I think it's a little early to predict the end, but there's less I'm interested in here, and I'm having trouble thinking of things to write about, though I can still find worthwhile links for open threads.

Is LW being hit by some sort of social problem, or have we simply run out of things to say?

I'd add "Metacontrarianism is on the rise" to your list. Many of the top posts now are contrary to at least the spirit of the sequences, if not the letter, or so it feels to me.

Has LW run it's course?

It seems to be a common sentiment, actually. I mentioned this a few times on #lesswrong and the regulars there appear to agree. Whether this is a some sort of confirmation bias, I am not sure. Fortunately, there is a way to measure it:

• Look at the recent Main entries: http://lesswrong.com/recentposts/

• Then look at the entries from about 1 year ago: http://lesswrong.com/recentposts/?count=250&after=t3_gnv

Count interesting articles from each period and compare the numbers.

Maybe it's because the important things have started, and moved to real life, outside of the LW website. There are people writing and publishing papers on Friendly AI, there are people researching and teaching rationality exercises; there are meetups in many countries. -- Although, if this is true, I would expect more reports here about what happens in the real life. (Remember the fundamental rule of bureaucracy: If it ain't documented, it didn't happen.)

Anyway, this is only a guess; it would be interesting to really know what's happening...

I would say LW is evolving.

The Sequences are and always were the finger that points at the objective, not the objective unto itself. The project of LW is "refining the art of human rationality." But we don't have the defininition of human rationality written on stone tablets, needing only diligence in application to obtain good results. The project of LW is thus a dynamic process of discovery, experimentation, incorporating new data, sometimes backtracking when we update on evidence that isn't as solid was we had thought.

You correctly observe that the style of participation has changed over time. This is probably mostly the result of certain specific high volume contributors moving on to other things. It could also be the result of an aggregated shift in understanding as to what kinds of results can actually be produced by discussing rationality in a vacuum, which may perhaps be why these contributors have moved on. Or maybe they just said all they felt they needed to say, I don't know. I have a 101.1 F fever right now.

I blame Facebook. Many of the discussions that are had there were of the type that used to invigorate these here boards.

I remember people saying things like "Less Wrong is dying" for a long time, from 2010 at least. Which doesn't invalidate the claim that LW's much more quiet than it used to be, of course, but it does challenge the claim that this would be a recent development.

The LW census get's every year more participants. If LW would be dying I would expect the opposite.

Hmm, I just noticed that the 'Nearest Meetup' feature is mostly removed (you can still see the field when you refresh before everything has loaded), so you cant see any notification anywhere for local meetups happening soon unless you are specifically checking /meetups or r/meetups.

I understand why Luke and co wanted this change asap (people have been complaining about the clutter), but I suspect that this change will have a big overall impact on LW Meetups turnouts. I'm fairly certain that a lot of non-regulars decide to go to a specific meetup because they are randomly reminded of it in the sidebar or in discussion, and not because they actively check.

Anyway, is there any chance you know why the 'Nearest meetup' area was removed (no mention of the removal in the issues)? I am not sure what the benefit is of having Upcoming Meetups over Nearest Meetups, but the latter at least provides a reminder for people of posted local meetups. Alternatively, is there anything else planned to serve as a reminder?

PS: I would've published this as a comment on the issue itself, but that didn't look very appropriate.

Continued...

Top-down research aimed at high assurance AGI tries to envision what we'll need a high assurance AGI to do, and starts playing with toy models to see if they can help us build up insights into the general problem, even if we don't know what an actual AGI implementation will look like. Past examples of top-down research of this sort in computer science more generally include:

• Lampson's original paper on the confinement problem (covert channels), which used abstract models to describe a problem that wasn't detected in the wild for ~2 decades after the wrote the paper. Nevertheless this gave computer security researchers a head start on the problem, and the covert channel communication field is now pretty big and active. Details here.
• Shor's quantum algorithm for integer factorization (1994) showed, several decades before we're likely to get a large-scale quantum computer, that (e.g.) the NSA could be capturing and storing strongly encrypted communications and could later break them with a QC. So if you want to guarantee your current communications will remain private in the future, you'll want to work on post-quantum cryptography and use it.
• Hutter's AIXI is the first fully-specified model of "universal" intelligence. It's incomputable, but there are computable variants, and indeed tractable variants that can play arcade games successfully. The nice thing about AIXI is that you can use it to concretely illustrate certain AGI safety problems we don't yet know how to solve even with infinite computing power, which means we must be very confused indeed. Not all AGI safety problems will be solved by first finding an incomputable solution, but that is one common way to make progress. I say more about this in a forthcoming paper with Bill Hibbard to be published in CACM.

