All of daenerys's Comments + Replies

Daenerys, since there seems to be some uncertainty:

Are you saying that you would prefer if LessWrong increased the height of it's metaphorical wall, keeping out "anti-feminist or biorealist assholes"?

Or are you saying that the model of a public forum is inherently "a great way to drive off women and minorities", and thus you don't use LessWrong and don't care about the moderation policy much?

I've seen different people reading your comment different ways.

Much closer to the latter. I am not making any policy recommendations about LW mo... (read more)

I'm currently driving cross country and typing this on my phone at a rest stop so I can't comment as much as I would like, but I DO want to clarify that my post meant what it said and nothing more. Eugine himself was an asshole. He ALSO was a biorealist and an anti feminist. When you combine those traits in a prolific user they're likely to drive away women and minorities.

Even if it's epistemically true, discussing those issues in an assholey way is instrumentally unhelpful (for people with goals at all similar to mine).

I'm pretty sure (but don't feel like spending time tracking down examples, so I could be wrong) that I've seen Eugine saying biorealist things.

I changed "racist" to "biorealist" in my comment, if you don't think the two should be equated.

Hi Stuart! Swimmer is correct; ChrisHallquist posted a link to this on my facebook wall. Personally, I'm glad Eugine is gone, because even without the downvoting he was an asshole. And having anti-feminist or biorealist assholes running around is a great way to drive off women and minorities.

Anyways, I prefer the walled garden, and the conversational tone, and the positive emotional support that Facebook provides, so I doubt I'll come back to posting here.

I'm still extremely active in the meatspace community though, and I have a friend who will be postin... (read more)

I use LW as a social networking device more than anything else.

• I got three jobs through the LW community, through a mix of job postings here and social networks, the succession of which has pretty much raised me from poor/lower class to middle class.
• The vast majority of my romantic partners since getting involved with rationality are through the LW community, often met at meetups or through related social networks.
• Almost all of my friends are through the rationalist community, especially if you expand that to include some of the related atheist netw

That quiz looks like it could use an update to fit modern society. It was hard to answer questions about "channel surfing" or "renting videos" in the modern era of hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. Also, thinking back to the days of actual video rental stores, it was much easier to choose a movie there than it is to choose one on Netflix. Possibly because the Netflix selections tends towards "second rate movies I've never heard of OR first rate movies that I've already watched or am not interested in")

Anyways, I am a natural ma... (read more)

A great way to track time spent on activities (especially fluid and unpredicatable ones) is an app called TagTime. It works best on Android, but you can also get it on your computer if you're hacky. It pings you at random intervals that average out to be worth 45 minutes each, and asks what you're doing at that exact moment. You create tags for different activities, so you just click on the relevant tag(s), and don't have to type in anything. It also integrates with Beeminder, if you'd like to track things that way.

In the US the guest is still expected to bring them, but as a host it's really nice to be able to provide for your guest if they need it.

This.

Plus, there are many emergencies where a guest wouldn't be prepared. For example, maybe someone who was coming for a couple hours to hang out/play games had their contact fall out. Or maybe a date went really well, and somebody stays the night who wasn't specifically packed for such. Maybe a friend needs last-minute emergency crash space, etc.

I have a draft of a post relating to Emergency Preparedness. I can probably fish it out and post it.

Organizing is investment cleaning. It takes a lot more time in the beginning (it will even look WORSE mid-project), but once you have a place for everything it is SO much quicker and easier to put everything in its place. If your area isn't organized, then you have to think about each think you pick up or clean. Where does this go? Where should I put it? Once you've organized, cleaning is a simple process of putting things back where they belong.

Some heuristics: Things you use frequently should be easy to get to, and easy to put away. For example put your ... (read more)

I would say the big one to start is Family Traditions, and the like. Ideas:

• A weekly or bi-weekly date night where you go do something different (no dinner-and-a-movie.)

• If you don't usually have a "Family Dinner", make one day of the week a "Family Dinner" night.

• Weekly or monthly get-together where you can hash out plans, see what's been problematic, hopefully correct things before they lead to arguments, etc

• The yearly traditions such as: having a jar where you write down all the awesome things that happened on slips of paper, and read the paper on New Years, various holiday traditions, or yearly vacations, or whatnot

Someone was asking a while back for meetup descriptions, what you did/ how it went, etc. Figured I'd post some Columbus Rationality videos here. All but the last are from the mega-meetup.

