I hear what you're saying here and I think it makes sense, but I also really agree with Raemon's response. I wonder if there is some hybrid approach that could get the best of both worlds, like having one big pledge for DC, but also having smaller, local pledges. Sorta like what I mentioned in my other comment about distributed protesting.

I agree with your points and think they're valuable to point out and focus on.

Another thing I got wondering about is the size threshold. Like, I'm willing to drop what I'm doing and fly to DC for a 100k protest because of how much of an impression I think that would make, but I don't feel like I would do that for a 10k protest. Some of that could be anchoring bias, and it's hard to say how much, but there's definitely interesting dynamics in choosing the threshold and how it is presented. I think 100k is a good number, but is it the best number for:

• attracting people to pledge based on the impression they imagine it making
• actually being attainable
• actually making an impression on global decision makers.

I don't think I know how to answer that, but I like clarifying that those are the things I think we're trying to maximize in choosing a pledge. Though it's already 100,000 and people are already pledging, so for that reason, it's probably the best!

I mentioned in my reply to Raemon how this can be seen as three factors:

• the amount it will influence global policy makers as a function of location
• the amount of locals who will show up as a function of location
• the amount of people who would travel a long distance to show up as a function of location

And we could maybe do better by drawing people in if the location scores highly both for function 1 and function 3. So maybe trying to focus on central locations that are easy to travel to, and either cheap, or pleasant to travel to. I think focusing on cheap and central, maybe a town where a big data center has been built would send a good message. On the other hand, focusing on pleasant, maybe vacation destinations popular with policy people is the way to go. Tropical beaches where people from around the world go to enjoy the weather spring to mind. I don't know if this line of thinking is fruitful or not. Probably DC is the conventional location to stage a mass protest for a reason, but maybe not.

On the other hand, I think there is something to the idea of having distributed protesting... Maybe lots of smaller thresholds for individual cities, and then some threshold for number of cities. It's getting a bit complicated, but would it still send a message if a significant population protested in a significant number of cities around the world?

I see where you are coming from. It's like there's three factors here:

• the amount it will influence global policy makers as a function of location
• the amount of locals who will show up as a function of location
• the amount of people who would travel a long distance to show up as a function of location

I agree DC makes sense for the first function. I don't really know too much about global policy makers, but I guess lots of important ones hang out in DC?

As for the second function, I think it probably is higher in SF than DC, though I'm not that confident about that and you are correct to point out, that isn't necessarily the most important thing, since most of the people for a 100,000 person march will need to have travelled to get there. So from that perspective, the third function is much more important. What location is most likely to cause people to travel to it...

So I can only conclude... we should actually not all march on DC, but some pleasant vacation destination known to be popular with affluent people... that will really draw in the fence sitters! Well... I'm mostly joking about that. It probably messes up the first function, which is still basically the whole point of holding a march.

good slogans and chats

Was this meant to say "chants"?

It wouldn't help p(send message to DC) but I do think it would help p(100,000 pledges).

(-- edit --): After further discussion with Raemon I now disagree with this comment. I think changing the location to SF would help get more pledges sooner, but that isn't the goal, the goal is to actually get to 100,000 and to actually have an impactful protest, and I suspect that more people total would be willing to travel to DC for a protest since it makes more sense to hold it there.

ToW: Exploration of what the space is that semantics map references into. Since a statement can be false, it can't be reality. But since we can talk about true or false, reality must be involved somehow.

That makes sense. I read somewhere that in hunter gatherer contexts we evolved in, being shunned from the tribe could be life or death. I think to a certain extent that's still true, but less so than in the past. In any case, it feels like a compelling reason that we would be hard coded to find interpersonal conflict really innately compelling.

(1) Future Ability to Remember Things

I don't have this one! My ADHD in my youth and throughout my life has painfully and eternally etched into my mind that I do not have the ability to insert things into my future contexts through the will of my mind alone, and often physical interventions like notes can still fail. A classic example is writing a note that I fail to ever reference in the relevant context. So afaik I basically never think "I can let this detail leave my current context knowing I can remember it." I can't. Instead what I think is "I can keep this in my current context from now until it's relevant" or "the amount of effort to return this to my future context is more expensive than what I hope to gain by having this detail in my future context". I am still regularly blindsided by unforeseen failures in my strategy to insert details into future contexts. For example, setting three reminders on my phone, then turning off my phone for an exam and forgetting to turn it back on after.

(2) Local Optima of Comfort

I definitely have this one! I noticed one I called "sleepiness in the morning is because you are coming out of sleep, not because you didn't get enough sleep" but "local optima of comfort" is a really good generalization.

Recently I've started swimming in the ocean again (about 9℃ where I live). I feel really good after, but always have an aversion to going in. Interestingly, I find myself motivated by eating a granola bar after as a motivation. It seems like the pre-swim version of myself still requires the future granola bar to motivate swimming even though the post-swim version of myself that actually eats the granola bar enjoys the feeling of being capable of regulating my temperature and the relaxed calming feeling of having swum much more than eating the granola bar.

(3) Interpersonal Conflict

I'm not sure about this one. I think in conflict I'm somewhat likely to try to depersonalize and describe myself and the people I'm in conflict with in 3rd person... but I think I do experience similar effects around stubbornness and feeling like people owe me communication, for example, when people downvote without saying why I get irritated, like, how am I supposed to understand why you are downvoting if you don't say anything! But of course taking the time to put things into words is a scarce resource that strangers on the internet are in fact, not obligated to spend on me.

(4) Bonus: Recognizing I'm in a Dream

I really like lucid dreaming and dream incubation. One strategy I used to use is regularly "trying to teleport to a predetermined location". If I fail to actually teleport there, I conclude I'm awake. If I do teleport there, I conclude I'm dreaming and start doing whatever dream exploration I wanted to do in that location. A very fun one I used to do is teleporting to an open field and increasing the amount of force I can jump with to the point I can jump a hundred feet in the air and try to do flips and focus on the feeling of my legs pushing against the ground and the way the world seems to spin around me as I am in the air.

...

This was a fun post. Thanks for writing it.

Being responsible for the blinding was annoying for my girlfriend, and it would be better to find ways to either do it myself in future experiments, or at least streamline the process to not have her involved every day of the experiment

I like this sort of thing. I think you could get a small lazy susan, and 3 shot glasses. Fill and dose each glass placing a note card under each one specifying the date and dose or placebo. Then close your eyes and spin the lazy susan. Choose a cup from the randomized lazy susan and add it to a larger drink to dilute the taste. Take the card from that glass and store it for reference. Pour out the other glasses and destroy their cards.

I think that would get you self administered blind testing at the cost of wasting some melatonin and note cards.