I think I might be a winner. In the past five years: I have won thousands of dollars across multiple prediction market contests. I earned a prestigious degree (PhD Applied Physics from Stanford) and have held a couple of prestigious high-paying jobs (first as a management consultant at BCG, and now an algorithms data scientist at Netflix). I have a fulfilling social life with friends who make me happy. I give tens of thousands to charity. I enjoy posting to Facebook and surfing the internet. I have the means and motivation to keep learning about areas outside my expertise. I floss and exercise and generally am satisfied with my health.
I think I could be considered both a rationalist and a winner.
But I post rarely to LessWrong because my rational perception is that it takes effort but does not provide return. Generally I think my shortcomings are shortcomings of execution rather than irrationality, and those are the areas I aim to improve upon. My arena for self-improvement is my workplace and my life, not a website. As a result, my stories like mine might be underrepresented in your sampling.
If rationalists were winning, how would we know? What would winning look like?
In other words, people who win at offline life spend less time on the internet because they’re devoting more time offline. And since rationalists are largely an online community rather than offline at least outside of the bay area, this results in rationalists dropping out of the conversation when they start winning. That’s a surprisingly plausible alternative explanation. I’ll have to think about this.
What does winning look like?
I think I might be a winner. In the past five years: I have won thousands of dollars across multiple prediction market contests. I earned a prestigious degree (PhD Applied Physics from Stanford) and have held a couple of prestigious high-paying jobs (first as a management consultant at BCG, and now an algorithms data scientist at Netflix). I have a fulfilling social life with friends who make me happy. I give tens of thousands to charity. I enjoy posting to Facebook and surfing the internet. I have the means and motivation to keep learning about areas outside my expertise. I floss and exercise and generally am satisfied with my health.
I think I could be considered both a rationalist and a winner.
But I post rarely to LessWrong because my rational perception is that it takes effort but does not provide return. Generally I think my shortcomings are shortcomings of execution rather than irrationality, and those are the areas I aim to improve upon. My arena for self-improvement is my workplace and my life, not a website. As a result, my stories like mine might be underrepresented in your sampling.
If rationalists were winning, how would we know? What would winning look like?
In other words, people who win at offline life spend less time on the internet because they’re devoting more time offline. And since rationalists are largely an online community rather than offline at least outside of the bay area, this results in rationalists dropping out of the conversation when they start winning. That’s a surprisingly plausible alternative explanation. I’ll have to think about this.