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Two concepts that changed my life:
1. Some people consider themselves "Super connectors" and purposely create networks and relationships between people they believe will benefit from knowing each other. To be effective, this requires certain personality traits combined with specific skills.
2. There are super connector super connectors.
So I'm not leaving the country (yet) but if I was:
1. Create a list of indicators. These are events which provide evidence of imminent social unrest or war. Examples include: threatening to nuke other countries, being sanctioned by the UN for human rights violations, or IDK, indefinitely detaining children. Must be unique events, not vague like "breakdown of civil discourse" This is your line in the sand. Precommit that if X and Y happen you're going to leave ASAP.
2. Create a list of alternative locations. Establish criteria, filter the globe for matches.
3. Research expatriation process to those countries. There are tons of expat forums online with advice on how to do this. Note that there are usually several visa options and the easiest ones will be clogged with applications depending on your criteria in step 2.
4. Keep your nose clean and get out before there's actual cause. People will think you're nuts, that's how you know it's early enough. If you stay past the point when people realize it's time to leave/move you're going to have to switch to a defensive strategy.
There seems to be (at least) two approaches:
1. Accepting and debating claims at face value, falsifying via evidence
2. Tracing the memetic lineage of claims, pointing out flaws of the source as refutation of the claims.
I'm not convinced which approach is superior. It seems like once you've done #1, claims deriving from #1 can be attacked via #2.
But my training is to always use #1, which is more laborious but I think more rigorous.
There's a weird fallacy I'm seeing of late and I'm not sure if it's new or if I've forgotten the proper term for it.
Example format is as follows:
"My ideological opponents predicted that [really bad thing] would happen as a consequence of [my preferred policy], but only [mildly bad thing that suggests worse to come] has happened so they're idiots and we should stick to [my preferred policy]."
Is there a term for this?
Abstracted: The theory is what is being disputed, but since the disputants aren't experts on the theory they're disputing the predictions of proponents of the theory.
Those predicted outcomes are occurring following the pattern the theory suggests, but not to the degree or severity that the predictions claimed, and the disputants are citing this as evidence against the theory.
I don't think this has been coined so I'm doing it.
Tuk's Law: If you can think of a statement of belief - no matter how absurd - someone believes it's true.
Borrowing from your future happiness is not self-care, it's debt.
If your self-care requires you to exert even more effort in the future it's actually self-sabotage.
Find a better method for caring for yourself that makes your future self have even less to do. Sometimes that takes more effort up front; an investment.
In some contexts it makes more sense to *minimize expected regret* rather than to *maximize expected utility*.
Broke: "opportunity never knocks twice at any man's door"
Woke: "Opportunities are a culmination of the sacrifices that we make to achieve our goals, the possibilities that we create for ourselves which gives us the best chance to succeed."
Bespoke: Opportunity is always going around knocking on doors. That means success is number of doors*probability of Opportunity knocking. Only one side of that equation can be controlled.
Buy more doors.
Blue ocean strategy remains my favorite.
It's less clear cut than 0 to 1.
But you can apply it to a lot of things, even problems you wouldn't think it applies to.
(Nudge me if you want a full-length blog post about this topic)
There seems to be some common thought process for humans, where we attribute all problems to a simplified, monolithic source that we can then blame and shift emotional valence onto. Which monolith you choose determines your tribe, and/or vice versa. But I suspect they're all equally lacking in empirical explanatory power, and this is mainly a coping mechanism.
Examples include: God/gods, fate, spirits, demons, Satan/Devil, Greed, Ignorance, Moloch, Capitalism, The State...
Attempt to UnAsk the persistent, yet annoying, question of purpose:
The purpose of life is to be able to ask what the purpose of life is.
http://www.meetup.com/Less-Wrong-NH-Meetup/events/227347206/
I sent you a private message with details. See you there!
Manchester, NH has added a new meetup: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mgn/meetup_less_wrong_nh_inaugural_meetup/