Hi there!
I’m focused on learning about the different causes of death and how to get rid of them: Viva Immortality! I organize rationality meetups in the Hampton Roads, VA area.
Willa
Karma: 493
Shortform #142 What entertainment are you consuming or interacting with?
Right now I am listening to Fragments, by Bonobo. I love that album!
Tonight was my once or twice a month “watch YouTube videos” night, and...I’m not sure how much I like that habit. I do skip a lot of videos I used to watch almost compulsorily when I watched YouTube videos multiple times a day...so that’s an improvement at least.
I am not watching any TV shows right now, but I will possibly watch a movie this weekend. I’m reading a book on Kaizen which I’m quite enjoying and am also slowly making my way through Ward. I had hardly played video games for the past six months or more, but right now I’m occasionally playing Borderlands (first playthrough) with some forays into visual novels too.
Thank you :) I did not used to have regular hangouts like that, and now that I do, I find that they are a nice improvement to my life.
Shortform #141 Weekly workshops & good things to come
I will now be running weekly workshops for Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk. I’m excited for this and am looking forward to the growth and fun we will experience! Nothing will change with our weekly socials, I wanted workshops so am running those separately from social meetups as was recommended by many other organizers at the organizer’s retreat in July.
I have an interview tomorrow for a job I’m a really good fit for on a team that would be great to work with. Here’s to good things to come hopefully :)
I did not write last night’s shortform because I was eating delicious homemade from scratch pizza with friends.
Shortform #140 Routine-breaking Weekend
I tend to settle into a fairly predictable routine, and this weekend roused me from that.
On Friday there was a tropical storm and no power in my apartment when I went home after work (though it did come back on that evening thankfully). Because my building sustained no damage, it was a pretty relaxing night, I read some while it was still light out and then the power was back on by nightfall so I hopped on my computer and was somewhat social virtually for a bit.
On Saturday I went to Richmond, VA for the ACX Meetup Everywhere meetup there and that was fantastic!!!! Had a wonderful time :) I then attended a lovely dinner at a friend’s house after making it back to Norfolk.
On Sunday I helped take care of my niece for most of the day.
I don’t feel as well rested as I usually do after a weekend, but I do think an occasional few interruptions to my routine is probably good for me in that it helps avoid stagnation in some ways in case my routine turns unproductive or unfulfilling (which does happen sometimes).
We are outside at the patio.
Shortforms will resume on Monday 3 October.
Shortform #139 Note to self: don’t reschedule weekly meetup
Tonight’s Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk meetup was great! We had a new individual join us who is familiar with ACX.
In retrospect, I think it was inconsiderate to suddenly reschedule the group’s weekly meetup just because I couldn’t attend. My co-organizer and others likely could have attended yesterday, and there were a few people who just couldn’t make the rescheduled meetup but had included Wednesday nights in their routine as “meetup night”. So, I intend to not reschedule the weekly social meetup unless literally everyone reaches out in advance and asks for that to occur. Weekly meetups = people build that into their routines, and should not be changed lightly.
Shortform #138 A good but slightly disorienting day
I applied for a promising job today, here’s to hoping that bears fruit!
I am somewhat out of whack due to having to suddenly house sit instead of going to my own home after work. I do not enjoy this, but it’s an obligation I’m fulfilling.
No meetup tonight, I rescheduled Norfolk’s meetup for Thursday evening (the 29th). I’m excited for the meetup tomorrow!
Shortform #137 Meal Prepping & Rambutan
In pursuit of healthier eating, I prepared containers of seeds, fruits of various kinds, and vegetables that I can eat during meals & take to work for lunch. I also tried a new-to-me fruit called Rambutan, I like the flavor okay but it’s a little bland, and now have a container of that fruit to eat through too.
I meditated for 5 minutes, rowed for 5 minutes, and did 5 pushups tonight. Small continuous improvements, here we go!
Shortform #136 Sugar* Considered Harmful
= sugar in excess of what one would consume normally by eating fruits & vegetables and maybe 1 square of dark chocolate.
I splurged (everything else were essentials / healthy food) on one item this weekend from Trader Joe’s: Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls. Yes they were tasty, duh. After consumption...now I feel physically ill: almost sweating and general discomfort, anxiety, elevated heart rate, trouble focusing, restlessness, etc. Oh! This is not an isolated set of bad feelings, these bad feelings occur every single time I eat sugar in excess of eating a few particular sweet fruits. (I have a great A1C level, for those who are worried this is due to something abnormal; I get full bloodwork done about 4 times a year [last time was late summer] and those levels have consistently been excellent)
I don’t care for a fully general rule of sugar = always bad...but from my experiences...I think it’s best for me to continue cutting unnatural amounts of sugar out of my life, because wow do I feel great when I do cut that out. The last few months I’ve steadily reduced my sugar consumption and now even eating two or three oreos feels intense and can trigger the bad feelings...eating a few cinnamon rolls at once was definitely a mistake. I intend to learn from this experience and the other bad experiences I’ve had with consuming unnatural amounts of sugar these last few months: stop consuming this particular drug [sugar], it’s bad for me and makes me feel bad.
Thank goodness I like the taste of >=90% dark chocolate and even pure baker’s chocolate. Figs are pretty great too, they almost taste too sugary but they don’t make me feel bad so I guess they are fine. I can cut out unnatural amounts of sugar, feel better, and still get to enjoy tasty dessert-style foods that I like (very dark chocolate, figs, sauteed onions, berries, and more), it’s a win win!
