Posts

What would “The Medical Model Is Wrong” look like? 2023-04-21T01:46:55.720Z
AstralCodexTen and Rationality Meetup Organisers’ Retreat Asia Pacific region 2022-10-12T03:20:43.461Z
I was asked about how to resolve strong emotional fear concerns around the basilisk and this is my instructions as to how to do that. 2022-04-05T06:14:15.374Z
A conversation about growing through the history of the rationality movement and some of it's history 2022-04-05T02:39:56.347Z
Rationalists should meet Integral Theory 2021-06-04T05:14:01.928Z
A workshop on Life Influences 2021-01-10T11:23:38.719Z
Fishbowl reality 2020-10-04T02:16:18.595Z
Reflections on a no content January 2020 experiment 2020-03-22T15:32:29.797Z
A Money Dojo 2019-10-16T20:35:11.718Z
Alleviating Bipolar with meditation 2019-08-04T05:15:49.246Z
Collaborative VS adversarial truth seeking 2019-07-01T23:48:09.817Z
A Map of the Lesswrong-O-Sphere of Interest 2019-05-04T04:19:25.345Z
A quick map of consciousness 2019-05-01T02:17:42.593Z
Many maps, Lightly held 2019-04-24T02:25:12.621Z
Leaky Concepts 2019-03-05T22:01:37.595Z
Dojo on stress 2019-02-09T22:49:59.890Z
Is this how I choose to show up? 2019-02-08T00:30:27.798Z
Boundaries - A map and territory experiment. [post-rationality] 2019-02-01T02:08:35.372Z
In what way has the generation after us "gone too far"? 2019-01-24T10:22:34.063Z
The Tether Theory and the Concrete, Subtle and Causal tiers 2019-01-14T00:07:50.829Z
Lesswrong Sydney - Dinner - Scott Aaronson comes to town! 2018-12-28T18:33:53.592Z
Feedback from emotions 2018-10-02T03:53:09.614Z
Code Switch 2018-09-29T00:32:18.302Z
Attacking enlightenment 2018-09-28T01:18:38.233Z
What is your relationship with your self? 2018-09-04T01:32:19.287Z
Open Thread September 2018 2018-08-31T21:38:19.118Z
Emotional Training Model 2018-08-01T06:41:09.832Z
Open Thread August 2018 2018-08-01T01:49:18.598Z
The Feedback Problem 2018-07-29T23:54:13.059Z
The Experimental Apparatus 2018-07-26T22:16:35.782Z
The problem of other minds 2018-07-24T01:04:06.396Z
The lesswrong slack - an introduction to our regulars 2018-06-04T06:29:18.247Z
Open Thread June 2018 2018-05-31T22:34:56.656Z
Open Thread May 2018 2018-05-01T06:23:37.468Z
Remembering the passing of Kathy Forth. 2018-04-16T01:53:56.536Z
I'm going to help you quit Facebook with some science 2018-04-12T03:09:30.324Z
Basic model of Sending a Message (Communication 101) 2018-03-25T23:55:52.888Z
Rationality Sydney pub meetups and Lesswrong Dojos 2018-03-12T00:09:47.215Z
Two kinds of Agency 2018-02-08T06:28:18.505Z
Complainy and Explainy voice 2018-01-18T01:47:09.374Z
How I accidentally discovered the pill to enlightenment but I wouldn’t recommend it. 2018-01-03T00:37:53.005Z
How I accidentally discovered the pill to enlightenment but I wouldn’t recommend it. 2018-01-03T00:37:18.450Z
Object level weight loss tips 2018-01-01T22:15:01.427Z
The answer sheet 2017-12-31T00:26:08.144Z
2017: A year in Science 2017-12-30T06:09:41.666Z
Books I read 2017 - Part 1. Relationships, Learning 2017-12-18T09:38:43.505Z
Meaning wars 2017-12-14T23:17:01.874Z
Problems as dragons and papercuts 2017-11-03T01:42:01.492Z
Problems as dragons and papercuts 2017-11-03T01:41:53.922Z
Cutting edge technology 2017-10-31T06:00:42.665Z

Comments

Comment by Elo on What would “The Medical Model Is Wrong” look like? · 2023-04-22T12:09:34.915Z · LW · GW

Please subscribe me to your newsletter! If you have a Google doc, I'd be interested to read it or offer comments!

