LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Well, that's unfortunate.  That feature isn't super polished and isn't currently in the active development path, but will try to see if it's something obvious.  (In the meantime, would recommend subscribing to fewer people, or seeing if the issue persists in Chrome.  Other people on the team are subscribed to 100-200 people without obvious issues.)

Thank you for your interest! My first idea for a post on LessWrong was actually about that—my journey from being a firefighter to discovering rationality. However, I hesitated because it felt very personal, and some of the most interesting parts of my story would be hard to verify. To summarize, I found myself unable to adapt to the "ethics" of the role, which eventually led me to leave and seek rationality as a way to rebuild my life. At the time, it felt like I had nothing left, as I had dedicated my entire life to becoming a firefighter.

Interestingly, there are some parallels between my experiences and the Brazilian movies Tropa de Elite. That kind of intense, complex environment leaves you with stories that are hard to explain but deeply shape who you are.

Thanks to your comment, though, I’m reconsidering publishing my story. Perhaps I could frame it as partly real, partly exaggerated—after all, not everything has to be 100% factual, right? Haha.

Just reproduced it; all I have to do is subscribe to a bunch of people and this happens and the site becomes unusable:

I'm curious how this seems to have gone for you 14 years later. 

The image didn't upload but it's a picture of my browser saying that the web page's javascript is using a ton of resources and I can force-stop it if I wish

Pretty sure the salary transparency law doesn't apply to us, because you need 25+ MA employees. Even if it did, though, I think it would mostly mean giving moderately wider salary ranges? Which I expect would be fine; our two current open positions [1][2] have ranges of 23% and 30%.

[1] https://securebio.org/careers/2024-lab-tech/

[2] https://securebio.org/careers/2024-director-operations/

I am a little confused as to why Israel does not have the hostages yet. My understanding was that Israel has essentially taken control of Gaza and decimated the Hamas leadership. Who are they even "negotiating" with to secure their release? Why can't the IDF just kidnap and waterboard that person to get the location of the remaining prisoners? Does the person with the authority to make a deal also not know? Are there clandestine cells of Hamas personnel hiding in a basement somewhere waiting for some "signal" from a third party to give up the Israelis?

Ah, yes. Recently I volunteered for a medical research along with 3 other people I know. Two of them dropped out in the middle. I can't imagine how any medical research can be methodologically valid this way. On the other hand, me and the other person stayed there, and it's almost over, so the success rate is 50%.

Somehow I just found out about this. Although this happened within a few minutes of me trying to use it:

OK gotcha. But I can just rephrase slightly, let me try again:

• (B’’) “…Gee, I guess this reprocessing must have been a kind of ‘training / practice / exercise’ during which I could forge new better subconscious habits and associations related to ‘type-of-situation X’ (which used to invoke anxiety). And these new subconscious habits and associations are now serving me well when I encounter type-of-situation X (or anything that vaguely rings of it) an adult context too.”

After all, you can’t form new subconscious habits and associations related to “type-of-situation X” except by making “type-of-situation X” thoughts active somehow during that process. It seems plausible to me that invoking a childhood memory where type-of-situation X triggered unhealthy anxiety would be very effective way to do that.

~~

I think what I’m suggesting is not that different from what you’re suggesting. Maybe the difference is when you wrote “…some specific childhood experiences that had to do with spiders, that seemed to be at the root of the phobia…”.

My mental image is, like, there’s some neuron in the amygdala, and one day in childhood it forms Synapse S connecting some input related to the idea of spiders with some output related to fear reactions. Then the goal for the adult therapy session is to delete Synapse S (or form different connections that counteract its effects, or whatever). Basically, my proposal is:

One day in childhood → Synapse S forms

Adult sees spider → Synapse S → fear reactions

I’m contrasting that with:

[What I don’t believe, but it sounds like maybe you do?] Adult sees spider → childhood memory reactivates, at least a little bit → fear reactions

In other words, I want to say that the childhood experience is “at the root of the phobia” as a matter of the historical record of how Synapse S came to be there, but it’s not “at the root of the phobia” in the sense of the episodic memory itself playing a critical causal role in the real-time anxiety reaction.

…And I’m saying that my hypothesis would nevertheless be compatible with childhood-memory-based therapies being effective, because invoking the actual episodic childhood memory itself, in a therapeutic context, is one possible path to delete or inactivate Synapse S.

Well, hmm, on second thought, I guess both stories are possible, maybe they coexist.