If any of my adoring fans, or anyone else, wants to grab lunch/dinner/a drink let me know. Im in SF for a bit. Lots to talk about. Also I try to do an hour plus of walking per day. So happy to walk. Though im not always up for a big hike. Lots to do.
I prefer to keep plans private but I’m making big progress on meditation and mental re-wiring. Am working on a way to publicly demonstrate. Public plans just stress me out. I recently set two pretty ambitious goals. I figured I could use psychedelics to turbo-charge progress. The meditation one is coming along FAST.
The other goal is honestly blocked a bit on being super out of shape. Multiple rounds of covid really destroyed my cardio and energy levels. Need to rebuild those before a big push on goal 2.
Everyone shits on younger people (say 14-22). But the younger people I interact with have a lot of great ideas and good perspectives. I am always happy to have a chance to learn from them. Why so much hate?
The coronavirus response has been so bad I no longer doubt many Sci-Fi premises. Before I often said to myself “you have tech that can do X and you still have problem Y. Ridiculous!”. But apparently, we can make a coronavirus vaccine in two days. But we still had over a year of lockdowns and millions of deaths. One in six hundred people in the USA have died of the virus but we blocked a vaccine because one in a million people who take it MIGHT develop treatable blood clots.
My standards for ‘realistic’ dysfunction have gotten a lot lower.
I remember Yudkowsky asking for a realistic explanation for why the Empire in Star Wars is stuck in an equilibrium where it builds destroyable gigantic weapons.
The heads of Government and the FDA don’t work like you do. Who knows the incentives that they have? It’s entirely possible that for them this is just a political play(moving chess pieces) that make sense for them while the well-being of the people take secondary place to a particular political move.
This wouldn’t be the first thing that this happens in any kind of government agency, but, at any rate, it’s too early to be skeptical. We need to see how this unfolds, may be the pausing don’t last as much.
Serious advice: Your close friends and partners should actively admire you and how you live your life. Don’t settle for less. You can have less close relations across the divide. But your closest circle should see you as a hero.
I don’t exactly disagree, but I’d rather not frame it in terms of expectations for others’ perception of you. YOU should actively admire the way you live your life and make decisions. That’s somewhat different from admiring yourself, as you should also have the humility to recognize that a lot of contingent context went into any successes you have as well.
If you are trying to get people into an investment don’t mention the price you got in at. Mentioning it just makes them less likely to buy-in. They don’t have a time machine so they don’t need to know. What matters is why you think the current price is too low.
I must have a different relation to social media to most rats. Whenever I open twitter I get a constant dopamine rush from all the stuff I find cute or funny. Here are some examples to demonstrate that maybe I am just easy to please:
I dont even live in SF. but I am visiting right now and having so much fun. Filled with joy at the idea of tetra having a lovely trip.
For example: For years people would comment that EA seemed increasingly ‘about’ AI Risk. the response was almost always to point out most EA money goes to near-termist causes. That reply was true but seemed to be trying to deflect rather than engage openly. Some evidence from the above link that that people had a point and weren’t just hallucinating:
My favorite explanation of what it means to be a friend is “Pigs on the Wing”
You know that I care What happens to you
And I know that you care For me too
So I don’t feel alone on the weight of the stone Now that I’ve found somewhere safe to bury my bone And any fool knows a dog needs a home A shelter from pigs on the wing
Pink Floyd, Animals
Possibly my favorite written passage is the last verse of “Wish You Here”. I thought about it all the time when I was separated from my best friend.
How I wish, how I wish you were here We’re just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl Year after year Running over the same old ground What have we found? The same old fears Wish you were here
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
A recent favorite is ” I Want You To Know”. Perhaps it was intended differently but I think it’s a beautiful ode to partnership; a wonderful way to think about a comrade and lover. Even true friends have conflict and things can be hard. But the storm will flow over if we don’t lose faith. You have to believe in your friends.
