As I mentioned earlier, I like this post, but a lot of the suggestions seem very hazardous. For instance, you write that “You may remember early in the Arabian revolutions in Libya, an American student took the summer off college to fight in the revolution. I bet he learned a lot. If you could do enough things like that, you’d be well on your way to matching the vampire.”
It doesn’t strike me that this is even a remotely good idea for personal development reasons, and I’m not even talking about the risk of death.
If you want to optimize your life for adventure, that’s fine—I once knew someone who held that the only things anyone actually optimized their life for were money, love, and adventure, and everything else was fake. But it doesn’t seem to me that this is necessarily good for learning.
People often say that I have had an unusually wide range of experiences, and in many respects that is true. However, it isn’t clear to me that this is a strategy that people should intentionally play. I know several people who have essentially optimized their lives for having crazy experiences, and to me this seems much more questionable than one might expect. Eventually—and often quite rapidly—“having crazy experiences” itself becomes a thing that these individuals are doing too much.
Much like being cool, classy, or honest, trying to be interesting or do interesting things often does not make you interesting—indeed it can make you the reverse. I think a perhaps better tactic is to find the interestingness in otherwise mundane activities. In my experience this can yield similar benefits to intentionally trying to go out and do interesting things, but has much lower costs.
Well, I hope we’d both agree that a future in which people who want to want to skydive and fight revolutions and found companies can do so and people who want to want to wirehead can do so is better than either.
This seems sensible and good, and I have essentially nothing to add.
Maybe that Libya thing was a bad example? I meant to encourage less dangerous self-development. And then, yeah, just doing self development with no glorious works produced is failure by infinite meta.
As I mentioned earlier, I like this post, but a lot of the suggestions seem very hazardous. For instance, you write that “You may remember early in the Arabian revolutions in Libya, an American student took the summer off college to fight in the revolution. I bet he learned a lot. If you could do enough things like that, you’d be well on your way to matching the vampire.”
It doesn’t strike me that this is even a remotely good idea for personal development reasons, and I’m not even talking about the risk of death.
If you want to optimize your life for adventure, that’s fine—I once knew someone who held that the only things anyone actually optimized their life for were money, love, and adventure, and everything else was fake. But it doesn’t seem to me that this is necessarily good for learning.
People often say that I have had an unusually wide range of experiences, and in many respects that is true. However, it isn’t clear to me that this is a strategy that people should intentionally play. I know several people who have essentially optimized their lives for having crazy experiences, and to me this seems much more questionable than one might expect. Eventually—and often quite rapidly—“having crazy experiences” itself becomes a thing that these individuals are doing too much.
Much like being cool, classy, or honest, trying to be interesting or do interesting things often does not make you interesting—indeed it can make you the reverse. I think a perhaps better tactic is to find the interestingness in otherwise mundane activities. In my experience this can yield similar benefits to intentionally trying to go out and do interesting things, but has much lower costs.
Down that path wireheading lies.
I find a future in which we are all steered to skydive and fight revolutions and found companies far more terrifying than wireheading.
Well, I hope we’d both agree that a future in which people who want to want to skydive and fight revolutions and found companies can do so and people who want to want to wirehead can do so is better than either.
I wish there were a term as powerful as wireheading that likewise condemned signaling anti-authoritarianism...
Perhaps “raging against the machine?”
I don’t understand what you mean. Please clarify
This seems sensible and good, and I have essentially nothing to add.
Maybe that Libya thing was a bad example? I meant to encourage less dangerous self-development. And then, yeah, just doing self development with no glorious works produced is failure by infinite meta.