Looking for advice with something it seems LW can help with.
I’m currently part of a program the trains highly intelligent people to be more effective, particularly with regards to scientific research and effecting change within large systems of people. I’m sorry to be vague, but I can’t actually say more than that.
As part of our program, we organize seminars for ourselves on various interesting topics. The upcoming one is on self-improvement, and aims to explore the following questions: Who am I? What are my goals? How do I get there?
Naturally, I’m of the opinion that rationalist thought has a lot to offer on all of those questions. (I also have ulterior motives here, because I think it would be really cool to get some of these people on board with rationalism in general.) I’m having a hard time narrowing down this idea to a lesson plan I can submit to the organizers, so I thought I’d ask for suggestions.
The possible formats I have open for an activity are a lecture, a workshop/discussion in small groups, and some sort of guided introspection/reading activity (for example just giving people a sheet with questions to ponder on it, or a text to reflect on).
I’ve also come up with several possible topics: How to Actually Change Your Mind (ideas on how to go about condensing it are welcome), practical mind-hacking techniques and/or techniques for self-transparency, or just information on heuristics and biases because I think that’s useful in general.
You can also assume the intended audience already know each other pretty well, and are capable of rather more analysis and actual math than is average.
Ideas for topics or activities, particularly ones that include a strong affective experience because those are generally better at getting poeple to think about this sort of thing for the first time, are welcome.
Idea that might or might be relevant depending on how smart / advanced your group is.
You could introduce some advanced statistical methods and use it to derive results from everyday life, a la Bayes and mammography.
If you can show some interesting or counter intuitive results (that you can’t obtain with intuition) it would give the affective experience you want, and if they want to do scientific research, the more they know about statistics the better.
Statistics are also a good entry door for rationalist thinking.
A system composed of atoms. (As opposed to a magical immaterial being who merely happens to be trapped in a material body, but can easily overcome all its limitations by sufficient belief / mysterious willpower / positive thinking.)
That means I should pay some attention to me as a causal system; to try seeing myself as an outside observer would. For example, instead of telling myself that I should be e.g. “productive”, I should rather look into my past and see what kinds of circumstances have historically made me more “productive”; and then try to replicate those more reliably. To pay attention to the trivial inconveniences, superstimuli, peer pressure—simply to be humble enough to admit that in short term I may be less of the source of my actions than I would like to believe, and that the proper way to fix it is to be strategic in long term, which is not going to happen automatically.
What are my goals?
Most people value happiness. But the human value is complex; we also want our beliefs to correspond to reality instead of merely believing pretty lies or getting good feelings from drugs.
Often people are bad at predicting what would make them happy. There is often a difference between how something feels when we plan it, when we are living it, and when we remember the thing afterwards. For example, people planning vacation can overestimate how good the vacation will be, and they may underestimate the little joys of everyday life. Or a difficult experience may improve relationships between people who suffered together, and make a good story afterwards, thus creating a lot of value in long term despite being shitty at the moment.
Sometimes we have goals, or we tell ourselves that something will be awesome, under influence of other people. We should make sure those people are in our “reference group”, and that they are speaking from their experience instead of merely repeating popular beliefs (in best case, those people should be older versions of our better selves).
Success often does not feel magical at the moment it happens; and it never makes you “happy ever after”. For example, you may believe that if you achieve X, you will be super happy, but actually when the day comes, you will probably feel tired, or maybe even a bit disappointed. You may have already raised your expectations, so at the day you are reaching X you already believe that only 2X can make you truly happy. Or maybe X comes so gradually that you never actually notice it when it comes, because that day doesn’t feel much different from the previous one. -- This can be solved by reviewing the past and finding the values of X that you have already achieved, and that you remember having wanted once.
If your strategy is “to do X because you want to achieve Y”, you should look for evidence whether X actually brings Y, and whether there are alternative ways to achieve Y. Otherwise you risk spending a lot of time and energy to achieve X without actually achieving Y.
How do I get there?
Specific goals need specific answers. But in general, you probably need to have a good model of how other people achieve similar goals (the problem is, many people will lie to you for various reasons). Then you need vision and habits. And some system of feedback, to measure whether you really progress in long term.
For example, if your goal is to write a novel, you should look for advice from your favorite authors, you should imagine what kind of novel you want to write for which audience, and they you need to spend some time every week actually writing. You could measure your long-term progress e.g. by publishing your writing on web, and measuring how many people read it.
“How to Actually Change Your Mind” is a great topic. I good way to start such a workshop is by having everybody write down instances where they changed their mind in the last year and then discuss those examples.
