Instrumental Rationality Questions Thread

Book clubs and philosophy groups, but they only attract people over 45 except in major metropolitan downtown areas. Most people are unavailable all through their thirties because they're having kids.

You can go to chautauquas, but only if you live in the 19th century.

I always find it odd that parents will take their kids to all sorts of educational events, but hardly ever go to any themselves. Go to any environmental education center, and you'll find nothing but kids and parents with kids. Why do they think it's important for their kids but not for themselves?

If you suggest the country; maybe some more relevant advice can be given.

Try meetup; check your local library for local group events. Look around for community notice boards. The problem of community finding is a hard one; for both communities looking to attract people; and people looking to find their community; it is as yet only now being solved partially by things like meetup.

There are also charitable volunteering opportunities that I have found will tend to host interesting people to interact with. Consider looking around for these groups too.

Sporting groups (I have little experience with but) should be around even in a small town.

Pub trivia - less good, but also possible to meet groups of people at.

Does this help?

One strategy I've seen recommended is to ramble a bit, including potential conversation starters on topics which are more interesting to you as part of the ramble.

For example, let's say you're talking with someone you just met in the laundry room of your apartment building. You're talking about the weather, or something similar. You want to see if this person is interested in cooking, so as you load some clothes you casually mention how you made a mess of your shirt last time you cooked to see if they bite.

I have not tried this myself, but it seems very general and subtle enough that it's not out of the ordinary.

I've noticed that people uphold a lot of social conventions about how conversations are supposed to work, and then they have to all get drunk in order to have interesting conversations, because those social conventions (like "don't make non-sequiturs" or "don't talk about impractical speculations") make interesting conversations difficult.

So... pretend to be drunk? Invite a drunk into the conversation? Probably not very good advice. But it seems people want to get past small talk, but need an excuse for breaking with convention.

At a high level, I have the same advice as any other instrumental rationality topic: know your purpose. Why do you want to move from small talk to more interesting topics? What anticipated future experiences are driving your choice to be talking with this person at all?

Specific options:

• Accept social risk. Often, small talk is used among people who don't trust each other enough to open up. If you can identify that the actual risk is smaller than the perceived risk, then you can introduce the (somewhat) riskier topics that actually interest you. With luck, it'll interest them too.

• If your goal is social cohesion, as opposed to your own entertainment or information-seeking, steer the small-talk toward the other person. Find topics they're interested in and guide them in telling stories about themselves.

• Change conversational partners. If you can't identify a strategic goal in continuing a conversation, find an excuse to leave it and do something else. Do be somewhat patient, though: it's easy to underestimate the value of non-close acquaintances and the time it takes to get enough mutual knowledge to be able to have truly interesting conversations.

I use two questions.

To myself - when stumped; "what do I want to know about this person?" then ask that; or find a way to ask that.

To others; "What is the most important thing you could be working on right now?" followed by, "What are you doing about that?" and "how can you do that better?" (also "have you tried X")

Traditionally - people would read paper or books and share that information with people they meet. i.e. "did you read the article about X" but people don't read papers any more.

Keeping a list (either written or mentally) of recent interesting things to chat about is good.

I tend to also ask, "what occupies most of your time?" Because it usually is something they are most interested in sharing.

Interestingly; those small-talk topics when you look at them carefully, are actually the important ones. "how are you?" when taken to steelman is practically the most important question I can ever ask someone. Its just too bad we automate to the default answers so often. (I have a theory that the weather actually affects 8% or so of people's moods. which is a small fraction; but big enough to be of significance for everyone. I don't know how to prove this; but its would explain why everyone defaults to the weather)

Often when people do the interview "how old are you, what do you do" type questions they are looking for common ground with which to share things with you. "Oh I also volunteer", "I also own a car that broke down today, how funny". If you try to broadly hit a few areas of your own interest with "hooks" for people to grab on - it will make it easier to connect.

i.e. "I like cooking" is not as good for hooking interest as, "I tried cooking X last week"... (this advice comes as dating profile advice as well)

Did this help?

Pick something from the context that has potential to lead to an interesting conversation, and start talking a little more passionately about it. Alternately, splinter the group into one-on-one conversations.

It seems that being extroverted is mostly about simply building certain extroverted habits. I’ve just noticed that I should probably try and replace my default response to “How are you?”/”What’s up?” with something with hooks for interesting topics, or maybe just saying whatever’s on my mind at the moment.

It occurs to me that certain situations and topics constantly reoccur, and that these present useful opportunities to transition to a more mutually interesting topic. For example, I should probably condition my response to mentioning the weather into “honestly, I think I probably follow weather satellites more closely than the weather itself”. This might easily lead to discussions of space, technology, or even GCR/X-risk hooks like the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor or the Solar Storm of 1859.

