Any fellow OB/LW-ers attending OSCON this year? If you are interested in meeting up there let me know. Perhaps respond to this comment or email me directly and we'll see what we can work out. (You can contact me via gmail at user name evtujo).
I wonder if I'm the only person here so biased, but when you wrote that you used c++ my instant and curiously strong reaction was: why would you use c++ on something like that? that's obviously a python (or similar language) type project.
i'm working on forgiving you.
I know this isn't reddit or hacker news, but I wonder if their might be some value in having some basic link recommending/voting features. For instance people could suggest rationality related links (reading, videos, book recommendations) that aren't at the level of an essay as most entries on this site seem to be. Perhaps this concept is inherent in the format that we have just not used much, i don't know.
I raise this issue because listing TED links made me think of this recent pycon video with Alex Martelli that riffed on the near/far modes that has be...
i have not viewed it yet (though i'm greatly looking forward to it) but my first reaction was: you got teenagers to sit still for 2 hours to listen to a talk on rationality. my mind is blown.
In the second half hour, when I was talking about the electromagnetic spectrum, I was a little nervous/excited and adopted a really college-lecture-level style and vocabulary and a lot of the audience (high school age) was obviously starting to tune out.
After I did the optical illusions and miracle fruit demo, which brought me about 2/3 into the presentation time-wise, I had a 5-minute intermission for people to just chat with each other, then continued. Their attention then seemed pretty steady for the last third.
I guess there are enough neat mind-pwns sprinkled throughout the presentation to keep people entertained, even the ones who self-reported that it went way over their heads.
I'm reading The Moral Animal (Robert Wright) currently and have been recommending it to everyone I talk to.
There's an interesting googletech video on how to create an online community with desired attributes (a la stackoverflow.com): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ
* Handle: evtujo
* Location: Montana
* Age: 40
* Gender: Male
* Education: Physics BS, CompSci Masters
* Occupation: Programmer
I've been following OB pretty much since the first couple of months. I was trying to think when I would have started calling myself a rationalist. I can't think of any time in my life when I wouldn't have thought of myself that way. Even 20+ years ago when I thought the world was 6000 years old. I just wasn't a relentless rationalist. I even tried using all the rationalism I could muster to try to develop evangelistic witness...
Can we rename the vote up and vote down buttons as "yay" and "boo"? Perhaps that can be a profile option... :)
it's a relief to hear of others not having success with shangri-la. i wish it worked for everyone but it doesn't and it's (apparently) not just me doing it wrong. though how you mess up drinking oil is beyond me.
i have lost 20 pounds this year (after about 2 years of trying various strategies including shangrila) and the answer was just discipline. cut out sweets ruthlessly and practice letting myself feel hunger. but i'm definitely plateaued now. and i have to exercise my free will every day to stay there. and it slowly starts moving up when i relax it. sigh
and i wish exercise worked as well. but i'd already maxed out that strategy years ago.
Montana
A couple months ago a tried to create a graphviz diagram of all of Eliezer's posts. With ALL dependancies to ALL postings in one diagram. It probably would have been a mess to try to decipher the result but in any case every variation I tried core dumped when generating the graphic. Too many posts. Too many dependencies. :) Keep up the good work.
How young can children start being trained as rationalists? And what would the core syllabus / training regimen look like?