searabbit

I think we agree for the most part. I also didn’t mean to imply reading literature = intelligent because I also don’t believe that. The people I described are people in my life who I believe are incredibly intelligent, just not academic.

On my last point, it’s my realist take. I have EDS (excessive daytime sleepiness), so even if I really really believe I will enjoy a tougher read, sometimes I can’t stay awake long enough to get through a page. During those periods, I’ll take the easier self help or scifi book to keep me going. But yeah, challenging ourselves is part of the joy. When I was a struggling college student, I became very depressed for a while, and I distinctly remember picking up a philosophy book at the city library and reading an excerpt about hedonism and eudaimonism which changed my outlook for the better. The idea that we need both short term pleasures and long-term purpose to feel happy/fulfilled helped me work through the challenges, making sure I still went out and had fun in between, which now I look back on with some sense of fondness and pride. I see reading a tough book that interests me in the same way.

for his essays, there is an excellent anthology available from Penguin, ‘The World-Ending Fire’.

Awesome! I’ll add that to my reading list :)

I love this comment and I’ll look into Wendell Berry since I haven’t heard of him before.

To add on, I’ve met a lot of otherwise smart people (smart as in curious and skeptical to not accept things at face value) who frustratingly have no interest in literature to flesh out their own philosophies about the world.

They’ll go on a rant about this or that and I’ll chime in to say, for example, “oh are you talking about prisoners dilemma?” or “you’re basically describing nihilism” or “well, that person likely disagreed with you because you are using different definitions of the same word/concept” and they’ll look at me with an expression of ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care.’ I’d be so happy to explain things or recommend what to research to engage with topics they’re clearly passionate about, but it’s sad to see the curiosity end so soon when so many people have collectively devoted lifetimes on expanding the ideas they think they just invented.

So I won’t comment on what makes someone intelligent (because you’ll never find me calling the people I described unintelligent), but if you want to improve your own, I emphatically agree on reading literature, even fantasy like Tolkien, whatever you enjoy.

Idk about your pile, but mine is precariously balanced on top of a chair so it’s O(1) until a literal tipping point when everything falls and then it’s O(k*n) where k is the time it takes me to put away a piece of clothing in the closet/laundry (or start a new pile elsewhere).

This feels like the poison scene from the princess bride, so I’ll approach it with that level of intellectual derangement.

Which means the obvious first step is to recognize that the house is a cheater who wants you to stay poor so your choice doesn’t matter. There is poison in both cups and I will lose either way. Money no longer influences my decision.

Next, I flip a coin ten times and note my reaction to the choices. That’s my gut instinct and obviously what the model predicted unless it’s either not smart enough to know my gut or smart enough to predict my double bluff, therefore useless.

Next, I decide which variables are most likely to influence the prediction (gender, age, education level, big 5 personality score) and realize this is the adult marshmallow test. I obviously think I’m smart and want the model to know that, so it obviously predicted that I would take one box because I’m a good little goodie two shoes who delays instant gratification for the potential bigger payoff. Therefore I choose two boxes because the model would never expect someone as smart as I to make such a dumb greedy move. Surely, I have outsmarted the supercomputer with my quadruple bluff and have won.

And then I remember I am dumb and the model knows that, because in my excitement, I forgot that the house is a cheater who always wins (and there was likely never any money in the mystery box because researchers never get that kind of funding). I am forced to believe that the model accurately perceived me to be a greedy idiot who took two boxes against my better judgement, shattering my ego.

But hey, I at least got $1k out of it.

I’ve never met someone who decided to write a history book as a hobby. Just wanted to say that’s awesome, hopefully you can make it accessible online to other history buffs who may enjoy it!

Lyft already has this feature, it’s called women+

I don’t think this issue is reflective of American gender wars in particular. I can think of dozens of countries I’d be way more terrified of being in a car alone with an unknown man as a woman. I’ve never had a bad encounter with any uber drivers in the US, but I have heard directly from drivers that drunk riders can be a fucking menace, so I don’t mind if female drivers would rather take their chances with drunk women vs drunk men.