I’m having a hard time squaring the right thing to say here. On the one hand, I do think that making big, decade long plans that work and achieve your goals is a continuation of the parts of me that makes plans that work on a day-to-day basis. When I’m exerting forces to figure out how to learn some math deeply, or make plans to make sure progress happens in alignment research, this is the same force that I personally use when making sure I do focused work in the LW offices, or indeed tidying my bedroom.
One the other hand, I think people have classes of areas where they’re able to make plans that work, and this sometimes interacts in funny ways with tasks people think of as ‘basic’ such as cleaning the dishes and not playing too much minecraft. Now, I actually don’t think that this is quite the right carving of reality. For example, I think that there are many ways of having a tidy house / bedroom. One way is the extension of the skill required to design environments and buildings generally, being able to think about how people interact with their environment, build natural affordances into it (e.g. at my house all the drawers and cupboard have a little label with what’s in them, making it easy for all of the housemates and guests to return things). Another way is have a broadly minimalist approach (I own relatively few things, making it harder to mess them up). There are other ways. Several of these skills just don’t overlap with other important skills, such as taste in mathematical proofs, or the skill of judging papers in a way that lets you do efficient literature reviews with google scholar.
I am not sure how to resolve these two perespectives I have. The model you lay out in the post is helpful, and I agree with your last paragraph.
I’m having a hard time squaring the right thing to say here. On the one hand, I do think that making big, decade long plans that work and achieve your goals is a continuation of the parts of me that makes plans that work on a day-to-day basis. When I’m exerting forces to figure out how to learn some math deeply, or make plans to make sure progress happens in alignment research, this is the same force that I personally use when making sure I do focused work in the LW offices, or indeed tidying my bedroom.
One the other hand, I think people have classes of areas where they’re able to make plans that work, and this sometimes interacts in funny ways with tasks people think of as ‘basic’ such as cleaning the dishes and not playing too much minecraft. Now, I actually don’t think that this is quite the right carving of reality. For example, I think that there are many ways of having a tidy house / bedroom. One way is the extension of the skill required to design environments and buildings generally, being able to think about how people interact with their environment, build natural affordances into it (e.g. at my house all the drawers and cupboard have a little label with what’s in them, making it easy for all of the housemates and guests to return things). Another way is have a broadly minimalist approach (I own relatively few things, making it harder to mess them up). There are other ways. Several of these skills just don’t overlap with other important skills, such as taste in mathematical proofs, or the skill of judging papers in a way that lets you do efficient literature reviews with google scholar.
I am not sure how to resolve these two perespectives I have. The model you lay out in the post is helpful, and I agree with your last paragraph.