I feel like the “this will just take so much time” section doesn’t really engage with the full-strength version of the critique.
When I think of people I know who have successfully gone from unremarkable to reasonably impressive via some kind of deliberate practice and training, the list consists of Nate Soares and Alex Turner. That’s it; that’s the entire list. Notably, they both followed a pretty similar path to get there (not by accident). And that path is not short.
Sure, you can do a lightweight version of “feedbackloop rationality” which just involves occasional short reviews or whatever. But that does not achieve most of the value.
My pitch to someone concerned about the timesink would instead be roughly: “Look, you know deep down that you are incompetent and don’t know what you’re doing (in the spirit of Impostor Syndrome and the Great LARP). You’re clinging to these stories about how the thing you’re currently doing happens to be useful somehow, but some part of you knows perfectly well that you’re doing your current work mainly just because you can do your current work without facing the scary fact of your own ineptitude when faced with any actually useful (and difficult) problem. The only way you will ever do something of real value is if you level the fuck up. Is that going to be a big timesink and take a lot of effort? Yes. But guess what? There isn’t actually a trade-off here. Your current work is not useful, you are not going to do anything useful without getting stronger, so how about you stop hiding from your own ineptitude and just go get stronger already?”.
(And yes, that is the sort of pitch I sometimes make to myself when considering whether to dump time and effort into some form of deliberate practice.)
I don’t claim to know all the key pieces of whatever they did, but some pieces which are obvious from talking to them both and following their writings:
Both invested heavily in self-studying a bunch of technical material.
Both heavily practiced the sorts of things Joe described in his recent “fake thinking and real thinking” post. For instance, they both have a trained habit of noticing the places where most people would gloss over things (especially technical/mathematical), and instead looking for a concrete example.
Both heavily practiced the standard metacognitive moves, e.g. noticing when a mental move worked very well/poorly and reinforcing accordingly, asking “how could I have noticed that faster”, etc.
Both invested in understanding their emotional barriers and figuring out sustainable ways to handle them. (I personally think both of them have important shortcomings in that department, but they’ve at least put some effort into it and are IMO doing better than they would otherwise.)
Both have a general mindset of actually trying to notice their own shortcomings and improve, rather than make excuses or hide.
And finally: both put a pretty ridiculous amount of effort into improving, in terms of raw time and energy, and in terms of emotional investment, and in terms of “actually doing the thing for real not just talking or playing”.
The thing I’m currently hearing you saying (either in contrast to this post, or flagging that this post doesn’t really acknowledge) is:
there’s a bunch of technical knowledge (which is a different type of thing than “metacognitive skill training”, and which also requires a ton of work to master)
the amount of work going into all of this is just, like, a ton, and the phrasing in the post (and maybe other conversations with me) doesn’t really come close to grappling with the enormity of it?
I think that accurately summarizes the concrete things, but misses a mood.
The missing mood is less about “grappling with the enormity of it”, and more about “grappling with the effort of it” or “accepting the need to struggle for real”. Like, in terms of time spent, we’re talking maybe a year or two of full-time effort, spread out across maybe 3-5 years. That’s far more than the post grapples with, but not prohibitively enormous; it’s comparable to getting a degree. The missing mood is more about “yup, it’s gonna be hard, and I’m gonna have to buckle down and do the hard thing for reals, not try to avoid it”. The technical knowledge is part of that—like, “yup, I’m gonna have to actually for-reals learn some gnarly technical stuff, not try to avoid it”. But not just the technical study. For instance, actually for-reals noticing and admitting when I’m avoiding unpleasant truths, or when my plans won’t work and I need to change tack, has a similar feel: “yup, my plans are actually for-reals trash, I need to actually for-reals update, and I don’t yet have any idea what to do instead, and it looks hard”.
I feel like the “this will just take so much time” section doesn’t really engage with the full-strength version of the critique.
When I think of people I know who have successfully gone from unremarkable to reasonably impressive via some kind of deliberate practice and training, the list consists of Nate Soares and Alex Turner. That’s it; that’s the entire list. Notably, they both followed a pretty similar path to get there (not by accident). And that path is not short.
Sure, you can do a lightweight version of “feedbackloop rationality” which just involves occasional short reviews or whatever. But that does not achieve most of the value.
My pitch to someone concerned about the timesink would instead be roughly: “Look, you know deep down that you are incompetent and don’t know what you’re doing (in the spirit of Impostor Syndrome and the Great LARP). You’re clinging to these stories about how the thing you’re currently doing happens to be useful somehow, but some part of you knows perfectly well that you’re doing your current work mainly just because you can do your current work without facing the scary fact of your own ineptitude when faced with any actually useful (and difficult) problem. The only way you will ever do something of real value is if you level the fuck up. Is that going to be a big timesink and take a lot of effort? Yes. But guess what? There isn’t actually a trade-off here. Your current work is not useful, you are not going to do anything useful without getting stronger, so how about you stop hiding from your own ineptitude and just go get stronger already?”.
(And yes, that is the sort of pitch I sometimes make to myself when considering whether to dump time and effort into some form of deliberate practice.)
Probably will have a bunch more to say, but immediate question is “what’s your story about the gears for Soares/Turner?”
I don’t claim to know all the key pieces of whatever they did, but some pieces which are obvious from talking to them both and following their writings:
Both invested heavily in self-studying a bunch of technical material.
Both heavily practiced the sorts of things Joe described in his recent “fake thinking and real thinking” post. For instance, they both have a trained habit of noticing the places where most people would gloss over things (especially technical/mathematical), and instead looking for a concrete example.
Both heavily practiced the standard metacognitive moves, e.g. noticing when a mental move worked very well/poorly and reinforcing accordingly, asking “how could I have noticed that faster”, etc.
Both invested in understanding their emotional barriers and figuring out sustainable ways to handle them. (I personally think both of them have important shortcomings in that department, but they’ve at least put some effort into it and are IMO doing better than they would otherwise.)
Both have a general mindset of actually trying to notice their own shortcomings and improve, rather than make excuses or hide.
And finally: both put a pretty ridiculous amount of effort into improving, in terms of raw time and energy, and in terms of emotional investment, and in terms of “actually doing the thing for real not just talking or playing”.
Nod.
The thing I’m currently hearing you saying (either in contrast to this post, or flagging that this post doesn’t really acknowledge) is:
there’s a bunch of technical knowledge (which is a different type of thing than “metacognitive skill training”, and which also requires a ton of work to master)
the amount of work going into all of this is just, like, a ton, and the phrasing in the post (and maybe other conversations with me) doesn’t really come close to grappling with the enormity of it?
Are there other things you meant?
I think that accurately summarizes the concrete things, but misses a mood.
The missing mood is less about “grappling with the enormity of it”, and more about “grappling with the effort of it” or “accepting the need to struggle for real”. Like, in terms of time spent, we’re talking maybe a year or two of full-time effort, spread out across maybe 3-5 years. That’s far more than the post grapples with, but not prohibitively enormous; it’s comparable to getting a degree. The missing mood is more about “yup, it’s gonna be hard, and I’m gonna have to buckle down and do the hard thing for reals, not try to avoid it”. The technical knowledge is part of that—like, “yup, I’m gonna have to actually for-reals learn some gnarly technical stuff, not try to avoid it”. But not just the technical study. For instance, actually for-reals noticing and admitting when I’m avoiding unpleasant truths, or when my plans won’t work and I need to change tack, has a similar feel: “yup, my plans are actually for-reals trash, I need to actually for-reals update, and I don’t yet have any idea what to do instead, and it looks hard”.