Stupid Questions June 2015

What contingencies should I be planning for in day to day life?

Those related to what you do and where you go in day to day life. The only people who need to worry about a micrometeorite punching a hole in the spaceship get training for it already.

These might include such things as: locking yourself out of your house, having an auto breakdown, being confronted by a mugger, being in an unfamiliar building when the fire alarm goes off, coming upon the scene of a serious accident, where to go and how to get there when widespread flooding is imminent, being stranded in a foreign country without funds or a ticket out, when to see a doctor when a mole you've always had starts growing, getting old, and so on.

Do you have insurance for anything? The list of what it covers is a list of contingencies. If it's worth spending money for the monetary compensation, it's worth thinking about how to deal with it if it happens, and how to stop it happening.

I am by no means an expert, but here are a couple of options that come to mind. I came up with most of these by thinking "what kind of emergency are you reasonably likely to run into at some point, and what can you do to mitigate them?"

• Learn some measure of first aid, or at least the Heimlich maneuver and CPR.

• Keep a Seat belt cutter and window breaker in your glove compartment. And on the subject, there are a bunch of other things that you may want to keep in your car as well.

• Have an emergency kit at home, and have a plan for dealing with natural disasters (fire, storms, etc). If you live with anyone, make sure that everyone is on the same page about this.

• On the financial side, have an emergency fund. This might not impress your friends, but given how likely financial emergencies (e.g. unexpectedly losing a job) are relative to other emergencies, this is a good thing to plan for nonetheless. I think the standard advice is to have something on the order 3-6 months of income tucked away for a rainy day.

(Note: my motivation for this is almost exclusively "I want to look like a genius in front of my friends when some contingency I planned for comes to pass", which is maybe not the best motivation for doing this kind of thing. But when I find myself with a dumb-sounding motive for doing something I rationally endorse anyway, I try to take advantage of the motive, dumb-sounding or not.)

Often being prepared simply means that nobody notices anything being at odds. Don't optimize for flashy solutions.

What to do when things get lost
1) Your credit card
2) Your mobile phone
3) Your keys

What do you do when things you rely on break:
1) Your computer
2) Your car

Who to call?
1) Police imprisons you and charge you for a criminal act
2) You have a medical emergency (also set up a ICE contact list entry on your smart phone)

Identify local forms of natural disaster and what you intend to do in the circumstances. (bush-fires, earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes, snowstorm, bear-pocalypse... whatever is normal in your area)

Identify what you plan to do in case of a power failure (owning some candles or something) depending on how bad the failure is and how long it lasts... I suggest owning a external battery block for phone charging - give extra peace of mind that you won't run out of battery. (something like 15000mah should be plenty for most people)

(I have never suffered a technical failure but) preparing for a hard-drive failure, monthly backups, cloud storage... how will you manage if you suddenly are unable to earn money for 3-6 months? have savings; have a plan; programs like pocketbook; YouNeedABudget, calculate your burn-rate. Unexpected spends i.e. bills. Plumbing problems sometimes just happen in old houses - know what to do (how to change a washer etc.), Know how to open an S-bend if something is dropped down a pipe.

(basic first aid training was mentioned elsewhere but I wanted to add that we don't train the heimlich manoeuvre in Australia)

know how to use a fire-extinguisher (you just have to read the instructions on the front; but maybe read them before you are in desperate need to know them)

qualified to drive larger vehicles can help in life.

knowledge of the law in some areas.

knowing how to cook delicious things on short notice (1-2 recipes that you can whip up really quick).

• Install a smoke detector

• Do martial arts training until you get the falling more or less right. While this might be helpful against muggers the main benefit is the reduced probability of injury in various unfortunate situation.

I have a small multitool on my keychain and have for several years; it most often comes in handy as a bottle opener but the small pliers, knife, screwdriver, and wire stripper have all been used.

I have the entire road system of North America as of three months ago downloaded as about five gigabytes of data on my phone (yay micro SD cards) which comes in handy when driving through rural mountains.

A charged car battery exists in the trunk of my car for jumpstarting (and also for running my big computerized telescope out in the field, which is how I ensure it is kept charged, because it is dual use).

