I’m predicting that much of the stuff that causes measurable cognitive improvement will be by the mechanism of making people spend less time on social media or otherwise dithering about on the internet.
e.g. something like 20% of the measured benefit from things like reading the Sequences, the CFAR handbook, singlemindedly playing a specific indie game, are from being the rare thing sufficient to shake people out of habits formed around the addictive gravity-well of the commercialized internet’s click/scroll maximization.
People should not have “shower thoughts”; in the 90s and 2000s people would zone out and have “shower thoughts” while reading books, the extropy email list, and sometimes even watching TV.
Specifically, somewhere around a 20% chance that >30% of the benefit unexpectedly comes from this dynamic, and a 50% chance that 10-30% of the benefit unexpectedly comes from this dynamic.
If MIRI or CFAR or EA’s extremophile ascetics were already successful at getting their best thinkers to consistently spend time thinking or pacing or writing on whiteboards/notes after work, instead of on the commercialized internet, that’s a strong update against my hypothesis.
I already expect feedbackloopfirst rationality to cause substantial cognitive enhancement on its own. This problem is a confounding variable; the goal of the practice club is to find ways to amplify intelligence, but the experiments will show high measured effectiveness from things like singlemindedly playing a specific indie game or driving or taking long showers, even though the causal mechanism actually comes those things increasing the proportion of time a rationalist spends thinking at all, not increasing intelligence or mitigating intelligence-reducing feedback loops.
People need to already be spending 2+ hours a day distraction-free, in order to see if the results are coming from cognitive enhancement, rather than from distraction-removal like long showers or driving.
Regarding ‘shower thoughts’ and ‘distraction-removal’ as far as its’ relation to cell phones and youtube videos and other ‘super fun’ activities as one might call them, I definitely think that there’s something there.
I’ve long had the thought that ‘shower thoughts’ are simply one of the rare times in a post-2015ish world that people actually have the opportunity to be bored. Being bored is important. It makes you pursue things other than endless youtube videos, video games, porn, etc. As well, showering and washing dishes and other ‘boring’ activities are meditative!
It’s a common meme these days that people need to always watch something while they eat. Some people listen to podcasts while they shower. Some people use their phone at stoplights. All of this points to a tendency for people to fill every single empty space of any kind with content of some sort, and it really doesn’t seem healthy for the human brain.
This is an interesting video I watched today while filling every single empty moment in my life with content like I’m being disparaging about, and it relates to the topic. The author describes a process by which you can actually do the sorts of things you want to do by making sure there isn’t anything else in that block of time that’s more fun / satisfying / engaging. If work is the most fun thing you’re allowing yourself to do, then you’re going to work. If you’re locked in a room with a book and a cell phone, you’re going to want to use the cell phone. If you just have a book, you’re going to read the book. You can apply this principle to your entire life.
Sorry if this post seems a little chaotic, lots of thoughts and I didn’t have the time or energy at the end of the day to link them together more coherently...
This comment is potentially vastly better worded/explained than my original comment. I will probably be quoting it when describing this problem, and will make serious efforts to write more like this in the future.
Thank you! That’s very kind of you to say. I haven’t spent a lot of time ‘assimilating into LessWrong’ so I sometimes worry that I come off as ignorant or uninformed when I post, it’s nice to hear that you think I made some sense.
I’m predicting that much of the stuff that causes measurable cognitive improvement will be by the mechanism of making people spend less time on social media or otherwise dithering about on the internet.
e.g. something like 20% of the measured benefit from things like reading the Sequences, the CFAR handbook, singlemindedly playing a specific indie game, are from being the rare thing sufficient to shake people out of habits formed around the addictive gravity-well of the commercialized internet’s click/scroll maximization.
People should not have “shower thoughts”; in the 90s and 2000s people would zone out and have “shower thoughts” while reading books, the extropy email list, and sometimes even watching TV.
Specifically, somewhere around a 20% chance that >30% of the benefit unexpectedly comes from this dynamic, and a 50% chance that 10-30% of the benefit unexpectedly comes from this dynamic.
If MIRI or CFAR or EA’s extremophile ascetics were already successful at getting their best thinkers to consistently spend time thinking or pacing or writing on whiteboards/notes after work, instead of on the commercialized internet, that’s a strong update against my hypothesis.
I already expect feedbackloopfirst rationality to cause substantial cognitive enhancement on its own. This problem is a confounding variable; the goal of the practice club is to find ways to amplify intelligence, but the experiments will show high measured effectiveness from things like singlemindedly playing a specific indie game or driving or taking long showers, even though the causal mechanism actually comes those things increasing the proportion of time a rationalist spends thinking at all, not increasing intelligence or mitigating intelligence-reducing feedback loops.
People need to already be spending 2+ hours a day distraction-free, in order to see if the results are coming from cognitive enhancement, rather than from distraction-removal like long showers or driving.
Regarding ‘shower thoughts’ and ‘distraction-removal’ as far as its’ relation to cell phones and youtube videos and other ‘super fun’ activities as one might call them, I definitely think that there’s something there.
I’ve long had the thought that ‘shower thoughts’ are simply one of the rare times in a post-2015ish world that people actually have the opportunity to be bored. Being bored is important. It makes you pursue things other than endless youtube videos, video games, porn, etc. As well, showering and washing dishes and other ‘boring’ activities are meditative!
It’s a common meme these days that people need to always watch something while they eat. Some people listen to podcasts while they shower. Some people use their phone at stoplights. All of this points to a tendency for people to fill every single empty space of any kind with content of some sort, and it really doesn’t seem healthy for the human brain.
This is an interesting video I watched today while filling every single empty moment in my life with content like I’m being disparaging about, and it relates to the topic. The author describes a process by which you can actually do the sorts of things you want to do by making sure there isn’t anything else in that block of time that’s more fun / satisfying / engaging. If work is the most fun thing you’re allowing yourself to do, then you’re going to work. If you’re locked in a room with a book and a cell phone, you’re going to want to use the cell phone. If you just have a book, you’re going to read the book. You can apply this principle to your entire life.
Sorry if this post seems a little chaotic, lots of thoughts and I didn’t have the time or energy at the end of the day to link them together more coherently...
This comment is potentially vastly better worded/explained than my original comment. I will probably be quoting it when describing this problem, and will make serious efforts to write more like this in the future.
Thank you! That’s very kind of you to say. I haven’t spent a lot of time ‘assimilating into LessWrong’ so I sometimes worry that I come off as ignorant or uninformed when I post, it’s nice to hear that you think I made some sense.