Note 1: I'm by default reluctant to write anything explicitly related to gender issues, because our society has a very special way of being stupid about that, and it doesn't feel like adding my voice to the mess would really be, you know, adding anything. I think in this case an exception is justified, because I might genuinely have things to say here which are so controversial that they probably haven't been said before.
Note 2: Yes, I know, it's very e...
This is a more-or-less complete blueprint of the process I'm currently using to run my life on the meta level. It is organized around four major principles, each of which represents a non-trivial design decision. This means that you could negate each of them, and get something arguably sensible. The minor points serve to explain further, and to map out some consequences of taking the major principles seriously. For me, they are also cached thoughts that help me make dec...
There is a certain high-level pattern of progress seen in almost every human activity, which I like to call “growth triplets”. A growth triplet follows an archetypal sequence of three stages: naive, clever, and wise, with the exact meanings of these terms varying depending on the situation. The defining feature of the pattern is that the third stage has some unexpected similarities to the first one. Because of this, most people have to ...
Note: This is a small peek into the kind of background model-building that goes into Be Well Tuned. I don't currently have resources to invest into writing, so the description is pretty bare-bones. On the positive side, I have changed the blog theme to black text on light background - I hope that makes it more readable.
The Eisenhower matrix is a (somewhat) useful high-level framing of a certain aspect of productivity...
There are some things which after a period of contemplation acquire a definite "I want to trumpet this from the rooftops" quality, and which I end up not saying because the world doesn't seem to be listening anyway. I also don't have enough clarity and/or writing skill to force the world to listen.
Some of these thoughts come across in comments (for example on LessWrong 2.0), where I somehow feel l...
Note: these are some rough, preliminary notes on mental security, defined as the art and discipline of keeping one's mental software free from hostile external influence. Or in other words, having a mind able to achieve its own goals, rather than goals of, say, Moloch or other people which happened to be around. This is supposed to serve as a reference point for discussion and further thought...
I've literally run out of cynicism.
Not so long ago, one of my long-term strategic projects felt especially close to my heart. The project could be summarized as something like "give happiness to people who already have rationality as a prerequisite".
In my rampaging naivety, I had thought the hard part was to figure out happiness. What was I thinking? To find out, follow this short imaginary conversation with my old self.
<...This is a story of my 2-year-long struggle with an unwanted habit of cracking my neck, which had gotten out of hand around 2013-2015. If it seems to you like it's not a serious problem, consider:
it's a serious health hazard (it seems that repeated strain of the neck area can eventually cause e.g. a stroke),
it made me look socially awkward, bordering on retarded at the peak of ...
Content warning: the last part of this post is saying some things that might be uncomfortable to hear, in a sharp tone which you might not like.
I'm spending this week living in Airbnb with my partner. The host, a young Chinese woman, has a dog. Mixed-breed. Maybe half a year old. Underfed. Lonely. Mostly left alone for the day. It's a young dog goddamit, it wants to play. Or rather it must play! Play is needed to develop s...
This will be short and to the point.
Sometimes when you are learning something, you reach a point when you are constrained by raw power. Think physics and particle accelerators.
You compensate by being better at interpreting subtle evidence. Even with low power, you can learn most of anything if you have good models, and do the hard work of extracting a weak signal from noise.
However if you find yourself in this situation, inc...
There are three stances one can take when dealing with a mathematical subject.
The first one is the engineering/practical/below math stance:
The second one is the symbolic/formal stance:
Yoga, as commonly taught, in a multitude of versions descended from the Indian tradition, gets some crucial things right. At the same time, it gets some other things terribly wrong.
One obvious thing it gets wrong is attaching metaphysical or religious meaning to all the teachings. But annoying as it can be, I do not consider it a deal breaker for anyone who has half-decent epistemic habits. It is fairly trivial to filter out the wordy noise a...
"I'm not weird. I'm just optimized."
This is a rare chance to learn some little-known rationality lore. Proceed cautiously, according to the instructions below.
Before you start, please remember -- never question a technique until you have mastered it. Your weak, human mind is certain to raise objections as you make progress on this path -- but this weakness will be overcome with time. Eventually, the technique will becom...
Note: this is a carrier class conceptual identification. What I'll write might superficially sound like postmodernist blathering. I assure you it is not, though I realize that there is no way to tell the difference... unless you already understand what I'm trying to say in this post. There is nothing I can do but try to say it anyway.
A musician wants you to appreciate their melodies. But their real pride is the emotions they are putting into the music....
Note: In this post, I lay out a strong philosophical argument for rational and intelligent people to have children. Even if you are not interested in the topic itself, you might find some of the (tentative) mental models presented here useful.
Why would anyone ever use philosophical arguments to settle questions about parenthood? Well, to answer that, we'll need a good philosophical argument for acting on philosophical arguments....
Hat tip: Owen posted about trying to one-man the AI control problem in 1 hour. What the heck, why not? In the worst case, it's a good exercise. But I might actually have come across something useful.
I will try to sell you on an idea that might prima facie appear to be quirky and maybe not that interesting. However, if you keep staring at it, you might find that it reaches into the s...
Elon Musk said during the panel at the Asilomar conference ("Beneficial AI 2017 Conference"):
[...] Everyone is already superhuman. And a cyborg. The limitation is one of bandwidth. We're bandwidth constrained, particularly on output. Our input is much better, but our output is extremely slow. If you want to be generous, you could say mayb...
Really high concentrations of CO2 (30,000 - 40,000 ppm) produce obvious and terribly bad physiological effects.
CO2 levels even in poorly ventilated buildings rarely exceed 3,000 - 5,000 ppm.
The evidence about those levels of CO2 directly affecting cognition remains inconclusive.
How...
I was just about to run an introductory workshop around applied rationality, mindfulness, effective communication etc. in Warsaw, Poland when I got the flu, which forced me to stay in bed for a few days. A friend agreed to replace me at the event, and I wrote up the following notes for him.
The notes are not comprehensive, and do not include any background information or explanations. However, the availability of this kind of materials seems to be low, so there is a chance someon...
Once in a while, I learn something about a seemingly unrelated topic - such as freediving - and I take away some trick that is well known and "obvious" in that topic, but is generally useful and NOT known by many people outside. Case in point, you can use equalization techniques from diving to remove pressure in your ears when you descend in a plane or a fast lift.
Ears
Reading about a few equalization techniques took me maybe 5 minutes...