Thank you! This is almost exactly my own list, but for some weird reason I had huge difficulty articulating.
I’m not sure why that was so tricky. I thought about it a lot, because despite the improvements in my thinking and decision-making, my effectiveness at actually doing stuff hasn’t changed greatly. I’m steering better, but I’m not peddling faster.
Can you explain more what you mean by steering vs. pedaling?
What you say about steering vs. pedaling, or about improvements in “thinking and decision-making”, and not so much improvement in “doing stuff”, sounds like it might fit for me and in general. But… really? If so, by what mechanisms?
If we’re better choosing e.g. what path to take toward useful scientific research, or positive relationships, or income, this should increase the amount of useful research, goodness in relationships, or income we gain.
As to myself: my ability to make money as a tutor did increase, once I started actually trying to make money as a tutor (vs. just doing tutoring- and marketing- activities, without tracking what helped students and what made money). I think my visible social skills improved somewhat, but I’m not confident, and I should check with others. My effectiveness at improving the outside state of the world has improved to a ridiculous extent, because I’m working on existential risks now, and my picture of how to make the world a better place used to involve activity that was ridiculously less efficient. My effectiveness at writing decent prose, keeping healthy, etc., has improved… slightly… in the manner that I might’ve expected from just experimenting a bit and reading some non-rationalist self-help literature.
If “good decision making” doesn’t improve one’s actual goal-achievement, why not? Is it just a “feeling” of good decision-making, rather than actual good decision making? Does rationality only work where it isn’t measurable? Does rationality only help much for “really tricky issues” like global philanthropy, and not for questions like how to make money or build positive relationships? Do we just need to actually discuss and practice the “actually apply this rationality to your day-to-day decisions” step?
(Re: this last possibility: I was talking the other day to a good rationalist by OB/LW standards, who comments here fairly often. He was talking about his plans to get a higher-paying job, and how he was undergoing a particular certification process for the purpose. He’d gotten some distance into studying for the certification, but it hadn’t occurred to him to, like, actually look up the wages and employment rates of people who got the certification and to compare to alternatives. “Look into wages before you go through a degree/certification program, if your goal in the job is to make money” should be a cached heuristic for rationalists, and might improve the mundane usefulness of rationality. I don’t know how many other such cached heuristics we should have.)
Can you explain more what you mean by steering vs. pedaling?
To be honest I had the analogy cached from here and it seemed appropriate, but I’ll try to clarify. I’m making better decisions on what I do or don’t do, at what I keep doing or stop doing, at what I pay attention to or ignore, but I’m not significantly better or faster at the actual doing itself.
I think rationality will help me with that bit, indirectly, by helping me understand what the best skills are to learn for he things I want to do, and which methods work best for learning it and which are snake-oil. But at the moment, most of my learning time is going into rationality related topics because I think it’s important to get those foundations first. I still have a huge amount of that to learn.
Thank you! This is almost exactly my own list, but for some weird reason I had huge difficulty articulating.
I’m not sure why that was so tricky. I thought about it a lot, because despite the improvements in my thinking and decision-making, my effectiveness at actually doing stuff hasn’t changed greatly. I’m steering better, but I’m not peddling faster.
Can you explain more what you mean by steering vs. pedaling?
What you say about steering vs. pedaling, or about improvements in “thinking and decision-making”, and not so much improvement in “doing stuff”, sounds like it might fit for me and in general. But… really? If so, by what mechanisms?
If we’re better choosing e.g. what path to take toward useful scientific research, or positive relationships, or income, this should increase the amount of useful research, goodness in relationships, or income we gain.
As to myself: my ability to make money as a tutor did increase, once I started actually trying to make money as a tutor (vs. just doing tutoring- and marketing- activities, without tracking what helped students and what made money). I think my visible social skills improved somewhat, but I’m not confident, and I should check with others. My effectiveness at improving the outside state of the world has improved to a ridiculous extent, because I’m working on existential risks now, and my picture of how to make the world a better place used to involve activity that was ridiculously less efficient. My effectiveness at writing decent prose, keeping healthy, etc., has improved… slightly… in the manner that I might’ve expected from just experimenting a bit and reading some non-rationalist self-help literature.
If “good decision making” doesn’t improve one’s actual goal-achievement, why not? Is it just a “feeling” of good decision-making, rather than actual good decision making? Does rationality only work where it isn’t measurable? Does rationality only help much for “really tricky issues” like global philanthropy, and not for questions like how to make money or build positive relationships? Do we just need to actually discuss and practice the “actually apply this rationality to your day-to-day decisions” step?
(Re: this last possibility: I was talking the other day to a good rationalist by OB/LW standards, who comments here fairly often. He was talking about his plans to get a higher-paying job, and how he was undergoing a particular certification process for the purpose. He’d gotten some distance into studying for the certification, but it hadn’t occurred to him to, like, actually look up the wages and employment rates of people who got the certification and to compare to alternatives. “Look into wages before you go through a degree/certification program, if your goal in the job is to make money” should be a cached heuristic for rationalists, and might improve the mundane usefulness of rationality. I don’t know how many other such cached heuristics we should have.)
To be honest I had the analogy cached from here and it seemed appropriate, but I’ll try to clarify. I’m making better decisions on what I do or don’t do, at what I keep doing or stop doing, at what I pay attention to or ignore, but I’m not significantly better or faster at the actual doing itself.
I think rationality will help me with that bit, indirectly, by helping me understand what the best skills are to learn for he things I want to do, and which methods work best for learning it and which are snake-oil. But at the moment, most of my learning time is going into rationality related topics because I think it’s important to get those foundations first. I still have a huge amount of that to learn.