It’s because of the peak-end rule. Last year, Boston’s potluck started out with us following up on what people had shared, and then drifted to our usual conversation topics. I think there are still good reasons to eat a meal together, and good reasons for such a meal to be a potluck, but I’d recommend doing so before the event. I’ll edit that in to the post.
Ben_LandauTaylor
Karma: 1,142
Schelling Day 2.0
I’ll flag that I’m currently working on revisions to the holiday based on feedback from last time. Expect that to be posted soon.
Effective Altruism Summit 2014
Space is limited, so we have to be pretty selective. I’d say it’s worth taking some time to present the relevant information.
“Good point. I’ll think about that when I have the chance.”
I’ve had success by reframing these decisions from “crap, this is too hard (probably because I’m bad), I should give up” to “interesting, this isn’t working, what’s the best way for this to not work.”
The video of Brienne’s presentation at the South Bay meetup is the most useful guide I’ve encountered.
To reach the Peaks of Countersignalling, one must first climb the Hills of Signalling.
If it’s 57% heritable, then ~40% of the difference is due to other factors, many of which you can control. Imagine someone at the 40th percentile of openness and contrast them with someone at the 80th percentile of openness. 40% is a lot.
I’ve had success in similar situations by reframing things and adopting the “extrovert in training” identity. Struggling at the limit of my ability reinforced that identity, even when that limit was low. For example, an extrovert wouldn’t attend the first 45 minutes of a party and then get overwhelmed and leave, but an extrovert in training would. Meanwhile, the identity reinforced my desire to struggle at the limit of my ability (maybe I can stay for 75 minutes), which led to rapid improvement. The general heuristic of reframing from “I am having trouble with X” to “I am learning to X” has helped my motivation immensely.
Also, you are awesome for taking concrete steps to gain the skills you want. Have some positive reinforcement.
Good summary. There’s enough detail here that other organizers can easily learn from it. Triple bonus points for noticing a problem and taking a concrete action to fix it.
Lively discussions about off-topics eat time and can keep participants out—but also provide casual athmosphere.
If the group is large enough (say, six people or more), then one way to handle this tradeoff is to establish a social norm to encourage splitting into separate conversations when someone is bored. That way, interested people can delve deeply into a topic without worrying that they’ll bore everyone else, and people can break away for off-topic chats when they feel like it.
the planned topic procrastication falling off the table until very late
Heh.
In my experience, subvocalization doesn’t become a barrier until you hit maybe 900-1000 wpm. I still subvocalize, and I read at about 800 wpm with appropriate software and 500 wpm on dead trees, so it’s definitely achievable. Over the span of several weeks, I increased my speed from ~250 wpm by spending 30 minutes a day practicing the techniques from Matt Fallshaw’s presentation at the Effective Altruism Summit. Unfortunately, my notes are about 3000 miles away, right now.
You’ve listed one concrete goal and two stupendously vague goals. My first suggestion would be for your friend to spend the time figuring out what, exactly, they’re trying to achieve with something like “form an alternative career” or “become a better person,” then using the resulting knowledge to make an actionable plan. Clarifying goals is often the first step to achieving goals.
Other considerations: How far in the future will this be? How much money, if any, does this person have available for training or travel or the like? Is CFAR running a workshop during the relevant month?
That handout is excellent. If anyone is an organizer looking for a topic, you could totally just steal this one.
This is a great summary with lots of specific, actionable detail. I successfully transitioned the Boston meetup from “philosophy and science fiction ideas discussion group” to “awesome vibrant community,” so I’ll give some feedback.
The most important thing in making the transition is to have content at the meetings, such as presentations or focused discussion topics. It sounds like you’re doing this already, and having some trouble with the execution. Some suggestions:
—Relying on people to prepare ahead of time doesn’t work in practice, since not everyone will actually do the homework.
—Having someone prepare a talk is a great way to provide background info and a focus for later discussion. I bet a 10-minute, well-rehearsed presentation on mind-killing would’ve improved this meetup dramatically. Doing this reliably does take a bunch of work, so it’s good to have several people willing to share the responsibility.
—It’s really good if you can set up the space in a way that encourages people to break out into individual conversations. My best experiences at meetups have been in conversations with 3-5 people. It’s also helpful if you explicitly establish the social norm that it’s appropriate to leave a discussion when you’re not engaged, both because listeners don’t have to politely sit through stuff they don’t like, and because speakers can trust that people actually want to hear what they’re saying.
I’m happy to answer any questions or help brainstorm for future meetups. If you want to talk more, PM me to set up a Skype call or something.
Short answer: The bad news is, you might in fact be screwed, given the situation. The good news is, it’s always possible to change the situation; all it takes is deliberate practice, planning, and a tremendous amount of hard work.
Long answer: Those conditions are rare and valuable things. To get them, you have to offer something rare and valuable in return. Here’s how to do that.
First, make sure you’re in a situation where you can improve your skills. If your job doesn’t use any skills that can be improved, then either take up a hobby, find a new job, or use all your ingenuity to figure out something else. You might have to ignore the other two conditions for now. That sucks, but such is life.
Second, practice. Constantly stretch yourself by working on projects that are just outside your comfort zone. Seek feedback from reality and from experts.
Third, build career capital. This is a combination of demonstrably awesome output plus social proof. It’s the thing that people see and realize “this person is good at that thing.”
Fourth, use your career capital to get a position that has (more of) the traits you want. From the outside, this will probably look like getting a lucky break. Your career capital makes opportunities available, and if you know what you’re looking for, you can do a pretty good job of judging which opportunities are worth following.
Finally, keep doing this. If your skills and career capital keep improving, you can keep improving your position to get more money, more autonomy, more impact on the world, or whatever it is you’re optimizing for.
This takes a long time. The examples in the book usually take years. The shortest example I’ve ever encountered took maybe ten months. With any proposed strategy to reach happiness and fulfillment, you have to ask why everyone else hasn’t done it already, and in this case the answer is because it’s actually pretty hard. I’ve done this, though, and I can confidently say it’s worth it.
Actually complete version: read the book.
(Disclaimer: I am about halfway through the book so far. There are probably further insights that I haven’t read yet.)
These are group houses where a bunch of rationalists live together. Sometimes they hold events for the wider community or host visiting rationalists from out of town. I know of several that exist in the Bay Area, one in Boston, and one in New York. There are probably others.
Yeah. The author claims you need to find something where (1) you can improve your skills, (2) you believe your work has positive value, and (3) you don’t actively dislike the people you’re working with. From there, you can increase your skills and prove your value, then barter that value into a position that has the traits which correlate with fulfillment.
Done!