AllAmericanBreakfast

• AllAmericanBreakfast 31 Aug 2019 7:42 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: John_Maxwell's comment on: How to Make Billions of Dol­lars Re­duc­ing Loneliness

  Take my thoughts less as ob­jec­tions and more as op­por­tu­ni­ties. If a busi­ness can solve many or most of them, they might pros­per. No rea­son to think it’s im­pos­si­ble to im­prove on the cur­rent rental in­dus­try, but you’d want to think through the cur­rent set of is­sues me­thod­i­cally.

  AirBnb doesn’t promise any­thing more than a reg­u­lar ho­tel ex­pe­rience in a new set­ting. OKCupid doesn’t promise any­thing at all re­ally, ex­cept a sup­ply of sin­gles look­ing to date.

  We already have ro­bust ser­vices that sup­ply both rental prop­er­ties and peo­ple look­ing for house­mates (the room­mate equiv­a­lents of AirBnb and OKCupid).

  It strikes me that the value you’re sug­gest­ing a com­pany could provide is a pos­i­tive house­mate ex­pe­rience, achieved through some sort of al­gorithm or a setup in which house­mates could some­how try each other out as house­mates in a flex­ible way be­fore they com­mit.

  I am highly skep­ti­cal of the idea that even the most so­phis­ti­cated al­gorith­mic match­ing soft­ware can provide bet­ter house­mate re­la­tion­ships through bet­ter match­ing than is already available. I don’t think any dat­ing apps match peo­ple well ro­man­ti­cally. The most effec­tive ap­proach with them is to just go on a lot of dates and see if any­one clicks.

  It would be more in­ter­est­ing to me if a com­pany figured out a way where peo­ple could move in to­gether, stay as long as they liked, move out, try an­other group, with min­i­mal has­sle.

  Per­haps an apart­ment build­ing with pods of fur­nished rooms con­nected to a com­mon area. Peo­ple make pro­files, get on the wait­ing list for an open pod, and the cur­rent pod mates can vote on who they want to ac­cept next. They can’t kick out a pod mate they don’t like, but they could switch away to a differ­ent pod.

  The rates are ho­tel prices, maybe dou­ble what the house nor­mally rents for. When an en­tire pod clicks, they can move out at their leisure to a rental apart­ment or house.

  It seems to me that this could add value to a typ­i­cal ho­tel ex­pe­rience, while us­ing a similar busi­ness model. AirBnb already pro­vides a solu­tion to the trust prob­lem of strangers co­hab­itat­ing.

  If this kind of busi­ness ex­isted in my city at an af­ford­able price, I might try it. Ho­tels are about twice as ex­pen­sive as rental apart­ments, though, so I imag­ine this would be a pretty costly in­vest­ment.

  You’d want lots of op­tions for peo­ple to live with, which ne­ces­si­tates own­ing a lot of rental prop­er­ties.

  To avoid that prob­lem, per­haps you could con­nect with land­lords, offer­ing them a cut of the prof­its in ex­change for part­ner­ing with your ser­vice. You help them man­age the prop­er­ties, to cut the has­sle for the land­lord, and they’re able to charge higher rates, closer to ho­tel prices, in ex­change for grant­ing this level of flex­i­bil­ity to their renters.

  My es­ti­mate is that you could raise prices by $4,000/​mo on a six bed­room house, with the land­lord keep­ing 25%-50% of the in­crease. You’d need to give them an in­cen­tive to take on an ex­tra po­ten­tial has­sle and try some­thing new.

  I sup­pose there’s merit in a more de­tailed sort­ing al­gorithm. OKCupid may not be able to de­tect your soul mate, but it helps pre­vent a match be­tween a 57 year old gay man in Seat­tle and a 22 year old les­bian in Austin, which is use­ful. I imag­ine a bet­ter al­gorithm could at least pre­vent mis­matches like these.

  The challenge is that you’d need to en­sure a steady stream of clients. Other­wise, the prop­erty own­ers might lose money de­spite the higher rates. This could be hard if a pod was oc­cu­pied by a per­son with an un­pop­u­lar pro­file.

  Per­haps you could rely on the high rates of the ser­vice to even­tu­ally in­cen­tivize them to move out. You could also put tem­porar­ily lower rates on un­oc­cu­pied rooms to in­cen­tivize peo­ple to move in.

  This ser­vice would prob­a­bly also need to deal with peo­ple treat­ing it like a ho­tel, which could dilute the util­ity for peo­ple treat­ing it as a room mate try be­fore you buy ser­vice. You could partly solve that with brand­ing. In any case, a pay­ing client is a good client.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 30 Aug 2019 21:25 UTC

  13 points

  on: How to Make Billions of Dol­lars Re­duc­ing Loneliness

  There are already at least three com­pa­nies in this space: RoomieMatch, Roomi, and Room­ster. I won­der why no­body I know uses them, but dat­ing apps are very pop­u­lar?