Mostly for hobby purposes but also for contingencies, I have built a portable solar-powered lithium-iron-phosphate battery pack that charges from sunlight at 25 watts, can store 200 watt-hours, and can discharge upwards of 100 watts at either 12 volts DC or 120 volts AC.

Take people you spend time with to first aid, heimlich, and CPR classes. You will need their help if you are the one choking or unable to breathe.

Build up enough stamina and physical fitness to run at both a sprint and for several minutes straight. Running away from a fight can be a very good strategy for not getting harmed.

Read the "Influence: Science and Practice" chapter that discusses Social Proof. I think it was chapter 4. The suggestions involved help avoid the bystander effect where a person in need is left alone and unassisted by a group of onlookers. The chapter deals with a few examples of effectively communicating and prompting someone to help you in an emergency situation. This is especially necessary in an urban environment.

Is there anything you keep expecting yourself to remember, but you don't remember it? If so, make an extra effort to remember it, or make a note, or whatever might help.

Thanks for the great suggestions everyone. To follow up, here's what I did as a result of this thread:

-Put batteries back in my smoke detector

-Backed up all of my data (hadn't done this for many months)

-Got a small swiss army knife and put it on my keychain (already been useful)

-Looked at a few fire extinguishers to make sure I knew how to use them

-Put some useful things in my messenger bag (kleenex, pencil and paper) - I'll probably try to keep adding things to my bag as I think of them, since I almost always have it with me

All of the car-related suggestions seemed like good ones, but weren't applicable since I don't own a car. Some other suggestions were good but required more time than I was willing to put in right now, or weren't applicable for other reasons.

Things that are unsexy but I can actually verify as having been useful more than once:

In wallet, folded up tissue. For sudden attack of sniffles (especially on public transport), small cuts, emergency toilet paper.

In bag I carry every day: small pack of tissues, multitool, tiny torch, ibuprofin, pad and pencil, USB charging cable for phone, plastic spork, wet wipe thing from KFC (why do they always shovel multiples of those things in with my order ?).

Americancentric, but: I would suggest that if you have a phone, programming the numbers for the local police, a good urgent care clinic in your area (a wiser choice than the ER, when possible), and your garage (especially if you don't have AAA). 911 is an important tool, but it is not always the best tool for the job, and the cost of updating your address book is essentially zero.

Oh, and perhaps the New York Public Library’s virtual reference service (depending on your long-distance plan).

(Dunno how they are sold in your country) a bottle of nitroglycerine or similar drugs, the instructions to which you know by heart, similar to Harry's preparations? Considering that the probability of you encountering a stranger who has an emergency should be higher than the p of only you having it, unless there is a common cause. In case there is a common cause, well. Bring a gun?.. (At least it is small.) A notebook seems also a useful thing to havehave, with a pencil attached.

Potentially relevant stuff from brief Google site searches:

• "Studying and Part-time work/supplementary income"
• "Interesting (or semi-interesting) part time jobs?"
• saving money by doing tasks in cheaper, time-consuming ways
• bisserlis talking about joining a temp agency
• "low stress employment/ munchkin income thread"
• "Physics grad student: how to build employability in programming & finance"

I feel like part-time work, and lightweight methods of converting time to money, have been chewed over in even more LW posts, but I can't quickly dig them out.

Sending 25 resumes is one strategy, but there are others. I believe you should find a few companies you like, learn a lot about them, find someone who has a contact at them, and develop a relationship with that contact.

This website has a lot of elements I agree with in terms of trying to get a job: http://corcodilos.com/blog/7633/how-to-tease-a-job-interview-out-of-a-manager

I've applied to 25 so far and have only heard back from 1.

I just went through the process of applying to software companies too. I get a strong impression that it's a numbers game and low response rates are to be expected. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions.

If there's a company that you really want to work for, then something like this seems like it'd be really hard to ignore.

What are good reliable ways that I can convert time to money before I get a full-time job?

Well there are a ton of low-skill jobs out there. And then there are higher skill jobs like tutoring that you may be able to pursue in the short term.

But why? I sense that right now, your time would be better spent on higher level actions like learning and thinking about what you want in life. This obviously depends on a lot of other things though. Like your goal and your financial situation.

The therapists I know would strongly recommend seeing someone in person, rather than counsel over the internet. So if you can't find a psychiatrist/psychologist in the DC area who is in the EA/LW community, I'd suggest you relax the EA/LW criterion rather than the DC area criterion. Good luck.