Looking for advice with something it seems LW can help with.
I’m currently part of a program the trains highly intelligent people to be more effective, particularly with regards to scientific research and effecting change within large systems of people. I’m sorry to be vague, but I can’t actually say more than that.
As part of our program, we organize seminars for ourselves on various interesting topics. The upcoming one is on self-improvement, and aims to explore the following questions: Who am I? What are my goals? How do I get there?
Naturally, I’m of the opinion that rationalist thought has a lot to offer on all of those questions. (I also have ulterior motives here, because I think it would be really cool to get some of these people on board with rationalism in general.) I’m having a hard time narrowing down this idea to a lesson plan I can submit to the organizers, so I thought I’d ask for suggestions.
The possible formats I have open for an activity are a lecture, a workshop/discussion in small groups, and some sort of guided introspection/reading activity (for example just giving people a sheet with questions to ponder on it, or a text to reflect on).
I’ve also come up with several possible topics: How to Actually Change Your Mind (ideas on how to go about condensing it are welcome), practical mind-hacking techniques and/or techniques for self-transparency, or just information on heuristics and biases because I think that’s useful in general.
You can also assume the intended audience already know each other pretty well, and are capable of rather more analysis and actual math than is average.
Ideas for topics or activities, particularly ones that include a strong affective experience because those are generally better at getting poeple to think about this sort of thing for the first time, are welcome.
Idea that might or might be relevant depending on how smart / advanced your group is.
You could introduce some advanced statistical methods and use it to derive results from everyday life, a la Bayes and mammography.
If you can show some interesting or counter intuitive results (that you can’t obtain with intuition) it would give the affective experience you want, and if they want to do scientific research, the more they know about statistics the better.
Statistics are also a good entry door for rationalist thinking.
A few random thoughts:
A system composed of atoms. (As opposed to a magical immaterial being who merely happens to be trapped in a material body, but can easily overcome all its limitations by sufficient belief / mysterious willpower / positive thinking.)
That means I should pay some attention to me as a causal system; to try seeing myself as an outside observer would. For example, instead of telling myself that I should be e.g. “productive”, I should rather look into my past and see what kinds of circumstances have historically made me more “productive”; and then try to replicate those more reliably. To pay attention to the trivial inconveniences, superstimuli, peer pressure—simply to be humble enough to admit that in short term I may be less of the source of my actions than I would like to believe, and that the proper way to fix it is to be strategic in long term, which is not going to happen automatically.
Most people value happiness. But the human value is complex; we also want our beliefs to correspond to reality instead of merely believing pretty lies or getting good feelings from drugs.
Often people are bad at predicting what would make them happy. There is often a difference between how something feels when we plan it, when we are living it, and when we remember the thing afterwards. For example, people planning vacation can overestimate how good the vacation will be, and they may underestimate the little joys of everyday life. Or a difficult experience may improve relationships between people who suffered together, and make a good story afterwards, thus creating a lot of value in long term despite being shitty at the moment.
Sometimes we have goals, or we tell ourselves that something will be awesome, under influence of other people. We should make sure those people are in our “reference group”, and that they are speaking from their experience instead of merely repeating popular beliefs (in best case, those people should be older versions of our better selves).
Success often does not feel magical at the moment it happens; and it never makes you “happy ever after”. For example, you may believe that if you achieve X, you will be super happy, but actually when the day comes, you will probably feel tired, or maybe even a bit disappointed. You may have already raised your expectations, so at the day you are reaching X you already believe that only 2X can make you truly happy. Or maybe X comes so gradually that you never actually notice it when it comes, because that day doesn’t feel much different from the previous one. -- This can be solved by reviewing the past and finding the values of X that you have already achieved, and that you remember having wanted once.
If your strategy is “to do X because you want to achieve Y”, you should look for evidence whether X actually brings Y, and whether there are alternative ways to achieve Y. Otherwise you risk spending a lot of time and energy to achieve X without actually achieving Y.
Specific goals need specific answers. But in general, you probably need to have a good model of how other people achieve similar goals (the problem is, many people will lie to you for various reasons). Then you need vision and habits. And some system of feedback, to measure whether you really progress in long term.
For example, if your goal is to write a novel, you should look for advice from your favorite authors, you should imagine what kind of novel you want to write for which audience, and they you need to spend some time every week actually writing. You could measure your long-term progress e.g. by publishing your writing on web, and measuring how many people read it.
“How to Actually Change Your Mind” is a great topic. I good way to start such a workshop is by having everybody write down instances where they changed their mind in the last year and then discuss those examples.