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When you get to know someone, you might ask about their interests or hobbies. From that, you can better decide what activity to invite them to join, or on what topic to have them converse, whenever you meet again. Any interest or hobby appeals to variously many people. If you...

Followup to: Will issues are quite nearly skill issues You do a thing iff you can do it and you want to do it. Something you can do, but didn't, looks just the same to the simple observer as something you can't do. Likewise with what you want to do,...

This is a joke taken too far, especially given that I am thoroughly educated in only a minority of these subjects. Maths Calculus is about change. Statistics is about variation. Linear Algebra is about vectors. Multivariable Calculus is about the chain rule. Differential Equations is about initial conditions. Topology is...

Followup to: If you weren't such an idiot... We believe in staying alive — at least when life is or will be worth it — to do things that are useful and/or fun. Protect yourself from extreme cold by techniques such as wearing clothes. Avoid looking directly at the sun,...

In being ascetic, you abandon the usual sources of material pleasure, guided by the benefits of the lifestyle: you use less money and effort on avoidable pleasures, you can better focus your mind on the spiritual and the creative, and you make yourself resilient to potentially losing these pleasures. In...

I like studying calculus, physics, and English etymology. Calculus includes problems like ∫dxarctanx. arctan is an elementary function, so you may be expected to have its integral memorised. I'd have to find it otherwise. By parts: ∫dxarctanx=xarctanx−∫dx(xarctan′x). I remember arctan's derivative: 1x2+1. Short of that, I could rederive it in...

Intermittently for the past four years, I read LessWrong and its ilk to hazardous excess. By teaching technical topics sans pressure to rigourously understand, heavy with microhumour and satisfying insights, it got my susceptible mind addicted. Intermittently for the past year, I also posted on LessWrong, with variable (mostly good)...