Noting emotions. Name your emotions, simply and without judgment, as you see them arise.
Trace emotion causes. When you do manage to notice an emotion and have a moment, practice asking yourself what the proximate cause of that emotion was until it becomes a not-uncommon practice upon noticing a surprising emotion.
Desire Generalizable Decision Processes Feel uncomfortable with the hint of uncertainty that maybe the algorithm that generated the reason you feel safe would have statistically bad results if applied more generally.
Check Yourself For BS Practice applying your bullshit detector on your own thoughts.
Check Yourself For BS Practice applying your bullshit detector on your own thoughts. The key observation is that it’s not important to have bullshit thoughts on which to practice detecting bullshit—like asking yourself whether you’re dreaming while awake to induce lucid dreams, the practice is having a mode where your bullshit detector is on and applied to your thoughts, so that it will actually fire when the time comes. So ask yourself, over and over, a) what your last thought was, and b) whether any part of it would have been flagged as BS if you saw the thought in someone else. Exercise: Think about something, trying to come up with the right answer, maybe where you’ve previously stated your guess at the right answer. At some point the facilitator will ring a bell or an alarm will sound or something. Locate your previous thought (if this is hard, practice this skill). Ask whether it was bullshit. Repeat 7 times. Have a cue to do the same during the day, like whenever you hear anyone’s cell phone ring or make an “I have a text!” noise.
Desire Generalizable Decision Processes Have everyone read Kahneman’s rant on picking the action with the best expected outcome in Thinking, Fast and Slow (chapter 31, Risk Policies, especially the sermon). Encourage people to play enough poker and read enough poker theory to become at least close to neutral-EV in Vegas. Experiencing the concept of pot odds in a real game was my strongest “passing up positive-EV moves is leaving money on the table no matter how loss-averse you are” learning moment. One exercise might be to (several times) present a story in which someone makes a decision and ask participants to a) make up a near-mode explanation of why the decision feels legit, b) give a far-mode explanation of why the reasoning that led to the decision would be disastrous if everyone used it, and c) figure out what the broadest set of people/circumstances is that would allow that reasoning to be generalized and still work well. Concrete example: Holden focuses on charities that are neglected by traditional funding. a) This is great because his marginal actions will actually be at the margin, not pushed back by some giant philanthropist who suddenly funds the whole charity. b) This is awful because if everyone focused on neglected charities, the most valuable charities would receive less than optimal focus. c) As long as very few people are actually applying this heuristic, there’s no danger of high-profile valuable charities suddenly losing all of their focus. So if Holden makes his decisions according to c), he’s doing great, but if just a), then his algorithm is flawed though its output might be correct in this case.
Noting emotions. Name your emotions, simply and without judgment, as you see them arise. Inspired by Mahasi noting, it may be enough of an exercise to simply state out loud a word describing any emotion you notice, taking care to not care whether your word is perfectly accurate but instead only care about having noticed and said something with the intent that if you knew the perfect descriptor word you would have used it. For ease it may well be enough to simply say a word that means “I noticed and attended to an emotion just now”. As you practice this, if you enjoy noticing the emotion regardless of the emotion itself, with any luck you’ll begin to notice your emotions and thus the “suddenly I’m more comfortable and feel safer” emotion without conscious effort. As an exercise, perhaps put on a particularly emotional-roller-coaster piece of instrumental music, stopping it at random points and asking everyone to name their emotion and the emotion they were feeling due to the music just before (presumably the in-the-moment emotion will often be annoyance due to the music being interrupted).
Notice Rationalization Directly If you have sufficient skill at noticing rationalization such that you recognize it maybe 1+ times per day, here is an exercise that User:thejash had me do which helped my brain latch on to recognizing rationalization much more regularly: carry a pencil and a bit of paper or notebook. Every time you notice yourself rationalizing, grin and make a mark on the paper. Every time, no exceptions, for an entire week. That’s all. If you must, pretend like you’ll use the data for something, but it’s the noticing practice itself that is useful.