Comment by Elo on What would “The Medical Model Is Wrong” look like? · 2023-04-22T12:07:54.735Z · LW · GW

I'd be interested in a post on "how to shop for a physician" if you want to write more about it.

Comment by Elo on AstralCodexTen and Rationality Meetup Organisers’ Retreat Asia Pacific region · 2022-10-12T22:28:25.086Z · LW · GW

modified.  Thanks!

Comment by Elo on Fiber arts, mysterious dodecahedrons, and waiting on “Eureka!” · 2022-08-06T01:09:37.922Z · LW · GW

You can also felt a knitted object for a double effort, secure structure.

Comment by Elo on Fiber arts, mysterious dodecahedrons, and waiting on “Eureka!” · 2022-08-06T01:08:41.104Z · LW · GW

Yes but why not use the more basic popsicle stick with a hole in it. There's no additional benefit from the ball shape. For example a lantern - no reason to use an exactly 12 sided shape over many other designs.

Comment by Elo on Books I read 2017 - Part 1. Relationships, Learning · 2021-12-09T09:05:49.774Z · LW · GW

Yes. Since 2017, I stopped reviewing. I still read more books but I felt a shift to "seeing the shape of the elephant" and felt comfortable with not writing about them.

I shifted the way I read to more letting the information wash over me and letting the ways that information needs to integrate with my being, self organise.

This year I read less but still about 50 books a year. My maximum was 130 books a year. My topics have shifted to psychology, therapy and business books. You can see my newer book list on my google doc here - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xqpnXl0N5gXse-FbqWFwWTH9BygTggccRd6iIQcq1x4/edit?usp=drivesdk

Prior years are linked. Best books are bold.

Comment by Elo on People who lie about how much they eat are jerks · 2021-06-04T05:19:37.788Z · LW · GW

Dieting is more about therapeutically soothing one's self.  The black box CICO is a good foundation but people eat because their emotions, cognition and somatic experience tell them they need to.  Dieting is one of the hardest things people do because it's a long effort process, however I believe there's ways to do it easier.  I haven't solved the dieting problem completely for myself but I feel like I am close.

I'd suggest people now to look at the immunity to change process in the book "right weight, right mind" and also do therapy with a therapist you trust on the issue if it remains significant and a battle.

Comment by Elo on Attacking enlightenment · 2020-10-12T07:41:44.554Z · LW · GW

I initiated, saidA did not reply.

Comment by Elo on What are examples of Rationalist fable-like stories? · 2020-09-28T19:23:32.196Z · LW · GW

Story of Richard hamming:

Richard hamming used to work at Bell labs, where he would befriend someone new in the cafeteria and talk to them about their field.

The next day he would ask them about the most prominent and important problems in their field.

And in the third day he would ask, "why aren't you working on the most important problem?"

On day 4 he would have to find a new friend to annoy at lunch time.

He inspires us to ask each other, "what is the most important problem in your life?" and "why aren't you working on it?"

Comment by Elo on "Mild Hallucination" Test · 2019-10-16T20:27:56.382Z · LW · GW

S1 knows a lot of things. Some examples include "gut feel", that can usually be inquired about and led back to a memory.

Example: I was once playing Blood on the Clocktower, a group party game. I used my gut to suspect someone, when I asked it why, A moment of the person looking down in a particular way after saying something came to mind. Turns out I was right and we killed the evil person on the first turn. Something that's supposed to take all game.

S1 knows how to ski better than S2. When I went skiing a few years ago, people would ski for a bit while watching what their s1 was doing, then stop to explain which way to lean or how to ski and repeat for a few instructions (lean to the left, put the weight to the right). Skiing has some counter-lean behaviours which are hard to insist via s2 first.

The same thing applies for juggling, or learning how to juggle, riding a bike, swimming, dancing, and most physical skills.

S1 also handles emotions better, where s2 would like to cognitively soothe via intellectual justification, s1 can usually declare, "I feel bad", and soothe via self validation of emotion in a way that s2 can only narrative about how I feel bad and why.