Jesse Galef on Defense Against the Dark Arts: The Ethics and Psychology of Persuasion

Eric on Applications of Models in Everyday Life (it's good, but skip about 10-15 minutes when there's herding-cats-nitpicky audience :P)

Elissa on Effective Altruism

Rita on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Don on A Synergy of Eastern and Western Approaches

Gleb on Setting and Achieving Goals

It's been mentioned before a couple years ago, but I highly recommend The Steerswoman's Road. Definitely what we would consider to be rationalist "fantasy", though as the protagonist applies logic and scientific reasoning, it becomes more of a sci fi.

From a blogger who explains better than I could: "Too much science fiction glorifies mere scientific fact and appeals to scientific authority. Such books are doomed to obsolescence as the state of the art passes them by. Rosemary Kirstein’s books, in contrast, are made timeless by their emphasi... (read more)

I don't speak Computer, but this is the bot: http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2011/02/12/1/loqi-the-friendly-irc-bot

We use him in a company hipchat room, and I don't know if he has been altered/reprogrammed in any way to run auctions.

In the article I linked to, Bethany argues that separate finances are a requirement to this, and I tend to agree.

A workaround might be having a joint account, AND separate accounts that are used for whatever fun/luxury you each want. You each get $x/month in your fun/luxury accounts, and that is the money you use to yootle with (and pay for dance class, and buy a new sewing machine with, and whatever other luxury, etc)

I've lived with other people (either spouses or roommates) pretty much my entire life (30 years), so I feel like I've already acquired the social skills to do without it. Other people's situations may be different. I am generally in support of people learning social skills, so yootling might not be the best answer if it is a replacement for that.

The bot doesn't run the money transfer. It runs the auction (collects bids from everybody, displays bids when all have been collected), and runs a random number generator.

We have also used the same bot to play a Schelling Point Game, where someone names a category (eg "a book") instead of a thing to auction, and we all make a guess (e.g "Strategy of Conflict" or "The Bible") instead of a bid. You get a point if your guess is the same as someone else's.

Thanks for the input! I think I wasn't clear though. I actually already am a networky type person (the tribe I am leaving behind is one that I did most of the work building) with high social skills.

However, I am ALSO extremely picky in who I'll allow into my close social circle (I have well thought out reasons for this). That means to start a new tribe I'll have to meet LOTS and LOTS of people just to find one that I consider to be worth my time. When I already have a group, then I don't have to be overly proactive about this because there's no particular... (read more)

There's the overall "move to Portland and start at my awesome new job" Project, which is coming along well. A friend and I drove here from Ohio (pretty much across the entire country) in a little over two days. We drove because I have a very old dog that I didn't want to fly. My POD arrives tomorrow, and I'm excited to have all my things back in my possession (I didn't bring any nice shirts or sweaters with me, so I've been feeling slovenly-ish), but I am NOT excited for having to unpack and move furniture.

More specifically, I'm working on helpin... (read more)

Title and link to buy?

Got a super awesome new job with Beeminder, and will be moving to Portland in a month. Got rid of so much clothing in preparation for move. Continuing to get rid of things that I don't consider worth moving.

New hobby, making earrings, has been fun and rewarding, and I get pretty earrings out of it. Also, learned to make cake pops, and working on a braid rug.

Held a mega-meetup in Columbus that went off well. Handed off the running of Columbus Rationality, and it's proven to be self-sustaining.

Medical All Things- Got put on allergy shots (did the "rush immunotherapy" where they give you the first six months worth of shots over the course of a single day). Dentisted the cavities.

I guess the obvious counterproposal is: why don't we just all join the existing freemasons rather than doing work to duplicate them?

Women aren't allowed to be Freemasons, except for a few rare and extenuating circumstances.

And it is unlikely for the foreseeable future that the mods are going to o anything.

Just pointing out that this IS a problem that is temporarily solvable by collective action. If about five people decided to karmassassinate the user in question, they could keep his karma at 0, which I believe would stop him from being able to downvote (until he set up a sock).

(Interestingly, I'm quite fine with losing a significant amount of karma if this post gets heavily downvoted because people don't like the idea of mob rule. I really don't care about my karma numbe... (read more)

It's probably worth talking to these people and seeing if the timing works out the same, but it does seem likely that the downvoting is all caused by the same person, and thus would have similar motives and MO with the downvoting.