  It seems to me that the tri­an­gu­la­tion, trust, and trans­fer prob­lems in room­mate match­ing that go be­yond what OKCupid has to deal with:

  • There are more than two peo­ple in­volved, and the difficulty of find­ing com­mu­nal com­pat­i­bil­ity com­plex­ifies ge­o­met­ri­cally with the num­ber of room­mates.

  • By the same to­ken, peo­ple mov­ing in and out hap­pens more fre­quently with larger num­bers of room mates, of­ten with short no­tice, mak­ing it hard to keep a sta­ble equil­ibrium of prefer­ences.

  • Imag­ine if it was easy to “date your fu­ture house­mates,” per­haps by liv­ing to­gether for a month. It’s already emo­tion­ally painful for peo­ple to deal with or in­flict re­jec­tion in one-on-one dat­ing. Imag­ine be­ing the “odd man out” in this situ­a­tion. That sounds like a recipe for re­ally un­com­fortable so­cial dy­nam­ics.

  • Land lords of­ten in­fluence or even en­tirely con­trol the pro­cess of find­ing new room mates. There are also laws around evic­tions that make it very difficult to kick some­body out if its not work­ing for oth­ers, whereas there are no le­gal bar­ri­ers to break­ing up with some­one you’re dat­ing if there’s no mar­riage and no kids.

  • There’s a much higher effort and com­mit­ment bar­rier re­quired to move than to go on a date.

  • This is spec­u­la­tive, but OKCupid’s suc­cess may stem from cap­i­tal­iz­ing on a cul­tural in­sti­tu­tion that makes ro­man­tic love feel of vast im­por­tance. By con­trast, find­ing an ideal group of room mates doesn’t have the same cul­tural im­por­tance: we still dream of hav­ing our own place by our­selves or with our own biolog­i­cal fam­ily. To have com­pa­rable suc­cess, such a ser­vice would need to cre­ate a new dream. Even if that’s your dream, is it the dream of your house­mates?

  • Similarly, the ser­vice OKCupid pro­vides may be less in match­ing peo­ple with com­pat­i­ble char­ac­ter­is­tics, and more in iden­ti­fy­ing an abun­dance of sin­gle peo­ple and get­ting them hyped to go on a date. The pur­pose of the “match­ing” is to trick you into build­ing up an­ti­ci­pa­tion, not to en­sure a re­ally good fit (af­ter all, if it did that too well, peo­ple wouldn’t come back for more!). In­stinct, hor­mones, and love do most of the work of mak­ing peo­ple stick to­gether in the end.

  • When peo­ple do try and start in­ten­tional group houses, they’re of­ten or­ga­nized around a shared so­cial move­ment, which already have word-of-mouth and so­cial me­dia chan­nels where peo­ple can learn about these op­por­tu­ni­ties for free.

  I think a com­pany would do bet­ter to work on solv­ing one or more of these prob­lems.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 30 Aug 2019 20:19 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: Matthew Barnett's comment on: How to Make Billions of Dol­lars Re­duc­ing Loneliness

  They are faster when you have a lot of dishes, and of­ten much more en­ergy and wa­ter effi­cient than hand wash­ing.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 29 Aug 2019 6:04 UTC

  1 point

  on: The I Ching Series (3/​10): This year, how can I live a happy life while suc­ceed­ing in school?

  
  

  Hex­a­gram: 33 (Tun/​Re­treat)

  In­ter­pre­ta­tion:

  The tran­quil Moun­tain tow­ers over­head, yet re­mains this side of Heaven: The Su­pe­rior Per­son avoids the petty and su­perfi­cial by keep­ing shal­low men at a dis­tance, not in anger but with dig­nity. Such a re­treat sweeps the path clear to Suc­cess. Oc­cupy your­self with minute de­tail.

  In con­junc­tion with my ques­tion, this sug­gests that I should fo­cus on deep re­la­tion­ships and net­work­ing re­lated to my ca­reer, care­ful schedul­ing, and seek­ing more undis­turbed soli­tude. Take hap­piness se­ri­ously—don’t let silli­ness or grand­stand­ing suck your time and en­ergy away.

  Beau­tiful na­ture, good art, the sym­phony, med­i­ta­tion, thought­ful con­ver­sa­tion, se­ri­ous cre­ativity and ex­plo­ra­tion of the nat­u­ral world: these are the things that give me joy. I would rather look at slides of dirt un­der my micro­scope for an hour than watch the Great Bri­tish Bak­ing Show, and I should make that clear to oth­ers that these kinds of ac­tivi­ties are how I wish to con­nect. Per­haps by be­ing ex­plic­itly clear about how oth­ers can con­nect with me, I won’t need to make as many sac­ri­fices figur­ing out the magic code for how to con­nect with oth­ers.

