Soft skills are hard. I’m extremely good at learning soft skills. I try as hard as I can to teach one whenever someone desires one, but they’re damn near impossible to teach. I’ve thus far only been successful at teaching someone how to do something related, in a way that their mind can grasp and run with, so that a few years later they will have developed the soft skill “on their own” (At which point, they will be doing exactly as I said exactly how I told them to, and they will tell me about this cool new thing they figured out how to do, and question why I didn’t ever tell them to do it that way).
So rather than teach how to learn soft skills, I’m going to describe a few of the most useful soft skills I have.
Maximize information input in a way that maximizes timeless usability. It works like this: prioritize observations in opposite order. The observation with the highest priority is the observation that is most distant from the desired observation while still being distantly related. The observation with the lowest priority is the observation that was first intended. For example: when performing a scientific experiment, the lowest-priority observation is the result of the experiment. Literally everything you could possibly observe related to the experiment is of higher priority than the direct result of the experiment. The reason for this is that distant observations have a tendency to be more useful for the future than direct observations.
Minimize friction to maximize usability at detail. When welding, move the welding rod and heating device at the exact rate that keeps the rod molten, and the welding pieces not-molten. When using a common carbon fiber dremel cutting blade on metal, move the blade through the metal at the exact rate that just barely melts the metal in the direction of the cut. When hammering a nail, make the nail move at a consistent rate that is fast enough to slide past the wood, but slow enough to not split the wood (this is like air resistance at sub-sonic vs super-sonic speeds). When talking to people (assuming you want to maximize usability of the other person’s mind), make statements and ask questions at a rate that doesn’t overload the person’s mind. When drawing a picture with a pencil, move the pencil across the medium at a rate that glides across the medium without catching on the medium.
Inference jump to maximize efficiency of skill gain. When developing a theory from a conceptual base, assume a related postulate to be true so that you can obtain more data from experiments. The postulate is most likely not true, but that’s not important. Experimenting under the assumption that a postulate is true is very useful in determining why said postulate is not true. Believe nothing. Treat all beliefs and assumed truths as inference jumps, because doing so maximizes their use. In order to make inference jumps with highest usability, all previously beliefs should be considered irrelevant. Failing that, consider the possibility that what you know to be wrong, or believe to be wrong, is in fact true, and use that as an inference jump.
I personally think the conceptual base of Less Wrong is contrary to efficient soft skill development. However, I think the conceptual base of Less Wrong is a potentially good platform to use to begin soft skill development. The most efficient way I can think to do so is to learn to use the conceptual base of Less Wrong, then make the inference jump that everything you’ve learned from Less Wrong is uselessly inefficient.
This is the pattern I see everywhere people strictly adhere to a conceptual base. It’s almost always a good platform to expand further from, provided the expansion stops using the platform as soon as possible.
Soft skills are hard. I’m extremely good at learning soft skills. I try as hard as I can to teach one whenever someone desires one, but they’re damn near impossible to teach. I’ve thus far only been successful at teaching someone how to do something related, in a way that their mind can grasp and run with, so that a few years later they will have developed the soft skill “on their own” (At which point, they will be doing exactly as I said exactly how I told them to, and they will tell me about this cool new thing they figured out how to do, and question why I didn’t ever tell them to do it that way).
So rather than teach how to learn soft skills, I’m going to describe a few of the most useful soft skills I have.
Maximize information input in a way that maximizes timeless usability. It works like this: prioritize observations in opposite order. The observation with the highest priority is the observation that is most distant from the desired observation while still being distantly related. The observation with the lowest priority is the observation that was first intended. For example: when performing a scientific experiment, the lowest-priority observation is the result of the experiment. Literally everything you could possibly observe related to the experiment is of higher priority than the direct result of the experiment. The reason for this is that distant observations have a tendency to be more useful for the future than direct observations.
Minimize friction to maximize usability at detail. When welding, move the welding rod and heating device at the exact rate that keeps the rod molten, and the welding pieces not-molten. When using a common carbon fiber dremel cutting blade on metal, move the blade through the metal at the exact rate that just barely melts the metal in the direction of the cut. When hammering a nail, make the nail move at a consistent rate that is fast enough to slide past the wood, but slow enough to not split the wood (this is like air resistance at sub-sonic vs super-sonic speeds). When talking to people (assuming you want to maximize usability of the other person’s mind), make statements and ask questions at a rate that doesn’t overload the person’s mind. When drawing a picture with a pencil, move the pencil across the medium at a rate that glides across the medium without catching on the medium.
Inference jump to maximize efficiency of skill gain. When developing a theory from a conceptual base, assume a related postulate to be true so that you can obtain more data from experiments. The postulate is most likely not true, but that’s not important. Experimenting under the assumption that a postulate is true is very useful in determining why said postulate is not true. Believe nothing. Treat all beliefs and assumed truths as inference jumps, because doing so maximizes their use. In order to make inference jumps with highest usability, all previously beliefs should be considered irrelevant. Failing that, consider the possibility that what you know to be wrong, or believe to be wrong, is in fact true, and use that as an inference jump.
I personally think the conceptual base of Less Wrong is contrary to efficient soft skill development. However, I think the conceptual base of Less Wrong is a potentially good platform to use to begin soft skill development. The most efficient way I can think to do so is to learn to use the conceptual base of Less Wrong, then make the inference jump that everything you’ve learned from Less Wrong is uselessly inefficient. This is the pattern I see everywhere people strictly adhere to a conceptual base. It’s almost always a good platform to expand further from, provided the expansion stops using the platform as soon as possible.
Could you give examples of how those three points play out in social interactions?