Are there solid examples of people getting utility from Lesswrong?
The Less Wrong community is responsible for me learning how to relate openly to my own emotions, meeting dozens of amazing friends, building a career that’s more fun and fulfilling than I had ever imagined, and learning how to overcome my chronic bouts of depression in a matter of days instead of years.
As opposed to utility they could get from other self-help resources?
Who knows? I’m an experiment with a sample size of one, and there’s no control group. In the actual world, other things didn’t actually work for me, and this did. But people who aren’t me sometimes get similar things from other sources. It’s possible that without Less Wrong, I might still have run across the right resources and the right community at the right moment, and something else could have been equally good. Or maybe not, and I’d still be purposeless and alone, not noticing my ennui and confusion because I’d forgotten what it was like to feel anything else.
I did self help before I joined lesswrong, and had almost no results. I’d partially attribute Lesswrong to changing me in ways such that I switched my major from graphic design to biology, in an effort to help people through research. I’ve also gotten involved in effective altruism in my community, starting the local THINK club for my college, which is donating money to various (effective) charities. I have a lovely group of friends from the Lesswrong study hall who have been tremendously supportive and fun to be around. There are a number of other small things, like learning about melatonin, which fixed my insomnia...etc. but those are more of a result of being around people who are knowledgeable of such things, not necessarily lesswrong-people.
True. It’s surprisingly difficult to think about the hypothetical figures since I’m not short on cash, can’t seem to make myself much happier spending more money, and still don’t know any viable alternative to LW. It also seems thinking about this in terms of a subscription fee instead of getting a cash offer changes the figures significantly, which I guess tells us something about the diminishing marginal utility of money.
This makes me wonder if there are any threads here discussing how to convert money into experiential happiness. ETA: yes there are.
how to convert money into experiential happiness. ETA: yes there are.
I am wary of such type of advice because it almost always aims itself at an average person. Someone who is not average might not find such advice useful and it could turn out the be misleading and harmful.
Also a large part of it comes from psychology papers which are, um, not an unalloyed source of truth.
Well, that depends on the person, doesn’t it? Some are sufficiently different and some are not.
Generic advice is generic. Only you can prevent wildfires.. err.. decide whether it is appropriate specifically for you or not. My point is really that you shouldn’t treat it as “scientifically established” gospel and get unhappy if you are weird enough for it not to apply.
Guessing here is a bad idea though, because it is specifically in relation to an area where people are known to be bad at predicting their own responses.
decide whether it is appropriate specifically for you or not.
Understanding if reading lesswrong is more or less a waste of time than other internet stuff I read.
I think that depends a lot on how you interact with it. You can read a post on commitment contracts and adopt the technique or you can read the post and just accept the new information. The impact on your life will the very different.
I’m not sure if TDT is available elsewhere as I gave up on self-help books many years ago.
I don’t know about self-help books, but the moral advice to choose as if you are choosing more than the immediate consequences is found in moral philosophy.
“I want to be the kind of agent that chooses X (habitually), therefore I will choose X (now)” reasoning can be found in virtue ethics, although the argument there is based on habit and character development rather than being an algorithm. Aristotle discusses the importance of practicing good decisions in the Nichomachean Ethics: “Similarly we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”(source)
“I want to live in a world where people choose X, therefore I will choose X” is a line of reasoning I’ve heard connected to the Jewish moral idea of tikkun olam, though I don’t have a source on that.
I agree that is similar to TDT but I would say it is too vague and general for it to have been much use to me. Part of the advantage of Lesswrong—or any intermet based medium—is that people can comment and sharpen ideas.
Are there solid examples of people getting utility from Lesswrong? As opposed to utility they could get from other self-help resources?
The Less Wrong community is responsible for me learning how to relate openly to my own emotions, meeting dozens of amazing friends, building a career that’s more fun and fulfilling than I had ever imagined, and learning how to overcome my chronic bouts of depression in a matter of days instead of years.