I’m better under your reflection But did you know did you know did you know know? That’s anybody else that’s met ya It’s all the same all the same all the same glow
Honey it’s raining tonight But storms always have an eye have an eye Tell me you’re covered tonight Or tell me lies tell me lies lies
I want you to know that it’s our time You and me bleed the same light I want you to know that I’m all yours You and me we’re the same force I want you to know that it’s our time You and me bleed the same light I want you to know that I’m all yours You and me run the same course
I have been saying this on other forums (where more people listen to me) for over a week but I might as well post it here too:
I have been pushing crypto quite hard. I do NOT recommend buying crypto until momentum reverses. If taxes and bankroll were not relevant I would say buying and selling are probably close to equivalent with a slight preference to selling. Of course, this means I put a decent probability on a quick recovery but I am not betting on it. Make sure you have at least some dry powder for the deep bear market if it comes. I hope you took some profits on the way up to fund this. But if not sell off your momentum plays and keep some post-tax money to buy the real dip. Otherwise, hold. Maybe momentum will reverse but it’s dangerous to buy this dip unless you have a ton of dry powder. You need to conserve for the real winter if it comes. Almost no one is capable of continually buying the ‘dip’ with their paychecks for months while losing money. Preserve your USDC.
Isn’t weight gained/maintained from eating sugary things all downside in terms of health?
I currently don’t have really any impulse to eat stuff like that. Get my fats from grass fed beef or mackerel, or olive oil. I have no noticeable body fat. But there are some mild dysfunctions indicating that I could have less than a body is supposed to. (reduced energy level when hungry, low gains, an annoying eustacean tube thing)
There is an emotion. It is something like ‘the joy of connection’. Its the emotion that can make just sitting near a friend fun. Or hearing about their day. People definitely vary in how much they feel this emotion by default.
lets call this emotionC
Honestly emotionC + ‘sexual interest’ explains most of what almost everyone means by romance. But this has been, for various reasons, logical and historical, to have gotten quite confused.
There are really FOUR main ways people orient toward this situation:
1) TRAD solution: More or less everyone is assumed straight in the uhhh ways that ‘matter’. Of course we have something like enforced monogamy. But you are totally permitted to feel emotionC as strongly as you want toward same sex friends. ‘Strongly as you want’ is meant quite literally, many things modern people would consider literal love poetry are allowed. Arbitrary amounts of loyalty toward your bros is allowed too. In some contexts you are allowed to fuck same sex friends. Bans on fucking same sex people are not really a breach of mono so much as ‘may or may not be considered too icky to be allowed’. By definition same sex stuff is not romantic. EmotionC towards your wife/husband is considered great but supergatory. Married partners have different obligations toward each other and their children but emotionC surely isn’t mandatory. This was hugely dominant for most of history and is basically where a lot of ideas on romance actually come from. In some ways it actually works fine. but of course its part of a very harmful overall trad memeplex. And its extremely homophobic and stuff. But it actually genuinely does have its appeals. Its certainly not dead.
More or less in reaction to the TRAD SOLUTION you get the LIB SOLUTION. Im trying to be supportive of everyone but of course I have the least affinity for the one I named lib.
2) The LIB SOLUTION more or less accepts most of the logic of the trad solution. But it gets rid of the homophobia and blatant sexism and stuff. On net this is probably fine but uhh it really causes some insane neurosis. The truest of trad boys think women are idiots anyway so there aren’t gonna really ‘fall in emotionC’ with a girl anyway. Besides under true trad men and women have very different lives and social spheres. Well under libdom they don’t have very separate lives so your partner is gonna meet lots of opposite sex people they might be interested in. Situation is even worse if people are queer. This again has its charms but its where you get stuff like ‘emotional infidelity’ memes. Its definitely a cause of LOTS of people only actually being friends with their marriage partner as they age. Its also worth noting that if you add a little ‘LIB’ to the TRAD solution you arguably make the trad solution worse. This is why the reactionary boys get so mad about ‘gays make boys holding hands unacceptable’ or whatever.