I am very far away and I don't know if I can help. But send me a message and I can try.

I had this problem with soap for a while (there was a "Dove isn't soap!" campaign that didn't say what it... like... was... and I switched to Ivory because I wanted soap.)

There's a label on the back as well with details. The front label is a billboard, designed to get your attention and take advantage of brand loyalty, so yes - you are expected to know it's detergent, and they are happy to handle the crazy rare edge-case person who does not recognize the brand. I suspect they also expect the supermarket you buy it at to have it in the "laundry detergents" section, likely with labels as well, so it's not necessary on the front label.

I dunno, the container I have says "detergent" on the front 3 times. In fact I think all of your pictures other than the Tide one contain "Detergent" in small print after the brand name, or at the bottom of the label.

I do not recommend choosing a diamond. Diamonds are both less pretty than and more expensive than moissanite; if you have the budget for a diamond, you can get better for cheaper with moissanite. The exception is if you know for a fact the recipient is a natural stone chauvinist, which doesn't sound like your situation at all (you basically can't get natural moissanite). Bonus: moissanite is from SPACE.

If you are unwilling to consult her in advance on her taste in rocks, the safe choice is a gold-band solitaire with a round brilliant cut rock set in prongs. More expensive, more interesting, and also pretty safe is a "past present future" setting with three rocks, matching if you want to be conservative about it. I'm not sure what the conventional alloy for gold-looking jewelry that needs to not deform with use is, but if it looks like yellow gold and anyone makes a point of telling you how many carats it is, it's probably good.

This is a perfect exemplar of something I really hate about this website. A poster asks for advice about how to buy a diamond, and instead he gets mostly replies saying "don't buy a diamond." I will try and actually be helpful.

My advice would be:

• Your girlfriend probably has much stronger views than you do about jewellery, and after all she will be the one wearing it. Propose with a "fake" ring, then go shopping for the "real" ring together. I got a very nice-looking ring off Amazon for £10 to propose with. This minimises the chance of making a bad decision, and is also a romantic thing to do together.
• If you do insist on buying the ring beforehand, make sure you can take it back. Many places will do returns within 30 days. Borrow a ring she finds comfortable to get the sizing.
• Do not get hung up about high degrees of quality. VS2 clarity and H colour is plenty. She will never tell the difference between having a VS2 and VVS1 diamond on her finger - these differences are only visible when put next to another diamond in the right light, which will never happen.
• But make sure the cut is top quality.
• Shop around. My experience is in London, but over here the prices in the diamond quarter and online are about the same. Beware of anyone who won't give you a straight price. Despite what anyone tells you, diamonds are close to commodities.
• Make sure you get a certificate, and don't buy anything with a non-GIA certificate.
• She will be wearing the ring all the time, and indefinitely into the future, which means there will be inevitable wear-and-tear. So platinum is probably the best metal.
• There is no reason to spend anything like the upper range of your budget. You can get an extremely nice (genuine) ring in the bottom half of that price range, and artificial will only be cheaper.

I live in NYC, so have access to the diamond district

Don't go to the diamond district. You'll just get a lot of high-pressure sales tactics and, likely, misleading information.

I am leaning towards an artificial diamond

Cubic zirconia? The main thing to be sure of is whether your GF is fine with that. If she is, just order a huge one online, they'll be cheap.

My price range

Your price range for the complete ring or just for the stone? You can pick the stone and the design separately, that's common.

Generally speaking, you need to figure out first if you want a natural diamond or a cubic zirconia stone -- that will greatly affect your budget, the stone size (and so the ring design), etc.

Are you picking out the ring entirely on your own or you are consulting with your GF?

Unless you are sure your GF really likes to follow social traditions this may not be the best idea...

