I’d love to hear a story (or maybe stories) of someone becoming an LW regular, improving their “rationality skills” and going on to “win” (define and achieve their personal goals), thanks to those skills.
Here I explicitly exclude LW-related goals, such as understanding the sequences, attending a CFAR workshop or being hired by CFAR, signing up for cryonics or figuring out how to donate more to GiveWell. Instead, I’d love to hear how people applied what they learned on this site to start a business, make money, improve their love life (hooking up with an LW poly does not count for this purpose), or maybe to take over the world.
Hopefully some of the stories have already been posted here, so links would be appreciated.
When I found LW, I was confused and nonambitious; my goal was to survive on as little money as possible (to ironically humiliate the people who say $17/hr is the minimum living wage), and maybe make a few video games or something, and I spent most of my free time on 4chan and arguing about radial politics on the internet.
Since coming to LW, I’ve used LW-far-epistemic rationality to figure out a great deal of philosophical confusions and understand a great deal more about those big questions. (this doesn’t count, but it should be mentioned)
More specifically and interestingly: it took explicit LW rationality for me to:
Think rationally about balancing my resources (time, money) and marginal utility, to great productivity benefit.
Step up to run the vancouver LW meetup.
Make and maintain a few really valuable friends (mostly through the meetup).
Respond positively to criticism at work, so that I’ve become much more valuable than I was 6 months ago, in a way that has been recognized and pointed out.
Achieve lightness and other rationality virtues in exploring design concepts at work, taking design criticism, not getting caught in dead ends. I explicitly apply much of what I’ve learned at LW to my work, though I’m unsure how much of that is just how I verally describe things I’d do anyways.
Become poly with my wife rationally and in a controlled manner.
Switch my goals from unambitious to working on the biggest problems I can find, like taking over the world. (this is actually hard).
start using beeminder, get a smartphone, use pomodoro, and use remember the milk, for large measurable (just look at my beeminder graphs) improvement in personal project productivity, sex life, excercise, etc.
Actually put in the hard work and strategic criticism-seeking that it took to actually get a really good job.
Take more rational risks and make better small decisions every day
Actually ask and get a cute girl’s number today (yay)
Of course, my ambition has scaled way faster than my achievement, so despite the semi-impressive list above, I feel like I’m way behind where I should be.
Then again, it may be a lucky draw that finding LW occurred almost exactly at the lowest point in my historical ambition; for 4 or 5 years before that, my goal was to take over the world and dismantle civilization for the good of mankind. It wasn’t just an idle “goal” either; I really worked at it. Still, I’d be much more effective at such post-LW than I was then.
Switch my goals from unambitious to working on the biggest problems I can find, like taking over the world. (this is actually hard).
Drat, is it?
Hmm, I’d be interested in your thoughts if this is a serious goal of yours, but OTOH broadcasting his sort of thing is pretty obviously a Bad Idea.
On the other hand, more people could sort of accelerate things. I mean, it would take [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] … EY could probably [REDACTED] [REDACTED] but he seems busy (with FAI; might be easier with a world, though) … I’d say LW would be an ideal recruiting ground for help creating a singleton.
OTOH broadcasting his sort of thing is pretty obviously a Bad Idea.
Is it? Did you take me seriously? It’s only a bad idea if you take me seriously enough to try to stop me. Especially considering the following sentences:
Also, I meant that the thing that is hard is to switch your goals to the highest value thing available.
I just used “taking over the world” as an ironic example. (also, causing FAI to happen is basically taking over the world, with “world” defined a little bit more broadly than “human society”).
The Motivation Hacker is one such story, though it focuses on the relevance of the stuff in my procrastination post rather than on the relevance of the rest of LW.
Is it possible to post anonymously but link it to my account? Some of the stuff I’d like to say aren’t things I want the general public to link directly to me, even though LessWrong played a possibly significant positive role.
Not sure what you are trying to achieve. And what you mean by link. You can certainly create another account and mention the original one in the profile.
