For everyone who’s interested, check out the details of the first meetup here: http://lesswrong.com/meetups/z6
free_rip
Karma: 240
The meetup is launched! A little late for schelling day, but we can call it that in spirit. http://lesswrong.com/meetups/z6
Nope. Probably Sunday 16th or 23rd
Alright, I’ll see what people think of Saturday. I suggested Sunday because the library is open to 9pm on Sunday and only 5pm on Saturday, but if we did early afternoon and everyone could make it there’s no reason Saturday couldn’t work
It is indeed. I’ll give an exact room, directions, and contact cell number for if anyone gets lost when I put up the actual meetup
Great, thanks for commenting and I’ll be sure to keep you informed
Oh, good catch, forgot there are probably several. In New Zealand
I find the Love Languages test, http://www.5lovelanguages.com/ , despite sounding a bit odd, to be useful. It rates whether you express and feel affection more strongly from Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Acts of Service or Gifts.
Mainly useful because while the results made sense, they were not the ones I tend to think of and present as most important (or that I would like to be most important to me) - so they gave me a bit of insight into what emotionally felt best, rather than what I would like to appreciate most. Similarly it’s useful to have partners try it, as it may be different from what they ask for or think is important.
Depending on if you have them already, invest in a few tailored pieces clothing that go with a lot and you can wear regularly.
Offer to pay for your friends to come with you to do what you like (for instance if you like ice-skating and you all usually end up at bars, offer to pay for them to come ice-skating with you—they’ll be happy to go for free, and you’ll get better quality out of your time with them).
Give small amounts to charities you see along the street, if you identify with them (for the warm fuzzies).
Make a habit of buying something nice at a bakery or similar outside work once a week and bringing it in for your colleagues. Chat with them over it.
If you don’t have dietary restrictions and are easy about what you eat, get one of those packages where they deliver you recipes and ingredients every week (cut down the time planning, buying and cooking and you can find one that’s healthy and balanced—most are by design anyway).
Throughout college, I’ve used tutoring (tertiary, not kids) as my supplementary income source. If you know your stuff well enough, there are several key benefits: you can usually tutor on campus if your client goes there too (which is super convenient), you get to brush up on all the basics as you go so it’s like extra study while you work, it requires little to no prep if you know your stuff, and I personally find it lots of fun. It also tends to have a high pay-rate, and once you get some experience you can set your own (when I started I charged $15ph an hour, now two years down the track I charge $25ph).
If you’re just starting college this year you may have to do a semester of tutoring kids first, seeing as you won’t have done any courses you can tutor in at tertiary. I’ve tutored courses I’m in the middle of taking before, but only when I am very confident in the area already. But see if you can sign up with a department, register on online tutoring directories, and put up flyers around campus.
The other opportunities I see around a lot for students (other than min-wage) are mostly tech-related (web development—usually one-offs, programming). If you’re good at music you might get a few one-offs playing at parties, but I wouldn’t expect any sort of reliable work. You could advertise as a cheap professional photographer for weddings, parties, kids photos etc. if you invested in a good camera and spent some time learning the basics.
Took the survey. Prisoner’s dilemma was a nice addition—would be interesting next year to have ‘would you co-operate in a prisoner’s dilemma situation’ earlier in the survey before the for-stakes version, and compare how often people co-operate in the for-stakes then as compared to this year (also compare across who has taken a LW census before, since this one might bias that a bit).
Same here, in Christchurch, happy to answer any questions.
First ones that come to mind with this structure:
Intelligent Winning
Calculated Success
Acting for Success
Intelligent Change
Rational Success
Purposeful Rationality
Purposeful Wisdom
Purposeful Thought
Purposeful Strategy
& whatever institute, foundation, center etc. bits people want to add on.
If you like chips better, eat chips. The rule here is ‘don’t waste calories’ - not ‘eat chocolate rather than chips.’
ie. instead of buying the cheap stuff you don’t like as much, buy the expensive stuff because it’s costing you more than money—it’s costing calories as well, so you should get the most utility out of it you can, and put on the minimum calories for it. If you happen to like the cheap stuff more per calorie, then eat that. I always feel satisfied quicker with high-quality chocolates than chips and I assume that’s true for most people, but it won’t be for everyone.
