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Karma: 237

theme_arrow Feb 8, 2021, 3:41 AM
5 points
in reply to: dksolo’s comment on: Silence
This comment (and the whole discussion) really resonated with me. I think a hard part of this is that if I try and totally remove the activities that allow for opting out of being (video games, mindless reddit scrolling etc.), it tends to only work for a short time before I relapse all at once into them. It seems like this is a case where moderation might be the answer for me personally rather than abstinence.
One unexpected positive of Hammertime is that I’ve noticed my desire to play video games gradually decreasing over the last month. This might be an interesting case where the solution to the problem is to solve other life problems, at which point the desire to cease to exist simply fades away.

theme_arrow Feb 4, 2021, 6:30 AM
1 point
on: CoZE 3: Empiricism
Overestimation: Interacting with external reviewers/customers at work. I thought I had useful things to contribute to discussions with external folks starting maybe 4-5 months into my job. I didn’t understand how to handle those interactions tactfully (and overestimated the chillness of by bosses) and got slapped down pretty hard.
Underestimation: Research ability as an undergrad. I kept thinking I was a fraud and doing terrible work right up until the day I won the research top prize in my department.

theme_arrow Feb 3, 2021, 5:07 AM
1 point
on: Design 3: Intentionality
Done well: I really like the daily prompts to comment, I think they’ve done a lot to encourage me to stick with it. They’ve also been nice because I get to see everyone else’s responses.
Done badly: I wish more days had direct connections to the bug list (i.e. more challenges directly of the form “pick a bug from the bug list and apply today’s technique to it”). It’s harder to motivate myself to tackle challenges on the bug list when it’s implicit that today’s technique can be applied to them than it is when it’s explicit.

theme_arrow Feb 2, 2021, 5:21 AM
3 points
on: TAPs 3: Reductionism
I applied the method of exhaustion to my course final project this semester, breaking it into 9 steps. It was a fun exercise, and I appreciated it!
It’s interesting, you definitely see failure rates that look logarithmic in marriages and bankruptcies, but I do think that some of that is what tcheasdfjkl said—some of that is just from the fact that things that fail early don’t get a chance to fail later. In my personal experience, I think there are two big places where my plans fail: before they start and at the first major setback. I think that usually if I can get started on something and keep going past the first time there’s a problem, I can usually overcome future problems. But sometimes the first setback is enough to make me set something aside, and I just never end up coming back.

theme_arrow Feb 1, 2021, 7:23 AM
3 points
on: Yoda Timers 3: Speed
Interestingly enough, five minutes wasn’t enough for me to get any improvement in typeracer or the arithmetic game. I started at 80 WPM and got results both above and below that on my subsequent tries. Similarly I got 20 on my first attempt at the arithmetic game, 23 on the second attempt, and 17 on the third. I don’t think that makes speed impossible to train, it just suggests that it’ll take longer than 5 minutes!
Here are some of my proudest speed records:
- Performance on exams when time is tight. For example, I had an undergraduate materials science exam where the professor had grossly underestimated the required time, making it a pure game of speed. I got a 93 when the average was in the low 60s.
- Finishing an anomaly investigation at work. I was assigned to lead the investigation and resolution efforts to a significant issue found in one of our systems. I found the root cause, came up with a corrective action, and got agreement from our customer and independent reviewers in less than ¹⁄₂ the time it had taken on an earlier similar issue that been assigned to another engineer.
- Cooking breakfast! I’m a master at all-out speed maximization on making breakfast burritos, avocado toast, eggs etc. I’ve gotten really good at prepping absolutely no more than is needed before I start the longest-cooking item going, then using the time when things are toasting and cooking to get everything together in just a few minutes.

