Willa's Shortform

149. Solve easy problems & what's your default query tool?

I am committing to solving at least five problems in my life per week that aren't just regular chores. Here's the current list: (most of this list is: I am tired of seeing my deadname around too frequently)

1. Done: requested name change with US Department of Education
2. Done: requested new card from $bank1 so my name is correct on it
3. Partial: Called $bank2 about name change and they are snail-mailing me the paperwork for that.
4. To do: Call $university1 & $college1 to do name change at both places

148. April 9 Williamsburg VA Meetup, AI, and thank goodness Spring is almost upon us

If you find yourself in or near Williamsburg, Virginia on 2023/04/09 come join for a Virginia Rationalists Meetup and the Williamsburg 2nd Sundays Art & Music Festival.

This week was a bit overwhelming in AI news, with GPT-4 releasing, new Midjourney, Stanford's Alpaca, more AI offerings from Google, Microsoft CoPilot 365, and honestly a bunch more things. I've spent too much time already talking with the GPT-4 version of ChatGPT given how long it's actually been available... (read more)

Shortform #147 Working & Considering Partial Digital Nomadism

I experience significant value-add to my life / nice things when I travel. I trialed working semi nomadically in December when I stayed at 7 or 8 households over 10 days while working remotely full time. That was fun, exhausting, and a very valuable learning experience! I definitely overbooked myself on that trip and did not schedule enough downtime, plus, I found working from a single laptop screen a bit less efficient than my normal 4 screen work setup & other desktop accoutrements.

With... (read more)

Shortform #146 Happy New Year! (a few updates; all dates from 2022 unless specified otherwise)

Resuming on October 16th didn't happen, oops. Looks like January 3rd (today) will have to do! Now for some updates:

• I changed jobs in October: I went from a contract employee to a full employee at the healthcare org I work at, with a promotion to a new team! Now I am supporting clinical & medical technology systems, it's cool stuff, I'm learning a ton, and I love the position, it's a very good fit.
• November disappeared into the abyss of working a lot, I can't

Shortform #145 Audio Journaling | Rethinking Shortforms

I tried audio journaling for the first time today, it felt weird but I think the experience was actually great! Recorded for about 30 minutes on an old non-internet connected phone (to pacify my paranoia) and then listened to the recording and got hit in the feels in all sorts of good and helpful ways.

I like writing these shortform posts, but am not sure how valuable they've been over the last few weeks in particular (I know writing the posts as a whole has been incredibly valuable to my personal devel... (read more)

Shortform #143 Taking small actionable steps to improve my life

Starts Monday Oct 10. I am coasting now on my past commitments because they have become habits (for the most part). Time for new commitments! Note: I find that small continuous actions of improvement, (see also Kaizen), more sustainable & actually doable than big innovations, so those are my guidelines with most of my new commitments.

Health:

• Eat one or less egg per day instead of the two I've been averaging
• Eat meat no more than once every other day instead of the once a day I've been aver

Shortform #142 What entertainment are you consuming or interacting with?

Right now I am listening to Fragments, by Bonobo. I love that album!

Tonight was my once or twice a month "watch YouTube videos" night, and...I'm not sure how much I like that habit. I do skip a lot of videos I used to watch almost compulsorily when I watched YouTube videos multiple times a day...so that's an improvement at least.

I am not watching any TV shows right now, but I will possibly watch a movie this weekend. I'm reading a book on Kaizen which I'm quite enjoying and am also slo... (read more)

Shortform #140 Routine-breaking Weekend

I tend to settle into a fairly predictable routine, and this weekend roused me from that.

On Friday there was a tropical storm and no power in my apartment when I went home after work (though it did come back on that evening thankfully). Because my building sustained no damage, it was a pretty relaxing night, I read some while it was still light out and then the power was back on by nightfall so I hopped on my computer and was somewhat social virtually for a bit.

On Saturday I went to Richmond, VA for the ACX Meetup Eve... (read more)

Shortforms will resume on Monday 3 October.

Shortform #139 Note to self: don't reschedule weekly meetup

Tonight's Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk meetup was great! We had a new individual join us who is familiar with ACX.

In retrospect, I think it was inconsiderate to suddenly reschedule the group's weekly meetup just because I couldn't attend. My co-organizer and others likely could have attended yesterday, and there were a few people who just couldn't make the rescheduled meetup but had included Wednesday nights in their routine as "meetup night". So, I intend to not reschedule the weekly social meet... (read more)

Shortform #138 A good but slightly disorienting day

I applied for a promising job today, here's to hoping that bears fruit!

I am somewhat out of whack due to having to suddenly house sit instead of going to my own home after work. I do not enjoy this, but it's an obligation I'm fulfilling.

