Instrumental rationality is about reaching goals. Any methods for finding goals? There is a military term “target-rich environment”. I think you live in a goal-rich environment if it is risky both ways: if you both fail hard and win big. If your environment does not look very goal-rich, what are some good ways to “mine” goals out of it? Broader, fighting boredom / tedium.
IIRC, “target-rich environment” was originally a euphemism for being surrounded by the enemy.
By analogy, a “goal-rich environment” might be one in which you are very critical of everything — no matter what you look at, you can see a way in which it sucks and should be improved — and a “goal-poor environment” is one in which pretty much everything is okay with you.
I don’t know if you are extremely optimistic or I am misunderstanding something, but much much more common is the case when you feel entirely powerless to change the things you are critical of, because they are set up so by bigger, more powerful people or some other similar cause, or simply you don’t think you are the kind of person who can tackle big things. Low self-esteem is the most common cause of feeling goal-por. BTW the analogy stands: the most common move to being surrounded is not shooting in 360 but surrendering.
I was inverting the connotation of the expression — in the same way that “target-rich environment” has been inverted from being a euphemism for a bad situation (being surrounded by people who want to kill you) into an expression for a good situation (having lots of opportunities to choose from).
If you environment does not look very goal-rich, you have an opinion on how it is different from a goal-rich environment, i.e. you have a model of a goal-rich environment. Find a decent real-world match for that environment, move there.
Or find other people with risky-both-ways goals, and work for them if you like either the goals or the people, preferably both.
But I’m not sure “risky both ways” is a good metric to look for. A life of crime fits this criterion, while violating a couple of other criterions that I assume you hold implicitly.
Instrumental rationality is about reaching goals. Any methods for finding goals? There is a military term “target-rich environment”. I think you live in a goal-rich environment if it is risky both ways: if you both fail hard and win big. If your environment does not look very goal-rich, what are some good ways to “mine” goals out of it? Broader, fighting boredom / tedium.
IIRC, “target-rich environment” was originally a euphemism for being surrounded by the enemy.
By analogy, a “goal-rich environment” might be one in which you are very critical of everything — no matter what you look at, you can see a way in which it sucks and should be improved — and a “goal-poor environment” is one in which pretty much everything is okay with you.
I don’t know if you are extremely optimistic or I am misunderstanding something, but much much more common is the case when you feel entirely powerless to change the things you are critical of, because they are set up so by bigger, more powerful people or some other similar cause, or simply you don’t think you are the kind of person who can tackle big things. Low self-esteem is the most common cause of feeling goal-por. BTW the analogy stands: the most common move to being surrounded is not shooting in 360 but surrendering.
I was inverting the connotation of the expression — in the same way that “target-rich environment” has been inverted from being a euphemism for a bad situation (being surrounded by people who want to kill you) into an expression for a good situation (having lots of opportunities to choose from).
If you environment does not look very goal-rich, you have an opinion on how it is different from a goal-rich environment, i.e. you have a model of a goal-rich environment. Find a decent real-world match for that environment, move there.
Or find other people with risky-both-ways goals, and work for them if you like either the goals or the people, preferably both.
But I’m not sure “risky both ways” is a good metric to look for. A life of crime fits this criterion, while violating a couple of other criterions that I assume you hold implicitly.