It’s Owen here. When we talked at EAG, your thoughts on Reference Class Forecasting was a huge part of the inspiration for this post, actually, so I want to thank you for helping me figure this out.
As for your query, a few other helpful mental “hooks” may include:
Imagining “meta-you” in your head practicing some MMA (mental martial arts) against mental akrasiatic demons, which would obviously require lots of practice to get good at.
(or any other variation of the analogy “learning mental habits = your brain training for a sport” )
Any action you want to take necessarily has thought behind it. Thus, practicing actions also means practicing thought.
A mental habit is what you do, not what you know.
Tie your mental habits into concrete physical actions, then focus on using that action as a mental anchor:
EX: Fighting distractions is about noticing that “drifting down the path of least resistance” and closing your eyes, clenching, and removing yourself from the situation. If you package that as a “unit”, seeing yourself do it, then these mental notions become much less abstract (basically re: Eliezer on the 5 second level)
More than happy to continue the dialogue on this. Loved your thoughts on breaks / relaxing too, as well as when you said “akrasia has mutant healing powers”.
Hi Romeo,
It’s Owen here. When we talked at EAG, your thoughts on Reference Class Forecasting was a huge part of the inspiration for this post, actually, so I want to thank you for helping me figure this out.
As for your query, a few other helpful mental “hooks” may include:
Imagining “meta-you” in your head practicing some MMA (mental martial arts) against mental akrasiatic demons, which would obviously require lots of practice to get good at.
(or any other variation of the analogy “learning mental habits = your brain training for a sport” )
Any action you want to take necessarily has thought behind it. Thus, practicing actions also means practicing thought.
A mental habit is what you do, not what you know.
Tie your mental habits into concrete physical actions, then focus on using that action as a mental anchor:
EX: Fighting distractions is about noticing that “drifting down the path of least resistance” and closing your eyes, clenching, and removing yourself from the situation. If you package that as a “unit”, seeing yourself do it, then these mental notions become much less abstract (basically re: Eliezer on the 5 second level)
More than happy to continue the dialogue on this. Loved your thoughts on breaks / relaxing too, as well as when you said “akrasia has mutant healing powers”.