zebrask — LessWrong

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zebrask — LessWrong

Replying toDon't Sell Stock to Donate

zebrask1mo

Don't Sell Stock to Donate

Two questions:

I am guessing that since this is just about capital gains, the advice doesn't necessarily hold for RSUs (if you sell your RSUs immediately), is that correct? I usually only have nominal capital gains due to a few days or weeks' delay between RSUs being issued and me selling them.
The way this is framed it sounds like it mostly applies to the situation where you have assets but not cash and you would sell the assets to get cash to donate, but it sounds like even if you have cash to donate, if your assets have a lot of capital gains it also makes sense to just donate them and buy more at a higher cost basis as a way to reset your cost basis on some of your stock.

Seems like good advice! Now I just need to see how this interacts with my employer's donation matching...

Replying toThe case for "mental strength"

zebrask4y

The case for "mental strength"

Interesting viewpoint, is this personal experience, another source, or both?

To be clear, I don't have high confidence in the direction, much less the magnitude, of the effect here, and I do not have any personal experience of tight communities.

My thinking on this was from a general sense that humans devote a lot of our cognitive resources into social games — signalling, fashion, politics, mating, etc — and it's plausible that modern society allows us to opt out of a lot of the most challenging parts of these by interacting with institutions with formal rules rather than communities with shifting and informal rules.

I get the impression that it is much more mentally challenging... (read more)

Replying toThe case for "mental strength"

zebrask4y

The case for "mental strength"

In the mental realm, the opposite may be true: the average person may be experiencing a pretty thorough mental workout just from day-to-day life.

Depending on what counts as a "mental workout", the direction of modernity's effect on one's mental challenges seems unclear to me. Many people have much more cognitively demanding jobs these days, but our social life has atomized so significantly that we no longer rely so heavily on being woven into the larger social fabric of a community, where we'd need to devote many more of our mental resources to the task of keeping track of the moods, sensitivities and interactions of the members of our social networks.

We also have... (read more)

Replying toMildly Photochromic Lenses?

zebrask4y

Mildly Photochromic Lenses?

Oh sorry! Having recently been deep-diving on this when considering the process I forgot some people might be squeamish about it. I've put the detailed description under a spoiler block.

Replying toMildly Photochromic Lenses?

zebrask4y*

Mildly Photochromic Lenses?

(Spoiler block contains description of eye surgery.)

You may be thinking of PRK? LASIK

involves cutting a flap in the outer layer, which is peeled back and they reshape the corneal stroma, then the flap is put back in place and the cut around it

heals. With PRK the outer layer is removed entirely.

Not that I'm saying you should get LASIK — I got it done recently and it's been marginally better than glasses or contacts, but it hasn't been life-changing in any way so far.

Plus it doesn't really solve your problem, since one of the nicest things about photochromic lenses is that you're already wearing glasses and they just kick in when it gets too bright. After LASIK, you have to carry around sunglasses, remember to put them on and not lose them! I've actually been considering getting non-prescription photochromic lenses to get back some of the nice "automatic activation" features of my old glasses.