  For a road trip I’m tak­ing in a week, I con­structed an elab­o­rate and very de­tailed itiner­ary, which was en­joy­able and helpful. I think the trip will be ex­cel­lent, in part be­cause of how thor­oughly it was planned. Con­struct­ing more minutely de­tailed plans and mak­ing zeal­ously sure to cross the “t”s and dot the “i”s for school will help me step fully away from work and into play at the end of the day.

  The same goes for things like dec­o­rat­ing my room, mov­ing to a new house, plan­ning meals, and choos­ing my next book to read. I read this as a call to thor­oughly con­sider the ex­pe­riences I wish to have and re­fuse the mediocre op­por­tu­ni­ties life foists on me. “Not in anger but with dig­nity” sug­gests that, while life will eter­nally push the petty and su­perfi­cial at me, I need to learn to avoid, re­fuse, de­lay, and offer al­ter­na­tives with grace.

  The Moun­tain at first seems like an im­pos­ing image, but in this de­scrip­tion, I am striv­ing to be the Su­pe­rior Man, Heaven. I am struck by the fact that both the Moun­tain and Heaven can seem mag­nifi­cent. This is a call also not to ex­pend my in­ner en­ergy try­ing to ap­pre­ci­ate what I do not fun­da­men­tally care for or where I do not want to be. One of my challenges is that in many situ­a­tions, I de­cep­tively praise or smile about things that I do not re­ally care about. It would be bet­ter to have a way to be more hon­est. Un­til I figure that out, I need to be sure that I at least keep my­self hon­est. It might be helpful to cre­ate a rule for how I will re­spond when I’m put in a po­si­tion where I find my­self dis­sem­bling.

  Re­treat in this in­stance is not a des­per­ate flight in disar­ray, but a con­scious choice to dis­tance your­self from forces that would rob you of your peace. It is not a sur­ren­der, but a re­group­ing. Re­treat from this con­flict is ac­tu­ally an ad­vance to­ward your own cen­ter. You move to­ward bal­ance, and thus a much stronger po­si­tion.

  This re­in­forces that pul­ling away from forces that are dis­tract­ing or both­er­ing me can be a slow, me­thod­i­cal pro­cess that does not in­volve burn­ing bridges or act­ing out. It oc­curs to me that part of the rea­son I’ve avoided mov­ing is be­cause I haven’t wanted to cut ties with my house­mates, even though our di­verg­ing pri­ori­ties are part of the rea­son I’ve wanted to move. The pro­duc­tive thing to do would be to figure out a way to move while invit­ing those of them who’d like to to keep up a con­nec­tion with me, and offer­ing a way to do that which would be ideal from my point of view.

  I am imag­in­ing a fu­ture self who knows a wide ar­ray of things he likes to do, and not only has no qualms but feels as­sured and joyful in invit­ing oth­ers to par­ti­ci­pate in them with him. When he does not know ac­tivi­ties that work for both peo­ple, he talks with them to de­vise some­thing that mu­tu­ally ex­cit­ing. He does not sac­ri­fice his own de­sires for those of oth­ers, and also does not re­quire sac­ri­fice from oth­ers to con­nect with him. Part of that means mak­ing no judg­ments about how other peo­ple spend their pri­vate free time, and mak­ing no apolo­gies for his own de­ci­sions.

  It means that if I have four hours to spend at play, but do not know ex­actly what I want to do, I should spend as much of that time as nec­es­sary to re­search and plan, rather than im­pul­sively grop­ing for a mediocre way to fill that time. The plan­ning will pay off in the long run, even though some re­lax­ation will be sac­ri­ficed in the short run.

  I have to rec­og­nize that this vi­sion fright­ens me, if taken to a point of po­tency. Un­derneath, I fear a threat to my re­la­tion­ships, a pos­si­bil­ity of failure lead­ing to lack of con­fi­dence, or a sense that this I Ching busi­ness it­self is all grand­stand­ing silli­ness. I fear that I my­self am es­sen­tially a mediocre per­son in work and in play, not the Su­pe­rior Man. This sug­gests that to achieve this vi­sion, I will need to em­brace the po­tency of this imagery, and per­haps do some cog­ni­tive be­hav­ioral ther­apy to work on my deep self-image.

  I feel as though I am com­par­ing my im­me­di­ate in­ner ex­pe­rience with the images I hold of oth­ers, who have the jobs, in­comes, looks, and lives that I have not yet achieved. This kind of com­par­i­son strikes me as su­perfi­cial. I don’t need to try and match them or copy them. In­stead, I need to adopt a kind of gen­er­ous op­ti­mism: other peo­ple’s achieve­ments are won­der­ful, and they ar­rived there not by ac­ci­dent or by guaran­tee, but through hard work, a will­ing­ness to take risks, in­trin­sic mo­ti­va­tion, and good judge­ment with ev­ery step. If I am go­ing to take steps to bet­ter my­self in some way, let it be com­ing from my in­trin­sic in­ter­est or di­rect needs, not from in­se­cu­rity.