But now, here are some top-down research problems MIRI thinks might pay off later for AGI safety outcomes, some of which are within or on the borders of computer science:

• Naturalized induction: "Build an algorithm for producing accurate generalizations and predictions from data sets, that treats itself, its data inputs, and its hypothesis outputs as reducible to its physical posits. More broadly, design a workable reasoning method that allows the reasoner to treat itself as fully embedded in the world it's reasoning about." (Agents build with the agent-environment framework are effectively Cartesian dualists, which has safety implications.)
• Better AI cooperation: How can we get powerful agents to cooperate with each other where feasible? One line of research on this is called "program equilibrium": in a setup where agents can read each other's source code, they can recognize each other for cooperation more often than would be the case in a standard Prisoner's Dilemma. However, these approaches were brittle, and agents couldn't recognize each other for cooperation if e.g. a variable name was different between them. We got around that problem via provability logic.
• Tiling agents: Like Bolander and others, we study self-reflection in computational agents, though for us its because we're thinking ahead to the point when we've got AGIs who want to improve their own abilities and we want to make sure they retain their original purposes as they rewrite their own code. We've built some toy models for this, and they run into nicely crisp Gödelian difficulties and then we throw a bunch of math at those difficulties and in some cases they kind of go away, and we hope this'll lead to insight into the general challenge of self-reflective agents that don't change their goals on self-modification round #412. See also the procrastination paradox and Fallenstein's monster.
• Ontological crises in AI value systems.

These are just a few examples: there are lots more. We aren't happy yet with our descriptions of any of these problems, and we're working with various people to explain ourselves better, and make it easier for people to understand what we're talking about and why we're working on these problems and not others. But nevertheless some people seem to grok what we're doing, e.g. I pointed Nik Weaver to the tiling agents paper stuff and despite not having past familiarity with MIRI he just ran with it.

I also have lots of objections to using VNM utility to model human preferences. (A comment on your example: if you conceive of an agent as accruing value and making decisions over time, to meaningfully apply the VNM framework you need to think of their preferences as being over world-histories, not over world-states, and of their actions as being plans for the rest of time rather than point actions.) I might write a post about this if there's enough interest.

Robin Hanson writes about rank linear utility. This formalism asserts that we value options by their rank in a list of options available at any one time, making it impossible to construct a coherent classical utility function.

I don't think of things like "what I want to do with my life" as terminal preferences - just instrumental preferences that depend on the niche you find yourself in. Terminal stuff is more likely to be simple/human universal stuff (think Maslow's hierarchy of needs)

I think you'll probably find Kevin Simler's essays on personality interesting, and he does a good job explaining and exploring this idea.

http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personality-the-body-in-society/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personality-an-ecosystems-perspective/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personality-beyond-social-and-beyond-human/

What I think is happening is that we're allowed to think of humans as having VNM utility functions ( see also my discussion with Stuart Armstrong ), but the utility function is not constant over time (since we're not introspective recursively modifying AIs that can keep their utility functions stable).

That is a hilariously apposite name for a chain of betting shops.

Having entered the lottery may make it harder to receive nonimmigrant visas in the future, however.

The payoff is huge ...,the cost of entry is minimal

This reminds me of another pretty decent lottery that some U.S. residents can take advantage of. Many major cities, including NYC, have affordable housing programs in brand new buildings. The cost to apply is $0, the payoff of is paying 20% - 25% of market rate of housing in that area. No, it's not for poor people, there are other programs for that, the income requirements vary but in general is set to qualify the working residents of the city (maybe 50k - 95k).

