InquilineKea

• InquilineKeaMay 21, 2015, 9:14 PM

  3 points

  on: How my so­cial skills went from hor­rible to mediocre

  It didn’t occur to me how significant this was. The number of hours that I had is perhaps as small as the number of hours that most people have by age 10. In hindsight it’s obvious: of course I didn’t have good social skills relative to other adults, in the same way that a 10 year old doesn’t have good social skills for an adult. I just hadn’t put nearly enough time in!

  Just out of curiosity—do you think that all other people who put massive amounts of time into socializing get benefits that are proportionate to the amount of time put in? From our point of view, most people spend incredibly high amounts of time socializing, but does this make each and every one of them socially savvy to the same extent?

  Also, what do you think of https://​​www.quora.com/​​How-did-successful-people-spend-their-time-when-they-were-young-between-ages-of-10-and-22/​​answer/​​Auren-Hoffman ?

Psy­cholog­i­cal val­idity of the “Seven deadly sins”?

• InquilineKeaFeb 16, 2015, 10:46 PM

  3 points

  on: An alarm­ing fact about the anti-ag­ing community

  What about something like this? http://​​nyscf.org/​​images/​​pdf/​​biopsy_flyer_versionweb.pdf?study_id=17&participant_id=51644acd8255dc3ede4fa494b7def28831554d6a . I’m not sure if they’d store the samples at a timescale long enough to be relevant though (aka, 4+ decades).

  How important is it, though, that the cells be your own cells? In several decades, we may have even better tools to deal with the transplant rejection that stems from regenerated organs with different genomic material.

  ==

  FWIW here is a relevant article: http://​​www.telegraph.co.uk/​​news/​​science/​​science-news/​​10295085/​​Stem-cell-banks-enable-wealthy-to-free-backup-version-of-their-adult-selves.html

• InquilineKeaAug 18, 2014, 2:17 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: CellBioGuy’s comment on: LINK: Blood from youth keeps you young

  Well, it’s a growth factor. Even IGF1 and growth hormone can rejuvenate old tissue, but they don’t make one age any more slowly (though they can make one more robust up to the end).

  Do you think that growth factors like these can accelerate aging in the end though? Reductions in growth factor signalling are often associated with increases in longevity, especially since many growth factors increase mTOR signalling (which often results in lowered rates of protein autophagy). I’m not sure how GDF11 would impact mTOR signalling though.

  ==

  Edit: Or is it really a growth factor? https://​​en.wikipedia.org/​​wiki/​​GDF11 says that it’s a growth differentiation factor.. And that it negatively regulates neurogenesis.. Hmm..

• InquilineKeaAug 18, 2014, 12:49 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: CellBioGuy’s comment on: [Open Thread] Stupid Ques­tions (2014-02-17)

  What about the wood frog?

• InquilineKeaMay 6, 2014, 3:43 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: How do you ap­proach the prob­lem of so­cial dis­cov­ery?

  Hm—thanks for the feedback. I’ve decided to edit my answers to think them out more (so that they’re hopefully more convincing—though they might not be convincing yet). Of course—this is not the goal of rationality. I’ve just realized that some of my past rationalizations suck.

  I am very well aware that people generally suck at evaluating themselves (especially given sunk costs and post hoc rationalizations). But I emphatically assign an extremely high probability to getting AoK as being one of the best decisions of my life ever (some of the other things I’ve bulleted though—I actually assign lower probabilities to).

• InquilineKeaApr 22, 2014, 1:02 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Metus’s comment on: How do you ap­proach the prob­lem of so­cial dis­cov­ery?

  Oh yes—definitely! I think the San Francisco Bay Area is best (public transport is amazing, the culture is amazing, there are lots of smart students from Stanford/​Berkeley, and people are very tech-oriented).

  The Boston area is probably second best, probably followed by NYC. Beyond that, it’s harder to find people for social discovery.

How do you ap­proach the prob­lem of so­cial dis­cov­ery?

