First, let me explain what I’d want out of the “leveling” process—a way to “become more awesome” by holding ourselves to rather high competitive standards in a bunch of different, but not too obscure, areas of human achievement. I don’t think a person needs to get to ExRx’s “untrained” level of strength to have a “reasonable quality of life”—I know lots of people who seem to be doing fine without being that strong, or without being able to run a mile. However, an elite athlete would think “Oh my god, how do you live if you can’t even run a little?” That’s what I was getting at. What the elite levels of a skill consider “minimal” is, of course, way above the actual minimum that ordinary people practice. That kind of “minimal” is a good, challenging goal for an ordinary person. (For example: I am really not a finance expert. I am also a terrible cook. I would want to know what a professional in finance, or a professional chef, thinks is the “bare minimum” of financial understanding or culinary skill, and see if I can get there.)
While I see the intuitive appeal of this from a status standpoint, I don’t understand why one would want to be other-optimized by someone who, by definition, doesn’t understand enough about one’s situation to know whether the given advice matches the stated criteria for applicability or not.
I will admit that my reaction could easily be the result of an ugh field, though. Ugh, people who think they know how I should be living my life.
Some people—I’m one of them—do want to be “other-optimized” in the sense that we want to know “how we’re doing,” generally, by the standards of other people, and we’re willing to try meeting an external set of challenge goals. Maybe it’s an age thing; I am not old enough that I think I have my life figured out and that I know what “works for me.” A lot of things are still in flux, so I’d be willing to learn entirely new skills and add new identities. That seems to be common for people in their teens and twenties. I wish somebody had shaken me and told me “No, seriously, learn to program NOW” when I was a lot younger. I expect there will be other things that I don’t yet know I will want to be good at. This “leveling” business seems like a way to facilitate the process.
I’m pretty much behind the idea of leveling, actually. Coming up with a coherent, stepwise map of how to get from a layperson’s ability level to mastery of a certain topic seems like it will have all sorts of benefits. I just think we can do a lot better than asking an authority on a given topic what they think everyone should know about it, to figure out which steps should go first or what should be considered a very basic level of competence—I think we’ll end up optimizing for the wrong things, if we do it that way.
This is exactly what I want from the leveling process as well. Thanks for expressing it so clearly, and for the suggestions of cooking and money management. These sound really nice to have!
First, let me explain what I’d want out of the “leveling” process—a way to “become more awesome” by holding ourselves to rather high competitive standards in a bunch of different, but not too obscure, areas of human achievement. I don’t think a person needs to get to ExRx’s “untrained” level of strength to have a “reasonable quality of life”—I know lots of people who seem to be doing fine without being that strong, or without being able to run a mile. However, an elite athlete would think “Oh my god, how do you live if you can’t even run a little?” That’s what I was getting at. What the elite levels of a skill consider “minimal” is, of course, way above the actual minimum that ordinary people practice. That kind of “minimal” is a good, challenging goal for an ordinary person. (For example: I am really not a finance expert. I am also a terrible cook. I would want to know what a professional in finance, or a professional chef, thinks is the “bare minimum” of financial understanding or culinary skill, and see if I can get there.)
While I see the intuitive appeal of this from a status standpoint, I don’t understand why one would want to be other-optimized by someone who, by definition, doesn’t understand enough about one’s situation to know whether the given advice matches the stated criteria for applicability or not.
I will admit that my reaction could easily be the result of an ugh field, though. Ugh, people who think they know how I should be living my life.
It really may not be for everybody.
Some people—I’m one of them—do want to be “other-optimized” in the sense that we want to know “how we’re doing,” generally, by the standards of other people, and we’re willing to try meeting an external set of challenge goals. Maybe it’s an age thing; I am not old enough that I think I have my life figured out and that I know what “works for me.” A lot of things are still in flux, so I’d be willing to learn entirely new skills and add new identities. That seems to be common for people in their teens and twenties. I wish somebody had shaken me and told me “No, seriously, learn to program NOW” when I was a lot younger. I expect there will be other things that I don’t yet know I will want to be good at. This “leveling” business seems like a way to facilitate the process.
I’m pretty much behind the idea of leveling, actually. Coming up with a coherent, stepwise map of how to get from a layperson’s ability level to mastery of a certain topic seems like it will have all sorts of benefits. I just think we can do a lot better than asking an authority on a given topic what they think everyone should know about it, to figure out which steps should go first or what should be considered a very basic level of competence—I think we’ll end up optimizing for the wrong things, if we do it that way.
This is exactly what I want from the leveling process as well. Thanks for expressing it so clearly, and for the suggestions of cooking and money management. These sound really nice to have!