I tried it, but at the time I found it very hard to focus. it's a lot like working at home – you need to be very good at creating your own routines and structure, and managing your own projects.
If that's not you, develops those skills first. Getting work where you train those skills is a good approach.
I doubt straight men innately dislike kissing or showing affection toward men.
I went to a kissing workshop. (Things escalated slowly and nothing was mandatory.) I was turned off more quickly than I expected by kisses with guys - just by a very short closed-mouth kiss.
(I like hugs though.)
I'm certain I'd also benefit from the bisexual pill, and my aversion to the idea is irrational.
"I hate spinach, which is a good thing because if I liked it I'd eat it all the time, and I hate the stuff." - half remembered second-hand quote, apparently from the 19th C(?)
It only increases your chances by the percentage of people of your gender who are open to same-sex encounters.
But the other people of your gender are also restricted to this smaller pool in their search for a pairing, giving you a better chance of being accepted/selected by a particular individual that you're attracted to (assuming you spend significant time around people in this pool). So this factor may not have a big effect.
The 2014 camp was interesting, fun, great for meeting new people, and a good time was had by many (hopefully all).
And there's also no discernible difference between seeing a psychotherapist and spending the same amount of time talking to a randomly selected college professor from another field. It's just talking to anyone that helps you get better, apparently.
Unless this has been tested for random people other than just college professors, there's a stronger case for saying that talking to a person of a certain intelligence and education level helps you get better. And I suspect that it doesn't generalise to "talking to anyone that helps you get better" but I haven't looked into it.
(I'm sure there are other factors, but I'm just going by what was said about college professors.)
That now redirects to a porn site.
Choose music that you're very familiar with it and put it on a loop. New music is much more likely to distract you. (Tip from Matt Mullenweg, interviewed by Tim Ferriss.) That might be more significant than the type of music, although we'd expect instrumental music to be less distracting. I know a health professional (who has ADHD, and works with people who have ADHD) who finds that AC/DC is best for helping to concentrate. I'm not an AC/DC fan, but I'll try some fast heavy music one day when I need an extra concentration boost, and see if it works.
So it's better to view our taste buds as an adaptation fitted to ancestral conditions that included near-starvation and apples and roast rabbit,
And those apples were crab apples. I doubt that many of our distant ancestors would have experienced anything like our bred-for-sweetness fruit varieties on a regular basis. Those new fruit varieties are probably still very healthy – I'm just further highlighting the enormous gulf between what our ancestors ate and the concentrated sugar-fat-salt concoctions that we eat.
An ergonomic mouse is good too. Looking up vertical mouse on eBay shows the kind of thing I mean. Reduces twisting by the forearm. That was a good investment for me, but then I suffer from RSI.
He's a very effective snake oil salesman.
Cool - I'll tell some of my Indonesian friends. I might need to visit Indo in 2015, so I'll look you up then.
People's judgements on music often amount to "The pattern in which your brain releases dopamine in response to music is inferior to mine."
I can definitely imagine coming to love Beethoven's Fugue (which I played in the background while reading this post & comments) because - it's not fundamentally different to other pieces I've come to love. But I seem to be a neophile in many ways, and I've been exposed to certain types of music, so I count tastes as personal and I find the Youtube comments you quote to be ridiculous.
Re repeated exposure: T...
Another option: Saving to "Pocket" (getpocket.com) and reading there works on Android, and presumably on other platforms.
4.7 years later... Did you ever read them?
The wiki is down. Was the content saved?
Post 1 (http://habitua.net/how-to-use-rewards-to-defeat-procrastination/) : What's the goal of this post? I don't think it's wrong but I can't see the intention behind it.
The intention was to give some direction as to the kinds of plans that can be effective in overcoming procrastination. I can see that more detailed suggestions would be helpful, and I'll look at that in future posts. I'm deliberately keeping posts short, so I actually get them done and posted.
The post about advertising also seems to lack a clear goal.
I thought that was an interest...
I'm looking for feedback on my blog drafts & posts - I'm not writing for specifically rationalist audience, but I'd appreciate intelligent feedback on accuracy, additional ideas to possibly include, as well as feedback on how I communicate.
