OrthernLight

In an extreme version of this, I heard from someone who reported that they needed to charge their phone, and the charger was even in reach, but the actual act of moving to get the charger felt insurmountable.

I'm confused by why this is in this section.

It doesn't sound like a problem in the planning or prioritizing stage, and breaking the task down into smaller steps seems totally inapplicable - it's hard to come up with a step smaller than 'reach towards the charger'.

Is there some framing of this in terms of prioritization that I'm missing?

I would like to be able to do this, but there are concrete reasons that I don't:

• Many of my friends hate phone calls. Outside an emergency, I pretty much have consider calling my friends not to be an option unless I remember the specific person saying otherwise. (I, on the other hand, can't have a spontaneous conversation that's any good over text messages.)
  • Right before I moved to a different area a few years ago, I asked a few friends if I could call them sometimes, and the only answer I got was 'I don't do phone calls'
• Talking to a friend I haven't

Go through to Less.Online to learn about who's attending, venue, location, housing, relation to Manifest, and more.

While I may be missing the obvious, I didn't see the location anywhere on the site. ('Lighthaven', yes, but unless I've badly failed a search check, neither the LessOnline nor the Lighthaven website gives an address.)

Google Maps seems to know, but for something like this, confirmation would be nice; I don't quite trust that Google isn't showing a previous location or something else with the same name.

"what are all the little-metadata-flags associated with this prediction?"

Some metadata flags I associate with predictions:

• what kinds of evidence went into this prediction? ('did some research', 'have seen things like this before', 'mostly trusting/copying someone else's prediction')
  • if I'm taking other people's predictions into account, there's a metadata-flags for 'what would my prediction be if I didn't consider other people's predictions?'
• is this a domain in which I'm well calibrated?
• is my prediction likely to change a lot, or have I already seen most of the evidence that I expect to for a while?
• how important is this?

I opted out.

Suppose that having the right amount of slack is important, and that the right amount is enough to handle three surprise problems per week. What actions would one take based on that?

Well, this sounds like it’s about figuring out how much capacity to use, so:
Notice whether you have more or less than you should; if you have more, use it more freely and/or de-prioritize getting it; if you have less, try to use less or get more. Do this independently for several types of slack.

(And at the level more concrete than that are specific things you can do to b... (read more)

(Because often "I'm fine" is false, you see. If this has never bothered you then you are perhaps not in the target audience for this essay.)

This does bother me, but I’ve come to the conclusion that “How are you?” usually isn’t really a question - it’s a protocol, and the password you’re supposed to reply with is “Fine.” Almost no-one will take this to mean that you actually are fine, in my experience - they will take it to mean that you are following the normal rules of conversation, which is true. It’s much like how I can tell jokes, use idio... (read more)

General ambitious-ness, in any given field, where {X} is not accomplishing much and {Y} is committing to projects you don't have the skills for: Adam has opportunities to do some important things and is skilled enough that they aren't too hard for him. Bob has a range of opportunities of varying significance, so he needs to think about whether something is at his level before trying it. Charles is newer to this field than Bob, so he has to be extra-careful not to be overambitious. David would be in the same situation as Bob, but his boss has real... (read more)

If you have an event you're running, or an online space that you control, or an organization you run, you can set the norms. Rather than opting-by-default into the generic average norms of your peers, you can say "This is a space specifically for X. If you want to participate, you will need to hold yourself to Y particular standard."

Learning a new set of norms/standards and sticking to them in the right contexts is often not easy. Getting a bunch of other people to choose to do so seems likely to be harder. (Although that’s just my immediate... (read more)

I find the topic of learning how to be a better commenter particularly interesting. If you have any further thoughts on that, I’d like to hear about them.

I think that a common reason that people who might have commented on something end up not doing so is that they aren’t sure if what they had to say is actually worthwhile. Well, just saying ‘I agree!’ probably isn’t, but this does raise the question of how how high that threshold should be.

The first paragraph of this comment is near that borderline, in my opinion - it could pretty much be formulaic: &... (read more)

What are the norms/rules for commenting on older posts? Many internet communities forbid thread necromancy; I see no mention of it here, but thought it worth checking.

Also, if I'm reading a sequence as it comes out, of course I do not have access to future posts when I make a comment. But if I'm reading through several posts from a month or two ago, and I have a question about one of them, is there an expectation that I read through the rest of the sequence to see if it's answered later before I say anything, or should I comment as I go al... (read more)