This month I’m implementing a self-incentive mechanism to achieve tasks (and vaguely profit if I don’t).
Last month I wrote up a list of 30 tasks, one for each day in April. If I fail to use any given day to complete one of my tasks, I move 1/100th (1%) of my previous month’s salary to my savings account. This way my future self will either be cleverer (/stronger/more socially talented—due to the nature of the tasks) or richer than would happen otherwise.
I’m not sure Eastbourne (or more likely, the nearest city Brighton) has a lot of LW readers, due to each of their typical demographics. However, due to this post, I am rather tempted to try it out. Indeed, worst that happens is sitting in a café with a book (which sounds like something I should be doing more of anyway).
Main purpose of comment: any Brighton- or nearby LW folk, call out! I might otherwise procrastinate about this prospect by a month or more.
To clarify why I liked it, I find comfort in the fact that someone else has thought about the same existentially terrifying things as me. (I read the beauty-terrible complaint as one of the nature of nature, rather than of something we can change.) So when I think about such things, I’m less likely to feel quite as alone if I recall this poetry. Somehow reading other people’s prose on the subject doesn’t strike the same effect as poetry.
It [the poem] might not relate to consequentialist thinking that easily, but I found it a good antidote to the negative emotional effects consequentialist thinking has. I expect other people’s mileage to vary; I have a specific personal set of philosophical neuroses, roughly identified as this sort of nihilism.
I’ve now upvoted your link to “Explaining vs. Explaining Away”, by the way, because I think it serves, for me, the same function as the poem. I’m guessing you didn’t have this reaction though?
I think a book of poems like these would be enough to fend off a whole load of existential angst.
I really liked this, it was very thoughtfully posted (i.e. most vaguely reductionist/scientific poetry is unbearable), and would like to see other polite conversations between intellect and emotion such as this. It’s nice to see them getting along for once.
I see, that’s interesting. That feels recognisable: I think when I hear my own voice/internal monologue, it brings to memory things I’ve already said or talked about, so I dwell on those things rather than think of fresh topics. So I think of the monologue itself as being the source of the stagnant thinking, and shut it down hoping insight will come to me wordlessly. Having said all that about having an internal monologue, I now think I do have a fair number of non-verbal thoughts, but these still use some form of mental labelling to organise concepts as I think about them.
That sounds an interesting experiment to do, next time I need to travel bipedally I’ll get on to checking out those default conceptual autocompletes* that I get from different words. Thanks!
*Hoping I haven’t been presumptious in my use of technical metaphors—in the course of writing this I’ve had to consciously reign in my desire to use programming metaphors for how my brain seems to work.
I suppose among the questions I was interested in, was indeed what I should spend my time thinking about. I had the idea that there must be high-computational-requiring and low-requisite-knowledge-requiring mental tasks, akin to how one learning electronics might spend time extrapolating the design of a one-bit adder with a pen and paper and requisite knowledge of logic gates. But crucially, without a pen and paper. So in what area can I use my pre-existing knowledge to productively generate new ideas or thoughts without a pen and paper. Possibly advancing in some sense my ‘knowledge’ of those areas at the same time.
Sidenote: I like reading detailed descriptions of people’s thought-processes like this, because of the interleaved data on what they pay attention to when thinking; and especially when there isn’t necessarily a point to it in the sequences-/narrative-/this post has a lesson related to this anecdote-style, and when it’s just describing the mechanics of their thought stream for the sake of understanding another brain. For some reason it feels like a rich source of data for me, and I would like to see more of it. Particularly because it feels to give insight on a slightly lower level than cognitive biases themselves. I sometimes think I use my micro-thought processes to evade or disrupt the act of changing my mind simply because they have the advantage of being on a lower level. A level that interacts with feelings, of which I seem to have many. Alternately, my desire for detailed descriptions of people’s thought-processes might be down to my personality and not be something generally useful.
I’d say something like internal monologue, for thinking anyway (this may be internally sounded, I know that I think word-thoughts in my own voice, but I regularly think much faster than I could possibly speak, until I realise that fact, when the voice becomes slow and I start repeating myself, and then get annoyed at my brain for being so distracting).
For calculating or anything vaguely mathematical I use abstractly spatial/visual sorts of thoughts—abstract meaning I don’t have sufficient awareness of the architecture of my brain to tell you accurately what I even mean. Generally I’m not very visual, but I would say I use a spatial sort of visual awareness quite often in thought. If this makes sense.
Does this imply something about the sorts of tasks I could do that were most useful? I’m intrigued by the reasons you have for requesting the data you did. :)
I’m often walking to somewhere and I notice that I have a good amount of thinking time, but that I find my head empty. Has anyone any good ideas on useful things to occupy my mind during such time? Visualisation exercises, mental arithmetic, thinking about philosophy?
It depresses me a little, how much easier it is to make use of nothing but a pen and paper, than it is to make use of when that is removed and one has only one’s own mind.
For some reason I would feel much better imposing a standard cost on commenting (e.g. −2 karma) that can be easily balanced by being marginally useful. This would better disincentivise both spamming and comments that people didn’t expect to be worth very much insight, and still allow people to upvote good-but-not-promotion-worthy comments without artificially inflating that user’s karma. This however would skew commenters towards fewer, longer, more premeditated replies. I don’t know if we want this.
