I don’t think most peoples’ thinking most of the time routes through the (fantasy) → (planning) move.
relative thinking time does not sound like a useful measure—if I imagine someone made a real living dragon, would I want to ask how many hours did they spend on thinking about “How would I make a real living dragon?” compared to thinking about “the rest of their life” .. meh 🤷
also if I consider 2 workflow variants:
16yo: (fantasy) → (planning) → (learning it’s not possible the hard way)
40yo: (fantasy) → (instantly notice the weakest part of potential planning)
..is it “better” to spend time on pre-doomed projects by not knowing better yet or to miss learning opportunities by focusing only on feasible projects?
..maybe you still like “time” measure here, but do you also have a better measure in mind how to stay on a healthy trajectory between optimism/curiosity and grounding/focus?
I actually weakly think that a lot of people (maybe a large majority) just don’t make this move at all; their fantasies live in a separate magisterium where they suspend disbelief, and they never think about how to actualize those fantasies. But I wanted the post to be more about “how does thinking work when not the move?” rather than yet another flavor of John dumping on normies. (Dumping on normies isn’t particularly interesting most of the time, it’s just an inconvenient side effect of figuring out how to do better.)
Regarding the “time” measure… I do think it’s possible, with practice, to structure more of one’s day-to-day thoughts around the fantasy → planning move, not just Big Thoughts. (I myself am only good at this in some domains, but that’s enough to notice the possibility). For example, a domain where I think I do this reasonably well is in choosing what to eat. I have to first some up a fantasy of Exactly What I Feel Like Eating Right Now, which is a different important mental move. Then, the fantasy → planning move often looks like pulling up google maps to find exactly what it is I feel like eating right now. And sometimes it’s just not available conveniently enough—e.g. a few days ago I was craving paratha and couldn’t find a good option sufficiently nearby. But other times I end up finding restaurants I hadn’t previously known about, and I go try them.
Dumping on normies isn’t particularly interesting most of the time,
I thought gossip was the thing for the human brain—personally, I find these ways of digging your own grave quite fascinating 🍿
fantasies live in a separate magisterium where they suspend disbelief, and they never think about how to actualize those fantasies
to overthink potential reasons for the observed ratio of “fantasy → planning” and “separate magisteria”—I imagine that the genes that correlated with agency about fire fantasies found themselves in burning villages..
reductio ad absurdum for the idea of wanting more agency about fantasies—“how to make a thinking machine?” .. perhaps we need more grandmothers to slap bright-eyed boys on the wrists, not to pour more billions of dollars into agentic fantasies?
but I agree there is enough room for benign fantasies to make it into planning (..but then perhaps keep the plan under a lid for most stuff, like for a fantasy that involves stripping John off his sunglasses [not you as a person, John as a para-social sexualized object] - the appeal is only in the imagination, not that I would want to attempt doing it for real)
relative thinking time does not sound like a useful measure—if I imagine someone made a real living dragon, would I want to ask how many hours did they spend on thinking about “How would I make a real living dragon?” compared to thinking about “the rest of their life” .. meh 🤷
also if I consider 2 workflow variants:
16yo: (fantasy) → (planning) → (learning it’s not possible the hard way)
40yo: (fantasy) → (instantly notice the weakest part of potential planning)
..is it “better” to spend time on pre-doomed projects by not knowing better yet or to miss learning opportunities by focusing only on feasible projects?
..maybe you still like “time” measure here, but do you also have a better measure in mind how to stay on a healthy trajectory between optimism/curiosity and grounding/focus?
Good points/questions.
I actually weakly think that a lot of people (maybe a large majority) just don’t make this move at all; their fantasies live in a separate magisterium where they suspend disbelief, and they never think about how to actualize those fantasies. But I wanted the post to be more about “how does thinking work when not the move?” rather than yet another flavor of John dumping on normies. (Dumping on normies isn’t particularly interesting most of the time, it’s just an inconvenient side effect of figuring out how to do better.)
Regarding the “time” measure… I do think it’s possible, with practice, to structure more of one’s day-to-day thoughts around the fantasy → planning move, not just Big Thoughts. (I myself am only good at this in some domains, but that’s enough to notice the possibility). For example, a domain where I think I do this reasonably well is in choosing what to eat. I have to first some up a fantasy of Exactly What I Feel Like Eating Right Now, which is a different important mental move. Then, the fantasy → planning move often looks like pulling up google maps to find exactly what it is I feel like eating right now. And sometimes it’s just not available conveniently enough—e.g. a few days ago I was craving paratha and couldn’t find a good option sufficiently nearby. But other times I end up finding restaurants I hadn’t previously known about, and I go try them.
I thought gossip was the thing for the human brain—personally, I find these ways of digging your own grave quite fascinating 🍿
to overthink potential reasons for the observed ratio of “fantasy → planning” and “separate magisteria”—I imagine that the genes that correlated with agency about fire fantasies found themselves in burning villages..
reductio ad absurdum for the idea of wanting more agency about fantasies—“how to make a thinking machine?” .. perhaps we need more grandmothers to slap bright-eyed boys on the wrists, not to pour more billions of dollars into agentic fantasies?
but I agree there is enough room for benign fantasies to make it into planning (..but then perhaps keep the plan under a lid for most stuff, like for a fantasy that involves stripping John off his sunglasses [not you as a person, John as a para-social sexualized object] - the appeal is only in the imagination, not that I would want to attempt doing it for real)