The growth I’ve experienced in the past several years:
Emotional introspection, via low-key practice (over several years, mostly through the lens of improving my relationship with my girlfriend, occasionally through noticing stuff during non-romantic drama).
Brienne’s Noticing Sequence, and Focusing were both helpful.
Emotional impulse control, via low-key practice (i.e. noticing “I’m feeling angry or spiteful”, and then running a check of “is this a useful emotion to feel? Do I endorse this?” and then more complicated stuff downstream). Also over several years, generally in tandem with the introspection.
Ability to focus at work, combination of:
Changing environment (getting a job that mattered to me, tasks that were difficult-but-at-my-skill-level)
Cheat code (selfcontrol.app)
Low-to-moderate practice cultivating habits, plus Try Things. The first several years of habits did not appear to work for longer than 2 weeks.
General Agency I via having a major project I was excited about, and gaining a social environment that fostered my belief that that sort of project was worth doing. (This was mostly inventing Solstice, which started at my current skill level. Rationality community encouraged “ambition”, which led me to attempt to scale it much larger than I otherwise would have.
I had serious plans to scale it to the “millions of people” range, which I eventually gave up on because it didn’t seem worth it, but the process of trying still changed me permanently)
(remembering this makes me want to consider “having a project” as a strategy unto itself. It’s sort of like changing environment but the environment is largely internal)
General Agency II via “realizing it was up to me”, combination of:
reading inspiring texts that led me to care more about the world, by reframing it in terms that resonated more with me
Being in a social environment where “try to have a big impact on the world” was incentivized (similar but subtly different from the version of this that encouraged Solstice). Having friends who were trying to do that.
Realizing in turn that I didn’t trust any of those friends to have quite the same values as me and/or approach it a way that I trusted.
Years later, I now trust the people around me more, but having been through a period of “the world’s all fucked up and nobody seems to quite see it through the same lens as me” left a permanent change
Thinking Strategically – Similar to general agency II, but coupled with being at a job where there were strategic questions just above my current skill level that would require me to level up to answer them (who I couldn’t get help with answering).
Got a one-time upgrade by reading an email from a colleague that thought about some strategy in detail, outlining their thought process, which showed me how I could improve. (I guess this falls under Learning?)
Improved Epistemic Rationality – low-key practice + social environment over several years, building off of introspection skills. Having people around who also practiced betting, model building, etc. Somewhat noticing that there weren’t enough people around who practiced that, which gave me a sort of spite/smugness based motivation to do it myself (felt more smug than the desperation which fueled General Agency II + Thinking Strategically)
Math – Social environment incentivized me to learn calculus to understand AI landscape better. Actual practice was maybe the closest thing I’ve done to “serious practice”, although it still felt more like “moderate practice.” I only did this for a week. It gave me a small boost to my actual math knowledge, coupled with an upgrade to my self-image as someone who can learn math. (Sort of improvement to mental architecture / healing? Maybe more like just an “Epiphany” in Brienne’s grid frame)
Some things feel like Epiphanies moreso than healing, cheat codes, changing social-landscape or mental architecture (although if I were to force them into my OP’s framework, mental architecture upgrade seems okay). Some epiphanies are triggered by being in a new social environment, but the upgrade is (semi)permanent rather than dependent on that environment.
I think “having projects” is important and maybe is worth considering it’s own category. It’s sort of like changing environment but it’s a more internal environment
I’ve been curious for a while about the stuff I’ve been coming across about rationalists ‘not seeing themselves as ’someone who can learn math.″ Aside from wondering where this comes from, where do you excel?
(What kind of things do you see yourself as someone who can learn those things?)
What got you interested in rationality?
I’m curious because in hindsight the things I’m good seem to be the things I tried because I wasn’t self conscious about, and the things I’m not good at seem to be the things I was self-conscious about, and I’m trying to figure out how to do that—to ‘heal/upgrade mental architecture’ in order to progress.
I actually think this _particular_ subproblem is because I live among rationalists.
In high school and college, I was good enough at math that I didn’t feel any sense that I “couldn’t” do it. (I wasn’t excited by it per se, but I think if I’d pushed ahead with it I’d have been fairly competent)
But, living among rationalists gave me a weird sense that “excelling at math” was something other people were better at that me.
In the years in between college and rationality-community, I didn’t do anything particularly math-related, so it’s not like there was a keen interest that the rationality community squashed. But I think there can be a response to people seeming better at a thing than me (where I have a comparative advantage at other things) that leads to me just focusing on those other things so I don’t have to compete as hard.
In my case, the “other things” included community organizing, and certain kinds of art/design stuff that led me to spearhead Solstice, etc.
(I think the math thing was… basically fine – it’s still the case that I don’t think math is my comparative advantage and I’m not sure how much it’s worth learning it for the sake of following certain conversations. But it *is* the case that, via a similar pattern, being in the rationality community stunted my strategic growth for 3 years because I kept asking other people to solve strategic problems for me)
Note that this isn’t a necessary problem. Being around people better than you doesn’t mean you’ll do this—doing a math undergrad surrounded by better mathematicians doesn’t tend to cause people to stop learning math.
It sounds like your environment wasn’t encouraging you to work on strategic problems, just get them solved, and we could change that fact if we wanted.
