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It seems like you are assuming historic gender segregation, eg men go out and go hunting together, women stay nearby gathering, etc.
There has been a lot of recent evidence that this isn't so cut and dry, but rather that we were applying our own modern lens while interpreting the past.
Specifically, newer evidence is showing gender parity or near-parity in participation in large game hunting. For example I recall that there were many graves that were assumed male because they were warrior or hunter graves, containing weapons and the like. But when they went back and tested them, something like 30% of them were female.
A handful of sources:
I made it up! It's to fix some common beginner follower connection problems in lateral, which by now you probably don't have anyways.
Disagree that the mechanistic understanding in unhelpful.
As a person who was starting to give privates in zouk, a thing my students really appreciated was the ability to explain things more mechanistically.
Someone who already UNDERSTANDS what you mean by "grounding" or "leading with your projection" or whatnot only needs to be told those things as a reminder.
Someone who is learning how to do those things will just get confused and frustrated if you keep telling them words that just don't make sense to them yet.
But if you say "Shift your weight slightly forward onto the balls of your feet by leaning forward. Maintain your frame thus pushing slightly towards your follow. Your follow will match this creating a compression. Really think about sending your weight down , driving the ball of your foot into the ground....." Etc.
There are many things that can be learned just by going and doing. But you'll quickly hit a wall.
The kinds of things people go to instructors for are the things that they AREN'T just picking up experientially or through expressive language, and any instructor worth anything will be able to:
- figure out the mechanics of what needs fixed
- Find a way to explain it that will fix the issue. This could be explaining the mechanics, but it might also be creating a visualization that fixes it. Or even overcorrecting them.
I was having difficulty getting followers to do the right kind of downward relaxation of their hands (The main zouk hand connection is neither expansion nor contraction, but a downward relaxation of the follower's arm). It's really hard to explain exactly what muscles are doing what, etc especially because it's dynamic.
A visualization where a hose of heavy running water enters at the top of your head and pours out through the pads of your hands results in a pretty solid frame for lateral. (Picture the water exiting your elbows instead and you'll notice your shoulder blades will move closer together, which we don't want).
- Rocket
- Space elevator
- Rename your group house "The Moon"
- Recognize that distance is an illusion.
- Create a trust that sends your item to the moon in what future time that such a service is easily accessible.
- Bribe an astronaut + relevant govt officials
- Befriend Elon
- Hire a Russian space tourism company
- Steal a moon rock. The part contains the whole.
- Prove the moon landing was hoax, thus restarting the space race. (Plus bribe astronaut)
- That company that sends your DNA to the moon ... Talk to them.
- Toss it really hard.
- Bring the moon to the earth. (Step 1: invent how to move moons)
- Teleportation
- Join the Air Force. Get on UFO team. Get aliens to take my item in exchange for their freedom.
- Massive human pyramid.
- Pony Express
- Send a package via USPS addressed to the moon
- Already be on the moon
- Genetically engineered jumping spiders. .
- Become president of USA
- Create a moon time capsule program "for the children".
- Bequeath item to my great great grandkids, and make moon transportation THEIR problem. They do not get rest of their inheritance until item is on moon.
- Produce a Big budget film, shot "on location" on the moon
- Create viral meme about sending this item to the moon.
- Create actual parasitic virus that makes people really want to get this item to the moon.
- Crowdfunding
- Transhumanism -> Super stretchy arms
- Transhumanism -> Rocket man
- Look through other people's answers to this question and do whichever makes the most sense.
- "Get my item to the moon" auction
- UFAI whose only purpose is to put item on moon.
- Blow up the moon, thus nullifying ask.
- Let go of all desires, including the desire for item to be on moon
- Lasso the moon
- Create a lucid dream world in which you can fly through space.
- Big slingshot.
- Ask really nicely
- Helium balloon
- Red Bull commercial .
