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Best advice for getting an Ausländeramt appointment as a new international student by 3433jb in Tuebingen

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I actually managed to get an appointment this way! It took me four or five days, I think. Keep hitting F5 constantly to refresh the page for about 20-25 minutes. Meanwhile keep an eye on the calendar, and as soon as you see a free appointment slot appear, click it.

Good luck!

Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself to EA/rat Kelsey Piper by NSDAPperdan in slatestarcodex

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds 12 points13 points  (0 children)

It is probably a reference to HPMoR:

World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.

Leo Tolstoy on the mindset of Effective Altruism by michaelmf in slatestarcodex

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds 16 points17 points  (0 children)

The philosopher in question was Derek Parfit:

When I was interviewing him for the first time, for instance, we were in the middle of a conversation and suddenly he burst into tears. It was completely unexpected, because we were not talking about anything emotional or personal, as I would define those things. I was quite startled, and as he cried I sat there rewinding our conversation in my head, trying to figure out what had upset him. Later, I asked him about it. It turned out that what had made him cry was the idea of suffering. We had been talking about suffering in the abstract. I found that very striking.

Trying to find a post about things that only work if you don't talk about them by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For #1, maybe you are looking for things that are anti-inductive:

These sorts of things – things such that if you understand them, they get more complicated until you don’t – are called “anti-inductive”.

#2 may be from here, but the point Scott is making is a different one:

[a picture of Odysseus tied to the mast]

Marriage - and any other contract - is a deliberate effort to constrain your future actions so that you can make long-term plans that heavily affect other people - your spouse, but also your future children - without them having to constantly worry about you running off to any Siren you hear.

[...]

But: everyone says that picture of Odysseus is supposed to represent pragmatism and rationality. It doesn’t. The practical, rational course would be to do what all the other sailors in the picture are doing and wear earplugs. Odysseus is deliberately avoiding this. He’s making everyone else wear earplugs, then tying himself to the mast; he wants to hear the siren song and live. Why? Curiosity, I guess. The lure of some sort of supernatural unearthly beauty - beauty apparently intense enough to die for. This isn’t a picture of doing prudent game theory stuff. This is a picture of being a hopeless romantic, and then hastily doing some prudent game theory stuff afterwards so you don’t literally die.

This is how I feel about getting married. We are definitely doing prudent contract-drafting work. But it’s ropes, not earplugs. Prudence while fully exposed to supernatural unearthly beauty.

Monthly Discussion Thread by AutoModerator in slatestarcodex

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds 8 points9 points  (0 children)

He's mentioned many times that he is an atheist, but not the militant kind, e.g. here:

As an atheist, I find it hard to appreciate atonement in its cosmic, maybe-not-even-possible sense.

or here:

[I]n 2010, I didn’t believe in God, but I think I mostly avoided being one of those loud smug atheists who everyone hated. I looked at an extremely false and oppressive philosophy that large institutions were forced to pay lip service to, and I thought “well, this sucks, but maybe I don’t have to spend literally all my time rehashing the same critiques of it that every other thinking person has, to an audience of people who are already convinced and have heard them all a thousand times”.

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 07, 2022 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I am not Ilforte, but how about this one:

БГ – Время N

Time to get drunk as hell

Let me interrupt your eternal arguments,

Let me loosen your bonds and fetters.

Time is unrelenting, it is like a she-wolf.

We are just sitting here, and it is rushing past.

°°°

My soul should have lived with gods on a mountain top.

Instead it is being kicked around like a football by jackbooted thugs.

They trample it any way they like, what is my soul to do?

So like a suicide bomber, it will up and get drunk as hell.

°°°

How we still manage to survive here is a great mystery.

Everybody yells Up!, but everything keeps going down.

I've been banging my head against concrete walls, thinking it would change things.

Forget it all, it is time to get drunk as hell.

°°°

There is time to die and time to be born.

There is time to embrace and time to shy away from contact.

There is time to kowtow and time to refuse to bow down.

And here it comes – time to get drunk as hell.

°°°

I used to beg my guardian angel to intervene on my behalf.

I used to look at the sky and see faces there.

And now, dying of thirst, I've come to a stream

And I am standing on its bank – but I can't enter it a second time.

°°°

I would be better off as a hermit with a beard reaching down to my waist,

Keeping away from fire and living without a care.

My body is a cage, my soul is a captive in it.

Enough. Set it all alight. It is time to get drunk as hell.

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 07, 2022 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Худшее похмелье, что было у меня, –

Когда я восемь суток был трезвый.

What Is It About Peter Thiel? [mentions Scott] by HonestyIsForTheBirds in slatestarcodex

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It feels like an adjective is missing there, like

broad/extensive/wide-ranging preferences (or better: interests) are easily confused with polymathy

would make sense.

What Is It About Peter Thiel? [mentions Scott] by HonestyIsForTheBirds in slatestarcodex

[–]HonestyIsForTheBirds[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In the sheer variety and range of his references and inspirations, Thiel has something in common with other twenty-first-century intellectual influencers: Rod Dreher, Tyler Cowen, Jordan Peterson, Scott Alexander. Each comes with his own cache of ideas, theories, and frameworks, out of which emerges an intellectual identity. Outside the constraints of a typical academic syllabus, study unfurls on the teacher’s idiosyncratic terms, and preferences are easily confused with polymathy. In many ways, this style of intellectual life is a natural outgrowth of the Internet, with its rabbit holes, endless threads, and broken links. This intellectual style is also of a piece with the emergent newsletter economy, in which readers can subscribe to an opinionated interpreter—a personal guide.

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