I'm an economist. I've taught at a university, worked for a think tank, and worked for government agencies. I've never particularly liked any of them and am now searching for a new career (I'm still plenty young, i.e. < 30).
Teaching at a University is probably the best, but I'm only an average instructor. I get frustrated teaching students that don't get ideas as quickly as I would like them to and it's exhausting.
I don't care much for research. This can either be cause of ego (I want to make big discoveries, not small incremental ones), because I'm inherently skeptical of my results (I have some qualms with statistical hubris), or because I don't have that je ne sais quoi that true researchers have.
Think tanks and government agencies were too political for me, although in surprising ways which I won't go into.
Letting advice seekers drive the discussion seems like a good idea, but I'm a little leery of the advice givers. Giving advice is fun and that makes it dangerous. Even if you have field tested it, external validity seems like a big problem here. There's enough heterogeneity in behavior that what works for me is not necessarily likely to work for you.
That said, I don't have a better alternative, so why not try out this one.
There seems to be a strong sense that a thread like this won't work. My question is: What would it look like if it did work? We seem to know where we don't want to go, but I don't have a clear idea of where we do want to go? What does winning look like?
I wasn't saying that it would become lengthy in 6 months, but that any haircut which can be maintained for 6 months without a trim has to be a lengthy one. My understanding is that, to maintain healthy hair, it is recommended you get a trim once a month (for split ends and what not.) I keep my hair fairly short (clippers on the side, "finger" length on top) and get a trim once every few weeks (I taught myself how to cut my own hair to make this more convient and affordable. Also, my sister is a cosmetologist so she can fix any mistakes I make when I see her.)
Though, now that I think about it, this is one of those cached thoughts that people ("experts") have told me, but I don't actually have hard evidence for.
You only cut your hair once every six months! Even if you sport a rather lengthy mane (which I'm assuming you do) once every six months seems way too infrequent.
I found this to be illuminating, although it has all the flaws you would expect from a magazine article (sub-par documentation, crummy story:information ratio).
The 4th page has a really interesting chart with different workout structures for different goals.
I agree with you. I don't think calling on poets and artists to be poetic and artistic is a problem, I was just interpreting what I thought Eliezer was saying.
Personally, I think Eliezer was actually offended by the idea that non-poets and non-artists cannot be poetic and artistic, i.e. we need poets and artists because these Computer Science/Math people can't express themselves without equations.
But I'm making some big assumptions here, so I could have misread the whole thing.
But the original article implies that the Singularity movement does not need liberal arts participants at all; at least, not in their professional capacity:
That's not how I read it. Eliezer was pointing out that they were signaling - calling out for participation from poets and artists because saying that brings out the warm fuzzies. Later he implies that artistic and poetic responses are welcome and appreciated (and I agree that the SAIA can benefit from artistic and poetic responses) but resents that poets and artists are specifically called on to do so, apparently because he sees that as reducing their humanity to mere titles.
That's a good question. Off the top of my head, I can't point to any specific post or comment. I could go through a look for examples, but that feels like clever arguing.
Maybe a better approach could be to just continue reading and make a note of whenever I see an example?
Like most stereotypes, this is something that just sorta "feels" true. But it also "feels" like it comes out more so in the comments than in the posts. This raises a couples issues. First, is it actually true? Second, if it isn't true, why does it "feel" true? Third, should we and could we do anything about it?
Wrt strength and endurance, what do you think about fitocracy?
I only know about from xkcd, but this seems already set up to have physical goals for leveling up explicit in the design.