You seem to be asking how you can deliberately and effortfully practice your writing. Did Scott and Paul Graham get to where they are by deliberately and effortfully practicing their writing? Are there people like them who did? One thing that has stuck in my mind from an old Paul Graham essay:
One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it’s only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no self-discipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not even a cup of coffee.
This doesn’t really answer the core question about deliberate effort. University education is pretty hit and miss in terms of teaching you how to write well, most people who graduated with a philosophy bachelor’s probably can’t write like Paul Graham. Scott improving over time might also be just a matter of him liking to write and compulsively writing a lot and thinking about his writing, without ever really making a complex training for improving or putting particular effort into focusing on writing when he would rather be doing something else. Also, he already had his whole medical degree that was a thing you put actual effort into even if you don’t feel like it going on at the same time.
To spell it out in more detail, right now I don’t actually know if the “maybe I don’t really feel like doing this right now but if I make myself do deliberate practice on it every day I will eventually be great” default script works at all. The feeling I get from the Paul Graham essay and from Scott’s Lottery of fascinations is that in a power distribution environment on an open-ended task (science, business, essay-writing, yes, chess, tennis, violin-playing, no) the people who end up as the visible top talent have some significant degree of inherent effortlessness in how they practice the thing everyone’s trying to be good at.
If you’re looking at things from the viewpoint where you see the top of the power distribution, “I want to learn how to write essays like Paul Graham and Scott Alexander”, and you assume you can get there with deliberate effort when you don’t have the significant initial effortlessness, the first question to ask is if this is even possible, and the mainstream “just believe in yourself” middlebrow culture really doesn’t want this question to be asked.
More generally, I’m poking at a general pattern where the implicit idea of “you could do it if you just expended more effort” for any value of “it” is a broken mental pattern without the sort of nonobvious caveats I was just spelling out, and swallowing it as is can lead to lots of mental unwellness where it starts transforming into “you are feeling bad because you haven’t hurt yourself enough yet”.
I’ve thought more about this recently, and one problem I have with this is that the open-ended tasks make it also really hard to tell how many levels above you someone is. I can easily accept that I won’t ever be the best chess player, not only because it does not seem important, but also because it is pretty clear to tell that there is a long road between where I am now and where I would have to be. My mind has a harder time accepting that I won’t be Scott Alexander by tomorrow, not only because it is more useful to be good at writing, but also because I don’t know how long the road ahead is going to be.
Also a good point, though this is maybe a different thing from the deliberate effort thing again. The whole concept of “be equal to the [top visible person] in [field of practice]” sounds like a weak warning signal to me if it’s the main desire in your head. This sounds like a mimetic desire thing where [field of practice] might actually be irrelevant to whatever is ticking away in your head and the social ladder game is what’s actually going on.
A healthier mindset might be “I really want to make concepts that confuse me clearer”, “I have this really cool-seeming intuitive idea and I want to iron it out and see if it has legs” or just “I like putting words to paper”, if you’re looking at writing. Likewise for business, “I want to learn how to make things more efficient”, “I want to create services that make people’s lives better” or “I have this idea for a thing that I think would be awesome and nobody’s making” are probably better than “I want to be the next Jeff Bezos”.
If you have fun programming right now, how much do you care that John Carmack is better at it than you are?
This sounds like a mimetic desire thing where [field of practice] might actually be irrelevant to whatever is ticking away in your head and the social ladder game is what’s actually going on.
Yes, I didn’t want to deny that 😉. I just think being motivated by competition isn’t always a bad thing (Though there are definitely healthy and unhealthy versions). For some reason, I find trying to be the best in the world at doing X is actually pretty motivating, and how this is harder (and more prone to an unhealthy attitude perhaps) to do if you don’t have clear metrics. It is also not necessarily that unattainable.
If you have fun programming right now, how much do you care that John Carmack is better at it than you are?
You caught me right there! I don’t care in the slightest.
