The following comment isn’t exactly a criticism. It’s more just exploring the idea.
I still struggle to really get on board with the advice you offer here while at the same time thinking that the general idea has a lot of merit. I think that both making yourself broadly better and focusing on narrow areas is maybe the best approach.
Take your illustrative story. I’d say the problem here is not that the person is trying to focus on the narrow area of increasing productivity. It’s that they picked a bad metric and a bad way of continual measuring themselves against the metric. The story just kind of glosses over what I would say is the most important part!
I’d say that 65%-75% of the problem this person has is that they apparently didn’t seriously think about this stuff before hand and pre-commit to a good strategy for measurement.
The person who looks and says “I only wrote 100 words last hour?!??!” kind of reminds me of the investor checking their stock prices every day.
For this person three months or six months or a year might be a better time frame for checking how they’re doing. Regardless, the main point I want to make is that how well this person would be able to improve themselves in this area while maintaining their well being is largely dependent upon making good decisions on this very important question.
On the other hand, making good decisions about this is also part of your advice...aka, keeping broad self-improvement in mind.
FWIW, I’ve lived most of my adult life (I’m in my mid 40s) basically with this sort of mindset...focusing on specific areas of self-improvement but also being well aware of how it might affect my broad well-being and taking that into account. I think everyone who knows me would tell you I’m a well-adjusted, friendly, and happy person.
That being said, I feel like that a lot of that is inherent in my personality so I’m not sure how much weight to give my personal experience.
Also, I wanted to say that I know many people who really came into their own in their mid-to-late thirties. I think a lot of people just start getting their life into order by that time, so I’m also not sure how much weight to give your personal experiences in this area.
The person who looks and says “I only wrote 100 words last hour?!??!” kind of reminds me of the investor checking their stock prices every day.
For this person three months or six months or a year might be a better time frame for checking how they’re doing.
If this is like, established fact or something...I did not know this, and I understand why the hypothetical person was also unaware of this.
Also, I wanted to say that I know many people who really came into their own in their mid-to-late thirties. I think a lot of people just start getting their life into order by that time, so I’m also not sure how much weight to give your personal experiences in this area.
Yes. But since I don’t expect to see an RCT anytime soon*, if anyone—you (Dustin) or the OP (Gordon)** -wrote posts about ‘things that improved my life’, I’d be interested to see those posts, and read them while keeping in mind that they’re not (necessarily) literal laws of physics, and different things might work for different people—especially when things are as vague as ‘keep your identity small’ and ‘don’t force that’. (How small is small? I don’t think I’ve seen ‘Make your identity big’ (and I won’t write it because I don’t know how to make it bigger.))
If this is like, established fact or something...I did not know this, and I understand why the hypothetical person was also unaware of this.
I have heard this advice repeatedly, but I guess it is quite easy to miss it. People probably either don’t know it, or consider it too obvious to mention. (And a few people benefit from you not knowing the advice, so they can profit from your fear, advising you to sell what you have and buy something else, charging you a commission, and you are so thankful that someone observes these changes 24⁄7 for you.)
On the other hand, many people seem unable to follow this advice even if they hear it. Like, a few of my colleagues who bought Bitcoins. Every day there were like “look, it’s $10 higher, we made a profit!” or “oh, it’s $10 lower, this sucks!”, and I was like “guys, calm down, it’s not important what happens in a day, the only thing that matters is what happens over years” and tried to explain that the $10 is not even worth the amount of stress they feel… and that the only thing they need to do is to simply stop watching the news, return a year later, with certain probability they will lose everything (if this is not acceptable for you, do not invest), and with certain probability they will make a nontrivial profit.
I guess following this advice is emotionally difficult. About a month later, some colleagues said they sold the Bitcoins, because it was “too stressful” for them to think about it. Seems like “simply do not think about it” is a difficult skill, almost like meditation. On the positive side, if you succeed to do it for a few weeks, it becomes much easier, because now you are used to the situation and it is no longer exciting. (I have a similar experience with Facebook and other websites: the longer you are without them, the less you miss them.)
If this is like, established fact or something...I did not know this, and I understand why the hypothetical person was also unaware of this.