Shortform #135 Rest and Shrinking the “World”
Last week I read about 10 arcs of Ward, listened to a ton of UNspoiled! podcast network podcasts, and played video games some too. I increased how much I slept each night and averaged a bit over eight hours, and improved the healthiness of my food choices. As much as I escaped into fiction and the “other worlds” that come with fiction, I felt that that came at the expense of the reality / world we all live in (hence part of this post’s title). The more I engage with fiction, the more I withdraw from reality / the world around me. I’m glad I took a week of rest, I think I needed it, especially with a few upcoming challenges, but I don’t care for the “world shrinkage effect” that occurred during that time. I stopped myself from returning to shortforms and other work prior to today, because I wanted to rest the full week, but the last few days have been...challenging. I’m just ready to get back to working on immortality studies, writing, organizing, and engaging with nonfiction, and all the other things I like do. So, I’m back!
We’re at the pagoda!!! I’m wearing a green shirt and have a large green and yellow hat on. We have a music stand holding our sign.
Daily Shortforms will return on Sunday 25 September, 2022. I need to focus on building other habits right now, but also...a bit of extra rest is nice.
Shortform #134 Cloud Atlas
It is possible that Friday evenings after working all week may not be my most effective evenings for focused study.
Instead of studying anything tonight, I watched Cloud Atlas for the first time and wow, what a movie (how’s the book? haven’t read it). I was confused at first, because the movie begins by throwing multiple characters in different locations in time and space at you completely independent of context or exposition, but my confusion lessened as the movie progressed and I found the whole experience quite novel and deeply interesting. Very ouroboros. The plot took Inception’s layers approach and instead did this cool recursive folding thing that I’m unable to describe very well but if you’ve seen the movie you might know what I mean (again, unhelpful). Definitely cried at the moments where certain characters chose certain permanent actions or lost someone or were killed. Did not care for the idea that “death is just a brand new adventure” or “death opens a new door”, fuck that nonsense (thankfully it was not emphasized too much, only a few times).
Take small consistent steps towards improvement and kind actions.
Shortform #133 Knowledge Intake
As mentioned yesterday, I re-read the comments on Have you considered getting rid of death? and added what was recommended to my knowledge intake system. I believe I’d benefit from working methodically through a textbook while reading another more foundational conceptual book so to those ends I suspect the first two books I read specifically for increasing my Biology knowledge are:
If I notice significant gaps in my knowledge or struggle too much with either of those, I will try more introductory Biology related books.
My reading material tomorrow is to review and add to my knowledge intake system the reading list & recommendations from Richard & Michael’s podcast episode Xenogenesis—Ageing and Immortality Special.
I use a clipboard manager at work (the built in Windows one, “clipboard history”) and spent 5 minutes searching for a macOS equivalent because that’s really useful functionality to go without, and I want it for my home or non-current job productive use cases too! I’m using Maccy because it’s open source and it’s pretty.
Shortform #132 Small but good actions.
Tomorrow evening’s reading material is a re-read of the comments on Have you considered getting rid of death? where several people recommended good things to check out. I will add that material to my intake system and begin processing it.
I will post Friday’s reading material tomorrow, I have got to get to sleep now. Tonight’s Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk meetup was fantastic!
I have completed similar “prep for tomorrow” actions tonight like I did last night. The extra slack provided by those actions from yesterday came in handy today.
Thank you for the resources! I’ve queued up XenoThesis 53: Ageing and Immortality Special on my podcast player.
Thank you! Right now it seems like I’ll be doing more organizing than research, but I intend to increase the research I do over time. Organizing in this space (i.e. community building for immortality studies & related things) seems like a comparative advantage for me at the moment relative to other actions.
A minor quibble because I agree with the three concepts you mentioned and how you used them, but I think increasing healthspan covers what you referred to as anti-aging. To increase a human’s healthspan, one must necessarily decrease that “acceleration” and also do a few other things: rejuvenation biology, preventative medicine, holistic care (better diets, better & more exercise, etc.).
I’ve created a Google Group to facilitate more conversations on this subject and improve coordination, check out Immortality Studies.
A good LessWrong post about aging we could all read & discuss for such a meetup is johnswentworth’s Core Pathways of Aging as recommended by ChristianKI in the above comment (thanks Christian!).
Shortform #143 Taking small actionable steps to improve my life
Starts Monday Oct 10. I am coasting now on my past commitments because they have become habits (for the most part). Time for new commitments! Note: I find that small continuous actions of improvement, (see also Kaizen), more sustainable & actually doable than big innovations, so those are my guidelines with most of my new commitments.
Health:
Eat one or less egg per day instead of the two I’ve been averaging
Eat meat no more than once every other day instead of the once a day I’ve been averaging
Increase stairs climbed per day from an average of 7 flights per day to 12+ flights per day (note that this is a full weekly average, not just during workdays where it’s easy to climb 10 flights a day given my current duties).
Continue walking as much as possible to reduce car utilization, plus, commit at least one 2 mile minimum walk per week that’s separate from my walking commutes.
Mind:
Continue the habit of going to bed by 9:30 and falling asleep by 10 except for occasional (no more than once a week) staying up slightly later. Waking up at 5:45am every morning for the last few weeks has been great for me, I want to continue that and possibly move the wakeup time earlier.
Set a five minute kitchen timer once per day and write in a designated notebook about thoughts that crossed my mind that day.
Set a five minute kitchen timer once per day and read a designated nonfiction book or textbook about biology (this will be one recommended by commentators from my Have you considered getting rid of death? post that was also posted on LessWrong).
This feels like quite a few new commitments already, yet I’m feeling like writing several more paragraphs worth. Let’s start with the above, I’ll add more as I go.