Comment by Elo on "Mild Hallucination" Test · 2019-10-11T20:10:30.842Z · LW · GW

Looks like from a rational perspective we can notice that our sensors are fallible.

Breathing walls seems to be the whole body/heart beat throwing the visual field out of lock. Usually counteracted by the brain in normal processing of the vision.

Visual snow is the noise in the visual field if it's too sensitive and after image is literally after image in the proteins in the back of the eye.

The gap between the sensor bug, brain compensation mechanism and imaginary mental "control" of a kasina after image is a pretty slim one.

It is interesting to explore that and hopefully can help break people out of perfect trust in what they have of their sensory apparatuses and brain interpretation mechanisms

Some people have it more than others.

From a non rational and mystical perspective, as the distinction between map and territory becomes blurred and the white noise can organise itself into information, there are interesting things to be learned about the way that s1 "knows" things that system 2 does not explicitly know until it self inquires.

Comment by Elo on Scope Insensitivity Judo · 2019-08-09T03:11:22.437Z · LW · GW

There's something like a mental motion that I'd call "escalation". A sudden leap from zero to "aaaaaaah". you seem to be pointing to the way that brains sometimes escalate in unimportant situations (and build a narrative around what's going on and why escalation is the self justified behaviour).

I'm currently exploring causal chains. To use one of your examples,

I asked if I could bring a cushion from home for a retreat. I was told yes. I brought it. The cushion was orange, the zendo's cushions were black, it stuck out, and I was told I couldn't use my cushion.
I complied, but I was immediately caught by thoughts like "but you told me I could use my cushion" and "now my meditation will be worse because I'll be less comfortable" and "I'm not as good a zen student as I thought".
I felt embarrassed, defensive, let down, and defeated. I felt like a failure, like I was 2nd grade Gordy again getting in trouble for being weird.

At the moment of being told, the thought stream built a causal chain like:

1. Ask permission

2. Receive permission

3. time passes, events happen

4. told something that reverses the permission

5. feel "embarrassed, defensive, let down, and defeated. "

6. I felt like a failure, (Narrative) like I was 2nd grade Gordy again getting in trouble for being weird.

My current interest is in tracking these causal reasoning chains and noticing the moment of 5 that makes the link to 6. Often is feels like 1-4 are agency actions (my choices), but 5 happens to me, (and 6 follows naturally).


Do you have any thoughts on that?

Comment by Elo on Alleviating Bipolar with meditation · 2019-08-07T19:22:02.390Z · LW · GW

No medication. I have no symptoms any more either.

Tara Brach is good yes.

Comment by Elo on Overcoming Akrasia/Procrastination - Volunteers Wanted · 2019-07-15T19:23:21.165Z · LW · GW

I'll play!

Comment by Elo on Open Thread July 2019 · 2019-07-14T07:36:02.796Z · LW · GW

take it seriously?

That's up to you. I've got a lot of value from the structure he outlines. It's a lot more reasoned than some of the other mysterious odd things I read.

If there is something wrong with the theory and the way it maps to the practice, is it better to read more theory or do more practice and make new theories? I would suggest it depends on the person and what they have found to work in the past. And also with an awareness to the loops of bad habits - "sharpen the saw" type problems. Sometimes it's more valuable to stop sharpening the saw, and start cutting down the tree. (rationality frame of thinking loves to sharpen more and cut less)

Comment by Elo on Open Thread July 2019 · 2019-07-14T02:22:01.538Z · LW · GW

I can offer an explanation that might fit. Rationalists tend toward expertise mode thinking (expert from the torbert action logic framework). Behaviour like reading the book is in line with the expert behaviour.

Cfar techniques and related in-person methods are not always about being the expert, they are about doing the best thing. Being a better expert is not always the same as being the better munchkin, the better person or the person who can step out of their knowledge beliefs.

In theory, the expert thing is the best thing. In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, in practice, there's a big difference between theory and practice.

Having said that, I've never done cfar, and I teach workshops monthly in Sydney and I think they are wrong to discourage sharing of their resources. As the same time I accept the idea of intellectual property being protected even if that's not the case they are claiming.

