But is there a way to waste time that is 300X more effective? Perhaps you’re playing the wrong video games, surfing the wrong parts of the web, or doing the wrong drugs, and you never took the time to meta-optimize!
What I don’t even—what would it look like if there were more and less efficient ways to waste time?
I am reminded of this Anscombe quote:
“The general method that Wittgenstein does suggest is that of ‘shewing that a man has supplied no meaning [“no reference”?] for certain signs in his sentences’. I can illustrate the method from Wittgenstein’s later way of discussing problems. He once greeted me with the question: ’Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis? I replied: ‘I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.’ ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?‘ This question brought it out that I had hitherto given no relevant meaning to ‘it looks as if’ in ‘it looks as if the sun goes round the earth’.
My reply was to hold out my hands with the palms upward, and raise them from my knees in a circular sweep, at the same time leaning backwards and assuming a dizzy expression. ‘Exactly!’ he said.”
Haha, good quotation. I take ‘efficiently wasting time’ to mean ‘decreasing the ratio of perceived time to actual time’. Cryopreserving oneself is probably the best method. Doing some drug that messed with your perspective of time in the right way would be an efficient waste of time, but far less so than just entering a coma. If one does not have the necessary drugs or willpower to attain them then I would suggest doing fun things that require little sustained effort like an endless string of pirated computer role playing games punctuated by sleep, hot pockets, a multivitamin, and water. Actually I wouldn’t recommend any of those, but for the sake of this thought experiment they seem to be decent suggestions.
I have an exam I’m supposed to be revising for, but unless it contains a lot of questions on Starcraft 2, naked ladies and sandwiches, my study priorities are seriously off-kilter.
Reading this, however, has made me realise that I can become vastly more productive by studying courses with a high Starcraft 2, naked lady and sandwich syllabyus content, and I won’t even have to change my behaviour.
But is there a way to waste time that is 300X more effective? Perhaps you’re playing the wrong video games, surfing the wrong parts of the web, or doing the wrong drugs, and you never took the time to meta-optimize!
What I don’t even—what would it look like if there were more and less efficient ways to waste time?
I am reminded of this Anscombe quote:
Haha, good quotation. I take ‘efficiently wasting time’ to mean ‘decreasing the ratio of perceived time to actual time’. Cryopreserving oneself is probably the best method. Doing some drug that messed with your perspective of time in the right way would be an efficient waste of time, but far less so than just entering a coma. If one does not have the necessary drugs or willpower to attain them then I would suggest doing fun things that require little sustained effort like an endless string of pirated computer role playing games punctuated by sleep, hot pockets, a multivitamin, and water. Actually I wouldn’t recommend any of those, but for the sake of this thought experiment they seem to be decent suggestions.
I have an exam I’m supposed to be revising for, but unless it contains a lot of questions on Starcraft 2, naked ladies and sandwiches, my study priorities are seriously off-kilter.
Reading this, however, has made me realise that I can become vastly more productive by studying courses with a high Starcraft 2, naked lady and sandwich syllabyus content, and I won’t even have to change my behaviour.