• InquilineKeaMar 29, 2014, 7:04 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Punoxysm’s comment on: In­creas­ing the pool of peo­ple with out­stand­ing accomplishments

  In general, however, at a young age foundational skills and opening their minds are more important than any particular direction (though a particular cause/​direction can be very motivating). Show people who think academics or hard sciences are the obvious path that all sorts of “soft skills” are actually very valuable even in their presumptive careers, but can also open their eyes to other paths.

  Whatever they seem to have closed their mind to without proper consideration, that’s what you can target for each individual.

  Oh yes! I think that expanding people’s imagination of what’s possible.. is really a powerful way of creating impact. To me, there’s honestly no compliment better than someone telling me that I expanded their imagination of what’s possible.. that I’ve changed them. Especially if I didn’t specifically give them advice. I simply motivated them by doing things differently than everyone else, and showing that it’s something that anyone [1] can do, not restricted to the arcane domains of some esoteric genius. It’s like basically changing their “openness to experience”. In general, I do believe that the world would be “better” if more people had higher levels of “openness to experience”.

  In fact, it’s also a powerful antidote against depression (and against people going into narrow high people-to-problems ratio fields where unhappiness tends to be very high). Sometimes I think that “lack of imagination” is a contributing factor to many cases of depression (not a causative one, and there are obviously genetic factors as well). But in my case.. I just really really wish that I knew of a world beyond that of school/​academia, and that there are people I can respect who aren’t in academia! (sadly, the experience of being in school made me elitist in many ways, which only further increased my neuroticism). But I didn’t know that there were alternative paths that I could still be happy with when I was young (which led me to make some poor decisions in college).

  There’s just so much stress and depression.. so much people who are constantly comparing themselves against each other in some imaginary competition, all for the sake of signalling. So much of it completely unnecessary. And it’s frustrating to see it. I think Peter Thiel summarizes it so well here: http://​​blakemasters.com/​​post/​​21169325300/​​peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-4-notes-essay

  Just look at high school, which, for Stanford students and the like, was not a model of perfect competition. It probably looked more like extreme asymmetric warfare; it was machine guns versus bows and arrows. No doubt that’s fun for the top students. But then you get to college and the competition amps up. Even more so during grad school. Things in the professional world are often worst of all; at every level, people are just competing with each other to get ahead. This is tricky to talk about. We have a pervasive ideology that intense, perfect competition makes the best world. But in many ways that’s deeply problematic.

  One problem with fierce competition is that it’s demoralizing. Top high school students who arrive at elite universities quickly find out that the competitive bar has been raised. But instead of questioning the existence of the bar, they tend to try to compete their way higher. That is costly. Universities deal with this problem in different ways. Princeton deals with it through enormous amounts of alcohol, which presumably helps blunt the edges a bit. Yale blunts the pain through eccentricity by encouraging people to pursue extremely esoteric humanities studies. Harvard—most bizarrely of all—sends its students into the eye of the hurricane. Everyone just tries to compete even more. The rationalization is that it’s actually inspiring to be repeatedly beaten by all these high-caliber people. We should question whether that’s right.

  I just think.. if we could maybe convince people to care more about making impact rather than being so obsessive about status… then so much more value can be produced.. And there would be so much less stress, and wasted years.

  [1] I’m using the term lightly, but by “anyone” I mean anyone in the top 10% of intelligence, which is still quite a broad range.

  Also, by spreading the word about a people who beat the odds, like a neuroscience professor who got into a top grad school with a 2.5 GPA, who is now an assistant professor who is now a rising star).. Seriously.. That type of anecdote is incredibly inspiring for anyone.

• InquilineKeaMar 24, 2014, 12:24 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: JonahS’s comment on: How can Cog­nito Men­tor­ing do the most good?

  Good replies.

  Regarding UnCollege -they charge tuition of $14k-$15k/​year (see http://​​www.uncollege.org/​​program/​​ ). It’s certainly not the way I would fund such a service, but we’ll see if it works in the long term..

