Hi, I'm from Perth, Western Australia. I have a background in analytical and background chemistry and have spent the last five years working in a testing laboratory doing a mixture of technician and logistics tasks. Unfortunately my workplace has recently imploded (metaphorically) and I am now job hunting. In addition to chemistry, I have also worked as a tour guide on a submarine, been assistant to a taxidermist preparing museum specimens, and had a brief stint filling in as a school librarian.
My interests are environmentalism, academia-adjacent work (I am frequently a science advisor for friends' creative writing) and logistics. My general strengths are that I'm a very loyal and diligent worker. I try to fix things that are broken in my work environment, if it's in my power to fix. I would love to get involved in a logistics job (I have my Dangerous Goods handling permits), chemistry, or if you don't mind tediously training me up for it, IT. Any help or tips appreciated.
I can be reached at morgrimmoon (at) gmail (dot) com
I'm looking for a Web UI/UX designer who works for cheap. Ideally, this would be someone with Javascript/CSS/HTML skills in addition to aritstic talent who could not only design UIs, but also implement them on the frontend. That person's first (unenviable) task would be to convert a feature comparison page that my scientist of a boss literally wrote in Notepad, into something that does not look like it was written in Notepad by a scientist -- but looks slick and modern instead. I will provide the source text (currently in the form of a CSV file). If that goes well, the next task would be to evaluate our corporate website (which BTW is written in Wordpress, go ahead and laugh now if you want), and bring it up to modern UI/UX standards; naturally, the feature comparison page should fit seamlessly into its overall design.
If interested, let me know at (bugmaster) (at) (gmail)
I'm looking for work this year, starting about October, most likely part-time. (I recently finished my Master's studying the evolutionary biology of ageing; I intend to take the year off to learn more skills, while working, then apply to PhD programs the following year.)
I could be good at academic editing (I have experience through Editing Press) or maybe technical writing, summarizing reports or research, stuff like that. Maybe tutoring. I'm not experienced at coding but it's one of the things I want to get better at, so if you do training+work I'd consider it.
I live in Ottawa, ON, Canada, or could do remote work.
I'm recently retired after 40+ years teaching English as a Foreign Language to adults (undergrad and grad students, steel workers, engineers, business people), cross-cultural communication and also some Mandarin Chinese medical interpreting. I'm looking for short term projects where the skills of cutting through language/cultural barriers would have an impact, where writing skills or pronunciation issues are creating barriers. OR teacher training; I've trained international teaching assistants for 20+ years to teach everything from math and physics to art and philosophy. I'm especially good at training people to teach in languages they don't speak very well, and can effect big improvement quickly.
Hi, I am a software architect and full stack developer with 10+ years of experience looking for on demand gigs. Currently I mostly work with Java and Angular but I have worked with languages such as C#, Delphi, php, asp (vanilla and .Net) and python. If interested you can contact me at adrianodsa@gmail.com
Canadian programmer looking for work, late 20s, most familiar with JS full-stack work, smart, good at algorithms, fast prototyping, would be super interested in anything to do with real-time messaging, websockets, or analytics. Willing to work remote or relocate.
I'm about to finish a STEM PhD, and I'm planning to shift out of academia. I'm looking for a software engineering or data science role, preferably in the bay area or remote. I'd prefer software engineering, but I'd need a decent amount of training -- I have a decent amount of programming experience, but it's all scientific programming. Data science I could dive right into.
I'd of course be excited to talk about potential employment directly, but I'd also just be open to advice about which companies I should talk to. When I think about where to apply, I really only know about the giant companies that (as far as I can tell) seem less interested in training someone like me. There are obviously tons of tiny startups in the bay, but I don't know how to find them or sort out which ones are open to training someone like me.
Hi! I was one of the finalists of the book review contest, and I'm looking for work at the moment. I'm at the intersection of coding and writing, and as a result I've been considering work in that space, such as technical writing or some other tech-adjacent roles, though by default I'm in software. I've been sort of slowly wanting to get in machine learning, though it hasn't been trivial to do that since I don't have direct recent experience. Working on it, though. I'm open to remote work from Canada (or possibly relocation to the US if there's a very compelling opportunity).
Are you an academic or nonprofit employee sick of handling the fiddly details of grant administration? Hire me (or convince your institution to hire me) to do it for you! I'll help prepare budgets & proposals, track deadlines, coordinate with other departments in your institution (contracts/sponsored projects office, HR, billing, IRB, etc), monitor compliance, prepare reports, and all the other things you need to do to get grant $ and spend it without getting in trouble. I would also be interested in learning the grant-maker side of the business (current experience is all on the recipient side, but I'm a very fast learner). I love working with passionate nerds and helping them focus on the important parts of their work by taking the bureaucratic nonsense off their plates.
Qualifications: I've been a research administrator for about 5 years and also have a law degree. Other background includes process improvement, project management, & customer service. I'm happy to provide more details via email (see below).
Must be a PSLF-eligible employer (US 501(c)(3) or educational institution) because of the student loan debt from the aforementioned law degree. Must be remote-friendly (if in the PNW I can do in-person training & occasional meetings, but for the long term I'm committed to a commute-free lifestyle).
You can reach me at aightsaber at the Google mail.
I'm a math PhD with experience in data science, AI/ML, and cloud. I'm looking to grow my consulting business (https://garoux.com/). Some recent projects include fine-tuning a large language model for text classification, then integrating the model into APIs as part of an application and performing inference at scale on millions of documents using Apache Spark.
If you're in need of consulting in AI/ML, cloud, or full stack engineering, send an email to mike@garoux.com.
I am a graduate student in mathematics hoping to finish up my PhD this December. My plan is to start a postdoc approximately one year from now, leaving a six month gap or so between my PhD and my postdoc and I am hoping to stay in the bay area. My expertise is in mathematical physics and I also have a background in numerical analysis as well. I would be interested in an internship at any company that plausibly does some good for the world .
If anyone has advice for how to find such an internship or is willing to talk to me, feel free to email me at
PS: I'm also interested in picking up a tutoring gig in math and/or physics this fall. I have experience teaching anyone from elementary school kids to graduate students.
Hey! I work at Antithesis, a startup that's more or less perpetually hiring software engineers.
If you love solving problems, know your way around a computer, and are open to an in-person role in Northern Virginia (Washington DC metro area), shoot an email to: info (at) antithesis (dot) com
About Antithesis: we're a four year old company trying to revolutionize software testing. We come from a bunch of different backgrounds and have several ACX readers in our ranks, myself included. We tend not to hire for particular programming competencies, but have projects in typescript, c++, rust, and c (so far).
I'm someone who got hired at Antithesis because I posted on the last thread! They are not kidding about actually looking to find people for jobs!
I've been there a bit over a month, and it's really great so far. I recently finished my introduction project, using our system to beat NES Castlevania. (The testing system excels at finding distinctive and hard-to-reproduce states of software, and beating Castlevania definitely fits the bill.) Now I'm moving onto new challenges, but there's still plenty of time to learn from the playground of NES. My coworkers are a knowledgeable, pleasant group who are always willing to help the new hire gain better understanding.
I strongly recommend giving us your consideration!
Hey everyone, I wasn't sure if I should post this in the employment or product/service section so posting it in both. Feel free to delete it if I'm mistaken!
I’m Shweta, the founder and lead designer at Studio Mukii. If you're a service-based business or an e-commerce business, I'd love to work with you!
— Who are we? —
Studio Mukii is a small yet mighty design studio passionate about the space where strategy and design meet. We partner with businesses of all types and sizes to help create meaningful connections with their audiences through strategic and visually engaging brand experiences.
— What do we do? —
Brand Strategy / Branding & Identity / Print & Digital Collaterals / Packaging Design / Shopify / Web Design & Development / Photoshoot Art Direction
If you have a project in mind, feel free to reach out to us on hello@studiomukii.com. :)
I will soon be hiring a postdoc in the Milan area in deontic logic/formal ethics/AI ethics very broadly conceived. Salary competitive for large European countries, I'm ok with partly remote.
Shoot me an email if you want to know more. rot 13 at ss48 aT anh.rqh
I am a digital artist looking for work and to expand my client base, so prices are low. I specialize in tabletop character portraits and am willing to do a full render bust for 20$--and half that if you can recommend me to your friends/circle, leading to at least one more commission.
See here for an example of the kind of work I've done in the past, but styles can vary widely depending on what you want. I am confident to replicate most looks. See the rest of my twitter for examples.
Want to have impact at scale? Our goal is to maximize the QALYs of humanity by moving healthcare delivery away from the labor cost curve and onto the software cost curve.
We're hiring across pretty much every team - engineers (hardware and software), medical (including doctors, clinical PMs, and everything in between), operations, finance, design, and more
If you're interested in driving down the cost of healthcare by two or more orders of magnitude drop me a line at felix <at> goforward.com or peruse https://goforward.com/jobs
- we're a venture-backed startup trying to rebuild healthcare from first principles. If you read Scott's blog there's a high probability you'd be an excellent culture fit.
- we put the patient first and sell directly to individuals so we align our incentives and don't have to deal with insurance companies or employers
- we're leveraging software, hardware, vertical integration, and disintermediating insurance to deliver better healthcare at lower cost (today we're a $150/mo concierge service, but think about our current product as the equivalent of a Tesla roadster - over time the goal is to expand the range of services and to get the cost down to $0/mo for the patient)
- we're still small enough that you can have an absolutely massive impact on the business
- drop me a line and I'll make sure we fast-track your application
For HQ roles, we're all in SF - turns out building a full-stack national healthcare provider from the ground up is incredibly complex, and it would be almost impossible to have the level of collaboration between folks that's needed if we weren't able to get together in person - not to mention develop hardware!
42 F seeking M, Seattle area, no children and not planning on any, but okay if you have school-age or older kids. Open to poly but prefer to meet a fellow undistracted single person.
My ideal situation would be a long-term relationship or permanent partnership, but not necessarily living together (I'm a bit of an ambivert and enjoy living alone in my condo, but love visiting others and having people over). Living together isn't off the table, though!
A perfect weekend night for me is rounding up a bunch of friends to go out to a great restaurant (I'm an omnivore foodie who loves to share dishes, it'd be nice if you were, too), and then seeing a great movie at the theater (and I am highly skilled at ferreting out the latter; I like to snobbishly say that my favorite genre is "quality."). Or maybe doing those things in reverse order so we can discuss the movie after!
On that subject, the most recent movie I watched was Baz Lurhmann's Elvis - although I only got through about half of it before shutting it off in frustration. It was all swoopy stylized camera movements and editing pans which made for an off-putting sense of removed distance from the characters.
TV is better than movies; the most recent TV I watched was the latest episode of Rick and Morty. It's so good you can't even process how good it is on the first pass.
I'm not especially outdoorsy and actively anti-woodsy, but I loved the crew rowing class I took last year and it'd be cool to get back into it (I am currently contenting myself with my WaterRower and occasionally delivering evil monologues straight to camera (and it would be neat if you get that reference.).).
Much more information, photos, and a couple of highly-themed metaphor and pun-filled personal ads can be found on my Fetlife profile, username "TheStoryGirl." Direct email is christinathestorygirl at gmail dot com
I'm a private-school teacher living in DC looking for a woman within a few years of my age and an hour's driving time for a long-term relationship; I'm not tied to DC long term but will probably be here for the foreseeable future, as I like my job and the dating pool is stacked in my favor. In my spare time, my passions are comparative linguistics, language learning (I have good Portuguese, OKish German, dormant Russian), writing, cooking, baking, and the occasional (not-professional-grade) coding spree, in about that order. My life goals are to start a family, buy a summer cabin on a lake in the Maine woods, and maybe make a few million dollars to retire early (I have a couple of side projects that *could* conceivably lead to this but probably won't). If I don't move or switch careers, my job (at a pretty academically well-regarded private school) comes with a serious tuition discount for fac brats.
Politically I am somewhere between a center-right Democrat and "the party line as dictated by The Economist, with a dash of reheated McCainism"; religiously I am agnostic, but was raised by the only graduate-educated Episcopalian coasties to have saved their virginities for marriage since about 1915 and, as a consequence, view dancing as infinitely more obscene than sex. I am decently good-looking in a soft-boy sort of way (5'11", 140lbs, clean-shaven) and would be happy to send you a picture if you'd like.
Feel free to email me or text me. My throwaway email is nephewjonathan@proton.me ; my phone number can be found by multiplying three by one billion, four hundred seventy-seven million, five hundred twelve thousand, four hundred fifty-seven. My ideal first date is a cup of coffee somewhere.
Male, Christ-follower, PhD in progress on natural language processing for low-resource languages. Looking for a lady with interesting thoughts who will be fascinating to talk to and go on dates with, perhaps for life! Long version at [1].
Currently in Dayton Ohio (at least for now). But I've made long-distance work and might be willing to relocate.
You can contact me at this cheesy online form [2], or by emailing me: 12leong at gmail, where 1 is my first initial, and 2 is the letter that is my middle initial, which is also one of the two in the middle of “middle”.
(If you can make a bot/NLP model that can actually parse this and pull out the correct letter I will actually be even more willing to talk to you, so go ahead!)
Machine learning engineer, looking to date an exceptionally smart woman. Have a dog, charitable person, somewhat witty, average-to-good looks, not a soyboy.
Longer term - want to start a *large* family, with embryo selection.
Even longer term - raise the children to reach the limits of the humanely possible, and create even smarter children.
Willing to do long-distance (temporarily), willing to relocate (temporarily, prefer Eastern Europe). My future is in Bulgaria.
29/M/Berkeley, looking for a relationship aimed at marriage + kids. Hobbies include "I've never tasted anything like this" food, ballroom dance, and occassionally karaoke.
You may enjoy my company if you have a pre-existing interest in the above hobbies, most enjoy social gatherings of 2 - 6 people, or just have an unfortunate taste for metatextual humor.
Honestly a very well written dating profile. If I was in the dating market, I would want to reach out, but in the back of my mind I would wonder is it her I want to date, or Scott's writing style?
42/F/Portland, OR. I got the most awesome job in the world (working in a lab doing research on brain preservation) through Scott's blog, and I'm hoping for similar luck with dating. Mother of 7, easy-going, good listener, enjoy writing.
You can reach me at annafirtree with the usual gmail addendum.
34/M/Wisconsin looking ideally for a wife but open to other things. Also probably going to move away soon, and visiting the bay area for a month+ this winter. If you want me to come visit your city for a week or two to hang out that can be arranged too.
Also whoever wants to feel free to yell at me about how much this profile sucks and how I could make it better, but ideally if you think "I'd be interested if I had this one piece of information" tell me what that piece of information is.
I have no object-level take, but I happen to notice that this fails [Aella's criterion for a good dating profile](https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1567639217353752580), and she may arguably be considered an expert on the matter.
The same is true for most profiles here or in general, but well you're the only one who gave permission to comment.
I like aella but I think she’s the opposite of a domain expert here given that she has an extremely unusual lifestyle, set of preferences, and dating history.
Also I’m confused by which specific [criterion] you’re referring to.
38/F/Munich, Germany/poly with three existing (long distance) relationships
I am looking for someone from Munich who would enjoy any number of things out of the set: { mostly just days of just sitting on the couch together and quietly doing separate things, going out to eat sometimes, having BDSM-flavoured sex (for added context, I am masochistic), mildly nerding about dinosaurs, watching science fiction and/or horror together, reading each other sci-fi and/or horror out of books, staying in contact via IRC, freeform roleplaying on IRC }.
Of these, I am mostly interested in the parts 'sharing-the-couch-but-doing-separate-things' and 'sex' (although I would want to get to know you for a handful of days beforehand first), but would still be interested in hanging out occasionally if your subset involves neither of these things.
I am introvert (in case the couch thing wasn't a hint), but enthusiastically fond of meeting people - it just sadly drains my energy reserves! I speak both German and English fluently, but prefer English. I grew up in South Africa (Greater Cape Town metropolitan area, mostly), if that's of interest. I like writing and world-building and talking your ear off about these two things, so be sure to bring a cork. :) Also, I eat low-carb due to a gut condition, so if you take issue with a non-vegan lifestyle, I am unfortunately going to make you very sad and you should stay away from me.