You seem to be asking how you can deliberately and effortfully practice your writing. Did Scott and Paul Graham get to where they are by deliberately and effortfully practicing their writing? Are there people like them who did? One thing that has stuck in my mind from an old Paul Graham essay:
Scott did a bachelors in philosophy where they taught him how to write philosophic essays.
If I look at an early article of Scott like https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cq45AuedYnzekp3LX/you-may-already-be-a-sinner I also believe that Scott’s writing quality improved by practice. His writing is now much clearer.
This doesn’t really answer the core question about deliberate effort. University education is pretty hit and miss in terms of teaching you how to write well, most people who graduated with a philosophy bachelor’s probably can’t write like Paul Graham. Scott improving over time might also be just a matter of him liking to write and compulsively writing a lot and thinking about his writing, without ever really making a complex training for improving or putting particular effort into focusing on writing when he would rather be doing something else. Also, he already had his whole medical degree that was a thing you put actual effort into even if you don’t feel like it going on at the same time.
To spell it out in more detail, right now I don’t actually know if the “maybe I don’t really feel like doing this right now but if I make myself do deliberate practice on it every day I will eventually be great” default script works at all. The feeling I get from the Paul Graham essay and from Scott’s Lottery of fascinations is that in a power distribution environment on an open-ended task (science, business, essay-writing, yes, chess, tennis, violin-playing, no) the people who end up as the visible top talent have some significant degree of inherent effortlessness in how they practice the thing everyone’s trying to be good at.
If you’re looking at things from the viewpoint where you see the top of the power distribution, “I want to learn how to write essays like Paul Graham and Scott Alexander”, and you assume you can get there with deliberate effort when you don’t have the significant initial effortlessness, the first question to ask is if this is even possible, and the mainstream “just believe in yourself” middlebrow culture really doesn’t want this question to be asked.
More generally, I’m poking at a general pattern where the implicit idea of “you could do it if you just expended more effort” for any value of “it” is a broken mental pattern without the sort of nonobvious caveats I was just spelling out, and swallowing it as is can lead to lots of mental unwellness where it starts transforming into “you are feeling bad because you haven’t hurt yourself enough yet”.
I’ve thought more about this recently, and one problem I have with this is that the open-ended tasks make it also really hard to tell how many levels above you someone is. I can easily accept that I won’t ever be the best chess player, not only because it does not seem important, but also because it is pretty clear to tell that there is a long road between where I am now and where I would have to be. My mind has a harder time accepting that I won’t be Scott Alexander by tomorrow, not only because it is more useful to be good at writing, but also because I don’t know how long the road ahead is going to be.
Also a good point, though this is maybe a different thing from the deliberate effort thing again. The whole concept of “be equal to the [top visible person] in [field of practice]” sounds like a weak warning signal to me if it’s the main desire in your head. This sounds like a mimetic desire thing where [field of practice] might actually be irrelevant to whatever is ticking away in your head and the social ladder game is what’s actually going on.
A healthier mindset might be “I really want to make concepts that confuse me clearer”, “I have this really cool-seeming intuitive idea and I want to iron it out and see if it has legs” or just “I like putting words to paper”, if you’re looking at writing. Likewise for business, “I want to learn how to make things more efficient”, “I want to create services that make people’s lives better” or “I have this idea for a thing that I think would be awesome and nobody’s making” are probably better than “I want to be the next Jeff Bezos”.
If you have fun programming right now, how much do you care that John Carmack is better at it than you are?
Yes, I didn’t want to deny that 😉. I just think being motivated by competition isn’t always a bad thing (Though there are definitely healthy and unhealthy versions). For some reason, I find trying to be the best in the world at doing X is actually pretty motivating, and how this is harder (and more prone to an unhealthy attitude perhaps) to do if you don’t have clear metrics. It is also not necessarily that unattainable.
You caught me right there! I don’t care in the slightest.