All of quentin's Comments + Replies

I don't see how this relates to the original post, this strikes me as a response to a claim of objective/intrinsic morality rather than the issue of resolving emotional basilisks vis-a-vis the litany of tarsky. Are you just saying "it really depends"?

This is something I think about a lot. We all know pure rhetoric is never going to deconvert someone, but a combination of "dark arts", emotional vulnerability, and personal connection seems a likely recipe.

A quick summation of how I feel about religiosity: I hate the belief, but love the believer. I went through a long and painful deconversion process, so I can empathize with them. I know that religious people struggle with doubt and are probably terrified by the prospect of losing their faith. I've had the chance to go for the throat (so to sp... (read more)

I agree with the post above advising "Wait, don't panic". I experienced (still do, sort of) exactly what you describe, and the people I developed the closest friendships with did as well. In fact, it was one of the primary contexts in which we were able to bond. As an intelligent person in a frequently alienating world, it can be very easy to feel disconnected and emotionally isolated. Don't immediately conclude that you have a disorder that requires medical treatment.

So, if it helps: a lot of people experience what you are going through. A lot... (read more)

Of course. Doing low level stuff like brushing your teeth is boring. Going meta is fun.

Eventually you need to actually cash out your strategies and really brush your teeth, at which point going meta can be a form of procrastination that has the benefit of making you feel like you are being productive.

I try to mentally file metacognition under "enjoyable pastime", but I'm not sure if the low level resource manager agrees with the user. This produces an acute form of akrasia wherein, while attempting to be productive, I go really meta, encounter a stack overflow, resolve the issue, and then treat myself to a well deserved break because I'm such a brilliant meta-theoretician.

First of all, I highly recomend Good Eats. As a tv show, it's probably not the most efficient way to learn how to cook, but Alton Brown presents simple, useful recipes while managing to convey the high-level methodology of the process. More importantly, it's damn entertaining.

I agree with RomeoStevens; keep it simple at home. I enjoy cooking, but I found that trying to prepare homecooked meals every night for myself led to motivational breakdown. So when I'm home, I graze on things that are healthy and delicious. A little bit of some (good) cheeses, raw ve... (read more)

I can read much, much faster than I can think words, and yet I still hear (at least some of) the words.

I can mentally replay any sense I've experienced. I sometimes get appropriate physiological responses, such as my mouth watering when imagining food. I can hear music, see movies. The resolution of any of this isn't very good. I wouldn't normally say I can actually experience these things, I do because I can't grok how else one would imagine a cow without "mentally seeing" something like a cow; but apparently this is the case (?).

I am bad at m... (read more)

I second that thank you!

Usually self-help books are way too fluffy for me to end up finishing (much less implementing), hopefully some of this will stick. Looks good so far :D

I'm honestly curious, how did you condition yourself to feel this way?

I mean, I think about the singularity, try to discount for my given bias (introverted young male in STEM field who read a lot of scifi) and I still conclude it is a worthwhile problem; but more importantly a problem that could use my skillset.

But I don't emotionally ... grok it, which makes me wonder if I really do believe it, or if it is belief-in-belief. I'm having my own struggle with ambition, and I'm at a point where I don't know if I actually care about anything. It seems that at my core, all my motivation stems from a desire for social status, which scares me.

I would probably make an excellent actual case study in akrasia. I'll try to quickly summarize a few issues.

instance:Weight lifting.

After a bad break-up, I pursued it rigorously for about 6 months, with great success, creating a postitive feedback loop. I was fueled by the progress, which inevitably plateaued, leading me to stagnation. In an attempt to get back on track, I purchased a squat rack and barbell, so that I could work out whenever was most convenient. In retrospect, this was a really bad idea. I find it virtually impossible to put in an adequat... (read more)

I'm not sure if I experience the same thing, but it sounds similar.

It sometimes happens with peoples faces, more often with my laptop screen when I've been staring at it for a while. It is impossible to put into words... sort of like my sense of size becomes meaningless. Depth perception vanishes. Sometimes things seem very small, or very large, but that is not quite it. It is more like my brain doesn't know how to parse anything related to absolute size.

Sometimes when I'm trying to fall asleep, I'll experience it with very high intensity. Normally when ... (read more)

Wow, I thought everyone got those.

Some from that list I would have imagined to be universal (who doesn't get shivers and tingles listening to Beethoven? seriously.), but these in particular are both incredibly accurate for myself and things that I figured were personal quirks:

Exposure to slow, accented, or unique speech patterns

Viewing educational or instructive videos or lectures

Watching another person complete a task, often in a diligent, attentive manner - examples would be filling out a form, writing a check, going through a purse or bag, inspecting

I didn't know there was such a term, thank you. I kind of wish there was a way to signify that status in posts.

I agree that it isn't a problem on the internet, especially not here. I would be interested in discussing this topic as it applies to meat-space (in particular among friends and allies), as it is something I have given a great deal of thought.

Yeah, I didn't look hard enough. So I'll leave this here.

Dear people from the future, here is what I have found so far:

http://alcor.org/BecomeMember/scheduleA.html http://alcor.org/BecomeMember/sdfunding.htm

Though, if anyone was in a similar position and would like to share, I'd still love to hear about it.

A small, but common related occurrence:

When you are checking out at a grocery store, or sometimes at fast food joints, they'll ask you to donate $1 to charity. Of course it is some sub-optimal charity, but the looming discomfort of saying no factors in far more than it should. Plus, it is really hard to tell some random person "sorry, but the utilon-to-dollar ratio is insufficient".

It seems to generalize to a category of 1-of things that arise in social situations. You know it is sub-optimal to along, you know it would be uncomfortable to speak ... (read more)

What does it mean to be agendered? Can you provide a specific example?