3) well after lib you get to LEFTY SOLUTION
The LEFTY SOLUTION is to basically insist on ‘you can only have totally unrestricted sex and emotionC with one person’. Definitely cannot openly date others. But we are going to be fairly flexible. Exactly one person gets very storng commitment, relationship escalator, strong (but not infinite or lexical) prioritization. Conditional on the prior rules, other people can get extremely high amounts of emotionC. And some amount of sexual flexibility is often involved (varies).
the LEFTY sOLUTION more or less works but like many lefty solutions its not exactly the most autism friendly. Lots of stuff is sort of handled indirectly. At some point its gets ridiculous to not call some relationships romantic, and they are tolerated, but only if not too overt. One can be like mega autist and do this more blatantly but it gets harder to do this the less idk ‘tact’ you add. This is basically what I would recommend most people tbh. But follow the system and dont be too overt and blatant about everything. Use some tact and emotional intelligence if you are gonna go with this tech.
4) Well COMMUNISM, as always, is simple and pure. Just allow totally unrestricted intimacy and sex.
Well that works great for some people and it is SIMPLE LOGICAL PURE and MAXIMUM LOVE. It does have a bit of a problem though. Most people like stability. Under communist norms there is no possible way to prevent, or even discourage, your ‘life partner’ from deciding they actually prefer to spend more or their time with someone else. Or they want to live with someone else. In truly hellish cases maybe they move away from you! Its especially funny to call this communism because a true believer in communism would say ‘well maybe people cannot tolerate this now, but that’s just because they live in a toxic society that indoctrinated them with shitty memes. If they just read enough theory and live under better conditions they will love communism’. Well Im a true believer in my heart but if you aren’t already a NEW SOVIET MAN/GIRL/ENBY this might be a bridge too far.
Note I did not know this when I decided to be poly. I chose purely based on ‘idk communist solutions sounds like MAX LOVE’ and im a believer in love.
Note one can try to patch communism by insisting on idk primary/secondary and stuff. But this destroys the logic and empirically is very unpleasant. Its EXTREMELY important not to end up doing de facto LEFTY as a compromise between communism and LIB. Total nightmare.
I’m confused about what your definition of the “Lib” solution. AFAIU your taxonomy is:
Trad: Emotion C is allowed with anyone of the same sex and (optionally) your monogamous heterosexual lover, sex is only allowed with your monogamous heterosexual lover.
“Lib”: Emotion C is allowed with ???, sex is only allowed with your monogamous lover.
“Lefty”: Both emotion C (beyond some threshold) and sex are only allowed with your monogamous lover.
“Communism”: Emotion C and sex are allowed with anyone you want.
Personally, I’m a fan of hierarchical poly. You can have unlimited emotion C and sex with multiple people, but when resources get scarce, your primary gets priority. Like you said, people like stability, hence once you merge your utility functions with your primary, you can do things like “I won’t leave Alice for Bob, even if Bob seems a locally better option, because a priori both Alice and I prefer the world where I stay with Alice no matter what, to a world where with 50% probability I meet Bob and leave Alice for him and with 50% she meets Carol and leaves me for her”.
Also, it’s true that hierarchical poly requires you navigating difficult questions like “how much time is it okay to spend with my secondary, if it comes at the price of spending time with my primary”. But I don’t think this is fundamentally different from what happens in monogamy. In a monogamous relationship you also have to contend with questions like “how much time is it okay to spend with my platonic friends, or on hobbies that I don’t share with my lover, or even on work, if it comes at the price of spending time with my lover”. I don’t think you can ever have clear-cut deonotological rules for this kind of thing, you have to do it the hard way and actually search for the mutually-optimal consequential solution.
[Disclaimer: I’m poly for only approximately 5 years]
My father died It has been a rough year.
I’m sorry for your loss.
I’m sorry to hear that :(
:(
That sucks. Sorry for your loss.
If any of my adoring fans, or anyone else, wants to grab lunch/dinner/a drink let me know. Im in SF for a bit. Lots to talk about. Also I try to do an hour plus of walking per day. So happy to walk. Though im not always up for a big hike. Lots to do.
