Cosmos

• CosmosNov 10, 2010, 11:19 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Call for Vol­un­teers: Ra­tion­al­ists with Non-Tra­di­tional Skills

  I haven’t done much with it yet. One of my CrossFit coaches was a Z-Health expert, his warmups often involved developing our kinesthetic senses and seemed helpful in developing movement patterns.

• CosmosOct 29, 2010, 3:04 PM

  6 points

  on: Call for Vol­un­teers: Ra­tion­al­ists with Non-Tra­di­tional Skills

  Hire PJEby to teach you guys emotional awareness/​control. The Mankind Project uses some similar psychological techniques, which has helped me actually put what I read from PJ into practice, but is male-only and not rational in its approach.

  Another kinesthetic practice to consider is Z-Health.

  There are tons of PUA instructors, but that is an expensive route. Maybe some of the more successful in the community can volunteer some training. Is there an mPUA in the house?

  Zvi thinks very highly of hypnosis as a psychological tool, I would consider that as well.

• CosmosOct 18, 2010, 4:27 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Stand­ing Desks and Hunter-Gatherers

  My schedule is basically once daily eating with substantial randomness. Usually I have a large dinner in the evening, with snacking as desired until bedtime, so a ~4 hour daily feeding window. The size of the meal varies quite a bit, some days are in the calorie restriction zone. The content varies too, sometimes I have a low-protein day. Sometimes I eat both lunch and dinner, sometimes I fast the entire day. I have not yet fasted longer than two days, but I plan to try an extended 4+ day fast eventually.

• CosmosOct 14, 2010, 4:10 PM

  4 points

  on: Stand­ing Desks and Hunter-Gatherers

  I have been eating a high-fat paleo+dairy diet with intermittent fasting, and doing high-intensity interval training. This diet/​exercise combination has drastically increased my energy level. I’m also very committed to getting >8 hours of sleep/​night.

  Unfortunately no standing desk at work, but I want one. I have felt for a long time I think and converse better when walking around.

• CosmosSep 22, 2010, 9:09 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: JenniferRM’s comment on: Septem­ber 2010 South­ern Cal­ifor­nia Meetup

  In my experience there tend to be several quiet members of a group, who don’t speak much in the group setting but will talk in one-on-one settings. It could be a fun exercise to break up into pairs, and have each pair chat individually for a period of time, before rejoining the group conversation.

  This would be useful just to build stronger connections between individual members of the group, but it is especially useful if you’re trying to have a focused discussion. Usually a few voices end up dominating, and if that occurs from the very beginning only a few ideas get discussed.

• CosmosSep 15, 2010, 7:15 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: XFrequentist’s comment on: Self-Im­prove­ment or Shiny Dis­trac­tion: Why Less Wrong is anti-In­stru­men­tal Rationality

  We are doing quite well as a community, but we didn’t actually start living together. That is another level of immersion entirely.

• CosmosSep 14, 2010, 8:39 PM

  8 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Self-Im­prove­ment or Shiny Dis­trac­tion: Why Less Wrong is anti-In­stru­men­tal Rationality

  I tried and failed to start a rationality lair in NYC. Too many people wanted their own apartment, and could not agree on a single location, even within one city. But I remain hopeful.

• CosmosMay 13, 2010, 3:30 AM

  0 points

  on: Do you have High-Func­tion­ing Asperger’s Syn­drome?

  My all-absorbing narrow interest is optimization.

• CosmosMay 11, 2010, 6:58 PM

  5 points

  in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Do you have High-Func­tion­ing Asperger’s Syn­drome?

  No, they tell you to do this, and to stop doing that. You don’t need the theory, you need instruction, and then you’ll internalize high-status behaviors. (Although we did talk very briefly about theory—tribal mentality, alpha males, status.)

  It is explicit about status being a variable, though, if that’s what you’re asking. For example, one of the exercises was role-play: we got assigned high- or low-status and had to act out a scene.

• CosmosMay 11, 2010, 4:41 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Do you have High-Func­tion­ing Asperger’s Syn­drome?

  Pickup 101

  Edit: they offer more than one, I took Art of Attraction.

• CosmosMay 11, 2010, 4:35 PM

  6 points

  in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Do you have High-Func­tion­ing Asperger’s Syn­drome?

  You’re not the first person to ask me this, but there are obvious difficulties in conveying exactly what is going on when I do this.

  The first step is becoming consciously aware of the phenomenon. Once this occurs, I begin to recognize it immediately when I do it. I then think to myself how I should have responded instead. Over multiple iterations of the above, I begin to internalize this conscious correction as a new habit.

  I first used this technique when I took a course on cognition in college and learned about cognitive biases. The availability heuristic was the first to go—I knew when I didn’t have actual data on a phenomenon, making it ridiculously easy to spot.