No meetup tonight, I rescheduled Norfolk's meetup for Thursday evening (the 29th). I'm excited for the meetup tomorrow!

Shortform #137 Meal Prepping & Rambutan

In pursuit of healthier eating, I prepared containers of seeds, fruits of various kinds, and vegetables that I can eat during meals & take to work for lunch. I also tried a new-to-me fruit called Rambutan, I like the flavor okay but it's a little bland, and now have a container of that fruit to eat through too.

I meditated for 5 minutes, rowed for 5 minutes, and did 5 pushups tonight. Small continuous improvements, here we go!

Shortform #136 Sugar* Considered Harmful

• = sugar in excess of what one would consume normally by eating fruits & vegetables and maybe 1 square of dark chocolate.

I splurged (everything else were essentials / healthy food) on one item this weekend from Trader Joe's: Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls. Yes they were tasty, duh. After consumption...now I feel physically ill: almost sweating and general discomfort, anxiety, elevated heart rate, trouble focusing, restlessness, etc. Oh! This is not an isolated set of bad feelings, these bad feelings occur every ... (read more)

Shortform #135 Rest and Shrinking the "World"

Last week I read about 10 arcs of Ward, listened to a ton of UNspoiled! podcast network podcasts, and played video games some too. I increased how much I slept each night and averaged a bit over eight hours, and improved the healthiness of my food choices. As much as I escaped into fiction and the "other worlds" that come with fiction, I felt that that came at the expense of the reality / world we all live in (hence part of this post's title). The more I engage with fiction, the more I withdraw from reality / th... (read more)

Daily Shortforms will return on Sunday 25 September, 2022. I need to focus on building other habits right now, but also...a bit of extra rest is nice.

Shortform #134 Cloud Atlas

It is possible that Friday evenings after working all week may not be my most effective evenings for focused study.

Instead of studying anything tonight, I watched Cloud Atlas for the first time and wow, what a movie (how's the book? haven't read it). I was confused at first, because the movie begins by throwing multiple characters in different locations in time and space at you completely independent of context or exposition, but my confusion lessened as the movie progressed and I found the whole experience quite novel and deeply ... (read more)

Shortform #133 Knowledge Intake

As mentioned yesterday, I re-read the comments on Have you considered getting rid of death? and added what was recommended to my knowledge intake system. I believe I'd benefit from working methodically through a textbook while reading another more foundational conceptual book so to those ends I suspect the first two books I read specifically for increasing my Biology knowledge are:

• Molecular Biology of the Cell
• Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things

If I notice significant gaps in ... (read more)

Shortform #132 Small but good actions.

Tomorrow evening's reading material is a re-read of the comments on Have you considered getting rid of death? where several people recommended good things to check out. I will add that material to my intake system and begin processing it.

I will post Friday's reading material tomorrow, I have got to get to sleep now. Tonight's Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk meetup was fantastic!

I have completed similar "prep for tomorrow" actions tonight like I did last night. The extra slack provided by those actions from yesterday came in handy today.

Shortform #131 TWI & Kaizen

In the spirit of continuous, sustained, small-step daily improvement (hello Kaizen or its precursor, TWI), I am adding a small component my daily shortforms: spend 10 minutes or less reading about a pre-registered subject each day and share my thoughts on what I read that day in my shortform.

Tomorrow I'm choosing or "pre-registering" my reading material for 14/09/2022 through 18/09/2022. Tonight I prepared tomorrow's lunch, set out tomorrow's clothes, and did a few other things to make tomorrow go more smoothly & increase my slack.

Shortform #130 More Slack

I passed my second cert exam (this cert requires passing scores on two separate exams) this morning and have thus obtained my new IT cert! I now have more slack in my life, which feels so good. I'm not completely out of churning waters yet, but they are quieter and a bit slower than before.

I look forward to discussing Twelve Virtues of Rationality in my upcoming meetups.

Shortform #129 More test taking

Tomorrow morning I take the second out of two exams for an IT cert I'm pursuing. I've studied well and know the material thoroughly. I'm excited to take that test and obtain that cert as it will help with short term survival with getting better IT jobs while I figure out how to transition to doing different work. Not much else to say tonight, the exam is the main thing on my mind. I'll gain some slack back in my life by obtaining the cert, so that's a nice thing too.

Be well,
Good night!

Shortform #128 Organizing for Immortality

Thank you to everyone who read and/or commented on Have you considered getting rid of death?! Your thoughts, resources, and support are welcomed :)

I've reflected on that post, discussions I had with others about it, and the comments, plus my current life circumstances: I have a small amount of time slack but zero financial slack, so what is the highest value added work I can put forth towards the bigger immortality project? Organizing, I think.