I’d love to hear a story (or maybe stories) of someone becoming an LW regular, improving their “rationality skills” and going on to “win” (define and achieve their personal goals), thanks to those skills.
Here I explicitly exclude LW-related goals, such as understanding the sequences, attending a CFAR workshop or being hired by CFAR, signing up for cryonics or figuring out how to donate more to GiveWell. Instead, I’d love to hear how people applied what they learned on this site to start a business, make money, improve their love life (hooking up with an LW poly does not count for this purpose), or maybe to take over the world.
Hopefully some of the stories have already been posted here, so links would be appreciated.
When I found LW, I was confused and nonambitious; my goal was to survive on as little money as possible (to ironically humiliate the people who say $17/hr is the minimum living wage), and maybe make a few video games or something, and I spent most of my free time on 4chan and arguing about radial politics on the internet.
Since coming to LW, I’ve used LW-far-epistemic rationality to figure out a great deal of philosophical confusions and understand a great deal more about those big questions. (this doesn’t count, but it should be mentioned)
More specifically and interestingly: it took explicit LW rationality for me to:
Think rationally about balancing my resources (time, money) and marginal utility, to great productivity benefit.
Step up to run the vancouver LW meetup.
Make and maintain a few really valuable friends (mostly through the meetup).
Respond positively to criticism at work, so that I’ve become much more valuable than I was 6 months ago, in a way that has been recognized and pointed out.
Achieve lightness and other rationality virtues in exploring design concepts at work, taking design criticism, not getting caught in dead ends. I explicitly apply much of what I’ve learned at LW to my work, though I’m unsure how much of that is just how I verally describe things I’d do anyways.
Become poly with my wife rationally and in a controlled manner.
Switch my goals from unambitious to working on the biggest problems I can find, like taking over the world. (this is actually hard).
start using beeminder, get a smartphone, use pomodoro, and use remember the milk, for large measurable (just look at my beeminder graphs) improvement in personal project productivity, sex life, excercise, etc.
Actually put in the hard work and strategic criticism-seeking that it took to actually get a really good job.
Take more rational risks and make better small decisions every day
Actually ask and get a cute girl’s number today (yay)
Of course, my ambition has scaled way faster than my achievement, so despite the semi-impressive list above, I feel like I’m way behind where I should be.
Impressive! I think CFAR could use a testimony like this.
Then again, it may be a lucky draw that finding LW occurred almost exactly at the lowest point in my historical ambition; for 4 or 5 years before that, my goal was to take over the world and dismantle civilization for the good of mankind. It wasn’t just an idle “goal” either; I really worked at it. Still, I’d be much more effective at such post-LW than I was then.
Drat, is it?
Hmm, I’d be interested in your thoughts if this is a serious goal of yours, but OTOH broadcasting his sort of thing is pretty obviously a Bad Idea.
On the other hand, more people could sort of accelerate things. I mean, it would take [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] … EY could probably [REDACTED] [REDACTED] but he seems busy (with FAI; might be easier with a world, though) … I’d say LW would be an ideal recruiting ground for help creating a singleton.
ETA: edited for [REDACTED].
Is it? Did you take me seriously? It’s only a bad idea if you take me seriously enough to try to stop me. Especially considering the following sentences:
Also, I meant that the thing that is hard is to switch your goals to the highest value thing available.
I just used “taking over the world” as an ironic example. (also, causing FAI to happen is basically taking over the world, with “world” defined a little bit more broadly than “human society”).
Fair enough.
Incidentally, I meant broadcasting methods to take over the world, rather than the fact that it’s a good idea.
lincolnquirk, six months after Rationality Mega-Camp.
The Motivation Hacker is one such story, though it focuses on the relevance of the stuff in my procrastination post rather than on the relevance of the rest of LW.
Is it possible to post anonymously but link it to my account? Some of the stuff I’d like to say aren’t things I want the general public to link directly to me, even though LessWrong played a possibly significant positive role.
Not sure what you are trying to achieve. And what you mean by link. You can certainly create another account and mention the original one in the profile.