The growth I’ve experienced in the past several years:
Emotional introspection, via low-key practice (over several years, mostly through the lens of improving my relationship with my girlfriend, occasionally through noticing stuff during non-romantic drama).
Brienne’s Noticing Sequence, and Focusing were both helpful.
Emotional impulse control, via low-key practice (i.e. noticing “I’m feeling angry or spiteful”, and then running a check of “is this a useful emotion to feel? Do I endorse this?” and then more complicated stuff downstream). Also over several years, generally in tandem with the introspection.
Ability to focus at work, combination of:
Changing environment (getting a job that mattered to me, tasks that were difficult-but-at-my-skill-level)
Cheat code (selfcontrol.app)
Low-to-moderate practice cultivating habits, plus Try Things. The first several years of habits did not appear to work for longer than 2 weeks.
General Agency I via having a major project I was excited about, and gaining a social environment that fostered my belief that that sort of project was worth doing. (This was mostly inventing Solstice, which started at my current skill level. Rationality community encouraged “ambition”, which led me to attempt to scale it much larger than I otherwise would have.
I had serious plans to scale it to the “millions of people” range, which I eventually gave up on because it didn’t seem worth it, but the process of trying still changed me permanently)
(remembering this makes me want to consider “having a project” as a strategy unto itself. It’s sort of like changing environment but the environment is largely internal)
General Agency II via “realizing it was up to me”, combination of:
reading inspiring texts that led me to care more about the world, by reframing it in terms that resonated more with me
Being in a social environment where “try to have a big impact on the world” was incentivized (similar but subtly different from the version of this that encouraged Solstice). Having friends who were trying to do that.
Realizing in turn that I didn’t trust any of those friends to have quite the same values as me and/or approach it a way that I trusted.
Years later, I now trust the people around me more, but having been through a period of “the world’s all fucked up and nobody seems to quite see it through the same lens as me” left a permanent change
Thinking Strategically – Similar to general agency II, but coupled with being at a job where there were strategic questions just above my current skill level that would require me to level up to answer them (who I couldn’t get help with answering).
Got a one-time upgrade by reading an email from a colleague that thought about some strategy in detail, outlining their thought process, which showed me how I could improve. (I guess this falls under Learning?)
Improved Epistemic Rationality – low-key practice + social environment over several years, building off of introspection skills. Having people around who also practiced betting, model building, etc. Somewhat noticing that there weren’t enough people around who practiced that, which gave me a sort of spite/smugness based motivation to do it myself (felt more smug than the desperation which fueled General Agency II + Thinking Strategically)
Math – Social environment incentivized me to learn calculus to understand AI landscape better. Actual practice was maybe the closest thing I’ve done to “serious practice”, although it still felt more like “moderate practice.” I only did this for a week. It gave me a small boost to my actual math knowledge, coupled with an upgrade to my self-image as someone who can learn math. (Sort of improvement to mental architecture / healing? Maybe more like just an “Epiphany” in Brienne’s grid frame)
Writing this out crystallized:
Some things feel like Epiphanies moreso than healing, cheat codes, changing social-landscape or mental architecture (although if I were to force them into my OP’s framework, mental architecture upgrade seems okay). Some epiphanies are triggered by being in a new social environment, but the upgrade is (semi)permanent rather than dependent on that environment.
I think “having projects” is important and maybe is worth considering it’s own category. It’s sort of like changing environment but it’s a more internal environment
I’ve been curious for a while about the stuff I’ve been coming across about rationalists ‘not seeing themselves as ’someone who can learn math.″ Aside from wondering where this comes from, where do you excel?
(What kind of things do you see yourself as someone who can learn those things?)
What got you interested in rationality?
I’m curious because in hindsight the things I’m good seem to be the things I tried because I wasn’t self conscious about, and the things I’m not good at seem to be the things I was self-conscious about, and I’m trying to figure out how to do that—to ‘heal/upgrade mental architecture’ in order to progress.
I actually think this _particular_ subproblem is because I live among rationalists.
In high school and college, I was good enough at math that I didn’t feel any sense that I “couldn’t” do it. (I wasn’t excited by it per se, but I think if I’d pushed ahead with it I’d have been fairly competent)
But, living among rationalists gave me a weird sense that “excelling at math” was something other people were better at that me.
In the years in between college and rationality-community, I didn’t do anything particularly math-related, so it’s not like there was a keen interest that the rationality community squashed. But I think there can be a response to people seeming better at a thing than me (where I have a comparative advantage at other things) that leads to me just focusing on those other things so I don’t have to compete as hard.
In my case, the “other things” included community organizing, and certain kinds of art/design stuff that led me to spearhead Solstice, etc.
(I think the math thing was… basically fine – it’s still the case that I don’t think math is my comparative advantage and I’m not sure how much it’s worth learning it for the sake of following certain conversations. But it *is* the case that, via a similar pattern, being in the rationality community stunted my strategic growth for 3 years because I kept asking other people to solve strategic problems for me)
Note that this isn’t a necessary problem. Being around people better than you doesn’t mean you’ll do this—doing a math undergrad surrounded by better mathematicians doesn’t tend to cause people to stop learning math.
It sounds like your environment wasn’t encouraging you to work on strategic problems, just get them solved, and we could change that fact if we wanted.