I've never respected gender roles; I'm a fairly androgynous (physically and behaviorally) male and I'm attracted to fairly androgynous females... but I don't know how one would go about "dissolving" their hormones and genitalia.

How to cryonics?

And please forgive me if this is a RTFM kind of thing.

I've been reading LW for a time, so I've been frequently exposed to the idea of cryonics. I usually push it to the back of my mind: I'm extremely pessimistic about the odds of being revived, and I'm still young, after all. But I realize this is probably me avoiding a terrible subject rather than an honest attempt to decide. So I've decided to at least figure out what getting frozen would entail.

Is there a practical primer on such an issue? For example; I'm only now entering grad school, ... (read more)

Finding ourselves with the ability to reflect on how our instinctual behavior and preferences are derived from inclusive genetic fitness necessitates neither fully accepting, nor fully rejecting these preferences.

I understand that, in seeking a romantic partner, there are qualities I value above those as determined by the blind idiot god. One of these qualities is reflectively the ability to rationally self-determine preferences, to the extent that such a thing is possible.

I liken my understanding to the fable of the oak and reed. I prefer, and indeed ex... (read more)

Just to agree with the above, and expand my feelings:

I don't see a lot of new ideas here. It would surprise me if an average less wrong reader hadn't spent a little time researching this topic, and all of this is fairly mainstream information.

I have a very strong ugh field set up around instrumentally pursuing females. After a bad break up, I spent about 6 months learning PUA, I had quite good success (my physical appearance is not lacking), but found the whole thing to be so pathetically empty compared to previous "organic" relationship that I f... (read more)

I'm not contradicting you at all, but I'm just curious: how do you know that you are smarter than virtually everyone you meet? If there is anything more to it than an intuition, I'd love to know about it. I've always wondered if there was some secret smart-person handshake that I wasn't privy to.

Personally, I'd say the lower 80 or 90% immediately identify themselves as such, but beyond that I try to give others the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they aren't interested in the conversation, don't want to seem intelligent, or or just plain out of my leauge. I do... (read more)

I was wondering if the IQ-calibration question was referring to reported or actual IQ. It seems to be the latter, but the former would be much more fun to think about.

Also, are so many LWers comfortable estimating with high confidence that they are in the 99.9th percentile? Or even higher? Is this community really that smart? I mean, I know I'm smarter than the majority of people I meet, but 999 out of every 1000? Or am I just being overly enthusiastic in correcting for cognitive bias?

I've been wanting to ask this here for a while: is there any (active or dead) discussion thread or article or something on the (rational :D) use of psychoactive substances? I've been very cautiously experimenting myself, and this is the only online community that I respect and whose goals seem to be inline with my own. There seem to be several exceedingly good reasons to partake, while all of the negative ones can be significantly mitigated with knowledge and precaution.

I'm a chaotic good, compsci undergrad doing research. Psychoactives haven't increased ... (read more)

So, ought we take supplemetary testosterone?

The benefits of weight training are typically significant and self-evident. Though anecdotal, most accounts I've heard (including my own) suggest that this is in large part due to increased testosterone levels. Why not supplement the natural process? If so, by how much?

Which is better: a society of immortals who never give birth, or a society that procreates and dies in the normal manner, whose population is stable at the same size?

That is to say, if both equally maximize observer-moments, does the "life-cycle" increase or decrease utility?

So there are several issues that seem conflated to me. More specifically, should we:

1. watch porn less
2. masturbate less
3. orgasm less

While the post superficially would be advocating (1), the justifications seem more in line with (3). Actually, I can get behind all three to some extent, and for different reasons. I just think they should be seperated. For instance:

1. sex becomes more enjoyable due to resensitization to arousal cues
2. sex is much more optimal than masturbation
3. basically all of the reasons already given (energy, focus, motivation... hormonal stuff)

the only compelling argument I've heard against Pascal's Wager is that you can't/shouldn't believe something just because it is convenient to do so

As I understand it, that's because our universe has provided no evidence that belief alters reality; but it does seem to suggest that the optimum strategy is relentless pursuit of truth. However, if we had good reason to think otherwise (I don't think this article counts), I see no reason why one shouldn't alter their beliefs to their benefit, apart from aesthetics.

Whether or not this is even possible is unc... (read more)

I was briefly excited as I met both GRE and SAT cutoffs. But now I'm feeling guilty and debating whether or not to apply; I'm certainly not in the 99.9th percentile. I absolutely love this community but I don't really post because I sincerely feel inadequate.

I'm easily in the 5th percentile, but I feel like an imposter with my standardized test scores: the tests are SO damn easy and don't measure anything of substance. GRE verbal tests your ability to recall obscure words, and the math tests your ability to maintain focus through 2 hours of trivial middle-school math. I didn't study at all.

For people I actually care about, I have better means of staying in touch. My inner circle has had a private voice chat server for years now, and that's part of the reason I haven't really been forced to use a social networking website.

But I'm trying to dramatically change who I am as a person, and this is a necessary step. I have severe issues with self-consciousness and social anxiety (despite acknowledging that this is unjustified as I am affable and attractive) so I am generally looking for ways to ease myself into social normalcy.

I have a kind of embarrassing one, but that's kind of the point of this discussion so here goes.

For some reason I've always had an aversion to social networking websites. I remember when all my peers used xanga, then livejournal, then myspace, and now facebook, and I always refused to use them whatsoever. I realize now though, that they represent a massive utility that I desperately need.

I am worried though, about starting new. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but it seems that having few friends on such a website signals low status, as does getting into ... (read more)