Avoid Optimizing Proxy Measures I have a gut-level averse reaction to being comforted by a reason my decision or action may work out when I only saw that reason in order to feel safer. Here is a possible exercise to show students that optimizing proxy measures is a terrible general algorithm: hand out a worksheet of two questions to each student, asking them to answer individually. There are two possible worksheets. The first says “1. Describe in a short paragraph Vatican City. 2. Write any short paragraph you like containing the following concepts: bright, cyclic, white, round, and dappled.” The second says “1. Describe in a short paragraph the appearance of the moon. 2. Write any short paragraph you like containing the following concepts: tiny, historic, beautiful, religious, gardens.” Then score every paragraph by giving each a score from 0 to 1 based on how well they mentioned each of the 5 concepts, and a final score from 0 to 5 by summing the scores, and note how the proxy measure is reasonable at picking out good descriptions (is it? playtest) if you don’t optimize for the proxy measure but terrible if you do.
Trace emotion causes. Magically acquire a gut-level realization that emotions are physical events in your brain and those events have physical causes (which may be other emotions or thoughts, since they’re physical). I acquired this gut-level realization during the 2011 minicamp from User:Academian. Then, when you do manage to notice an emotion and have a moment, practice asking yourself what the proximate cause of that emotion was until it becomes a not-uncommon practice upon noticing a surprising emotion. To practice, you first need a way to notice emotions—either develop this, or ask someone else to cue you in whatever way the two of you choose, and precommit to ask yourself at their cue a) what your strongest emotion is currently, and b) what the largest components of that emotion’s cause happen to be. I’m not sure what a good exercise for this might be, since it feels like you legitimately need an unanticipated emotion.
I don’t always have a problem with motivated cognition, but when I do, my brain usually makes it some or all of the way through the following steps:
Notice that I’m becoming more comfortable with (feeling safer about) a decision or action I’m about to make or just made.
Notice that the physical cause of my comfort is that I recently had a thought consisting of a reason the decision could have a good outcome.
Some brain process that I haven’t pinned down yet that feels like and possibly is a mix of noticing optimization by proxy, feeling disdain for non-generalizable reasoning algorithms, and wondering about the true component strength of the reason.
Apply my bullshit detector to my comforting thought.
If appropriate, begin to legitimately think about the decision or action.
If this is a procedure that will work more generally, then these exercises may help:
Mindfulness meditation. Attention control is critical, mindfulness and a thread on mindfulness
Noting emotions. Name your emotions, simply and without judgment, as you see them arise.
Trace emotion causes. When you do manage to notice an emotion and have a moment, practice asking yourself what the proximate cause of that emotion was until it becomes a not-uncommon practice upon noticing a surprising emotion.
Avoid Optimizing Proxy Measures Train yourself to intuit that optimizing the heuristic measure correlating with your purpose does not optimize your purpose.
Desire Generalizable Decision Processes Feel uncomfortable with the hint of uncertainty that maybe the algorithm that generated the reason you feel safe would have statistically bad results if applied more generally.
Check Yourself For BS Practice applying your bullshit detector on your own thoughts.
Notice Rationalization Directly Actively reward noticing rationalization.
Check Yourself For BS Practice applying your bullshit detector on your own thoughts. The key observation is that it’s not important to have bullshit thoughts on which to practice detecting bullshit—like asking yourself whether you’re dreaming while awake to induce lucid dreams, the practice is having a mode where your bullshit detector is on and applied to your thoughts, so that it will actually fire when the time comes. So ask yourself, over and over, a) what your last thought was, and b) whether any part of it would have been flagged as BS if you saw the thought in someone else. Exercise: Think about something, trying to come up with the right answer, maybe where you’ve previously stated your guess at the right answer. At some point the facilitator will ring a bell or an alarm will sound or something. Locate your previous thought (if this is hard, practice this skill). Ask whether it was bullshit. Repeat 7 times. Have a cue to do the same during the day, like whenever you hear anyone’s cell phone ring or make an “I have a text!” noise.
