Groudon466

I've long ascribed to (and felt) that people are existentially isolated

There's a pair of conjoined craniopagus twins in Canada, the Hogan twins, who are conjoined at the head and have fused brains connected by a thalamic bridge. They're separate individuals who still receive some sensory awareness of what the other is feeling, and they can even communicate in their thoughts. When one was crying as a child, you could put a pacifier in the other's mouth and they would both calm down. When you cover one's eyes and show an image to the other, the blindfolded one can see it.

To the best of my knowledge, neither one of them has ever once... (read more)

Regarding a drug-based solution, I recommend Silexan. Scott Alexander wrote about this not that long ago on ACX, and anecdotally, it's been shockingly effective for anxiety issues that arose for me a year ago.

Regarding an entirely psychological, but still clinical solution? Consider starting online therapy with a psychologist/psychiatrist. This has helped me as well- not to the same extent as the Silexan, I think, but it still helped just because it was a dedicated hour per week of thinking about it and voicing those thoughts to someone. Almost every breakthrough came from me just rationally talking it out, but that was 10 times easier in therapy than on my own because I... (read more)

Do you believe that the world would be better if everyone shared this moral system, or is this more of a nihilistic "This is the best way for a individual agent to act for their own true gain, but I certainly wouldn't want every agent to act this way" sort of deal?

I ask because it really does seem devoid of any traditional "goodness", except for the part that encourages wisdomists to protect all wisdom, including the wisdom of others. It espouses wisdom and creativity as virtues, sure- but what part of wisdom and creativity, as defined in the paper, can't go into the act of publicly torturing you to death in an... (read more)

If the purpose of this betting is to reward those who bet on the truth, though, then allowing a spike in credulity to count for it works against that purpose, and turns it into more of a combined bet of “Odds that the true evidence available to the public and LW suggests >50% likelihood or that substantial false evidence comes out for a very short period within the longer time period”.

In his comment reply to me, OP mentioned he would be fine with a window of a month for things to settle and considered it a reasonable concern, which suggests that he is (rightly) focused more on betting about actual UFO likelihood,... (read more)