But I try to think of examples of how myself or others have failed at a particular aspect of it. Is that what you mean by reactions?
Sort of. The main thing is identifying a situation that will trigger a behavior. For example, whenever I notice I’m the least bit confused, I say out loud “I notice I am confused.” This is an atomic action that I can do out of habit, and which will make me much more likely to follow up on the confusion. Oftentimes, this will be something like saying “event is on Saturday the 25th,” and then noticing that Saturday isn’t the 25th. This is something I really ought to get to the bottom of, because thinking the event is on the wrong day will lead to missing the event, which is totally preventable at this point if I notice my confusion.
Most people have defaults against noticing this sort of thing, though (I know I definitely did, even knowing a lot of decision science and about baises). Having a specific plan of action makes it way easier to react the right way in the moment, and having a workaround for one bias is better than knowing about twenty biases.
I’m the type of person to read it all as fast as possible and then go back and try to implement specific actions during a reread.
This is a better approach, I think, but I’m leery of recommending it because enough people have trouble reading through the sequences one time that suggesting it two times seems like asking too much.
This is a better approach, I think, but I’m leery of recommending it because enough people have trouble reading through the sequences one time that suggesting it two times seems like asking too much.
I know this isn’t true for everyone, but for me, Eliezer’s writing is really fun to read; I’ve reread many of his posts just on that basis. The Sequences do have some dense parts, but for most parts, I couldn’t tear myself away.
Sort of. The main thing is identifying a situation that will trigger a behavior. For example, whenever I notice I’m the least bit confused, I say out loud “I notice I am confused.” This is an atomic action that I can do out of habit, and which will make me much more likely to follow up on the confusion. Oftentimes, this will be something like saying “event is on Saturday the 25th,” and then noticing that Saturday isn’t the 25th. This is something I really ought to get to the bottom of, because thinking the event is on the wrong day will lead to missing the event, which is totally preventable at this point if I notice my confusion.
Most people have defaults against noticing this sort of thing, though (I know I definitely did, even knowing a lot of decision science and about baises). Having a specific plan of action makes it way easier to react the right way in the moment, and having a workaround for one bias is better than knowing about twenty biases.
This is a better approach, I think, but I’m leery of recommending it because enough people have trouble reading through the sequences one time that suggesting it two times seems like asking too much.
I know this isn’t true for everyone, but for me, Eliezer’s writing is really fun to read; I’ve reread many of his posts just on that basis. The Sequences do have some dense parts, but for most parts, I couldn’t tear myself away.