Personally, I am pretty certain that is gender issues that cause my karma stalking. It's the only topic I write on that gets any significant number of downvotes. Also, due to timing, my best guess (though I'm not highly confident) is that the triggering event was my post in the mistakes thread admitting to staying married longe... (read more)

Is it merely historical accident for each separate profession?

Just like the two ladders in militaries is a holdover from a more classist society, the doctor/nurse divide is at least partly a holdover from a past (more) sexist society. Even today about 90% of nurses are women. This might be interesting if someone had access past the paywall: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3540064

Someone has been regularly downvoting every thing I've posted in the past couple months (not just a single karmassasination). I really don't care about the karma (so please DO NOT upvote any of my previous posts in order to "fix" it), but I do worry that if someone is doing it to me, they are possibly doing it to other/new people and driving them off, so I wanted to point out publicly that this behaviour is NOT OKAY.

Anyways, if you have a problem with me, feel free to tell me about it here: http://www.admonymous.com/daenerys . Crocker's Rules and all.

Awesome! I loved Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and it seems like an interesting subject, besides.

I recently realized that I think the stuff I already know about the history of science, math, etc., is really inherently interesting and fascinating to me, but that I've never actually thought about going out of my way to learn more on the subject. Does anybody on here have one really good book on the subject to recommend? I've already read Science and the Enlightenment by Hankins.

This sounds awesome, I can't wait! What's the parking situation for people who are driving up?

V nyfb snvyrq ng cvpxvat gur fnzr bar nf nalobql ryfr. V jnf cvpxvat haqre gur cerivbhf cerzvfr bs "trarevp qngr avtug", naq fb gevrq gb cvpx gur zbfg "qngr avtug-l" zbivr, juvpu frrzrq yvxr Ebzrb naq Whyvrg, juvpu vf na npgvbal ebznapr. (Nygubhtu, crefbanyyl zl zbivr qngr avtugf graqf gbjneq zber fpv-sv, fhcreureb, Wbff Jurqba, rgp, ohg gung'f zber bhgyvre-l guna trarevp, V guvax.)

Those sorts of questions are asked in a field called Information Visualization, which is a part of Human Factors Engineering.

UPDATE: The upcoming Columbus Mega-Meetup is already halfway full! Don't put off pre-registering, if you are interested in coming, or you might get locked out. ( link to pre-reg form )

Pre-registration is FREE and the form should only take a minute. You can cancel as late as October 4, if you end up unable to come. Thanks!

In the previous thread, you mentioned "Friday we may do a swing dance class. Sunday we may go shopping."

Is the Maker's Faire the shopping? Has the swing dancing disappeared into the void?

Swing dancing has disappeared into the void. It was for a different weekend that was under consideration for the mega-meetup. If you already swing dance, I'll happily dance with you for a bit, and/or we have some new leads who would love some instruction, if you'd like to work with them. If you DON'T already swing dance, I'm happy to teach you the basics.

The ... (read more)

This dissertation blog focuses on the author's doctoral work on polyamory, including lots of reference lists (scroll down to see reference list for post).

-Taking the non-thinking NPC college route (going to whatever school was close enough to commute to, majoring in classes you thought were easy or letting your family influence your decision too much)

-Getting married extremely young because you think (probably correctly) that you can't support yourself, and then staying married much longer than you should have for the same reasoning (probably incorrect, by then).

-Spending most of college trying (and failing miserably) to take a large course load before realizing that you really just can't do it, and the onl... (read more)

In my experience, this is something that liberal arts does better than STEM. When I was a History undergrad they DID teach many contrasting theories or interpretations (once you got past 101-level stuff). The common interpretation these days is to say that "Here are three theories for why happened. They probably all contributed to .", instead of just choosing a single interpretation.

Hi, I'm new to LessWrong and haven't read the morality sequence and haven't read many arguments for effective altruism, so could you elaborate on this sentiment?

How I read this: "Hi! I know exactly where to find the information I am asking for, but instead of reading the material (that I know exists) that has already been written that answers my question, can you write a response that explains the whole of morality?"

To start off with, you seem to be using the term "rationality" to mean something completely different than what we mean when we say it. I recommend Julia Galef's Straw Vulcan talk.