Some of the most desirable and stunning locations in the city, where rents are 4k for 600 sq/f, can go for $700. Just Google the city you live in to see the specific requirements.

I don't think you can resell green cards so their open market price should be irrelevant.

The payoff is huge

Moving somewhere that uses Fahrenheit degrees and sixteen-ounce pints doesn't sound that great to me...

Anything remotely like this for EU countries?

See also this old post where Robin Hanson basically predicted that this would happen.

The contrarian will have established some priority with these once-contrarian ideas, such as being the first to publish on or actively pursue related ideas. And he will be somewhat more familiar with those ideas, having spent years on them.

But the cautious person will be more familiar with standard topics and methods, and so be in a better position to communicate this new area to a standard audience, and to integrate it in with other standard areas. More important to the "powers that be" hoping to establish this new area, this standard person will bring more prestige and resources to this new area.

If the standard guy wins the first few such contests, his advantage can quickly snowball into an overwhelming one. People will prefer to cite his publications as they will be in more prestigious journals, even if they were not quite as creative. Reporters will prefer to quote him, students will prefer to study under him, firms will prefer to hire him as a consultant, and journals will prefer to publish him, as he will be affiliated with more prestigious institutions. And of course the contrarian may have a worse reputation as a "team player."

I think this is fine. Convincing people that this is a Real Thing and then specifically making them aware of Eliezer and MIRI should be done separately anyway. Doing the second thing too soon may make the first thing harder, while doing the second thing late makes the first thing easier (because then AI x-risk can be put in a mental category other than "that weird thing that those weird people care about").

Why would LWers use such a prediction market more than PredictionBook?

I think it's a very good idea. I also like the "tax on bs" metaphor. I like the idea of bullshitters getting punished! :)

I think it should be remembered, though, that wrt many predictions, luck is as least as important as skill/knowledge. Of course if you have many question the luck/noise element is reduced and the signal/skill element is strengthened, but it nevertheless is something to consider.

I would personally allow free account creation but give people an ingame salary of currency for every day in which they engage into trades.

Developing a good prediction market that's people actually want to use is a bigger problem. PredictionBook sort of works but it could work better than it works at the moment.

PredictionBook already exists and is opensource. If you want you could probably write a plugin that adds prediction market functionality on top of what already exists in predictionbook.

However, the prediction markets that we have are currently only available in meatspace, they have very low volume, and the rules are not ideal

The global financial markets are basically prediction markets.

If you have a prediction (a "view") on something important, you can often express that view in financial markets.

tax on bullshit

Not with "play money", it won't.

Be very very careful of studying beyond the level you think is comfortable. My experience has been that you cannot push yourself to learn difficult things, especially math, faster than a certain pace. Sure, your limit may be 20% higher than what you think it is, but it's not 200% higher. Spending more time on a task when you just don't feel up to it is useless, because instead of thinking you'll just be spending more time staring at the page and having your mind drift off.

I've found that the various methods of 'productivity boosting' (pomodoros, etc) are largely useless and do one of two things: Either decrease your productivity, or momentarily increase it at the expense of a huge decrease later on (anything from 'feeling fuzzy for a couple of days' to 'total burnout for 3 weeks'). Unless you have a mental illness, your brain is already a finely-tuned machine for learning and doing. Don't fool yourself into thinking you can improve it just by some clever schedule rearrangement.

The point to all of this is that you should refrain from 'planning ahead' when it comes to learning. Sure, you should have some general overall sketch of what you want to learn, but at each particular moment in time, the best strategy is to simply pick some topic and try to learn it as best you can, until you get tired. Then rest until you feel you can go at it again. And avoid internet distractions that use up your mental energy but don't cause you to learn anything.

One of my professors once mentioned that there's an upper limit to how much learning you can do in a sleep cycle [citation needed]. This is congruent with my experience, both before and after he mentioned that, so I tend to believe it. Personally, I tend to max out around 3-4 hours, so the times you're talking about seem reasonable. If you can restructure your work times, napping is a good strategy; I've talked to a few people who report getting through grad school by napping once they'd saturated their brain's capacity to learn new stuff.

