Shortening the Unshortenable Way
or
A Starting Point for Defense against Flexible Dark Artists and Circumstances
In On Seeking a Shortening of the Way the assertion “Maybe we’re not geniuses because we don’t bother paying attention to ordinary things” caught my eye. Certainly! I said. Obviously if we were able to pay the appropriate amount of attention to every occurrence so as to gain enough data to update our models in an optimal way, we would rapidly increase our overall ability to model the world and increase our probability of insights at the level currently considered ‘genius.’
And then I remembered that I can’t really do that, on account of having crappy models of what is actually important, and thinking that i can’t improve those models quickly. Whoops! I, like so many others, fail to know how much attention to pay to ordinary things so as to become a genius. C’est la vie. Fortunately the lesson here was not the factuality of the statement, which is high, but a reminder that you could probably gain benefits from paying more attention and being more disciplined in your thought.
Which is even better because it’s great advice, and eminently doable. Thanks, Yvain! So I set about paying attention to how I currently pay attention and, like usual, paid attention to the cues I get about how other people pay attention, assuming that I make the mistakes they do at least some of the time.
And then I realized… wait a minute, whenever other people aren’t actually paying attention is when I could most easily shanghai them into doing things they normally wouldn’t do (Were I a dark artist. Hypothetically.). So learning how to pay more attention and pay attention in the correct way is probably the best reflexive method of avoiding being dutch booked by people who are highly adaptable dark artists.
And here’s my low-hanging fruit of techniques to build the foundational reflexes for shortening the way. The goal is to avoid being inattentive in certain sorts of situations where I noted personal susceptibility to being taken advantage of by changing situations or flexible con artists.
Summary: Act like Suspicious, Smart, Rich People Do. Assume everyone and everything is both an opportunity and an encounter with a parasite, and don’t act like it unless it’s socially convenient. How do you do this, you say. It sounds more difficult than that, you say. On the contrary, skeptical sir! I will now present an exercise which rapidly becomes reflexive, in a manner which will cause it to become reflexive, which separates the exercise from the situation so that you can learn the requisite acting skills separately! Try this!
Ask yourself for new people , situations, arguments, and facts, what is this worth to me? What risks do I run by paying attention to this? What opportunities lie in this, if my understanding of it is correct? What risks do I run, if my understanding of it is incorrect? And you can go as much deeper as you think is valuable or are mentally capable of sustaining.
For the step-by-steppers out there (I salute you!), here’s explicitly How To start doing this in a low-cost way.
Step 1: In your journal for daily events (If you’re not keeping one of these go buy a journal and start. Without a daily log how do you know you’re actually making progress?) use Pen and Paper (The Great Equalizer!) and write down your understanding of a couple of important topics and a few simple topics (the simple topics shouldn’t take as long… right?). This will be a lot of work! But it’s only for one day, and developing this mental habit in particular and your ability to do rational yet seemingly onerous things for a brief period each day will both be massively valuable.
Step 2: When That Gets Boring, elaborate with pros and cons, an analysis of arguments, or other techniques that professionals use when it’s important (Imagine a lawyer not analyzing their opponent’s arguments, and then imagine yourself as their client.). Do a Fermi calculation (here’s some practice) if it involves a number of things you don’t understand well.
Step 3: Avoid abusing this method to convince yourself you don’t need to run the numbers by pretending someone else, someone biased,wrote the analysis. (Those darned Biased people, cropping up even in your own journal!) Think of how future versions of yourself will look at your thought processes (you’ll be smarter then… wiser… with a knowledge ofcommon logical fallacies and the heuristics and biases literature)(you might even read Godel Escher Bach or something andblow your mind. Anything is possible!). Look over your previous analyses before deciding (sleep on it and wait on it). Developing a decent set of evidence for fermi calculations and calibration exercises will let you use the same thought processes to do this right when you don’t have time to run the numbers.
Step 4: Profit.
Yet another self-help genre post with Mind Projection Fallacy written all over it.
Neh? Oh, do you mean this, a.k.a. the typical mind fallacy?
Still looks like an interesting exercise.
First link after searching for Mind Projection Fallacy.