Who knows? I’m an experiment with a sample size of one, and there’s no control group. In the actual world, other things didn’t actually work for me, and this did. But people who aren’t me sometimes get similar things from other sources. It’s possible that without Less Wrong, I might still have run across the right resources and the right community at the right moment, and something else could have been equally good. Or maybe not, and I’d still be purposeless and alone, not noticing my ennui and confusion because I’d forgotten what it was like to feel anything else.
I did self help before I joined lesswrong, and had almost no results. I’d partially attribute Lesswrong to changing me in ways such that I switched my major from graphic design to biology, in an effort to help people through research. I’ve also gotten involved in effective altruism in my community, starting the local THINK club for my college, which is donating money to various (effective) charities. I have a lovely group of friends from the Lesswrong study hall who have been tremendously supportive and fun to be around. There are a number of other small things, like learning about melatonin, which fixed my insomnia...etc. but those are more of a result of being around people who are knowledgeable of such things, not necessarily lesswrong-people.
In short, yes, it is helpful.
What would solid examples look like? Are there solid examples of people getting utility from other self-help sources? Can you think of any?
Less Wrong isn’t just a self-help resource. I enjoy the conversational norms and topics here, and that’s utility for me, but can you measure it?
I can make you cash offers to abandon it until you take one. This is leaky but workable.
True. It’s surprisingly difficult to think about the hypothetical figures since I’m not short on cash, can’t seem to make myself much happier spending more money, and still don’t know any viable alternative to LW. It also seems thinking about this in terms of a subscription fee instead of getting a cash offer changes the figures significantly, which I guess tells us something about the diminishing marginal utility of money.
This makes me wonder if there are any threads here discussing how to convert money into experiential happiness. ETA: yes there are.
I am wary of such type of advice because it almost always aims itself at an average person. Someone who is not average might not find such advice useful and it could turn out the be misleading and harmful.
Also a large part of it comes from psychology papers which are, um, not an unalloyed source of truth.
yes, but in the absence of significant countervailing evidence one should not assume that they are so different as to render the advice useless.
Well, that depends on the person, doesn’t it? Some are sufficiently different and some are not.
Generic advice is generic. Only you can prevent wildfires.. err.. decide whether it is appropriate specifically for you or not. My point is really that you shouldn’t treat it as “scientifically established” gospel and get unhappy if you are weird enough for it not to apply.
Guessing here is a bad idea though, because it is specifically in relation to an area where people are known to be bad at predicting their own responses.
with a big dose of empiricism.
Solid as in empirical, no. But I fee like I get a lot out of LW. It’s a good source for finding other resources. What do you want help in, if any?
Understanding if reading lesswrong is more or less a waste of time than other internet stuff I read.
I think that depends a lot on how you interact with it. You can read a post on commitment contracts and adopt the technique or you can read the post and just accept the new information. The impact on your life will the very different.
It prob’ly depends on what the other Internet stuff you read is.
That’s a pretty broad counterfactual.
I used TDT to get in the habit of flossing my teeth every night—it worked beautifully.
I’m not sure if TDT is available elsewhere as I gave up on self-help books many years ago.
Also I’m not sure of the health benefits of flossing, but still.
I don’t know about self-help books, but the moral advice to choose as if you are choosing more than the immediate consequences is found in moral philosophy.
“I want to be the kind of agent that chooses X (habitually), therefore I will choose X (now)” reasoning can be found in virtue ethics, although the argument there is based on habit and character development rather than being an algorithm. Aristotle discusses the importance of practicing good decisions in the Nichomachean Ethics: “Similarly we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” (source)
“I want to live in a world where people choose X, therefore I will choose X” is a line of reasoning I’ve heard connected to the Jewish moral idea of tikkun olam, though I don’t have a source on that.
I agree that is similar to TDT but I would say it is too vague and general for it to have been much use to me. Part of the advantage of Lesswrong—or any intermet based medium—is that people can comment and sharpen ideas.