In case gender-identity matters to you (I've specified my sex in the A/S/L section), I gender-identify as androgyne/agender. Manifestations of this are mostly subtle, e.g. I don't wear dresses, ever, for any occasion. You will probably not notice. :) But I figured I'd mention it in case it's a deal-breaker for someone. (Pronouns are any, and she/her is fine. I use ve/vis/ver for myself when I need to refer to myself in third person, but have zero expectations that others use them; it's merely an honesty thing for me.)
You can contact me via pinkgothic at gmail dot com.
M/33 just moved to the Milan area to take up academic position. Day job: philosopher/logician/AI ethicist. Looking forward to meet people in the area who would read this blog.
Keen on great food, traveling, art, opera, history, languages, hikes, sailing, fencing and bike rides.
WANTED: Experienced sailor (or, preferably, sailing couple) for the 3- to 6-month nautical "date" of a lifetime. Gibraltar and back? Northwest Passage? Explore the remote western coast of Cuba? Our sailboat, Kestrel, is a Bruce Roberts Offshore-44 cutter (with GRP--not steel--hull) built by Atlantica in 1998 to insanely high standards and presently docked in Boston. We are a couple, now in our 70s, who can still stand a stormy watch but can no longer work the rigging unaided. Time frame is next April, although planning begins soon. All expenses paid. Shawn dot Spilman at Gmail dot com. (Just one L, please.)
Unfortunately, my girlfriend is not as enthusiastic about sailing as I am, and I have 0 experience (it's all from books, heh — I live in the desert and cannot afford a boat anyway)...
...but if you ever have the time and inclination to talk about sailing and sailing ships, and/or to help me understand the subject better* (or merely to show off cool nautical photos!), please let me know, and I'll e-mail you.
-------------
(*Both for pleasure, in terms of what it's like to take a long voyage in a modern sailing vessel — and maybe, too, in more technical terms, as I'm trying to build a "tall ship simulator", all existing such games being very inaccurate; but I'm hampered by not really being able to tell when something isn't true-to-life, having no real experiences myself)
You might enjoy my book, Boat Lore: Know-How for Sailors, at a token 99 cents on Amazon or read for free with Amazon Unlimited. Any number of classic books, some of them fiction, and a few movies are better still. Start with Joshua Slocum. Learning to sail is like learning to cook or to paint in oils. It takes a day to get the basics and a lifetime to do it well.
Cool! I'm a sailor, but currently landbound in Sweden. Are you liveaboards? Where were you for Covid? I was Tristan da Cunha when we learned that Cape Town was closed for us...
We have a home ashore in Boston and another, with our Pearson-34 docked behind it, in Cape Coral, FL, where we are hosting the first ACT Meet-Up in that area on Oct 2. For more, send email.
I'm just moved to Israel and know very few people here. I'm 31/M/married, staying in Tel Aviv, working as a Software Engineer. As it is too hot here, I mostly stay at home reading books and substack :), but it will be great to meet in real life over a beer, go hiking, etc
I write the //hellahexi// substack, just getting started. It's broadly about TTRPGs, from a theme/worldbuilding perspective. I like to trace out the implications of what we (in our games) take for granted, and see what weirdness results.
I co-host The Engineering History Podcast. We've covered JPL's occult founder, the radium girls, weird silicon valley history, and a lot more! Next week's episode is going to be on space nukes. We bring a wacky and accessible approach to some pretty dense topics and often our discussions turn philosophical. If that sounds interesting to you, here's a link to the show! https://open.spotify.com/show/6jAVPDB7yybOTmqpVCVe93?si=d081b0858cd448fd.
It addresses Axioms but it also takes a controversial position on the impact of narratively focused design and multiplayer design in strategy games and adjacent genres like rpgs and tactical turn based combat.
I think that if developers moved away from these two design focuses they'd open up a whole new world of possible gameplay.
The blog generally discusses unique gameplay systems and the reasoning for adding them to my Map&Menu fantasy world simulation game.
Year old substack that is trying to revive the short story. Payout to the winning author is $100 + 50% of subscription revenue. Next winner gets $447.50. If you post something on social media promoting it, I will give you 3 months free to read a bunch of amazing short stories.
Posts so far have centered around a few areas of interest which I have dubbed the 4 Es, namely:
Engineering
Economics
Environmental Science
Effective Altruism/Progress Studies
If you have interest in these areas, I hope you'll find my perspective and commentary entertaining, and hopefully learn something along the way. My most recent post was about how leaf cutter ants can adjust our perspectives on the emergent nature of agriculture.
I'm writing about the space industry and astrophysics, with a bit of other stuff thrown in as catches my attention. I used to be an astrophysicist years ago, and since them I've worked on a lot of interesting space projects, so I'd like to think I can bring a different perspective and clear explanations of what's going on and what it actually means for the future.
I'm not great at advertising, so I'll just say you can check it out here: https://www.thequantumcat.space/, and if you want to subscribe I'd love to have you as a reader.
I'm not sure how much overlapping interest there is between ACX and medieval Turkish mystical poetry, but just in case, I recently self-published a book of Yunus Emre's poems translated into English, available at nominal cost in paperback and ebook form here: Piercing the Heart: Poems by Yunus Emre https://a.co/d/ix6RB7u (or if technically inclined, you could read it for free here: https://gitlab.com/0j/poetry ).
Feedback from bilingual Turks would be especially welcome.
Here is a link to Part One of a (to-be-completed) three-part book review for Timur Kuran's "Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification." My basic view is that Kuran's model gets reality backwards: he thinks knowledge falsification merely follows from preference falsification, whereas I think that knowledge falsification matters more and moves first. (Note that this comment is almost entirely a summary of the forthcoming third part's argument, so after the first few sentences the link has little directly to do with what's written below).
By preference falsification, he means the public expression of a personal taste that does not match one's private opinion (for instance, pretending to appreciate your superior's apparent orientation toward certain virtues or aesthetics). He does not mean lying, except insofar as one's lies are aimed at “manipulating the perceptions others hold about one's motivations or dispositions”; nor does he mean self-censorship, except insofar as one's acts of omission intentionally misrepresent one's interior sentiments. Preference falsification is not strategic dishonesty, like supporting a “lesser evil” electoral candidate who could easily win over a long-shot favorite. And it is not hypocrisy, like granting oneself opportunistic exemptions from standards that one holds for others. Rather, it is avowing ideals which are themselves insincere. In contrast, "knowledge falsification" describes the pretense by people who know better that, for example, the Spanish Inquisition was especially bad: the Medieval and Roman Inquisitions each probably killed almost a hundred times as many people, but only the Spanish one—and its Portuguese spin-off—set up a special bureaucracy cleanly separated from the papacy and episcopacy, toward which it's thus much easier to direct sincere distaste for such purges.
For instance, Kuran writes: "Undertaken as a means of preference falsification, knowledge falsification has an unintended effect: it alters the composition of public discourse, making favored messages more common and unfavored ones less so. An immediate consequence is the distortion of public opinion, and a longer-run consequence is the distortion of private knowledge and private opinion." Likewise, he argues that "changes in private knowledge are unrelated to personal motivation. Beliefs get abandoned in response to transformations of the corpus of public information, not because individuals decide to change their own minds." In other words, one's preferences remain exogenously given, and falsification regimes can only change your private opinions by changing your factual beliefs; further, because preferences are in the driver's seat, your lies about information merely serve as props to persuade others that you believe a claimed ideology is good, and you don't have to persuade others that this purported alliance with its values flows from any particular alleged fact pattern.
But the rainbow movement chants "transwomen are women," not "transwomen should get access to places and privileges currently reserved for cis women." Further--even though some pro-pride people would honestly rate the natural reading of that slogan as true, and even though many more have redefined those terms to mean whatever makes its truth seem credible--individuals who insincerely avow this catchy mantra almost certainly support its implied policy agenda far more than do those who currently refuse to play its convenient make-believe. (Indeed, when hold-outs from the trans-train eventually convert, they often first change their minds about whether these lies look politically acceptable, instead of starting with a sudden blindness to biology).
If conversations were about sharing information rather than solidifying allegiances, we'd welcome corrections, befriend political enemies, view listening as greedier than interrupting, and replace our social networks with internet reading. And yet, we all understand that when a friend tells you about some altercation, your cued-up lines affirm his enemy's in-the-wrongness, instead of describing him (your friend) as desirable despite assholery. Cheap talk needs to find costly signals, and we've settled on complimenting an emperor's new clothes, not kneeling before kings we nonetheless call naked. In other words, we generally demonstrate vulnerability by using our social status to brazenly bluff, out of trust that chosen interlocutors won't pounce on such flagrant errors... or else to test whether their loyalty beats this truth (much like how monarchs know they can trust court eunuchs). If there were a parade where we watched our social superiors proudly cross-dress, and one child were to loudly ask why the king is dressed like a queen, the gelded sovereign's float would not deflate, nor would the bowed spectators rise; no, the kid's parents would start loudly scolding or hushing their little embarrassment. Others have of course pointed this out (for instance, Zero HP Lovecraft), but the point stands: inquisitions are directed not by the inquisitive, but at them.
Kuran argues that such knowledge falsification "is undertaken to justify one's public position to others rather than to oneself [as] a form of preference falsification" because, for instance, listening to regime-approved broadcasts and rallies can provide the arguments necessary for you to make your avowed faith more "convincing." He rejects an alternative explanation, i.e. that these "people seek dissonance-lowering information." But I think the modal NPR-listener clearly wants worldview-affirmation, and finds patterns which disrupt such perspectives viscerally discomforting. Does a typical Maddowist seem to relish opportunities for debating wrongthought with persuasively honed goodfacts? In my view, no: they seek any nearby rationalization as shelter against those surprises which shock an accepted dogma. Do they test out hypotheses in private so as to publicly perform only their side's most supportable claims? Again, in my experience, no: they latch onto whatever can quickly help them forget a temporary crisis of faith. Is understanding enemies on their own terms widely embraced, in order to better parry their threatening ideas? No: good-faith inquiries into hot-button topics render even opposition research suspect. I think the woke make this tendency quite clear, insofar as they love confessing to internalized ignorance and/or to implicit noticing, so that they can seek out proper trainings for suppressing such impulses.
Relatedly, the book discusses how minor penalties for crimethink seem to effectively seduce one's honest preferences more than major ones do--as when stiffly banned ideas persist underground, while going along with a moderately incentivized catechism causes people to even privately minimize their personal disagreements--by suggesting that those honest beliefs which people so easily renounce must just be held very weakly. The alternative would be that we seek to reduce dissonance and maintain self-respect, so easily giving into public heresy naturally causes us to forsake even secret faith (or else to start flimsily reconciling said heresies with our faith). "The crucial point is that differences in attitudinal change will tend to reflect differences in cognitive resistance, not differences in motivation," in Kuran's perspective. In other words, if your convictions "yield to mild pressure, the reason could be that [your] reservations are minor or, if major, that they rest on superficial understandings. In either case, [your] resistance to new ideas is likely to be low." The alternative is that "[t]he magnitude of the dissonance created by a conflict between one's inner and outer selves varies inversely with one's incentive for accommodating external demands."
In other words, though the introduction says that it inter-disciplinarily "recognizes that the mind has limitations and that it is a seat of tensions," the book promotes the standard economist's worldview: that we should model individuals as having only resources, like arguments, and desires; any behavior thus represents a reliably computed revealed preference, through some combination of these endowments and attributes. And so wishing we had more backbone doesn't make sense, just like junkies must by definition really prefer doing terrible drugs to living decent lives. Temptation may have been a core concept throughout our civilization's history, but post-WWII mainstream western economics pretty fundamentally relies on declaring it incoherent or vacuous, and reducing preferences over preferences to mere preferences.
However, we can equally model humans as intersections between Apollonian accumulations, Dionysian wants, and Herculean strength, especially given that our computational bottleneck seems to be processing power, not programs or goals. We suffer endemically from inattentional blindness, motivated reasoning, and confirmation bias; we forget, miscalculate, and regret. You can of course use neoclassical axioms to describe this as a model of endogenously-determined agents, just like astronomers could always add enough epicycles to make starry data compatible with geocentrism. But it's easier to just say that I think true credence is less elastic than pleasure, that the good life orients more towards excellence than happiness, that the world tests your spine more than your wants, that actions reveal grit more than desire, and that virtue rests upon integrity not uninhibitedness.
As a result, I think the relationship between preference falsification and knowledge falsification which Kuran describes should be reversed. Instead of "collective conservatism" arising from establishment constraints on expressed ideals--where we don't quickly do what's popular because we don't quickly learn what's popular because we don't quickly admit what we actually think--it arises from producing excuses for official narratives (which can legitimately sate betrayed subjects). Instead of distorting information, this whips up earnest yet superficial and thus exploitable but potentially chaotic passions.
And yet--while preference falsification cascades (where everyone suddenly realizes what everyone else really thinks) generate surprises which threaten their lie-monger sovereigns--knowledge falsification cascades prop up this regime: first, each week focuses us onto some completely new obvious trend that all decent people strenuously deny is occurring; then, once we're coordinated into teams inside this topic arena, our side heroically celebrates what a good thing it is that's happening. Michael Anton summarizes this tendency in a number of ways, including "the same fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it," and "that'll never happen, and when it does you'll deserve it!"
I trust you can provide your own examples, though one good heuristic might be to consider whether a historic argument against some achieved progress might have won, had the public foreseen its actual results. For example, did "slippery slope" warnings in fact come true, and, if so, does that mean the march of history actually vindicated those cautionary prophets? If your socially progressive or civilly libertarian 2010 self appeared today, with internet access, how would you convince him that the facts he can readily find about current LGBT issues don't delegitimize whatever triumphs led to this? Just try turning off the lights, lighting a candle, putting on some Katy Perry, and looking in the mirror at what could be yourself ten years ago: then say, "Genitalia exist in order to signify one's metaphysical gender, so anybody can freely reinterpret their actual genitals as representing other sex organs, which means the human form is but a process of inscribing beliefs onto flesh, and thus biological consequences from these affirmation surgeries aren't really part of you who have become just the desire to be so affirmed." Can you even hold yourself to last month's views, without endlessly picking up today's new take cycle, or have you become like a consultant who must constantly advise yourself on what your opinions would be if anything was real? (Admittedly, codex readers are less vulnerable to this tendency than pretty much any other group, so I mean the "you" here quite generally; still, though, I think this audience would benefit from internalizing the implication that correct arguments don't matter nearly so much against generalized falsificationism as does personal fortitude).
Our goal must be to rejoin reality by shedding these passions born of lies. Just as Kuran counsels that preference falsification can actually hijack knowledge, we must be wary of knowledge falsification hijacking actual preferences. Yes, as Kuran points out, a crowd's authentic factual beliefs will end up mistakenly kowtowing to regime-approved values when said beliefs are based on outsourced information, specialized analysis, collective decision-making, complicated feedbacks, and minimized adversarialism. But if I'm right in arguing that knowledge falsification matters more and moves first, then the more serious risk arises when people base their values on vicarious enjoyments, cultivated tastes, coordinated behavior, distant consequences, and unexamined motives. For intuition as to why, remember Scott's post about Forer Statements: because on average we pretend to be above social desirability bias, shrinks and psychics can in expectation predict that each of us feels more prone to social judgment than we think others generally seem; however, until recently, people haven't often wanted to brag about how socially undesirable they think their interiority is, so these pathologies aren't all that contagious. But whereas therapists thus prey on self-consciousness, demagogues prey on self-aggrandizement, which spreads much more explosively (a demagogue can guess that on average you feel like you're less harmed by our society's widely-believed fake-boogeymen than others seem to be, so they can get you to loudly affirm that "yes, the harms facing alleged victim-group X are a very big deal, even though it doesn't affect me," which of course further inflates the boogeyman in question).
The natural trend toward complex culture has been stacked against us on both counts, but Kuran believes we can fruitfully clear away much rot if we think in terms of cumulative utility graphs, expressive propagation curves, and cowardice threshold charts, whereas I believe we should focus on motivation, training, and discipline. Note that these are mostly points I will raise in parts two and especially three of my review, whereas the link is only to part one: https://cebk.substack.com/p/take-off-your-mask-and-put-on-a-habit
I like this and broadly think it makes sense; but some of it I found, initially, hard to parse — just a friendly suggestion, if you feel inclined to take any!