theme_arrow Jan 28, 2021, 4:54 AM
3 points
on: Bug Hunt 3
I do think I’ve gotten better at achieving my values over the course of Hammertime. the biggest way that’s manifested has been in how I’m spending my time. I’m spending more time reading books and talking to friends rather than aimlessly browsing the internet or playing videogames. Interestingly enough, I’ve actually been spending less time working, which I wasn’t consciously trying to do but I think is positive, as I generally work somewhat too hard.
Reflecting back on the bug list for the second time, I only came up with a modest number of additional bugs. The list currently stands at 132 bugs, of which I’ve solved 38. My favorite bug solve was to finally get around to hanging some art in the empty space near my desk.

theme_arrow Jan 27, 2021, 5:01 AM
3 points
on: Friendship
This was a great post, and I fully agree with the idea that working to make our interactions with others positive is an important part of making life good. I found that a good additional exercise to go with this post was to set a Yoda timer and reach out to friends who I haven’t talked to in a bit.

theme_arrow Jan 24, 2021, 11:59 PM
3 points
on: TDT for Humans
I like your weakened version of TDT, it feels like it does really capture something salient about human decision-making. I recognize that the exact number isn’t really important, but I think I’d describe it as close to a one-percent shift than a ten-percent shift for myself. I feel like I personally have taken a very long time to go from the first few times I do something to that thing feeling natural. I wonder if that’s something that tends to differ a lot between people or different kinds of actions.

theme_arrow Jan 24, 2021, 1:39 AM
4 points
in reply to: jasoncrawford’s comment on: Technological stagnation: Why I came around
I like Noah Smith and enjoyed that post, but I’m not sure I agree with the conclusions. I think I agree more with the critique from Applied Divinity Studies than I do with Noah. There are definitely areas for optimism, but I haven’t seen anything that looks like we’re actually getting increases in productivity growth in the US or similar countries. Moreover, I have seen no indications that cost disease has slowed (see healthcare costs for example, other than the decrease in care due to COVID lockdowns, there’s no real evidence of a slowdown). And beyond all that, the ineffective response to COVID in the US has shown just how badly our state capacity for effectively confronting problems has deteriorated.
I would really, really like stagnation to be over (and I do my best to support to efforts to make that happen!), but I don’t yet feel very hopeful.

theme_arrow Jan 20, 2021, 4:08 AM
3 points
on: Three Miniatures
Listing all of the times I’ve improved rapidly in the past was a very interesting exercise. Many of the times where I made a really big improvement stemmed from making a decision that was hard to make in the moment, but locked me into a path toward something good. That’s very much in line with the basic principle is “take advantage of willpower now to put yourself on a course in which you don’t need willpower to do the right thing later.”
Another idea that seems common to a number of the examples I can come up with is an idea that I might call “seize the moment.” It’s very similar to the first one but perhaps just slightly distinct. The basic idea is if you do one hard thing and it works, you may find that lots of other hard things suddenly seem easier, at least momentarily. I’ve had times where I was able to get on a roll of compounding improvements that way, and I think it can be surprisingly successful at allowing you to make big changes.

theme_arrow 19 Jan 2021 8:39 UTC
4 points
on: Public selves
Epistemic status: largely just brainstorming
I think there are a number of examples in history of people or groups of people successfully advancing the cause of ideas significantly outside the societal mainstream through living and embodying those ideas fully openly and authentically. One example that comes to mind is FM-2030, who was pretty much the exact opposite of choosing to spend one’s weirdness points selectively and did a lot to spread transhumanist ideas as a result. Anther good example would be the post-Stonewall gay liberation movement.

theme_arrow 18 Jan 2021 23:33 UTC
1 point
on: CoZE 2
I think courage is more than just the absence of fear, I think it’s the ability to take actions that are important but difficult or dangerous, while being fully aware of the risks. Similar to what Qiaochu_Yuan said, just going through life doing dangerous stuff without caring out the consequences is recklessness, not courage. I think you may or may not have fear when an action is dangerous, but you can be courageous regardless of whether you’re afraid.
To me, CoZE seems like it’s more targeted at decreasing fear than it is at increasing courage. A lot of what’s involved in CoZE is getting your subconscious to understand that lots of things that are scary aren’t actually difficult or dangerous. Targeting courage itself seems harder, at least in my conception, because it requires actually doing difficult or dangerous things. I don’t have any genius ideas of how to train courage, but it seems like activities that force you to do difficult tasks as part of a group, such as team sports or military training, have traditionally been used to train courage.