At the moment, the best I can come up with for discussing sports is to bring up the idea that anyone sufficiently obsessed with anything, regardless of topic, basically slowly becomes a nerd. Sports nerds start out as just fans, but once they start tracking stats and playing fantasy football, they slowly turn into nerds. They are especially amusing because of the “jocks vs nerds” archetype, which is a completely arbitrary dichotomy. I can imagine this leading to discussions of in-groups, sociology/psychology, or maybe meta-analysis.

Context: I am a software engineer living and working in the US. I am a US citizen and my wife is not, and we are working on getting her permanent residency.

It's definitely worth investigating the difficulty of immigrating to the various countries. Canada and Singapore both have reputations for being a lot easier for skilled workers to immigrate to than the US, but YMMV.

Note that if you do marry an American, be sure to start the process of getting your permanent residency while you're still in the country. My wife and I made the mistake of starting the process while she was temporarily abroad, and that has caused significant delays.

See if there are companies that are willing to hire you while you're on OPT. I think that buys you a couple years to try for an H1b or perhaps get married. If they're willing to hire you in the US and let you transfer internationally if immigration doesn't let you in, even better.

Also keep in mind that if you become a US citizen, the US will tax you on your worldwide income, not just your US income. That's not an issue if you plan on staying in one place, though.

How ambitious are you? If you want to work very hard and potentially change the world, come to the US. For better or worse (probably worse), the US is basically the place where world-changing technology development happens.

If you are more interested in work/life balance, I would recommend Europe (esp. Germany), Canada, Australia or maybe NZ. In particular everyone I've talked to who knows both Australia and the US agrees that while Americans make more money, Aussies have a better lifestyle.

There are many, many things about the US that are just astonishingly broken. The immigration system is one of them. Also, there is lots of anti-immigrant turmoil going on in the US now.

Gwern's records of his own self-experimentation are not to be missed: http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics

There's quite a few, but Nicotine is the one that jumps out at me, as well as Ritalin and Adderal.

Edit: Here's a more exhaustive list than Scott's, although still not complete. The great thing about examine is you can click through and see exactly what evidence there is for what effects.

http://examine.com/supplements/Nootropic/

Pseudoephedrine comes to mind. Does anyone know what the evidence is on that?

• Getting an air filter can gain you ~0.6 years of lifespan, plus some healthspan. Here's /u/Louie's post where I saw this.
• Lose weight. Try Shangri-La, and if that doesn't work consider the EC stack or a ketogenic diet.
• Seconding James_Miller's recommendation of vegetables, especially cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, bok choy, cauliflower, collard greens, arugula...) Just eat entire plates of the stuff often.
• Write a script that takes a screenshot and webcam picture every 30 seconds. Save the files to an external hard drive. After a few decades, bury the external, along with some of your DNA and possibly brain scans, somewhere it'll stay safe for a couple hundred years or longer. This is a pretty long shot, but there's a chance that a future FAI will find your horcrux and use it to resurrect you. I think this is a better deal than cryonics since it costs so much less.

I don't know whether Feldenkrais Method is verified for increasing lifespan, but it does a lot for easy mobility which definitely improves quality of life as the years go by.

Also, studying tai chi (even late in life for a few months) decreases the likelihood of falling.

I'm not sure which are overlooked, but the key ones are don't smoke, eat vegetables, wear a seat belt, exercise, cryonics, and (for men) castration. I do bulletproof intermittent fasting but I'm not sure if data backs up this last one.

I know of what you speak! My solution may not work for you, but here's what I did:

First, identify all the really important things, and make sure they get done. For me, this meant either making them part of my core routine, or making a list. 'Core routine' means a required set of actions; if it is necessary to walk the dog or he will pee on the carpet, I walk the dog as soon as I get home - before sitting down, before logging into my computer. I don't do anything else until my routine is completed.

Likewise, I make the list of need to do as central to my life as it needs to be to in order to get it done. If I must pay the rent tomorrow, the note to pay the rent is on top of my computer, and I cannot compute until it is done. If that is not sufficient, tape the note over the door handle, and don't leave the house until you have payed the rent. My list is rarely more than three items long -- there's just not that many things that are really important any given day. (If an electronic list is more useful than a physical one, simply make checking your list part of your core routine; check it before you head out the door every day).

Once the big stuff is out of the way, actually do stop worrying. The dishes are not important, so if you suddenly think of an interesting idea that you want to write down, walk away from the sink and do it. If you get distracted by 20 other things before you get back to the sink, so what? You may need to spend a couple days practicing this -- instead of just thinking "oh, I should write that down", drop what you are doing and write it, not because the writing has priority, but because you are practicing being less stressed about completing/switching tasks.

