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We are in the front patio! Look for a janky blue sign and an orange jacket.
Hello, we decided we didn't want to risk even 40% chance of rain so we're changing the venue.
VENUE CHANGE: We're going to Urban Roots!
1322 V Street Sacramento, CA, 95818 United States
Hope to see you guys there!
Oh okay, then yours is definitely superior. Good thing it's mine now.
Hi, there's a post for this meetup already.
It's here: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/5TKo5CHZyWAuxauRi/everywhere-meetup
But I guess this one is more official.
What are you planning to make? What did you like from what you tried?
Thanks, the page was causing my computer to freeze. I tried editing it twice.
Where can we talk about it? He has comments turned off.
Nooooo, I've been saying it wrong in my head the whole time.
Also, if you're going to put something somewhere that's not in its place, put it in a place that you'll HAVE to clean soon. I had a lot of success putting all my school-related stuff on my bed throughout the day in high school because I was guaranteed to pack it all up into my backpack because I had to use the bed to sleep.
How do you pronounce "Yvain"?
That's interesting, because I think I usually refrain from vengeance by default, but I do try to like ... limit further interaction and stuff. Maybe that's similar.
The way I was thinking about it is that there's an internal feelings component -- like, do you still feel sad and hurt and angry? Then there's the updating on evidence component -- are they likely to do that or similar things again? And then there's also a behavioral piece, where you change something in the way you act towards/around them (and I'm not sure if vengeance or just running awaaay both count?) So I wasn't sure which combination of those were part of "forgiveness" in common usage. It sounds like you're saying internal + behavioral, right?
Does anyone have a working definition of "forgiveness"? Given that definition, do you find it to be a useful thing to do?
It might help to precise-ify some of the language around what you mean by "more friends" and "more popular"? What kind of friends? What kind of popularity? Are there types of friends or popularity you don't want? Also, what kind of people can you usually hang out with one-on-one?
Also, when buying and wearing clothes, pay attention to how you feel! If you're wearing the spiffiest thing in the world but you feel uncomfortable in it for whatever reason, it'll show!
Be careful about using this! I have a sneaking suspicion that my car-sickness resulted in an aversion to cars.
I briefly worked at a desk with my back to two doors, which made me less likely to take breaks to read articles because I never knew who might be walking up behind me and looking at my screen.
See, I always worry that the easiest way to get through grading is to just give everyone A's regardless of what they turned in. So I feel like you somehow have to factor in a reward for quality or that's what your system will collapse into?
But doesn't that make you inclined to not read as carefully or grade as thoroughly or not leave as many comments? "Oh whatever, that was mostly right. Yay, high score!"
I'm both waiting around to see if anyone wants to write up an answer to the flirting question, while also thinking about whether some gender relations questions can first be decomposed into a series of well-written polls, so we could see which issues are the most contentious. Can polls be embedded into top-level posts?
Thanks for the link! It makes it much clearer to me how this project started.
Feel free to discuss any gender-related issues that you find relevant, especially responses to the questions that are posted in the thread below by your fellow LWers. [...] It is ok if they are half-formed, stream-of-consciousness writings.
However, I'm wondering if we would make more progress on gender issues if these submissions were structured essay prompts that requiring more argument or analysis? For example, a weekly (monthly?) gender-related question prompt with compiled responses. I ask because my reaction upon seeing this post was that this person is probably just sorta rambling about themselves, but if they were trying to make a cohesive point, then it would be kind of an unflattering one. Now that I have more reason to think that it's most likely the first option, I'm wondering if there's room for more structured posts.
An example of a gender-related writing prompt might be:
Do you believe that flirting with others is an ethical means of accomplishing non-sexual goals? Please define your terms and provide examples to illustrate your stance.
It's also gender-neutral, so anyone could respond? I guess the examples might be anecdotes that might require anonymity, but then the authors can use analogies instead.
So do these female submissions get some sort of prompt to respond to? Or are they just "Hey, you're a girl! Write whatever!" I'm trying to understand how to read some of these details.
Like if the scientists get their best thinking done while chopping carrots or something?
