maia

• maia 17 Nov 2024 23:59 UTC

  4 points

  0

  on: Sec­u­lar Sols­tice Song­book Update

  I would suggest taking out the paganism verse in Bold Orion. We never use it, dunno about you guys.

[Rockville] Ra­tion­al­ist Shabbat

The Ra­tion­al­ist Hag­gadot Collection

The Aspiring Ra­tion­al­ist Congregation

• maia 27 Dec 2023 16:04 UTC

  16 points

  1

  on: Would you have a baby in 2024?

  Empirically my answer to this is yes: I’m due in January with my second.

  When I had my first child, I was thinking in terms of longer timelines. I assumed before having them that it would not be worth having a child if the world ended within a few years of their birth, because I would be less happy and their utility wouldn’t really be much until later.

  One month after my first baby was born, I had a sudden and very deep feeling that if the world ended tomorrow, it would have been worth it.

  YMMV of course, but having kids can be a very deep human experience that pays off much sooner than you might think.

• maia 27 Nov 2023 19:31 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: DC Sec­u­lar Solstice

  Update:

  Solstice is less than one week away! Here are a few updates that I promised.

  Parking: When you arrive, follow signs for “Quaker Meeting” or “Country Day School.” Parking is permitted in gravel lot in the back of the meetinghouse, along the driveway on its left side, and along the side of Dogue Lane, the street on the right of the Meeting House. The Country Day School has allowed us to use their parking lot for the event, so you can also park in the paved lot to the left as you come in.

  Childcare: I haven’t heard from anyone about this, and I was the only one using the paid childcare last year, so we’ve decided not to hire the babysitter this year. But if you plan to bring kids, I’d still love to hear from you so we can coordinate (my toddler will be in the audience with a friend).

  Songs: We have a song list for the year! If you want to familiarize yourself with what we’ll be singing ahead of time so you can sing along, check it out here: https://​​tigrennatenn.neocities.org/​​solstice_2023

  Let me or Rivka know if you have any questions or concerns.

• maia 6 Nov 2023 3:41 UTC

  4 points

  0

  on: Sols­tice 2023 Roundup

  DC/​Baltimore

  December 2nd

  FB event: https://​​www.facebook.com/​​events/​​1170803117213501/​​
  LW event: https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​events/​​86QzMxdEthKaPwQKw/​​dc-secular-solstice-1

DC Sec­u­lar Solstice

PSA: The com­mu­nity is in Berkeley/​Oak­land, not “the Bay Area”

• maia 24 Jul 2023 2:26 UTC

  7 points

  0

  on: I’m con­sis­tently over­whelmed by ba­sic obli­ga­tions. Are there any paradigm shifts or other ra­tio­nal­ity-based tips that would be helpful?

  I got a lot of value out of How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: https://​​www.aslobcomesclean.com/​​book/​​

  The high level takeaway is that these tasks become much more manageable when you establish a consistent set of habits and routines around them. There’s a lot of very specific step by step advice for creating those habits. It’s still the same amount of work, but feels less overwhelming once you have a grasp on how much work it actually is and experience with each task.

• maia 6 Jun 2023 21:42 UTC

  9 points

  6

  on: The Base Rate Times, news through pre­dic­tion markets

  I don’t see a way to click into individual charts to be able to zoom /​ see them in more detail. They’re a bit crammed on the main page, which is fine for a summary but not great as the only way to view them.

  In general it’s a bit weird to have a news website with no way to click into a headline and see more information. Maybe that’s OK for now, but it is surprising as a user. Perhaps you could link to or quote comments from the prediction market websites, or recent related news articles?

  Are you using the same fonts as NYT? Probably better to use different ones to distinguish your site.

  You’ve got various little weirdness with your borders and formatting. E.g.: the gray vertical lines between columns start at different points near the top. The spacing between the icons next to “Follow” and “Newsletter” is too close.

  This is a very cool project, hope it continues!

• maia 3 Jun 2023 3:21 UTC

  4 points

  0

  on: Change my mind: Ve­ganism en­tails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes

  I feel more EAs (or anyone who wants to eat ethically) should consider ameliatarianism if they find that veganism is too difficult, nutritionally or otherwise. It removes the vast majority of animal suffering from your diet, with very few nutritional concerns.

  I’m also curious what you think about lacto-vegetarianism. It’s a step between vegan and ameliatarian suffering-wise, but I’m not sure where it falls between the two in terms of nutritional difficulty. There’s the example of the large and ancient lacto-vegetarian culture in India, but if you don’t eat the specific foods of that culture, how hard is it to stay nutritionally balanced as a lacto-vegetarian?

  What links here?

  • Elizabeth's comment on Change my mind: Ve­ganism en­tails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes by Elizabeth (3 Jun 2023 4:21 UTC; 2 points)

• maia 16 May 2023 13:23 UTC

  4 points

  1

  on: Les­sons learned from offer­ing in-office nu­tri­tional testing

  You say you didn’t care about age and sex, but I’m curious about the distribution in your participants. Menstruation is very relevant to iron deficiencies.

Group De­bug­ging meetup

• maia 20 Apr 2023 21:39 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Nathan Helm-Burger’s comment on: Quaker Prac­tice for the Aspiring Rationalist

  Although I enjoy the practice of Meeting, I actually really disagree with you about Quaker practices around decisionmaking. My local Meeting had some huge disagreements around COVID that weren’t resolved at all well; from that and how disagreements are handled in general, it almost seems to me to be more of a Tyranny of Structurelessness[1] kind of situation, where conflict is handled via backchanneling and silently routing around disagreements and leaning on people who disagree to let it go.

  Frankly I just don’t think consensus is a good decisionmaking method at all.

  [1] https://​​www.jofreeman.com/​​joreen/​​tyranny.htm

• maia 8 Apr 2023 13:04 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Paus­ing AI Devel­op­ments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down

  Thank you for writing these up! I think they are good guidelines for making discussion more productive.

  Are these /​ are you planning to put these in a top level post as well?

• maia 3 Apr 2023 3:02 UTC

  3 points

  1

  on: What could EA change it’s name to?

  EA is currently still the final frontier for every vegan everywhere, for example, including those in professional networks such as government policy.

  EA is the ultimate destination for virtually all vegans in the world right now

  I’m not that familiar with the vegan/​animal rights community. What do you mean by this, can you elaborate? I thought animal rights was a large movement in its own right, separate from EA?

Quaker Prac­tice for the Aspiring Rationalist

How I Run Sols­tice, Step by Step

• maia 16 Mar 2023 0:07 UTC

  9 points

  1

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Shut­ting Down the Light­cone Offices

  That all makes sense. It does feel like this is worth a larger conversation now that people are thinking about it, and I don’t think you guys are the only ones.

  I’m reminded of this Sam Altman tweet: https://​​mobile.twitter.com/​​sama/​​status/​​1621621724507938816