Where is a good place to get such feedback? LessWrong has a lot of the right sort of people, but posting lots of draft posts to the open thread may not be popular.
My blog is Habitua - it's on self-improvement, attempting to be evidence-based as much as practicable.
Trans-human thought experiment:
Given the limitations (that you describe in other replies) I think you've got a good list.
Regarding podcasts, this could be a great time to experiment with new ones & decide which you want to listen to longer term.
Perhaps there are some short activities of value to you, such as Anki (assuming you have a smartphone), mentally reviewing your memory palace, or mindfulness exercises. Mindfulness exercises on public transport may seem a little odd, but the distractions may make it more effective as exercise - just be patient with yourself.
TIL: NLP can mean Natural Language Processing, as well as Neuro Linguistic Programming. I was confused for a while there.
How is your stenographic typing progressing? What has the return on effort been for you, so far?
I've done the first 6 weeks now, and finding it very easy - but I'm definitely learning something each week.
If you already know about the roles of different parts of the brain (e.g. orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, DLPFC) and their interactions, then it might not be word your time. For me it's worth the time. Playing the videos at high speed helps.
I love it... but I need to make sure I get up & move during the breaks rather than sitting and chatting.
I just used it for the first time. Very valuable, but the Android Tinychat app seems unreliable.
I have upvoted your post in the hope that it will contribute to your positive feelings about having written it, so that you will continue to write intelligent and thoughtful posts in future.
A "council that doles out things people deserve" sounds like Parecon: Life After Capitalism by Michael Albert.
(Personally, it fills me with horror, but there are people who think it's a good idea.)
Me too. I get frustrated by forums where old threads are routinely closed, or where participants are rebuked for bumping an old thread.
Of course, how hard it is depends whether you're in, say, Indonesia or Finland!
Do you find a particular benefit from the cold shower?
I read this, and some time later I started trying it.
I misremembered, so I've been counting from 1 to 10. Interesting thing is that I generally start getting up as I say the "1", or before. It seems that by the time I've decided to employ the technique, I'm actually ready to get up - I just need something to focus my mind and get out of the "monkey mind" thing that Buddhism talks about. The little bit of focus I get from deciding to count is enough to switch my brain into action.
Next: to try it for starting a work task I'm avoiding. I'...
In particular, I don't think you can make a share-alike requirement on a public domain item.
That's correct.
"Public domain" is sometimes used in a much vaguer sense to mean the information is out there and being used and shared, but this vaguer sense is best avoided.
I suggest to Epiphany to either:
Poorly informed ranters wanting to debate does sound annoying, I didn't realize there was a problem with that. It seems to me the best way to deter them would be to paste a link that's directly related to their points and ignore them. Do that enough times and they'll probably wake up and realize they've got a problem with not knowing what they're talking about.
I haven't come across this either. Doesn't the downvoting minimize this problem?
That said, I like civility to be one of the core principles of any discussion group - but without every feeling we have to agree with what someone else is saying.
4 year summer camp
You're clearly not talking about a degree such as engineering - unless you're talking about a summer camp run by sadists.
I was annoyed after first hearing the Monty Hall problem. It wasn't clear that the host must always open the door, which fundamentally changes the problem. Glad to see that it's a recognized problem.
..."The problem is not well-formed," Mr. Gardner said, "unless it makes clear that the host must always open an empty door and offer the switch. Otherwise, if the host is malevolent, he may open another door only when it's to his advantage to let the player switch, and the probability of being right by switching could be as low as zero." Mr.
Just looking at Wikipedia, and artificial general intelligence redirects to Strong AI).
I'm concerned that there's no mention of dangers, risks, or caution in the Wikipedia article.* Is there any "notable" information on the topic that could be added to the article? E.g. discussion of the subject in a publication of some kind (book or magazine/newspaper - not a self-published book).
*haven't read the whole thing - just did a search.
I don't know how many LessWrongers knew what AGI meant. (Apparently it's artificial general intelligence, aka Strong AI).
