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I was still hoping for a suet if normal life. At least for a decade or maybe more. But that just doesn't seem possible anymore. This is a rough night.
I recovered from surgery alone.
I had extensive facial feminization surgery. My jaw was drilled down. Same with brow ridge. Nose broken, reshaped packed. No solid go d for months.
Recovery was challenging alone but I was certain I could manage it myself. I spared myself begging for help. The horror of noticing I was pissing off my friend by needing help.
No regrets. I'm quite recovered now. That was very interesting month alone.
The truth should be rewarded. Even if it's obvious. Everyday this post is more blatantly correct.
I don't think he is directly responsible. But recent events are imo further evidence his methods are bad. If I said some dangerous teacher was Buddhist I would not be implicating the Buddha directly. Though it would be some evidence for the Buddha failing as a teacher.
Is the hoody gonna be good? Hoodies are often really shitty quality and texture. If you make a good one I will pay the 1K.
The Local Vasserite has directly stated "i purposefully induce mania in people, as taught by Michael Vassar". Seems like the connection to michael Vassar is not very tenuous. At least that is my judgement. Others can disagree. Vassar does not have to personally administer the method or be currently supportive of his former student.
I honestly have no idea what you mean. I am not even sure why "(self) statements you hear while on psychedelics are just like normal statements" would be a counterpoint to someone being in a very credulous state. Normal statements can also be accepted credulously.
Perhaps you are right but the sense of self required is rare. Practical most people are empirically credulous on psychedellics.
When you take psychedelics you are in an extremely vulnerable and credulous position. It is absolutely unsafe to take psychedelics in the presence of anyone who is going to confidently expound in the nature of truth and society. Michael Vassar, Jessica Taylor and other are extremely confident and aggressive about asserting their point of view. It is debatable how ok that is under normal circumstances. It is absolutely dangerous if someone is on psychedelics.
Even a single trip can be quite damaging.
I consulted multiple people to make sure my impression was accurate .Every person, except you, agree you are much more schizophrenic than before the events. My personal opinion is you currently fit the diagnosis criteria. I do not accept that people are the unique authority on whether they have developed schizophrenia.
Yes you are the second person observed to have a schizophrenic event. In your case I doubt long lasting.
Events are recent and to some extent ongoing. Though the 'now they are literally schizophrenic' event occurred some months ago. Pacific northwest. This incident has not been written up in public afaik.
A second person has now had a schizophrenic episode. This occurred a few days ago. Though I do not think the second person will end up persistently schizophrenic.
I am not talking about any of the more well known cases.
The idea that people would do these things in the 'rationalist' community is truly horrifying to me. I am a believer in doing somewhat innovative or risky things. But you are supposed to do them somewhat safely.
Don't Induce psychosis intentionally. Don't take psychedelics while someone probes your beliefs. Don't let anyone associated with Michael Vasser anywhere near you during an altered state.
Edit: here is a different report from three years ago with the same person administering the methods:
Mike Vasser followers practice intentionally inducing psychosis via psychedelic drugs. Inducing psychosis is a verbatim self report of what they are doing. I would say they practice drug induced brain washing. TBC they would dispute the term brain washing and probably would not like the term 'followers' but I think the terms are accurate and they are certainly his intellectual descendants.
Several people have had quite severe adverse reactions (as observed by me). For example rapidly developing serious literal schizophrenia. Schizophrenia in the very literal sense of paranoid delusions and conspiratorial interpretations of other people's behavior. The local Vasserite who did the 'therapy'/'brainwashing' seems completely unbothered by this literal schizophrenia.
As you can imagine this behavior can cause substantial social disruption. Especially since the Vasserite's don't exactly believe in social harmony. This has all precipitated serious mental health events in many other parties. Though they are less obviously serious than "they are clinically schizophrenic now".But that is a high bar.
I have been very critical of cover ups in lesswrong. I'm not going to name names and maybe you don't trust me. But I have observed this all directly. If you are let people toy with your brain while you are under the influence of psychedelics you should expect high odds of severe consequences. And your friends mental health might suffer as well.
Edit: these are recent events. To my knowledge never referenced on lesswrong.
edit: For anyone who feels the connection to Michael Vassar is too tenuous. The Local Vasserite in question has directly stated "i purposefully induce mania in people, as taught by Michael Vassar" to multiple people.
The market isnt efficient. Which isn't to say it is easy to beat. Your friends strategies don't sound promising. It also seems strange to me he is obsessed with crypto and thinks it will do well but isn't a crypto investor. Sounds pretty inconsistent with his beliefs.