- Something something quantum
- Wormhole
- Convince everyone they are already on the moon
- Fairies
- Really big baseball bat
- Really tall ladder
- pneumatic tube
- Read a lot of sci Fi books and do whatever seems coolest
- Ability to manipulate gravity
- Forced perspective.
Interpersonal abuse (eg parental, partner, etc) has a similar issue. People like to talk as if the abuser is twirling their mustache in their abuse-scheme. And while this is occasionally the case, I claim that MOST abuse is perpetrated by people with a certain level of good intent. They may truly love their partner and be the only one who is there for them when they need it, BUT they lack the requisite skills to be in a healthy relationship.
Sadly this is often due to a mental illness, or a history of trauma, or not getting to practice these skills growing up until there was a huge gulf between where they are and where they need to be.
This makes it extra difficult for the victim, because the abuser is sympathetic and seemingly ACTUALLY TRYING. Trying to get advice from the internet may not help when everyone paints your abuser as a scheming villain and you can tell they're not. They're just broken.
I've really appreciated the media that shows a more realistic picture of abusers as people who love you, but are too fucked up to not hurt you. I think more useful advice would acknowledge this harsh reality
Agreed! Everything that I shared is actually from my Soviet Ukrainian family, who used to just call themselves "Russian" as an easily-understood shorthand for Americans who wouldn't have known where "Ukraine" was back then.
I actually think just about anything Eastern European is good for this.
My Ukrainian dad's easy borscht recipe:
Vegetarian Borscht:
You need:
small cabbage (or half large one), I prefer red cabbage, but green is fine also.
1 can of sliced beets,
onion,
few garlic cloves,
one potato,
2 bay leaves,
salt/paper.
Pour 6-8 cups of water in a pot ( or fill pot up to half) and turn your stove on..
Once water is getting hot- slice onion on small pieces and add to the water, then start slicing cabbage on small pieces (editor's note- You can also use pre-sliced cabbage from a bag) then add to the water, bring it to the boil, reduce heat so it barely boils, add sliced garlic and two or three bay leaves. Check your time- once cabbage is in and water is boiling it will take approx. 40 min to make it done. In a beginning it looks like you have a lot of cabbage but don’t worry – it will cooks down and make more liquids. Now you can work on potato: slice and add, slice and add one carrot. Cover and let it cook. During the last ten minutes open can of beets and add all content including a juce. Bring to the boil again, taste it…add one or two tablespoon of vinegar ( I preferred Apple cider vinegar, but..) if you don’t have vinegar substitute with lemon juce. You are DONE. Takes 40 min from boiling… Serve as is or you can add small spoon of sour cream on a top of the bowl, sprinkle with a dill if you wish
fyi, I am a girl and I also find the "Hot girls excite me!" line to be off-putting and it makes me go ugh. For me it isn't that it makes me think ogling women is a big hobby of yours, but rather that you mostly value women for their "hotness". And the term "hot" means a specific kind of attractiveness that is very expensive and high effort (as opposed to "cute", "pretty", "attractive", etc). So it means you prefer women who spend a lot of time and effort on their appearances rather than liking women as people.
There is more reasons it's uncomfortable, but that's my initial 10 cents.
I felt a lot of internal resistance and push back when reading this. I agree that this is NOT WHAT YOU SAID, but I feel like there is already a lot of memery and pressure to let the long term / Mission folks be social free riders and leeches in every other part of their lives and I don't like it. My brain pattern matched this post into that meme space.
Cross-posted from FB:
During the 872 day long Siege of Leningrad, almost a million people died, mostly of starvation. Twelve of those people died while surrounded by food they refused to eat. They were the scientists and staff at the Institute of Plant Study, a seed bank containing the life's work of Nikolai Vavilov.
Vavilov had already starved to death in a Soviet gulag, for holding to Mendelian genetic theory, as opposed to the false-but-government-endorsed Lysenkoism. It wasn't just a principled stand either. Vavilov knew that the truth of genetics could help them feed the country with better crops, while the false theories would fail.
