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Almost half a century ago, when I was 16 or 17 and still believed in God, I went to a synagogue with some people of my church for some kind of exchange thing. The service was quite boring though, as everything was in Hebrew and I didn't understand a thing. But there was nothing to be done except sitting still trying to be respectful. So I guess I fell into some kind of meditative state, and I don't remember anything about that, but just afterwards I felt that I had been in the presence of God, and a sense of great gratitude. I'm still surprised I didn't convert to Judaism on the spot; maybe I would have if I weren't so shy...
OK, I'll go first. I'd correct people's grammar and spelling a lot, and I'd tell overweight people how to lose weight.
Oh wait, I misunderstood the afterimage thing. No, I usually don't see them while I'm looking at something, only when I close my eyes or look away. I do sometimes get the effect you describe, but not often. I tried to see the 'snow' again just now, but I didn't see any.
My behavior is a compromise between different parts of me, and I'm good enough. “Doing good the best things rather than bad good/neutral things is generally supererogatory”. I was very relieved to learn that word and concept!
I definitely see afterimages, and I thought everyone did. I get movement in textured surfaces, but it doesn't look like 'breathing' at all. I get visual snow, but *not* with my eyes closed, only when I'm trying to see if it's raining outside, which can be hard to tell sometimes.
I made a midi file of it, because I wanted to hear what it sounded like. Let's see if I can share it.
Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking and Allen Carr's Easy Way to Control Alcohol have helped me stop smoking (20+ years ago) and drinking (2+ years ago). Can't recommend those enough!
Will the lyrics be included with the digital download?
Grocery line: I'd think about why I am waiting in it, wishing the supermarket had a self-checkout system like my usual one, which is so much faster and more convenient.
Youtube: background music for work, like music from World of Warcraft, 'world music', classical music.
Experience: compared to most people, I'm probably hyper-conscious of dogs. I like dogs, but only if they're friendly and well-behaved, and until I'm sure a dog is in that category I'm very wary of it (and even if I know a dog is friendly, I still don't want to startle it).
A better pain scale: https://i.imgur.com/S2R4pzI.png
I'll go with XKCDT.
Please go ahead en write it, I want to read it.
Used the poll
"Less equal" is a reference to "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" from Animal Farm.
Just happened to see this old comment. Sure enough, the cycling got skipped more and more often, until I just forgot about it completely. I really need to find something fun to do to get myself moving again.
It also made me think of the inner ring by C.S. Lewis, especially this part:
“If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.
EDIT: fixed typo.
I thought it was meant to be a parody, and I didn't find it very funny.
Yes, but some young people would fuck themselves up for life, possibly under pressure from their families. That happens now too, of course, and at least when it's legal they could get earlier and better help; but I still don't see any politician voting for it.
I guess that would depend on how likely your dentist thinks they're going to cause problems. Personal anecdata: I had to have a back molar extracted one time, and a wisdom tooth started growing right into the vacant spot, giving me a brand-new tooth. :-) I still have a wisdom tooth on the other side; I can feel the point under my gums, but it's not causing any problems so far (I'm 61).
I'm afraid the preservation techniques are still so bad that you can't be revived correctly even with improved future techniques.
More like 1/100000, and then when they thaw you you'll be brain damaged and have to live in an institution forever. They don't really know how to do this yet. How far along are they now? Have they frozen and thawed a mouse yet, and did it behave the same as before? I won't let them freeze me earlier than that, because there's essentially no chance I'll be even able to walk and talk, let alone be someone present me would recognize as 'me'.
...a reflexive, aversive reaction to ruminating. I'm almost more scared of ruminating, and the places that leads, than I am scared of pain. I don't know if this is a psychologically healthy stance...
I think it is. My own life is pretty good, actually, but I could easily talk myself into a depression if I didn't try and avoid ruminating as much as possible. "Don't believe everything you think"—I learned that here on LW, and that alone is easily worth all the time I've spent on this site.
This made me think of this cartoon: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174.
Right now, I'm grateful for coffee.
Are there any games which encourage a you/thou distinction?
I hope there are not, people would use the wrong cases and verb forms all the time.
He asked her to conjugate, but she declined.
So it helps them to be less wrong, as it were.
I would love to know more about how to create motivation!
I have taken the survey. I left a lot of questions blank though, because I really have no opinion about many of them.
It makes a lot of sense that the nature of questions regarding the "beginning" of the universe is nonsensical and anthropocentric, but it still feels like a cheap response that misses the crux of the issue. It feels like "science will fill in that gap eventually" and we ought to trust that will be so.
I think that's one question that science probably won't be able to answer. But that's no reason to just make something up! Maybe we can't rule out a 'powerful, intelligent creative entity' – but why would you even think of that? And of course it just shifts the question to the next level, because where would that entity come from?
I think it probably matters a lot what people are conforming about. If it's about perception (which line is the same, which color is different) and several people all say the same thing that's different from what I thought I saw, I can see myself starting to doubt my perception. If it's about memory (what is the capital of Rumania?) I'd start thinking I must have misremembered. But if 4 people all said that 2+2=5, I'd realise the experiment wasn't about what they said it was.