I intend to read, write, and produce original research for that project, ... (read more)

Shortform #127 CoWorking is Great!

I don't have much slack in my life right now, so working in the same space as a friend plus taking occasional breaks to talk is great. I get some amount of social hangout time and am able to work.

Problem: I'm hecking exhausted from working hours a day on other things in addition to my day job. Really need to change something in the next few months I think. I'm enjoying the work at least :)

Shortform #126 Running More Specific Meetups

We had nine attendees (including myself) at our [Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk] social tonight! It was great, I had a most excellent time, and everyone else said they enjoyed it too.

Only four out of nine attendees (including myself) were familiar with LW/ACX/EA, and when you don't have a group where most of the people are "in-group" so to say (i.e. familiar with things inside our walled gardens), that changes the dynamics of the experience quite a bit.

I may have to vary between open and closed socials in additio... (read more)

Shortform #125 Increasing Vegetarianism

I am still eating meat, but have steadily been cutting back on my meat consumption for the last few weeks. I feel better, my mind is sharper, and I tend to have more energy when I eat more fruits & vegetables and less meat. Not ready to make a full commitment, not sure if I ever will (parties do exist, and there are still things I like trying or would want occasionally), but I am thinking of the 80/20 rule and how that could apply well in this case.

If I eat vegetarian for >=80% of meals, I get the aforementioned benefits while still getting to eat some amount of meat. This seems like a good compromise.

Shortform #124 Returning, Exams, and Plans

Shortforms exist again! Yay :) I enjoy writing these, they are a nice ritual and anchoring part of my days each week, especially while parts of my life remain fairly fragile or uncertain.

The IT exams went well until there was a software glitch, and the second exam failed to even launch and no proctor ever reached out to me. I passed the first exam with room to spare, and opened a support ticket about the second exam, so hopefully the testing company will issue me a new voucher so I can take the second exam and fina... (read more)

Daily shortforms shall resume on Monday 5 September, 2022. I am taking IT certification exams this weekend and need to focus.

Shortform #123 Learning Social Conventions via Scripting & Deliberate Practice

One topic discussed at Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk's social meetup tonight (we had six attendees and had a ton of fun!) was how many people had to consciously choose to learn & practice social conventions like eye contact, body language, customs, and more. Those are things I've had to do, as most social conventions or customs didn't or don't come naturally to me for some reason. This topic resonated with most of us at the meetup, so I'm wondering if it's also a topic t... (read more)

Shortform #121 So many ACX Meetups Everywhere to go to!

I will be travelling as much as possible to ACX Meetups Everywhere mostly along the East coast, some in the South, and hopefully all such meetups in Virginia. If I can swing it, I'd like to go to Houston see everyone & run a meetup then attend the Austin ACX meetup.

I love looking at the Community map and seeing so many meetup events occurring, this is fantastic! I'm eager to see that grow year over year and help however I can with that growth.

If you haven't been to any meetups or only a few, ACX Meetups Everywhere are the best time of the year to try attending rationalist meetups, I highly recommend you give that a go. Meetups FTW!

Shortform #120 I [mostly] met an important-to-me deadline: immortalityisgreat.com is now live as a substack blog

Here's the first post: Have you considered getting rid of death?

I am excited and look forward to writing more on that subject, preferably each week!

And now bedtime, then back to my day job tomorrow...

Shortform #119 Art is Fun!

I hadn't played the piano in months, but decided to have a solo jam session where I let myself play whatever felt good to play, and wow was that nice! Some of the time I played existing songs, but most of the time I flowed from chord to chord and jumped around the octaves.

Recently I acquired a drawing tablet, I spent some time learning Krita and drew some things, it was cathartic and very fun at the same time.

I don't think I let myself just play around very much, nor spend much time doing art things that I enjoy. I would like to c... (read more)

Shortform #118 Changing Profession & Considering Other Jobs

I don't like doing IT and the thought of doing it years in the future fills me with intense dread. I have decided that I will leave that profession to go do something else and am now considering what other profession or job(s) that might be.

I'm not leaving my current job immediately, I do need to survive in the meantime of course, but having a job-change plan & steadily executing on it will help make the day to day more bearable (it has gotten so bad I've been tempted to just walk out multi... (read more)

Shortform #117 Studying!

Thankfully I was able to take today and tomorrow off from work, I am studying. Nothing more to really discuss, just a lot of work to finish up this weekend. Be well, live long, and prosper :)

Shortform #116 Commitments Check-In

Very simply, a status update on my ongoing commitments, plus a short deadline list.