Vavilov's absence left just his workers to guard the seed banks from destruction. They did their best, knowing that the seeds would be instrumental in rebuilding after the war. But the majority of the seeds still rotted, even as they were protected from the starving masses outside their door.
The workers starved rather than eat the seeds, but still most the seeds were lost.
That may make it seem like all a waste, but what did survive proved to be invaluable. Today 80% of Russia's cropland is growing the descendants of the seeds from the Institute. Many millions, maybe even a billion people are alive because of the sacrifices of Vavilov and his workers.
Like many others, I'm currently fasting in honor of Vavilov Day. While it's officially a one day fast, I'm vaguely aiming to make it to Saturday, which would make it my longest fast yet.
IDEAS THREAD:
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Team up with friends who already play DnD or write glowfic. Less scalable but can grab the $20k.
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Similarly, if you're unemployed/ have lots of free time just sit down and write it yourself.
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Recruit from a local University. This can be very scalable if you e.g. know the creative writing professor.
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Recruit from roleplaying groups or online roleplaying forums. Requires a bit more filtering than the above.
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Recruit from fiverr or similar. Requires lots of initial filtering but can end up with low price. Create a series of increasingly less automated tasks as a filter (eg start with a multiple choice quiz that's automatically graded)
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Ask a person who already does this kind of thing how they would go about it.
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I don't want to name names publicly here, but post on BR, or talk to MR to use his team.
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Use the volunteers who are posting here.
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Show this post to a whole bunch of people who you think might want to grab the $20k as individuals. Let them know that if enough of them make the $20k thing that you will all team up to churn out the $1m thing, split proportionally.
I can't tell if it is purposeful that this is set up in an adversarial/ winner-take-all kind of way. It's really off-putting to me, and seems to encourage everyone being out for themselves, rather than collaboration. Particularly for such an inherently collaborative product. Maybe Nate and Eliezer just expect cooperation to fail?
Anyways, if people DO want to attempt some kind of collaboration... EDIT- Don't join my Facebook group, join plex's Discord linked in the comment below instead
Multiple times on this thread I've seen you make the point about figuring out what responsibility should fall on Geoff, and what should be attributed to his underlings.
I just want to point out that it is a pattern for powerful bad actors to be VERY GOOD at never explicitly giving a command for a bad thing to happen, while still managing to get all their followers on board and doing the bad thing that they only hinted at/ set up incentive structures for, etc.
("So Kids Will Learn" is old enough that I expect lots of it too be mostly debunked growth mindset and the like, but I expect will still hold valuable bits)
Thank you! There is actually a whole bunch of similar books by the Fabers such as "How to Talk So Kids Will Learn" and "How To Talk When Kids Won't Listen."
I plan on listening to a few more in the next year or so.
I really enjoyed this book review and appreciated how well-written it was. It captured my attention and didn't feel like a slog to get through at all.
If I were to make a suggestion, it would be to think of some question you can ask that can spark discussion. After reading this review I feel like I gained knowledge, but don't feel like I have any good handles to comment about it. (to be fair, I tried to add some comment-affordances to my book review and also didn't get any responses, so maybe this advice is not actually great)
This feels like opinion stated as fact.
I have some strong disagreements with what you say, but I recognize that it may be true for some people. It feels like you're trying to universalize your own opinion / experiences.
I'm saying it's $25k PER CYCLE. (granted, this is Bay Area prices, but still)
IVF requires multiple other expenses that aren't the fertilization itself. These other expenses include about $5-6k of injectable drugs that stimulate egg production, and about $6000 for the implantation.
I agree. I think the IVF number is just plain wrong. I'm getting ready to have IVF myself and the total bill will be well over $25k even if we succeed in the first round, which is only 65% likely.
Maybe he researched the cost of "IVF" itself, but didn't think to add on the cost of implantation, injectable drugs, etc. which is a huge percentage of the cost.
I am rather good at not applying judgment to e.g. children or dogs, but relatedly have a very strong intuitive agent /patient split, which I understand doesn't actually match reality.
