Yeah, this works.

I'm a bit torn on where fairness should be properly placed. For example, if Alice is the only one deciding and Bob has no power to punish her at all, it seems like fairness should still come into Alice's consideration. So maybe it should be encoded into the utility function, not into the strategic behavior running on top of it. But that would mean we need to take actions that benefit random aliens while going about our daily lives, and I'm not sure we want that.

Yeah, that training took some time, but it worked. I can now write melodies and chords from imagination pretty easily. Have had this skill for awhile now. It's very useful, though of course not a golden ticket.

My current challenge in music is just coming up with interesting stuff, I think this challenge isn't gonna run out anytime soon.

I think in music you quickly learn to hear and play the right notes, and then it's just never a problem anymore. The real difficulty is having something to say. In writing and visual arts I think it's also like that: you learn a basic level of skill, and then it's all about what you say.

It is fun, but there is only a certain amount I can use my hands before I get RSI on any given day.

Might be worth experimenting a bit with finding more comfortable ways to play. Lots of people (including me) can play the guitar for many hours every day with no problems. But it's hard for a teacher to tell from outside what's crampy and what isn't, you need to rely on your feelings for this.

Cool. If you go with it, I'd be super interested to know how it went, and lmk if you need any help or elaboration on the idea.

Last year I had an idea for a debate protocol which got pretty highly upvoted.

I think once you're past a certain basic level in math, it's feasible to continue learning pretty much by yourself, just download problem sets and go through them. But it's a bit lonely. Going to classes lets you meet other people who are into the same thing as you! Shared love for something is what makes communities happen, I got this idea in Jim Butcher of all places. And the piece of paper itself is also quite nice, it can come in handy unexpectedly, and getting it now is probably easier than getting it later. So on the whole I'd lean toward getting the degree.

About the philosophical stuff, I think "the world and/or my life will be over soon anyway" is kind of a nasty idea, because it makes you feel like nothing's worth doing. That's no way for a human being to be! You're not a potato! Hence it's better to act on the assumption that neither the world nor your life will be over anytime soon.

Also check out "personalized pagerank", where the rating shown to each user is "rooted" in what kind of content this user has upvoted in the past. It's a neat solution to many problems.

Crosstalk is definitely a problem, e-drums and pads have it too. But are you sure the tradeoff is inescapable? Imagine the tines sit on separate pads, or on the same pad but far from each other. (Or close to each other, but with deep grooves between them, so that the distance through the connecting material is large.) This thought experiment shows that damping and crosstalk can be small at the same time. So maybe you can reduce damping but not increase crosstalk, by changing the instrument's shape or materials.

Reading a book, or even watching a movie, is less stimulating than ancestral activities like hunting or fighting. So maybe stimulation by itself isn't the problem, and instead of "superstimuli" we should be worried about activities that are low effort and/or fruitless. From that perspective, reading a book can be both difficult and fruitful (depending on the book - reading Dostoevsky or Fitzgerald isn't the same as reading a generic romance or young adult novel). And creativity is both difficult and fruitful. So we shouldn't put these things on par with watching tiktok.