(That is, more paragraph breaks and less-complex clauses — or fewer complex-clauses, either works! — might help draw in readers. I think.
Mostly the paragraph thing. Although the comment format might be making that worse, on my tiny phone screen, than it really is.)
Thanks for the compliment & the feedback! Several people have told me that now (and nobody has told me the opposite) so I should definitely try simplifying things in the future. Cheers
A handful of in-progress (but likely to stay that way) recordings from a recovering analog fetishist "indie" musician, now mostly hermit pseudo-surfer. Violating my own "make music for itself" take here, but there you have it.
The Guild of the Rose is an online-focused rationality training and self-improvement group, building on the foundations (and learning from the mistakes of) similar orgs.
We place a strong emphasis on community, with a bias towards practicality.
I recently edited a sci-fi trilogy for $30/hr, turns out I'm fast and extremely thorough, which makes sense I guess since I was a newspaper editor for years in the long ago. Total cost for a long trilogy was about $2000 total or ~$400/book for a more standard 50,000 novel. Reference available. email is k * h*m e c k@gmail.com, except remove the spaces and asterisks.
Got a VERY clever kid between the ages of 8 and 14? Are they hungry to learn, and are undernourished with their current school?
I teach live, hyperactive, online science classes! We work kids around the world, and particularly in the Bay Area. (Our sweet spot seems to be kids who are gifted/talented and/or ADHD.)
The big project is to rebuild the science curriculum from the ground up on an intellectually vibrant, rationalist-inspired foundation... so if you're looking for an outfit with gargantuan plans, yeah, we've got those!
Our third year of classes starts next week, and we still have a few open seats. If you'd need a discount, just reach out and let us know you read ACX — we'll do what it takes to get your kid experiencing the joy of science!
If you find yourself misunderstood, especially when explaining things in person, I can help. If you consider yourself low-confidence and don't know how to work on it, I can help!
For the past 10 years I have been developing a method that I have since employed on engineers, middle and C-level managers and exceptional people, helping shy people become better at making friends, helping people get over stage fright, helping experts communicate their ideas clearer to a wide array of audiences, and helping TEDx speakers get their good speeches to become great. If you are a company and need workers trained at these skills (communication, feedback, teamwork, confidence, presentations, teaching) - I organize online and in-person workshops (in Europe). If you are an individual looking to develop yourself, I do one-on-one coaching online to help you become your better self. Reach out at dusan at dnesic dot com to set up a free call to see if we click and how we can work together on getting your confidence up and your ideas heard!
I am a freelance editor specializing primarily in fantasy and science fiction, though happy to work with most types of fiction and occasionally interesting non-fiction. My previous work includes fantasy, light romance, the variety of not-quite-fantasy where the geography and history are invented but no magic is present, superheroes, urban fantasy (you may be noticing a pattern here), military sci-fi, mysteries (usually fantasy mysteries), and "interesting nonfiction" (mostly my father's books, that's how I got started). Not all of this is published, but for some representative samples: https://www.amazon.com/Harald-David-D-Friedman/dp/1416520562/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495748349&sr=1-1&keywords=harald (see note about how I got started), https://www.amazon.com/Cantata-Coral-Ivory-The-Palace/dp/0992152879/ (a really early one which I firmly recommend on its own merits), https://www.eviscerati.org/fiction/cb/ (web serial superhero fiction, some of the editing I have done is in visible comments, though not all.
My website is http://arpistaediting.com/ (and should run smoothly now, thank you so much Austen!). Prices are currently at $2-$8/500-word page depending on how much work is needed (for fiction; non-fiction is higher), with a five-free-pages offer for new clients so you know which of those prices applies and what you'll be getting for it before you actually have to pay me anything. Contact information and additional details are all on the website. And thank you again to everyone who contacted me after the previous ads!
In the past 3ish months I became a productivity coach. I work with clients on their own goal-setting, productivity, akrasia, ugh fields, etc. I've been especially enjoying working with people in this community, because they tend to be avid systematizers like myself, and we have a common vocabulary that makes deep communication easier.
Learn more about coaching and get your free 30 minutes with me here-
It's a really great place to learn how prediction market mechanisms work without risking anything. Plus, our site is full of ACX regulars; our all-time top market was "Who will be the next ACX Discord Moderator?" You can sign up for free here (referral link): https://manifold.markets?referrer=AustinF2P
Hi All! My brother-in-law Bill Adams wrote fun and exciting novels and short stories. When he died in 2019, I undertook to publish his stuff on Amazon. I love them all and want them to live forever.
TL;DR: You can find them all via http://davidwall.info/BillAdams/index.html. They are available for Kindle or in paperback; the four novels are also on Kindle Unlimited.
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Tilt was Bill's first novel, a science-fictional defense of free will and an epic tale of love, triumph, betrayal and redemption. Hannes Bannerman undertakes a quixotic bid to single-handedly overthrow the gangster ruler of the resort planet Spang. But what does he hope to gain? This one is my favorite, and the Kindle version is AVAILABLE FOR FREE Sept 9 through 13.
The Unwound Way, written with Bill's cousin Cecil Brooks, was the first of two novels about Evan Larkspur, a poet and playwright who finds, after a century in space and cold-sleep, that his works have become both revered and seditious. Originally published by Ballantine/Del Rey Books.
The End of Fame is the sequel to The Unwound Way. Evan Larkspur prepares to reveal himself and lead a revolution, but somebody beats him to the punch. Originally published by Ballantine/Del Rey Books.
Dead Sirius is a modern-day thriller set in and around Boston. Bret Ambler, a perennial student, successful inventor, and energetic slacker, is marked as the fall guy in a mysterious plot involving the new Russian President, credulous neo-Nazis, and South American assassins.
13 Quick Tricks (And a Few Long Cons) is a collection of twenty-three short stories, mostly mysteries, including thirteen published in magazines around 1980. Ellery Queen's calls "A Very Short Week" a "tour-de-force", but all of them are delightful.
I am currently reading 13 Quick Tricks based on a post of yours some weeks back. I’m enjoying it very much on vacation! Thank you for making it available.
I used blender to make a short video explaining my ongoing doctoral research in spacecraft propulsion as part of a competition in my research group. It's my first effort at scientific communication and I know my microphone quality isn't great, but I'm pretty happy with it and would appreciate some eyes on it!
We've had one of these in a vacuum chamber for the past 6 months! Yeah please make progress on the simulation problem! Seriously though is your lab able to collaborate with a UK company? If so I'd be keen to explore options.
It's pretty good, for someone who's familiar with basic E&M, but if you want to make it more accessible you might consider interspersing the main animation with subanimations that explain some of the key component ideas, e.g. the Lorentz force just zooms by and it really needs a little subanimation of its own for anybody who didn't quit physics after the first year.
Hey everyone! I’m Shweta, the founder and lead designer at Studio Mukii. If you're a service-based business or an e-commerce business, I'd love to work with you!
— Who are we? —
Studio Mukii is a small yet mighty design studio passionate about the space where strategy and design meet. We partner with businesses of all types and sizes to help create meaningful connections with their audiences through strategic and visually engaging brand experiences.
— What do we do? —
Brand Strategy / Branding & Identity / Print & Digital Collaterals / Packaging Design / Shopify / Web Design & Development / Photoshoot Art Direction
If you have a project in mind, feel free to reach out to me on hello@studiomukii.com. :)
I MAKE WEIRD THINGS. If you have a weird thing need, I can probably make it for you. Some (but sadly by no means all) of the previous weird things I have made can be found at my Instructables page (https://www.instructables.com/member/rachel/), my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/mnrsiat), and my Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/doctorshiny). I am, shall we say, new to marketing myself; so for example the drshiny.com website exists but is terrible. But nevertheless, buy a weird thing from me!
I clicked though and was struck by how well made and attractive some of these weird things are. Unaffiliated - just impressed by the quality and design.
Hi! EA for Jews (https://eaforjews.org/) is running an EA Shabbat Dinner Program (https://eaforjews.org/take-action/shabbat/): a way for people to come together over a shabbat meal to explore the ideas of effective altruism and build community. Hosts are provided with funding and resources to run the dinner. All are welcome, whether Jewish or not Jewish, new to EA or highly engaged! If you’re interested in attending or hosting an in-person dinner please fill out this super quick form! - https://airtable.com/shrifiTuH3sPUTHuW
We have a Discord server for rationalist and rationalist-adjacent Dutch people and people living in the Netherlands, with the goal of building a stronger community by organizing and promoting regular meetups. We also have spirited discussions! Join here if you'd like that sort of thing: https://discord.gg/t6C9CywN
TheThinkery, a group of ACX readers in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and anonymous locations doing an ACX online meetup Thursday September 22 in Gathertown 8pm eastern, 5pm Pacific. Internationals welcome, though, timezones are wicked.
What does it mean to improve your local community/environment? Is local improvement possible? What would that mean? Should you care? Does local matter anymore? And how would one go about making such improvements possible? Come puzzle over these things and more with us Thursday night.
We tend to discuss the topic for a while and then move to whatever fits one's fancy. Also, gathertown allows splitting to talk in different groups. So that's, like, helpful if you want to talk Stable Diffusion, but another group of people want to talk development economics, and another education politics.
We're planning an in-person gathering for late 2023 (exact date TBD) about rationalism, post-rationalism, meta-rationalism, cog sci, meditation, AI, psychology, & more.
David Chapman, author of Meaningness and In The Cells Of The Eggplant
Jake Orthwein of the Frame Problems Youtube channel
if you are interested a right-tilting but rationalist-open dinner group, and you live in austin, feel free to email me at contactgnxp@gmail.com. usually happens about 2x a month, announced in a private signal group. sometimes we have out of town notable guests (usually friends of mine, or ppl i've done podcasts with)
Tomorrow 9/8, the synthetic biology Journal Club group DNADeviants is having a spontaneous IRL meet up in mission bay sf around noon. A few folks in the EA and rationalist community or adjacent will be there. DM @paultkim_nysbc on Twitter if you’re interested to find out location details.
I'm in the process of searching for land to build a homestead and I'm looking for co-homesteaders. Looking for friendly and self sufficient people who are interested in building a small community on land they own.
WE ARE NOT LOOKING TO BE A COMMUNE. Everyone owns and is responsible for their own property although of course the goal is to cultivate community and help each other out.
Some core project goals focus around: food self sufficiency, land conservation, off grid living, spending more time drinking beers around campfires with dogs, keeping bees and cultivating edible mushrooms, having space to build a high quality workshop, bringing good people together to build cool stuff.
The project is anti political which is to say the members are interested in minimizing the time spent dwelling on politics external to the project
Geographically open but the couple places I'm currently most interested in are Coeur D Alane ID, Greenville SC, Asheville NC, Bentonville AR, several small towns in MT. Places with abundant farmland within 30 mins of a medium sized town at as reasonable as possible prices which I believe will fare better than average through climate change.
Right now the project has 2 people on board, ~600k in capital and one of the members has extensive construction / craftsman experience. Looking for partners who can contribute on all fronts but the unfortunate reality is, with the price of high quality land these days, bringing some meaningful amount of capital to the project is mandatory.
As an aside I'm also single and interested in dating people who are interested in homesteading and self sufficient off grid living.
Lots more to say but probably better to just get in touch if you're interested after hearing up to this point. andrew.n.max@protonmail.com
Hi! I'm looking for flatmates in or around the Boston area to save on rent.
I am 36, male, easy-going, and neat/clean. I'll probably only be staying at the apartment part-time. I've been looking through ads on facebook/craiglist, but I'm not really looking forward to the process of having to weed through a bunch of unreliable randos from the Internet. But I figured if I post this here on ACX, I might find some cool randos who I actually have stuff in common with!
Let me know if you're interested, or know anyone who might be.
Hi! This is a bit strange but: I am suffering from a mystery illness that is about to cost me my dream job. Since I'm desperate, I thought I'd see if I could get other eyes on it! I'm even setting up some prizes: 100 dollars to you or a charity of your choice if you email me a treatment that is promising enough for me to try, 5,000 dollars to you or a charity of your choice if anything you suggest leads to significant improvement after a year. If you're familiar with the medical field, skimming the document might be low hanging fruit!
Hi. You posted on the ACX Classified Thread asking if anybody had ideas about your mystery illness. I just learned about something that I thought might be it: It's called a Chiari malformation. It happens when a part of the skull is too small for the brain, and part of the brain gets squeezed into the spinal canal. Symptoms are headache:
Headaches, often severe, are the classic symptom of Chiari malformation. They generally occur after sudden coughing, sneezing or straining.
Neck pain
Unsteady gait (problems with balance)
Poor hand coordination (fine motor skills)
Numbness and tingling of the hands and feet
Dizziness
Difficulty swallowing, sometimes accompanied by gagging, choking and vomiting
Speech problems, such as hoarseness
I know the above aren't a perfect fit with what you describe, but the head and neck pain are a match; you mention becoming inarticulate and disoriented -- list mentions speech problems and dizziness; you say vigorous exercise brings on an attack -- lists says attacks come on after straining.
The Chiari malformation is diagnosed by an MRI of head and neck, and you mention that you have had that and results were normal. On the other hand, a friend's daughter was just been diagnosed with this, after several years of symptoms. Seems likely that she had had some MRI's in all those years of going to doctors, and yet the problem wasn't found til recently. So maybe the Chiari malformation is hard to see on just any MRI -- like maybe you have to set up the MRI a special way to check specifically for this problem.
Anyhow, seems worth a shot. Wishing you well, in any case.
I have some general advice that has helped other people with mystery illnesses get more effective help from doctors. OK, all doctors are going to feel mystified, and some are going to be skeptical of how accurate your reports are. So go to one with a LOT of solid data.
REGULAR DAILY MEASURES
Take regular measures of a bunch of stuff, at least twice a day at some regular time, and make the results into a nice neat chart. Low-hanging fruit measures are temp, pulse, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood oxygen -- all easy to do. Also do tests that relate directly to problem:
-A good measure of concentration is Stroop test, easy to find online, quick to make, can take it using your phone, & it's not subjecty to practice effects
-Maybe head or neck pain ratings
-Whattup with your neck. Take a photo in profile to show head/neck angle. Have somebody rotate your head right, left, up, down and record about how many degrees your head can turn in each direction. Note whether any directions cause pain.
DO ALL THE SAME MEASURES DURING AN ATTACK. In addition to standard measures, do some extra ones during attack.
-Get someone to interview you and video you during some attacks.
-Find out what some standard simple neurological tests are and have them administer them & record results.
DO EXPERIMENTS SEARCHING FOR THINGS THAT AFFECT PROBLEM
-Does wearing a neck brace reduce chance of problem?
-Are there any ways you can bring on problem? Bending over so blood pools in your head? Hold head in weird position? Hyperventilating? Jumping up and down? Spinning in a desk chair? pressing on spots in your neck and upper back?
Gather this data for at least 2 weeks, with at least one attack in the period. So then go see a good doctor and bring in all this data, nicely organized. Doc will be in a much better position to figure things out now, plus all those records should lay to rest any idea he has that this problem is so weird you must be confabulating or exaggerating.
Also one last thing I thought of: does your headache throb? Can you make it throb by bending forward & lowering head, the way you do when you pick something up off the floor?
Also, have you tried a migraine rescue med to see whether it does anything? Would be informative to know what effect one has.
And a final thought: If you do this — and I strongly recommend doing it — a neurologist could probably give you some other measures to take on a regular basis, and/ or during an attack, that would be informative for the next doctor trying to figure out what is going on.
If you haven’t done it already seems like you should bring on an attack and then get an EEG and some kind of brain imaging during it.
Sounds a lot like a craniocervical or atlantodental instability to me, only the disorientation doesn`t fit in. Do you really lose your knowledge about your location, date/time, identity or situation or did you mean spatial / coordinative problems? The latter would fit basilary blood flow problems due to mechanical irritation of the vertebral arteries; disorientation in the psychiatric sense is a cerebral sign that wouldn`t be caused that way before seroius cerebellar symptoms occured.