That looks like it could prove really useful / interesting; thanks for linking.
I guess the entry requirements for beta are strict because they’re trying to keep to a small set of variables for the people to check? It would have been really interesting to spy in on though. Regarding the China study, it sounds either like there was no effort to control for other obvious/statistically-true correlates or that there is no possible overlap at all to abstract a controlled comparison from. A fraction of that data might be useful (all data is useful! …yum!). I think with sufficient (though perhaps improbably large) sample size even user-submitted data with large amounts of noise becomes useful. Any empirical paradigm more open and faster than the current is bound to be a good thing, even despite inaccuracy, for reasons of sheer brute force.
I’ve often wondered if a large-userbase data collecting website could help solve problems like this by looking for very weak statistical correlations among coinciding events over large datafields. I.e. see how often people self-report eating X, see how often people self-report feeling Y, see how often one precedes the other and when they happen independently. The function to users would be letting them track their own actions (e.g. diet, health, etc) according to preset (or high-karma member-submitted) input:data -sets. I should think with members in the thousands such a thing would become useful. Especially were the service entangled with some social app to get users and some very good statistics processing to get results. Does anything like this at all exist? (Any obvious ideas why it doesn’t, barring there possibly being lack of incentive to use it, lack of an incentive for a company/person to program it?)
I’ve been working on a personal organisation web-app. Partly because it’s fun, partly because hopefully it’ll get to stage of being useful. Currently all data is basically private to each user (I have the only user account, though now that it’s online it is open to new users). Features right now are calendars and diaries, with users being able create multiple iterations of each for whatever differing purposes.
One planned feature is the ability to have dialogues with oneself, (Alicorn’s Luminosity Elspeth-style) between 1-8ish other named personalities / selves / sides. The idea is that you can talk to yourself in different styles or with different opinions, so that you can evaluate more precisely any internal conflicts, be they between values or ideas or choices. Then if you feel the conflict come up again you can check the log rather than worry about it all over again, maybe with additional insights the next times.
Very reluctantly posting link: http://buytherooftop.com/yourder/ (because it’s only slightly of use to me at the minute, although I anticipate making it more so).
I made it because I didn’t see anything similar on the web. I’m hoping to add a few other more complex things to it (like full hierarchical task / goal management systems) but those will wait for a while.
I may post about other personal projects, but this was the most obviously relevant.
It strikes me that searching the internet for this phrase, and meaningfully equivalent variants, would be a really interesting experience.
I knew there was an elegant solution to be had, my own reply became pointless. Thank you.
If you don’t open your eyes and guess, you have a 0.5 chance of being right. The policy of ignoring the wall-color in front of you makes 50% of ’identical-you’s wrong about the coin toss.
Opening your eyes allows 99% of atomically ‘identical-you’s to guess the coin toss correctly, and gives the other 1% information that will lead them astray. The policy of taking the wall-colour as evidence makes 99% of ’identical-you’s correct about the coin toss.
This is as far as I am able to take the problem, to a point that I understand what’s going on. What aren’t I getting, if from here it doesn’t seem special?
I’ve been looking for this sort of software for forever, and this is a great post too. Thanks a lot!
I was impressed at how easily I understood everything you said, despite having experienced neither any non-fleeting mania, nor the depth into the academic fields that you have acquired. So your writing rules at that.
Definitely would like to read more, particularly as someone whose view of the world is consistently mundane.
My mum, among others, doesn’t like wasting food. I frame it thus, in the hope that it will nudge her wanting in the more useful direction: if you’re not going to enjoy eating it, or if eating it is going to have effects you don’t want, then eating it is more wasteful than throwing it away.
Alas the benefits of being open about a very slight sexual curiosity are probably not often great enough to make complete honesty seem worthwhile. Also such curiosity tends to signal a lack of self-knowledge and thus to an extent lack of trustworthiness, probably hence the vague stigma that many people have against dating bisexuals.
Hmm, I’ll experiment with a variety, and report back if I make findings.
I find some of the most relatable parts of the story to be the vague hero-against-the world / morality allegory, particularly in the dialogue quoted here. I think as much of the micro-morality of the story is Randian in a way that as much of the surface dialogue might paint Rand as a negative colour (if only by showing how ugly her beliefs on the surface, but revealing their purer roots). Harry is basically saying “Yes, everyone is incompetent; woe that they didn’t have the luck to be not, and let’s try and change that without getting too annoyed”. With greater intelligence comes greater ability (and in a sense perceived moral obligation) to restrain or make productive one’s hatred towards that which can’t be changed or that can’t be changed easily. Harry is taking morality as being the extent to which a strength can compensate for weakness in the spirit of creating future strength. The Randian ‘strike’ is a utilitarian way to achieve Randian values, and not an inherently Randian way or whatever. I don’t think it’s immediately obvious Harry isn’t aiming for Randian values, if perhaps narratively in a way that Ayn Rand would not have imagined—i.e. strength and weakness are much more complexly intertwined.
(It’s not obvious either that I’m disagreeing with the parent post.)