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Addendum: a great "decoupling" event was when countries stopped tying their currency to precious metals (or indeed anything material) ... first it started by introducing paper notes, and now money can exist just as an entry in a bank account. If the economy is just numbers of money then this decoupling means that the economy than grow higher than the number of atoms in the universe which is often cited as a hard upper limit.
I think that economic output is the sum of a lot of other curves. All exponentials come to stagnation pretty fast when they hit their limits, but in our history whenever that happened, there was already a new summand added to the economy which starts a new exponential growth.
Many of the curves improve factors of things that don't grow any more. For example, many wealthy nations don't have population growth any more, but still increase per-capita output. Likewise, many nations don't have a growth of the energy input, but they're using energy more efficiently.
Machines (and energy transformations) have made it possible to decouple economic output from the physical labor of humans and animals. Electronic communication (starting with telegraphy before there even was electricty) has decoupled the transfer of information from the transfer of matter.
Electronic data processing (and AI) decouples one more thing from the need for biological brains. Even without AI, modern software does a lot of work that we already wouldn't have enough humans to do!
Maybe one reason for the economy to have been growing over so many different epochs is that the definition of what an economy is has expanded to include more and more things, which previously didn't exist.
With every task that machines took over from humans, humans found new tasks to create and sell even more things. And the more basic needs are taken care of, the more we focus on entertainment, status, and great projects of humanity like the settlement of Mars, and extending human lifespans. Maybe it will be during our lifetimes that machines take care of all the basic needs and humans will only care about entertainment, their social relationships, and the great projects of humanity. And many, of course, will already be satisfied fith the first two of those three points.
I suggest that some people who want to organize or help with the next meetup will gather on Sunday before or after the official end, so that the date and city can already be announced soon after. We can shoot for a six-month advance notice next time and either stick to this or extend to twelve-months if needed. (12 months advance notice seems to be quite common for big annual events, but not when something new is held the first time.)
"Learned Helplessness" and its opposite "Learned Optimism" are widely replicated results that have now become the basis for some therapeutic approaches in the academic/scientific psychology world. Seligman did a lot of work on this and got his early academy fame on this work. The character strengths and virtues on the other hand are not based on reproducible experiments, rather literature study (as Seligman writes: "lists of virtues from all cultures"). It's not knowledge and results, but rather trying to open up a new area and advocate real experimental research in that field. We'll have to wait at least a decade until the results are in ;-)
Brillyant's comment above basically gives the answer to this: beauty doesn't provide as much long-term happiness as the ICVPI facotrs (individual character, values, preferences, and interests).
Happiness levels in our society are stagnating because materialist desires only provide short-term fulfillment. No matter what good thing happens to you (be it a promotion, inheritance, marrying "the love of your life", ...) your happiness might raise for a certain amount of time but then drop back to its initial level. (Evidence of this is provided in both the books I cited originally.) A dating site which works like online shopping is not just creepy, but also actively diminishing happiness because it offers to much random choice and too little help in connecting with people. Just look at the graph:
So in a way it seems to be the case that in order to lastingly raise your happiness it is basically the only way to change your preferences. Be more social. Be nice to people. Be less judgmental.
I am just starting to do this and although it works for me, I am not yet ready to explain it, and haven't read enough to recommend and summarize. But Seligman's "Authentic Happiness" is at least a start. And "Search inside yourself" is the right thing to validate how much your preference functions has been corrupted by unhelpful external factors.
"citation needed" -- no problem, you'll easily find this kind of study cited in Vanity Fair or Psychology Today. ;-)
Whereas if you look here: http://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/ you'll see that more attractive pictures incite two orders of magnitude more messages on a popular online dating site. Do you really think that all these men have a better chemistry with the attractive woman (200+ messages) than with the least attractive one (only 1 message in the same time span).
That's Availability and salience bias right there at work -- the picture trumps it all and then we rationalize that looks are important in some way or other.
PS: the "experiment" cited is not scientific, but that stark a contrast in message counts can't be explained by the error of not switching cities half-way through. Just can't.