  It would there­fore be good to make a deeper ex­am­i­na­tion of my own in­se­cu­ri­ties, about ca­reer, school, and life, and fo­cus on ways to de­ci­sively dis­solve them this year.

  The power of the dark is as­cend­ing. The light re­treats to se­cu­rity, so that the dark can­not en­croach upon it. This re­treat is a mat­ter not of man’s will but of nat­u­ral law. There­fore in this case with­drawal is proper; it is the cor­rect way to be­have in or­der not to ex­haust one’s forces. In the cal­en­dar this hex­a­gram is linked with the sixth month (July-Au­gust), in which the forces of win­ter are already show­ing their in­fluence.

  This is a lit­tle mys­te­ri­ous to me, as most parts of my life right now are rel­a­tively re­laxed. My origi­nal ques­tion is time-limited, con­cern­ing only this year: Au­gust to Au­gust, 2019 to 2020. This fits the sea­son sug­gested by the read­ing. What sorts of se­cu­rity should I seek this year in or­der to avoid an en­croach­ing dark? It does seem to me that at this time of life, you don’t get so lucky, and op­por­tu­ni­ties are fewer and fur­ther be­tween. Each day counts.

  To me, a place of se­cu­rity means that my house, my daily liv­ing habits, my sched­ule, my course­work, are all care­fully ar­ranged to sup­port my path. I am not spend­ing hours into the night in drawn out con­ver­sa­tion. I am not im­pul­sively drink­ing or smok­ing weed to ex­cess. I am not over­spend­ing my money, wast­ing time or en­ergy, or miss­ing ap­point­ments. Each of my de­ci­sions should feel like it is clearly con­tribut­ing to some larger pro­ject of mine. No flailing, min­i­mal pick­ing up of balls off the ground. Much more re­flec­tion and plan­ning in or­der to en­sure ac­countabil­ity.

  THE JUDGEMENT

  RETREAT. Suc­cess. In what is small, per­se­ver­ance fur­thers.

  Although this is not an op­ti­mistic-feel­ing read­ing, I should re­call that it has come with many pos­i­tive images: suc­cess, Heaven, the Su­pe­rior Man. School­ing is a long-term pro­ject, and comes with many quar­ters of pro­gres­sively learn­ing tech­niques that will only be ap­plied to real-world work af­ter years of train­ing. It is im­por­tant to per­se­vere with the small work and the care­ful ac­qui­si­tion of that tech­nique to en­sure I ab­sorb it with ex­cel­lence. This is a re­treat, per­haps, from my own dilet­tan­tism, sur­fing the in­ter­net, read­ing what­ever blog or ar­ti­cle grabs me. It is a time to buckle down and mas­ter a new dis­ci­pline. Em­brac­ing that re­la­tion­ship with learn­ing, work­ing to­ward true mas­tery over many years, will lead to hap­piness and suc­cess. It’s about let­ting go of the im­pos­si­ble-to-fulfill need to see re­sults im­me­di­ately, and seek fulfill­ment with the pro­cess of work­ing through pre­limi­nar­ies.

  This is rele­vant in my re­la­tion­ships and ac­tivi­ties as well. It is not a time to think about sweep­ing changes for their own sake, but to make a care­ful, crit­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion of daily choices. Creat­ing space even in time spent with other peo­ple to “re­treat” into my own psy­che, re­group, and re­turn ready to change course. Not just let­ting the time go by, or push­ing to keep things go­ing be­cause I fear that a dis­con­nec­tion will some­how prove ru­inous.

  Con­di­tions are such that the hos­tile forces fa­vored by the time are ad­vanc­ing. In this case re­treat is the right course, and it is through re­treat that suc­cess is achieved. But suc­cess con­sists in be­ing able to carry out re­treat cor­rectly. Re­treat is not to be con­fused with flight. Flight means sav­ing one­self un­der any cir­cum­stances, whereas re­treat is a sign of strength. We must be care­ful not to miss the right mo­ment while we’re in full pos­ses­sion of power and po­si­tion. Then we shall be able to in­ter­pret the signs of the time be­fore it is too late and to pre­pare for pro­vi­sional re­treat in­stead of be­ing drawn into a des­per­ate life-and-death strug­gle. Thus we do not sim­ply aban­don the field to the op­po­nent; we make it difficult for him to ad­vance by show­ing per­se­ver­ance in sin­gle acts of re­sis­tance. In this way we pre­pare, while re­treat­ing, for the counter- move­ment. Un­der­stand­ing the laws of a con­struc­tive re­treat of this sort is not easy. The mean­ing that lies hid­den in such a time is im­por­tant.