I was about to write about how it might feel weird to have someone else do tasks that you're perfectly capable of doing. Or maybe scientists might feel used (objectified?) that society only values them for their output if there's assistants constantly yanking away any non-science and saying, "Sir, please get back to your work!" But then I realized that this could be overcome by having the scientists decide on exactly which chores need to be done. However, that leads to the overhead of explaining to someone how you want something done, which is sometimes more annoying than just doing it yourself.
Would important scientists still do science at the same level of quality if all their stuff was aggressively personalized? I can think of a couple of mechanisms that might kick in. They might work harder because they feel like they have to match the help they're receiving in scientific output. But they might also take the assistance as a sign that they're great and valuable and start slacking off, like ... divas?
Also, from what I've seen/read, I think Japanese culture has this type of system for elders/experts in various fields. Maybe it applies to scientists?
I have a question about linking sequence posts in comment bodies! I used to think it was a nice, helpful thing to do, such as citing your sources and including a convenient reference. But then it struck me that it might come off as patronizing to people that are really familiar with the sequences. Oops. Any pointers for striking a good balance?
I don't think the contest model fits this situation very well. As I understand, a contest is designed to measure aptitude along only one axis (like who can run faster or play chess better) and it's the job of the contest organizer to keep the other conditions as equal as possible. Meanwhile, things like dating or job/roommate interviews or college admissions are really attempts at selecting people you'd prefer to be around and get along with, so you're choosing from a set of points in a nebulous region in human-qualities-space that doesn't linearize nicely. For example, if I say that I'm going to hire the candidate that's objectively faster and more accurate at filing papers (which is easy to measure), then according to the contest model, I'm committing to overlooking other qualities like loudness or disagreeableness or smelliness or tardiness, which are also important factors to consider when hiring someone. These are also things I might not even consider until the pool of applicants is available!
This is why rejections from these types of places tactfully say "We had a lot of promising people and a limited number of spots so we couldn't accept all of them," because if they write, "We thought you were too tardy," then next time you apply and be super-punctual, that still won't guarantee you a spot. Because other factors!
I think the contest is tempting because it's simple and it makes you feel like you're more in control of the outcome than you really are ("All I have to do is be less tardy!") but generally I think modeling these blobby types of interactions as contests creates unnecessary pain, because it needlessly creates losers when there aren't ... really any. You weren't that in control to begin with (which can be hard to accept), so don't be so hard on yourself for the result! You might get to date Alice but not Barbara and you might get accepted to Berkeley and rejected by UCLA.
I don't think I follow. This is what you want from every lady in the store/library/train who thinks you're cute?
What about interesting women that clearly aren't available or most likely don't find you attractive?
I think women actually give men advice by telling them how they'd like to ... be dated? At least, that's what I do. Which makes me think army1987's mother probably wanted a hypergentlemanly man to lavish her with niceness and gifts and attention. Actually, maybe she was experiencing a shortage of gifts and attention from someone she DID have romantic feelings for, and so didn't realize what an overabundance of gifts and attention would feel like from someone she had NO romantic feelings for, which is generally when Nice Guys™ become problematic.
Maybe we need to ask the opposite question. Mens! How would you like to ... be dated?
EDIT: I think it was a system back in the day when land and inheritance and dowries were important and some memes from back then are still alive and floating around confusing everyone.
That's exactly why these gender relation things are so insidious! They don't come from evil mens oppressing womens because they want to cause suffering and inequality or evil womens calling mens creepy and taking away all their status. They're cached thoughts that well-meaning mothers and grandmothers pass down to us because they think they're helping us survive in a cruel and confusing system. Without stopping to think that we can slowly dismantle the system to make it suck less.