It's worth remembering many versions of ',,the market is efficient' are almost or totally unfalsifiable.
I was a miserable child. When I was nine years old I remember watching one and thinking "I have almost a decade left to serve. This is a long sentence for an adult and im just a kid. But at least I will get out one day".
I was eventually set free. But until my freedom came all I could really do was bide my time and try to cope with the torture. And I most certainly consider it torture in retrospect. I was physically assaulted by my dad and I was horribly, horribly sleep deprived. But I managed to keep some of my sanity and pick up some MTG cards I later sold at a large profit. It could have been a lot worse for future me.
Love is true if you will fight for it. Not destroy yourself, not commit suicide but fight bravely.
The 'Food' and the 'Drug' parts behave very differently. By default food products are allowed. There may be purity requirements or restaurant regulations but you don't need to run studies or get approvals to serve an edible product or a new combination. By default drugs are banned.
I think the FDA is under zealous about heavy metals and other contaminants. But the FDA does a decent job of regulating food. However the 'drug' side is a nightmare. But the two situations are de facto handled in very, very different ways. So its not obvious why an argument would cover both of them.
I'm sending my funds/votes to lighthaven. It's a very well run venue and afaik needs funding. It should eventually be profitable or break even but needs some help getting started. Really useful and important to support well executed projects.
Most of the republican party wants to outright ban pornography. Full ban in project 2025. And they consider lots of LBGT representation fundamentally pornographic.
You can make make people/entities actually equal. You can also remove the need for the weaker entity to get the stronger entities permission. Either go more egalitarian or less authoritarian or both. Its worth noting that if you dont want to be authoritarian its important to blin yourself to information about the weaker party. The ebst way to not be overbearing is to not know what behavior they are getting up to. This is why children's privacy is so important. Its much easier to never known than to resist your urge to meddle.
I have previously bet large sums on elections. Im not currently placing any bets on who will win the election. Seems too unclear to me (note I had a huge bet on biden in 2020, seemed clear then). However there are TONS of mispricings on polymarket and other sites. Things like 'biden will withdraw or lose the nomination @ 23%' is a good example.
Leadership is supposed to be about service not personal gain.
A serious effective altruism movement with clean house. Everyone who pushed the 'work with AI capabilities company' line should retire or be forced to retire. There is no need to blame anyone for mistakes, the decision makers had reasons. But they chose wrong and should not continue to be leaders.
Lumina is incredibly cheap right now. I pre-ordered for 250usd. Even genuinely quite poor people I know don't find the price off-putting (poor in the sense of absolutely poor for the country they live in). I have never met a single person who decided not to try Lumina because the price was high. If they pass its always because they think its risky.
Leftwing point of view:
Its a wealth transfer to younger people. Im fully aware that middle aged people have college debt.
Conversely wealth inequality by age is fairly extreme.
So I remain extremely in favor of student debt cancellation. Note I have never taken on any student debt so I obviously dont have any.
Many things can be done by the right people. But Idk 'radical honesty' adjacent ideas usually go real bad.
Im a real fan of insane ideas. I literally do Acid every monday. But I gotta say among crazy ideas 'be way way more honest' is well trodden ground and the skulls are numerous. It just really rarely goes well. Im a pretty honest guy and am attracted to the cluster. But if you start doing this you are definitely trying something in a cluster of ideas that usually works terribly.
If anything I have to constantly tell myself to be less explicit and 'deeply honest'. It just doesnt work well for most people.
Did the students really want to learn?
A few times I de facto taught a course on 'calculus with proofs' to a few students who wanted to learn from someone who seemed smart and motivated. I didn't get any money and they didnt get paid. We met twice a week. I could give some lectures and they discuss problems for a few hours. There was homework. We all took it very seriously. It was clearly not a small amount of work but I frankly found it invigorating. Normal classes were usually not invigorating.
I will say I found tutoring much more invigorating than teaching courses. When a student comes to you for tutoring they tend to REALLY wanna learn the material fast. Often there is a test coming up. They pay attention. If you are good they are grateful for your attention. And you feel grateful to them too! Its wonderful to see someone learn fast. Many students will be genuinely sincerely thankful to their good tutors. It makes sense the tutors were trying to help them learn as efficiently as possible!
I think teaching is soul crushing because neither the student nor the teacher is properly motivated. Teachers are not providing their students with optimal learning environments, they aren't even trying (where as a good tutor is actually trying. Even at a commercial tutoring center). And the students aren't trying all that hard to learn.
