Why am I not signed up for cryonics?

Here's my model.

In most futures, everyone is simply dead.

There's a tiny sliver of futures that are better than that, and a tiny sliver of futures that are worse than that.

What are the relative sizes of those slivers, and how much more likely am I to be revived in the "better" futures than in the "worse" futures? I really can't tell.

I don't seem to be as terrified of death as many people are. A while back I read the Stoics to reduce my fear of death, and it worked. I am, however, very averse to being revived into a worse-than-death future and not being able to escape.

I bet the hassle and cost of cryonics disincentivizes me, too, but when I boot up my internal simulator and simulate a world where cryonics is free, and obtained via a 10-question Google form, I still don't sign up. I ask to be cremated instead.

Cryonics may be reasonable for someone who is more averse to death and less averse to worse-than-death outcomes than I am. Cryonics may also be reasonable for someone who has strong reasons to believe they are more likely to be revived in better-than-death futures than in worse-than-death futures. Finally, there may be a fun... (read more)

A new comet from the oort cloud, >10 km wide, has been discovered that is doing a flyby of Mars in October of 2014. The current orbit is rather uncertain, but it is probably passing within 100,000 km and the max likelihood is ~35,000 km. There is a tiny but non-negligable chance this thing could actually hit the red planet, in which case we would get to witness an event on the same order of magnitude as the K-T event that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs! (and lose everything we have on the surface of the planet and in orbit.)

I, for one, hope it hits. That would not be a once in a lifetime opportunity. That would be a ONCE IN THE HISTORY OF HOMINID LIFE opportunity! We would get to observe a large impact on a terrestrial body as it happened and watch the aftermath as it played out for decades!

As is, the most likely situation though is one in which we get to closely sample and observe the comet with everything we have in orbit around Mars. The orbit will be nailed down better in a few months when the comet comes out from the other side of the sun.

And to quote myself towards the end of the last open thread:

I don't know if this has been brought up around here before, b

Zeo Inc is almost certainly shutting down.

Zeo users should assume the worst and take action accordingly:

1. Update your sleep data and then export all your sleep data from the Zeo website as a CSV (the bar on the right hand side, in tiny grey text)
2. Upgrade your Zeo with the new firmware if you have not already done so, so it will store unencrypted data which can be accessed without the Zeo website.
3. Depending on how long you plan to use your Zeo, you may want to buy replacement headbands (~$15 each, I think you can get a year's use out of them). Amazon still stocks the original bedside unit's replacement headbands and the cellphone/mobile unit replacement headbands but who knows how many they still have?

I'm sad that they're closing down. I've run so many experiments with my Zeo, and there doesn't seem to be any successor devices on the horizon: all the other sleep devices I've read of are lame accelerometer-based gizmos.

Google Reader is being killed 1 July 2013. Export your OPML and start searching for a new RSS reader...

I wanted to apologize for the post I made on Discussion yesterday. I hope one of the mods deletes it. I should have thought more carefully before posting something controversial like that. I made multiple errors in the process of writing the post. One of the biggest mistakes I made was mentioning the name of a certain organization in particular, in a way that might harm that organization.

In the future, before I post anything, I will ask myself, "Will this post raise or lower the sanity waterline?" The post I made clearly didn't really do much for the former, and could easily have contributed to the latter. For that I am filled with regret.

I have a part-time job, and I will be donating at least $150 of my income to the organization I mentioned and possibly harmed in the previous post I made.

I'm not making this comment for the purpose of gaining back karma; I'm making it because I still want to be taken seriously in this community as a rationalist. I know that this may never happen, now, but if that's the case, I can always just make another account. Less Wrong is amazing, and I like it here.

A call for advice: I'm looking into cognitive behavioral therapy—specifically, I'm planning to use an online resource or a book to learn CBT methods in hopes of preventing my depression from recurring. It looks like these methods have a good chance of working, although the evidence isn't as strong as for in-person CBT. At this point, I'm trying to decide which resources to learn from. Any recommendations or anecdotes would be appreciated.

For various reasons, I cannot make open threads anymore, ever again.

I have been reading up on religious studies (yes, I ignored that generally sound advice never to study anything with the word 'studies' in the name) in order to better understand Chinese religion.

Unexpectedly, I have found the native concepts are useful (perhaps even more useful) outside the realm of religion. That is to say, distinctions like universalist/particularist, conversion/heritage, and concepts like orthodoxy, orthopraxy, reification, etc... are useful for thinking about apparently "non-religious" ideologies (including, to some extent, my own).