  What is difficult here is the word “hos­tile.” Mostly, I have been soft­en­ing these images to fit them with the peo­ple and situ­a­tions I en­counter, which rarely feel gen­uinely hos­tile. When I try to imag­ine what forces in my life could be gen­uinely hos­tile, I start by think­ing about ex­ploita­tive com­pa­nies try­ing to ma­nipu­late me and ex­tort my in­se­cu­ri­ties, or per­haps of fierce com­pe­ti­tion with my fel­low stu­dents for those cov­eted spots in grad­u­ate pro­grams or re­search pro­jects. I also think about global con­cerns: poli­tics, en­vi­ron­men­tal de­struc­tion, the po­ten­tial dan­gers of tech­nolog­i­cal ad­vance­ment.

  My typ­i­cal at­ti­tude to­ward all these things is hu­mor at my own foibles, a spirit of gen­er­ous co­op­er­a­tion with my peers, and an emo­tion­ally de­tached in­tel­lec­tu­al­ism in the mo­ment as I work to­ward be­ing able to effect change in the long term. Yet in a sense, these at­ti­tudes are sim­ply effec­tive strate­gies for deal­ing with these hos­tile forces. I am also challenged be­cause I do not per­ceive my­self in be­ing im­pel­led to­ward flight from these hos­tile forces. After all, I’m stay­ing steady with school and mak­ing ever more de­liber­ate de­ci­sions about how to spend my time.

  Is there some sense in which I am wa­ver­ing be­tween im­proper flight and a cor­rect re­treat? I am con­sid­er­ing tak­ing an­other 3 classes this au­tumn, and have wor­ried that such a work­load might prove too bur­den­some. I can take this as a warn­ing that if I feel over­loaded, I should re­spond to that proac­tively and in a timely fash­ion, rather than let­ting the stress build up ex­ces­sively. Like­wise, I should make care­ful de­ci­sions about how I spend my money or nav­i­gate re­la­tion­ship changes. To me, it is a sug­ges­tion that se­ri­ous stress may build up over the course of the year, and that I need to man­age it very care­fully, avoid­ing old rou­tines of bot­tling it up, act­ing out im­pul­sively, or avoidance.

  “Sin­gle acts of re­sis­tance” im­plies that my stress will prob­a­bly spread through my life like an in­vad­ing army, too pow­er­ful to be driven off. Yet through tac­ti­cal guer­rilla war­fare, I can de­lay it and strike back through in­di­vi­d­ual, small ac­tions—plan­ning an ex­cit­ing date night or at­tend­ing a med­i­ta­tion re­treat in the mid­dle of a busy quar­ter, prepar­ing a deli­cious din­ner when I find my­self eat­ing a lot of con­ve­nience foods, all while mak­ing sure I care­fully man­age the re­treat. This will not be a year of vic­tory and peace­ful abun­dance, but of hard strug­gle. I need to take es­teem from the small daily vic­to­ries and the man­age­ment of stress, rather than try­ing to achieve a true turn­ing of the tides. Other friends are in differ­ent situ­a­tions, closer to achiev­ing pro­fes­sional and per­sonal goals, or hav­ing lower as­pira­tions. I should not let their vic­to­ries make me feel ashamed that I am hav­ing a year of care­ful re­treat.

  Moun­tain un­der heaven: the image of RETREAT. Thus the su­pe­rior man keeps the in­fe­rior man at a dis­tance, Not an­grily but with re­serve.

  The moun­tain rises up un­der heaven, but ow­ing to its na­ture it fi­nally comes to a stop. Heaven on the other hand re­treats up­ward be­fore it into the dis­tance and re­mains out of reach. This sym­bol­izes the be­hav­ior of the su­pe­rior man to­ward a climb­ing in­fe­rior; he re­treats into his own thoughts as the in­fe­rior man comes for­ward. He does not hate him, for ha­tred is a form of sub­jec­tive in­volve­ment by which we are bound to the hated ob­ject. The su­pe­rior man shows strength (heaven) in that he brings the in­fe­rior man to a stand­still (moun­tain) by his dig­nified re­serve.

  I no­tice that this read­ing over­all comes with two di­chotomies: my re­treat against hos­tile forces, and the su­pe­rior man’s re­serve to­ward the climb­ing in­fe­rior. I feel as though I’ve iden­ti­fied how the former ap­plies, but not the lat­ter. I do not feel as though any­one is “climb­ing” to­ward me. I am no­body’s su­pe­rior in any for­mal sense, and in no gate­keep­ing po­si­tion.