(I'm in the process of writing up my resources into a collection)

Comment by Elo on Magic is Dead, Give me Attention · 2019-07-11T04:38:01.648Z · LW · GW

I too know how to juggle... Some of this post is remarkably familiar to me.

Comment by Elo on Raemon's Shortform · 2019-07-03T22:22:47.592Z · LW · GW

I'd appreciate this information (about looking at votes) being published in meta.

The difference between "confusion" and "complain" is a grey area. I've heard people exclaim, "I'm so confused. This is exciting!" and other times people exclaim, "I'm so confused, this is frustrating".

I suspect you weren't sharing your confusion because you had a fun and jolly sentiment behind it. But being text, it's very hard to tell. (hence the follow up question, "how was that confusion for you?" - which I assume you weren't taking seriously and weren't going to answer, particularly because I put you on the defensive about mod culture and powers)

Two separate comments here:

  1. If users knew more about what the mods were or were not doing, there would be less to bring up in my original comment.
  2. Unclear about why you shared your confusion. What are your motives and in having those motives from a mod-power position, how does that shape the culture around here?
Comment by Elo on Raemon's Shortform · 2019-07-03T21:41:34.555Z · LW · GW

That's not fair.

I don't believe you as a moderator, who can see who's voted, should ever have the right to make the comment that solicits a user to justify their voting behaviour in the way you've done.

Let alone on your own short form feed. Seems a bit selfish, with asymmetric information here.

What's it like for you to be very confused? How's that for you? How did the (confusion) comment add to the discussion?

Comment by Elo on A Map of the Lesswrong-O-Sphere of Interest · 2019-07-01T23:53:58.069Z · LW · GW

I am surprised that this got as many upvotes but zero discussion. I am wondering if I currently publish true and useful things that don't generate conversation? Should I adapt to try to publish posts that generate conversation over useful posts?

------

My purpose here was to generate a list of possible tags for a sub-forum system. There being no discussion I am guessing this won't be taken seriously. I wish I could see how many people have read this and better understand if it's a generally agreed sentiment or generally disagreed sentiment.

Not only was this not commented on, it was never referenced in relevant archipelago posts, or commented on in those posts. does that mean I'm shadow posting and in my alternative universe I am doing nothing helpful, or does it mean that this post was obviously accepted as cannon and so obvious that it was not commented on.

Comment by Elo on Instead of "I'm anxious," try "I feel threatened" · 2019-06-30T03:29:00.428Z · LW · GW

The word "state" might be more helpful than the word "trance" for researching relevant information and resources.

Comment by Elo on Welcome and Open Thread June 2019 · 2019-06-29T05:46:24.400Z · LW · GW

Do what you like. I'd say that some people want to know, some don't. I wish we had tags like "typo" or "nitpick" because I might want to make a self aware comment that was one of those but we don't right now.

I suspect people like corrections but it's a hard thing to navigate with kindness at the forefront of "it's spelt wrong"

Comment by Elo on Instead of "I'm anxious," try "I feel threatened" · 2019-06-28T20:43:52.861Z · LW · GW

The other previous way to reframe is to put anxiety as excitement. And act accordingly.

Comment by Elo on Instead of "I'm anxious," try "I feel threatened" · 2019-06-28T20:42:48.915Z · LW · GW

I'd offer a different question. And I'd suggest a reframe of anxiety. Anxiety is about the body delivering more energy to itself, it comes with extra mindful attention, and it's about protection yes, but not necessarily threat.

Most of the time when I get some sensation like anxiety I'm thinking about how I might benefit from this extra energy that my s1 has decided I need. How I might use it to pay extra attention and me more vigilant or cautious for errors.

As you said it's not really a threat, for me it's more about my concern that I'll make a mistake.

"anxious" energy is here to help me to be more vigilant and cautious about this concern.

Comment by Elo on How to deal with a misleading conference talk about AI risk? · 2019-06-27T22:59:47.210Z · LW · GW

This should be advertised in meta.

Comment by Elo on Mythic Mode · 2019-06-26T18:27:16.055Z · LW · GW

Archetypes are good (Caroline Myss is one author), trickster makes this world, and spiral dynamics are three places to look for modes of thinking.