  Hmm.. Yeah.. reddit isn’t going to be the easiest medium to advertise on.. You could also try http://​​www.reddit.com/​​r/​​highschool, maybe, though I’m not sure if it’ll work. Maybe you could use another page on Cognito Mentoring to advertise on reddit?

• InquilineKeaMar 23, 2014, 10:52 PM

  0 points

  on: High school stu­dents and epistemic rationality

  It’s also important to note that K-12 education tends to infantilize people in general (and restrain their imagination of what’s possible and what isn’t). Many (though not all) 16-18 year old homeschooled students can have incredible levels of maturity and self-awareness.

• InquilineKeaMar 23, 2014, 10:49 PM

  0 points

  on: What we learned about Less Wrong from Cog­nito Men­tor­ing advising

  I’m curious: what sorts of communities are they most familiar with? What did they think of College Confidential? And what were the subreddits that they were most familiar with?

• InquilineKeaMar 23, 2014, 10:46 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: How can Cog­nito Men­tor­ing do the most good?

  “I think you are likely making a strategic mistake by focusing on outreach instead of focusing on building a place where people want to go.”

  I agree—I think it would be nice to create a Facebook group (at least). Forums/​subreddits could also work, although I’m not sure if they would gain much traction at this stage.

• InquilineKeaMar 23, 2014, 10:43 PM

  2 points

  on: How can Cog­nito Men­tor­ing do the most good?

  I’m curious—what do you think of UnCollege and how it manages to advertise/​fund itself? Would you be interested in following a similar model?

  Also—what about advertising on sites like College Confidential and reddit? It probably wouldn’t run well with the mods there if you advertised too much, but doing it once might work.

  I think getting in touch with the homeschooling community might also provide some ideas. People in those communities can be incredibly motivated and resourceful.

[LINK] What’s New? Ex­u­ber­ance for Novelty Has Benefits

• InquilineKeaFeb 7, 2012, 5:08 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: What are some cool things a LWer can do at Yale, Brown, and UChicago?

  Thanks for that excellent reply—that pretty much describes my social life too. :)

  The one school that Chicago seems comparable to is Caltech, but Caltech students do seem to be more cliquish (due to the house system) and also probably less “intellectually promiscuous”.

• InquilineKeaFeb 7, 2012, 5:07 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: TimS’s comment on: What are some cool things a LWer can do at Yale, Brown, and UChicago?

  Thanks very much for that reply! And I think you’re right about that. There are very few non-LAC schools where the undergrads actually expect to be grad students in the future. So that’s probably enough to make Chicago unique. Whereas at a place like Stanford, they might disdain the grad students since there is so much social pressure to join startups rather than grad school.

• InquilineKeaFeb 7, 2012, 1:18 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: What are some cool things a LWer can do at Yale, Brown, and UChicago?

  Oh okay I see.

  Just wondering—are people in the dormitories somewhat cliquish? Or are the cliques less extreme than at other schools? And do they open up more easily than most students at other schools? In public universities, people often largely stick with their peer groups from high school (so I can never really join). And I’ve heard that people often become cliquish in the other elite schools too. Stanford undergrads even mistreat Stanford grad students (see http://​​www.quora.com/​​Why-do-Stanford-undergrads-mistreat-grad-students ). But Chicago seems like it would be the least cliquish, based on the limited stuff I know about it so far.

• InquilineKeaFeb 6, 2012, 2:12 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: What are some cool things a LWer can do at Yale, Brown, and UChicago?

  Wow—very nice. :) And very good points. :)

  Do you know if PhD students are allowed to join these dining hall conversations?

• InquilineKeaFeb 5, 2012, 10:28 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: falenas108’s comment on: What are some cool things a LWer can do at Yale, Brown, and UChicago?

  Oh wow—that’s so interesting! I would love to join a LW group there if I end up coming.

  “Over half of the student population at UChicago is atheist/​agnostic”

  Isn’t that true for most elite universities?