Anyway, if it is an instability, there may be no cure but surgical fusion.
Are there any conditions that were suspected but ruled out? What kinds of specialists have you consulted with?
Could you be suffering from mitochondrial dysfunction? (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26083647/). I'm no doctor but this is something I've experienced. I got over it shortly after I started taking supplements that help mitochondria, like CoQ10, acetyl L-carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, magnesium, some B vitamins, and antioxidants like green tea extract. Something to note is that some of these are mild blood thinners.
What about migraines? Or a shoulder injury that affects your neck?
Have you looked into cerebrolysin, it's neuropeptides derived from pig brains sometimes used for treatment of brain trauma. I've never taken it before so can't vouch for it but it might be worth looking into.
I'm not a doctor, but have you been tested for B12 deficiency? The symptoms you describe do seem like they could be consistent with it. Although perhaps this is less likely given that the symptoms started following a brain injury and concussion, it might be worth looking into just in case.
Yeah, good luck with that. There's an interesting podcast you may want to listen to. It's about a photographer who experienced weird neurological symptoms that stumped her doctors. She used CrowdMed to get an accurate diagnosis. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/awhmzx/42-blind-spot
Is anyone here perhaps affiliated with Riot Games and willing to help me, a League of Legends player, fix some broken Challenges? I really like imaginary internet points, but I'm frustrated that some of these aren't achievable in the manner they claim to be. I know exactly the problems with a few of them, but there's also some others where working with someone at the company would be really helpful for figuring out the fix.
Always note a massive preference for a "smart and curious" partner on all these dating profiles, but how much does that matter in the long run? Like why is that the one most people consistently highlight in their dating profiles?
My strong Intuition is that the intelligence of my partner probably wouldn't make a massive difference provided they aren't way below average. Am I just way off here?
"smart and curious" is also a good proxy for things that it's less socially acceptable to blatantly screen for (primarily income). Not everyone might be doing this intentionally, but my guess is that at least some people are doing it accidentally
Oh yeah. For a while I tried to suppress my curiosity so I'd be better at making money. I figured there were 'idea people', who wasted their lives as adjuncts, and 'practical people', who went out and told people what they wanted to hear and made money.
I know. I should have found a way to monetize it. Of such decisions are fortunes made and lost, I imagine.
It can be quite jarring to try to have a conversation with someone who engages with the world and with ideas on a level different than your own, even if you like other aspects of their personality.
Have had only one long-term relationship to be fair (4 years and counting!), with my sample size being small because I'm 25.
To be honest my girlfriend does engage with the world in a different way than me. She isn't really that curious about the world, and she loathes when I try to engage her with abstract ideas or the kinds of things spoken about on this blog.
That being said, it's never really been an issue. We still love each other's company, we still have clear goals we want to achieve together, and though we have divergent hobbies we almost always engage in them together as we're both usually willing to compromise.
I guess I get what you mean to some extent. I wouldn't have a long-term relationship with many of the women in my hometown because they only care about conspicuous consumption, flexing said consumption on Instagram, and having children before 25. But I would argue these traits are more related to a woman's values rather than her smarts, hence why I think values are probably far more important.
It's important to the sort of cerebral people who frequent SSC/ACX. Birds of a feather and all that. It's not a moral thing, it's a compatibility issue. Look at activists seeking out people with similar politics, or athletic people requiring a potential partner be able to keep up with them physically.
At least for me, it's not quite a matter of smart. I've met a great many highly intelligent women, but part of what made my wife such a good fit for me was how unusually intellectual she is. By intellectual, I mean interested in accumulating and sharing knowledge, dissatisfied with facile solutions, and the sort of person who enjoys considering all sorts of weird situations. Less goal-directed intelligence, and more exploratory intelligence. I think that preference is common in this rather-intellectual community, and that's what the "smart and curious" phrasing is driving at.
> wouldn't make a massive difference provided they aren't way below average
The average reader of this blog has an IQ of 138 according to a 2017 survey. I don't know how accurate that is but I'd be surprised if it's below 120 in practice (yes, yes, this is /r/iamverysmart material). Someone with an IQ of 95 would be incredibly far off.
I think it's a matter of "are they within a certain range from me" - my friends that have average intelligence make for good friends, but I would not tolerate them as partners as they couldn't partake in meaningful conversations when I need them to. I am fortunate to have a great wife, and she is kind, beautiful and accepting - but her intelligence is also conditio sin qua non.
There's a 60/40 chance I'll be in the bay area this October (10th oct to 10th Nov) and I'd love to find a nice group house with a temporary lack in residents to join. If you know of any, hit me up.
Are there any ACX readers near Sainte-Maxime, France, who would like to hike, play boardgames and/or have fika? Me and my girlfriend are moving there and we'd like people to hang out with. :)
I'm seeking collaborators who are interested in working on a self-tracking project to measure cognitive performance. The late psychologist (and noted self-experimenter) Seth Roberts developed a simple, quick reaction-time test that could be used to measure your brain function. I worked on this project with Seth before his untimely death in 2014. Since that time I've pursued other interests, but I'd like to start working on this project again. The reaction-time test would be perfect for screening putative nootropics, and the results wouldn't hinge on subjective assessments of effectiveness. If anyone is interested in working together on this project, please contact me at alexc [at] aya [dot] yale [dot] edu. Professor Roberts's blog posts are still online. One representative post is here: https://sethroberts.net/2014/01/09/reaction-time-as-a-measure-of-health/
Everything from experimental design, to data analysis, to improving the script that's used to collect the data, to just generally discussing ideas on the best way to test hypotheses related to improving brain function. I'm especially interested in collaborating with someone who has a good working knowledge of statistics (an area that I'm weak in), but everyone is welcome to participate. Email me at alexc@aya.yale.edu if you're interested.
**Peter Singer, Bryan Caplan** will be debating “Do The Rich Pay Their Fair Share” next week for an audience of 1,000 people on an unrecorded zoom call.
Tickets available at the link below.
See this link for the details, including how to join the event as an audience member:
Very interesting ticketing format, too. "Selling" all tickets in a blind auction seems like a great way to potentially raise revenue, but also a great way to leave people feeling betrayed if they don't win the auction. It's especially tough because there's no hint at what the cutoff price might be. But I guess no matter if you win the auction, you've still made a donation to a great charity, which is the whole point anyway.
Hello, I'm starting a super fun ANTIDOOMSDAY CULT. "Where you never have to drink the Kool-Aid™".
Our activities involve creating a irreverent doomstead compound where we can live cheap and self provision, fomenting revolution, art, science, frolicking in meadows. We have no leader and don't plan any rapey or murdery things. Current members range from 18-40 and run the gamut from disaffected artistic youth wizards to hyper rationalist autistic science hobos. Some have described us as a heterodox anarchist thinktank. We are looking for interesting cooperative people. If you would like to join email me at 6.2831853071 protonmail.
Our company is tackling PPP fraud and other types of corporate fraud. A lot of people are upset about this and their only option is to throw their complaint into the void. If you have any information on fraud and you'd like to see something done, drop us a tip.
I hesitate to be negative about a program aimed at increasing the costs for lack of integrity, but...
1) there does seem a lot of special pleading around PPP, with an alarm not reflected in concern for other obvious areas of fraud and waste.
2) I would urge people to pay as much attention to the small $ loans as the larger ones. Fifteen companies borrowing $200k have taken more than 1 company borrowing 1 mill from the public pot.
The people we've talked usually have some relationship with a business that received a PPP loan that is way too large for activity, say a small mechanic shop paying near minimum wage receiving 2 million in PPP loans. The kinds of people that lie about their business operations are shady people more generally.
As someone coming from the more implementation side of such programs. What are your thoughts on the fraud being just a known feature of these programs?
The government metaphorically (and almost literally) wanted to sprinkle money out of helicopters. There is a balance when designing programs and their rules in terms of the level of fraud the program incurs versus the versus the number of eligible applicants discouraged from applying/denied.
You make completing an application a 1 foot hurdle, you might get 20% fraud, but get almost everyone who qualifies as a successful applicant. You make it a 3 foot hurdle you might get 5% fraud, but also lose 30% of the applicants to either them just not even attempting the hurdle, or failing to navigate it.
Add in the government's main instruction to the people administering these programs being "follow all the rules BUT FASTER FASTER FASTER!!!!!!", and the level of fraud is sort of "baked in". It would be like your boss opening up a position and demanding a very top shelf hire, and then giving you 2 days to conduct the job search with only a normal salary range. Something is going to give.
Anyway, my business didn't apply for a PPP loan despite being eligible, but it has helped run different programs, and the public conversation around fraud/waste/abuse always seems a little tone deaf and ignorant to me.
Often there are a lot of competing priorities that the government and legislators all try to enshrine as the #1 priority. But that just isn't how the world works. And if you want to fight fraud the place to do it best is in the rule making stage and in the legislature, not on the backend.
The programs, however poorly implemented, require that the applicants certify true facts and we're trying to do some work to ensure this is the case. If you got 3 million dollars that you claim went to payroll, you better have more than three employees at a residential house.
The government's approach here was to "Just assume everything the banks and applicants said is true. We can go after the fraud after the fact," and that's what we're helping to do.
With regards to "where to fight fraud", there are a lot of stages but we're not quite big enough to begin enshrining laws yet and even less capable of enshrining laws during the outbreak of the pandemic. In the meantime, we're going to do our best to fight fraud and tackle injustice where we can with what we can.
Fair enough I am glad there are people looking into fraud.
I wasn't meant to be discouraging, more to see if your org talks about the broader picture at all and the incentives involved not only to applicants, but also at the legislation/federal department implementation etc.
The messaging we so often see on the implementation side is:
1) Make sure anyone with two brain cells who might try to apply can.
2) Make sure no one defrauds the program.
3) Do this yesterday (the timelines are frequently ludicrous).
And there literally are a lot of scenarios where you will be getting lawsuits from both directions at the same time. People mad there is too much fraud and people mad their mentally challenged grandma who cannot count to four and doesn't know what a computer is cannot figure out the application.
----------------------------- Section divider: EMPLOYMENT ------------------------------
Hi, I'm from Perth, Western Australia. I have a background in analytical and background chemistry and have spent the last five years working in a testing laboratory doing a mixture of technician and logistics tasks. Unfortunately my workplace has recently imploded (metaphorically) and I am now job hunting. In addition to chemistry, I have also worked as a tour guide on a submarine, been assistant to a taxidermist preparing museum specimens, and had a brief stint filling in as a school librarian.
My interests are environmentalism, academia-adjacent work (I am frequently a science advisor for friends' creative writing) and logistics. My general strengths are that I'm a very loyal and diligent worker. I try to fix things that are broken in my work environment, if it's in my power to fix. I would love to get involved in a logistics job (I have my Dangerous Goods handling permits), chemistry, or if you don't mind tediously training me up for it, IT. Any help or tips appreciated.
I can be reached at morgrimmoon (at) gmail (dot) com
I'm looking for a Web UI/UX designer who works for cheap. Ideally, this would be someone with Javascript/CSS/HTML skills in addition to aritstic talent who could not only design UIs, but also implement them on the frontend. That person's first (unenviable) task would be to convert a feature comparison page that my scientist of a boss literally wrote in Notepad, into something that does not look like it was written in Notepad by a scientist -- but looks slick and modern instead. I will provide the source text (currently in the form of a CSV file). If that goes well, the next task would be to evaluate our corporate website (which BTW is written in Wordpress, go ahead and laugh now if you want), and bring it up to modern UI/UX standards; naturally, the feature comparison page should fit seamlessly into its overall design.
If interested, let me know at (bugmaster) (at) (gmail)
There are worse CMSes than Wordpress, honestly, especially if you still want to maintain your site on the cheap.
That is certainly true -- one can always do worse :-)
I'm looking for work this year, starting about October, most likely part-time. (I recently finished my Master's studying the evolutionary biology of ageing; I intend to take the year off to learn more skills, while working, then apply to PhD programs the following year.)
I could be good at academic editing (I have experience through Editing Press) or maybe technical writing, summarizing reports or research, stuff like that. Maybe tutoring. I'm not experienced at coding but it's one of the things I want to get better at, so if you do training+work I'd consider it.
I live in Ottawa, ON, Canada, or could do remote work.
I'm recently retired after 40+ years teaching English as a Foreign Language to adults (undergrad and grad students, steel workers, engineers, business people), cross-cultural communication and also some Mandarin Chinese medical interpreting. I'm looking for short term projects where the skills of cutting through language/cultural barriers would have an impact, where writing skills or pronunciation issues are creating barriers. OR teacher training; I've trained international teaching assistants for 20+ years to teach everything from math and physics to art and philosophy. I'm especially good at training people to teach in languages they don't speak very well, and can effect big improvement quickly.
Hi, I am a software architect and full stack developer with 10+ years of experience looking for on demand gigs. Currently I mostly work with Java and Angular but I have worked with languages such as C#, Delphi, php, asp (vanilla and .Net) and python. If interested you can contact me at adrianodsa@gmail.com
Canadian programmer looking for work, late 20s, most familiar with JS full-stack work, smart, good at algorithms, fast prototyping, would be super interested in anything to do with real-time messaging, websockets, or analytics. Willing to work remote or relocate.
email rorykaufmann@gmail.com
I'm about to finish a STEM PhD, and I'm planning to shift out of academia. I'm looking for a software engineering or data science role, preferably in the bay area or remote. I'd prefer software engineering, but I'd need a decent amount of training -- I have a decent amount of programming experience, but it's all scientific programming. Data science I could dive right into.
I'd of course be excited to talk about potential employment directly, but I'd also just be open to advice about which companies I should talk to. When I think about where to apply, I really only know about the giant companies that (as far as I can tell) seem less interested in training someone like me. There are obviously tons of tiny startups in the bay, but I don't know how to find them or sort out which ones are open to training someone like me.
My email address is singletrackacx@gmail.com
Thanks!
Hi! I was one of the finalists of the book review contest, and I'm looking for work at the moment. I'm at the intersection of coding and writing, and as a result I've been considering work in that space, such as technical writing or some other tech-adjacent roles, though by default I'm in software. I've been sort of slowly wanting to get in machine learning, though it hasn't been trivial to do that since I don't have direct recent experience. Working on it, though. I'm open to remote work from Canada (or possibly relocation to the US if there's a very compelling opportunity).
Is my technical writing post of any interest to you? https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/classifieds-thread-922/comment/8919229
Yes, I applied, thanks!
Are you an academic or nonprofit employee sick of handling the fiddly details of grant administration? Hire me (or convince your institution to hire me) to do it for you! I'll help prepare budgets & proposals, track deadlines, coordinate with other departments in your institution (contracts/sponsored projects office, HR, billing, IRB, etc), monitor compliance, prepare reports, and all the other things you need to do to get grant $ and spend it without getting in trouble. I would also be interested in learning the grant-maker side of the business (current experience is all on the recipient side, but I'm a very fast learner). I love working with passionate nerds and helping them focus on the important parts of their work by taking the bureaucratic nonsense off their plates.
Qualifications: I've been a research administrator for about 5 years and also have a law degree. Other background includes process improvement, project management, & customer service. I'm happy to provide more details via email (see below).
Must be a PSLF-eligible employer (US 501(c)(3) or educational institution) because of the student loan debt from the aforementioned law degree. Must be remote-friendly (if in the PNW I can do in-person training & occasional meetings, but for the long term I'm committed to a commute-free lifestyle).
You can reach me at aightsaber at the Google mail.
I'm a math PhD with experience in data science, AI/ML, and cloud. I'm looking to grow my consulting business (https://garoux.com/). Some recent projects include fine-tuning a large language model for text classification, then integrating the model into APIs as part of an application and performing inference at scale on millions of documents using Apache Spark.
If you're in need of consulting in AI/ML, cloud, or full stack engineering, send an email to mike@garoux.com.
I am a graduate student in mathematics hoping to finish up my PhD this December. My plan is to start a postdoc approximately one year from now, leaving a six month gap or so between my PhD and my postdoc and I am hoping to stay in the bay area. My expertise is in mathematical physics and I also have a background in numerical analysis as well. I would be interested in an internship at any company that plausibly does some good for the world .
