As far as floating where the river carries me, this is in fact my position and a metaphor I like, although what most people would mean by “path of least resistance” supposes a lack of complexity. I guess if you could only reason about one preference at a time you’d always do the one thing that was most preferred, but being able to balance multiple preferences, what is “easiest” is often not obvious before composing preferences. I am of course limited by how much deliberation and memory (time and space complexity) I can devote to a decision, so I can of course make no claim to global optimality.
I think this also addresses the black box concerns. There is a way in which you could take this position without awareness that you have competing preferences and some thought process by which you resolve them. This is similar to the popular notion of what Buddhist or Daoist practice looks like, and although I have no doubt some people actually do it this way because the traditions definitely have that interpretation and present similarly if you ignore mental phenomena, there’s a more nuanced position which sublimates unification and differentiation to each other to yield a complex, single “gray box” approach.
there’s a more nuanced position which sublimates unification and differentiation to each other to yield a complex, single “gray box” approach
And we’re off to Hegelian dialectics and the thesis—antithesis—synthesis triad :-)
But how is your position different from the trivial observation that everyone always does what he wants, even though he might be conflicted about it and experience regret afterwards?
Primarily perhaps it’s a difference in relationship to regret. Because we seem to live in a world where causality flows in one direction, there’s no way to go back and change the history of the world we find ourselves in. Literally every action, including “non” actions, results in find oneself in one world or another. Thus no matter what we do we can regret not finding ourselves in some other world. Regret is powered by a kind of evidence of counterfactuals that is perhaps worth considering for its own sake, but need not generate a feeling of regret at having found one self in one world rather than another. Regret is a kind of self imposed suffering, and one which evaporates by accepting all counterfactual worlds are a source of regret and so the feeling of regret itself provides no additional information to update on from the counterfactuals.
I’d perhaps describe regret as a kind of weighting function that causes you to more notice the evidence of some counterfactuals than others because they contain large losses to or from the world you find yourself in.
Primarily perhaps it’s a difference in relationship to regret.
Ah, I see.
and so the feeling of regret itself provides no additional information
I think it does: it provides information about yourself to you. You don’t necessarily know which actions and/or counterfactuals will lead to feelings of regret in the future and how intense will it be.
All in all, you seem to be operating in a somewhat different framework than the OP and so the question might need to be translated to something like “Do you deliberately manage the conflict between your different preferences, specifically short-term and long-term ones, and if you do, what kind of techniques do you use?”
Ah, then to that question I can give some more specific answers that will likely work even for people who don’t share my model.
Preference integration
Basically equivalent to what I think CFAR calls propagation, although with a lot of different “flavor” since there are no subagents.
+6. Generally works but can be time consuming and is often limited by availability of experiences to change relative preference weights on. Is a trainable skill though so you get better at it over time. I don’t think there’s any unwanted side effects with this one.
Write down future actions
Some version of GTD. I specifically write things down in email I send to myself that I then see later and act on. Since I also practice inbox zero my inbox is a list of things that need immediate action. If I’m not going to do something immediately then I use the email as a trigger to schedule to do it later.
+4. Again, generally works, but is limited to only those things you remember to write down. Also documenting everything can be annoying, so it’s only for stuff I think I’d likely otherwise forget. Also trainable and you get better at it over time (what to put in emails, when to send them, etc.). Maybe negative side effect is you get slightly less good at using your memory since you are now using a memory enhancer.
Get enough sleep
Best way to do this I know is set a fixed time for waking up, then go to bed when you are tired. Your body will automatically regulate unless you have a sleep disorder and make you tired at an appropriate time to wake up at your fixed time. Even if you do have a sleep disorder this can work: I have narcolepsy and it works for me.
+2. Sleep is great in general but won’t do that much about this specific issue other than give you more energy to deal with it. Unwanted side effect might be that you discover you need a lot more sleep than you would like to need, but then that was already the case before you were just tired all the time.
Eat enough food
Your body won’t work if you’re hungry. If you are hungry, eat. Get enough protein, carbs, and fats to make your body go. Also get enough micronutrients or else you’ll still have a hard time though you won’t die.
+2. Like sleep, just a general enhancer that makes everything better, so will naturally help with aligning your preferences to your long term and short term objectives. Downside is you might turn out to have an eating homeostasis issue and get fat.
Exercise
Bodies evolved to do work. If your body doesn’t do work it seems to languish in various ways that affect your mental health.
