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I agree that mixing politics and EA is potentially bad, especially if there's a partisan slant overall. This felt like a bad idea back when Rob Wiblin was posting to Facebook daily about how strategic efforts to stop Trump were competitive with standard EA charities. But it also feels like a bad idea to do what you've done in this post, as I know from your post history that you're reliably conservative, and notice that that's affected how I System-1-feel about what you've written here.
So: my gut feels the same about you pushing for these ideas as it feels about others pushing for the ideas you're pushing against. I wish that everyone could just stop bringing politics into EA.
(I anticipate a counter to what I've said here along the lines of, "but he's just trying to make EA more politically neutral". Fair, but it's obvious by his tone and wording that he has other motives, and that these are obvious enough to enough people that I expect this to cause many people's guts to notice these motives and politically infect their own feelings.)
Lumifer being Lumifer at everyone
My condolences.
This is especially helpful! I think I developed the habit of washing my hands so much while working in an insufficiently safe chemistry lab, with lots of students who were less than safe.
You don't actually need clean hands until you start preparing food, so to say.
Hearing this does provide me with some needed system 1 verification that I'm allowed to be less paranoid. I treat myself as I must have clean hands for doing anything that won't get them dirty.
I've experimented with chaining various events, too, and that's a good strategy. One thing I might try in the future is doing chains of things where I need clean hands, and sneaking in a couple things that sound like they might get my hands dirty, but actually wouldn't, like having tea. Like a sort of exposure therapy, maybe.
Thanks!
here is some mushy emotional verification
Yes yes yes, you are the best LessWronger. Thanks for that, and hugs if you like. <3
I've noticed that I've become quite handicapped by the fact that I get weakly triggered by having to interact with things that aren't, but could plausibly be, dirty. This fear goes away once I wash my hands, but I've found that I'm wasting lots of time washing my hands, and that I've stopped e.g. gratitude journaling because I have to pick up a pen to journal, and the pen might be dirty and I'd have to wash my hands after, which hurts me because I seem to get lots out of gratitude journaling. I've also stopped drinking tea (which I enjoy) because, even though I clean my microwave and sink handles often enough, it's possible that a roommate touched them with dirty hands, which means that I'd have to wash my hands after, which sounds effortful, and that knowing that having to wash my hands would require effort makes getting up to have tea much harder.
I won't go on, but I assure you that my system 1 is making a bigger deal of this cluster of cleanliness-related things than it should.
Mostly, I'm looking for suggestions, and also mushy emotional verificatioin that, while I'm not being bad, it's not necessary to be so paranoid.
It's not so much the case that I have unanswered factual questions about cleanliness, with the exception that I am unsure if (say) touching a doorknob, then touching my phone, then washing my hands and touching phone again makes them dirty. I will say that my System 1 thinks that my hands are always either in a binary "dirty" or "not dirty", which is perhaps a bit silly.
Anyhow, thank you all very much. It seems like having to interact with dirty things on a daily basis might have acted as some sort of exposure therapy, but it seems like I've just gotten more System 1-paranoid over time. Suggestions are quite welcome. <3
It doesn't help your case that you're the main one posting in these threads. Just post in the bragging thread that's already posted monthly. Thanks.
Like pimgd, $3900 is a lot of money for me. Even if I'd get a discount to the CFAR workshop for being an EA, I might do just as well to continue studying materials from past CFAR workshops as I come across them, rather than attending a workshop in person.
I feel like I don't deserve a scholarship to CFAR, since I'm a fraud and a bad person (yes, I know, impostor syndrome). When people have bragged about getting scholarships to CFAR, though, I've felt sad, since I feel like I would have been honored, rather than proud, to accept such charity, if I were in their position. I guess that I'm not really as keen on donating to CFAR anymore for similar reasons--why donate to CFAR rather than spending money on myself, if I value (say) fitness gear that will help me live longer more than saving up for CFAR, and saving up for CFAR for myself more than helping someone whose personality rubs me the wrong way attend a workshop?
Um, thank you very much for entertaining my unkind rant. <3
I have a rationalist/rationalist-adjacent friend who would love a book recommendation on how to be good at dating and relationships. Their specific scenario is that they already have a stable relationship, but they're relatively new to having relationships in general, and are looking for lots of general advice.
Since the sanity waterline here is pretty high, I though I'd ask if anyone had any recommendations or not. If not, I'll just point them to this LW post, though having a bit more material to read through might suit them well.