This is my usual conclusion but the issue is not lack of skill in most cases. Its lack of 'actually trying' and lack of 'minimal attempt at good practices'. Professors/teachers just have to teach whoever shows up and needs the class. This is true in tutoring centers too, to some degree. But in tutoring there is much more expectation students will find a tutor they vibe with.
Education could be fun and invigorating for both sides if both sides came into the experience with a sincere attitude to try. But unless goals are aligned where could such an attitude come from. And goals are often not aligned.
I will say as a professor I also wanted to help my students. But the obvious way to help them was to uhhhhh 'give them as high a grade as I could possibly get away with'. If I could id have given them all As but the amount of flexibility I had varied. But it was just too soul crushing to not go into teaching with a sincere desire to help my students not judge them.
This thread honestly reminded me I live in a college town. I wonder if anyone needs high quality help with their analysis or algebra classes. I could probably charge some reasonable rate and im a very good tutor if the student has the right vibe. and by right vibe I dont mean exceptional ability I just mean something like 'gets along with sapph as a person. Sapph is good natured but very high energy and clearly a little insane. Ideally the student finds this charming'
Related question - Can you link me a summary of why aircraft weapons are good. I feel like it should be kinda hard to hit an aicraft with a missle or whatever. Aicraft are moving really fast and are not the biggest target. How much faster are missiles? The jet is already moving at a high speed but the missle has to accelerate from zero. Aircraft seem pretty vulnerable to lasers but are those kind of defenses actually deployed at our current tech level?
Strong upvoted. I learned a lot. Seriously interested in what you think is relatively safe and not extremely expensive or difficult to acquire. Some candidates I thought of but im not exactly well informed:
-- Grass fed beef
-- oysters/muscles
-- some whole grains? which?
-- fruit
-- vegetables you somehow know arent contaminated by anti-pest chemicals?
I really need some guidance here.
I prefer to keep plans private but I'm making big progress on meditation and mental re-wiring. Am working on a way to publicly demonstrate. Public plans just stress me out. I recently set two pretty ambitious goals. I figured I could use psychedelics to turbo-charge progress. The meditation one is coming along FAST.
The other goal is honestly blocked a bit on being super out of shape. Multiple rounds of covid really destroyed my cardio and energy levels. Need to rebuild those before a big push on goal 2.
Im with several other commentators. People know what unconditional love is. Many people have it for their family members, most commonly for their children but often for others. They want that. Sadly this sort of love is rare beyond family.
I felt some amount of unconditional towards my dad. He was really not a great parent to me. He hit me for fun, was ashamed of me, etc. But we did have some good times. When he was dying of cancer I was still a good son. Was quite supportive. Not out of duty, I just didnt want him to suffer any more than needed. I felt genuinely love. I would have done a lot of costly things for him if he asked. My mom and uncle were giving him intrusive treatment than he wanted. Though it hadnt gotten too out of hand yet (except for the fact it burned all my moms money). But I very seriously told him during visits if he said the word Id call my lawyers and make sure he didn't get medically tortured. This would have cost me a lot of money and time but he was my dad! How can a son let his father down like that. He died before legal issues came to a head but I was in his camp. I didnt care how many people got mad at me.
Does anyone have high quality analysis of how effective machines are for strength training and building muscles. Not free weights specifically machines. Im not the pickiest on how one operationalizes 'work'. More interested in the quality of the analysis. But some questions:
-- Do users get hurt frequently? Are the injuries chronic? (This is the most important question)
-- Do people who use them consistently gain muscle
-- Can you gain a 'lot' of muscle and strength liek you can with free weights. Or people cap out quickly if they are fit
-- Does strength from free weight carry over to other things. To barbells? To bodyweight calisthenics? To sports?
As I said im not the pickiest. Id rather have a great analysis of 'carryover to curling' than a meh quality analysis that covered all of my questions.
Im not particularly against pivotal acts. It seems plausible to me someone will take one. Would not exactly shock me if Sam Altman himself planned to take one to prevent dangerous AGI. He is intelligent and therefore isnt going to openly talk about considering them. But I dont have any serious objection to them being taken if people are reasonable about it.
A rather large fraction of the total words in this document are dedicated to safety warnings. I do not see how its possible to deny I seem quite focus on some sense of safety. I focused on the safety issues I think are genuinely the most pressing (addiction risks, trauma). I genuinely do not think that drug purity issues are the main risk of taking this advice. Certainly not for ketamine sourced in San Fransisco. Also the service I linked in SF also sends samples to a lab for quite thorough testing and you get results in about four weeks. You should believe I genuinely disagree with you on what the risks are for the substances mentioned.