If anyone has advice for how to find such an internship or is willing to talk to me, feel free to email me at
felipe h b (at) stanford (dot) edu .
Google scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RqyoME4AAAAJ&hl=en .
PS: I'm also interested in picking up a tutoring gig in math and/or physics this fall. I have experience teaching anyone from elementary school kids to graduate students.
Hey! I work at Antithesis, a startup that's more or less perpetually hiring software engineers.
If you love solving problems, know your way around a computer, and are open to an in-person role in Northern Virginia (Washington DC metro area), shoot an email to: info (at) antithesis (dot) com
About Antithesis: we're a four year old company trying to revolutionize software testing. We come from a bunch of different backgrounds and have several ACX readers in our ranks, myself included. We tend not to hire for particular programming competencies, but have projects in typescript, c++, rust, and c (so far).
I also ended up with a job (offer, haven't started yet) from antithesis from posting here last time!
I'm someone who got hired at Antithesis because I posted on the last thread! They are not kidding about actually looking to find people for jobs!
I've been there a bit over a month, and it's really great so far. I recently finished my introduction project, using our system to beat NES Castlevania. (The testing system excels at finding distinctive and hard-to-reproduce states of software, and beating Castlevania definitely fits the bill.) Now I'm moving onto new challenges, but there's still plenty of time to learn from the playground of NES. My coworkers are a knowledgeable, pleasant group who are always willing to help the new hire gain better understanding.
I strongly recommend giving us your consideration!
Oooo, NES Castlevania! Does your system abuse holy water to stunlock bosses? (please say yes)
It doesn't do that, but it has found some pretty interesting ways to beat them.
Could you make a YouTube video about your system beating Castlevania? It might be interesting to watch, and possibly a good advertisement.
(On a second thought, check this idea with your customers, maybe some people would take an association with computer games negatively.)
Hey everyone, I wasn't sure if I should post this in the employment or product/service section so posting it in both. Feel free to delete it if I'm mistaken!
I’m Shweta, the founder and lead designer at Studio Mukii. If you're a service-based business or an e-commerce business, I'd love to work with you!
— Who are we? —
Studio Mukii is a small yet mighty design studio passionate about the space where strategy and design meet. We partner with businesses of all types and sizes to help create meaningful connections with their audiences through strategic and visually engaging brand experiences.
— What do we do? —
Brand Strategy / Branding & Identity / Print & Digital Collaterals / Packaging Design / Shopify / Web Design & Development / Photoshoot Art Direction
If you have a project in mind, feel free to reach out to us on hello@studiomukii.com. :)
https://studiomukii.com/
https://www.instagram.com/studiomukii/
I will soon be hiring a postdoc in the Milan area in deontic logic/formal ethics/AI ethics very broadly conceived. Salary competitive for large European countries, I'm ok with partly remote.
Shoot me an email if you want to know more. rot 13 at ss48 aT anh.rqh
I am a digital artist looking for work and to expand my client base, so prices are low. I specialize in tabletop character portraits and am willing to do a full render bust for 20$--and half that if you can recommend me to your friends/circle, leading to at least one more commission.
See here for an example of the kind of work I've done in the past, but styles can vary widely depending on what you want. I am confident to replicate most looks. See the rest of my twitter for examples.
https://twitter.com/Shaeor1/status/1505246125984464903
https://twitter.com/Shaeor1
PM me on twitter or on Discord @Shaeor#7214
Or email stachemail (a t) yahoo
Want to have impact at scale? Our goal is to maximize the QALYs of humanity by moving healthcare delivery away from the labor cost curve and onto the software cost curve.
We're hiring across pretty much every team - engineers (hardware and software), medical (including doctors, clinical PMs, and everything in between), operations, finance, design, and more
If you're interested in driving down the cost of healthcare by two or more orders of magnitude drop me a line at felix <at> goforward.com or peruse https://goforward.com/jobs
- we're a venture-backed startup trying to rebuild healthcare from first principles. If you read Scott's blog there's a high probability you'd be an excellent culture fit.
- we're extremely well-capitalized (last fundraise announcement: https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/11/forward-health-raises-225m-from-investors-including-the-weeknd-as-it-looks-to-expand-nationwide/)
- we put the patient first and sell directly to individuals so we align our incentives and don't have to deal with insurance companies or employers
- we're leveraging software, hardware, vertical integration, and disintermediating insurance to deliver better healthcare at lower cost (today we're a $150/mo concierge service, but think about our current product as the equivalent of a Tesla roadster - over time the goal is to expand the range of services and to get the cost down to $0/mo for the patient)
- we're still small enough that you can have an absolutely massive impact on the business
- drop me a line and I'll make sure we fast-track your application
Hi Felix, excited to discover your firm. I'm a medtech product manager looking for more impactful opportunities. Sending you an email now.
Is this SF only or remote-friendly?
For HQ roles, we're all in SF - turns out building a full-stack national healthcare provider from the ground up is incredibly complex, and it would be almost impossible to have the level of collaboration between folks that's needed if we weren't able to get together in person - not to mention develop hardware!
For medical roles, we have openings across the US (see: https://goforward.com/locations).
We also have remote contract roles for doctors, nurse practitioners, RNs, care coordinators, and medical scribes who can be located anywhere.
Seconded.
----------------------------- Section divider: DATING ------------------------------
(Not dating - married and mono)
Curious to know if any readers live in the Azores, specifically Sao Miguel island.
42 F seeking M, Seattle area, no children and not planning on any, but okay if you have school-age or older kids. Open to poly but prefer to meet a fellow undistracted single person.
My ideal situation would be a long-term relationship or permanent partnership, but not necessarily living together (I'm a bit of an ambivert and enjoy living alone in my condo, but love visiting others and having people over). Living together isn't off the table, though!
A perfect weekend night for me is rounding up a bunch of friends to go out to a great restaurant (I'm an omnivore foodie who loves to share dishes, it'd be nice if you were, too), and then seeing a great movie at the theater (and I am highly skilled at ferreting out the latter; I like to snobbishly say that my favorite genre is "quality."). Or maybe doing those things in reverse order so we can discuss the movie after!
On that subject, the most recent movie I watched was Baz Lurhmann's Elvis - although I only got through about half of it before shutting it off in frustration. It was all swoopy stylized camera movements and editing pans which made for an off-putting sense of removed distance from the characters.
TV is better than movies; the most recent TV I watched was the latest episode of Rick and Morty. It's so good you can't even process how good it is on the first pass.
I'm not especially outdoorsy and actively anti-woodsy, but I loved the crew rowing class I took last year and it'd be cool to get back into it (I am currently contenting myself with my WaterRower and occasionally delivering evil monologues straight to camera (and it would be neat if you get that reference.).).
Much more information, photos, and a couple of highly-themed metaphor and pun-filled personal ads can be found on my Fetlife profile, username "TheStoryGirl." Direct email is christinathestorygirl at gmail dot com
Isabella, 19, hetero, looking for love, will be at the nyc meetup this afternoon
Huh, I don't remember encountering an Isabella there...
i came around 4:40, left after ten minutes because of a sudden nirvana of being autistic and forgotten to bring an umbrella
Oh, haha. Well, in case you haven't seen, you can join the mailing list if you want to come to the weekly meetups or whatever! :)
I have put my name and email on the mailing list before leaving
27/M/Washington DC
I'm a private-school teacher living in DC looking for a woman within a few years of my age and an hour's driving time for a long-term relationship; I'm not tied to DC long term but will probably be here for the foreseeable future, as I like my job and the dating pool is stacked in my favor. In my spare time, my passions are comparative linguistics, language learning (I have good Portuguese, OKish German, dormant Russian), writing, cooking, baking, and the occasional (not-professional-grade) coding spree, in about that order. My life goals are to start a family, buy a summer cabin on a lake in the Maine woods, and maybe make a few million dollars to retire early (I have a couple of side projects that *could* conceivably lead to this but probably won't). If I don't move or switch careers, my job (at a pretty academically well-regarded private school) comes with a serious tuition discount for fac brats.
Politically I am somewhere between a center-right Democrat and "the party line as dictated by The Economist, with a dash of reheated McCainism"; religiously I am agnostic, but was raised by the only graduate-educated Episcopalian coasties to have saved their virginities for marriage since about 1915 and, as a consequence, view dancing as infinitely more obscene than sex. I am decently good-looking in a soft-boy sort of way (5'11", 140lbs, clean-shaven) and would be happy to send you a picture if you'd like.
Feel free to email me or text me. My throwaway email is nephewjonathan@proton.me ; my phone number can be found by multiplying three by one billion, four hundred seventy-seven million, five hundred twelve thousand, four hundred fifty-seven. My ideal first date is a cup of coffee somewhere.
34/ M Dayton Ohio, USA but flexible/
Male, Christ-follower, PhD in progress on natural language processing for low-resource languages. Looking for a lady with interesting thoughts who will be fascinating to talk to and go on dates with, perhaps for life! Long version at [1].
Currently in Dayton Ohio (at least for now). But I've made long-distance work and might be willing to relocate.
You can contact me at this cheesy online form [2], or by emailing me: 12leong at gmail, where 1 is my first initial, and 2 is the letter that is my middle initial, which is also one of the two in the middle of “middle”.
(If you can make a bot/NLP model that can actually parse this and pull out the correct letter I will actually be even more willing to talk to you, so go ahead!)
[1] Date-me doc with more details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LEnAiGKfXs_PhVfle1ci-w-4GXP1SXnP9f96wG7_EEc/edit?usp=sharing
[2] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdj1y_acAsLOmKWWxdebNmM2x71BTRjOkRI-kEfxh2ajfFC7g/viewform?usp=sf_link
(Oh, and if anyone's got any advice on making these profiles I'd love to hear it! Tried following https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1567639217353752580 above, not sure how I did)
29/m/Bulgaria.
Machine learning engineer, looking to date an exceptionally smart woman. Have a dog, charitable person, somewhat witty, average-to-good looks, not a soyboy.
Longer term - want to start a *large* family, with embryo selection.
Even longer term - raise the children to reach the limits of the humanely possible, and create even smarter children.
Willing to do long-distance (temporarily), willing to relocate (temporarily, prefer Eastern Europe). My future is in Bulgaria.
contact - petar.istev@gmail.com
29/M/Berkeley, looking for a relationship aimed at marriage + kids. Hobbies include "I've never tasted anything like this" food, ballroom dance, and occassionally karaoke.
You may enjoy my company if you have a pre-existing interest in the above hobbies, most enjoy social gatherings of 2 - 6 people, or just have an unfortunate taste for metatextual humor.
Dating doc for more info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KQdDKB8QY-0X2kqIy2oKjhssX_3nYFOM9qgjovzrA80/
I feel like getting Kelsey Piper and Scott Alexander to cowrite your dating profile is just a staggeringly unfair advantage. Can I call foul?
Honestly a very well written dating profile. If I was in the dating market, I would want to reach out, but in the back of my mind I would wonder is it her I want to date, or Scott's writing style?
And now I'm skimming through my FB friends list trying to assemble a hypothetical dream team...
42/F/Portland, OR. I got the most awesome job in the world (working in a lab doing research on brain preservation) through Scott's blog, and I'm hoping for similar luck with dating. Mother of 7, easy-going, good listener, enjoy writing.
You can reach me at annafirtree with the usual gmail addendum.
26/M/London looking for a monogamous long term relationship!
Lots more about me here: https://neilkakkar.com/
Usually I'd add more qualifiers about who I'm seeking, but this place is a qualifier enough :)
Contact info at the link above!
Do we know if anybody has ever actually met a partner through these classifeids?
There's people who met playing World of Warcraft, so why not here? Give it a try and worst case you'll get 0 messages
I met someone pretty cool who happened to live in Madison and we went on dates for a while before I decided that we were not long-term compatible.
34/M/Wisconsin looking ideally for a wife but open to other things. Also probably going to move away soon, and visiting the bay area for a month+ this winter. If you want me to come visit your city for a week or two to hang out that can be arranged too.
https://drethelin.com/romance/
Also whoever wants to feel free to yell at me about how much this profile sucks and how I could make it better, but ideally if you think "I'd be interested if I had this one piece of information" tell me what that piece of information is.
I have no object-level take, but I happen to notice that this fails [Aella's criterion for a good dating profile](https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1567639217353752580), and she may arguably be considered an expert on the matter.
The same is true for most profiles here or in general, but well you're the only one who gave permission to comment.
I like aella but I think she’s the opposite of a domain expert here given that she has an extremely unusual lifestyle, set of preferences, and dating history.
Also I’m confused by which specific [criterion] you’re referring to.
... actually I'm stupid, I think I had a bunch of profiles here open and mixed them up. Sorry. Yours arguably passes the Aella test!
38/F/Munich, Germany/poly with three existing (long distance) relationships
I am looking for someone from Munich who would enjoy any number of things out of the set: { mostly just days of just sitting on the couch together and quietly doing separate things, going out to eat sometimes, having BDSM-flavoured sex (for added context, I am masochistic), mildly nerding about dinosaurs, watching science fiction and/or horror together, reading each other sci-fi and/or horror out of books, staying in contact via IRC, freeform roleplaying on IRC }.
Of these, I am mostly interested in the parts 'sharing-the-couch-but-doing-separate-things' and 'sex' (although I would want to get to know you for a handful of days beforehand first), but would still be interested in hanging out occasionally if your subset involves neither of these things.
I am introvert (in case the couch thing wasn't a hint), but enthusiastically fond of meeting people - it just sadly drains my energy reserves! I speak both German and English fluently, but prefer English. I grew up in South Africa (Greater Cape Town metropolitan area, mostly), if that's of interest. I like writing and world-building and talking your ear off about these two things, so be sure to bring a cork. :) Also, I eat low-carb due to a gut condition, so if you take issue with a non-vegan lifestyle, I am unfortunately going to make you very sad and you should stay away from me.
In case gender-identity matters to you (I've specified my sex in the A/S/L section), I gender-identify as androgyne/agender. Manifestations of this are mostly subtle, e.g. I don't wear dresses, ever, for any occasion. You will probably not notice. :) But I figured I'd mention it in case it's a deal-breaker for someone. (Pronouns are any, and she/her is fine. I use ve/vis/ver for myself when I need to refer to myself in third person, but have zero expectations that others use them; it's merely an honesty thing for me.)
You can contact me via pinkgothic at gmail dot com.
(Not actual dating, looking for platonic friends)
M/33 just moved to the Milan area to take up academic position. Day job: philosopher/logician/AI ethicist. Looking forward to meet people in the area who would read this blog.
Keen on great food, traveling, art, opera, history, languages, hikes, sailing, fencing and bike rides.
Email at rot13 ss48 AT anh.rqh
WANTED: Experienced sailor (or, preferably, sailing couple) for the 3- to 6-month nautical "date" of a lifetime. Gibraltar and back? Northwest Passage? Explore the remote western coast of Cuba? Our sailboat, Kestrel, is a Bruce Roberts Offshore-44 cutter (with GRP--not steel--hull) built by Atlantica in 1998 to insanely high standards and presently docked in Boston. We are a couple, now in our 70s, who can still stand a stormy watch but can no longer work the rigging unaided. Time frame is next April, although planning begins soon. All expenses paid. Shawn dot Spilman at Gmail dot com. (Just one L, please.)
Unfortunately, my girlfriend is not as enthusiastic about sailing as I am, and I have 0 experience (it's all from books, heh — I live in the desert and cannot afford a boat anyway)...
...but if you ever have the time and inclination to talk about sailing and sailing ships, and/or to help me understand the subject better* (or merely to show off cool nautical photos!), please let me know, and I'll e-mail you.
-------------
(*Both for pleasure, in terms of what it's like to take a long voyage in a modern sailing vessel — and maybe, too, in more technical terms, as I'm trying to build a "tall ship simulator", all existing such games being very inaccurate; but I'm hampered by not really being able to tell when something isn't true-to-life, having no real experiences myself)
You might enjoy my book, Boat Lore: Know-How for Sailors, at a token 99 cents on Amazon or read for free with Amazon Unlimited. Any number of classic books, some of them fiction, and a few movies are better still. Start with Joshua Slocum. Learning to sail is like learning to cook or to paint in oils. It takes a day to get the basics and a lifetime to do it well.