Other-optimizing is a subset.
Interesting idea, paper. Your assertion is that because I have tried this and it works for me, I unreasonably weight its properties as helpful instead of objectively looking at it as another self-helpy useless trick? I suppose I am confused at the idea that because this idea may have helped me to establish the habit of writing in my journal, and the reflex of looking for opportunities to be rational, which seems positive.
I suppose I never stopped to think that i might be committing a typical mind fallacy when guessing that a useful habit which i used to train myself to be rationally opportunistic might be useful for lesswrong as a whole.
It is true that my post is attempting to optimize others. I am realistic enough to assume that everyone won’t try this, particularly those who are already optimized in this fashion, but I also don’t think that we should avoid posting potentially helpful techniques because we fear the mind projection fallacy and its other-optimizing subset.
Or maybe we are not geniuses because we don’t have somewhat above average intelligence and then spend years becoming experts in one or (much preferably) two fields and then develop the idea to produce genius level ideas at the cutting edge level. Possibly consider paying less attention to ordinary things so as to specialise in a particular area.
Approximately what do you consider the minimum IQ to be to do genius level work? Do you believe it to be different for verbal and mathematical intelligence, and have you any thoughts on the interaction effects between the two? Are there any fields that are likely to be especially fruitful in combination with other fields besides mathematics, formal logic and computer science[0]?
[0] Actually, would you support that? I remember a Vassar comment somewhere where he suggested the high standards of evidence required in these fields could be actively harmful in building new knowledge.
That is hard to answer. My expectation is something along the lines of a distribution with lower IQs just being less likely to achieve ‘genius’ status. Let’s say about 120 for the border of credibility in non extreme cases. (But don’t try that in Physics!)
I’m not sure what you mean. Could you be more specific?
I’m not sure. The biggest benefits I expect for becoming an expert in multiple fields for the purpose of making a contribution in one of them are:
Potential cross-pollination.
You are able to apply highly developed thought structures and existing knowledge before your thinking in the second field becomes thoroughly entrenched in the normative habits of that culture.
Do you believe the minimum cutoff for genius level work is likely to be different for verbal and mathematical intelligence? As a sketch of an argument why it’d be lower for mathematical intellegence
Many fewer people work with math all the time in their professional lives.
We’re making very fast progress (albeit completely undirected) in math all the time, whereas progress in e.g. philosophy (mostly a very, very verbal field) has been glacial for a relatively long time, so the collection of new, potentially useful tools in math is growing much faster, and the number of people who can use those tools is vastly smaller than those who can use the equivalent purely verbal tools (not that being able to construct a god argument is all that common a skill)
The returns to investment on verbal intelligence almost certainly have a much higher median than those on mathematical, both in social success and financially
Taken together these suggest to me that if one had equivalent gifts for, and interest in, M and V, M would be on average a more fruitful investment.
On cross-pollination; can you think of a few examples? I’d nominate economics imperialism, a la Posner, though physicists seem like they should be more successful than they are given the ridiculous intelligence needed to go into that field and the massive overproduction of physicists.
skeptical sir or madam :)
I don’t follow at all how the writing exercises help me ask “what’s in it for [what I care about]?” in deciding what to pay attention to. They seem like fine exercises, but other than the fact that you’re choosing a topic, I see no relation.
I remember GEB being entertaining but not mind-blowing. I’d already studied mathematical logic, though.
I don’t understand what you mean by ‘how the writing exercises help me ask “what’s in it for [what i care about]?” in deciding what to pay attention to.’
Simplify to “what’s in it for me”. Sorry for the over-elaboration. Since you’re the author, it’s not surprising that you don’t understand the source of my confusion. This quote from your post may help:
That’s what I was expecting the exercises to develop—the ability to focus attention where there’s advantage.
Do you think there might be any downsides to this?
Yes. You definitely run the risk of being considered calculating and manipulative. Also there is a further risk of overestimating your ability to spot risks and then being susceptible to street smart tricks. Also if you’re not good at acting then you’ll be immediately offputting if you do this in daily life and wear it on the surface.
I’d add to this that changing your internal attitudes changes who you are, and thus has a “long tail” of unexpected effects.