I prefer to keep plans private but I’m making big progress on meditation and mental re-wiring. Am working on a way to publicly demonstrate. Public plans just stress me out. I recently set two pretty ambitious goals. I figured I could use psychedelics to turbo-charge progress. The meditation one is coming along FAST.
The other goal is honestly blocked a bit on being super out of shape. Multiple rounds of covid really destroyed my cardio and energy levels. Need to rebuild those before a big push on goal 2.
Everyone shits on younger people (say 14-22). But the younger people I interact with have a lot of great ideas and good perspectives. I am always happy to have a chance to learn from them. Why so much hate?
Because what they do or believed to do—gaming and social—is seen as idling/sloth.
Use Authy, not Google authenticator. GA not supporting any sort of backups is a huge problem.
The coronavirus response has been so bad I no longer doubt many Sci-Fi premises. Before I often said to myself “you have tech that can do X and you still have problem Y. Ridiculous!”. But apparently, we can make a coronavirus vaccine in two days. But we still had over a year of lockdowns and millions of deaths. One in six hundred people in the USA have died of the virus but we blocked a vaccine because one in a million people who take it MIGHT develop treatable blood clots.
My standards for ‘realistic’ dysfunction have gotten a lot lower.
On the flipside: WTF Star Trek?
I remember Yudkowsky asking for a realistic explanation for why the Empire in Star Wars is stuck in an equilibrium where it builds destroyable gigantic weapons.
The heads of Government and the FDA don’t work like you do. Who knows the incentives that they have? It’s entirely possible that for them this is just a political play(moving chess pieces) that make sense for them while the well-being of the people take secondary place to a particular political move.
This wouldn’t be the first thing that this happens in any kind of government agency, but, at any rate, it’s too early to be skeptical. We need to see how this unfolds, may be the pausing don’t last as much.
Serious advice: Your close friends and partners should actively admire you and how you live your life. Don’t settle for less. You can have less close relations across the divide. But your closest circle should see you as a hero.
I don’t exactly disagree, but I’d rather not frame it in terms of expectations for others’ perception of you. YOU should actively admire the way you live your life and make decisions. That’s somewhat different from admiring yourself, as you should also have the humility to recognize that a lot of contingent context went into any successes you have as well.
Current AI weights
If you are trying to get people into an investment don’t mention the price you got in at. Mentioning it just makes them less likely to buy-in. They don’t have a time machine so they don’t need to know. What matters is why you think the current price is too low.
I must have a different relation to social media to most rats. Whenever I open twitter I get a constant dopamine rush from all the stuff I find cute or funny. Here are some examples to demonstrate that maybe I am just easy to please:
I dont even live in SF. but I am visiting right now and having so much fun. Filled with joy at the idea of tetra having a lovely trip.
I used to feel CONSTANTLY gaslit reading the EA forum. For some reason this has substantially reduced in recent months. It feels like people actually lay out their actual reasoning. This is an example of a post that feels ‘honest’ to me and would be really unusual a few years ago: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qCF5kETxnk3HkfiEf/cause-generality-is-hard-if-some-causes-have-higher-roi.
For example: For years people would comment that EA seemed increasingly ‘about’ AI Risk. the response was almost always to point out most EA money goes to near-termist causes. That reply was true but seemed to be trying to deflect rather than engage openly. Some evidence from the above link that that people had a point and weren’t just hallucinating:
My favorite explanation of what it means to be a friend is “Pigs on the Wing”
Possibly my favorite written passage is the last verse of “Wish You Here”. I thought about it all the time when I was separated from my best friend.
A recent favorite is ” I Want You To Know”. Perhaps it was intended differently but I think it’s a beautiful ode to partnership; a wonderful way to think about a comrade and lover. Even true friends have conflict and things can be hard. But the storm will flow over if we don’t lose faith. You have to believe in your friends.
