 miles, that was nice.
I had a great time at today's Houston Rationalists Virtual Meetup, it lasted about four hours and was quite fun! I have some good ideas for what to do at f

... (read more)

[-]Willa4y20

2020 Week 52 Review: 21 Dec - 28 Dec

I do best when I have a structure to work with as a scaffolding when dealing with life and everything that entails. The weekly review process will be one of several structures I'm purposely building into my life so that I can be a more focused and concentrated general intelligence entity: this has the great benefit of helping me align my actions with my goals, plus you know, helping me to actually identify and remember my goals explicitly.

Last week I completed 8 of my major weekly ToDo items and failed to complete 7 of t... (read more)

1Willa4y

Today is the only time I'm allowing my weekly review post to count as my daily shortform update (tis #9). This will not occur again in the future.

[-]Willa4y20

Well, daily shortform posts do get significantly more boring while sick, unfortunately :(

I've scaled back a lot of my activities and plans so that I can rest and get over the flu more quickly.

However! I have successfully overcome giving in to the temptation to fully go into a cocoon and not do anything, i.e. I have avoided totally isolating myself which is a habit I've routinely fallen into while sick in the past. My plan of being extraordinarily more (virtually) social to prevent the onset of depression is really paying off! I spent the majority of active... (read more)

[-]Willa4y20

I'm taking a few minutes now to write what comes to mind, reflect on my day, plan, organize, blah blah blah.

(1) Tomorrow I will record the amount of time I spend reading and what site I was on (or book / physical reference material if not on a computer / is offline but on a computer) using a stopwatch. I want to know how much time I spend reading what and where I read it.

(2) I am taking a temporary break from Hacker News, the next time I'm allowing myself to go there and mine for dopamine (I mean, search for novel and cool things) is Monday the 28th at 14:... (read more)

2Willa4y

Note to self, since I have the markdown editor activated, I can make my posts more nicely formatted by actually using markdown. Time to print out my favorite markdown cheatsheet: https://rstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/rmarkdown-cheatsheet.pdf

[-]Willa4y20

Writing is great for me, but I do way too little writing. I put my feelings about this into a small poem, here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vMNPQvFfgNmRWsJBi/intake-rumble-spew

Since shortform posts are, short and don't require high epistemic confidence and seem compatible with social media style posting, I will now write shortform posts regularly so that I get at least some writing done. This will help process the torrent of data and thoughts swirling around in my head like some chaotic vortex. It's hard to do anything with that vortex there, but writi... (read more)

4Adam Zerner4y

I can really relate to this. I too experience that vortex and find that writing helps with it, in addition to just helping me reason about things. I wrote about it in Writing to Think if you're interested.

2Willa4y

Thanks for sharing that post as well as your experiences and struggles with writing! Down with the vortex, heh :( I'm glad writing helps you wrangle it down to something more manageable as well. I agree with everything you said in your post about writing. I believe writing has such positive efficacy regarding thinking clarity, mental health improvement, expanding "smarts", and has power, and so on because it is a cognitive prosthetic. Writing is a tool our species developed that extends the capabilities of not only an individual's working memory, their total information storage capacity, their scope sensitivities, and more, but does the exact same things for entire civilizations, for our entire species as a whole. Writing seems to be "a more communicative form of communication" (see below quote), a process which results in a product that explicitly separates the act of thinking with what was thought, leaving what was thought as an object in the world one can interact with and channel the act of thinking against. On repeat! As more gets written, more acts of thinking are channeled against what's written and more products of thinking are generated. In a very real way, writing might be the most powerful recursive self and civilizational improvement tool that we humans have, given that it's the most communicative form of communication and allows for such separation between the act of thinking and the product of thought. Much of what I think about writing comes from reading different products of though targeted at writing over the years such as Umberto Eco's "How to Write a Thesis", hundred of blog posts about writing, A.G. Sertillanges' "The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods", casual discussions with friends about writing, Cyril Connolly's "Enemies of Promise" (this book broke my ability to write for a semester in college, such was its power), and more. I should make an actual list of these influences! More recently my thinking about writing, think