Would negative public opinion do much more than (a) force such research underground, or (b) lead to researchers being more circumspect?
(Not a rhetorical question - just unsure whether focusing on public opinion is a useful approach.)
What decision did those that were already aware of it make, in order to optimise this activity?
Acknowledge the other person - their intent, the effort they've made, and/or the things they've got right. Be sincere rather than superior. E.g. to an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, I might say "I understand why you're suspicious of big pharma, and I know that you're concerned for the health of children. However, I believe vaccines do far more good than harm, and here's why..."
This helps take heat out of the exchange, by making it clear (on an emo...
How old are you?
I'm 41. I'm curious what the age distribution is in the LW community, having been to one RL meetup and finding I was the oldest one there. (I suspect I was about 1.8 times the median age.)
I love what the LW community stands for, and age isn't a big deal... youthful passion is great (trying to hold onto mine!) and I suspect there isn't a particularly strong correlation between age and rationality, but life experience can be valuable in these discussions. In particular, having done more dumb things and believed more irrational things, and gotten over them.
http://www.superbrain.me looks useful. How does it differ from Anki - just that it's web-based rather than needing to be installed? (I'm wondering how well it will work for those of us on slow connections.
I see from doing a site-search with Google that you can export to CSV - nice. I assume it's possible to import the same way? And it looks like we can import from Anki - very nice.
Thanks for the mention of Anki. I want to learn Spanish, partly to keep my brain healthy, and partly because the experience of communicating in another language and culture is very satisfying for me. (I already speak Indonesian fluently.)
Downloading AnkiDroid now - I'll try putting all my new vocab straight into the app.
I love the idea of using something like this for NVC, too - I find NVC very useful, but I always struggle to remember the finer details. Will download those decks. Thank you!
Carl Sagan described himself as agnostic, and it's a rational position to hold. As Sagan said:
"An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the c...
Good food for thought. I'd like to hypothesize that willpower is not limited in a fixed sense, but also not unlimited. (This might be obvious, but worth thinking through.)
Willpower seems to be increased by practice. People who are disciplined seem to have more willpower to apply to a given problem.
Hmm... alternative hypothesis: is it that they have more willpower, or does their discipline - their daily habits of work and self-improvement - mean that they're wasting much less energy on deciding whether to do something, many times each day? It's probably mu...
Any more Melbourne meetups happening?
Re exercise: Good point, but I'd emphasize making a strong habit over doing it a lot. Spending a lot of time is easier during summer, but harder to carry over. Sure, do that, but also make sure you have a 15 minute routine, say, that you do every morning. Even a five minute routine isn't to be sneezed at, if you're doing bodyweight exercises like pushups.
Doing a stretch and 5 minutes of exercise during study breaks is worth a try. Could help avoid some of the physical problems with long hours of computer use. (Press down with your whole hand during pushups - strong fingers, hands and arms will help avoid RSI.)
A trader once said to me that price cycles aren't consistent, but volatility cycles are. Bollinger Bands can be good signals of sudden volatility... but as for what to do with that to reliably make a profit, I don't know.
Welcome.
Getting beaten up as a child sucks. Hope your life is a whole lot better now.
A somewhat related personal story: I was a Christian. I was plagued by doubts, and decided that I wanted to know what the truth was, even if it was something I didn't want to believe. I knew that I wanted Christianity to be true, but I didn't want to just believe for the sake of it.
So I started doing more serious reading. Not rationalist writings, but a thoughtful theologian and historian, NT Wright, who I've also seen appear on documentaries about New Testament history. ...
Greetings! I joined under my usual username a little while ago, that I use everywhere on the web. Then I realized - this is very public, and I'd rather not worry about potential clients or employers drawing conclusions from what I write about my akrasia, poor planning, depression or anything like that. So here's the version of me that's slightly less connected to my real life identity.
Very briefly:
That's about your family's attitudes, rather than about anything intrinsic to the act.
I would be surprised and possibly grossed out if this happened in my own family, but that would be the moral equivalent of a vistigial limb,* something to get past.
*I was going to say appendix, but the appendix does actually have a function).