At the same time, I am rightfully frustrated by the self-serving picking and choosing of when to use an agentic frame v when to use a moral patient frame.
This is great and I want more.
I really resonated with a part of it. Building up a scaffolding of "morality" or "self-righteous Protestant work ethic" both allows me to function in a reasonable way at all, but also has a side effect of feeling strongly morally judgmental towards others. I do think a large underlining part of that is this need-to-distance.
Low-level specific recommendation: Here is a really great calculator for splitting rents for different rooms. You enter in some basic info (total rent, number of rooms), and it continuously adjust room rents and asks individuals what their preferred room would be at different rent splits until it finds a rent split at which everyone would prefer different rooms. You can keep running it a few rounds past that to refine the answer more too.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/science/rent-division-calculator.html
I know it's a decade old now, but I still love Vi Hart's stuff on YouTube (less complex topics than the ones you listed though)
The Existential Giraffe is a pretty amusing primer on Cartesian doubt, but I don't know how much a young kid actually "gets" of it. (But I've still had kids who particularly enjoy it as a book).
It has such entertaining lines as "The possibility of not really existing made Sammy very, very sad."
The same author also wrote the Moribund Mouse (a mouse learns he is going to die and so finally starts "living" but then goes back to his boring cubicle life when he learns the doctor was lying) and the Perspicacious Penguin (a penguin really likes green even though God himself has proclaimed that blue is superior)
Frog and Toad books are among my favorites.
https://daily.jstor.org/frog-and-toad-attend-a-philosophy-class/
I am super-duper surprised she says it took a few weeks to teach the Outside button! It took about... 15 minutes to teach my dog to use her Food bell. And then the Outside bell and Treat bells were similarly fast. I don't think button pressing is inherently harder than bell ringing, so that shouldn't make a difference.
I guess if the dog was starting at zero training it would take two weeks. (Robin already knew how to Target an item, which she learned after learning hand Touch, which she learned as part of the process of teaching how clicker-like training with positive reinforcers works in the first place. )
I can imagine abstract words like "Tomorrow" and "Where" taking a whole lot longer, but the words that are just ways to obtain concrete things are extremely easy to teach. Outside bells are a very well-known and frequently-done thing. Look them up on Amazon and you'll see about 20 options for sale.
My dog does this unusual roundhouse butt attack when she's playing with other dogs. It's unusual enough that people comment on it.
I've definitely noticed other dogs start doing it too after playing with her a bunch.
There also SEEMS to be a thing where in e.g. Berkeley the dogs at the park play quietly. I wondered how they taught their dogs not to bark while playing, because this is NOT the case in midwest dog parks. But apparently it's "cultural". If the dogs don't bark at the dog park you frequent, your dog will also not bark.
I'd do this! Right now my dog is my accountability partner, but she adjusts to waking up later herself! :) I'm in Pacific timezone
You can simplify the problem into straight behaviorism.... I'd have to look up which book I read this in (Don't Shoot the Dog, maybe?), but there is a game you can teach dogs, dolphins, etc where you give them a box or something, and only reward them for novel behavior. So you reward them the first time they push it with their nose, but not any subsequent times. This seems to "teach" creativity, in that animals that play this game regularly get good at quickly coming up with unusual actions.
Note: I'm not saying the CORRECT thing to do is ignore all the substeps, conditions, pre-requisites, etc and go straight to "just reward the thing you want". It was just a cute anecdote that seemed relevant.
But they'd probably have to have years and years of correctly predicted boring missions to make up for the amount of incorrect 99% predictions, right?
Maybe the Star Trek universe has low key solved aging, so even though it doesn't seem like years between episodes, it really is. :P
There's the counter-identity of scorning people who "pick stuff up and put it down again" and calling all sports "sportsball", etc.
I think it's related to what Julia mentioned about having an identity that's just against some other group.
