The simpler way is just to recognize that, as a human in a western society, you won’t lose much more or win much more than the other humans around you
Well, unless you actually take specific steps to win more....which is kind of what this is about.
which subgroup of humans do you join? How do you make the tradeoff between different subcultures etc. But still, you don’t even need a general solution to that problem, you only need to decide which of the handful of specific subcultures available to you seems best for you.
Note that people probably tend to end up here by this very process. That is, of all the subcultures available to them, the subculture of people who are interested in
carefully building up [their] abstract-reasoning ability to the point where it produces usefully accurate, unbiased, well-calibrated probability distributions over relevant outcome spaces
Note that people probably tend to end up here by this very process. That is, of all the subcultures available to them, the subculture of people who are interested in
True … but I suspect that people who end up here do so because they basically take more-than-averagely literally the verbally endorsed beliefs of the herd. Rationality as memetic immune disorder, failure to compartmentalize etc.
Perhaps I should amend my original comment to say that if you are cognitively very different from the herd, you may want to use a bit of rationality/self-development like a corrective lens. You’ll have to run compartmentalization in software.
Maybe I should try to start a new trend: use {compartmentalization} when you want to invalidate an inference which most people would not make because of compartmentalization?
E.g. “I think all human lives are equally valuable”
“Then why did you spend $1000 on an ipad rather than giving it to Givewell?”
“I refute it thus: {compartmentalization: nearmode/farmode}”
What steps can a person actually take to really, genuinely win more, in the sense of “win” which most people take as their near-mode optimization target?
I suspect that happiness set-points mean that there isn’t really much you can do.
In fact probably one of the few ways to genuinely affect the total of well-being over your lifetime is to take seriously the notion that you have so little control over it: you’ll get depressed about it.
I recently read a book called 59 seconds which said that 50% of the variance in life satisfaction/happiness is directly genetically determined via your happiness set-point.
In fact the advice that the book gave was to just chill out about life, that by far the easiest way to improve your life is to frame it more positively.
Well, unless you actually take specific steps to win more....which is kind of what this is about.
Note that people probably tend to end up here by this very process. That is, of all the subcultures available to them, the subculture of people who are interested in
is the most attractive.
True … but I suspect that people who end up here do so because they basically take more-than-averagely literally the verbally endorsed beliefs of the herd. Rationality as memetic immune disorder, failure to compartmentalize etc.
Perhaps I should amend my original comment to say that if you are cognitively very different from the herd, you may want to use a bit of rationality/self-development like a corrective lens. You’ll have to run compartmentalization in software.
Maybe I should try to start a new trend: use {compartmentalization} when you want to invalidate an inference which most people would not make because of compartmentalization?
E.g. “I think all human lives are equally valuable”
“Then why did you spend $1000 on an ipad rather than giving it to Givewell?”
“I refute it thus: {compartmentalization: nearmode/farmode}”
What steps can a person actually take to really, genuinely win more, in the sense of “win” which most people take as their near-mode optimization target?
I suspect that happiness set-points mean that there isn’t really much you can do.
In fact probably one of the few ways to genuinely affect the total of well-being over your lifetime is to take seriously the notion that you have so little control over it: you’ll get depressed about it.
I recently read a book called 59 seconds which said that 50% of the variance in life satisfaction/happiness is directly genetically determined via your happiness set-point.
In fact the advice that the book gave was to just chill out about life, that by far the easiest way to improve your life is to frame it more positively.
Happiness is a sham; focus on satisfaction. There don’t seem to be satisfaction set points.
That said, I agree with what you seem to be saying- that optimization is a procedure that is itself subject to optimization.