Explicit YOLO ALL IN numbers for my biggest bags. Until we hit these numbers I am not shoving everything:
Sol − 8
Matic − 0.3
FTT − 7.5
ETH − 500
BTC − 12K
Remember in 2018 ETH went 1400->89 and it wasn’t all downhill. Lower highs, lower lows. Be ready for the opportunity.
I have been saying this on other forums (where more people listen to me) for over a week but I might as well post it here too:
I have been pushing crypto quite hard. I do NOT recommend buying crypto until momentum reverses. If taxes and bankroll were not relevant I would say buying and selling are probably close to equivalent with a slight preference to selling. Of course, this means I put a decent probability on a quick recovery but I am not betting on it. Make sure you have at least some dry powder for the deep bear market if it comes. I hope you took some profits on the way up to fund this. But if not sell off your momentum plays and keep some post-tax money to buy the real dip. Otherwise, hold. Maybe momentum will reverse but it’s dangerous to buy this dip unless you have a ton of dry powder. You need to conserve for the real winter if it comes. Almost no one is capable of continually buying the ‘dip’ with their paychecks for months while losing money. Preserve your USDC.
Good luck friends!
Weight maintenance system I use and recommend:
1 - Weigh yourself daily right in the morning
2 - Have a narrow target band. IE 140-142 inclusive.
3 - If you are below the band eat something decadent. Maybe cake or ice cream!
4 - If below eat super low cal but have fun! Only fresh fruit day is dope!!!
Isn’t weight gained/maintained from eating sugary things all downside in terms of health?
I currently don’t have really any impulse to eat stuff like that. Get my fats from grass fed beef or mackerel, or olive oil. I have no noticeable body fat. But there are some mild dysfunctions indicating that I could have less than a body is supposed to. (reduced energy level when hungry, low gains, an annoying eustacean tube thing)
I have no idea sorry.
FOUR ORIENTATIONS TOWARD LOVE
There is an emotion. It is something like ‘the joy of connection’. Its the emotion that can make just sitting near a friend fun. Or hearing about their day. People definitely vary in how much they feel this emotion by default.
lets call this emotionC
Honestly emotionC + ‘sexual interest’ explains most of what almost everyone means by romance. But this has been, for various reasons, logical and historical, to have gotten quite confused.
There are really FOUR main ways people orient toward this situation:
1) TRAD solution: More or less everyone is assumed straight in the uhhh ways that ‘matter’. Of course we have something like enforced monogamy. But you are totally permitted to feel emotionC as strongly as you want toward same sex friends. ‘Strongly as you want’ is meant quite literally, many things modern people would consider literal love poetry are allowed. Arbitrary amounts of loyalty toward your bros is allowed too. In some contexts you are allowed to fuck same sex friends. Bans on fucking same sex people are not really a breach of mono so much as ‘may or may not be considered too icky to be allowed’. By definition same sex stuff is not romantic. EmotionC towards your wife/husband is considered great but supergatory. Married partners have different obligations toward each other and their children but emotionC surely isn’t mandatory.
This was hugely dominant for most of history and is basically where a lot of ideas on romance actually come from. In some ways it actually works fine. but of course its part of a very harmful overall trad memeplex. And its extremely homophobic and stuff. But it actually genuinely does have its appeals. Its certainly not dead.
More or less in reaction to the TRAD SOLUTION you get the LIB SOLUTION. Im trying to be supportive of everyone but of course I have the least affinity for the one I named lib.
2) The LIB SOLUTION more or less accepts most of the logic of the trad solution. But it gets rid of the homophobia and blatant sexism and stuff. On net this is probably fine but uhh it really causes some insane neurosis. The truest of trad boys think women are idiots anyway so there aren’t gonna really ‘fall in emotionC’ with a girl anyway. Besides under true trad men and women have very different lives and social spheres. Well under libdom they don’t have very separate lives so your partner is gonna meet lots of opposite sex people they might be interested in. Situation is even worse if people are queer. This again has its charms but its where you get stuff like ‘emotional infidelity’ memes. Its definitely a cause of LOTS of people only actually being friends with their marriage partner as they age. Its also worth noting that if you add a little ‘LIB’ to the TRAD solution you arguably make the trad solution worse. This is why the reactionary boys get so mad about ‘gays make boys holding hands unacceptable’ or whatever.