My first instinct when hearing a claim is to try and figure out if it is true, but I fear I have been missing the point (since much of the time, the truth of the claim is irrelevant to the speaker) and instead should focus more on the function a given (stated) belief plays in the life (especially the social life) of the person making the assertion (at least, on the margin).

Over the past month, I have started taking melatonin supplements, instigated a new productivity system, implemented significant changes in diet and begun a new fitness routine. February is also a month where I anticipate changes in my mood. I find myself moderately depressed and highly irritable with no situational cause, and I have no idea which of these things, if any, are responsible.

This is not ideal.

I'd been considering breaking my calendar down into two-week blocks, and staging interventions in accordance with this. Then the restless spirit of Paul Graham sat on my shoulder and told me to turn it into an amazing web service that would let people assign themselves into self-experimental cohorts, where they're algorithmically assigned to balanced blocks so that effects of overlapping interventions can be teased apart.

I've never really gotten that into the whole Quantified Self thing, but I'd be keen to see if something like this existed already. If not, I'd consider putting such a thing together.

Any discussion/observations on this general subject?

It seems plausible to me that traditional financial advice assumes that you have traditional goals (e.g. eventually marrying, eventually owning a house, eventually raising a family, and eventually retiring). Suppose you are an aspiring effective altruist and willing to forgo one or more of these. How does that affect how closely your approach to finances should adhere to traditional financial advice?

This comment discusses information hazards, but not in much detail.

"Don't link to possible information hazards on Less Wrong without clear warning signs."
— Eliezer, in the previous open thread.

"Information hazard" is a Nick Bostrom coinage. The previous discussion of this seems to have focused on what Bostrom calls "psychological reaction hazard" — information that will make (at least some) people unhappy by thinking about it. Going through Bostrom's paper on the subject, I wonder if these other sorts of information hazards sh... (read more)

So you guys remember soylent? I was thinking I could get similar benefits blending simple foods and adding a good multivitamin to fill in any gaps.

So I've worked on it on and off for a couple of days, and here is a shot at what a whole food soylent might contain:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2786310/2

So um if anybody wants to confirm or critique this, that would be cool

Gamification of productivity:https://habitrpg.com/splash.html

I haven't signed up yet because I'm still assessing whether the overhead of filling it out is going to be too much of a trivial inconvenience, but thought some others might be interested. From poking around, it looks like it has a lot of potential but is still a little raw. It has the core game elements firmly in place but lacks the public status/accountability elements of good games (through acheivements/badges) and Fitocracy (through community/public accountability).

UPDATE: signed up, will report back next month

So apparently I should be somewhat concerned about dying by poisoning. Any simple tips for avoiding this? It looks like the biggest killers are painkillers and heavy recreational drugs, neither of which I take, so I might be safe.

Math and reading gaps between boys and girls

However, even in countries with high gender equality, sex differences in math and reading scores persisted in the 75 nations examined by a University of Missouri and University of Leeds study. Girls consistently scored higher in reading, while boys got higher scores in math, but these gaps are linked and vary with overall social and economic conditions of the nation.

I've just noticed that hovering the mouse pointer over a post's or comment's score now displays a balloon pop-up with information how large percentage of votes was positive. New feature or am I just really bad at noticing black stuff appearing suddenly on my screen?

Anyway, it's pretty nice. You can, for example, upvote a comment from 0 to 1, notice that the positive vote ratio changes only by a few percent and suddenly realize that there's a war going on in there.

Saving the world though ECONOMICS

In a world of magic and fantasy, there exist two worlds: the Human World and the Demon World of fantasy creatures. Fifteen years ago, the "War of the Southern Kingdoms” broke out between both sides, each intending to conquer the other. Both sides were locked in a stalemate, until a young male human decides to do something about it. Known as the Hero, he is a skilled and powerful warrior who has traveled to the Demon World to end their evil by killing their leader, the Demon Queen.

But what surprised the Hero when he s

So, I notice some of the top contributors have the "Overview" page that appears when you click on their name display their LW wiki user page instead of the standard recent comments/posts summary (gwern, for example). Is that only for super-awesome people or is there some way to enable it that I failed to find?

[edit:] Okay, apparently patience is the key. It started working for me somewhere between 24 and 48 hours after I made the wiki page for my username.

What is the purpose of the monthly quotes thread? (To post quotes, obviously.) But it seems to me that a lot of the time, it's just an excuse for applause lights.

I've been trying out the brain-training software from Posit science. I've definitely gotten better at some of their training material (tracking objects in a crowd of identical objects and seeing briefly shown motion), but I'm not sure whether it's improving my life.