I think modafinal is great for a lot of people. But I made the choice to only write up the very best (in terms of expected outcomes) stuff. Given that many substances have risks or legal issues it was much simpler for me to just not mention a lot of stuff. I do not intend any implicit claim that other things aren't useful. But I didn't make a list of 'stuff I've investigated and found less good on average' vs 'stuff I have not investigated'.
Thanks for sharing moda is working that well for you
It feels like bad praxis to punish people for things they got right!
The circle is by far my favorite solstice song. I like to it all the time. It is definitely the most 'sapph values' part of the performance. I find it beautiful. A ray of pure divine grace. I will say im not exactly bad at being rational in concrete ways. Im fairly successful economically, socially and romantically despite having an abusive childhood. I attribute my success to being methodical and rational about things, at least some of the time. But there is something about rat values that differs from mine. So its very good for my feeling included that the Circle has survived the culls.
If any of my adoring fans, or anyone else, wants to grab lunch/dinner/a drink let me know. Im in SF for a bit. Lots to talk about. Also I try to do an hour plus of walking per day. So happy to walk. Though im not always up for a big hike. Lots to do.
I didn't have time or energy! This shit was going parabolic! Whatever happened to Aumann's agreement theorem!
I will note this is both a cool as fuck project and the token is like 2x+ from when I posted. So idk why im getting downvoted. I guess lesswrong jsut isnt into finance for personal gain or to look at dope stuff.
The lesswrong/EA communities 'inside game' strategy for AI safety is genuinely embarrassing to me as a longtime community member. Quokkas gonna quokka but this is ridiculous.
Obviously this is up a fuckton
Serious advice: Your close friends and partners should actively admire you and how you live your life. Don't settle for less. You can have less close relations across the divide. But your closest circle should see you as a hero.
Emmett Shear reminds us that if you are playing Street Fighter [2 Turbo, presumably] then the solution to the so-called ‘cheese’ moves that seem overpowered is not to ban them, it is to use them until someone shows you or figures out the counter, then everything is fine.
This works exactly because the game is well-designed, with good counters to every such move. If that was not true, this would fail. It also relies on having enough data to find the counter-moves, and enough practice to learn them, to get to the new equilibrium. It does genuinely ruin a different experience some people want. Keep those things in mind while generalizing.
Its worth noting that, at this point, the vast majority of paper magic is explicitly competitive. Commander has eclipsed everything else combined. And in normal commander if your playgroup finds something cheap than you basically can't use it! Normal commander games run on social consensus of whats acceptable, definitely de facto ban fully optimized lists, and have a strong norm of not bringing strategies anyone at the table strongly objects to. Seems like most people prefer this flexible 'scrubby' ruleset.
it is interesting to me that what has won out is neither strictly competitive nor strictly freeform. Commander has a banned list and most people dont explicitly deviate from it. People rarely play totally homebrew formats. What has won is a 'consensus ruleset' + 'flexible social norms around what is de facto banned for being too strong or cheesy'. Very interesting to me.
Note: Im aware CEDH exists but I'm counting it as part of 'everything else' for these purposes. I play IRL modern and modern/legacy on mtgo (im sapphirestar on mtgo! send me a friend request if you wanna jam some games). so im not exactly the scrubbiest person myself. But it definitely seems like the hardcore tribe lost out in the marketplace for playershare.
I don't really get why this wouldn't get funded.
Current AI weights
A culture that denigrates being altruistic/nice in small ways makes it really hard to know who to trust. I understand their is an aversion to 'virtue signaling' but accepting rat/ea culture really feels like it disables my intuitive (and honestly decently reliable) intuition for who is trustworthy. Imo there is a good reason people check things like 'how do they treat waiters' when deciding who is a trustworthy partner or friend. That stuff cannot replace explicit logical altruism. But it seems like a mistake to jettison being kind in smaller ways throughout your life.
Progress is mostly illegal or at least extremely hobbled by regulations. When people are free to innovate there is usually quite rapid progress. There are a few exceptions like fundamental physics but existing physics explains things we actually interact with fairly well except at extremely high energies. I have all sorts of very viable and productive business ideas that would help people. But they are either illegal or regulations make them tooo expensive to start up. This is the norm. If you want to improve things you need to look for areas where innovation is still doable without incurring gigantic costs.
A browser extension that colors reddit usernames red if the user is a likely bot.