Hey, D_Alex.
It’s been a long time, I know, but I was thinking about going to Australia. Any tips you could give for the current day?
Bound_up
Karma: 526
Rationalist Politicians
I’m thinking of going to Australia as recommended here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/43m/optimal_employment/
It looks like the program run by a fellower LWer at http://ozworkvisa.com/ is gone now?
Does anyone know if there are still people who’ve put together a fast track for going to work in Australia?
I’m trying to find Alicorn’s post, or anywhere else, where it is mentioned that she “hacked herself bisexual.”
“My utility function includes a term for the fulfillment of your utility function.”
Awww.… :)
The obvious way in my case would be to do what I’m doing here, talk in my native tongue about the foreign one I should learn.
A powerful single piece of information would have been to talk about system 1 and 2 and talk over the specific times each fails, and how I should learn to be instinctive and reactive in many social and physical activities.
Another useful thing would be to watch exactly the kind of media I once found pointless and make explicit the rules going on. Chick flicks and girl TV are great for this.
The Improv and the Theatre text would have helped, as also The Gervais Principle series.
In my case...I think the instinct was there, but was effectively missing a lot of the time because it was being drowned out by the much louder filter in my head, the one interpreting things in a much more rigid, word-based, “literal” way. The nerdy way, as I’ve come to think of it.
I think that was the result of my search for truth. I spent time trying to nail down exactly what things meant and so on. This interfered with my thinking about things like “what will they think I mean?” and “what do they think that word means” stuff since I had formed beliefs about the true meaning of their words and stuff.
Social Insight: Status Exchange: When an Insult Is a Compliment, When a Compliment Is an Insult
Like-Minded Forums
So, more that it’s not so much inaccurate as it is coming from an unnecessarily unhappy place?
Would it be fair to say you don’t think the post is inaccurate so much as you think it is unkind?
That’s my greatest fear about this.
We’re all in our social bubbles, such that some of us don’t know a single Young Earth Creationist or Trump fan (or hardly do), so we reject out of turn the idea that so many humans might work this way simply because the ones we hang out with don’t.
I could find a better social circle; it sounds like you have, and I don’t doubt it’s more enjoyable for you. But, either way, let’s not forget that the people we don’t hang out with still exist, and there’s a reason we don’t enjoy hanging out with them as much as we do people like us. There’s a reason they enjoy politics and partisanship and don’t want to hear about your market functions unless what you really mean is how cool some group is.
And there’s a reason they’re the cool ones that wield all the power.
Humanity’s current expenditure of resources is pathetically misaligned with its goals, and fixing that means power.
I’ve classically been a literalist super-honest guy, and now intend to be super-honest about what I make the other person hear.
I think them knowing I’m being honest about what they hear is sufficient to grant me all the benefits I’ve enjoyed in the past, while avoiding some of the disadvantages
Try for a while. You might be surprised how easy the game becomes once you explicitly understand the rules
Social Insight: When a Lie Is Not a Lie; When a Truth Is Not a Truth—Pt. 2
I’m actually just starting to look into hypnosis a bit. I found a blog by an LW person at https://cognitiveengineer.blogspot.com/
You have any recommendations? I’m getting enough to tell there’s something interesting being described, but not enough to get it quite down pat.
That is what most people are already doing. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but there are no advantages to being oblivious to how people are thinking
Some of what Trump says is both emotionally and empirically wrong. The concept of “emotional truth” isn’t a carte blanche to claim that anything you want is “true in some way;” it’s a different way of communicating, and can be used to deceive as well as inform.
Some things Trump says are empirically wrong, but emotionally true, and those I have some measure of sympathy for.
We’re mostly on the same page, really.
Much of what I’ve said applies to politics with large electorates, where the default case is that you can’t effectively teach new concepts and people don’t want to learn them, anyway.
In small groups, by all means, there are times when it’s a very powerful move to try and teach people. There are even times, in all arenas, where saying “I’m better than you” is a useful move, you just don’t want to be limited to that one move.
I also strongly value being honest and known to be honest. I find “you’re the best” statements to be acceptable insofar as the other person KNOWS what I mean and is not deceived in any way. The key insight here is that the explicit meaning of the words is not the real meaning of a statement in many contexts. Don’t ask what the words of a sentence mean, ask what it means for someone to say those words in this situation, in other words. “You’re the best” doesn’t actually mean “I would bet money on you against Muhammad Ali,” and nobody thinks it does, which is why it doesn’t communicate any false information. It doesn’t communicate ANY information about how the world works, nor does it try to; it’s more like the verbal equivalent of a shot of caffeine
According to worldnomads.com, my healthcare as a US citizen in the UK would be about $70 a month, or 60ish pounds, if I had to guess