Recently, I wanted to spend some time with a certain lady in a bedroom… but the only available bedroom, her primary’s, had doors with large glass windows in them; she remarked that she and her primary were considering trying to put up curtains across the door.
At some point thereafter, two large moving boxes were stacked up in front of the door, a blanket had been spread over them, a sitting pillow had gone on top of them, and a bed pillow had been stacked on top of that. It wasn’t perfect privacy but it at least meant somebody would need an effort to see in, which in the generally libertine environment was as much as we cared about.
I realized afterward that I’d just turned into Harry in Chapter 16 of HPMOR, except that instead of asking how I could use every object in the room to kill someone, I was glancing at every single object in the room around me and reinterpreting it in terms of how I could use it to achieve my current objective of “block visibility into the room”. And that apparently other people don’t automatically Munchkin when confronted with real-life problems, and CFAR needs to come up with some sort of training method.
I realized afterward that I’d just turned into Harry in Chapter 16 of HPMOR, except that instead of asking how I could use every object in the room to kill someone, I was glancing at every single object in the room around me and reinterpreting it in terms of how I could use it to achieve my current objective of “block visibility into the room”. And that apparently other people don’t automatically think this way when confronted with real-life problems, and CFAR needs to come up with some sort of training method.
Really? Even the rather potent near mode goal of copulation isn’t enough to prompt people to enter that sort of creative problem solving mode? While I believe it I’m still surprised. I have acted out rather similar privacy construction scenarios and thought nothing of it.
Well, the problem wasn’t “we can’t have sex”, the problem was, “we can have sex but not privacy”. I suspect that people are much less likely to go Munchkin when faced with something they can just grit their teeth for, however inconvenient.
Well, the problem wasn’t “we can’t have sex”, the problem was, “we can have sex but not privacy”. I suspect that people are much less likely to go Munchkin when faced with something they can just grit their teeth for, however inconvenient.
Would you expect that in the situation where the other partner is not likely to have sex without the provision of privacy (this does not seem at all uncommon in my experience) the would be seducer would be likely to successfully engage Muchkin mode?
Interesting, thankyou. This phenonemon really should be studied: “The influence of likely sexual reward on logistical problem solving”. Or “would people become munchkins if munchkins got laid?”
(EDIT: I’m genuinely dumbfounded at why several people have come through and downvoted Eliezer’s comments here. They don’t seem particularly worse than mine yet mine are still positive. This is especially surprising since several people have downvoted all of my recent comments yet somehow mine are still positive here while Eliezer’s are negative. Just don’t get it.)
If I had to guess, I’d say the trouble was Eliezer’s claim, in his initial post, that most people don’t go into munchkin mode when confronted with real life problems. No reason was given for thinking that this was true (none has been given since). The result was probably the impression that Eliezer assumed on principle that his reaction to the situation was an unusually intelligent one.
I very much doubt that was Eliezer’s thought (it would be a very bad inference), but there you go.
If I had to guess, I’d say the trouble was Eliezer’s claim, in his initial post, that most people don’t go into munchkin mode when confronted with real life problems. No reason was given for thinking that this was true (none has been given since).
Interesting, that would indicate that in this instance I took Eliezer at his word more than the average voter.
If this means you have some insight into his reasoning, especially toward the conclusion that he behaved unusually, please share it. I think we have ample reason to believe that Eliezer is unusually intelligent, to say the least, but my own impression is that his behavior during this episode was, well, in line with similar episodes in my life. And in the lives of most of the people who shared my dorm floor in college. And we’re a pretty average bunch.
I think we have ample reason to believe that Eliezer is unusually intelligent
More predisposed muchkinism. That’s somewhat distinct from intelligence. The task of of covering the window with junk probably didn’t harness all of his intellectual resources, or even enough of them for them to be particularly significant factor.
I’m not sure it is. Intelligence is at least very roughly a capacity to optimize, and while intelligent people may fail to optimize in everyday situations (and still be called intelligent), I don’t see any real real difference between a straightforward exercise of intelligence (working out a proof or something) and a situation like this. It’s just a matter of knowing what you have available to you, and what you can do with those resources to best and most efficiently achieve an end. ETA: But agreed that one difference is that working out a proof is typically much more demanding then obscuring a door.