Desire Generalizable Decision Processes Have everyone read Kahneman’s rant on picking the action with the best expected outcome in Thinking, Fast and Slow (chapter 31, Risk Policies, especially the sermon). Encourage people to play enough poker and read enough poker theory to become at least close to neutral-EV in Vegas. Experiencing the concept of pot odds in a real game was my strongest “passing up positive-EV moves is leaving money on the table no matter how loss-averse you are” learning moment. One exercise might be to (several times) present a story in which someone makes a decision and ask participants to a) make up a near-mode explanation of why the decision feels legit, b) give a far-mode explanation of why the reasoning that led to the decision would be disastrous if everyone used it, and c) figure out what the broadest set of people/circumstances is that would allow that reasoning to be generalized and still work well. Concrete example: Holden focuses on charities that are neglected by traditional funding. a) This is great because his marginal actions will actually be at the margin, not pushed back by some giant philanthropist who suddenly funds the whole charity. b) This is awful because if everyone focused on neglected charities, the most valuable charities would receive less than optimal focus. c) As long as very few people are actually applying this heuristic, there’s no danger of high-profile valuable charities suddenly losing all of their focus. So if Holden makes his decisions according to c), he’s doing great, but if just a), then his algorithm is flawed though its output might be correct in this case.
Noting emotions. Name your emotions, simply and without judgment, as you see them arise. Inspired by Mahasi noting, it may be enough of an exercise to simply state out loud a word describing any emotion you notice, taking care to not care whether your word is perfectly accurate but instead only care about having noticed and said something with the intent that if you knew the perfect descriptor word you would have used it. For ease it may well be enough to simply say a word that means “I noticed and attended to an emotion just now”. As you practice this, if you enjoy noticing the emotion regardless of the emotion itself, with any luck you’ll begin to notice your emotions and thus the “suddenly I’m more comfortable and feel safer” emotion without conscious effort. As an exercise, perhaps put on a particularly emotional-roller-coaster piece of instrumental music, stopping it at random points and asking everyone to name their emotion and the emotion they were feeling due to the music just before (presumably the in-the-moment emotion will often be annoyance due to the music being interrupted).
Notice Rationalization Directly If you have sufficient skill at noticing rationalization such that you recognize it maybe 1+ times per day, here is an exercise that User:thejash had me do which helped my brain latch on to recognizing rationalization much more regularly: carry a pencil and a bit of paper or notebook. Every time you notice yourself rationalizing, grin and make a mark on the paper. Every time, no exceptions, for an entire week. That’s all. If you must, pretend like you’ll use the data for something, but it’s the noticing practice itself that is useful.
Avoid Optimizing Proxy Measures I have a gut-level averse reaction to being comforted by a reason my decision or action may work out when I only saw that reason in order to feel safer. Here is a possible exercise to show students that optimizing proxy measures is a terrible general algorithm: hand out a worksheet of two questions to each student, asking them to answer individually. There are two possible worksheets. The first says “1. Describe in a short paragraph Vatican City. 2. Write any short paragraph you like containing the following concepts: bright, cyclic, white, round, and dappled.” The second says “1. Describe in a short paragraph the appearance of the moon. 2. Write any short paragraph you like containing the following concepts: tiny, historic, beautiful, religious, gardens.” Then score every paragraph by giving each a score from 0 to 1 based on how well they mentioned each of the 5 concepts, and a final score from 0 to 5 by summing the scores, and note how the proxy measure is reasonable at picking out good descriptions (is it? playtest) if you don’t optimize for the proxy measure but terrible if you do.
Trace emotion causes. Magically acquire a gut-level realization that emotions are physical events in your brain and those events have physical causes (which may be other emotions or thoughts, since they’re physical). I acquired this gut-level realization during the 2011 minicamp from User:Academian. Then, when you do manage to notice an emotion and have a moment, practice asking yourself what the proximate cause of that emotion was until it becomes a not-uncommon practice upon noticing a surprising emotion. To practice, you first need a way to notice emotions—either develop this, or ask someone else to cue you in whatever way the two of you choose, and precommit to ask yourself at their cue a) what your strongest emotion is currently, and b) what the largest components of that emotion’s cause happen to be. I’m not sure what a good exercise for this might be, since it feels like you legitimately need an unanticipated emotion.