theme_arrow 16 Jan 2021 4:45 UTC
3 points
on: Design 2
In general, my advice is that making something totally painless on a computer is worth extra cost or hassle setting up. I really like using dropbox for storing schoolwork because it’s just a folder on my desktop that I can use like any other, but it’s automatically backing up everything. I stay under the limit of what’s allowed in the free version, but I think the paid version may still be worth it for many people if you’re the kind of person who can’t be bothered to regularly back things up ordinarily. Another similar one is to get a laptop docking station and leave an external hard drive plugged into it. Then you can configure your backups to happen automatically whenever you’re connected, removing the need to do anything manually.
In other news, today was last day of the useless activity I picked to do daily for a week on day 8. I’ve been doing the “pat your head while rubbing your stomach in a circle thing,” which must have been pretty hilarious for anyone watching through my apartment window. But I’m proud to have successfully stuck with it for a full week, despite its ridiculousness!

theme_arrow 15 Jan 2021 5:57 UTC
4 points
on: TAPs 2
Switching majors in undergrad was definitely a “factory reset” moment for me. I came into college with lots of AP credits and the plan of being a chemical engineer. I started classes in the major right from the beginning of freshman year, and it felt great to be getting ahead. Of course, the disadvantage of that was that I didn’t have any real chance to explore other interests before starting. I actually enjoyed the major classes, but it turned out that there was quite a bit of stuff I enjoyed better. It was soon pretty clear to all my friends that I would do better in another department, I kept denying that I should switch. I don’t know exactly what changed in my brain, but when the time at which you fully locked into a major got closer, something finally flipped. I broke through the sunk costs mentality, switched majors, and ended up quite a bit happier.

theme_arrow 14 Jan 2021 6:56 UTC
3 points
on: Yoda Timers 2
I grew up in Oakland, but didn’t return after college. Looking at California as it was then and as it’s changed since I’ve left, I keep feeling like housing policy is really the nexus of so many different problems (and that this is true nationwide as well). We’re struggling with homelessness, high costs of living, climate change, wildfires etc., and housing has such a big role to play in all of those. We make new housing construction so hard, not just with zoning but with lot size and coverage restrictions, parking requirements, and arduous consultation and permitting processes. So many of the most desirable neighborhoods in the country, Greenwich Village, Rittenhouse Square etc. would be illegal to build today! Hard to build housing means rising rents, rising rents mean high cost of living and people being pushed into homelessness. People moving to exurbs add carbon emissions, and low density inside cities chokes public transit systems that can’t get a critical mass of riders. As we push farther into urban-wilderness boundaries, we put more people at risk in wildfires. I’m not by any means the first person to say this, but I just wish more people could see the whole web of connections.
Phew that was hard, I ended up taking about an extra 30 seconds to get it done, but it’s a good exercise in just putting words down and not spending too much time searching for perfection.

theme_arrow 13 Jan 2021 8:10 UTC
3 points
on: Bug Hunt 2
I would like to be the lead author on a patent (and one that actually represents a new development). I work on a team that has produced dozens of patents, but none in the last few years. I want to get my skills to the point where I’m genuinely pushing boundaries, and more selfishly I want to have something public to show for my work. I don’t know if that’ll be possible on my current team, or if this team/company’s time has passed, but it’s something I would find really special.
Reflecting back on the bug list, I actually came up with relatively little more to add based on today’s post. Thinking about things in terms of the themes discussed today certainly helped me reframe some of the items that were already on there, but it didn’t make me come up with significantly more bugs. The list currently stands at 124 bugs, of which I’ve solved 26. Many of the solved bugs were simple ones related to my space and physical objects, since these ones could be quickly solved with a purchase. But I’ve made progress on more complicated bugs too. The highest bug that I consider to be solved is a ⁵⁄₁₀ difficulty, failing to shower and brush my teeth on-time in the morning, which I seem to have been able to fix with a TAP. But I’ve got a ¹⁰⁄₁₀ difficulty bug, not being sure if my current job is a good fit for my long-term happiness, that I’m making serious progress on. That one was actually remarkably easy to get started on, I told my manager that I had some available time and was interested in trying to broaden my skills, and he arranged for me to spend 1/4th of my time for the next three months working with another team in a different area.