It didn't take me long practicing this before I started getting more organized in planning the unimportant tasks without much stress. Once I knew that the important things were taken care of, and once I got serious about not caring that the trash was taken out right now, I felt less stress over all, felt less rushed, and took the time to plan things out just enough that I was was able to organize things efficiently.

If this is a memory concern - outsource memory to handwritten or digital lists.

If this is a focus concern (I need to work on it myself and I don't understand how to better focus very well other than) - Kanban board of "this is what I am working on now" and a list of "things to work on later.

One thing that I have found helpful is when a thought like "I should really do [task]" comes to mind, I write it on a post-it note and stick it to the nearest available surface and then carry on with whatever I was doing. Then, when I finish what I was doing, I can actually do that task, put it onto a more durable to-do list, etc.

I'm not a doctor, but maybe you should see one. Supposedly Adderall may help.

Post information of value to yourself or that you think would be valuable to other people.

post milestones, post learnings, post successes, post thanks or gratitude, post relevant life photos (dogs you see or whatever)

Do not complain about anything ever.

Discuss things; but carefully. Remember politics is the mindkiller.

Facebook is very useful for messaging, and that would be sufficient reason for me to use it.

I find that it is also useful for following local businesses and organizations that are of interest to me.

Facebook reminds me of the birthdays of people I am friends with, which is the only way that I can remember anyone's birthday; this has sometimes been useful socially.

Once you collect some interesting friends, you may learn stuff from Facebook feeds that you don't learn elsewhere. This is hit-or-miss though. Facebook was how I discovered Wait But Why.

I also post to Facebook, primarily because I am friends with a lot of people who are part of a very limited culture -- most of my coworkers and local friends get exposed to very few ideas outside of church and office gossip, which means that many of them never see a rationality blog post, see anyone they know support marriage equality publicly, never see anything interesting regarding technology (other than consumer products), etc. I doubt that many people enjoy my posts who don't have other sources of finding interesting things, but I think that it is probably useful to expose as many people as possible to things like this -- otherwise they might go through life thinking that football, dieting, and pictures of their kids are all that anyone ever thinks about. Yes, I realize that championing Facebook as an agent of social change is totes feeb, but whatevs.

You need to be clearer about your goals.

Do you want more interaction with existing friends? Do you want to meet new people? Do you want an easier way to interact with other rationalists?

Remembering that you are a product, something that Facebook sells.

Facebook's revenue in 2014 was 12.5 billion US dollars.

I support the idea of having a recurring 'Instrumental Rationality Questions' thread.

If there's one thing I enjoy about this site, it's reading practical advice from its members.

*fixed the 3AM typo

Yes, it can work.

Happiness doesn't work the way you seem to think it does: there is actually no way to sacrifice your happiness for theirs, so there's no balance or equilibrium decision to make. You CAN reduce your happiness, but it won't increase theirs, so there's not much reason to do so.

The keys (for me) have been:

• Know that you're not responsible for their happiness. You're allowed to be happy even when your partner is sad. Ideally, this makes their sadness somewhat less.
• Much mutual trust, communication, and knowledge about depression and happiness. Your partner needs to appreciate and desire your happiness, even if they don't feel it themselves.
• Many other dimensions of compatibility and significant (not continuous or even majority) joyful shared events.

Really, those are key to any serious long-term relationship, romantic or otherwise. A happiness differential puts a lot more weight on other dimensions of compatibility, rather than being the only important thing.

tl;dr: An unhappy partner can still want to and succeed in making you happy. But it's probably rare.

As long as the other person is still pretty happy, it doesn't really matter too much if you're happier. That's not to say that things can't go wrong, but it's not a hard rule that people must be of equal happiness levels in order to be together successfully.

100 mg once a day, but I don't have a strong justification for this dose.

I suggest you take any medical advice here as coming with a very long disclaimer.

I wonder if intention to improve is just as valuable (if thought hard about) as reading a book in self help.

If you are talking about being motivated to change; plenty of motivation exists; but if you can self-motivate that would be worth even more than all the value from all the motivational speakers you can ever listen to.

link did not work; takes you to a new blank version of the thing.

I guess this is downvoted because it doesn't give the least indication of what is on the other side of the link.

without watching anything - do you want to be him? (He looks like a guy who yells things at youtube) if so - yes, if not; take every piece of advice with the advice, "yes but I am not you, I am me; so how can I adapt that to my situation".

Does this help - or do I need to actually absorb some of his advice?