I personally believe that one should think Less Wrong and act Long Now, if you follow me.
Possibly my favorite catch-phrase ever :) What do I think is hiding there?
Think Less Wrong
Self anthropology- “Why do you believe what you believe?”
Hugging the Query and not sinking into confused questions
Litany of Tarski
Notice your confusion - “Either the story is false or you model is wrong”
Act Long Now
Cultivate habits and practice routines that seem small / trivial on a day/week/month timeline, but will result in you being superhuman in 10 years.
Build abstractions where you are acutely aware of where it leaks, and have good reason to believe that leak does not affect the most important work you are using this abstraction for.
What things trigger “Man, it sure would be useful helpful if I had data on XYZ from the past 8 years”? Start tracking that.
What am I currently doing to Act Long Now? (Dec 4th 2019)
Switching to Roam: Though it’s still in development and there are a lot of technical hurdles to this being a long now move (they don’t have good import export, it’s all cloud hosted and I can’t have my own backups), putting ideas into my roam network feels like long now organization for maximized creative/intellectual output over the years.
Trying to milk a lot of exploration out of the next year before I start work, hopefully giving myself springboards to more things at points in the future where I might not have had the energy to get started / make the initial push.
Lot’s of progress on understanding emotional learning (or more practically, how to do emotional unlearning) allowing me to get to a more even keeled center from which to think and act.
Getting better at ignoring the bottom line to genuinely consider what the world would be like for alternative hypothesis.
This is a great list! I’d be curious about things you are currently doing to act short now and think more wrong as well. I often find I get a lot out of such lists.
From Gwern’s about page:
Possibly my favorite catch-phrase ever :) What do I think is hiding there?
Think Less Wrong
Self anthropology- “Why do you believe what you believe?”
Hugging the Query and not sinking into confused questions
Litany of Tarski
Notice your confusion - “Either the story is false or you model is wrong”
Act Long Now
Cultivate habits and practice routines that seem small / trivial on a day/week/month timeline, but will result in you being superhuman in 10 years.
Build abstractions where you are acutely aware of where it leaks, and have good reason to believe that leak does not affect the most important work you are using this abstraction for.
What things trigger “Man, it sure would be useful helpful if I had data on XYZ from the past 8 years”? Start tracking that.
What am I currently doing to Act Long Now? (Dec 4th 2019)
Switching to Roam: Though it’s still in development and there are a lot of technical hurdles to this being a long now move (they don’t have good import export, it’s all cloud hosted and I can’t have my own backups), putting ideas into my roam network feels like long now organization for maximized creative/intellectual output over the years.
Trying to milk a lot of exploration out of the next year before I start work, hopefully giving myself springboards to more things at points in the future where I might not have had the energy to get started / make the initial push.
Being kind.
Arguing Politics* With my Best Friends
What am I currently doing to think Less Wrong?
Writing more has helped me hone my thinking.
Lot’s of progress on understanding emotional learning (or more practically, how to do emotional unlearning) allowing me to get to a more even keeled center from which to think and act.
Getting better at ignoring the bottom line to genuinely consider what the world would be like for alternative hypothesis.
This is a great list! I’d be curious about things you are currently doing to act short now and think more wrong as well. I often find I get a lot out of such lists.
Act Short Now
Sleeping in
Flirting more
Think More Wrong
I longer buy that there’s a structural difference between math/the formal/a priori and science/the empirical/ a posteriori.
Probability theory feels sorta lame.