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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

For me, "going into the wild" evokes the arguments of psychedelic transhumanists.

I can relate to Nate F, having encouraged dissociation for the sake of uncovering novel ideas. That phase produced many beautiful ideas for start-ups, NPOS, and even a sort of Grand Unified Theory of economics as part of a solution to the Friendliness problem. Now, out of school, I work as a bartender, so as to re-learn what I'd forgotten, to do precisely as the OP suggests, and socialize some of these wild ideas. After about 3 years, I feel I've learned a lot about people (at least the drunks).

Neither embracing the wilderness nor camp has been effective at bridging the two. Yet, while I haven't yet shifted any paradigms, through both phases, I've grown personally .

Also, McRibs are delicious. They aren't digested too well though. Reminds me of the diverging concepts of memetics and "internet memes." Maybe, after we make in vitro meat viable, we can start growing ideas in a vat.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I do not think it is backwards at all. First, you fail to consider that it is expected of young people to be unreliable and novel and old people to be conventional and conservative. So, the social penalty for introducing novelties is likely significantly smaller if you are young.

Besides, "I imagine that young people who conform and signal reliability start families earlier" is irrelevant. What you should look for are fertility rates, not family formation. And I am quite certain that social deviants (especially if their deviation is from norms about what is and is not criminal behaviour) have higher fertility than law-abiding, hard-working,out-of-college kids.

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