Cool! I'm a sailor, but currently landbound in Sweden. Are you liveaboards? Where were you for Covid? I was Tristan da Cunha when we learned that Cape Town was closed for us...
Fair winds :)
We have a home ashore in Boston and another, with our Pearson-34 docked behind it, in Cape Coral, FL, where we are hosting the first ACT Meet-Up in that area on Oct 2. For more, send email.
(not a dating, but still)
I'm just moved to Israel and know very few people here. I'm 31/M/married, staying in Tel Aviv, working as a Software Engineer. As it is too hot here, I mostly stay at home reading books and substack :), but it will be great to meet in real life over a beer, go hiking, etc
Hi! I'm moving (back-ish) in October, also 31/M (but sadly not married), also probably to Tel Aviv. would be up to get coffee sometime.
You can write me at not.art.spiegel at gmail
check your email :)
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I write the //hellahexi// substack, just getting started. It's broadly about TTRPGs, from a theme/worldbuilding perspective. I like to trace out the implications of what we (in our games) take for granted, and see what weirdness results.
https://hellahexi.substack.com
I primarily come out of D&D, old enough for the OSR to make a lot of sense, with a broad smattering of other games along the way.
I co-host The Engineering History Podcast. We've covered JPL's occult founder, the radium girls, weird silicon valley history, and a lot more! Next week's episode is going to be on space nukes. We bring a wacky and accessible approach to some pretty dense topics and often our discussions turn philosophical. If that sounds interesting to you, here's a link to the show! https://open.spotify.com/show/6jAVPDB7yybOTmqpVCVe93?si=d081b0858cd448fd.
I want to build a sentient AI. I wrote a post on how I plan to do it: https://buildingher.substack.com/p/a-roadmap-to-the-mind
I just wrote a post for my game dev design blog: axiomsofdominion.substack.com
It addresses Axioms but it also takes a controversial position on the impact of narratively focused design and multiplayer design in strategy games and adjacent genres like rpgs and tactical turn based combat.
I think that if developers moved away from these two design focuses they'd open up a whole new world of possible gameplay.
The blog generally discusses unique gameplay systems and the reasoning for adding them to my Map&Menu fantasy world simulation game.
https://absenceofweather.substack.com/
New blog. Sure to be a massive success. Essays about metapolitics and ethics. Someday I'll post some short stories too.
Example blog posts:
"Metaprinciples"
"Endlessly Trading Symmetrical Accusations of Hypocrisy Back and Forth"
Year old substack that is trying to revive the short story. Payout to the winning author is $100 + 50% of subscription revenue. Next winner gets $447.50. If you post something on social media promoting it, I will give you 3 months free to read a bunch of amazing short stories.
Everyone wins.
https://shortstory.substack.com/
A friend of mine recently started a blog: https://medium.com/@evie.c.keats
Topics include economics, contemporary issues, general overthinking – I'm sure many readers from here would enjoy her writing!
Coming soon, maybe: my blog about politics, rationality, and similar topics https://politicsisbad.substack.com/
I'm Connor Tabarrok, and I write the blog OfAllTrades at https://alltrades.substack.com/.
Posts so far have centered around a few areas of interest which I have dubbed the 4 Es, namely:
Engineering
Economics
Environmental Science
Effective Altruism/Progress Studies
If you have interest in these areas, I hope you'll find my perspective and commentary entertaining, and hopefully learn something along the way. My most recent post was about how leaf cutter ants can adjust our perspectives on the emergent nature of agriculture.
-Connor, OfAllTrades
I'm writing about the space industry and astrophysics, with a bit of other stuff thrown in as catches my attention. I used to be an astrophysicist years ago, and since them I've worked on a lot of interesting space projects, so I'd like to think I can bring a different perspective and clear explanations of what's going on and what it actually means for the future.
I'm not great at advertising, so I'll just say you can check it out here: https://www.thequantumcat.space/, and if you want to subscribe I'd love to have you as a reader.
I write a blog that includes:
- lots of book reviews (including of some ACX context -featured books, like Where is my Flying Car? and The Internationalists)
- notes on CS topics like lambda calculus and data science
- effective altruism
- a bunch of other things, including nuclear power, technological progress, and a parody of the literary essay format
All posts are listed and easily browsable here: https://www.strataoftheworld.com/p/lists-of-posts.html
I'm not sure how much overlapping interest there is between ACX and medieval Turkish mystical poetry, but just in case, I recently self-published a book of Yunus Emre's poems translated into English, available at nominal cost in paperback and ebook form here: Piercing the Heart: Poems by Yunus Emre https://a.co/d/ix6RB7u (or if technically inclined, you could read it for free here: https://gitlab.com/0j/poetry ).
Feedback from bilingual Turks would be especially welcome.
I blog about Politics, Pop-culture, Poetry, and Violence.... so Politics.
Some of you might know me from the Motte... I won Mottepost of the year back in 2019 for this long-take on Alex Jones:
https://anarchonomicon.substack.com/p/alex-jones-wordsmith
others might know me from my more recent hits on motorcycles in warfare:
https://anarchonomicon.substack.com/p/the-antagonists-tech-tree
Or This long-take on prison gangs and social decay:
https://anarchonomicon.substack.com/p/cocytarchy
.
My most recent piece is this one, on the State of Legacy media and the confusing manner in which it got there:
https://anarchonomicon.substack.com/p/why-is-legacy-media-like-this
I blog about isekai anime and manga. If you're a fan of the genre, it may be of interest.
https://isekaipastandpresent.neocities.org/
Here is a link to Part One of a (to-be-completed) three-part book review for Timur Kuran's "Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification." My basic view is that Kuran's model gets reality backwards: he thinks knowledge falsification merely follows from preference falsification, whereas I think that knowledge falsification matters more and moves first. (Note that this comment is almost entirely a summary of the forthcoming third part's argument, so after the first few sentences the link has little directly to do with what's written below).
https://cebk.substack.com/p/take-off-your-mask-and-put-on-a-habit
By preference falsification, he means the public expression of a personal taste that does not match one's private opinion (for instance, pretending to appreciate your superior's apparent orientation toward certain virtues or aesthetics). He does not mean lying, except insofar as one's lies are aimed at “manipulating the perceptions others hold about one's motivations or dispositions”; nor does he mean self-censorship, except insofar as one's acts of omission intentionally misrepresent one's interior sentiments. Preference falsification is not strategic dishonesty, like supporting a “lesser evil” electoral candidate who could easily win over a long-shot favorite. And it is not hypocrisy, like granting oneself opportunistic exemptions from standards that one holds for others. Rather, it is avowing ideals which are themselves insincere. In contrast, "knowledge falsification" describes the pretense by people who know better that, for example, the Spanish Inquisition was especially bad: the Medieval and Roman Inquisitions each probably killed almost a hundred times as many people, but only the Spanish one—and its Portuguese spin-off—set up a special bureaucracy cleanly separated from the papacy and episcopacy, toward which it's thus much easier to direct sincere distaste for such purges.
For instance, Kuran writes: "Undertaken as a means of preference falsification, knowledge falsification has an unintended effect: it alters the composition of public discourse, making favored messages more common and unfavored ones less so. An immediate consequence is the distortion of public opinion, and a longer-run consequence is the distortion of private knowledge and private opinion." Likewise, he argues that "changes in private knowledge are unrelated to personal motivation. Beliefs get abandoned in response to transformations of the corpus of public information, not because individuals decide to change their own minds." In other words, one's preferences remain exogenously given, and falsification regimes can only change your private opinions by changing your factual beliefs; further, because preferences are in the driver's seat, your lies about information merely serve as props to persuade others that you believe a claimed ideology is good, and you don't have to persuade others that this purported alliance with its values flows from any particular alleged fact pattern.
But the rainbow movement chants "transwomen are women," not "transwomen should get access to places and privileges currently reserved for cis women." Further--even though some pro-pride people would honestly rate the natural reading of that slogan as true, and even though many more have redefined those terms to mean whatever makes its truth seem credible--individuals who insincerely avow this catchy mantra almost certainly support its implied policy agenda far more than do those who currently refuse to play its convenient make-believe. (Indeed, when hold-outs from the trans-train eventually convert, they often first change their minds about whether these lies look politically acceptable, instead of starting with a sudden blindness to biology).
If conversations were about sharing information rather than solidifying allegiances, we'd welcome corrections, befriend political enemies, view listening as greedier than interrupting, and replace our social networks with internet reading. And yet, we all understand that when a friend tells you about some altercation, your cued-up lines affirm his enemy's in-the-wrongness, instead of describing him (your friend) as desirable despite assholery. Cheap talk needs to find costly signals, and we've settled on complimenting an emperor's new clothes, not kneeling before kings we nonetheless call naked. In other words, we generally demonstrate vulnerability by using our social status to brazenly bluff, out of trust that chosen interlocutors won't pounce on such flagrant errors... or else to test whether their loyalty beats this truth (much like how monarchs know they can trust court eunuchs). If there were a parade where we watched our social superiors proudly cross-dress, and one child were to loudly ask why the king is dressed like a queen, the gelded sovereign's float would not deflate, nor would the bowed spectators rise; no, the kid's parents would start loudly scolding or hushing their little embarrassment. Others have of course pointed this out (for instance, Zero HP Lovecraft), but the point stands: inquisitions are directed not by the inquisitive, but at them.
Kuran argues that such knowledge falsification "is undertaken to justify one's public position to others rather than to oneself [as] a form of preference falsification" because, for instance, listening to regime-approved broadcasts and rallies can provide the arguments necessary for you to make your avowed faith more "convincing." He rejects an alternative explanation, i.e. that these "people seek dissonance-lowering information." But I think the modal NPR-listener clearly wants worldview-affirmation, and finds patterns which disrupt such perspectives viscerally discomforting. Does a typical Maddowist seem to relish opportunities for debating wrongthought with persuasively honed goodfacts? In my view, no: they seek any nearby rationalization as shelter against those surprises which shock an accepted dogma. Do they test out hypotheses in private so as to publicly perform only their side's most supportable claims? Again, in my experience, no: they latch onto whatever can quickly help them forget a temporary crisis of faith. Is understanding enemies on their own terms widely embraced, in order to better parry their threatening ideas? No: good-faith inquiries into hot-button topics render even opposition research suspect. I think the woke make this tendency quite clear, insofar as they love confessing to internalized ignorance and/or to implicit noticing, so that they can seek out proper trainings for suppressing such impulses.
Relatedly, the book discusses how minor penalties for crimethink seem to effectively seduce one's honest preferences more than major ones do--as when stiffly banned ideas persist underground, while going along with a moderately incentivized catechism causes people to even privately minimize their personal disagreements--by suggesting that those honest beliefs which people so easily renounce must just be held very weakly. The alternative would be that we seek to reduce dissonance and maintain self-respect, so easily giving into public heresy naturally causes us to forsake even secret faith (or else to start flimsily reconciling said heresies with our faith). "The crucial point is that differences in attitudinal change will tend to reflect differences in cognitive resistance, not differences in motivation," in Kuran's perspective. In other words, if your convictions "yield to mild pressure, the reason could be that [your] reservations are minor or, if major, that they rest on superficial understandings. In either case, [your] resistance to new ideas is likely to be low." The alternative is that "[t]he magnitude of the dissonance created by a conflict between one's inner and outer selves varies inversely with one's incentive for accommodating external demands."
[continued]
[continued]
In other words, though the introduction says that it inter-disciplinarily "recognizes that the mind has limitations and that it is a seat of tensions," the book promotes the standard economist's worldview: that we should model individuals as having only resources, like arguments, and desires; any behavior thus represents a reliably computed revealed preference, through some combination of these endowments and attributes. And so wishing we had more backbone doesn't make sense, just like junkies must by definition really prefer doing terrible drugs to living decent lives. Temptation may have been a core concept throughout our civilization's history, but post-WWII mainstream western economics pretty fundamentally relies on declaring it incoherent or vacuous, and reducing preferences over preferences to mere preferences.
However, we can equally model humans as intersections between Apollonian accumulations, Dionysian wants, and Herculean strength, especially given that our computational bottleneck seems to be processing power, not programs or goals. We suffer endemically from inattentional blindness, motivated reasoning, and confirmation bias; we forget, miscalculate, and regret. You can of course use neoclassical axioms to describe this as a model of endogenously-determined agents, just like astronomers could always add enough epicycles to make starry data compatible with geocentrism. But it's easier to just say that I think true credence is less elastic than pleasure, that the good life orients more towards excellence than happiness, that the world tests your spine more than your wants, that actions reveal grit more than desire, and that virtue rests upon integrity not uninhibitedness.
As a result, I think the relationship between preference falsification and knowledge falsification which Kuran describes should be reversed. Instead of "collective conservatism" arising from establishment constraints on expressed ideals--where we don't quickly do what's popular because we don't quickly learn what's popular because we don't quickly admit what we actually think--it arises from producing excuses for official narratives (which can legitimately sate betrayed subjects). Instead of distorting information, this whips up earnest yet superficial and thus exploitable but potentially chaotic passions.
And yet--while preference falsification cascades (where everyone suddenly realizes what everyone else really thinks) generate surprises which threaten their lie-monger sovereigns--knowledge falsification cascades prop up this regime: first, each week focuses us onto some completely new obvious trend that all decent people strenuously deny is occurring; then, once we're coordinated into teams inside this topic arena, our side heroically celebrates what a good thing it is that's happening. Michael Anton summarizes this tendency in a number of ways, including "the same fact pattern is either true and glorious or false and scurrilous depending on who states it," and "that'll never happen, and when it does you'll deserve it!"
I trust you can provide your own examples, though one good heuristic might be to consider whether a historic argument against some achieved progress might have won, had the public foreseen its actual results. For example, did "slippery slope" warnings in fact come true, and, if so, does that mean the march of history actually vindicated those cautionary prophets? If your socially progressive or civilly libertarian 2010 self appeared today, with internet access, how would you convince him that the facts he can readily find about current LGBT issues don't delegitimize whatever triumphs led to this? Just try turning off the lights, lighting a candle, putting on some Katy Perry, and looking in the mirror at what could be yourself ten years ago: then say, "Genitalia exist in order to signify one's metaphysical gender, so anybody can freely reinterpret their actual genitals as representing other sex organs, which means the human form is but a process of inscribing beliefs onto flesh, and thus biological consequences from these affirmation surgeries aren't really part of you who have become just the desire to be so affirmed." Can you even hold yourself to last month's views, without endlessly picking up today's new take cycle, or have you become like a consultant who must constantly advise yourself on what your opinions would be if anything was real? (Admittedly, codex readers are less vulnerable to this tendency than pretty much any other group, so I mean the "you" here quite generally; still, though, I think this audience would benefit from internalizing the implication that correct arguments don't matter nearly so much against generalized falsificationism as does personal fortitude).
Our goal must be to rejoin reality by shedding these passions born of lies. Just as Kuran counsels that preference falsification can actually hijack knowledge, we must be wary of knowledge falsification hijacking actual preferences. Yes, as Kuran points out, a crowd's authentic factual beliefs will end up mistakenly kowtowing to regime-approved values when said beliefs are based on outsourced information, specialized analysis, collective decision-making, complicated feedbacks, and minimized adversarialism. But if I'm right in arguing that knowledge falsification matters more and moves first, then the more serious risk arises when people base their values on vicarious enjoyments, cultivated tastes, coordinated behavior, distant consequences, and unexamined motives. For intuition as to why, remember Scott's post about Forer Statements: because on average we pretend to be above social desirability bias, shrinks and psychics can in expectation predict that each of us feels more prone to social judgment than we think others generally seem; however, until recently, people haven't often wanted to brag about how socially undesirable they think their interiority is, so these pathologies aren't all that contagious. But whereas therapists thus prey on self-consciousness, demagogues prey on self-aggrandizement, which spreads much more explosively (a demagogue can guess that on average you feel like you're less harmed by our society's widely-believed fake-boogeymen than others seem to be, so they can get you to loudly affirm that "yes, the harms facing alleged victim-group X are a very big deal, even though it doesn't affect me," which of course further inflates the boogeyman in question).