Comment by Elo on What does the word "collaborative" mean in the phrase "collaborative truthseeking"? · 2019-06-26T18:25:19.167Z · LW · GW

Should this be its own post?

Comment by Elo on What does the word "collaborative" mean in the phrase "collaborative truthseeking"? · 2019-06-26T18:24:49.771Z · LW · GW

There are two cultures in this particular trade-off. Collaborative and adversarial.

I pitch collaborative as, "let's work together to find the answer (truth)" and I pitch adversarial as, "let's work against each other to find the answer (truth)".

Internally the stance is different. For collaborative, it might look something like, "I need to consider the other argument and then offer my alternative view". For adversarial, it might look something like, "I need to advocate harder for my view because I'm right". (not quite a balanced description)

Collaborative: "I don't know if that's true, what about x" Adversarial "you're wrong because of x".

Culturally 99% of either is fine as long as all parties agree on the culture and act like it. They do include each other at least partially.

Bad collaboration is not being willing to question the other's position and bad adversarial is not being willing to question one's own position and blindly advocating.

I see adversarial as going downhill in quality of conversation faster because it's harder to get a healthy separation of "you are wrong" from, "and you should feel bad (or dumb) about it". "only an idiot would have an idea like that".

In a collaborative process, the other person is not an idiot because there's an assumption that we work together. If adversarial process cuts to the depth of beliefs about our interlocker then from my perspective it gets un-pretty very quickly. Although skilled scientists are always using both and have a clean separation of personal and idea.

In an adversarial environment, I've known of some brains to take the feedback, "you are wrong because x" and translate it to, "I am bad, or I should give up, or I failed" and not "I should advocate for my idea better".

At the end of an adversarial argument is a very strong flip, popperian style "I guess I am wrong so I take your side".

At the end of a collaborative process is when I find myself taking sides, up until that point, it's not always clear what my position is, and even at the end of a collaborative process I might be internally resting on the best outcome of collaboration so far, but tomorrow that might change.

I see the possibility of being comfortable in each step of collaboration to say, "thank you for adding something here". However I see that harder or more friction to say so during adversarial cultures.

I advocate for collaboration over adversarial culture because of the bleed through from epistemics to inherent interpersonal beliefs. Humans are not perfect arguers or it would not matter so much. Because we play with brains and mixing territory of belief and interpersonal relationships I prefer collaborative to adversarial but I could see a counter argument that emphasised the value of the opposite position.

I can also see that it doesn't matter which culture one is in, so long as there is clarity around it being one and not the other.

Comment by Elo on Causal Reality vs Social Reality · 2019-06-25T23:25:35.731Z · LW · GW

Why is that weird? Instead of carrying gold around just carry these promising pieces of paper that guarantee value.

And everyone agreed. Probably not at first.

Comment by Elo on The Best Textbooks on Every Subject · 2019-06-25T23:01:37.663Z · LW · GW

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/c4glci/professionals_and_experts_of_reddit_what_is_the

Comment by Elo on Matt Goldenberg's Short Form Feed · 2019-06-23T00:02:06.935Z · LW · GW

You should add integral's interior and exterior to the diagram.

Comment by Elo on Defending points you don't care about · 2019-06-21T02:47:35.053Z · LW · GW

There is no frame, and it's not clear what this point is until about half way through a dialogue between several people which needs to be thought through carefully to really understand.

Comment by Elo on Pattern's Shortform Feed · 2019-06-18T02:46:47.430Z · LW · GW

Google docs are good for saving content on the fly.

Comment by Elo on Discourse Norms: Moderators Must Not Bully · 2019-06-16T21:17:21.238Z · LW · GW

Are you acting as the moderator nitpicking, or acting as a user nitpicking?

Are you personally committed to arguing with this post because it potentially mandates moderation behaviour? Or because you want to demonstrate being the bully being described?

What on earth is going on with this whole comment thread??

Comment by Elo on 2017 LessWrong Survey · 2019-06-03T19:30:45.848Z · LW · GW

Nope, hasn't been done.