Thanks! (Updating accordingly)
Oh wow. There is an example of a person who used to be certain they didn't want kids and changed their mind later, but felt awkward about it because older people used to be very patronizing about her desire to not have kids and would assure her that she'd change her mind when she got older.
This is me. Practically word for word how I've written about it. I would be certain this was literally me if it weren't for the fact that I'd expect Julia to have mentioned if she were using me as an example. And I know Scott Alexander has talked about really common issues amongst his clients that feel personal enough that he thinks if his clients read them they'd think they were talking about them in particular as opposed to a general thing. And it's probably not an uncommon thought to express.
But it's the most I've ever felt that feeling of "that is literally me being quoted there" before. And I feel like maybe I'm a paranoid person.
Chapter 2: What the Soldier Mindset Protects
- Comfort, Self esteem, Morale, Pursuasion, Self Esteem, Belonging
Chapter 1: Two Types of Thinking
- Motivated Reasoning
- "Can I believe this?" (searching for evidence something is true) v "Must I believe this?" (searching for evidence something is false)
Introduction:
- Scout Mindset is the ability to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.
- "Was I in the wrong in that argument?"
- How do we NOT self-decieve?
- Realize that truth isn't in conflict with your other goals
- Learn tools that make it easier to see clearly, e.g. the Outsider Test
- Appreciate the emotional rewards of Scout Mindset
I expect this book to be well-written and have interesting examples, but I expect it will mostly cover ground I'm already familiar with. That's okay with me, the more I go over things, the more they get into my head and new examples help internalize thoughts in a way factual knowledge doesn't.
I expect I will learn at least one new thing that isn't just an example.
I expect that after listening to this book these ideas will be more in my head for the next week or month and so I will notice relevant issues and opportunities in my own life, which will help further internalize the ideas. But I also expect that big "in my head"-ness will diminish after a week or two.
Meta - I often relate to things with personal examples, so that might be a lot of my commentary.
The title and cover image reminds me of my grandfather who had been a Soviet scout in WW2. His job was to go far ahead closer to enemy lines, and radio back how to adjust their artillery fire to hit more accurately. He got shot out of a tree when the Germans saw the glint off his binoculars. Being a scout can be dangerous!
Pre-Reading Thoughts
Amusingly, the example of humans that are scared of dogs most reminded me of my rescue dog who was scared of humans! Common internet advice is to use food to lure the dog closer to humans. That way they can associate new humans with tasty treats.
While this might work fine for dogs that are just mildly suspicious of strangers, it is actually bad for fearful dogs and reinforces the fear/stress response in the way Scott describes. Not knowing this, we tried the typical route and were surprised when our dog got even more reactive towards people. If she saw us talking to people, this was a sign that WE MIGHT MAKE HER GO TO THE PERSON (even though we never forced her, but luring her with treats was enough), so now just seeing us talking to people was enough to raise her stress levels and get a reaction.
I got a very good trainer, and she used the example of how if your boss hands you a paycheck while holding a gun to your head, the goodness of the paycheck doesn't overcome the gun to your head.
Instead of trying to get her to go near strangers, we told all strangers to completely ignore her. We taught her to run away from strangers, and tossed treats away from the strangers. If a stranger is nearby or even talking to me, they won't do anything scary like "look at her" (her previous life taught her that Attention From Humans is Dangerous), but instead she gets treats for running away.
Now she is still a little shy around strangers, and might bark once while running away if someone freaks her out a bit, but she volunteers to go up to people of her own will, and NOW we let strangers give her treats if she is willingly going up to them and sniffing around their hands without any prompting from any of us (and I continue to give her treats if she runs away as well)
Consider doing some epistemic spot checks
The issue here is that the easy, straightforward facts are all legit to the best of my knowledge (e.g. the basic history of the Bronze Age collapse and such), but the points that his thesis is more strongly built upon are not just straightforward fact checks (e.g. Pretending to be a deer helps you hunt deer, and tribes with shamans outperformed tribes without, etc)
It's like you list a bunch of real facts and real knowledge in order to make your point sound legit, and then put a bunch of wild speculation on top of it. (I'm not saying that's what he's doing, but that it's a really easy thing to do, and really hard to tell apart).
