My posts since the last digest

• Give Me Your Data: The Rationalist Mind Meld — Too often online, people try to argue logically with people who are just missing a background of information. It’s sometimes more productive to share the sources that led to your own intuition.
• Cover Your Cough — A lighthearted, ranty post about a dumb subway poster I saw.
• The Real Cost of a Peanut Allergy — Often, people think the worst part of having a peanut allergy is not being able to eat Snickers. Really, it’s the fear and the uncertainty — the not being able to kiss someone without knowing what they’ve eaten.
• Guys I might be an e/acc — I did some napkin math on whether or not I supported an AI pause, and came down weakly against. But I’m not really “against” an AI pause. The takeaway is really that there’s so little information to work with right now that any opinion is basically a hunch.
• Unsureism: The Rational Approach to Religious Uncertainty — A totally serious post about a new religion that statistically maximizes your chances of getting into heaven.

I feel like I haven’t had as much time to write these posts as I did in the last two digests, and I’m not as proud of them. Give Me Your Data has some good ideas. The Real Cost of a Peanut Allergy has interesting information and experiences that won’t be familiar to most people. And the Unsureism post is just fun, I think. So it’s not all bad. But a bit rushed. Hopefully I have a bit more time going forward.

Some highlights from other Halfhaven writers (since the last digest)

• Choose Your Social Reality (lsusr) — A great video starting with an anecdote about how circling groups have problems with narcissists making the activity all about themselves, but zendo groups don’t have this issue, because even though these two activities are superficially similar, zendo by its nature repels narcissists. The idea being certain activities attract certain people, and you can choose what people you want to be around by choosing certain activities. I had a relevant experience once when I tried joining a social anxiety support group to improve my social skills, only to end up surrounded by people with no social skills.
• Good Grief (Ari Zerner) — A relatable post not great for its originality, but for its universality. We’ve all been there, bro. Segues nicely into his next post, Letter to my Past.
• The Doomers Were Right (Algon) — Every generation complains about the next generation and their horrible new technology, whether that’s books, TV, or the internet. And every generation has been right to complain, because each of these technologies have stolen something from us. Maybe they were worth creating overall, but they still had costs. (Skip reading the comments on this one.)
• You Can Just Give Teenagers Social Anxiety! (Aaron) — Telling teenagers to focus on trying to get the person they’re talking to to like them makes them socially anxious. And socially anxious teens can’t stop doing this even if you ask them to stop. So social anxiety comes from a preoccupation with what other people think about you. This is all true and interesting, and I’m glad the experiment exists, but I wonder if a non-scientist would just reply, “duh”. Anyway, a good writeup.
• Making Films Quick Start 1 - Audio (keltan) — This is one of a three-part series worth reading if you ever want to make videos. I liked the tip in part 2 about putting things in the background for your audience to look at. I’ve been paying attention to this lately in videos I watch, and it seems to be more important than I originally guessed. I also liked this post about a starstruck keltan meeting Eliezer Yudkowsky. For some reason, posts on LessWrong talking about Eliezer as a kind of celebrity have gone up in the last few days.

You know, I originally wondered if Halfhaven was a baby challenge compared to Inkhaven, since we only have to write one blog post every ~2 days rather than every day, but I kind of forgot that we also have to go to work and live our normal lives during this time, too. Given that, I think both are probably similarly challenging, and I’m impressed with the output of myself and others so far. Keep it up everyone!