Thank you both for providing the links. I will wait and see whether the percentage stays the same in the 2015 survey...
I only identify with my birth gender by default: 681, 45.3%
I'm surprised at this. Is there a special term for "only identifying with one's gender by default" or keywords I can use to look for statistics for among the general population? (a brief googling didn't uncover anything). I would've guessed this number to be much lower, and now I'm wondering whether this is signaling or whether my model of other people in this particular instance is completely wrong.
What I did during the last couple years of high school and throughout university was to do some jobs that I definitely didn't want to do for longer than a month, but where I was curious about "how they work from the inside". I did one-month stints at a fast-food chain, private tutoring for languages and math, cashier at a department store, and working in a bar, and short-term things like selling merchandise at big events. I also found two not-so-common opportunities through friends of friends (teaching in a bilingual summer camp, and helping with a TV program). The main criterium for me here was whether it was something I wanted to... (read more)
I'd also be curious to see an elaboration on the Attention workshop. The concept of attention as a limited and important resource was one of my main takeaways from the 4-day workshop (+discussions on the alumni list), leading me to the tools I needed to gain better focus and not feel overwhelmed all the time. Now and then I try to explain the concepts in conversations with people who I think might benefit from it, so I'd be interested in how not to do it.
Hello community.
I've been aware of LW for a while, reading individual posts linked in programmer/engineering hangouts now and then, and I independently came across HPMOR in search of good fanfiction. But the decision to un-lurk myself came after I attended a CFAR workshop (a major positive life change) and realized that I want to keep being engaged with the community.
I'm very interested in anti-aging research (both from the effective altruism point of view, and because I find the topic really exciting and fascinating) and want to learn about it in as much depth as time permits. So far I would come across science articles about single related discoveries in specialized fields (molecular biology, brain science, ... ) but I haven't found a good resource (book, coursera course, whatever) where I can learn the necessary medicine/biology background and how it all comes together in the current state of the art (I'm thinking of something similar to all the remarkable physics books we have on the market). Any pointers are appreciated.
Imagine someone who reads the horoscope every morning, who always trusts their gut feelings and emotions, who's a sincere believer in homeopathy, etc etc (whatever you think an irrational person believes). Such a person would probably strongly rationality, rationalists, and the complex of ideas surrounding rationality, for probably understandable reasons
A bit offtopic to the discussion itself, but trusting your "gut feelings" is rational in certain circumstances (or, in the more precise lingo, in certain conditions System 1 will be faster /and/ more correct than System 2). I actually don't remember whether HPMOR teaches it somewhere (if anybody knows, could you share a link?).
I often use this as a bridge when explaining applied... (read more)
I'd like to gauge interest in an (english-language) Tokyo area meetup - given Tokyo's size, if a couple people are interested, it would be good to pick a location/day that's convenient for everybody. Otherwise I will announce a date and time and wait in a cafe with a book hoping that somebody will turn up.
I have been to several LW gatherings and have met consistently awesome and nice people, so if any Tokyo lurkers are reading this, I can assure you it's totally worth it to come! Please make yourself heard in the comments if you are interested.
I'm trying to gauge interest in starting a new (english-language) Tokyo area meetup. Are the people who went to this meetup still interested/in Japan?
To address your point of
On changing your sense of identity into "I don't like sugar": I do that with other stuff, and it is very effective. I don't want it to fail with sugar and therefore cause me to trust my overall identity less, so I'm not trying it with something with such high likelihood of failure, but others who like sugar less should try.
I totally see how you don't want it to become a negative spiral. For the sake of completeness, a thinking pattern that helps me in such cases is to "try on" an identity for 2 weeks or so. This feels very non-committal, so if it fails, there... (read more)
I'd like to pitch the identity angle, which worked for me very well (your mileage may vary, of course). I ate very little processed sugar foods (chocolate, cookies, etc) at various points in my life due to what I saw myself as:
I find that a fiction book that speaks to you is also a really great way of jump-starting experiments in your Inner Simulator. I usually find such books by browsing a book store and picking out (not necessarily objectively that good) stuff that speaks to me rather than working from a crowd-sourced list.