All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with how these first 10 days have gone, and I’m hoping that the next 10 will be similarly positive!

theme_arrow 12 Jan 2021 7:06 UTC
4 points
on: Hammertime Day 10: Murphyjitsu
This was a super interesting exercise! I chose doing well in the next class in my master’s degree as the goal. I have generally done well so far, but I’m working full-time while going to school (because work is paying for it), so every semester is a bit of a struggle. What was unexpected about murphyjitsuing this goal was the way in which there were basically two categories of possible problems I found. The first were the easy, well-contained problems (like “I generally submit assignments at the last minute, making it easy for technical difficulties to mess things up”). That’s the kind of problem that can be solved via yoda timers, reminders etc. The second kind is the big life problems, like “I could lose motivation,” or “I could have a serious health problem.” These are much harder to defeat through planning, and can only be hit more indirectly.
I found the second category of problems to be disheartening in a way, since there’s not an easy way to fight them off. But they’re also at least a little bit motivating, because it helps me see the connection between everything else in the bug list and this specific goal. Getting more regular sleep, going for more walks, and doing a better job of keeping up with friends will all help in little ways in guarding against these bigger risks.

theme_arrow 10 Jan 2021 17:36 UTC
7 points
on: Hammertime Day 9: Time Calibration
My worst case of the planning fallacy is a very general one—any assignment with a deadline. I consistently think “this problem set isn’t so hard, I’ll be able to get it done on Tuesday even though it’s due Friday.” In reality, I’m always working right up until the deadline, pretty much regardless of how hard the assignment is. It’s even worse at work, where a large fraction of the deadlines are made up and easy to slip past without anyone getting mad. I think the underlying dynamics here aren’t just about the planning fallacy, it’s also a matter of how my personal control systems operate, and I’m trying to address both pieces as part of hammertime.

theme_arrow 10 Jan 2021 0:24 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 8: Sunk Cost Faith
Epistemic status: I was told to argue this position.
For a long-term project (say, for example, finishing a PHD rather than mastering out), the true utility you’ll derive from it is a random variable with some true mean and variance. Maybe finishing the PHD will take 8 years and you’ll never get that TT position you dream of, maybe it’ll take 5 and there will be a perfect job for you at the end. You can’t know the true mean utility, your guess of the mean is an estimator, which is itself a random variable. I think your argument was that sometimes your estimate of the mean utility will be negative, but that the true mean utility will be positive. So you should stick through and see if it improves. But the inverse can also be true—you can have cases where your estimate of the mean is positive and the true mean is negative. So “stick with things even though your estimate of the mean utility you’ll derive from it is negative because it might actually be positive in reality” seems like as logical a rule as “drop things even though your estimate of the mean utility is positive because it might actually be negative.”

theme_arrow 9 Jan 2021 5:23 UTC
4 points
on: Hammertime Day 7: Aversion Factoring
My job involves sometimes dealing with information that can’t necessarily be shared with everyone at the company. I have an official mentor, who’s a senior employee who used to work in my group and is now in another. I put off setting up a mentorship meeting for months because I was working on a project and didn’t know whether I could talk about it with him. All I needed to do was send my manager a quick email to check, but I just kept putting it off.
On the flip side, I’ve had instances where adding a trivial inconvenience has been key to breaking a bad habit. For example, in college I was on the top bunk of a bunkbed for two years, Those years, I’d put my alarm clock down off the bed so that I’d have to get out of bed to turn off the alarm, at which point I’d never be tempted to snooze it and go back to sleep.