Thanks!
Everything in this chain of comments has now been proven true in my particular case. Thank you for the advice. This bit sums it up pretty well:
Instead of simply cutting contact you can tell your parents how you want to be treated. As long as they are willing to act that way you interact with them. If they don't then you don't and you retry after half a year.
Clearly explicitly communicating your personal boundaries isn't easy but it's a very important skill. It's a challenge that provides a lot of personal growth.
Thanks to everyone for the responses! I enjoyed reading everyone's comments, and this response in particular was very helpful.
In the spirit of asking personally important questions of LessWrong, here goes. Please be gentle with me.
Related:
Discussion post by another user on being raised by narcissists
My parent always had a number of narcissistic traits, but was never a full-blown narcissist. They (singular) supported me financially and always seemed to legitimately care about how well I was doing academically and professionally. However, they had a habit of lowering my status by verbally critiquing my actions, and sometimes made odd demands of me, such as demanding that I share some of my passwords with them, or demanding that they be present every time I go to the doctor (I'm 25).
Right now, I think that I'm either going to severely limit contact with my parent, or cut contact completely. I think that cutting contact completely is likely to be more pleasant and easier on me, but I'm really not sure about that yet. I've had a few family members tell me that I'm obligated to keep in touch with my parent. Since LW is my in-group, and since I share lots of values with the kind of people who tend to post here, I'd prefer to get advice here, rather than elsewhere. Specifically, I'm not sure if I have a familial obligation to remain in contact with my parent, given that they've only been somewhat emotionally abusive to me; it's probable that they don't even realize/ are incapable of realizing that I find their treatment of me to be hurtful. Do you think that I have any such obligation?
Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?
Taken. Thanks for putting in the effort to do the surveys. I noticed that the question on IQ calibration asked about "the probability that the IQ you gave earlier in the survey is greater than the IQ of over 50% of survey respondents", and I wondered if you meant to ask instead about (the probability that the IQ given earlier is greater than the reported IQ of over 50% of survey respondents). I recall that people tended to report absurdly high IQs in earlier surveys.
After reading this, I stuck a note saying "Be a vampire" to the front of my computer (which is my main source of procrastination).
Also, this post reminds me of the fact that being a hard sciences student is one of the things which helps me keep 'leveling up' on a regular basis, which is strong motivation to get me to do my coursework.
I suspect that the act of having children causes most people to care less about their own wellbeing, and more about the wellbeing of their children.
As thus, I intuitively find it a good idea for anyone reading this to sign up for cryonics before they have children (conditional on them already being interested in signing up), in case their desire to be cryopreserved dwindles after they have children of their own.
The values of physical constants are regularly outside of the expected interval by 3+ standard deviations. This goes on for decades.
Moral of the story: Visualize the ways you could be way off. Use outside views. Increase your error bars.
Does this refer to literature values of physical constants, or the values of physical constants as guessed at by participants of psych studies?
On the topic of how much it takes to save a QALY in the US:
"Most, but not all, decision makers in the United States will conclude that interventions that cost less than $50,000 to $60,000 per QALY gained are reasonably efficient. An example is screening for hypertension, which costs $27,519 per life-year gained in 40-year-old men.3, 8 For interventions that cost $60,000 to approximately $175,000 per QALY, certain decision makers may find the interventions sufficiently efficient; most others will not agree."
-from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497852/
The first paragraph of this gives more on the cost of QALYs in the US. So, kidney dialysis is an intervention that is paid for by the government in the US, and it comes in at more than $100,000 per QALY saved.
Since marginal funding generally goes to pay for interventions which are no more effective than those already being paid for, I wouldn't expect the cost of a marginal QALY to be below (say) $50,000.
So, you (Swimmer963) think of agenty people as being those who:
- Are reliable
- Are skilled (in areas you are less familiar with)
- Act deliberately, especially for their own interest
It is interesting that all three of these behaviors seem to be high status behaviors. So, my question is this: does high status make someone seem more agenty to you? Could sufficiently high status be a sufficient condition for someone being "agenty"?
But as soon as I acknowledge an obligation to help people I have never met, there is nowhere I can stop and still feel decent.
For people who enjoy giving, there are ways to avoid or minimize these sorts of guilty feelings. For example, some religious folk (perhaps unwittingly) use tithing as a sort of a schelling fence to prevent themselves from feeling bad about not giving more.