Interleaved practice is good. This study had subjects practice finding the volume of unconventional geometric solids. One group clustered their practice; they found the volumes of a bunch of wedges, then a bunch of spheroids, etc. The other group had their practice problems mixed. On a final test, the former group got 20% right, and the latter group got 63% right. citation.

What this suggests is you should perhaps study programming and algebra at the same time, switching between the two fairly frequently. It feels like you're going slower, but, as the authors of the book emphasize, you're trading the illusion of learning for more durable learning.

The AoPS textbooks are really, really good. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're the only good algebra textbooks you're going to find, unless you count abstract or linear algebra; most textbooks at that level are mediocre. As luke_prog has mentioned, good textbooks are the usually the quickest and best way to learn new material. Quality learning takes time, and you're doing yourself no favors by spending that time looking for faster alternatives.

Unfortunately, the source for this information about biotypes and depression is looking very sketchy

Well, we can use the outside view here. If we look at people who are particularly successful, did they get that way by helping others? What's the proportion relative to poor people?

I don't think this backs up the idea of enlightened self-interest very well. Sure, you have to "play by the rules" to be successful, but going above and beyond doesn't seem to lead to additional success.

Another question we might ask is "where do peoples' instincts for giving come from?" If you believe Dawkins et al., it's the selfishness of genes, which does not have to causally pay of for the organism (instead, the payoff is acausal). This is not the sort of thing where giving according to our instincts will lead to us getting more money.

The main problem is that facebook encourages drastically different quality of thought and expressions than lesswrong does. The quality of thought in Eliezer's comments on facebook is sloppy. I chose to unfollow him on facebook because seeing Eliezer at his worst makes it rather a lot more difficult to appreciate Eliezer at his best (contempt is the mind killer). I assumed that any particularly insteresting work he did (that is safe to share with the public) would end up finding its way into a less transient medium than facebook eventually...

...Have I been missing anything exciting?

Douglas Hofstadter is the go to, mainstream, "hey I recognize that name" authority, though it obviously should be noted that he is a cognitive scientist, not a biologist, neurologist, or nuero-biologist. So, you couldn't build a brain from reading Godel, Escher, and Bach. The only other material I intimately know that discusses the origin of consciousness is Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden, which, again, is mainstream and pop science. It's fun reading and enjoyable, but you can't build a brain from it. Someone else can probably suggest better sources for more study.

Of course, some components of these questions can be answered by reducing the question to find out more about what you're looking for.
What's the make up of an internal experience? What are its moving parts? How do you build it?
How are subjective experiences not physical processes? If they aren't physical, what are they?
Taboo "internal/subjective experiences." What are you left with to solve? What mechanics remain to be understood?

Since you've read through the quantum physics sequence, I'm sure you've been exposed to these ideas already. I'm not a neuroscientist or a cognitive scientist. I know very little about the brain that wasn't used for blunt symbolism in Neon Genesis or Xenogears. But I'd guess that, whatever mechanism(s) allows for consciousness, it's built using the matter available. No tricks or slight of hand.

My suggestion would be to start with Dennett's Consiousness Explained. It tackles exactly the questions you are interested in, and it is much more entertaining than the average philosophy/neurology book on the topic.

Update: 3 months later, it just popped into my head that this ought to be a checklist, not a drop-down.

I think I'd want a second question about the severity of the disorder, including whether person thinks the disorder has some advantages.

Idea for a question for the next LW survey: Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental disorder?

...and a follow-up question: Have you ever self-diagnosed yourself with a mental disorder?

:-)

One point, just a nitpick: I would suggest not to aim to act "rationally." Aim to win. I may be assuming overmuch about your intended meaning, but remember, if your goal is to do what is rational rather than to do what is best/right/winning, you'll be confused.

That said, I understand what you mean. There are activities I know can done now, in youth, that, while maybe not impossible in my 40s, 50s, or 60s, would be more difficult.

