The other writer who also does this extremely well is Vikram Seth, in A Suitable Boy.
Chriswaterguy
Karma: 62
As an experiment, a couple raised their child without telling them what colour the sky was. When they eventually asked, the child… thought about it. Eventually… “white”. (I’d assumed it was a clear sky. Just realised it’s a pointless story if it was cloudy.)
Why Isn’t the Sky Blue? - starts with colours in Homer.
I can’t answer your questions about / criticisms of my belief, but if you ask my guru (or read his book), he’ll definitely have the answers to all your questions.”
(Or “her book” etc—but the examples I’ve come across have all used men as their infallible guru.)
I found the last paragraph-sentence impossible to understand. I may just be not thinking straight, but it could be made clearer, and I’m posting about my confusion because I’m sure there’ll be others who are also confused.
“actually does have a certain number of exemplars in real life” refers to the “honest people not being good at lying” theory, plus the risk of huge blow-ups from end of lies.
“though obvious selective reporting is at work in our hearing about this one” clearly refers to this sensational case of someone who was mostly good at lying, but left an entangled trace… Einfeld turned out to be a dishonest person (who was remarkably successful at lying, for a long time), so I’m not sure how that relates. The use of “though” was the first thing that confused me, but then I realised that the whole paragraph confuses me.
Sorry, I left an extra “not” and an extra “but” in. What a horrible sentence—I apologize.
Did you mean: “This version assumes that women are materialistic—worse than just materialistic, it assumes that women assess prospective mates solely on their net worth. It would be good to find a version that doesn’t assume that.”?
Yes—thank you.
I appreciate the value of the illustrations, but it would be good to find a version that doesn’t assume that women are merely materialistic, assessing prospective mates solely on their net worth. Geek communities are often not friendly places for women—some readers will accept the assumptions for the sake of argument, but some are likely to take offence.
Edited when MixedNuts pointed out how confused the original version was. My apologies.
Is it our bias towards optimism? (And is that bias there because pessimists take fewer risks, and therefore don’t succeed at much and therefore get eliminated from the gene pool?)
I heard (on a PRI podcast, I think) a brain scientist give an interpretation of the brain as a collection of agents, with consciousness as an interpreting layer that invents reasons for our actions after we’ve actually done them. There’s evidence of this post-fact interpretation—and while I suspect this is only part of the story, it does give a hint that our conscious mind is limited in its ability to actually change our behavior.)
Still, people do sometimes give up alcohol and other drugs, and keep new resolutions. I’ve stuck to my daily exercise for 22 days straight. These feel like conscious decisions (though I may be fooling myself) but where my conscious will is battling different intentions, from different parts of my mind.
Apologies if that’s rambling or nonsensical. I’m a bit tired (because every day I consciously decide to sleep early and every day I fail to do it) and I haven’t done my 23rd day’s exercise yet. Which I’ll do now.
Open Thread doesn’t quite do what the OP is looking for. Open Thread is: A. a bit hard to find (I didn’t know it existed, and only found it through the site search) B. a single thread at any one time. Makes it hard to find or follow a particular topic.
Nothing original just now—I just want to go on record as saying that HP:MOR is amazing, brilliant work—I really enjoy it, as well as learning from it.
How did it go?
Btw, I’m in Canberra until ~23rd Jan, and would love to meet other LessWrongers.
I’ll be busy at RecentChangesCamp on 20-22 Jan (great event if you’re into wikis). So I’m really hoping for something between now and 19 Jan.
I’m 41, working on a wiki project for sustainability and development, which I love (and part-time on a related project which I like and actually get paid for). I use the same username everywhere, so if you’re curious, you won’t have trouble finding the wiki project.
I’m a one-time evangelical Christian. I think it was emotional damage from my upbringing that made me frightened to let go of that, and I stayed a believer for 9 years, starting in my late teens. I took it extremely seriously, and there were good things about that. But with hindsight, I would direct people to other places for their personal growth than becoming a believer. Later, just a few years ago, I did the Landmark Forum, which was very powerful and mostly very positive, though I wouldn’t recommend that as a first step in working on personal development, unless you’re already pretty successful and mature. I’m also a big fan of Nonviolent Communication, and I’d recommend that to anyone.
I learned about Less Wrong a year ago (from someone else on the wiki project) and loved it. I’ve been meaning to join, but the thing that prompted me now is that I need help, in the form of accountability, and this seems like a good place.
I do a lot of work, but I find myself distracted from the work I most need to do. The persistence of the problem leads me to carry out a “lifestyle experiment” for the next 3 weeks. I’m calling it my “3 week Serious Focus experiment”, and the key ingredients are:
Being sensible: doing stuff that I need to do, that will have a big positive effect on my life, before doing other stuff, no matter how good or enticing
Being accountable: I’m posting here, and will do so on Facebook and G+, and will tell friends In Real Life.
Regarding it as an experiment: I’m only committing myself to 10-30 Jan 2012, so I can play at being hardline with myself, like it’s a bootcamp. I can extend or make new decisions at the end, but the time limit means it doesn’t feel like a trap that I’m desperate to escape from.
A focus on (a) livelihood—the stuff I’m already getting paid for, and (b) taking the wiki project to the next level, i.e. strategic work before maintenance or putting out fires.
The rules for the Serious Focus experiment are:
Plan each night before bed—up to 6 items to work on the following day
3 hours solid work on the one or two top items (livelihood and strategy) before looking at email (except perhaps work related—I have email filters for that) or at work-related social media, or at messages I get on the wiki site. (Only exception is if it’s so urgent that a colleague on the wiki project calls or IMs me—which is very rare.)
Any work I’m tempted to do on secondary things (not among the 6 items, and taking more than 5 min) to be written down and put aside until the 3 solid hours are done.
After the 3 hours are done, I loosen up a bit, but still focus on getting those items done.
All items must be done before checking personal social media at all. (I’m allowed to post any time, but not look at replies or other people’s statuses.) If I don’t get all 6 items finished, that’s ok—going without Facebook will do me good, even if I don’t get a chance to check it for the whole 3 weeks!
I’m going to start now, but I’m making my official start date 2 days away, so there’s time for feedback on the plan and to adjust it if needed, before I launch the experiment.
Glad to join you all at Less Wrong!
I used to trade the stock market, getting into Bollinger Bands and other kinds of chart analysis. Had some successes, but the times that losses came, they were sudden and brutal. In the end, I decided I didn’t enjoy it enough to do it well. And I wasn’t quite sure I had the ability—the charts seem to work in hindsight, but there were a lot of factors that made looking at patterns in old charts deceptive—the fact that bankrupt stocks were removed from the data history by my data supplier was one obvious problem. And almost every other trader I knew seemed to be hopeful of making a buck, rather than already making a buck—with only one exception, a guy who did brilliantly, but I could never work out his methods.
I’m now earning some money as a consultant, and when I’ve got enough to put in the market, I’ll be doing it longer term, probably in some variation of the “Dogs of the Dow” methodology, with a basic ethical filter. Or if that’s too much work, an index fund. Maybe I could have been richer if I’d dedicated myself to paper trading and then working hard on real life trading, or maybe I would have lost more money. Either way, I’m happier with my life now—but that’s just me.
Good luck!
MELBOURNE! I forgot to write Melbourne, and the map incorrectly shows Perth. It seems I can’t edit an event that I created.