Our story: we avoided surprises and discussed thoroughly whether we want to spend a life together or not. It also included whether to go through the expense of a wedding or just live together. We concluded that a wedding is a nice thank-you ceremony to our parents, and besides the whole point is that we planned a child, otherwise we would just keep cohabiting, and she was afraid I could dump her into the difficult life of 35+ single moms later on so basically the wedding would be a way to promise in front of 50 relatives that I won't. She felt she would not risk having a child otherwise. Thankfully diamonds are not a tradition in our country (they cost more than what savings a young-ish man usually has, and getting into debt even BEFORE the wedding / setting up the new home sounds really dangerous). But gold rings are. Anyway she strictly forbidden me to buy a gold ring because we need to rent a bigger apartment with a proper child bedroom and buy new furniture so it makes more sense to blow our savings on that. She said a silver band €300 tops. So I waited a few weeks to achieve at least a surprise about the timing, waited for a national holiday that was about some big battles and said "This day we remember men who did brave things, so it is a good time for me to do something brave and..." :-) Later on, I had some of my inherited gold jewelry molten down for the actual wedding bands. As a decoration, we decided that we will write into each others rings to the outside what virtue we need to work on the most for us to be happy. I need to work on my patience and she needs to work on her courage i.e. actually accepting job promotions offered so we wrote these on the rings as reminders.

Anyway this non-traditional approach worked pretty well for us, although it may feel a bit "coldly rational" and not too "romantic". What I would propose on a meta-level is finding out how much your GF likes being romantic and how much she likes to follow social traditions and conventions. (And how much you like to follow them, and what it predicts about your long-term marriage stability. Are there any other social conventions that you would less like to follow?)

If you want to ensure she won't regret the choice, go shopping together!

You will pay extra, as in you will pay more than the ring is worth. If you buy a diamond ring, turn around and try to sell it back, they'll give you something like 30% for it.

Also, listen to this: http://freakonomics.com/2015/04/16/diamonds-are-a-marriage-counselors-best-friend-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

If you're not familiar with the diamond industry, you may want to read Diamonds are Bullshit (or watch this less formal video.

I don't mean for this to be offensive, but I've always disapproved of the idea of purchasing diamonds, especially for an engagement.

There's a lot of abuse, fraud and mistreatment that happens throughout their production and distribution (then again, this is true for a lot of industries...). From a physical standpoint, it's x thousand dollars for a shiny rock (money that could have been used to do good). I get that people see it as a symbol of love and that it's reasonable to pay that amount of money for the symbolic meaning you get in return. I just find it odd that people derive such meaning, given the realities that exist beneath the surface.

Let me give you some more immediately useful advice: a recommendation. The New York Diamond Center at 65 Broadway (ignore the big-sounding name, it's a small shop with an expert salesman) is where I bought both my engagement ring and our wedding bands. The salesman will provide useful and professional advice about the relationship between price, size, and quality. Importantly, he sells loose diamonds and orders the settings separately. You will get the GIA certificate from him for any diamond you buy. And then you also have your seller already picked out for wedding rings.

Do try to get an understanding of your girlfriend's taste before going to pick out a ring and a setting. It should not be a surprise or a secret that you're planning to propose, so talk about her taste in jewelry, whether she would prefer a more traditional round cut or one of the other more unique cuts, band color and design, etc. Also get her finger sized somewhere--even within average ranges, her finger could be anywhere from a 7 to a 9.

One important thing to remember on price is that it roughly scales with the square of the diamond's size in carats, so that a 1 carat diamond will probably be about 4 times the price of a 0.5 carat diamond. The guy I recommended will show you what diamonds of different quality look like so you can see what you're paying for.

Note that you can and should insure your diamond on your renter's or homeowner's policy. Your insurance broker will want a copy of your receipt and your GIA certificate.

One last tip, if you're planning to propose out of town and need to keep it hidden through airport security, sneakily transfer the box from your pocket to inside your shoe, and then back to your pocket on the other side of the scanner. And then make sure it's in the opposite pocket from your girlfriend on the flight so that the jewelry box digging into her hip doesn't give it away.

Biased: From Australia. Get an opal? or more general advice "consider other stones to diamonds".

Gold is pretty; White gold is too (and cheaper)

Bonus: Magnetic wedding band. neat, unusual, practical. (Disclaimer: I just purchased for testing out magnetic-sense https://www.supermagnetman.net )

My sister and her partner made their own wedding rings at a custom-wedding-ring-jewellery place, but I have no idea of the details.

Buy something with comparable resale value - a popular gem on a second hand jewellery item directly from the previous owner. Then, there is no need for her to regret anything cause she can sell it back if she needs to and possibly even profit.