  Yet it does oc­cur to me that I some­times con­flate dig­nified re­serve with an ex­pres­sion of anger. It is as if I need to pre­tend to en­thu­si­as­ti­cally en­gage with triv­ial­ities, be­cause oth­er­wise I fear I will make the other per­son feel as though I am an­gry with them. Like­wise, I pro­ject that feel­ing of anger onto other peo­ple who show re­serve to­ward me. I come from a fam­ily in which no­body had much skill in ex­plic­itly es­tab­lish­ing how they wanted to re­ceive con­nec­tion from oth­ers, and so I found my­self, as I grew up, try­ing to force con­nec­tion by guess­work, ask­ing ques­tions about the other per­son’s in­ter­ests, and tak­ing up the other per­son on all their in­ter­ests and en­thu­si­asms, even when they didn’t match my own. So I feel in that sense as if I am typ­i­cally the “climber.”

  This gives me a sense, then, of why I some­times feel in­se­cure. To be­come a se­cure, su­pe­rior man starts with al­low­ing oth­ers their re­serve, claiming it for my­self with equa­nim­ity, and show­ing oth­ers how I wish to be reached rather than leav­ing it for them to guess.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 22 Jul 2019 1:20 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: jimmy's comment on: Raw Post: Talk­ing With My Brother

  Great thoughts. I share the “neu­tron mod­er­a­tor” con­cept of NVC.

  NVC-like prac­tices have definitely pro­duced de-es­ca­la­tion in many cases. In ret­ro­spect, I per­ceive that it may have made the other per­son feel ashamed of them­selves for be­ing in­sult­ing or cruel, and hav­ing that be met not with silence or ag­gres­sion, but with an hon­est ex­pres­sion of hurt.

  In some cases, that has led to an ex­tended con­ver­sa­tion in which those feel­ings could be pro­cessed fur­ther, as with my brother. I count this as a suc­cess­ful ap­pli­ca­tion of NVC. That’s why I felt it was not quite fit­ting for Alexey Lapit­sky to sug­gest that I may have come across as judg­men­tal or ac­cusatory, and recom­mend NVC as a solu­tion—al­though I ap­pre­ci­ate his in­put.

  How­ever, in other in­stances, that mo­ment of NVC hon­esty led di­rectly to ei­ther ex­plo­sion (scream­ing, curs­ing, threats, ac­cu­sa­tions) or an un­com­fortable end to the con­ver­sa­tion. Prob­a­bly I could have done more in situ­a­tions where the con­ver­sa­tion just pe­tered out un­com­fortably. I could have in­ten­tion­ally brought up feel­ing like I wanted to talk more at a later time, for ex­am­ple.

  In the “ex­plo­sion” cases, it’s hon­estly as­so­ci­ated with one figure in my life. There is a lot of love there, but also an aware­ness of a high ca­pac­ity for dishon­esty, self-de­cep­tion on their part, false mem­o­ries, and in­ap­pro­pri­ate re­cruit­ment of me as their con­fi­dant. I there­fore even­tu­ally de­cided sim­ply to en­er­get­i­cally shield my­self, prac­tice dis­tanc­ing my­self from their schticks, and find­ing ways to sooth or di­vert them prior to a blowup for the sake of my own com­fort.

  Prob­a­bly it is mem­o­ries as­so­ci­ated with this ex­plo­sive figure in my life that lead me to strug­gle with con­tin­u­ing to pro­cess re­la­tional dis­com­fort with other peo­ple who’d be more re­cep­tive. Thanks for push­ing on that point. I hope I’ll be able to im­prove my other re­la­tion­ships with that in mind.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 18 Jul 2019 18:54 UTC

  14 points

  in reply to: Alexey Lapitsky's comment on: Raw Post: Talk­ing With My Brother

  I’ve re­worded this re­ply about 5 times now, and I’m not sure why the words are prov­ing slip­pery.

  Ba­si­cally, my ex­pe­rience with NVC and other such frame­works is that they most of­ten get offered to peo­ple who are already work­ing hard to com­mu­ni­cate well. Quite nat­u­rally, since they’re prob­a­bly re­cep­tive to help in that effort and in­ter­ested in an­a­lyz­ing their con­ver­sa­tional dy­nam­ics in de­tail. Un­for­tu­nately, it’s the peo­ple who lack good com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills who prob­a­bly need NVC. When the peo­ple who are already care­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tors are also re­ceiv­ing the most ad­vice about im­prov­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tion style, the re­sult can be self-blame, self-stifling, and dys­func­tional lev­els of in­di­rec­tion and soft­en­ing to the point of fun­da­men­tal dishon­esty.

  I need to re­mem­ber that in­tel­lec­tual con­ver­sa­tions are also highly emo­tional and re­la­tional. Ques­tion­ing a per­son’s ideas can feel like a per­sonal at­tack. Mak­ing a strong ar­gu­ment can shut a con­ver­sa­tion down. A de­bate can’t be kept re­laxed through the one-sided ap­pli­ca­tion of ra­tio­nal­ist tech­niques. It has to be a shared lan­guage or im­plicit agree­ment.