First, your health. Work out, eat right, stay clean. Do everything that can maximize your health NOW and do it to the utmost that you can. If you start working on your health now, the long term payoffs will be exponential rather than linear. The longer you wait to maximize your health, the greater your disadvantage, the less your payoff. EDIT: (As I have no citation to back this claim up, it'd be best not to take my word on this. I would still suggest not delaying improving your health because doing so will result in benefits now, regardless of whether health improvements are exponential or linear with age.)

Second, try everything. We have a whole article on this that spells it out better than I can. And I'll be the first to admit I haven't dove into its methods full force so I can't vouch for them. But, basically, expose yourself to the world. Not in any mean or gross sense, but as a human being, gathering experience. Go to art classes, go to yoga classes, go to MIRI classes, take karate, learn to dance, learn to sing, play an instrument, learn maths, learn history, go to LW meetups.

Of course, you will be limited, and should be limited, by circumstances. You aren't a brain with infinite capacity yet, so you can't literally do everything. So, focus on a few things at a time. Set a schedule to try out new activities while continuing old, beneficial ones. For example, you might have three days for working out, two days for programming learning (as a hobby), one for online studying, one for social networking. Replace with whatever activities most interest or most benefit you (and don't be afraid of overlap if you want to double up). I live in a place with very little stimulus, so I double up on audiobooks and exercise and use recreational times (gaming or working out) to listen to audiobooks or expose myself to new music. The point is to jump in with both feet and do whatever you do well.

Ultimately, your youth gives you two real things: health (presumably) and energy. Now, I have seen 60 year old men in better shape and with more pep than me (marathon runners!), but for the average, your health and energy will come easier to you now than later. Use it.

I think it might even have negative return. If you do PR in that regard you are going to encourage misallocation of NASA funds. NASA should spend more resources on tracking near-earth objects and less on PR moves like trying to put a man on Mars. Understanding the climate of our own planet better is also an useful target for NASA spending.

Building human civilisation in Alaska is much easier than doing it on Mars. We don't even get things right in Africa where there fertile ground on which plants grow.

Colonizing Mars will need much better biotech and smarter robots than we have at the moment.

.. the obvious E-A answer to this question is "Don't do any pushing". - Increased space presence is a nigh-certain consequence of a more generally prospering and peaceful world, and diverting resources towards pushing this above trend is going to have just awful returns in utility per dollar. Space will happen on it's own accord as people find useful things to do there (I figure telescopes will be the main thing, tbh.) but beyond that? People are already mapping the asteroid trajectories, which is the only issue really directly relevant to E-A work. If the world dies, and a remnant lives on in tincans in space, that is.. not actually very helpful.

I have a lot of friends who I met through fan mail - people contacting me to tell me they like something about my online footprint. My recommendation is to establish online correspondence for a while, then when they don't send "leave me alone" signals like terse or perfunctory responses you can ask to hang out.

Obviously there are hundreds of possibilities, but the Future of Humanity Institute springs to mind.

ASL class at Gallaudet

(means "American Sign Language" for the curious like me)

Maybe try doing nothing. For some people that would drive them crazy, but for others a month of rest and peacefulness can be life-changing. Try turning off the computer for a month. Take walks. Read a book under a tree. Smell the flowers. Meditate.

Also, I'm not sure if this counts as travel, but Shenandoah is only about 1:30 from DC. Getting a small cabin or a room in a bed and breakfast for a month is not so expensive. Immersing yourself in a more natural, less hectic environment can itself be extremely restorative. And you can even sew / embroider while you're doing it.

I don't know what falls under 'freelance writing', but have you considered writing fiction?

It's a huge time-sink even if you're deliberately trying to improve your speed, but the skills are also surprisingly applicable - modelling your characters in your head isn't dramatically different from modelling other real people, even if you ignore the skills that merely fall under "knowing how to write". I've had a great deal of fun with that, lately.

You don't necessarily need to immediately jump into original fiction, either. Fanfiction is often considered "training wheels", but that doesn't just mean it's easier - well, it is, but it's also much easier to tell if you're getting characterisation right when there's the original work to compare to (and rabid fans to do the comparison), while the usual "benefit" of writing fanfiction (not needing to invent your own setting) can be trivially set aside if you feel like it.