Media Commitment: This goes well! I am barely watching two movies a week, have not watched YouTube except for purely time sensitive educational purposes, and haven't watched TV at all. My worry about binging comics hasn't been vindicated, as I've acquired several new comics but am actually going through them pretty slowly.

Regular sleep habit commitment: This was going well until the awful stress storm of this week where I have changed my sl... (read more)

Shortform #115 Christopher Nolan's Tenet

I watched this movie tonight and had a blast, it was actually quite a bit of fun keeping track of the timeline stuff and whether someone or an object was operating "inverted" or "non-inverted". Is the premise absurd? It definitely feels that way, but the movie was fun and kept my attention well occupied for its duration. One provocative takeaway from the movie: be careful with rigidity of thought & not updating your priors. It felt like the movie was mostly about rapidly updating your priors and not just for usua... (read more)

Shortform #114 Huh, Human Being not Human Doing

For the past month or so I've been in a Doing spiral. This has been great for my productivity, but as multiple important deadlines coincided at the same time this week, I've realized (thank you everyone I've talked about this with for helping me realize) that I've left little time for simply being in my life.

One might say I've left very little to no slack in my life, with the negative consequences that can cause. Working 10 hours a day at my day job before coming home to work for 2-4 hours a night on studying ... (read more)

Shortform #113 Writing under the influence of panic, stress, etc. considered harmful

See yesterday's shortform, but more broadly, I've noticed that if I let stressors I'm feeling into my writing, my writing is worse, specifically: less concise, less clear (vagueness is not a virtue; nor am I trying to entice close reading, one ought not need to be a Straussian to read what I write), and not as coherent.

I noticed that I initially felt significant stress about this post, because I wasn't going to post it before 9:30 (my bedtime). I sat with that stress, and d... (read more)

Shortform #109 Yay for organizing & co-organizers!

Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk filled up the large round table at Fair Grounds tonight, had good conversations (though admittedly a bit lacking in rationalist content...but that'll be what the upcoming dojo or workshop meetups are for), and walked to a Boba place together afterwards for some wonderful bubble / boba tea.

Yitz and I met briefly afterwards to discuss our upcoming dojo and workshop meetup plans as well as figure out our plan for Meetups Everywhere 2022 - Call for Organizers, because we will ... (read more)

Shortform #108 Tool use, software, and digitising operations

How does one as a human being stay relevant and able to solve enough problems that others experience to earn a living? No, AGI does not seem to be here yet, but our lives are governed, shaped, impacted by, and sometimes even ended via machine algorithmic decision making.

What tools are you using as prosthetics to augment your capabilities? Do you care about privacy or should privacy be given up to allow a closer integration with digital operations & support from machine algorithmic decision mak... (read more)

Shortform #107 So much to build, do, and create...so little time in a day!

I have moved from "wanting to do things" to simply doing things and getting a lot done each day. This feels fucking fantastic, I love turning my attention to X things and plowing through them! Scheduling and time block planning are helping quite a bit, but I'm still looking for room to optimize my workflows & cut out time sinks.

Here's what I'm thinking of:

• either pay out of pocket for laundry wash & fold delivery service once I obtain a job upgrade this month or next month -

Shortform #106 Four Days of Consistent Sleep & Wake Times: going well!

Waking up at 6:13am on Thursday & Friday felt like normal work wakeup time but with more energy & less tiredness than usual because of falling asleep by or slightly before 10pm.

Waking up at 6:13am on Saturday and Sunday made my weekend feel like it was unbelievably long in a great way. I wasn't tired at all, felt plenty energetic, and immediately after waking up both mornings spent a solid two or three hours working on important personal tasks or projects. I really am sharper... (read more)

Shortform #105 Wow, desks are great | Setting up my home office

I went to Costco with two friends today and picked up three six-foot long folding tables that are sold there. Just for a sanity test, I sat on one of the tables and it fully bore my weight, thus I felt comfortable putting on the ~100 pounds of equipment I have on one of them now. It is very nice to have desks and workbench space instead of working from the floor, oof. I've got four / five of my monitors setup, but the last one (an old Wacom drawing tablet) needs a display adapter to function, I... (read more)

Shortform #104 Movies, oh movies

I love working extra hours earlier in the week to allow for a short day Friday, may push for working four 10s to just get Fridays off entirely. Anyway, I finished watching Dune which I had watched partially last month, then I watched Men in Black: International.

I'm not very good at movie critiques, so I won't offer any in that direction for Dune or MIB: International. To think critically about a piece of media, I almost always have to experience it twice, and I did not watch those movies twice (only once).