Comment by Elo on FB/Discord Style Reacts · 2019-06-02T22:14:07.173Z · LW · GW

My experience is reactions are important for real time conversations with too many people at once. It allows one person to speak and several people to agree without adding another line of text and clogging up the discussion.

There is another use case of "supportive" emojis where I would react hug to "I've had a rough day" from a friend of mine.

There's all the humour uses of emoji too but that's not what we want on lw.

Comment by Elo on Tales From the American Medical System · 2019-05-29T17:22:52.751Z · LW · GW

The battle over time and money (patient value for their time) (doc value for money) was more central to the discussion than life and death. Bringing in the subjective life and death claims helps to elevate the stakes of the discussion, but this "signalling game" was all about the time and the money, not the life and death as claimed by the report.

We can pretend it was about life and death but the ticking clock was still very long. I could think of it as a "runway". Yes at the end of the runway if the patient did nothing they could die in a week. On the other hand they have access to money and plenty of options. Lots of start ups run with 6 months of runway and crash, instagram had huge success in a very short time.

The fake runway here has death at the end, before that point includes, "the patient spends exorbitant money" making the runway longer.

Comment by Elo on Evidence for Connection Theory · 2019-05-29T00:33:13.164Z · LW · GW

By my understanding, leverage is working on human effectiveness. How to take a human and make them more effective at what they are doing.

There's a broad brush of choosing high leverage people to apply their efforts of effectiveness training and a broad brush of what counts as their effectiveness methodologies.

I am thinking of it as coaching from a perspective of "what works" above "what is proven", so branching into the post rationality area.

For example, if a person is learning piano. And they have maxed out deep work hours, and teacher hours, and relevant study programs, and expertise training. At some point teaching small stuff like posture, reading skills, memory, productivity, start to become effective techniques to add to the pile. As does maybe meditation, diet, and seemingly unrelated fields like social relationship management to better enable happiness and well-being while maximising piano learning. At some point the pollution in the air becomes a relevant factor, the development of the surrounding society, and more.

Comment by Elo on Open Thread May 2019 · 2019-05-24T16:40:34.678Z · LW · GW

There are definitely rationalist positions that have unexamined potential in the pr direction, where a good excuse is, "I haven't looked yet". (and a bad excuse might be, "that's dumb I don't want to look there"). In that sense there is rationality that is not yet at Post-rational investigations.

I had to have some sense and experience of investigating and knowing the world before I turned that machine on itself and started to explore the inner workings of the investigation mechanism.

Comment by Elo on Discourse Norms: Justify or Retract Accusations · 2019-05-24T01:23:28.372Z · LW · GW

I would think of this in terms of rights. Who has the right to post a new theory? Who has the right to challenge an existing concept? Who has the right to reply? Who has the right to defence?Who has the right to demand?

Everyone can choose which ones you want to and which ones you don't want to, but it's not possible to bind other people to your preferences against their will.

Comment by Elo on What is your personal experience with "having a meaningful life"? · 2019-05-23T22:43:26.509Z · LW · GW

This question is better informed by the works of Martin Seligman and his happiness/wellbeing department of psychology, Jordan Peterson's early book "Maps of meaning", and Victor Frankl.

Seligman suggests that meaning is one of the big things required to live a fulfilling and happy life.

Jordan Peterson proposed that meaning is narrative based and you can write your own meaning by journaling about your past/present/future.

Victor Frankl (post holocaust book - "man's search for meaning") invented logotherapy, suggesting that people need a reason and a purpose to exist. Described that while surviving the camps he was propelled by the desire to be able to one day tell his story. V also describes his patients and some of the ways he reflects back a cognitively meaningful conclusion to their struggles (man who died before his wife, was suggested that it was to save his wife from dying first and suffering without the man).

Buddhist meditators realise that meaning is subjective. because meaning is located in the brain, we can change it, we can manipulate it and we can make it work differently. I can do things like discount how much I value something, whenever I notice a motivation I can examine it's parts and find it's impermanence, I can notice how meaning does not satisfy and is just some chemistry in my brain. I can notice the self is an illusion and my own meaning is made up to satisfy something like an "ego" (ego is a word being butchered by many definitions).