Well, PPP has meaning only in the context of multiple currencies, so presumably you're trying to get a handle on some country's nominal GDP expressed in a different currency. This means you need a foreign exchange rate, a multiplier to convert units to different units.

At this point things start getting murkier. Sometimes there's a market FX rate. Sometimes there is an official FX rate (and a different black market one). Sometimes there is no reasonable FX rate at all.

The PPP rate is just one of the possibilities. Depending on the circumstances it might be more or less appropriate.

The crude meaning of GDP converted at PPP rate is "how much stuff at local prices does this country produce/consume".

What's the use of nominal total GDP? I would expect the argument for PPP total GDP to be that it's a more accurate measure of the same thing, but I'm not actually seeing what the use is.

I'm in a similar situation, and am leaning toward it being a circulation issue. Would you happen to know what your last blood pressure measurements were?

My previous lead candidate was proto-diabetes, but the most recent tests suggest otherwise. The only comment made about my bloodpressure was by the trainee EMT, saying "I wish my bloodpressure was that low!". I've been suspicious that the safe range for bloodpressure might be shifted a bit too far downward, since most people suffer from high bloodpressure-related conditions, but I'll need to refind the evidence that pushed me in that direction.

Anyway, my current strategy is to try and get more/better exercise, fresh air and sunlight. Those are good ideas in general, and should have an impact if it's circulation-related. It's too early and I'm still struggling to get good exercise, and I didn't think to try and quantify changes until... just now, so right now, this solution is experimental on my end.

There are a bunch of ways temperature is regulated. Blood circulation is on of the main ways the body regulates the temperature of the extremities. Blood moves very fast through the body and has therefore a relatively constant temperature. The blood in your hand is warmer than the rest of the hand.

If there's more blood in the capillaries in your hand than your hand gets warmer. Low blood pressure in the arterioles means that less blood flows into the capillaries. If muscle tissue is tense that also usually makes it harder for blood to flow into it.

I personally used to often feel cold five years ago but solved the issue for myself. There are days where something emotional is going on and my thermoregulation is messed up but that's not my default. I do have done a bunch of different things, so I can't give you a single solution.

Firstly an easy suggestion. Drink a lot. Drinking can increase blood pressure. There were weeks where I needed to drink 4-5 liters a day for my body to work at it's peak. I would recommend you to try drinking 4 liters a day for a week and see whether that changes how you feel.

On of the main things I personally did was dancing a lot of Salsa. Salsa gave me a new relationship with my body. Part of Salsa is also having body contact and that allows me to feel which parts of the body of the woman I'm dancing with are warm and relaxed and which aren't.

Good Salsa dancers are usually well circulated. On the other hand I do know woman who danced for years and didn't solve issues like that in their body. Knowing dancing patterns doesn't seem to be enough. In the Salsa sphere body movement classes seem like the produce such results but I don't know whether they are optimal.

I do personally think that there's a case that 5 Rhythms or Contact Improvisation is better for your purpose than Salsa. But to be open, the theory based on which I make that recommendation are not academic in origin.

Another thing that I believe but which does not come from an academic source is that the problem is likely emotional in origin. I consider it to be a self defense mechanism of the body. If they get removed I consider it likely that emotions will come up and that have to be dealt with. Based on what you wrote about severe trauma, I would recommend you to have professional help.

My first tactic with confusing health problems is adjusting my diet, but I seem to be more affected by diet than the typical person, so your mileage may vary Taking a very complete multivitamin for a few days and seeing if you feel any different is an easy way to check for nutrition deficiencies, if your blood tests didn't check for that (or only checked for a few usual suspects). If you do feel different, then you at least know you were deficient in something. You could also do an elimination diet for the most common food allergies, but that takes a lot of effort, so it might not be worth it if you and your family don't have a history of food issues.

If you're more sensitive to cold at some times than others, try to notice the fluctuation and see if it correlates with anything (especially stress, based on ChristianKi's comment). Maybe try writing down how cold you felt and what you did that day? (I usually don't write this sort of thing down, even though I know I should.)