As Viliam says, it’s something I’ve heard constantly throughout my life. However, the hypothetical person not having heard of it relates to the points I’m trying to make. I’m saying that rather than telling them to focus on something other than performance, telling them how to better measure themselves might be the better course.
But since I don’t expect to see an RCT anytime soon
To be clear, this is exactly why I tried to couch all my language in this thread in “might”, “I think”, and other terms to indicate that not only am I not sure, but I’m not sure how anyone can be sure about this subject.
When I say to the OP, “I’m also not sure how much weight to give your personal experiences in this area.”, I think I’m saying the same thing you’re saying. I’m not trying to say in a roundabout way that I don’t believe the experiences of the OP. I’m saying my literal state of mind. I also want the OP to post posts like this one for the same reasons you describe.
Take your illustrative story. I’d say the problem here is not that the person is trying to focus on the narrow area of increasing productivity. It’s that they picked a bad metric and a bad way of continual measuring themselves against the metric. The story just kind of glosses over what I would say is the most important part!
I’d say that 65%-75% of the problem this person has is that they apparently didn’t seriously think about this stuff before hand and pre-commit to a good strategy for measurement.
The person who looks and says “I only wrote 100 words last hour?!??!” kind of reminds me of the investor checking their stock prices every day.
For this person three months or six months or a year might be a better time frame for checking how they’re doing. Regardless, the main point I want to make is that how well this person would be able to improve themselves in this area while maintaining their well being is largely dependent upon making good decisions on this very important question.
This is one of the weird issues with what I see as the problem I’m trying to illustrate with the story and the limitations of telling a single story about it.
What you say is true, but it’s a reduction of the problem to be less bad by applying weaker optimization pressure rather than an actual elimination of the problem. Weak Goodharting is still Goodharting and it will still, eventually, subtly screw you up.
This post is also advice, and so aimed mostly at folks less like you and more like the kind of person who doesn’t realize they’re actively making their life worse rather than better by trying too hard.
What you say is true, but it’s a reduction of the problem to be less bad by applying weaker optimization pressure rather than an actual elimination of the problem. Weak Goodharting is still Goodharting and it will still, eventually, subtly screw you up.
I think all self improvement is subject to Goodharting, even the type you recommend.
The best things available to us to do about that:
Be nimble and self-aware. Adjust your processes to notice when you’re harming yourself.
Be thoughtful in how you measure success.
I do not think this is actually a contradiction to your post, but, at least for me, it seems like a more actionable framing of the issue.
I think all self improvement is subject to Goodharting, even the type you recommend.
In particular, I’d worry that “not Goodharting yourself” is Goodharting yourself. Dunno that I have this very coherently, but things that feel like hooks:
Selling nonapples.
Don’t try to “get better at rationality”; rationality needs to have a goal outside itself.
“How are you doing at your goals?” “Well, I stopped measuring things that weren’t perfect metrics for them.”
The following comment isn’t exactly a criticism. It’s more just exploring the idea.
I still struggle to really get on board with the advice you offer here while at the same time thinking that the general idea has a lot of merit. I think that both making yourself broadly better and focusing on narrow areas is maybe the best approach.
Take your illustrative story. I’d say the problem here is not that the person is trying to focus on the narrow area of increasing productivity. It’s that they picked a bad metric and a bad way of continual measuring themselves against the metric. The story just kind of glosses over what I would say is the most important part!
I’d say that 65%-75% of the problem this person has is that they apparently didn’t seriously think about this stuff before hand and pre-commit to a good strategy for measurement.
The person who looks and says “I only wrote 100 words last hour?!??!” kind of reminds me of the investor checking their stock prices every day.
For this person three months or six months or a year might be a better time frame for checking how they’re doing. Regardless, the main point I want to make is that how well this person would be able to improve themselves in this area while maintaining their well being is largely dependent upon making good decisions on this very important question.
On the other hand, making good decisions about this is also part of your advice...aka, keeping broad self-improvement in mind.
FWIW, I’ve lived most of my adult life (I’m in my mid 40s) basically with this sort of mindset...focusing on specific areas of self-improvement but also being well aware of how it might affect my broad well-being and taking that into account. I think everyone who knows me would tell you I’m a well-adjusted, friendly, and happy person.