3) well after lib you get to LEFTY SOLUTION
The LEFTY SOLUTION is to basically insist on ‘you can only have totally unrestricted sex and emotionC with one person’. Definitely cannot openly date others. But we are going to be fairly flexible. Exactly one person gets very storng commitment, relationship escalator, strong (but not infinite or lexical) prioritization. Conditional on the prior rules, other people can get extremely high amounts of emotionC. And some amount of sexual flexibility is often involved (varies).
the LEFTY sOLUTION more or less works but like many lefty solutions its not exactly the most autism friendly. Lots of stuff is sort of handled indirectly. At some point its gets ridiculous to not call some relationships romantic, and they are tolerated, but only if not too overt. One can be like mega autist and do this more blatantly but it gets harder to do this the less idk ‘tact’ you add. This is basically what I would recommend most people tbh. But follow the system and dont be too overt and blatant about everything. Use some tact and emotional intelligence if you are gonna go with this tech.
4) Well COMMUNISM, as always, is simple and pure. Just allow totally unrestricted intimacy and sex.
Well that works great for some people and it is SIMPLE LOGICAL PURE and MAXIMUM LOVE. It does have a bit of a problem though. Most people like stability. Under communist norms there is no possible way to prevent, or even discourage, your ‘life partner’ from deciding they actually prefer to spend more or their time with someone else. Or they want to live with someone else. In truly hellish cases maybe they move away from you! Its especially funny to call this communism because a true believer in communism would say ‘well maybe people cannot tolerate this now, but that’s just because they live in a toxic society that indoctrinated them with shitty memes. If they just read enough theory and live under better conditions they will love communism’. Well Im a true believer in my heart but if you aren’t already a NEW SOVIET MAN/GIRL/ENBY this might be a bridge too far.
Note I did not know this when I decided to be poly. I chose purely based on ‘idk communist solutions sounds like MAX LOVE’ and im a believer in love.
Note one can try to patch communism by insisting on idk primary/secondary and stuff. But this destroys the logic and empirically is very unpleasant. Its EXTREMELY important not to end up doing de facto LEFTY as a compromise between communism and LIB. Total nightmare.
I’m confused about what your definition of the “Lib” solution. AFAIU your taxonomy is:
Trad: Emotion C is allowed with anyone of the same sex and (optionally) your monogamous heterosexual lover, sex is only allowed with your monogamous heterosexual lover.
“Lib”: Emotion C is allowed with ???, sex is only allowed with your monogamous lover.
“Lefty”: Both emotion C (beyond some threshold) and sex are only allowed with your monogamous lover.
“Communism”: Emotion C and sex are allowed with anyone you want.
Personally, I’m a fan of hierarchical poly. You can have unlimited emotion C and sex with multiple people, but when resources get scarce, your primary gets priority. Like you said, people like stability, hence once you merge your utility functions with your primary, you can do things like “I won’t leave Alice for Bob, even if Bob seems a locally better option, because a priori both Alice and I prefer the world where I stay with Alice no matter what, to a world where with 50% probability I meet Bob and leave Alice for him and with 50% she meets Carol and leaves me for her”.
Also, it’s true that hierarchical poly requires you navigating difficult questions like “how much time is it okay to spend with my secondary, if it comes at the price of spending time with my primary”. But I don’t think this is fundamentally different from what happens in monogamy. In a monogamous relationship you also have to contend with questions like “how much time is it okay to spend with my platonic friends, or on hobbies that I don’t share with my lover, or even on work, if it comes at the price of spending time with my lover”. I don’t think you can ever have clear-cut deonotological rules for this kind of thing, you have to do it the hard way and actually search for the mutually-optimal consequential solution.
[Disclaimer: I’m poly for only approximately 5 years]