  I think the same is true of NVC. If only one per­son’s do­ing it, it’s not go­ing to work very well. It takes two. Some of my best mem­o­ries are of con­ver­sa­tions that took place be­tween my­self and some­body else schooled in NVC or some­thing similar. Some of my worst are of ap­ply­ing NVC or similar tech­niques in a situ­a­tion where the other per­son is used to get­ting their way through dom­i­neer­ing or abu­sive be­hav­ior.

  The benefit of NVC/​ra­tio­nal­ism in situ­a­tions like that is that they help you get away clean. You don’t es­ca­late your own lan­guage or say equally stupid things. That doesn’t mean they’ll look at you any bet­ter—they may well in­vent an even worse in­ter­pre­ta­tion of your be­hav­ior to jus­tify their own abuse. But by con­sis­tently ap­ply­ing these tech­niques to a healthy de­gree, you’ll start to per­ceive your­self as a kind, level-headed per­son who doesn’t get sucked into other peo­ple’s schticks as eas­ily. This builds con­fi­dence and dis­solves guilt.

  This in turn makes it eas­ier to be hon­est about what hap­pened with an in­ti­mate com­pan­ion or ther­a­pist. Hav­ing the op­por­tu­nity to look at the situ­a­tion through your friend or ther­a­pist’s eyes builds wis­dom that can be ap­plied to the larger dy­nam­ics at play. It’s a vir­tu­ous cy­cle.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 13 Jul 2019 15:33 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Teerth Aloke's comment on: Raw Post: Talk­ing With My Brother

  Are you the Maoist, or some­one you know?

  I don’t see my brother as ir­ra­tional. I see him as think­ing ra­tio­nally from a differ­ent set of premises, and morally fired up about the con­clu­sions he draws.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 13 Jul 2019 3:07 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Pattern's comment on: I Ching Ex­plo­ra­tory Run 2/​10

  In con­crete terms, it’s the differ­ence be­tween sort of bleed­ing from work­ing on school­work all day on the com­puter to mind­lessly watch­ing some­body play video games on Twitch or stream­ing a bunch of epi­sodes of a TV show I’ve watched 4 times be­fore; ver­sus de­cree­ing that work stops at 10:00 PM, tak­ing one hit on a joint on the porch (I’m a lightweight), and gab­bing with my girlfriend about all kinds of stuff in a very en­joy­able and emo­tion­ally-en­gaged way that I find ex­ceed­ingly difficult to do if I haven’t gone into a kind of men­tal and emo­tional “sec­ond space.” Does that make sense?

• AllAmericanBreakfast 13 Jul 2019 3:03 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Pattern's comment on: I Ching Ex­plo­ra­tory Run 2/​10

  Thank you for the ideas and all the pos­i­tive feed­back! I would say that the re­sults of this I Ching run have been quite dra­matic so far. I’m ex­cited to make a post about them when they’ve had more time to de­velop. You’re right that seek­ing men­tor­ship on tak­ing on more of a lead­er­ship role would be a good idea. I’m still ex­plor­ing what aca­demic train­ing to seek, and ac­tu­ally start­ing a new ca­reer will be sev­eral years fur­ther down the line—though ob­vi­ously there will be plenty of im­por­tant pro­jects in the mean­time. How­ever, I do feel con­fi­dent that I’ve learned a lot from my work as a teacher, and I feel good about the ways they’re ap­ply­ing to my new pro­jects and school­work. Some­times, that only be­comes ap­par­ent on re­flec­tion.

Raw Post: Talk­ing With My Brother

AI Align­ment “Scaf­fold­ing” Pro­ject Ideas (Re­quest for Ad­vice)

• AllAmericanBreakfast 9 Jul 2019 22:55 UTC

  4 points

  on: I Ching Ex­plo­ra­tory Run 2/​10

  
  

  In­sights, In­ten­tions, First Steps:

  • In­sight: I will pri­ori­tize col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­jects and en­sure their suc­cess, de­pri­ori­tize soli­tary skill-build­ing pro­jects, and re­ject pro­jects re­lated to de­vel­op­ing the ca­reer I am in­volved in cur­rently but mov­ing away from. I will be cau­tious about tak­ing on ad­di­tional col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­jects or es­ca­lat­ing my cur­rent ones, since let­ting down oth­ers is frus­trat­ing to them and may risk my rep­u­ta­tion.

    • Up­date: Since this post, I took on a sig­nifi­cant new col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­ject that fits my new ca­reer di­rec­tion, and have spent the bulk of my free time work­ing on it. I did have a re­quest to cre­ate a doc­u­ment with ad­vice and in­sights re­lated to ex­pe­rience in my former ca­reer. This seems like an im­por­tant way to pre­serve what I’ve learned over the last decade as a mu­sic teacher, so I will prob­a­bly do it.

