Author’s Notes, Ch. 78

I’ll update fan art along with the next chapter – I just don’t have time to do it right now.

News #1:  I’ve moved to Berkeley, a big change from commuting between Redwood City and Berkeley like for the last several months.  (I actually was set up to update Friday before the move, and then somebody pointed out that this was the eve of the SAT in America which is pretty darned important as life events go; then Saturday was the move; but at least I’m squeaking in on the 11th, at the end of the promised period.)  Being in Berkeley may or may not speed up my writing; I make no promises, but it sure was tiring the other way.  In any case it’s probably better if you treat future installments as novellas that arrive now and then, rather than chapters you expect on a weekly basis.  I’m still writing faster than a lot of professional writers, and individual event-chapters will be published as soon as they’re finished.

News #2:  Fanfiction.net has disabled links in author’s profiles.  As a result, all information previously in the author’s profile (fanart, translations, etc.) has been moved to HPMOR.com, which now also offers one-click, no-login-required email subscription to future chapter updates.  If you aren’t already signed up for email notifications, I strongly recommend doing that rather than repeatedly visiting the front page every day at 7pm until the pain becomes too much for you.  Overwhelming thanks and kudos to Josh Larios aka RJL20 for programming HPMOR.com, and Lightwave for design work.

News #3:  The other reason I’ve been busy lately is that I’ve been working with Anna Salamon (also of my host research institute) and Julia Galef (of skeptic community fame) on launching a new nonprofit – tentatively titled the Center for Modern Rationality – to systematize cognitive-science-based how-to-think training at a much higher level than modern ‘critical thinking’ courses.  We are currently seeking test subjects for exercises under development, especially if you reside in the Bay Area; if you haven’t read through the Sequences on LessWrong dot com, that’s fine, we need test subjects like that.  We’re exercising the rationalist virtue of empiricism by testing our ideas on live audiences every Saturday, and iterating rapidly – we can never have enough test subjects.  We’re also advertising open positions for curriculum developers, executive assistants, a programmer, and some amount of consulting work, though at the moment we’re still in the launch stage and paying relative peanuts.  (If you’re not sure whether to apply, please err on the side of applying.  We’ve gotten some really awesome people who say that they almost talked themselves out of it.)  CMR isn’t set up yet to take lots of small donations, but anyone interested in substantially funding the nonprofit’s initial launch can email myself or Julia Galef – right now we’re operating under my host institute’s umbrella, so all donations need to be specially processed.  See the CMR page here for more information.  (Yes, we’re working to get a real website set up!)

Oh, and if someone can donate $1.6 million or more to launch the Center for Modern Rationality, I’ll update every two days until I run out of updates.  Honestly I am not expecting anyone to cough up $1.6M… unless some wealthy reader is sick of our whole species being insane and wants to fund a nonprofit that can do something about it.  But hey, I thought I’d throw it out there, just in case.

Otherwise I’ll just update with spacing determined by some mix of chapter length and tension.  Ch. 78 is a rather long one, but considering how it ends…

The next update will occur on Thursday, March 15th at 7PM Pacific Time.