(1) Be one of those people who actually turn knowledge, general knowledge, into personally designed actions/policies. The kind of people who, upon learning that driving is more dangerous than being attacked by spiders, and experiencing the first person evolved fear of spiders, understands that he should be as afraid of driving badly as he is of spiders, or much more, and drives accordingly.
Check. (Spiders scare me less than the red inbox icon on LW, but driving often scares the crap out of me.)
(2) Understand that there is no metaphysical Self, only a virtual center of narrative gravity (Read Dennett), whose manner of discounting time is hyperbolic (Read George Ainslie), weirdly self-representative (Read GEB), and basically a mess.
Check (kind-of—I haven’t read Dennett or Ainslie but I think I know what you’re talking about).
(3) Read Reasons and Persons, by Parfit, and really give up on your Naïve intuitions about personal identity over time.
Check (kind of—haven’t read Parfit, but).
Using (1) act accordingly, i.e. screw future retired you.
No. Just because future me isn’t the same as present me, doesn’t mean I should defect against him in the prisoner’s dilemma.
(4) Go through a university program in the humanities,
Damn it! Too late!
so no one tempts you by throwing money at you after you graduate
Ah. Well, if you are in the ‘right’ country, no one will tempt you that way if you graduate in a hard science either.
This has happened to an academically oriented friend of mine who graduated a Medical Doctor,
And medicine would count as “humanities” and not something it’s easy to make money with? scratches head
Check. (Spiders scare me less than the red inbox icon on LW, but driving often scares the crap out of me.)
Check (kind-of—I haven’t read Dennett or Ainslie but I think I know what you’re talking about).
Check (kind of—haven’t read Parfit, but).
No. Just because future me isn’t the same as present me, doesn’t mean I should defect against him in the prisoner’s dilemma.
Damn it! Too late!
Ah. Well, if you are in the ‘right’ country, no one will tempt you that way if you graduate in a hard science either.
And medicine would count as “humanities” and not something it’s easy to make money with? scratches head