I usefully demonstrated rationality superpowers yesterday by bringing a power strip to a group project with limited power outlets.
Now, you could try to grind this ability by playing improv games with the situations around you, looking for affordances, needs, and solutions. But this is only a sub-skill, and I think most of my utility comes from things that are more like mindset technology.
A personal analogy: If I want to learn the notes of a tune on the flute, it works fine to just play it repeatedly—highly grindable. If I want to make that tune sound better, this is harder to grind but still doable; it involves more skillful listening to others, listening to yourself, talking, trial and error. If I want to improve the skills I use to make tunes sound better, I can make lots of tunes sound better, but less of my skill is coming from grinding now, because that accumulation is slower than other methods of learning. And if I want to improve my ability to learn the skills used in making tunes sound better...
Well, first off, that’s a rationality-adjacent skill, innit? But second, grinding that is so slow, and so stochastic, that it’s hard to distinguish from just living my life, but just happening to try to learn things, and accepting that I might learn one-time things that obviate a lot of grinding.
So maybe the real grinding was bringing the power strip all along.
I usefully demonstrated rationality superpowers yesterday by bringing a power strip to a group project with limited power outlets.
Now, you could try to grind this ability by playing improv games with the situations around you, looking for affordances, needs, and solutions. But this is only a sub-skill, and I think most of my utility comes from things that are more like mindset technology.
A personal analogy: If I want to learn the notes of a tune on the flute, it works fine to just play it repeatedly—highly grindable. If I want to make that tune sound better, this is harder to grind but still doable; it involves more skillful listening to others, listening to yourself, talking, trial and error. If I want to improve the skills I use to make tunes sound better, I can make lots of tunes sound better, but less of my skill is coming from grinding now, because that accumulation is slower than other methods of learning. And if I want to improve my ability to learn the skills used in making tunes sound better...
Well, first off, that’s a rationality-adjacent skill, innit? But second, grinding that is so slow, and so stochastic, that it’s hard to distinguish from just living my life, but just happening to try to learn things, and accepting that I might learn one-time things that obviate a lot of grinding.
So maybe the real grinding was bringing the power strip all along.