I’ve wondered how many people were dissuaded from LW because they pick up things quickly, value their time, and were getting a frustratingly low insight/minute ratio from the Sequences.
I have a friend for whom this is the case. I’ve tried linking her to LW and she finds the sequences (a) move slowly and (b) mostly appear to reiterate stuff that she already knows about biases etc, from reading pop-psych/philosophy/science, books/blogs. I feel like she’d be a valuable member in most intellectual communities, but so far she’s been disinterested in this one.
Granted, another part of this is she appears to be disinclined towards “optimization” as a drive. Or something. I’ve still yet to fully understand this.
Granted, another part of this is she appears to be disinclined towards “optimization” as a drive.
No idea whether it relates to your friend or not, but… the fact that the big names on Lesswrong seem to be really happy people appears to me to be anomalous. I seem to recall seeing a study somewhere that maximizing makes people less happy than satisficing. But optimization is just maximizing utility. It’s a puzzle.
Yeah. I think she doesn’t like the ideally of continually trying to improve stuff… so it does appear to be contrary to satisficing, though perhaps on a meta-level. Like, if something’s not working in her life, she’ll go and fix it, but she doesn’t operate from a perspective of continual growth. Ongoing growth, absolutely: Dweck-wise, she definitely has a growth mindset… but there’s no sense of “how can I make today marginally better than yesterday” etc...
Could you elaborate on the difference between continual and ongoing growth? Dweck-style growth mindset seems similar to LW-style life optimization on a practical level to me.
Uhhh, continual is a subset of ongoing. Essentially, my friend fixes things when they’re obviously problematic, and actually does a fair bit of self-modification in the process, in addition to modifying her environment. I think perhaps it’s somewhat like she just tries to find a local optimum, and then goes back to doing stuff with her life.
The mindset test basically asks two questions phrased a bunch of different ways, and those questions amount to “to what extent are your abilities (talent/intelligence) fixed?” My friend certainly believes (and demonstrates) that if necessary she can level up at any given thing, but for the most part her focus is on actually doing stuff, rather than growth.
I have a friend for whom this is the case. I’ve tried linking her to LW and she finds the sequences (a) move slowly and (b) mostly appear to reiterate stuff that she already knows about biases etc, from reading pop-psych/philosophy/science, books/blogs. I feel like she’d be a valuable member in most intellectual communities, but so far she’s been disinterested in this one.
Granted, another part of this is she appears to be disinclined towards “optimization” as a drive. Or something. I’ve still yet to fully understand this.
No idea whether it relates to your friend or not, but… the fact that the big names on Lesswrong seem to be really happy people appears to me to be anomalous. I seem to recall seeing a study somewhere that maximizing makes people less happy than satisficing. But optimization is just maximizing utility. It’s a puzzle.
Yeah. I think she doesn’t like the ideally of continually trying to improve stuff… so it does appear to be contrary to satisficing, though perhaps on a meta-level. Like, if something’s not working in her life, she’ll go and fix it, but she doesn’t operate from a perspective of continual growth. Ongoing growth, absolutely: Dweck-wise, she definitely has a growth mindset… but there’s no sense of “how can I make today marginally better than yesterday” etc...
Could you elaborate on the difference between continual and ongoing growth? Dweck-style growth mindset seems similar to LW-style life optimization on a practical level to me.
Uhhh, continual is a subset of ongoing. Essentially, my friend fixes things when they’re obviously problematic, and actually does a fair bit of self-modification in the process, in addition to modifying her environment. I think perhaps it’s somewhat like she just tries to find a local optimum, and then goes back to doing stuff with her life.
The mindset test basically asks two questions phrased a bunch of different ways, and those questions amount to “to what extent are your abilities (talent/intelligence) fixed?” My friend certainly believes (and demonstrates) that if necessary she can level up at any given thing, but for the most part her focus is on actually doing stuff, rather than growth.