The natural trend toward complex culture has been stacked against us on both counts, but Kuran believes we can fruitfully clear away much rot if we think in terms of cumulative utility graphs, expressive propagation curves, and cowardice threshold charts, whereas I believe we should focus on motivation, training, and discipline. Note that these are mostly points I will raise in parts two and especially three of my review, whereas the link is only to part one: https://cebk.substack.com/p/take-off-your-mask-and-put-on-a-habit
I like this and broadly think it makes sense; but some of it I found, initially, hard to parse — just a friendly suggestion, if you feel inclined to take any!
(That is, more paragraph breaks and less-complex clauses — or fewer complex-clauses, either works! — might help draw in readers. I think.
Mostly the paragraph thing. Although the comment format might be making that worse, on my tiny phone screen, than it really is.)
Thanks for the compliment & the feedback! Several people have told me that now (and nobody has told me the opposite) so I should definitely try simplifying things in the future. Cheers
For clear-eyed and actionable takes on college admissions, try clarkecollegeinsight.substack.com !
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https://personalityvulture.bandcamp.com/album/as-is-where-is
A handful of in-progress (but likely to stay that way) recordings from a recovering analog fetishist "indie" musician, now mostly hermit pseudo-surfer. Violating my own "make music for itself" take here, but there you have it.
The Guild of the Rose is an online-focused rationality training and self-improvement group, building on the foundations (and learning from the mistakes of) similar orgs.
We place a strong emphasis on community, with a bias towards practicality.
https://guildoftherose.org/
I recently edited a sci-fi trilogy for $30/hr, turns out I'm fast and extremely thorough, which makes sense I guess since I was a newspaper editor for years in the long ago. Total cost for a long trilogy was about $2000 total or ~$400/book for a more standard 50,000 novel. Reference available. email is k * h*m e c k@gmail.com, except remove the spaces and asterisks.
Got a VERY clever kid between the ages of 8 and 14? Are they hungry to learn, and are undernourished with their current school?
I teach live, hyperactive, online science classes! We work kids around the world, and particularly in the Bay Area. (Our sweet spot seems to be kids who are gifted/talented and/or ADHD.)
The big project is to rebuild the science curriculum from the ground up on an intellectually vibrant, rationalist-inspired foundation... so if you're looking for an outfit with gargantuan plans, yeah, we've got those!
Our third year of classes starts next week, and we still have a few open seats. If you'd need a discount, just reach out and let us know you read ACX — we'll do what it takes to get your kid experiencing the joy of science!
scienceisWEIRD.com
If you find yourself misunderstood, especially when explaining things in person, I can help. If you consider yourself low-confidence and don't know how to work on it, I can help!
For the past 10 years I have been developing a method that I have since employed on engineers, middle and C-level managers and exceptional people, helping shy people become better at making friends, helping people get over stage fright, helping experts communicate their ideas clearer to a wide array of audiences, and helping TEDx speakers get their good speeches to become great. If you are a company and need workers trained at these skills (communication, feedback, teamwork, confidence, presentations, teaching) - I organize online and in-person workshops (in Europe). If you are an individual looking to develop yourself, I do one-on-one coaching online to help you become your better self. Reach out at dusan at dnesic dot com to set up a free call to see if we click and how we can work together on getting your confidence up and your ideas heard!
If you want evidence-based college admissions advice and have a kid in eighth, ninth, or tenth grade, let’s talk!
clarkecollegeinsight.com
I am a freelance editor specializing primarily in fantasy and science fiction, though happy to work with most types of fiction and occasionally interesting non-fiction. My previous work includes fantasy, light romance, the variety of not-quite-fantasy where the geography and history are invented but no magic is present, superheroes, urban fantasy (you may be noticing a pattern here), military sci-fi, mysteries (usually fantasy mysteries), and "interesting nonfiction" (mostly my father's books, that's how I got started). Not all of this is published, but for some representative samples: https://www.amazon.com/Harald-David-D-Friedman/dp/1416520562/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495748349&sr=1-1&keywords=harald (see note about how I got started), https://www.amazon.com/Cantata-Coral-Ivory-The-Palace/dp/0992152879/ (a really early one which I firmly recommend on its own merits), https://www.eviscerati.org/fiction/cb/ (web serial superhero fiction, some of the editing I have done is in visible comments, though not all.
My website is http://arpistaediting.com/ (and should run smoothly now, thank you so much Austen!). Prices are currently at $2-$8/500-word page depending on how much work is needed (for fiction; non-fiction is higher), with a five-free-pages offer for new clients so you know which of those prices applies and what you'll be getting for it before you actually have to pay me anything. Contact information and additional details are all on the website. And thank you again to everyone who contacted me after the previous ads!
If you enjoy self experimenting and are an iphone owner and don't mind early stage products you should give our app a try: https://eurekahealth.com/
In the past 3ish months I became a productivity coach. I work with clients on their own goal-setting, productivity, akrasia, ugh fields, etc. I've been especially enjoying working with people in this community, because they tend to be avid systematizers like myself, and we have a common vocabulary that makes deep communication easier.
Learn more about coaching and get your free 30 minutes with me here-
https://patrickdfarley.com/coaching/
My own session was great! Thanks again :)
Manifold Markets is a play-money prediction market, where you can ask any question you like and have people bet on the results! Scott's written about us a few times eg on https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/information-markets-decision-markets
It's a really great place to learn how prediction market mechanisms work without risking anything. Plus, our site is full of ACX regulars; our all-time top market was "Who will be the next ACX Discord Moderator?" You can sign up for free here (referral link): https://manifold.markets?referrer=AustinF2P
I made a card sorting (UX) tool for use in my hobby projects.
https://github.com/indigane/cardsort
Hi All! My brother-in-law Bill Adams wrote fun and exciting novels and short stories. When he died in 2019, I undertook to publish his stuff on Amazon. I love them all and want them to live forever.
TL;DR: You can find them all via http://davidwall.info/BillAdams/index.html. They are available for Kindle or in paperback; the four novels are also on Kindle Unlimited.
---
Tilt was Bill's first novel, a science-fictional defense of free will and an epic tale of love, triumph, betrayal and redemption. Hannes Bannerman undertakes a quixotic bid to single-handedly overthrow the gangster ruler of the resort planet Spang. But what does he hope to gain? This one is my favorite, and the Kindle version is AVAILABLE FOR FREE Sept 9 through 13.
The Unwound Way, written with Bill's cousin Cecil Brooks, was the first of two novels about Evan Larkspur, a poet and playwright who finds, after a century in space and cold-sleep, that his works have become both revered and seditious. Originally published by Ballantine/Del Rey Books.
The End of Fame is the sequel to The Unwound Way. Evan Larkspur prepares to reveal himself and lead a revolution, but somebody beats him to the punch. Originally published by Ballantine/Del Rey Books.
Dead Sirius is a modern-day thriller set in and around Boston. Bret Ambler, a perennial student, successful inventor, and energetic slacker, is marked as the fall guy in a mysterious plot involving the new Russian President, credulous neo-Nazis, and South American assassins.
13 Quick Tricks (And a Few Long Cons) is a collection of twenty-three short stories, mostly mysteries, including thirteen published in magazines around 1980. Ellery Queen's calls "A Very Short Week" a "tour-de-force", but all of them are delightful.
I'm reading Tilt and it's really really great.
I’m so glad!
I am currently reading 13 Quick Tricks based on a post of yours some weeks back. I’m enjoying it very much on vacation! Thank you for making it available.
Thanks! That means a lot.
Just wanted to say that I think it's really sweet and awesome that you got them published.
Thanks. It was a big job but it gave me a pandemic hobby. I wish Bill could have seen them.
I used blender to make a short video explaining my ongoing doctoral research in spacecraft propulsion as part of a competition in my research group. It's my first effort at scientific communication and I know my microphone quality isn't great, but I'm pretty happy with it and would appreciate some eyes on it!
https://youtu.be/mAfjmGMp43w
We've had one of these in a vacuum chamber for the past 6 months! Yeah please make progress on the simulation problem! Seriously though is your lab able to collaborate with a UK company? If so I'd be keen to explore options.
It's pretty good, for someone who's familiar with basic E&M, but if you want to make it more accessible you might consider interspersing the main animation with subanimations that explain some of the key component ideas, e.g. the Lorentz force just zooms by and it really needs a little subanimation of its own for anybody who didn't quit physics after the first year.
thanks for sharing that! I definitely have a better understanding of hall thrusters after watching
Hey everyone! I’m Shweta, the founder and lead designer at Studio Mukii. If you're a service-based business or an e-commerce business, I'd love to work with you!
— Who are we? —
Studio Mukii is a small yet mighty design studio passionate about the space where strategy and design meet. We partner with businesses of all types and sizes to help create meaningful connections with their audiences through strategic and visually engaging brand experiences.
— What do we do? —
Brand Strategy / Branding & Identity / Print & Digital Collaterals / Packaging Design / Shopify / Web Design & Development / Photoshoot Art Direction
If you have a project in mind, feel free to reach out to me on hello@studiomukii.com. :)
https://studiomukii.com/
https://www.instagram.com/studiomukii/
My band released a new single the other week, which you can listen to on Bandcamp (https://latenightpharmacy.bandcamp.com/track/is-it-because), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/7e56iesKqaER8BaP6EHSQx) etc.
FFO Interpol, Deafheaven, Envy, Mogwai.
We produced a music video for it and we're looking for an outlet to premiere it. If you'd be interested in doing so, give me a shout.
I MAKE WEIRD THINGS. If you have a weird thing need, I can probably make it for you. Some (but sadly by no means all) of the previous weird things I have made can be found at my Instructables page (https://www.instructables.com/member/rachel/), my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/mnrsiat), and my Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/doctorshiny). I am, shall we say, new to marketing myself; so for example the drshiny.com website exists but is terrible. But nevertheless, buy a weird thing from me!
I really enjoyed your monster-creating video!
I am so glad!
I clicked though and was struck by how well made and attractive some of these weird things are. Unaffiliated - just impressed by the quality and design.
Thank you for the kind words!
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Hi! EA for Jews (https://eaforjews.org/) is running an EA Shabbat Dinner Program (https://eaforjews.org/take-action/shabbat/): a way for people to come together over a shabbat meal to explore the ideas of effective altruism and build community. Hosts are provided with funding and resources to run the dinner. All are welcome, whether Jewish or not Jewish, new to EA or highly engaged! If you’re interested in attending or hosting an in-person dinner please fill out this super quick form! - https://airtable.com/shrifiTuH3sPUTHuW
We are also running a series of exciting online events in May! You can subscribe to this calendar (https://bit.ly/EAJCalendar) or join our FB (https://www.facebook.com/groups/3153978951496816) or Slack (https://join.slack.com/t/eaforjews/shared_invite/zt-1u8b24mg0-jPLLiJuKcFwWESdH4671dw) to stay up-to-date on these and future events.
Thursday, May 11 · 7:30 - 8:30 pm EDT: Presentation and discussion on the topic: Is EA Just Utilitarianism? Three Approaches to Reconciling Effective Altruism with Jewish and Other Pursuits - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/presentation-and-discussion-tickets-622059937017
Thursday, May 18 · 6 - 7pm EDT: Virtual Social and Speed-friending! - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-social-and-speed-friending-tickets-622717343337
Tuesday, May 30 · 7 - 8pm BST: Speaker event with Zach Brown on Effective Giving and Judaism (note, event time is for UK time zone). - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/speaker-event-zach-brown-on-effective-giving-and-judaism-tickets-622733942987
We have a Discord server for rationalist and rationalist-adjacent Dutch people and people living in the Netherlands, with the goal of building a stronger community by organizing and promoting regular meetups. We also have spirited discussions! Join here if you'd like that sort of thing: https://discord.gg/t6C9CywN
Wanneer ik op de link klik krijg ik: Invalid entry. Is de link misschien niet meer geldig?
This one should be non-expiring: https://discord.gg/FEqdA9JYVq
TheThinkery, a group of ACX readers in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and anonymous locations doing an ACX online meetup Thursday September 22 in Gathertown 8pm eastern, 5pm Pacific. Internationals welcome, though, timezones are wicked.
https://app.gather.town/events/pXVcEMSts1dcxnOc7rqU
What does it mean to improve your local community/environment? Is local improvement possible? What would that mean? Should you care? Does local matter anymore? And how would one go about making such improvements possible? Come puzzle over these things and more with us Thursday night.
We tend to discuss the topic for a while and then move to whatever fits one's fancy. Also, gathertown allows splitting to talk in different groups. So that's, like, helpful if you want to talk Stable Diffusion, but another group of people want to talk development economics, and another education politics.
FLUIDITY FORUM 2023 ATTENDANCE INTEREST POLL
https://fluidityforum.org/poll/
We're planning an in-person gathering for late 2023 (exact date TBD) about rationalism, post-rationalism, meta-rationalism, cog sci, meditation, AI, psychology, & more.
David Chapman, author of Meaningness and In The Cells Of The Eggplant
Jake Orthwein of the Frame Problems Youtube channel
Collin Lysford of Desystemize and tis.so
Sarah McManus, “How To Human”
Hazard Spence of Natural Hazard and tis.so
Peter Limberg, steward of the online salon The Stoa
Forrest Landry of My Famous Love Books
Even if you can't attend in 2023, please fill out the poll so we can use the info for 2024! Thanks!
Meet-up/UnConference. I’m co-hosting a UnConference (Free) in London, UK, with Chatham House. How can humanity best thrive and survive over the long term? It’s participatory, no agenda (Likely 50-100 people using OpenSpace) . Fri, Sep 16. If interested do register: https://www.chathamhouse.org/events/all/research-event/sustainability-accelerator-unconference-2022
if you are interested a right-tilting but rationalist-open dinner group, and you live in austin, feel free to email me at contactgnxp@gmail.com. usually happens about 2x a month, announced in a private signal group. sometimes we have out of town notable guests (usually friends of mine, or ppl i've done podcasts with)
Tomorrow 9/8, the synthetic biology Journal Club group DNADeviants is having a spontaneous IRL meet up in mission bay sf around noon. A few folks in the EA and rationalist community or adjacent will be there. DM @paultkim_nysbc on Twitter if you’re interested to find out location details.
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I'm in the process of searching for land to build a homestead and I'm looking for co-homesteaders. Looking for friendly and self sufficient people who are interested in building a small community on land they own.
WE ARE NOT LOOKING TO BE A COMMUNE. Everyone owns and is responsible for their own property although of course the goal is to cultivate community and help each other out.
Some core project goals focus around: food self sufficiency, land conservation, off grid living, spending more time drinking beers around campfires with dogs, keeping bees and cultivating edible mushrooms, having space to build a high quality workshop, bringing good people together to build cool stuff.
The project is anti political which is to say the members are interested in minimizing the time spent dwelling on politics external to the project
Geographically open but the couple places I'm currently most interested in are Coeur D Alane ID, Greenville SC, Asheville NC, Bentonville AR, several small towns in MT. Places with abundant farmland within 30 mins of a medium sized town at as reasonable as possible prices which I believe will fare better than average through climate change.
Right now the project has 2 people on board, ~600k in capital and one of the members has extensive construction / craftsman experience. Looking for partners who can contribute on all fronts but the unfortunate reality is, with the price of high quality land these days, bringing some meaningful amount of capital to the project is mandatory.
As an aside I'm also single and interested in dating people who are interested in homesteading and self sufficient off grid living.
Lots more to say but probably better to just get in touch if you're interested after hearing up to this point. andrew.n.max@protonmail.com
Hi! I'm looking for flatmates in or around the Boston area to save on rent.
I am 36, male, easy-going, and neat/clean. I'll probably only be staying at the apartment part-time. I've been looking through ads on facebook/craiglist, but I'm not really looking forward to the process of having to weed through a bunch of unreliable randos from the Internet. But I figured if I post this here on ACX, I might find some cool randos who I actually have stuff in common with!
Let me know if you're interested, or know anyone who might be.