“I am entirely incapable or many of the things mentioned” “I might be very good at coming up with certain types of examples or providing a certain kind of hard to articulate meta intuition. I also know a bunch abaut art and design.” They’ve stated they’re looking for people who can do just a one or a couple steps (as well as all-rounders), so sounds like you should go for it.
“I am unable to commit or fully participate due to helth and geographical reasons, and a bunch of other things… what should I do?” If I were you, I’d send in an email saying just that, but with more detail of course—what things you’d like to do, what limits on time you’re likely to have etc. My guess is you’d still be a help, and if not you’ve only lost 5mins in checking.
Thank you! I am still enjoying the site—there’s so much good stuff to get through. I’ve read most of the sequences and top posts now, but I’m still in the (more important, probably) process of compiling a list of all the suggested activities/actions, or any I can think of in terms of my own life and the basic principles, for easy reference to try when I have some down-time.
Taken. Moral views question gave me a bit of trouble, I didn’t agree with any of them. Another option like ‘There is morality, but I don’t define it in any of the ways above’ would be nice.
In general I thought the categories covered things pretty well.
These are learnt best in full drama (not just acting) lessons, with daily, weekly or monthly performances and at least some devising left up to the students, letting them work it out together with decreasing guidance. I’ve taken these types of drama lessons for four years, and found them very useful for the above. I took formal acting lessons (where the teacher made all the decisions, gave all the feedback) and quit after three months.
A good way of teaching it can be to demonstrate concepts through lecturing and requiring daily performances for a week or two (have everyone perform at the end of the lesson) and then letting everyone get into groups with scripts and design their performance for a month or week from then, with whatever restrictions, advice, resources you decide. Organizing rehearsals is another good and transferable skill.
These might not go too well in short hour or such lessons, though—but getting people to create a short minute or so performance on a topic/style with a few people in their off-time, and present in class, would do as well and leave more time for ‘teaching’. People can also laugh and joke and, I’ve found, do better work in their own rehearsals then in a class format with other groups all around them.
More skills:
Group-work skills: compromise, listening to other’s ideas, shifting your own, recognizing when someone’s is better than your’s and when it isn’t, recognizing when it’s important to someone that their idea be used and when it isn’t.
How to take criticism, and use it. (In four years of drama, I’ve never done a performance with more than a week prep time where I haven’t gotten feedback that’s made it better.)
Creativity, quick-thinking, improv.
I used to have the same, to the extent that I wouldn’t ask even ask teachers, people paid to help me, for help. I hated the feeling that I was a burden somehow. But I got over it in the space of a couple months by getting into a position where people were asking me for help all the time—and that made me realize it wasn’t an unpleasant or annoying experience, I actually liked it, and others were probably the same. In most cases you’re doing people a favor by giving them a chance to get warm-fuzzies for what’s (usually in the case of rejection therapy) a relatively simple request to fulfill.
Of course, there are still certain requests that might be uncomfortable to reject, and my thoughts on those are that they’re usually the ones where you feel like you’ve left someone out who really needed your help. So to get over this, don’t choose things to ask that are going to go bad if you don’t get it—for instance asking for a ride when it’s pouring out, or telling someone you need some money to call your kids at home so they don’t worry (instead of just ‘I need to make a call’). As long as what you ask is casual and you don’t seem desperate, people should have no problem rejecting it without feeling bad, and to lessen any impact even more you can smile and say ‘no problem, thanks anyway’ or something similar to show you’re alright without it.
Also use your sense, if you ask and they look uncomfortable going ‘oh, umm, well...’ you should be the one to jump in and say ‘hey, it’s no problem, you look busy so I’ll check with someone else’ or something like that, rather than waiting for them to have to say outright ‘no’. Some people don’t mind just saying no outright, some people do, so be attuned to that and no-one should be uncomfortable. Good luck!