In my experience, situations like the one Eliezer was in are thrilling, in the way vaulting around a children’s play structure can feel thrilling. They’re experiences of mastery in circumstances very like those in which we’ve experienced being helpless. It’s really fun to be smart, strong, and mature. It’s the feeling of being an adult, next to which the joys of childhood play are kind of a joke. It’s not therefore the joy of real accomplishment (munchkinism mostly doesn’t matter), but it is an avenue into it. If there’s a rationality trick here, it’s getting people hooked enough on the feelings of munchkinism, while keeping them from being satisfied with trivial exercises of it.
The two people who had been considering putting up curtains there apparently did not interpret all the other objects in the room as potential privacy screen components.
The people who had been considering putting up curtains there were probably looking for a long term, comfortable solution to the problem. For them, piling junk in front of the door would be a terrible way to handle that problem. Way worse than just ignoring it.
Learning to street fight was a good exercise in this for me. Not so much “how would you use this to kill someone” as training the subconscious process of identifying a handy object and a combat-specific use for it very quickly, faster than you’d be able to reason it out. What’s interesting is that it didn’t take much to get the ball rolling—mentor simply had to demonstrate the concept with a handful of loose change. It’s a bit weird when I realize people don’t relate to objects in their environment that way, now—but I’ve noticed that my casual willingness to look a little weird when solving problems seems to touch off a lot of lightbulbs for other people.
This reminds me… I have read in a book, I believe it was “The Gift of Fear”, that a good way to increase your safety is trying to think like a criminal. For example if you want to assault a person, which place would you choose? You need a hidden place (so that nobody else catches you in the act) near a widely open area (so that you can check that your victim is alone, and no other people are near). You want a place where people walk rarely (to have an opportunity to catch someone alone), but near a place where people often go (so that you don’t have to wait for a victim forever). For example near a supermarket, but in a direction where people usually don’t go; a short dark path near an open space or near a long street. Spend some time looking around for a place you would rationally choose to assault people. And then you’ll learn to recognize the places you should rather avoid.
nodnod I had a bit of a problem recently because one of the classes I’m taking can only be reached, when using public transit, through corridors that all read to me like nearly perfect places to opportunistically assault or mug someone, and I’m in an at-risk population (this occurs in a neighborhood where several members of that population have been murdered there in the last two years, and a high number of assaults take place there as well). Conversely, in Sydney I was mostly fine in neighborhoods locals considered rough and necessary to avoid—it was just abundantly clear that the beaten path wouldn’t be trouble, no matter how many scary stories I’d heard about the place.
Recently, I wanted to spend some time with a certain lady in a bedroom… but the only available bedroom, her primary’s, had doors with large glass windows in them; she remarked that she and her primary were considering trying to put up curtains across the door.
At some point thereafter, two large moving boxes were stacked up in front of the door, a blanket had been spread over them, a sitting pillow had gone on top of them, and a bed pillow had been stacked on top of that. It wasn’t perfect privacy but it at least meant somebody would need an effort to see in, which in the generally libertine environment was as much as we cared about.
I realized afterward that I’d just turned into Harry in Chapter 16 of HPMOR, except that instead of asking how I could use every object in the room to kill someone, I was glancing at every single object in the room around me and reinterpreting it in terms of how I could use it to achieve my current objective of “block visibility into the room”. And that apparently other people don’t automatically Munchkin when confronted with real-life problems, and CFAR needs to come up with some sort of training method.
This sounds like it’s closely related to functional fixedness.
Really? Even the rather potent near mode goal of copulation isn’t enough to prompt people to enter that sort of creative problem solving mode? While I believe it I’m still surprised. I have acted out rather similar privacy construction scenarios and thought nothing of it.
Well, the problem wasn’t “we can’t have sex”, the problem was, “we can have sex but not privacy”. I suspect that people are much less likely to go Munchkin when faced with something they can just grit their teeth for, however inconvenient.
Would you expect that in the situation where the other partner is not likely to have sex without the provision of privacy (this does not seem at all uncommon in my experience) the would be seducer would be likely to successfully engage Muchkin mode?
I think I’d bet against it at 50-50 odds.
Interesting, thankyou. This phenonemon really should be studied: “The influence of likely sexual reward on logistical problem solving”. Or “would people become munchkins if munchkins got laid?”