I freaking loved th... (read more)

Shortform #101 Conversation experiment: Tabooing $topics after previously discussed for $time

Do you ever find yourself talking at length, sometimes repetitively about the same topic(s)? Do you notice others around you doing similarly? Experiment with tabooing that topic or topics (with consent of your conversation partner(s), of course) for an evening (or whatever your time interval is) and see what happens!

Spur of the moment tonight, I asked my friend after we finished coworking and were hanging out if they wanted to try the conversation topic taboo exper... (read more)

Shortform #100 Writing publicly considered beneficial, fun, and not that scary

After writing one hundred shortform posts, writing publicly no longer feels scary and really just feels like a habit more than anything else (especially because the last 33 posts were near daily or daily). A habit I intend to continue as these are fun to write (even when I feel grumpy or hit an ugh field before doing so) and occupy a nice role in my life, plus I love growing my writing & other skills when creating these posts.

I feel a strong desire to write bigger posts than ... (read more)

Shortform #99 Glassblowing, Contemporary Art, & M.C. Escher! | Also, good conversations :)

If Saturday was a stay-in get attention hijacked kind of day, today was a "get the heck out of the house and do something" kind of day. I met up with a friend to visit the Chrysler Art Museum and attended an hourish long glassblowing demonstration which was absolutely fascinating, I loved it! I enjoyed walking around the modernist & contemporary sections of the museum (only stayed for a few hours so I didn't go to all parts of the museum this time around), had... (read more)

Shortform #98 Visual media consumption considered enjoyable but net harmful for now

In shortform #89 I declared another media diet. That diet ended yesterday evening so I tried out a TV show, Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" on netflix. Which...promptly hijacked my attention from last night until the afternoon of today. I came across LRNZ's "Golem" for free on Wednesday last week at my local cafe hangout, took it home, and devoured it in one sitting. I could keep listing examples, on and on...of all the times some visual media (digital or analog) has so utterly ... (read more)

Shortform #97 Frames, paradigms, priors, concept space, oh my!

I am obsessed with such things ^^^^. What are ideas, how do they work? When you reduce until everything is just axioms, why do you build what you build on top of those axioms? <<<< mostly rhetorical questions, though sometimes they can be nice to meditate on.

Thank goodness for reality, not only is existence a lovely thing, but the territory provides a great foundation upon which to build maps. And then there's Math.

I don't expect this post to make any coherent sense to others, it's f... (read more)

Shortform #96 Operating Systems Rant Number Infinity

Much like you need a kernel (usually in most cases, anyways) to run an operating system...this rant needs a foundation: use-cases for operating systems; the principle of charity & steelmanning shall apply here. Note that this is focused on desktop operating systems, not mobile operating systems. Don't take this too seriously, I have some thoughts about the OSes I use and need to get them out, this is by no means polished or seriously researched.

Microsoft Windows

• The inescapable behemoth that is Windo

Shortform #95 The Feeling of Focusing & Attentiveness

At any given moment, where is the full weight of your attention targeted at? Or is your attention partial, divvied up amongst several targets?

I'm deliberately reducing the amount of noticed occurrences where my attention is partial rather than full. Undivided focus or attentiveness not only makes experiencing existence more satisfying for me, it also sharpens my cognition because I single task instead of multitask. That sharpness benefits me by reducing biases, making my heuristics more transparent &... (read more)

Shortform #94 Boundary Setting at work is suddenly much easier after attending Retreat

Prior to attending the organizer's retreat, I would let people send me tasks that fell outside of my primary responsibilities, even if they were mundane and not good learning opportunities and/or even if the individual in question actually had time to do the task. After the retreat, I noticed today, I haven't been doing that and have been saying no much more often, or enforcing better boundaries generally about work tasks.

I'm not sure what changed. My current job admitted... (read more)

Shortform #93 Timeboxing

I am loving spending so much time doing organizing work, it's genuinely fun and feels great! I do have other interests and prior commitments + goals to attain though, so I need to be more deliberate with my time. I'm once again heavily relying on my calendar (Google Calendar for now) to restrict certain activities mostly to specific boxes of time on the calendar. This is helping. I attended to other goals & commitments today while still doing organizing work.

There's so much work to do for so many of my interests & parts of m... (read more)

Shortform #92 Woohoo for Organizing :)

Houston Rationalists now have an in-person local organizer! Thank you David M for organizing, I look forward to seeing how the group grows and supporting how I can from afar.

Norfolk Rationalists will become Virginia Rationalists this week! We are still meeting in Norfolk, but the name change should reduce confusion amongst people I or others speak to about the group. Plus, I would like to provide infrastructure & support to organizers in other parts of Virginia and support as many Virginia groups as possible, let's... (read more)