Effective Altruism

"Doing Good in the Most Helping Way"- It is good to try to help people. It is better to help people in the best way possible. You should look at what actually happens when you try to help people in order to find out how well your helping worked. If we look at lots of different ways of helping people, then we can find out which way is best. You should give your money to the people who are best at helping people.

Where we live, and in places like it, everyone has lots more money than most people who live in other places. That mean... (read more)

We are also establishing a community house, but don't expect to be ready to actually move in together for about a year or so. The first difficulty we ran into was actually moving/lease dates. Some people needed to move asap (moving to city, didn't want to renew current lease, etc), other people won't be ready for a while (waiting for a house to sell, etc). Everyone's leases are up on different months.

Another (probably unique to us) situation is that everyone in the group has been living/ moving to the same area/neighborhood, so that about two-thirds of th... (read more)

Datapoint: I was poly before joining LW.

This might be an interesting question to ask Yvain to put on the next mega survey.

Glad to hear of the interest! I updated the posting with current details.

In answer to your questions: Attendance to the talks is limited to 50 (our regular workshops bring up to the 30s in attendance). Because of this, we will be selling (very cheap) tickets which will cover Saturday lunch (it's just a way to hold people's places). More people will be at the talks, than at the rest of the weekend.The group of people hanging out for the rest of the weekend will be about 20, I'd guess. Friday we may do a swing dance lesson. Sunday we may do a shopping trip.... (read more)

Tutoring- If you don't want to find clients yourself, there are companies that will hire you, and then match you up with students. When I did this, I made $20/hr with a bachelors. The problem with tutoring is that you are only working an hour or two, and have to drive there and back. If you're lucky, you can schedule two clients back-to-back, but you still are having to travel for short shifts.

Nannying- If you find taking care of kids and houses to be unstressful, this can pay pretty decently (generally under the table), be full-time or part-time, and inc... (read more)

Ranty complaint: Someone always downvotes ONLY my meetup posts with no explanation. (I do not flood the list. My last post included topics for the next NINE meetups). I think whoever-they-are is an asshole.

You are claiming to speak for all introverts, which turns this into an "introvert v extrovert" discussion. In other words, you are saying that half the population is forcing themselves onto the introverted half of the population. In reality, introverts are often the MOST happy that someone else initiated a conversation that they would be too shy to start themselves.

In reality, the situation is more like "NTs v non-NTs", and you are speaking for the non-NT part of the population. The same way you say half the population shouldn't force ... (read more)

I'm really interested to see what people have to say on this topic, but I think its broadness prevents most people from responding, since we don't really know what you're looking for.

There seem to be quite a number of distinct topics that would each deserve their own post. Off the top of my head: budgeting/finances, decorating, cooking, organizing, cleaning, clothing, entertaining, mixology, etc

Could you ask some specific questions that people could respond to?

My random tip: White vinegar (the cheap kind you buy in a big plastic jug) is great for getting ... (read more)

"Relevant".

That's my current read! Hey! I'm reading the same EY is!

(Yeah, that actually did make me feel "cool" and "hip" and "with it"...:P )

Seeing this get voted to be top comment, I figured I should also probably give some downside to the SCA.

What they are actually accomplishing is not very important. There are no startups formed. There is no higher goal. Yes, people are actually doing stuff, which is cool, but WHAT they are doing isn't overly useful (getting really good at tablet weaving, or horn carving, or whatever), and is often done as a status competition (since you gain status by doing these rather overall useless things) [ETA: This is also going to be true about the vast majority of s... (read more)

A specific example that is available worldwide is the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). [ETA: A medieval and rennaisance recreational and educational non-profit organization]

I have actually had in depth conversations with the local rationalist community about how the SCA does community building/running right, and what part of that can we steal. I think it's set-up is highly optimized for geeky types:

Explicit, official hierarchies (aka The Order of Precedence), with explicit rules of how to advance in it (Do Awesome Things)

Strong reputation-based soci... (read more)

Those seem like very generalizable rationalizations for never actually doing anything.

On rationality amateurs causing harm to the public image of rationality-

• They can (and DO) do this anyways. On LW, reddit, facebook, blogs, vlogs, etc etc. In fact, I would guess that an enthusiastic amateur could cause more overall harm to the movement on the internet, than running a class irl.

• The people who are likely to say EXTREMELY harmful things are extremely unlikely to be the types to decide to lead an organization (require related social skills).

• What do yo