I noticed that all of my 5-second skills (and Eliezer’s also) involve doing more mental work than you’re instinctively inclined to do at a key point. This makes sense if the main reason people are irrational is due to taking cognitive shortcuts (see this great article; feel free to skip down to “Time for a pop quiz”). So maybe we could save some labor identifying or at least acquiring 5-second skills if we learn to be comfortable with constant reflectivity and hard mental work.
I thought of a few five-second skills like this:
remembering that a purpose of engaging in argument is to update your map
realizing you should actually spend time on activities that have proven to be helpful in the past (related to this)
noticing when you have a problem and actually applying your creativity to solve it (similar to this)
recognizing a trivial inconvenience for what it is
I noticed that all of my 5-second skills (and Eliezer’s also) involve doing more mental work than you’re instinctively inclined to do at a key point. This makes sense if the main reason people are irrational is due to taking cognitive shortcuts (see this great article; feel free to skip down to “Time for a pop quiz”). So maybe we could save some labor identifying or at least acquiring 5-second skills if we learn to be comfortable with constant reflectivity and hard mental work.