This seems to be a fully general counterargument against any kind of advice. As in: “Don’t say ‘do X’ because I might want to do not X which will give me cognitive dissonance which is bad”
You seem to essentially be affirming the Zen concept that any kind of “do X” will imply that X is better than not X, i.e. a dualistic thought pattern, which is the precondition for suffering.
But besides that idea I don’t really see how this post adds anything.
Not to mention that identity tends to already be an instance of “X is better than not X”. Paul Graham is saying “not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X), and you just seem to be saying “not (not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X)) is better than (not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X))”.
At that point you’re running in circles and the only way out is to say mu and put your attention on something else.
Well, I don’t know if I’d call it a fully general argument against taking any kind of advice. I’d say it’s more like a fully general argument against directly trying to optimize for the thing being measured, i.e. an argument that you should avoid Goodhart’s curse.
As to to the post not adding anything, I guess that’s true in a certain sense, but I find many people, myself included, are kinda bad at taking general advice and successfully applying it in all specific situations, so it’s often helpful to take something general and consider specific instances of it. You might say it’s something like the general idea is the “math” and this post is the “engineering” of using the “math” to do some specific thing.
Some other quick examples that come to mind that might be worth exploring as posts to take this general idea and consider it in specific contexts given many people benefit from seeing the same thing worked out many ways:
don’t harm yourself by trying to directly optimize for productivity
This seems to be a fully general counterargument against any kind of advice.
As in: “Don’t say ‘do X’ because I might want to do not X which will give me cognitive dissonance which is bad”
You seem to essentially be affirming the Zen concept that any kind of “do X” will imply that X is better than not X, i.e. a dualistic thought pattern, which is the precondition for suffering.
But besides that idea I don’t really see how this post adds anything.
Not to mention that identity tends to already be an instance of “X is better than not X”. Paul Graham is saying “not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X), and you just seem to be saying “not (not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X)) is better than (not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X))”.
At that point you’re running in circles and the only way out is to say mu and put your attention on something else.
Well, I don’t know if I’d call it a fully general argument against taking any kind of advice. I’d say it’s more like a fully general argument against directly trying to optimize for the thing being measured, i.e. an argument that you should avoid Goodhart’s curse.
As to to the post not adding anything, I guess that’s true in a certain sense, but I find many people, myself included, are kinda bad at taking general advice and successfully applying it in all specific situations, so it’s often helpful to take something general and consider specific instances of it. You might say it’s something like the general idea is the “math” and this post is the “engineering” of using the “math” to do some specific thing.
Some other quick examples that come to mind that might be worth exploring as posts to take this general idea and consider it in specific contexts given many people benefit from seeing the same thing worked out many ways:
don’t harm yourself by trying to directly optimize for productivity
… for popularity
… for happiness
… for success
… for minimizing guilt
… for health
And so on.