I once considered doing a mini-sequence on marksmanship along similar lines to your drawing sequence, but decided it was too tangential to the Less Wrong project to be of much value. Was I wrong?
What interested me was how much the study of drawing was relevant to rationality. Not only do you have to learn to observe reality (this is surprisingly hard), but you have to pretty much scrap your entire model of how you think drawing works. (Almost everything you will naturally gravitate towards is wrong). Most artists don’t notice that they should be applying these lessons to the rest of their life, but I think the skills can generalize if attention is brought to that notion.
It seems to me that everything about drawing that makes it a good training ground for rationality is even more true of, say, long range precision rifle shooting. Also, evaluating your progress is easier because the metrics are more objective (targets don’t lie) and your biases are more apparent (you can go so far as quantifying your biases by fractions of a centimeter and even giving them directionality in 3-dimensional space).
“Hey, can I shoot you?” is somewhat less appropriate as a conversational gambit, compared to “Can I draw you”.
Your response misses the point. Obviously, I didn’t have marksmanship in mind for helping you approach people on the subway. I believe the primary goal of this sequence was to explore how to improve general rationality through drawing, not merely better social skills through drawing. It is my contention that various shooting sports teach skills that are just as or more readily transferable to other domains that require rationality. Of course, I am willing to be corrected by Raemon as to his/her intention in writing this sequence.
But yes, I think this could be an interesting. I have a mild phobia of guns (that I don’t see a need to override), but I would be interested to read the material. In general, I am a fan of Less Wrong articles that talk about a real, instrumental goals we have had and how we achieved them, as long as the experience can be tied to rationality tools.
Put another way: Technically, ANYTHING you can win at relates to instrumental rationality, insofar as you can always rationally choose not to think about too hard about it (i.e. dancing and sex may require you to deliberately turn off certain parts of your brain). My litmus test for “should this be a Less Wrong article” is: “Did your ‘rational approach’ to this subject consist primarily of identifying that Less Wrong skills weren’t that relevant and then following conventional wisdom, or did you actually have to use tools that you learned here?”
I know others may disagree with me on this (my post’s already been downvoted at least once), but anything that connects rationality to actual instrumental success seems like a good idea to me.
Metaphors are cheap. With a little effort you can take any arbitrary hobby, from abstract math to whittling little wooden bear statues, and come up with plausible rationality lessons to be learned from it. Some of them will even generalize to most practitioners of the art. And that’s fine as far as it goes; you certainly shouldn’t reject any insights that fall into your lap, and on the communicative side of things there’s always a need for compelling examples with a personal flavor.
But outside of a few tasks that’re tightly and explicitly bound to specific rationality skills (poker comes to mind), I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to spend a lot of time debating which hobbies are better at inculcating good habits of thought, let alone recommending rationalist (sic) ones to people. There’s an information gap and a lot of potential confirmation bias there, and that’s usually a recipe for unproductive debate. At most it might be a good idea to write a few survey posts regarding the applications of common hobbies—and while the OP might pass muster under that light if you turn your head and squint, I think it’s probably better viewed as a case study.
At most it might be a good idea to write a few survey posts regarding the applications of common hobbies—and while the OP might pass muster under that light if you turn your head and squint, I think it’s probably better viewed as a case study.
I wanted to respond to this, but I’m not actually sure what you meant. Can you clarify a bit?
Rifle shooting was just an example (the one I’m most familiar with), but you can practice the art of marksmanship with a bow or even a slingshot for that matter.
I would be interested in a sequence like that. Of course, if it only touches rationality tangentially then maybe LessWrong is not the best place for it. But again, I personally would be very interested in it.
I once considered doing a mini-sequence on marksmanship along similar lines to your drawing sequence, but decided it was too tangential to the Less Wrong project to be of much value. Was I wrong?
“Hey, can I shoot you?” is somewhat less appropriate as a conversational gambit, compared to “Can I draw you”.
It seems to me that everything about drawing that makes it a good training ground for rationality is even more true of, say, long range precision rifle shooting. Also, evaluating your progress is easier because the metrics are more objective (targets don’t lie) and your biases are more apparent (you can go so far as quantifying your biases by fractions of a centimeter and even giving them directionality in 3-dimensional space).
Your response misses the point. Obviously, I didn’t have marksmanship in mind for helping you approach people on the subway. I believe the primary goal of this sequence was to explore how to improve general rationality through drawing, not merely better social skills through drawing. It is my contention that various shooting sports teach skills that are just as or more readily transferable to other domains that require rationality. Of course, I am willing to be corrected by Raemon as to his/her intention in writing this sequence.
I think your response misses the joke.
But yes, I think this could be an interesting. I have a mild phobia of guns (that I don’t see a need to override), but I would be interested to read the material. In general, I am a fan of Less Wrong articles that talk about a real, instrumental goals we have had and how we achieved them, as long as the experience can be tied to rationality tools.
Put another way: Technically, ANYTHING you can win at relates to instrumental rationality, insofar as you can always rationally choose not to think about too hard about it (i.e. dancing and sex may require you to deliberately turn off certain parts of your brain). My litmus test for “should this be a Less Wrong article” is: “Did your ‘rational approach’ to this subject consist primarily of identifying that Less Wrong skills weren’t that relevant and then following conventional wisdom, or did you actually have to use tools that you learned here?”
I know others may disagree with me on this (my post’s already been downvoted at least once), but anything that connects rationality to actual instrumental success seems like a good idea to me.
Metaphors are cheap. With a little effort you can take any arbitrary hobby, from abstract math to whittling little wooden bear statues, and come up with plausible rationality lessons to be learned from it. Some of them will even generalize to most practitioners of the art. And that’s fine as far as it goes; you certainly shouldn’t reject any insights that fall into your lap, and on the communicative side of things there’s always a need for compelling examples with a personal flavor.
But outside of a few tasks that’re tightly and explicitly bound to specific rationality skills (poker comes to mind), I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to spend a lot of time debating which hobbies are better at inculcating good habits of thought, let alone recommending rationalist (sic) ones to people. There’s an information gap and a lot of potential confirmation bias there, and that’s usually a recipe for unproductive debate. At most it might be a good idea to write a few survey posts regarding the applications of common hobbies—and while the OP might pass muster under that light if you turn your head and squint, I think it’s probably better viewed as a case study.
I wanted to respond to this, but I’m not actually sure what you meant. Can you clarify a bit?
It wasn’t until this point that I realized you were not talking about archery.
Rifle shooting was just an example (the one I’m most familiar with), but you can practice the art of marksmanship with a bow or even a slingshot for that matter.
I would be interested in a sequence like that. Of course, if it only touches rationality tangentially then maybe LessWrong is not the best place for it. But again, I personally would be very interested in it.