Now that you mention it, I've only ever used this tactic on people I didn't know very well, so I expected their resent-o-meter to be average. And then I could use their reaction to gauge their actual resentment-setting. Meanwhile, I have a friend with a resent-o-meter that's perhaps higher than necessary, and I always go with the "Well you CAN'T just hate people for something like that ..." which led to really long, tedious debates about why she shouldn't demonize some gentleman or another. But I think she finds reasons to resent people because it's the only way she knows to deal with sad things. :(
Ohh, I see what you're saying. I guess I won't object if you decide that you don't want to use the word "creep" to describe this guy, but I'm guessing the word originated not from the stealthy behavior of the creep, but the sensation of the person experiencing the feeling of creepiness. Because a creepy feeling is a type of growing discomfort that it's hard to pinpoint the source of. Even in horror movies, a place can be creepy because you feel like something bad is going to happen, but you don't quite know why. And indeed, it takes the narrator some thinking before he's able to figure out what made this guy's approach so much more disturbing than the usual attention he's received from gay guys before.
I'm not sure how big the issue surrounding "creep" is actually a language issue, but I think part of what's happening is that the meaning of words drift slowly enough for people to notice. For example, I have a tendency to disagree when people tell me that "lame" is ableist language, because I always think of lame as referring to jokes and maybe occasionally pack animals and ... never people. I think the usage of that word has drifted away from people, but there are enough vocal people who are still sensitive about it. (And I guess I would try to not use it around those people anyway.)
So I guess I would conclude that when you hear other people use the word creep, they probably mean "a nebulous source of discomfort that I can't quite place" rather than "an agent deliberately trying to cause me discomfort", which is definitely pretty broad, but maybe a lot less accusatory than the latter?
I did too! Edited.
Well, there's a bunch of things it communicates at once:
- Probably you are angry, and I'm your friend so I will give you a place to vent your anger, if you want.
- Probably you are sad, so I will try to cheer you up by telling you that what happened is not that big of a deal, because if she's not interested, then she is not worth feeling too sad about.
Meanwhile, "she's just not that into you" sounds like you're taking her side. "Well, she can do what she wants." But if you're my friend and I'm the one that the sad thing happened to, then I'd want you to keep the situation about me. So even if she is perfectly justified in being not that into me, I don't want it brought up right at that moment.
Therefore! Those girls who reacted by calling that girl a bitch probably don't actually think she's a bitch. If they encounter her later in life, they probably won't pounce on her with something like, "You're that bitch that stopped replying to my friend army1987! We totally hate you!" They are instead most likely just comforting you in a confusingly aggressive-sounding way.
Why is wanting to hang out with a cool person so loserly for the cool person* ?! Noooo!
I feel like staying friends with someone you went on dates with should be much better than never wanting to see them again ever.
It's even worse when you start dating someone else but you want to stay friends with the guy! What are you supposed to write? "I think you're really cool but I want to date this guy over here. Can we still hang out?!"
Here is a link describing creepy, threatening desire from a man's perspective.
I think that was probably your female friends' way of offering their sympathy. They probably didn't mean that she was a bitch to everyone always, but that what she did was not a nice, pleasant thing to do and since you only went on one date, then thinking of her as a bitch will make the experience easier to not be sad about.
It might sound really convoluted, but I've done this before (though not recently). "What a bitch!" makes a much better soundbite than "She was probably not interested and she was entitled to her preferences but not replying was a little not nice but maybe she was afraid to reject you to your face, but I'm sure she's probably a nice person, but you're a nice person and there are plenty of other even nicer ladies, so don't feel bad, etc."
I will experience an increase in utility from the process of finding out the answer? I will bask in the good feeling of having my question answered? I will gleefully tell like-minded friends about it, thus infecting them with my enthusiasm?
I guess it's hard to tell the difference if you haven't encountered the second type of question, where you think, "Oh well, I better develop an opinion on this whole gay marriage thing because everyone is talking about it and I'm the type of person that has opinions." It feels kinda like a chore you should do. (It's even worse when you feel pressure to make the opinion unique and interesting.) The difference between that feeling and realizing you don't know something and then checking it on wikipedia and going "ohhhh" is really big.
