Sorry, yes, this is what I was also getting at, that the joke has basis in reality. My comment was not worded very well.
Celarix
Karma: 366
I mean, it’s a joke for a reason. SpongeBob had its “daring escape through the perfume department” gag, too.
But somehow it feels wrong to just talk to yourself out loud.
Haha, yeah, totally. Uh… I never talk to myself for extended periods while pacing up and down my apartment… or workplace. Nope, never.
(it helps me think better if I do it out loud. Sorry to anyone who I give off insane vibes to!)
The concept of one-shotting psychological and mental issues is quite intriguing, I must admit. I really do think there’s a sizable blindspot around actual solutions for tons of mental issues, and not because I think people are faking or lying about wanting to change. I do it myself, even; when I think about trying to make my life better, I often get caught up in the absurdities of my mind and what it does, and that System-1-FEELS like the correct place to start.
For some stuff, I do think there can be one-neat-trick style fixes, too, but that they’re often quite out of left field and hard to synthesize on one’s own, which does rather suck. The “and?” example you have above fits that quite well, it’s not something someone would ordinarily say (well, out loud, the fear of coming off as rude will stop a lot of people).
Speaking of, maybe one of the biggest obstacles here is making the other person feel heard and understood and not dismissed? You seem to do quite well per your accounts, but man alive I’d say probably >99.5% of Internet discussions I read that involve a) two sides and b) any level of distrust devolve into pointless arguing about what was said, meant, heard, and felt. A real shame, and I think this can come up a lot in therapeutic environments, too, where the therapist knows what they want to say but must not say it because the patient needs to realize it for themselves via gentle questioning and guiding. Communication is really hard and no one’s intended message ever makes it 100% over (see https://thezvi.substack.com/p/just-saying-what-you-mean-is-impossible).
Why, the Practical tag (https://www.lesswrong.com/w/practical) has a lot of cool stuff like this.
My opinion is that whatever value of epsilon you pick should be low enough such that it never happens once in your life. “I flipped a coin but it doesn’t actually exist” should never happen. Maybe it would happen if you lived for millions of years, but in a normal human lifespan, never once.
She then proceeded to sock puppet it in mock dialogue to the student next to her.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
...
Uh, to contribute something useful: good piece! I love the idea of aiming for any goal in a broader direction, landing even close to an idealized “perfect goal” is probably still OOMs better than trying for the perfect goal, failing, and going “eh, well, guess I’ll lay bricks for 40 years”.
I also like the section on intrinsic motivation—describing it as “all the things you find yourself doing if left to your own devices”. I do fear that, for many, this category contains things that can’t be used to support you, though, but then your diagram showing the dots outside the bounds of “video games” but pointing back to it I think nicely resolves that conundrum.
And when all else fails, apply random search.
Hell yes. Speaking from my own experience here, whatever you do, don’t get stuck. Random search if you have to, but if you’re unhappy, keep moving.
Ah, I think I see where you’re pointing at. You’re afraid we might be falling prey to the streetlamp effect, thinking that some quality specifically about Western diets is causing obesity, and restricting our thoughts if we accept that as true. I agree, and it’s pretty terrifying how little we know and how much conflicting data there is out there about the causes of obesity.
It might very well be that the true cause is outside of the Western diet and has little to do with it, and I could definitely see that being true given how much we’ve spent and how little we’ve gotten for research taking the Western diet connection for granted.
Sure, I broadly agree, and I do prefer that people are living longer, even obese, than they would be with severe and long-term malnutrition. I think what you’re saying here is “the modern Western diet provides a benefit in that it turns what would have been fatalities by malnutrition into survival with obesity”, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Basically, it is good—very good, one of the greatest human accomplishments—that we have been able to roll back so much suffering from starvation and malnutrition. I think, though, that we can address obesity while also avoiding a return to the days of malnutrition.
Or, in other words, there are three tiers, each better than the last:
Planes get shot down and pilots die
Planes get riddled with bullets but return safely
Planes don’t get damaged and pilots can complete mission
We would still have to explain the downsides of obesity, and not just in the long-term health effects like heart disease or diabetes risks, but in the everyday life of having to carry around so much extra weight.
Despite that, I’d still agree that being overweight is better than being underweight.
The visual techniques of TV—cuts, zooms, pans, and sudden noises—all activate the orient response.
Anecdote, but this form of rapid cutting is most assuredly alive and well. I saw a promotional ad for an upcoming MLB baseball game on TBS. In a mere 25 seconds, I counted over 35 different cuts, cuts between players, cuts between people in the studio, cut after cut after cut. It was strangely exhausting.
The thing about Newcomb’s problem for me was always the distribution between the two boxes, one being $1,000,000 and the other being $1,000. I’d rather not risk losing $999,000 for a chance at an extra $1,000! I could just one-box for real, take the million, then put it in an index fund and wait for it to go up by 0.1%.
I do understand that the question really comes into play when the amounts vary and Omega’s success rate is lower—if I could one-box for $500 and two-box for $1,500 total and Omega is wrong 25% of the time observed, that would be a different play.
I don’t want to spend ten years figuring this out.
A driving factor in my own philosophy around figuring out what to do with my life. Some people spend decades doing something or living with something they don’t like, or even something more trivially correctable, like spending one weekend to clean up the basement vs. living with a cluttered mess for years on end.
Hmm. My family and I always let the ice cream sit for about 10 to 15 minutes to let it soften first. Interesting to see the wide range of opinions, wasn’t even aware that wasn’t a thing.
My thinking is that the more discussed threads would have more value to the user. Small threads with 1 or 2 replies are more likely to be people pointing out typos or just saying +1 to a particular passage.
Of course, there is a spectrum—deeply discussed threads are more likely to be angry back-and-forths that aren’t very valuable.
Ooh, nice. I’ve been wanting this kind of discussion software for awhile. I do have a suggestion: maybe, when hovering over a highlighted passage, you could get some kind of indicator of how many child comments are under that section, and/or change the highlight contrast for threads that have more children, so we can tell which branches of the discussion got the most attention
Noted, thank you. This does raise my confidence in Alcor.
This doesn’t really raise my confidence in Alcor, an organization that’s supposed to keep bodies preserved for decades or centuries.
I can kind of see the original meme’s point in the extremes. Consider a mechanic shop that has had very, very slow business for months and is in serious financial trouble. I can see the owners Moloching their way into “suggesting” that their technicians maybe don’t fix it all the way. After all, what’s the harm in having a few customers come back a little more often if it means maybe saving the business?
But this is only on the extremes.
Strong upvote from me, this is a huge cause issue in my life and I’m sure in many others. Any mental stuff aside, it seems the brain has strong control systems around not wanting to do too much of stuff it doesn’t like, and more of stuff it can’t get enough of.
One thing I’ve always wondered about is how a person’s affinities and frustrations are made. Why do some people love to write, so much so that time for writing just appears without conscious effort, whereas others find it a grinding chore they can’t wait to be done with? What makes some people feel a calling to be, say, a veterinarian or a plumber? Why do most people dislike exercise but a few really love it and couldn’t make themselves stop if they tried?
If we can figure this out, maybe we can figure out how to move stuff between categories. Rather than trying to learn how to live with the suck, maybe we can find ways to make stuff not suck, as much as we can, at least.