+2. General enhancer again. Downside is time investment and possibly suffering if you can’t find exercise you enjoy.
As far as floating where the river carries me, this is in fact my position and a metaphor I like, although what most people would mean by “path of least resistance” supposes a lack of complexity. I guess if you could only reason about one preference at a time you’d always do the one thing that was most preferred, but being able to balance multiple preferences, what is “easiest” is often not obvious before composing preferences. I am of course limited by how much deliberation and memory (time and space complexity) I can devote to a decision, so I can of course make no claim to global optimality.
I think this also addresses the black box concerns. There is a way in which you could take this position without awareness that you have competing preferences and some thought process by which you resolve them. This is similar to the popular notion of what Buddhist or Daoist practice looks like, and although I have no doubt some people actually do it this way because the traditions definitely have that interpretation and present similarly if you ignore mental phenomena, there’s a more nuanced position which sublimates unification and differentiation to each other to yield a complex, single “gray box” approach.
And we’re off to Hegelian dialectics and the thesis—antithesis—synthesis triad :-)
But how is your position different from the trivial observation that everyone always does what he wants, even though he might be conflicted about it and experience regret afterwards?
Primarily perhaps it’s a difference in relationship to regret. Because we seem to live in a world where causality flows in one direction, there’s no way to go back and change the history of the world we find ourselves in. Literally every action, including “non” actions, results in find oneself in one world or another. Thus no matter what we do we can regret not finding ourselves in some other world. Regret is powered by a kind of evidence of counterfactuals that is perhaps worth considering for its own sake, but need not generate a feeling of regret at having found one self in one world rather than another. Regret is a kind of self imposed suffering, and one which evaporates by accepting all counterfactual worlds are a source of regret and so the feeling of regret itself provides no additional information to update on from the counterfactuals.
I’d perhaps describe regret as a kind of weighting function that causes you to more notice the evidence of some counterfactuals than others because they contain large losses to or from the world you find yourself in.
Ah, I see.
I think it does: it provides information about yourself to you. You don’t necessarily know which actions and/or counterfactuals will lead to feelings of regret in the future and how intense will it be.
All in all, you seem to be operating in a somewhat different framework than the OP and so the question might need to be translated to something like “Do you deliberately manage the conflict between your different preferences, specifically short-term and long-term ones, and if you do, what kind of techniques do you use?”
Ah, then to that question I can give some more specific answers that will likely work even for people who don’t share my model.
Preference integration
Basically equivalent to what I think CFAR calls propagation, although with a lot of different “flavor” since there are no subagents.
+6. Generally works but can be time consuming and is often limited by availability of experiences to change relative preference weights on. Is a trainable skill though so you get better at it over time. I don’t think there’s any unwanted side effects with this one.
Write down future actions
Some version of GTD. I specifically write things down in email I send to myself that I then see later and act on. Since I also practice inbox zero my inbox is a list of things that need immediate action. If I’m not going to do something immediately then I use the email as a trigger to schedule to do it later.
+4. Again, generally works, but is limited to only those things you remember to write down. Also documenting everything can be annoying, so it’s only for stuff I think I’d likely otherwise forget. Also trainable and you get better at it over time (what to put in emails, when to send them, etc.). Maybe negative side effect is you get slightly less good at using your memory since you are now using a memory enhancer.
Get enough sleep
Best way to do this I know is set a fixed time for waking up, then go to bed when you are tired. Your body will automatically regulate unless you have a sleep disorder and make you tired at an appropriate time to wake up at your fixed time. Even if you do have a sleep disorder this can work: I have narcolepsy and it works for me.
+2. Sleep is great in general but won’t do that much about this specific issue other than give you more energy to deal with it. Unwanted side effect might be that you discover you need a lot more sleep than you would like to need, but then that was already the case before you were just tired all the time.
Eat enough food
Your body won’t work if you’re hungry. If you are hungry, eat. Get enough protein, carbs, and fats to make your body go. Also get enough micronutrients or else you’ll still have a hard time though you won’t die.
+2. Like sleep, just a general enhancer that makes everything better, so will naturally help with aligning your preferences to your long term and short term objectives. Downside is you might turn out to have an eating homeostasis issue and get fat.
Exercise
Bodies evolved to do work. If your body doesn’t do work it seems to languish in various ways that affect your mental health.
+2. General enhancer again. Downside is time investment and possibly suffering if you can’t find exercise you enjoy.