Excellent point! You've placed yourself squarely in the mainstream which cannot believe that looks are not important. How could they not be important since everybody is making so much buzz about it!?!
Many people can not let go of their fear of being seen as losers for dating an ugly woman. (Sorry for the stark, emotional term "ugly", but this is about emotion, after all.)
Those who can get over it, win.
Not "win" as in being seen as heros, but "win" as in knowing they're doing the right thing and putting themselves in a happier and safer spot as those whose self-esteem depends on their mates' looks.
PS: "I doubt very much that [you actually don't care what people look like]" sounds a bit like Generalizing from one example ;-)
Of course they do and that's why I wrote "plus other things we don't need to get into here". The point is the beauty-fixation of men which nobody has yet denied. Drethelin even suggests it is so inert that it cannot be changed ;-)
Original for Reference: "Gelehrsamkeit schießt leicht in die Blätter, ohne Frucht zu tragen."
Thanks to all for the warm welcome and the many curious questions about my ambition! And special thanks to MugaSofer, Peterdjones, and jpaulsen for your argumentative support. I am very busy writing right now, and I hope that my posts will answer most of the initial questions. So I’ll rather use the space here to write a little more about myself.
I grew up a true Ravenclaw, but after grad school I discovered that Hufflepuff’s modesty and cheering industry also have their benefits when it comes to my own happiness. HPMOR made me discover my inner Slytherin because I realized that Ravenclaw knowledge and Hufflepuff goodness do not suffice to bring about great achievements. The word “ambition” in the first line of the comment is therefore meant in professor Quirrell’s sense. I also have a deep respect for the principles of Gryffindor’s group (of which the names of A. Swartz and J. Assange have recently caught much mainstream attention), but I can’t find anything of that spirit in myself. If I have ever appeared to be a hero, it was because I accidentally knew something that was of help to someone.
@shminux: I love incremental steps and try to incorporate them into any of my planning and acting! My mini-retirement is actually such a step that, if successful, I’d like to repeat and expand.
@John_Maxwell_IV: Yay for empirical testing of rationality!
@OrphanWilde: “Don't be frightened, don't be sad, We'll only hurt you if you're bad.“ Or to put it into more utilitarian terms: If you are in the way of my ambition, for instance if I would have to hurt your feelings to accomplish any of my goals for the greater good, I would not hesitate to do what has to be done. All I want is to help people to be happy and to achieve their goals, whatever they are. And you’ll probably all understand that I might give a slight preference to helping people whose goals align with mine. ;-)
May you all be happy and healthy, may you be free from stress and anxiety, and may you achieve your goals, whatever they are.
Hi LWers,
I am Robert and I am going to change the world. Maybe just a little bit, but that’s ok, since it’s fun to do and there’s nothing else I need to do right now. (Yay for mini-retirements!)
I find some of the articles here on LW very useful, especially those on heuristics and biases, as well as material on self-improvement although I find it quite scattered among loads of way to theoretic stuff. Does it seem odd that I have learned much more useful tricks and gained more insight from reading HPMOR than from reading 30 to 50 high-rated and “foundational” articles on this site? I am sincerely sad that even the leading rationalists on LW seem to struggle getting actual benefits out of their special skills and special knowledge (Yvain: Rationality is not that great; Eliezer: Why aren't "rationalists" surrounded by a visible aura of formidability?) and I would like to help them change that.
My interest is mainly in contributing more structured, useful content and also to band together with fellow LWers to practice and apply our rationalist skills. As a stretch goal I think that we could pick someone really evil as our enemy and take them down, just to show our superiority. Let me stress that I am not kidding here. If rationality really counts for something (other than being good entertainment for sciency types and sci-fi lovers), then we should be able to find the right leverages and play out a great plot which just leaves everyone gasping “shit!” And then we’ll have changed the world, because people will start taking rationality serious.
Let me send out a warm “thank you” to you all for welcoming me in your rationalist circles!