Post rationalists can approach the problem like a game. What's the meaning at the end of the game? Okay, why don't I just stop playing the game and just do that. I call this the "just stop playing the game" game, and I've wanted to do it for as long as I was a rationalist. Only to realise that, the "just stop playing the game" game, is just another fancier game. Seeing the game, playing the game anyway, and realising it's a game, or seeing the game and not playing the game, starts looking like the same thing. A prison I can't escape. knowing these details, from the PR perspective, how do I play the game of my own choosing, my own meaning, while knowing I'm still in a game.

There's also the theory of spiral dynamics which describes how different people find meaning from different broad structures in a sociologically predictable and mapped out fashion. I will write an article about it at some point and have several drafts half written.

It's important to separate meaning from meaningful and the reasoning around meaning from the core meaningful thing. The difference between, "I really like sweet deserts" and "I like ice-cream" (but for meaning, X matters, Y are the reasons why it matters).


personal front:

Meaning is subjective, I accidentally made myself miserable by wanting things I could not have, then I accidentally made myself very disappointed by never wanting anything. It's been a meditative challenge to find the balance where I can want something and not be sad if I don't get it, and also not want something too hard that I feel meaningless being unable to get it, or meaningless once I do get it.

I explore what matters to other people, and that's been fun and interesting. There's a deep world of what matters to other people and why, and it's worth sharing and enjoying.

There's a complexity of validation for my own meaning, or some 1st person subjective desires never go away.

One thing I would like to acquire is the ability to have an enjoyable subjective experience almost all of the time.

Comment by Elo on Comment section from 05/19/2019 · 2019-05-19T22:29:18.021Z · LW · GW

This information should be publicly findable. And ideally anonymous information about reports received should also be published.

Comment by Elo on Data Analysis of LW: Activity Levels + Age Distribution of User Accounts · 2019-05-16T01:57:20.737Z · LW · GW

If it's a non-public view count, I don't see it becoming a goodheart metric. If something is too clickbait or trash, it would get downvotes. If it doesn't get downvotes, maybe there's good reasons.

Maybe it would be worth internally having:

  • page view count
  • upvote count
  • downvote count
  • vote total (also possibly up and down vote total)
  • comment count
  • some sort of relative metric that can compare this article to the other articles nearby.
Comment by Elo on Data Analysis of LW: Activity Levels + Age Distribution of User Accounts · 2019-05-15T22:20:07.624Z · LW · GW

There are two features. "author sees view count" and "public sees view count". Which one are you talking about?

Comment by Elo on Data Analysis of LW: Activity Levels + Age Distribution of User Accounts · 2019-05-15T20:57:19.771Z · LW · GW

For me, I don't write a clickbait and I don't write a community drama. But I've written posts with 5 hours of work and posts with 30mins of work. And different styles and qualities of 30min posts. I'd love to know if people are reading them.

A post with 100 views and +10 up votes VS a post with 15 views and +10 up votes is a very different thing.

Comment by Elo on Data Analysis of LW: Activity Levels + Age Distribution of User Accounts · 2019-05-15T05:27:32.113Z · LW · GW

Is there a reason that post view count is not public? (for each post? Anonymous counter)

Old style mybb forums had this function. Seems simple and easy to implement, OTOH at least have the post author be able to know how many views they are getting?

I'd be interested in the views a post is getting, the total site views a month, and therefore the relevance to the user base of my posts. (independent of comment and vote metric data)

Comment by Elo on Open Thread May 2019 · 2019-05-13T17:54:38.761Z · LW · GW

Pr is not in opposition either.

Comment by Elo on Open Thread May 2019 · 2019-05-13T16:49:33.308Z · LW · GW

Are you sure that post rationality is opposite to rationality? Where did that idea come from?

I've been involved in the loosely defined PR cluster for a while and I've not seen such a thing yet. Do you have a link?

Comment by Elo on The Relationship Between the Village and the Mission · 2019-05-13T07:13:35.862Z · LW · GW

Interested.

Comment by Elo on Open Thread May 2019 · 2019-05-12T01:47:21.292Z · LW · GW

Ah. I would still object to argument by credentials.