Have any of you tried Posit's BrainHQ? If so, how has it worked out for you?

The training exercises look like they're only available as expensive software, but if you do their free exercises, they'll offer a $10/month option.

I found out about Posit from this video-- Merzenich clearly has somethi... (read more)

I'm having a motivation block that I'm not sure how to get around. Basically whenever I think about performing an intellectual activity, I have a sudden negative reaction that I'm incapable of succeeding. This heavily lowers my expectation that doing these activities will pay off, most destructively so the intellectual activity of figuring out why I have these negative reactions.

In particular, I worry about my memory. I feel like it's slipping from what it used to be, and I'm only 24. It's like, if only I could keep the details of the memory tricks in ... (read more)

Apparently conscientiousness correlates strongly with a lot of positive outcomes. But unfortunately I seem to be very low on it.* Is there anything I can do to train it?

*Standard disclaimers about self assessment apply.

It occurs to me that there is a roadblock for an AI to go foom; namely that it first has to solve the same "keep my goals constant while rewriting myself" problem that MIRI is trying to solve.

Otherwise the situation would be analogous to Gandhi being offered a pill that has a chance of making him into anti-Gandhi, and declining it.

If the superhuman - but not yet foomed! - AI is not yet orders of magnitude smarter than a hoo-mon, it may be a while before it is willing to power-up / go foom, since it would not want to jeapardize its utility function along the way.

Just because it can foom does not imply it'll want to foom (because of the above).

I think it'd be nice to have a (probably monthly) "Ideas Feedback Thread", where one would be able to post even silly and dubious ideas for critique without fear of karma loss. Rules could be that you upvote top level idea comments if they sound interesting (even if wrong), and downvote only if you're really sure that it's very easy to find out they're bad (e.g. covered in core sequences). Could also be used for getting feedback on draft posts and whatnot.

The plan being that questionable ideas are put into their own thread for feedback, instead o... (read more)

I have a small site feature question! What are those save buttons and what do they do, if anything? (They seem to not do what I think they should do.)

How to instantly know, which articles I have already read on LW (or elsewhere)?

Well, if I have a camera on my computer, it could trace my eyes and displayed article and do some time based guesses what had actually has been read by me. Then it should be displayed with a yellowish background next time.

Just a suggestion.

P.S.

Or at least, it should be a I HAVE READ IT! button somewhere. With an personal marks how good it was. Independent of the up/down vote thumbs.

Can anyone tell me the name of this subject or direct me to information on it:

Basically, I'm wondering if anyone has studied recent human evolution - the influence of our own civilized lifestyle on human traits. For example: For birth control pills to be effective, you have to take one every day. Responsible people succeed at this. Irresponsible people may not. Therefore, if the types of contraceptives that one can forget to use are popular enough methods of birth control, the irresponsible people might outnumber responsible people in a very short peri... (read more)

Recent experiences have suggested to me that there is a positive correlation between rationality and prosopagnosia. One hypothesis is that dealing with prosopagnosia requires using Bayes to recognize people, so it naturally provides a training ground for Bayesian reasoning. But I'm curious about other possible hypotheses as well as additional anecdotal evidence for or against this conclusion.

Does anyone have sources on active steps that can be taken to improve gender diversity in organisations?

There is a lot of writing on the subject, but I'm finding it difficult to find sources that compare the effectiveness of different measures, with figures showing change, controlling for variables etc.

I remember seeing something about Islamic law and the ability to will money to charities meant to exist in perpetua and now I can't find it. Does anyone know what I'm talking about.

From the wikipedia page, it seems that coffee has a lot of good long term medical benefits, with only a few long term side effects if consumed in moderation, meaning less than 4 cups a day.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_caffeine#Long-term_effects)

This includes possible reduced risk of prostate cancer, Alzheimers, dementia, Parkinson's disease, heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, cirrhosis, and gout.

It has also been taken off the list for a risk factor in heart disease, and acts as an antidepressant.

Caffeine is not the cause of all of t... (read more)

If computer hardware improvement slows down, will this hasten or delay AGI?

My naive hypothesis is that if hardware improvement slows, more work will be put into software improvement. Since AGI is a software problem, this will hasten AGI. But this is not an informed opinion.

I've just learned that if it is July or a later month, it is more probable that the current year has begun with Friday, Sunday, Tuesday or Wednesday. If it is June or an earlier month, it is more probable that the current year has begun with Monday, Saturday or Thursday.

For the Gregorian calendar, of course.