• CosmosMay 11, 2010, 4:24 PM

  15 points

  in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Do you have High-Func­tion­ing Asperger’s Syn­drome?

  I did not find reading websites particularly helpful in this regard. I have always been very “book smart” and I love to theorize about things, but I am coming to realize that implicit experiential knowledge is key for success in this world. It’s easy to know what high/​low status signals are, but it’s much harder to become aware of them and know what to do to correct them. Yet it only took a couple hours of in-person training at the seminar to fix the majority of the bad signals.

  Despite that nitpick I definitely agree with your point. I needed to construct a mental model of social interaction, and now I can ruthlessly optimize over that as well. I am greatly looking forward to it.

• CosmosMay 11, 2010, 3:49 PM

  13 points

  on: Do you have High-Func­tion­ing Asperger’s Syn­drome?

  I came to the conclusion that I have autistic tendencies a long time ago—lack of understanding of social cues, constant pattern recognition, stuttering, habitual actions… Given the high autism rates in Silicon Valley, it seems likely to me that there is indeed a genetic component, and “high-functioning” autistics have a heterozygous genotype. (Although I don’t think it’s yet ruled out that it could be caused by some type of improper socialization.)

  However, I seem to have an uncommon level of ability to self-modify (from my discussions with other people, including rationalists), and since discovering rationality I’ve been attempting to ruthlessly optimize various aspects of myself. For my most recent example, because I didn’t understand social cues I took a PUA seminar and within days I could successfully approach and charm people in bars and clubs, a world that I always thought would be inaccessible to me. It turns out I was just unconsciously sending low-status signals, because I never paid any attention to what myself or others were doing.

  This also helps me deal with the symptoms as well. I have habitual actions, but I don’t allow myself to be disturbed if they are interrupted. (In fact, I think settling too quickly into habits means we don’t explore the possibility space thoroughly enough, so I consciously try to break up my routines and find new ways of doing things.) I have narrow interests, but I rotate between different things, in a type of serial immersion. I can even use conscious control over my mouth, tongue and throat to relax my muscles and effectively stop my stuttering.

  For what it’s worth I scored a 22. I predict that number will be lower in the future.

NYC Ra­tion­al­ist Community

• CosmosOct 1, 2009, 7:30 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Open Thread: Oc­to­ber 2009

  1) I can’t work and starve at the same time.

  That assumes you’re starving during intermittent fasting. Many practitioners actually find that they are much more clear-headed when they have not eaten recently.

  My guess is that you’re equating hypoglycemia with hunger. I eat a paleo diet, which has low levels of dietary carbohydrates. This forces the body to use gluconeogenesis to meet its glucose needs. Because you’re producing it endogenously, your blood sugar remains completely steady. You only suffer from hypoglycemia when you’re dependent upon exogenous sources of glucose, forcing you to eat every few hours. I much prefer the freedom to eat whenever I want.

• CosmosOct 1, 2009, 3:58 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: CannibalSmith’s comment on: Open Thread: Oc­to­ber 2009

  I definitely agree that a forum would allow for more discussion, particularly of the less-momentous but still-beneficial topics. In particular, I think that discussions of actual strategies people have tried, what has worked and not worked, could actually be highly beneficial. I see them as data we need to collect in order to begin forming some kind of method for actually helping rationalists win in real world situations.

• CosmosSep 29, 2009, 4:23 PM

  0 points

  on: Your Most Valuable Skill

  Learning from the mistakes of others.

• CosmosSep 23, 2009, 4:46 PM

  5 points

  on: Against Dis­count Rates

  Interestingly enough, Schumpeter essentially makes this argument in his Theory of Economic Development. He is against the view that humans have intrinsic discount rates, an innate time preference, which was one of the Austrian school’s axioms. He thinks that interest is a phenomenon of economic development—resources need to be withdrawn from their customary usage, to allow entrepreneurs to find new combinations of things, and that requires compensation. Once this alternative use of resources is available, however, it becomes an opportunity cost for all other possible actions, which is the foundation of discount rates.

• CosmosMay 15, 2009, 2:03 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: Sur­vey Results

  Perhaps they are contractarians, which they think isn’t about “morality” per se?

• CosmosMay 12, 2009, 5:22 PM

  4 points

  0

  on: Willpower Hax #487: Ex­e­cute by Default

  As far as I can tell, the trick is to remove willpower from the situation one way or the other. Brains are very good at doing things habitually, executing unconscious subroutines and freeing up willpower to do something else. If our supply of willpower is limited, then we should attempt to encode one or two good habits at a time, and once they are encoded we can move on to the next problem.