From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Nov 05 2000 - 08:44:18 MST
> 1. Is their natural spectrum lighting in the place Eli works?
Only if you count sunlight, during the day. I had natural spectrum lighting
in Chicago, and there wasn't a perceptible difference as a result.
> 2. Does Eli sleep on a really comfortable mattress?
No, but it's on the shopping list.
> 3. Is he exercising enough each day?
90 minutes or so. I don't know if I'll still have the time for that once I
switch to coding, but designing takes such a peak mental output that there are
plenty of minutes left over for the physical stuff. (I've lost some weight,
but I've still got a long way to go. I'm trying to get into some kind of
physical condition that can be maintained with minimum effort once I start
running out of minutes.)
Incidentally, I can now say from personal experience that the idea that
exercise makes your mind sharper is, as far as I can tell, completely untrue.
It makes your body lighter. That's it.
> 4. Having a pet could be good for Eli's frame of mind.
"Do you like daisies? I plant them, but they always die. Everything that I
put in the ground withers and dies..."
> 5. And what about Eli's reading habits? We all laud him for the scholarly tomes he reads but man cannot live on serious scholarship alone.
Second-generation SF fan, remember? My Dad got interested in my Mom because
of her science-fiction collection? Three bookcases, 600 books, increasing
monthly.
> 6. Diet must be taken into consideration too. I wonder what this fellow eats? I sure hope it is not the typical programmer diet of pizza and coke!
Nope. Cereal, prepackaged microwave meal, meat-based soup, daily vitamin
tablet.
> 7. The physical safety of Eli is a key concern to all of us! I want him only driving something BIG(or a volvo) so he will have a better chance of surviving a car wreck.
Drive? You mean, in a car and stuff? What for? I have Webvan.
> 8. To enhance his mental powers Eli should check out alternative methods.
There is no cause-and-effect relationship between processing the words "You
are a better programmer" and the sections of the brain that actually program
things.
> 9. Eli must be so careful involving romantic entanglements!
Waiting until after the Singularity works for me.
> 10. Wasting time on email lists could really be a problem for him!
Where do you think Singularity Institutes come from, anyway?
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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