Hi! This is a bit strange but: I am suffering from a mystery illness that is about to cost me my dream job. Since I'm desperate, I thought I'd see if I could get other eyes on it! I'm even setting up some prizes: 100 dollars to you or a charity of your choice if you email me a treatment that is promising enough for me to try, 5,000 dollars to you or a charity of your choice if anything you suggest leads to significant improvement after a year. If you're familiar with the medical field, skimming the document might be low hanging fruit!
Details here! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N_VPSJ3-sNZvuVr0klPlvwOm_Fnl7r9mti58KyJ7AAk/edit?usp=sharing
Hi. You posted on the ACX Classified Thread asking if anybody had ideas about your mystery illness. I just learned about something that I thought might be it: It's called a Chiari malformation. It happens when a part of the skull is too small for the brain, and part of the brain gets squeezed into the spinal canal. Symptoms are headache:
Headaches, often severe, are the classic symptom of Chiari malformation. They generally occur after sudden coughing, sneezing or straining.
Neck pain
Unsteady gait (problems with balance)
Poor hand coordination (fine motor skills)
Numbness and tingling of the hands and feet
Dizziness
Difficulty swallowing, sometimes accompanied by gagging, choking and vomiting
Speech problems, such as hoarseness
I know the above aren't a perfect fit with what you describe, but the head and neck pain are a match; you mention becoming inarticulate and disoriented -- list mentions speech problems and dizziness; you say vigorous exercise brings on an attack -- lists says attacks come on after straining.
The Chiari malformation is diagnosed by an MRI of head and neck, and you mention that you have had that and results were normal. On the other hand, a friend's daughter was just been diagnosed with this, after several years of symptoms. Seems likely that she had had some MRI's in all those years of going to doctors, and yet the problem wasn't found til recently. So maybe the Chiari malformation is hard to see on just any MRI -- like maybe you have to set up the MRI a special way to check specifically for this problem.
Anyhow, seems worth a shot. Wishing you well, in any case.
I have some general advice that has helped other people with mystery illnesses get more effective help from doctors. OK, all doctors are going to feel mystified, and some are going to be skeptical of how accurate your reports are. So go to one with a LOT of solid data.
REGULAR DAILY MEASURES
Take regular measures of a bunch of stuff, at least twice a day at some regular time, and make the results into a nice neat chart. Low-hanging fruit measures are temp, pulse, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood oxygen -- all easy to do. Also do tests that relate directly to problem:
-A good measure of concentration is Stroop test, easy to find online, quick to make, can take it using your phone, & it's not subjecty to practice effects
-Maybe head or neck pain ratings
-Whattup with your neck. Take a photo in profile to show head/neck angle. Have somebody rotate your head right, left, up, down and record about how many degrees your head can turn in each direction. Note whether any directions cause pain.
DO ALL THE SAME MEASURES DURING AN ATTACK. In addition to standard measures, do some extra ones during attack.
-Get someone to interview you and video you during some attacks.
-Find out what some standard simple neurological tests are and have them administer them & record results.
DO EXPERIMENTS SEARCHING FOR THINGS THAT AFFECT PROBLEM
-Does wearing a neck brace reduce chance of problem?
-Are there any ways you can bring on problem? Bending over so blood pools in your head? Hold head in weird position? Hyperventilating? Jumping up and down? Spinning in a desk chair? pressing on spots in your neck and upper back?
Gather this data for at least 2 weeks, with at least one attack in the period. So then go see a good doctor and bring in all this data, nicely organized. Doc will be in a much better position to figure things out now, plus all those records should lay to rest any idea he has that this problem is so weird you must be confabulating or exaggerating.
Also one last thing I thought of: does your headache throb? Can you make it throb by bending forward & lowering head, the way you do when you pick something up off the floor?
Also, have you tried a migraine rescue med to see whether it does anything? Would be informative to know what effect one has.
And a final thought: If you do this — and I strongly recommend doing it — a neurologist could probably give you some other measures to take on a regular basis, and/ or during an attack, that would be informative for the next doctor trying to figure out what is going on.
If you haven’t done it already seems like you should bring on an attack and then get an EEG and some kind of brain imaging during it.
Sounds a lot like a craniocervical or atlantodental instability to me, only the disorientation doesn`t fit in. Do you really lose your knowledge about your location, date/time, identity or situation or did you mean spatial / coordinative problems? The latter would fit basilary blood flow problems due to mechanical irritation of the vertebral arteries; disorientation in the psychiatric sense is a cerebral sign that wouldn`t be caused that way before seroius cerebellar symptoms occured.
Anyway, if it is an instability, there may be no cure but surgical fusion.
Are there any conditions that were suspected but ruled out? What kinds of specialists have you consulted with?
Could you be suffering from mitochondrial dysfunction? (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26083647/). I'm no doctor but this is something I've experienced. I got over it shortly after I started taking supplements that help mitochondria, like CoQ10, acetyl L-carnitine, alpha-lipoic acid, magnesium, some B vitamins, and antioxidants like green tea extract. Something to note is that some of these are mild blood thinners.
What about migraines? Or a shoulder injury that affects your neck?
Good luck!
If they are migraines, I think they're a little atypical, which has been throwing people off. Thanks for the response! I'll have to look into this!
Have you looked into cerebrolysin, it's neuropeptides derived from pig brains sometimes used for treatment of brain trauma. I've never taken it before so can't vouch for it but it might be worth looking into.
I'm not a doctor, but have you been tested for B12 deficiency? The symptoms you describe do seem like they could be consistent with it. Although perhaps this is less likely given that the symptoms started following a brain injury and concussion, it might be worth looking into just in case.
Good luck. If you do figure out your medical problem, I'd be interested to see you post an update someday.
Look into these guys: https://portal.selfhacked.com/
You might want to try CrowdMed: https://www.crowdmed.com/
Wow this is exactly what I was just trying to do but less janky, thanks!
Yeah, good luck with that. There's an interesting podcast you may want to listen to. It's about a photographer who experienced weird neurological symptoms that stumped her doctors. She used CrowdMed to get an accurate diagnosis. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/awhmzx/42-blind-spot
Is anyone here perhaps affiliated with Riot Games and willing to help me, a League of Legends player, fix some broken Challenges? I really like imaginary internet points, but I'm frustrated that some of these aren't achievable in the manner they claim to be. I know exactly the problems with a few of them, but there's also some others where working with someone at the company would be really helpful for figuring out the fix.
Thank you! If you're able to, my email is euclid11 (at) gmail.com.
Always note a massive preference for a "smart and curious" partner on all these dating profiles, but how much does that matter in the long run? Like why is that the one most people consistently highlight in their dating profiles?
My strong Intuition is that the intelligence of my partner probably wouldn't make a massive difference provided they aren't way below average. Am I just way off here?
People prefer people similar to themselves.
"smart and curious" is also a good proxy for things that it's less socially acceptable to blatantly screen for (primarily income). Not everyone might be doing this intentionally, but my guess is that at least some people are doing it accidentally
That's kind of no bullshit kind of reasoning I come here for!
Many very successful people in business are smart and *in*curious, rising on their ability to build relationships and make sales.
Never thought this was possible until I met a family of people like this. They were all really good at making money... And not much else
Oh yeah. For a while I tried to suppress my curiosity so I'd be better at making money. I figured there were 'idea people', who wasted their lives as adjuncts, and 'practical people', who went out and told people what they wanted to hear and made money.
I know. I should have found a way to monetize it. Of such decisions are fortunes made and lost, I imagine.
How many people have you had relations with?
It can be quite jarring to try to have a conversation with someone who engages with the world and with ideas on a level different than your own, even if you like other aspects of their personality.
Have had only one long-term relationship to be fair (4 years and counting!), with my sample size being small because I'm 25.
To be honest my girlfriend does engage with the world in a different way than me. She isn't really that curious about the world, and she loathes when I try to engage her with abstract ideas or the kinds of things spoken about on this blog.
That being said, it's never really been an issue. We still love each other's company, we still have clear goals we want to achieve together, and though we have divergent hobbies we almost always engage in them together as we're both usually willing to compromise.
I guess I get what you mean to some extent. I wouldn't have a long-term relationship with many of the women in my hometown because they only care about conspicuous consumption, flexing said consumption on Instagram, and having children before 25. But I would argue these traits are more related to a woman's values rather than her smarts, hence why I think values are probably far more important.
It's important to the sort of cerebral people who frequent SSC/ACX. Birds of a feather and all that. It's not a moral thing, it's a compatibility issue. Look at activists seeking out people with similar politics, or athletic people requiring a potential partner be able to keep up with them physically.
Examples of some things which would help me enjoy someone's company long term include them being able to:
- be an appropriate debate sparring partner
- challenge me in board games
- teach me new things
For all of these it helps to have overall intelligence similar to mine.
At least for me, it's not quite a matter of smart. I've met a great many highly intelligent women, but part of what made my wife such a good fit for me was how unusually intellectual she is. By intellectual, I mean interested in accumulating and sharing knowledge, dissatisfied with facile solutions, and the sort of person who enjoys considering all sorts of weird situations. Less goal-directed intelligence, and more exploratory intelligence. I think that preference is common in this rather-intellectual community, and that's what the "smart and curious" phrasing is driving at.
> wouldn't make a massive difference provided they aren't way below average
The average reader of this blog has an IQ of 138 according to a 2017 survey. I don't know how accurate that is but I'd be surprised if it's below 120 in practice (yes, yes, this is /r/iamverysmart material). Someone with an IQ of 95 would be incredibly far off.
I think it's a matter of "are they within a certain range from me" - my friends that have average intelligence make for good friends, but I would not tolerate them as partners as they couldn't partake in meaningful conversations when I need them to. I am fortunate to have a great wife, and she is kind, beautiful and accepting - but her intelligence is also conditio sin qua non.
There's a 60/40 chance I'll be in the bay area this October (10th oct to 10th Nov) and I'd love to find a nice group house with a temporary lack in residents to join. If you know of any, hit me up.
The same applies for April to June next year :)
Are there any ACX readers near Sainte-Maxime, France, who would like to hike, play boardgames and/or have fika? Me and my girlfriend are moving there and we'd like people to hang out with. :)
I'm seeking collaborators who are interested in working on a self-tracking project to measure cognitive performance. The late psychologist (and noted self-experimenter) Seth Roberts developed a simple, quick reaction-time test that could be used to measure your brain function. I worked on this project with Seth before his untimely death in 2014. Since that time I've pursued other interests, but I'd like to start working on this project again. The reaction-time test would be perfect for screening putative nootropics, and the results wouldn't hinge on subjective assessments of effectiveness. If anyone is interested in working together on this project, please contact me at alexc [at] aya [dot] yale [dot] edu. Professor Roberts's blog posts are still online. One representative post is here: https://sethroberts.net/2014/01/09/reaction-time-as-a-measure-of-health/
Sounds like a cool project! What kind of help are you looking for?
Everything from experimental design, to data analysis, to improving the script that's used to collect the data, to just generally discussing ideas on the best way to test hypotheses related to improving brain function. I'm especially interested in collaborating with someone who has a good working knowledge of statistics (an area that I'm weak in), but everyone is welcome to participate. Email me at alexc@aya.yale.edu if you're interested.
You might take a look at the health tracking app George posted about (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/classifieds-thread-922/comment/8931854). I've seen some demos of it and it seems like it would probably help with the data gathering portions of this. Worth an email to them, at least.
**Peter Singer, Bryan Caplan** will be debating “Do The Rich Pay Their Fair Share” next week for an audience of 1,000 people on an unrecorded zoom call.
Tickets available at the link below.
See this link for the details, including how to join the event as an audience member:
https://appliedacademia.substack.com/p/coming-soon?showWelcome=true
I’m not sure where this goes, since it’s both a charity event for The Life You Can Save and a good/service.
Very cool event, wish I was free at that time.
Very interesting ticketing format, too. "Selling" all tickets in a blind auction seems like a great way to potentially raise revenue, but also a great way to leave people feeling betrayed if they don't win the auction. It's especially tough because there's no hint at what the cutoff price might be. But I guess no matter if you win the auction, you've still made a donation to a great charity, which is the whole point anyway.
Hello, I'm starting a super fun ANTIDOOMSDAY CULT. "Where you never have to drink the Kool-Aid™".
Our activities involve creating a irreverent doomstead compound where we can live cheap and self provision, fomenting revolution, art, science, frolicking in meadows. We have no leader and don't plan any rapey or murdery things. Current members range from 18-40 and run the gamut from disaffected artistic youth wizards to hyper rationalist autistic science hobos. Some have described us as a heterodox anarchist thinktank. We are looking for interesting cooperative people. If you would like to join email me at 6.2831853071 protonmail.
Where-ish?
people are assembling in temporary base in Louisiana right now. Moving as we have resources to upgrade.
how is this simultaneously extremely threatening and very tempting
C0m3 j0!ñ uS !
> We have no leader and don't plan any rapey or murdery things
Your wording reminds me of a line in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Charles Manson acolyte:
“Charlie said to make the murders look… witchy.”
Our company is tackling PPP fraud and other types of corporate fraud. A lot of people are upset about this and their only option is to throw their complaint into the void. If you have any information on fraud and you'd like to see something done, drop us a tip.
www.sidesolve.com
I hesitate to be negative about a program aimed at increasing the costs for lack of integrity, but...
1) there does seem a lot of special pleading around PPP, with an alarm not reflected in concern for other obvious areas of fraud and waste.
2) I would urge people to pay as much attention to the small $ loans as the larger ones. Fifteen companies borrowing $200k have taken more than 1 company borrowing 1 mill from the public pot.
What is this? How would I recognize it if I saw it?
The people we've talked usually have some relationship with a business that received a PPP loan that is way too large for activity, say a small mechanic shop paying near minimum wage receiving 2 million in PPP loans. The kinds of people that lie about their business operations are shady people more generally.
As someone coming from the more implementation side of such programs. What are your thoughts on the fraud being just a known feature of these programs?
The government metaphorically (and almost literally) wanted to sprinkle money out of helicopters. There is a balance when designing programs and their rules in terms of the level of fraud the program incurs versus the versus the number of eligible applicants discouraged from applying/denied.
You make completing an application a 1 foot hurdle, you might get 20% fraud, but get almost everyone who qualifies as a successful applicant. You make it a 3 foot hurdle you might get 5% fraud, but also lose 30% of the applicants to either them just not even attempting the hurdle, or failing to navigate it.
Add in the government's main instruction to the people administering these programs being "follow all the rules BUT FASTER FASTER FASTER!!!!!!", and the level of fraud is sort of "baked in". It would be like your boss opening up a position and demanding a very top shelf hire, and then giving you 2 days to conduct the job search with only a normal salary range. Something is going to give.
Anyway, my business didn't apply for a PPP loan despite being eligible, but it has helped run different programs, and the public conversation around fraud/waste/abuse always seems a little tone deaf and ignorant to me.
Often there are a lot of competing priorities that the government and legislators all try to enshrine as the #1 priority. But that just isn't how the world works. And if you want to fight fraud the place to do it best is in the rule making stage and in the legislature, not on the backend.
The programs, however poorly implemented, require that the applicants certify true facts and we're trying to do some work to ensure this is the case. If you got 3 million dollars that you claim went to payroll, you better have more than three employees at a residential house.
The government's approach here was to "Just assume everything the banks and applicants said is true. We can go after the fraud after the fact," and that's what we're helping to do.
With regards to "where to fight fraud", there are a lot of stages but we're not quite big enough to begin enshrining laws yet and even less capable of enshrining laws during the outbreak of the pandemic. In the meantime, we're going to do our best to fight fraud and tackle injustice where we can with what we can.
Fair enough I am glad there are people looking into fraud.
I wasn't meant to be discouraging, more to see if your org talks about the broader picture at all and the incentives involved not only to applicants, but also at the legislation/federal department implementation etc.
The messaging we so often see on the implementation side is:
1) Make sure anyone with two brain cells who might try to apply can.
2) Make sure no one defrauds the program.
3) Do this yesterday (the timelines are frequently ludicrous).
And there literally are a lot of scenarios where you will be getting lawsuits from both directions at the same time. People mad there is too much fraud and people mad their mentally challenged grandma who cannot count to four and doesn't know what a computer is cannot figure out the application.
Very impressive
Hi, I will gladly take the printer off your hands. My email is johngoldengardiner@gmail.com