One rationality technique that I can infer from my past experiences is one I’m not really sure how to name; possibilities include “path divergence analysis,” “counterfactual defaults,” “adjacent life heuristic,” “near-miss solutions,” and “reality branch mining.” The idea is to look at what common actions for you would be if your life had gone slightly differently (e.g. you went to a different school, were born in a different country, etc.), see what sort of actions you would commonly take under these conditions, and see if these actions have value in your current life circumstances. One example that I applied was in terms of realizing that if my college major were slightly different, I’d have learned to code in C++ by now, realizing that learning C++ has significant advantages for me even with my major being what it is, and finally learning C++.
One rationality technique that I can infer from my past experiences is one I’m not really sure how to name; possibilities include “path divergence analysis,” “counterfactual defaults,” “adjacent life heuristic,” “near-miss solutions,” and “reality branch mining.” The idea is to look at what common actions for you would be if your life had gone slightly differently (e.g. you went to a different school, were born in a different country, etc.), see what sort of actions you would commonly take under these conditions, and see if these actions have value in your current life circumstances. One example that I applied was in terms of realizing that if my college major were slightly different, I’d have learned to code in C++ by now, realizing that learning C++ has significant advantages for me even with my major being what it is, and finally learning C++.