mingyuan

"Essayer is the French verb meaning "to try" and an essai is an attempt. An essay is something you write to try to figure something out... In a real essay, you don't take a position and defend it. You notice a door that's ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what's inside." -- Paul Graham

Sequences

Meetup Advice
Meetup Theorizing
Cryonics Signup Guide
The 'Meetup Writeups' Experiment

Comments

Anyone claiming a particular style, brand, fabric, or article of clothing is optimal, full stop, is either lying, trying to sell you something, or confused about how optimization works

That's fair... but also I want to spread the word about my optimal dress. While it's only sold new on StitchFix, there are tons available secondhand (and usually cheaper) on Poshmark, and it comes in dozens of fabrics/patterns! (Search 'Kaileigh faux wrap dress' or just 'Kaileigh dress', in your size.)

It's obviously not actually 'optimal' but it's really comfortable and looks amazing on a lot of people. I own like fifteen in different patterns and have gifted them to four friends of different complexions and body types, and all of them love them and wear them constantly (even one who never ever wears dresses), and two of them have even gone and bought more. And as a bonus, it's also good as a maternity dress and for breastfeeding!

I just love this dress. I get so many compliments on it and I wear it almost every day. And now so do some of my friends!

I basically haven't done any further research since I wrote this article, but my understanding was that you can fund a Cryonics Institute contract with work-provided life insurance, but it's not possible for Alcor, because Alcor has stipulations about who owns the policy. I hope that helps!

Epistemic check: Are you going off any kind of study or anything for baby boomers "being the most narcissistic in human history", or is that just a thing that feels good to say? 

I'm extremely skeptical that parents have become more abusive in general — life in the past was terrible in all sorts of ways and I'd be surprised if people were on average nicer fifty years ago. If you know more people your age who claim to have had abusive parents than people older than you who claim the same, consider the types of alternate explanations Zvi gives above, e.g. "maybe younger people are more likely to use the concept of 'abusive'". Both of my parents definitely had abusive parents, but neither of them ever used that term to describe it. Also like, disciplining children by spanking was entirely normal where they grew up (mom in US in 60s, dad in China in 70s), but if a parent did that in the US now it would be considered abuse.

I don't think it's that new or weird, I mean, I guess it depends what you mean by 'kids', but universities have been hotbeds of political activism since long before the internet. And I know that I had strong political 'opinions' growing up just by virtue of living in a city where 95% of the adults I encountered were liberal. My parents took me and my sister to protests against the Iraq War when I was five and were definitely not particularly politically involved people, and the 2011 Wisconsin protests happened when I was 14 and I and most of my friends were there (especially since school was canceled, so there wasn't much reason not to go).

What, lockdown? Absolutely not. Sticking around in Berkeley? I don't know, probably

Not Zvi and not a parent but: Every kid learns about death, and it is true for every kid that they might not get to grow up. Extinction is different, but not so different (to a child's mind) from the threat of nuclear war, or even regular war, both of which many children have had to face before. I'm also not aware of concrete policies on how to explain to kids that they and everyone they love will die, but it's not like it's a new problem.

The Chinese effort and one child policy would fall into the ‘young adult dystopia’ book section if it was fictional.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Among_the_Hidden

As resident hyperlocal cryonics sort-of-expert-I-guess, I do not recommend this; see mukashi's answer. Relatedly: The legal hurdle is that it's considered murder.

Oh my god we're finally here! It's been so very long. Your posts were so important to me during the worst of the pandemic; I wouldn't know how to possibly thank you enough, and also I 100% support you stopping. Onward and upward <3

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