There’s a skill of “quickly operationalizing a prediction, about a question that is cruxy for your decisionmaking.”
And, it’s dramatically better to be very fluent at this skill, rather than “merely pretty okay at it.”
Fluency means you can actually use it day-to-day to help with whatever work is important to you. Day-to-day usage means you can actually get calibrated re: predictions in whatever domains you care about. Calibration means that your intuitions will be good, and _you’ll know they’re good_.
Fluency means you can do it _while you’re in the middle of your thought process_, and then return to your thought process, rather than awkwardly bolting it on at the end.
I find this useful at multiple levels-of-strategy. i.e. for big picture 6 month planning, as well as for “what do I do in the next hour.”
I’m working on this as a full blogpost but figured I would start getting pieces of it out here for now.
A lot of this skill is building off on CFAR’s “inner simulator” framing. Andrew Critch recently framed this to me as “using your System 2 (conscious, deliberate intelligence) to generate questions for your System 1 (fast intuition) to answer.” (Whereas previously, he’d known System 1 was good at answering some types of questions, but he thought of it as responsible for both “asking” and “answering” those questions)
But, I feel like combining this with “quickly operationalize cruxy Fatebook predictions” makes it more of a power tool for me. (Also, now that I have this mindset, even when I can’t be bothered to make a Fatebook prediction, I have a better overall handle on how to quickly query my intuitions)
I’ve been working on this skill for years and it only really clicked together last week. It required a bunch of interlocking pieces that all require separate fluency:
1. Having three different formats for Fatebook (the main website, the slack integration, and the chrome extension), so, pretty much wherever I’m thinking-in-text, I’ll be able to quickly use it.
2. The skill of “generating lots of ‘plans’”, such that I always have at least two plausibly good ideas on what to do next.
3. Identifying an actual crux for what would make me switch to one of my backup plans.
4. Operationalizing an observation I could make that’d convince me of one of these cruxes.
Tracing out the chain of uncertainty. Lets say that I’m thinking about my business and come up with an idea. I’m uncertain how much to prioritize the idea vs the other swirling thoughts. If I thought it might cause my business to 2x revenue I’d obviously drop a lot and pursue it. Ok, how likely is that based on prior ideas? What reference class is the idea in? Under what world model is the business revenue particularly sensitive to the outputs of this idea? What’s the most uncertain part of that model? How would I quickly test it? Who would already know the answer? etc.
There’s a skill of “quickly operationalizing a prediction, about a question that is cruxy for your decisionmaking.”
And, it’s dramatically better to be very fluent at this skill, rather than “merely pretty okay at it.”
Fluency means you can actually use it day-to-day to help with whatever work is important to you. Day-to-day usage means you can actually get calibrated re: predictions in whatever domains you care about. Calibration means that your intuitions will be good, and _you’ll know they’re good_.
Fluency means you can do it _while you’re in the middle of your thought process_, and then return to your thought process, rather than awkwardly bolting it on at the end.
I find this useful at multiple levels-of-strategy. i.e. for big picture 6 month planning, as well as for “what do I do in the next hour.”
I’m working on this as a full blogpost but figured I would start getting pieces of it out here for now.
A lot of this skill is building off on CFAR’s “inner simulator” framing. Andrew Critch recently framed this to me as “using your System 2 (conscious, deliberate intelligence) to generate questions for your System 1 (fast intuition) to answer.” (Whereas previously, he’d known System 1 was good at answering some types of questions, but he thought of it as responsible for both “asking” and “answering” those questions)
But, I feel like combining this with “quickly operationalize cruxy Fatebook predictions” makes it more of a power tool for me. (Also, now that I have this mindset, even when I can’t be bothered to make a Fatebook prediction, I have a better overall handle on how to quickly query my intuitions)
I’ve been working on this skill for years and it only really clicked together last week. It required a bunch of interlocking pieces that all require separate fluency:
1. Having three different formats for Fatebook (the main website, the slack integration, and the chrome extension), so, pretty much wherever I’m thinking-in-text, I’ll be able to quickly use it.
2. The skill of “generating lots of ‘plans’”, such that I always have at least two plausibly good ideas on what to do next.
3. Identifying an actual crux for what would make me switch to one of my backup plans.
4. Operationalizing an observation I could make that’d convince me of one of these cruxes.
Looking forward to specific examples, pretty please.
Tracing out the chain of uncertainty. Lets say that I’m thinking about my business and come up with an idea. I’m uncertain how much to prioritize the idea vs the other swirling thoughts. If I thought it might cause my business to 2x revenue I’d obviously drop a lot and pursue it. Ok, how likely is that based on prior ideas? What reference class is the idea in? Under what world model is the business revenue particularly sensitive to the outputs of this idea? What’s the most uncertain part of that model? How would I quickly test it? Who would already know the answer? etc.
My shorthand has been ‘decision leverage.’ But that might not hit the center of what you’re aiming at here.