The advantage to having Stupid Question threads is that it's easier to make it clear that that the questions should be treated kindly.

You are allowed to ask in the open thread. I don't think having it more often would help. The SQ thread is for things that you are embarrassed or afraid to ask elsewhere. Apparently some people have questions that they didn't bring up before the first stupid questions thread.

The simplistic approach is that A and B share 1/2 of their (variable) genes by virtue of being siblings, and so their child C will have that shared half, and half of the remainder (i.e. a quarter) will come from B, so C and B share 3/4 of their genes. By the same approach, D and B will share 7/8 of their genes, and thus E and F will have 7/8 shared for certain and 1/16 shared by chance, and so their children will share about 15/32ths of their genes, i.e. be about as related as actual siblings.

If you, as a human, are thinking of a number, I can narrow it down a great deal from a uniform improper prior. I don't really like that wiki entry, though - if you ask me to guess a number and I say "I don't know," it's sure as heck not because either of us believes or is attempting to imply that I have literally no information about the problem.

I think the way in which that wiki entry is important is that "I don't know" cannot be your only possible answer to a question. If there was a gun to my head, I could give guessing your number a pretty good try. But as triplets of words go, "I don't know" serves a noble and practical purpose.

I don't think this can be answered for the general case, because those peoples are/were very different from one another. The Pacific Northwest Coast tribes were relatively prosperous and well-fed due to their fishing and whaling. Further up north in Canada, tribes in much less desirable hunting grounds had so little that even in the 1940s their kids were considered seriously malnourished.

Why are agricultural diets assumed to always be better than the wide range of possible hunter-gatherer diets that our species has spent megayears on? I mean sure, often more stable and efficient in terms of labor. But that's not the same thing. To be fair there will be places with, say, iodine deficiency here and there.

There's also the fact that a shitload of the areas conquered in the colonial rush were fully agricultural and even urbanized...

A bad and unfounded theory: if they had plentiful food they would have had more time to develop more complicated culture and a structured society and develop colonial society of their own. So probably yes.

One of the foundations of modern life is domestication of animals and farming. because it allowed for easy access to food even during harsh natural environment changes. With more food availability the population could grow to meet the available supply.

It is of course possible and likely that they were both well fed and malnourished at the same time. Across different people, across different times of the year where food supplies would naturally vary, and across different nutrients.

Well, everyone will likely die sooner or later, even post-Singularity (provided that it will happen, which isn't quite a solid fact).

Anyway, I think that any morality system that proclaims unethical all and every birth happened so far is inadequate.

Unless you believe the end times are here and the Rapture is imminent, who will bring it about if no-one has children?

No, it's better to live a good finite life than to have never been born.

I figure it's better to live for the better part of a century than to not live at all.

Maybe not for that reason. But the opportunity cost of having kids, for example in terms of time and money, is pretty high. You could easily make an argument that those resources would be more effectively used for higher impact activities.

The money as dead children analogy might be particularly useful here, since we're comparing kids with kids.

Not for that reason, but I do think that it's unethical right now because of overpopulation.

Is a 3 minute song worse, somehow, than a 10 minute song? or a song that plays forever, on a loop, like the soundtrack at Pirates of the Caribbean, is that somehow even better?

The value of a life is more about quality than quantity, although presumably if quality is high, longer is more desirable, at least to a point.

You could argue with current overpopulation is is unethical to have any children. In which case your genes will be deselected from the gene pool, in favor of those of my children, so it's maybe not a good argument to make.

Kids have got along fine so far.

I think maybe not if you sign them up for cryonic preservation?

I think it may be much more on point to talk about it being unethical to have children pre-singularity, for the inevitable needless suffering that will occur. I do believe that the moment we solve aging, it is a moral imperative to stop having children until we can be assure that we're not bringing new people into existence just to suffer.

I don't think it is unethical to keep having children today, but only so far as it is necessary to actually reach the singularity. I think ethically, we should be trying to minimize the portion of human mind-space that must experience pre-singularity existence, but not to the point of delaying the singularity.

If everyone did that, there's a non-negligible chance the human race will die out before bringing about a Singularity. I care about a reasonably nice society with nebulous traits that I value existing, so I consider that a bad outcome. But I do worry about whether it's right to have children who may well posess my far-higher-than-average (or simply higher than most people are willing to admit?) aversion to death.