Long underwear. Even if your legs don't specifically feel cold, adding more insulation there helps the whole body. Your legs are a pair of huge heat exchangers, and there's a limit to how useful it is to pile more layers on your torso if all your body heat can still leak out through your legs.

I've had something like that for the last 35 years or so. I just live with it. I suspect a connection with a serious illness I had back then, but I've never bothered to raise the matter with a doctor, because it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that a doctor is likely to have any remedy for. I am also slightly built (BMI 19 to 20) and have occasional attacks of great fatigue, but not depression.

Thick woolly hats are good too. A lot of heat is lost through the head.

Did something happen 3 years ago? Maybe a major emotional trauma?

Thank you for all the comments and suggestions. :)

At this point I have made an appointment to have my hormone levels checked (as suggested by Lumifer and NancyLebovitz).

I also think my blood pressure and circulation is worth looking into.

I'm still processing a lot of the suggestions and ideas, and might make another thread on this in the future.

Do you do sports?

I'm similar. I have found scarves to be both stylish and practical. The neck area is highly sensitive to cold. I've taken to toting a scarf if I am going to bring a jacket.

First question: what's your blood pressure?

Second question: did you do a thyroid panel and what did it show?

Third question: did you measure your body temperature in controlled settings (e.g. first thing upon waking up before getting out of bed)?

Common causes of sensitivity to cold are low blood pressure and hypothyroidism.

used in high status circles (sample celebrity babies names)

You don't want hollywood celebrities. Low status people name their kids after hollywood celebrities. In Germany given kids Anglosaxon names is a sign of low status. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/leben/studie-kindernamen-und-vorurteile-von-wegen-schall-und-rauch-1.44178

According to that article good names for German children that make teachers think the child is high performing are: "Charlotte, Sophie, Marie, Hannah, Alexander, Maximilian, Simon, Lukas and Jakob". On the other hand bad names are: "Kevin, Chantal, Mandy, Justin and Angelina".

Nice infographic for naming children:

http://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/2013-longlist/infographic/

This was the first Coursera course I took! Highly recommended, if anyone's still on the fence.

OK, I'll try. Signed in, but will look at it deeper on Thursday.

A better example of selective quotation is that Slate article.

Yes, I am taking that course - I did the previous version of it, but started late so didn't complete the requirements.

It is a short course focused mainly on getting your development environment setup with github

From the 2013 survey results:

• Don't understand/prefer not to answer: 92, 5.6%
• Not sure: 103, 6.3%
• One box: 1036, 63.3%
• Two box: 119, 7.3%
• Did not answer: 287, 17.5%

A good decision theory performs well in many problems and not only in one problem. Having a decision theory that solves Newcomb's Problem but that doesn't perform well for other problems isn't helpful.

There isn't yet the ultimate decision theory that solves everything so I don't see how individual problems can be declared solved.

"Wisdom" and "pickup artistry" do not belong in the same sentence.

Isn't it rather the reverse? What in vitro fertilization is to sex, perhaps. It purports to offer the underlying biological benefits, but you have to give up the pleasurable sensations that normally attach to eating food.

I suppose really it's more complicated than that. You have (1) the biological need, which via evolution gives rise to (2) the pleasant sensations, and then cultural processes produce (3) all sorts of other stuff -- culinary traditions, sexual taboos, etc. And also (4) the usual way of satisfying the need and/or getting the pleasant sensations may be time-consuming or expensive or inconvenient.

Soylent removes 2, 3, 4. Blow-up dolls remove 1, 3, 4. IVF removes 2, 3, 4. (You might want to add "mostly" to some of those.) Make of that what you will.

Your analogy actually seems more plausible to me than gjm's. With a blowup doll and with Soylent, you get a less pleasurable version of the action (sex and eating), while also fulfilling your needs/impulses. People feel more of a "need" to have sex than they feel a "need" to procreate.

Even if gjm's was better, I've never seen someone receive 5 downvotes for an analogy that they think isn't quite as good as another, so it seems more likely that you've been downvoted because people who like Soylent didn't like you talking mean about it.