His solution is to create an "ecosystem of practices" (such as meditation, journaling, circling and such) that are practiced communally. Sometimes he also calls it "The religion that isn't a religion"
Two episodes / two hours in and he hasn't mentioned any of this that I recall. I feel like the introductory session should at least vaguely mention where he's going to be steering BEFORE you've invested many hours.
I've just watched two episodes now, and while it's interesting, it's also... throwing up a lot of epistemic red flags for me.
He goes off on all these interesting tangents, but it feels more like "just so stories". Like he can throw all this information at me to get me to nod along and follow where he's going, without ever actually proving anything, and because there's all these tangents I feel like he can slip stuff in without me noticing.
I've been listening to him for two hours now, and I still don't quite get what his thesis is, except "There's a meaning crisis." I feel like he's trying to push me towards a solution without being upfront from the beginning about what that solution is.... "Traditionalism", maybe?
Or like maybe he's saying something simple in a very complex and long-winded way in order to feel deep? But maybe that is the required method of saying it to get it deeper into your brain.
His digression about shamans really getting into the mindset of a deer in order to better track them reminds me of a skill "Pretending to Be" that I think is useful for many skills.
I had previously watched an episode or two of this, and felt pretty meh about it. It felt like he overpromised and underdelivered, and talked a lot without getting to an actual point. I'm trying it again solely on the strength of your recommendation / it seems like you think there's a solid payoff if you stick with it.
But building flat-pack furniture is ADULT LEGOS!
Yes, you are correct that the Cheerful Price could be less than my normal wage. But this is not usually the case for me. People aren't usually asking my Cheerful Price to eat some ice cream, or something similarly pleasant. And unfortunately we don't live in a world where my regular wages are above my Cheerful Price.
I expect most people on LW to be okay being asked their Cheerful Price to have sex with someone. But e.g. even contemplating "Cheerful Price to kill my dog" throws an error and causes large psychic damage.
(Otoh, I fell asleep pondering my Cheerful Price for various random things, and I think it's about $100k for my dog to stay with my ex instead of me)
(Edited: replaced torture thought experiment)
It's sometimes hard for me to figure out exactly where my "cheerful price" is. So when I'm "negotiating" with people I trust, I often list a couple of prices, that are some set of:
- I definitely would not do it at this price (without it being a favor/ social exchange)
- The lowest price I think I would do it at.
- My Satisfied Price: I am happy to do the thing for you! This is what I normally get paid for similar jobs
- My Cheerful Price: I am excited to do the thing for you! This is more than my average, and I am actively happy about the opportunity!
- My Ecstatic Price: My Cheerful Price is definitely lower than this. I would be ecstatic if you paid me $100 / hr to do laundry. This is an amazing deal for me.
This can help because finding the ONE SPECIFIC NUMBER that is your Cheerful Price feels daunting. But feeling out a range helps you narrow it down.
For example: "You want my blegg?? Well I definitely wouldn't give it to you for $10. But if you offered me for $500 I'd think it was my lucky day and you were crazy. Normally I give people bleggs for about $100. I've never gotten more than $200 for a blegg, and I was really happy about that, so.... $200?"
And honestly I feel more comfortable giving someone that whole set of information than just throwing out $200.
Yes. Trying to Think Hard about something logical just makes my mind feel like a brick wall slams down. Things that work:
-Sticking with things that are easy enough I don't actually have to use Real Brain Power. If I'm learning complex things, the underlying level of abstraction has to be absolutely second nature before I put anything on top of it.
-Pretending To Think, which works good enough if you just want to trick people into believing that you are working hard at thinking
-Tricking my mind into not recognizing it is Thinking by use of humor, play, narrative
Like Ustice I have ADHD, and have a frequent feeling of low-level boredom that I get around by usually having two tracks running in my brain, e.g. watching TV while working / answering emails.