(If under reflection, someone would prefer not to become immortal if they had the chance, then their preference is by far the most important consideration. So if I knew my future kids wouldn't be too fazed by their own future deaths, I'd be fine with bringing them into the world.)

could someone please explain to me why (apart from the potential torture aspect) it is so bad to share/discuss the concept?

There's a class of concepts called "information hazards." Like any other hazard, they're something that, if handled without care, will cause damage to someone. But with chemicals or lasers or falling rocks, you can stick up signs and people can stay out of the location where the chemicals or lasers or falling rocks are; putting up signs for concepts is hard, because warning signs can be easily self-defeating. If you label something a "horror story," all you're saying is "here be scariness." If you start talking about exactly why a story is scary, then you run the risk of giving people nightmares.

And so the Basilisk is disallowed for roughly the same reasons that shock images are disallowed. (This specific idea has given people nightmares, but the consensus is that it doesn't work as a serious proposal.)

Let me introduce Orphan's Basilisk: Anybody who knows about "Orphan's Basilisk" will, in the unlikely chance that some hypothetical entity (which hates people who know about Orphan's Basilisk, and which we'll call Steve) achieves unlimited knowledge and power, be tortured for perpetuity.

It's a much simpler basilisk, which helps illuminate what, exactly, is silly about Roko's Basilisk, and related issues such as Pascal's Mugging: It puts infinite weight on one side of the equation (eternal torture) to overcome the absurdly low probability on the other side of the equation (Steve existing in the first place). Some people, who are already concerned with evil AI, find Roko's Basilisk problematic because they can imagine it actually happening; they inappropriately weigh the probability of that AI coming into existence because it's in the class of things they are frightened of. Nobody is reasonably frightened of Steve.

There's a bigger problem with this kind of basilisk; Anti-Steve is equally probably; Anti-Steve will -reward- you for eternity for knowing about Orphan's Basilisk. The absurdities cancel out. However, Orphan's Basilisk doesn't mention Anti-Steve, inappropriately elevating the Steve Hypothesis in your brain.

Probably not.

Research shows that gratitute --> happier, you're asking happier --> gratitude?

Research has not shown that gratitude is the only way to get happier.

click the "poll help" in "show help" guide is there I think.

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Comment_formatting#Polls

What do you mean with the word "disutility"?

Could you clarify what you take to be the relationship between utility and disutility? (If, e.g., disutility = -utility, then max expected disutility is the exact same thing as min expected disutility, and trying to do one is the same as trying to do the other.)

Prepositions at the end of sentences are actually perfecty valid in English. Only obnoxious teachers insist otherwise.

If you say "This is some stuff I hate to put up with," and someone complains about your sentence ending in a preposition, I think the correct rephrasing is "This is some stuff I hate to put up with, you asshole." But here are some more serious answers:

"Stuff I hate to put up with" does not end with a preposition - "put up with" is functioning as a compound verb here. It's like saying "Popsicles I hate to lick." Anyone who hassles anyone about this should refer to paragraph one.

"I don't want to exercise, but I have to" becomes (if one wants to follow this arbitrary rule, which, to reiterate, one needn't) "I don't want to exercise, but I have to exercise," or alternately, "Though I have to, I don't want to exercise."

AFAICT, "Best" is ordered strictly by the number of upvotes, and isn't tempered by the number of downvotes. What shows up seems to vary by what's currently trending (varying by your configured comment window), rather than changes to the logic.

The first thing that's commonly held to be difficult is exploiting it in the box without accidentally letting it out. E.g., it says "if you do X you will solve all the world's hunger problems, and here's why", and you follow its advice, and indeed it does solve the world's hunger problems -- but it also does other things that you didn't anticipate but the AI did.

(So exploiting it in the box is not an unproblematic option.)

The second thing that may be difficult in some cases is exploiting it in the box without being persuaded to let it out. This may be true even if you have a perfectly correct reasoned argument showing that it should be exploited in the box but not let out -- because it may be able to play on the emotions of the person or people who have the ability to let it out.

(So saying "here is an argument for not letting it out" doesn't mean that there isn't a risk that it will get let out on purpose; someone might be persuaded by that argument, but later counter-persuaded by the AI.)