I think this post is covering a superset of the unhelpful questions that I pointed out here, because the ones that I mentioned are also dissolved by "What do you plan to do with the answer?" Sometimes, you do have a goal in mind, but you don't realize that the question you're asking isn't going to yield an answer that's relevant or helpful with respect to that goal (which is a mini lost purpose in the form of expended clock cycles but maybe also yelling at a tiny child.) Meanwhile, I think the signalling ones are usually when you feel like you need to formulate an opinion on something just because it's in the media even though it doesn't affect your daily life.
I think the answer "I'll be like whoaaa, because this question is interesting!" is a helpful, non-nothing answer, but something like "then I'll put it in this paper and eventually it will lead to more papers, but not much else" is indicative of larger lost purposes.
Ohh yeahh, I guess I also use pepper. And garlic is a veggie. =P
I knew someone had an answer but I would have never thought of that myself; I use like a total of one spices. Thank you!
I keep accidentally accumulating small trinkets as presents or souvenirs from well-meaning relatives! Can anyone suggest a compact unit of furniture for storing/displaying these objects? Preferably in a way that is scalable, minimizes dustiness and falling-off and has pretty good ease of packing/unpacking. Surely there's a lifehack for this!
Or maybe I would appreciate suggestions on how to deal with this social phenomenon in general! I find that I appreciate the individual objects when I receive them, but after that initial moment, they just turn into ... stuff.
I was just about to complain about this! No one talking to me could either feel not-welcoming because they don't include me or it could feel like letting me listen and not putting me on the spot. Someone talking to me could make me feel welcomed, but if they were saying "so you're like totally an outsider, right?" I would feel not welcomed at all.
Spiffy! Thank you! I have to admit that I've fallen into the trap of reading engaging, smart people on random topics instead of ... doing work. But also I've been considering starting a blog that's partially personal but occasionally cross-postable and I wanted to see how other people handle that transition in its unpolished stages. (I am also really bad at picking an audience.)
Can we have a link or is it still too early? :)
I think I'd even predict that porn in book form won't ever achieve the same effect as being able to click through only the several most graphic frames of a 7-minute video. I think books as a medium take longer to consume and they require using your imagination to fill in the gaps, which I don't think would be quite as addictive. However, I do agree that sooner or later, the market will even out and people will begin to shoot pornographic content for straight women and we'll see if women get hooked at similar rates as men.
Actually, camera quality is getting better (on phones and things) so maybe men will start publishing photos or videos without any large production companies. Also, I wonder if men will encounter the same stigma as, for example, female teachers do when pornographic photos of them are found online. But I think part of the lag in this area is that men aren't quite socialized to be oggled the way women are? (So I'll be pretty surprised by a bunch of responses saying "No, I totally know how to be in straight woman porn!")
From what I've gathered from the internet, it seems to be much more difficult for straight women to find appealing porn in quite the same volumes as it is available for straight men, so it seems like the problem is mostly male-centered at this point. And I'd guess that erotic literature doesn't quite have the same superstimulus effect as graphic video content.
I'm going to take a blind guess and say nurses. Someone tell me how I did!
That's exactly why I want some tricks that intelligent, depressed people can use on themselves in order stop trying to think themselves better and to get up off their butts to look for help.
I would like to request some detailed accounts of people dealing with mental health issues from a LW perspective. There's a lot on this website about hacking your brain's normal procedures, but not a lot about noticing actual bugs and taking steps to debug effectively and efficiently? Or maybe accounts of mistakes made in the debugging process? This might be too specific for each person to be useful, but it would still be interesting and maybe there are parallels to draw even if specific solutions don't translate from person to person. It seems like a lot of people in the comments have something to contribute from experience but there are few complete accounts.
EDIT: Here are some specific topics:
- A catalog of some common indicators that you're depressed; maybe also if you have a recurring problem, then what are your warning signs that it's back?
- If you have sufficient evidence that you're probably depressed, how do you effectively/efficiently trick your faulty hardware to get help? Where should you look for help? How do you fix your feeling after you've fixed your thinking?
- What is the scope of mental health treatment in terms of money, time/week, time to see results, etc. for various issues? When is it worth undertaking?
- What are some mental health symptoms that are known by the medical community but aren't widely known outside of it that might deserve mainstream attention and maybe de-stigmatizing?