(EDIT: I’m genuinely dumbfounded at why several people have come through and downvoted Eliezer’s comments here. They don’t seem particularly worse than mine yet mine are still positive. This is especially surprising since several people have downvoted all of my recent comments yet somehow mine are still positive here while Eliezer’s are negative. Just don’t get it.)
If I had to guess, I’d say the trouble was Eliezer’s claim, in his initial post, that most people don’t go into munchkin mode when confronted with real life problems. No reason was given for thinking that this was true (none has been given since). The result was probably the impression that Eliezer assumed on principle that his reaction to the situation was an unusually intelligent one.
I very much doubt that was Eliezer’s thought (it would be a very bad inference), but there you go.
Interesting, that would indicate that in this instance I took Eliezer at his word more than the average voter.
If this means you have some insight into his reasoning, especially toward the conclusion that he behaved unusually, please share it. I think we have ample reason to believe that Eliezer is unusually intelligent, to say the least, but my own impression is that his behavior during this episode was, well, in line with similar episodes in my life. And in the lives of most of the people who shared my dorm floor in college. And we’re a pretty average bunch.
More predisposed muchkinism. That’s somewhat distinct from intelligence. The task of of covering the window with junk probably didn’t harness all of his intellectual resources, or even enough of them for them to be particularly significant factor.
I’m not sure it is. Intelligence is at least very roughly a capacity to optimize, and while intelligent people may fail to optimize in everyday situations (and still be called intelligent), I don’t see any real real difference between a straightforward exercise of intelligence (working out a proof or something) and a situation like this. It’s just a matter of knowing what you have available to you, and what you can do with those resources to best and most efficiently achieve an end. ETA: But agreed that one difference is that working out a proof is typically much more demanding then obscuring a door.
In my experience, situations like the one Eliezer was in are thrilling, in the way vaulting around a children’s play structure can feel thrilling. They’re experiences of mastery in circumstances very like those in which we’ve experienced being helpless. It’s really fun to be smart, strong, and mature. It’s the feeling of being an adult, next to which the joys of childhood play are kind of a joke. It’s not therefore the joy of real accomplishment (munchkinism mostly doesn’t matter), but it is an avenue into it. If there’s a rationality trick here, it’s getting people hooked enough on the feelings of munchkinism, while keeping them from being satisfied with trivial exercises of it.
The two people who had been considering putting up curtains there apparently did not interpret all the other objects in the room as potential privacy screen components.
[edit: I initially worded that badly]
The people who had been considering putting up curtains there were probably looking for a long term, comfortable solution to the problem. For them, piling junk in front of the door would be a terrible way to handle that problem. Way worse than just ignoring it.
Learning to street fight was a good exercise in this for me. Not so much “how would you use this to kill someone” as training the subconscious process of identifying a handy object and a combat-specific use for it very quickly, faster than you’d be able to reason it out. What’s interesting is that it didn’t take much to get the ball rolling—mentor simply had to demonstrate the concept with a handful of loose change. It’s a bit weird when I realize people don’t relate to objects in their environment that way, now—but I’ve noticed that my casual willingness to look a little weird when solving problems seems to touch off a lot of lightbulbs for other people.
This reminds me… I have read in a book, I believe it was “The Gift of Fear”, that a good way to increase your safety is trying to think like a criminal. For example if you want to assault a person, which place would you choose? You need a hidden place (so that nobody else catches you in the act) near a widely open area (so that you can check that your victim is alone, and no other people are near). You want a place where people walk rarely (to have an opportunity to catch someone alone), but near a place where people often go (so that you don’t have to wait for a victim forever). For example near a supermarket, but in a direction where people usually don’t go; a short dark path near an open space or near a long street. Spend some time looking around for a place you would rationally choose to assault people. And then you’ll learn to recognize the places you should rather avoid.
nodnod I had a bit of a problem recently because one of the classes I’m taking can only be reached, when using public transit, through corridors that all read to me like nearly perfect places to opportunistically assault or mug someone, and I’m in an at-risk population (this occurs in a neighborhood where several members of that population have been murdered there in the last two years, and a high number of assaults take place there as well). Conversely, in Sydney I was mostly fine in neighborhoods locals considered rough and necessary to avoid—it was just abundantly clear that the beaten path wouldn’t be trouble, no matter how many scary stories I’d heard about the place.
I shudder to think what sort of training method you have in mind.