My husband and I fell in love when I was 40 and he was 36. I agree with Viliam: the obsession was definitely weaker, and the idea that the other will make life perfect forever was missing. But that's a good thing, IMO.
Looks like the more you like nature/the outdoors, the less neurotic you are.
Shouldn't step 9 actually be the first?
Yeah, that one is better. :-)
I don't think it's true, period. It's true that "No one is in control of your happiness but you", but it does not follow that "therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change". And for it to be true instrumentally, it should give us a tip about how to control your happiness.
The most likely scenario is that you'll just die anyway; this one is the second most likely. They probably made mistakes freezing you, and also when thawing you, and you'll end up with severe 'Alzheimer's'. After you've paid a lot of money that could've gone to your family/favorite charity.
Your interpretation is possible too. It's just that I saw the other one first, and I didn't even think of yours till I saw your post.
Um. I upvoted CellBioGuy because I assumed 'Not just women' meant 'Not just women freak out when advancedatheist says stuff like that'. Was my interpretation wrong?
They're not in 'constant torment', I think. But 'unhappy most of the time', yeah. Not the animals you see outside in pastures, those are probably pretty content a lot of the time; but the ones that spend all their life in a cage, definitely.
The Syrians I don't know. Anyone in a refugee camp must be very unhappy, surely. But maybe they were happy before they had to go to those camps, and hopefully they'll get a chance to be happy again sometime. You'd have to ask the people themselves.
But I think most people's lives are net negative, not just the ones living in camps. Just go sit in a mall or something, and look at people's faces, and listen to what they're saying to each other, and in what tones. And it stands to reason. First you have to go to school, and you'd need to be pretty darn happy later in life to make up for that. And then you have to work, which most people hate. You're lucky if your job is just boring and you like your co-workers. Sure, in your free time you get to do stuff that's more fun, but you also get physical and emotional pain, and sickness.
Regarding factory farming - what alternative am I comparing it to? It's worse than happy animals frolicking in the fields, it's better than those animals not existing.
This is such a weird argument to me. It seems to me self-evident that happy animals > animals not existing > suffering animals. Or don't you think that factory animals are suffering?
Anonymous voting is the default, and I always leave it on.
You're right, of course (have an upvote). OTOH, I do like the start of the quote, because there is a difference between caring about something and believing you need to do something. I see the quote as a reminder that you don't have to do anything in an absolute sense. You have to do some things because you want some other things. 'I need to do ' should be short for 'I need to do because '. And it should be your reason, you shouldn't feel you have to do it just because others tell you to or because your parents told you when you were small.
On the gripping hand, I didn't upvote the quote either, because I don't like the part that's saying 'nothing is real'.
If they could even just revive a mouse, that'd help a lot already.
So far, cryonics looks like a great SF idea. One of those things that should be possible in theory, but may not be possible in practice. If you get frozen now, what I think will happen is that they'll do it wrong, and the people who thaw you will do it wrong, too. And those people will learn about what to avoid next time they thaw someone, and what the people who froze you should have done differently.
That's great, because it'll help people they freeze in 2215 to maybe have a real chance of being revived, so I'd be prepared to volunteer for it (but not pay a lot of money for it). But what if they succeed partially, and I don't just die (for real, this time) but end up a 'vegetable'? No, thanks, I'm not as altruistic as all that.
No, alas, I don't know of any official studies or anything, I've just read stories by transsexual people saying that's how they feel.
Since April I've lost over 10 kg and exercised every weekday.
Interesting! It's not the same thing as what happens when a magnet is attracted to a ferrous metal, though. As they explain in the comments, the magnet falling through the pipe creates a current in the copper, making it an electromagnet. That should work with any metal, also gold; but it identifies a metal only as a metal, you wouldn't be able to tell which one (maybe if you made sufficiently precise measurements you could tell by the strength of the magnetic field, but we're talking about someone wearing a magnetic ring, not about lab setups). You couldn't use it to tell if some ore contained gold.
But now I'm wondering what would happen if you drop a piece of non-ferrous metal through a magnetic pipe... A ring is a very short pipe though; to see any effects you'd probably have to film it and play it in slow motion, so it wouldn't be very useful for prospecting either.
I've been wearing a magnetic ring for a long time now, and my experiences are more or less the same. I have only one though; maybe I'll buy one for my other hand so I can play with the magnetic field too.
One thing to watch out for is magnetic keycards. My debit card doesn't have any problems (yet), and it's several years old; but the last 2 summers I've had to get the keycard for my hotel door remagnetized a few times. And yeah, if you're cleaning things with steel wool, you get tiny sharp pieces of it stuck on the ring, that are quite difficult to get off. I also take my ring off in bed, because our headboard consists of metal bars, and the ring tended to be attracted to it with a loud *ting* and wake up my husband.