That being said, I feel like that a lot of that is inherent in my personality so I’m not sure how much weight to give my personal experience.
Also, I wanted to say that I know many people who really came into their own in their mid-to-late thirties. I think a lot of people just start getting their life into order by that time, so I’m also not sure how much weight to give your personal experiences in this area.
If this is like, established fact or something...I did not know this, and I understand why the hypothetical person was also unaware of this.
Yes. But since I don’t expect to see an RCT anytime soon*, if anyone—you (Dustin) or the OP (Gordon)** -wrote posts about ‘things that improved my life’, I’d be interested to see those posts, and read them while keeping in mind that they’re not (necessarily) literal laws of physics, and different things might work for different people—especially when things are as vague as ‘keep your identity small’ and ‘don’t force that’. (How small is small? I don’t think I’ve seen ‘Make your identity big’ (and I won’t write it because I don’t know how to make it bigger.))
*If you’ve heard of something let me know.
**or both
I have heard this advice repeatedly, but I guess it is quite easy to miss it. People probably either don’t know it, or consider it too obvious to mention. (And a few people benefit from you not knowing the advice, so they can profit from your fear, advising you to sell what you have and buy something else, charging you a commission, and you are so thankful that someone observes these changes 24⁄7 for you.)
On the other hand, many people seem unable to follow this advice even if they hear it. Like, a few of my colleagues who bought Bitcoins. Every day there were like “look, it’s $10 higher, we made a profit!” or “oh, it’s $10 lower, this sucks!”, and I was like “guys, calm down, it’s not important what happens in a day, the only thing that matters is what happens over years” and tried to explain that the $10 is not even worth the amount of stress they feel… and that the only thing they need to do is to simply stop watching the news, return a year later, with certain probability they will lose everything (if this is not acceptable for you, do not invest), and with certain probability they will make a nontrivial profit.
I guess following this advice is emotionally difficult. About a month later, some colleagues said they sold the Bitcoins, because it was “too stressful” for them to think about it. Seems like “simply do not think about it” is a difficult skill, almost like meditation. On the positive side, if you succeed to do it for a few weeks, it becomes much easier, because now you are used to the situation and it is no longer exciting. (I have a similar experience with Facebook and other websites: the longer you are without them, the less you miss them.)
As Viliam says, it’s something I’ve heard constantly throughout my life. However, the hypothetical person not having heard of it relates to the points I’m trying to make. I’m saying that rather than telling them to focus on something other than performance, telling them how to better measure themselves might be the better course.
To be clear, this is exactly why I tried to couch all my language in this thread in “might”, “I think”, and other terms to indicate that not only am I not sure, but I’m not sure how anyone can be sure about this subject.
When I say to the OP, “I’m also not sure how much weight to give your personal experiences in this area.”, I think I’m saying the same thing you’re saying. I’m not trying to say in a roundabout way that I don’t believe the experiences of the OP. I’m saying my literal state of mind. I also want the OP to post posts like this one for the same reasons you describe.
This is one of the weird issues with what I see as the problem I’m trying to illustrate with the story and the limitations of telling a single story about it.
What you say is true, but it’s a reduction of the problem to be less bad by applying weaker optimization pressure rather than an actual elimination of the problem. Weak Goodharting is still Goodharting and it will still, eventually, subtly screw you up.
This post is also advice, and so aimed mostly at folks less like you and more like the kind of person who doesn’t realize they’re actively making their life worse rather than better by trying too hard.
I think all self improvement is subject to Goodharting, even the type you recommend.
The best things available to us to do about that:
Be nimble and self-aware. Adjust your processes to notice when you’re harming yourself.
Be thoughtful in how you measure success.
I do not think this is actually a contradiction to your post, but, at least for me, it seems like a more actionable framing of the issue.
In particular, I’d worry that “not Goodharting yourself” is Goodharting yourself. Dunno that I have this very coherently, but things that feel like hooks:
Selling nonapples.
Don’t try to “get better at rationality”; rationality needs to have a goal outside itself.
“How are you doing at your goals?” “Well, I stopped measuring things that weren’t perfect metrics for them.”