I’ve been browsing the site for at least a year. Found it through HP:MoR, which is absolutely amazing. I’ve been coming to the LessWrong study hall for a couple weeks now and have found it highly effective.
For the most part, I haven’t really applied this at all. I ended up making a final break with Christianity, but the only significant difference is that I now say “Yay humanism!” instead of “Yay God!” I’ve used a few tricks here and there, like the Sunk Cost Fallacy, and the Planning Fallacy, but I still spent the majority of my time not thinking about things. Because thinking is hard.
Then I started trying again to figure out what I should do with my life. Now, the first time I tried this I spent less effort on the decision than I did on most papers I’ve written for class. Ended up signing a five-year contract with miserable results. Now I’m actually thinking. It is incredibly difficult, but I am convinced that it is worth it.
My current goals are to broaden my knowledge (I know a ton of information about classical music but almost nothing else) and sharpen my critical thinking skills.
What I want to do is to figure out what I want to do. My basic (and vague) goal is to do the most amount of good with my future career. If I make that decision with my current tools, I will likely overlook something.
Have you looked at 80,000 hours? They have a lot of great resources for people in exactly your situation, including individual advice. I’ve found a lot of their posts extremely useful. (I’m currently earning to give, largely as a result of arguments I ran into here on LW. I’d be happy to talk in more depth, if you think it would be useful.)
I’ve been browsing the site for at least a year. Found it through HP:MoR, which is absolutely amazing. I’ve been coming to the LessWrong study hall for a couple weeks now and have found it highly effective.
For the most part, I haven’t really applied this at all. I ended up making a final break with Christianity, but the only significant difference is that I now say “Yay humanism!” instead of “Yay God!” I’ve used a few tricks here and there, like the Sunk Cost Fallacy, and the Planning Fallacy, but I still spent the majority of my time not thinking about things. Because thinking is hard.
Then I started trying again to figure out what I should do with my life. Now, the first time I tried this I spent less effort on the decision than I did on most papers I’ve written for class. Ended up signing a five-year contract with miserable results. Now I’m actually thinking. It is incredibly difficult, but I am convinced that it is worth it.
My current goals are to broaden my knowledge (I know a ton of information about classical music but almost nothing else) and sharpen my critical thinking skills.
I strongly agree with both of those statements.
Do you know what you’d like to do with the knowledge and skills you’re acquiring, or is that still an open question?
What I want to do is to figure out what I want to do. My basic (and vague) goal is to do the most amount of good with my future career. If I make that decision with my current tools, I will likely overlook something.
Have you looked at 80,000 hours? They have a lot of great resources for people in exactly your situation, including individual advice. I’ve found a lot of their posts extremely useful. (I’m currently earning to give, largely as a result of arguments I ran into here on LW. I’d be happy to talk in more depth, if you think it would be useful.)