  • In­ten­tion: I will take time this sum­mer to in­ves­ti­gate al­ter­na­tive com­mu­nity col­leges and teach­ers, since I’ve switched aca­demic tracks since start­ing at my cur­rent school. First Step: I made a list of the com­mu­nity col­leges in my town, and listed the email ad­dresses of the heads of their eco­nomics and math de­part­ments.

    • Up­date: I con­tacted the head of the math de­part­ment at one, and sched­uled a meet­ing for Fri­day.

  • In­sight: Over­all, I will keep a level-headed at­ti­tude with the ups and downs over this pro­cess, and un­der­stand that while plans are frag­ile, par­tic­u­larly those made for more than 6 months out, I can find work­able al­ter­na­tives.

  • In­ten­tion: I will as­sign a rea­son­able amount of time each day to do some­thing in­ten­tional to add joy and ease to my life. Even if I’m not cer­tain it will re­ally ac­com­plish this aim, I’ll se­lect ac­tivi­ties that con­vey the ap­pear­ance of joy, trust­ing that perform­ing such rit­u­als will lead to ma­tu­rity, the real thing. First Step: I made a list of fit­ting ac­tivi­ties and cre­ated a Per­sonal Growth Jour­nal to put them in.

    • Up­date: I started us­ing the late evening as a time to smoke a lit­tle bit of weed, watch TV or read po­etry, and have reached out to friends more of­ten. I have also used time-wast­ing ac­tivi­ties far less dur­ing the day since mak­ing this change, and felt hap­pier about my use of free time. How­ever, the weed-and-TV time rapidly switched from novel and pleas­ant to some­what rou­tine. It will be hard to sched­ule more mean­ingful ac­tivi­ties many days due to my work sched­ule, but it might be nec­es­sary for true “joy time.”

  • In­ten­tion: I will make more of an effort to praise good out­comes of de­ci­sions and ac­tions made by my­self and oth­ers, un­der­stand­ing that they will usu­ally be more mod­est and short-lived than I’d origi­nally hoped. First Step: I started an “ac­com­plish­ment af­fir­ma­tions” sec­tion of my Per­sonal Growth Jour­nal briefly list­ing what I’ve achieved to­day.

    • I only made one en­try in “ac­com­plish­ment af­fir­ma­tions,” but have re­placed it by cre­at­ing a daily work tracker—a sim­ple spread­sheet in which I list each task and ac­com­plish­ment through­out the day. This gives me a more suc­cinct and prac­ti­cal record that both serves as an or­ga­niz­ing tool and as a record of what I ac­com­plish. In gen­eral, I do feel that I’ve soft­ened in my per­sonal in­ter­ac­tions.

  • In­ten­tion: I will look for op­por­tu­ni­ties to take po­si­tions of com­mand, such as a boss or team leader. First Step: I guess I’ll make an “as­pira­tions” sec­tion in the PGJ. Not sure how to take a more con­crete step in this di­rec­tion.

    • No ob­vi­ous progress

  • In­ten­tion: I will hold my­self and my col­lab­o­ra­tors ac­countable for failures in our du­ties. First Step: In my PGJ, I made a log of cau­tions to my­self for my own small failings., and wrote two para­graphs about how I dealt with my frus­trat­ing physics teacher.

    • Writ­ing down some of my mis­takes (on tests, for ex­am­ple) ac­tu­ally did help me be­come more rigor­ous.

  Hex­a­gram:

  55

  In­ter­pre­ta­tion:

  Fêng /​ Abundance

  Thun­der and Light­ning from the dark heart of the storm: The Su­pe­rior Per­son judges fairly, so that con­se­quences are just. The leader reaches his peak and doesn’t lament the de­scent be­fore him. Be like the noon­day sun at its zenith. This is suc­cess.

  My first thought is that some of my pro­jects are col­lab­o­ra­tive. That means we’ve made com­mit­ments to each other. My de­ci­sion to cut these pro­jects or in­crease my com­mit­ment will im­pact other peo­ple. Mak­ing sure oth­ers feel like I’ve treated them well in our col­lab­o­ra­tion is as im­por­tant as adding an­other line to my re­sume. There­fore, all else be­ing equal, I should pri­ori­tize col­lab­o­ra­tions, make sure that I’m treat­ing oth­ers well and re­ceiv­ing good treat­ment in turn, and should be es­pe­cially cau­tious be­fore tak­ing on fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tions or es­ca­lat­ing my cur­rent com­mit­ments.

  The fact that I’m at­tempt­ing a ma­jor ca­reer change af­ter ten years in the work­force makes the lan­guage about “the de­scent be­fore him” un­palat­able to me. A more op­ti­mistic read­ing is that I’m “de­scend­ing” from the zenith of my pre­vi­ous ca­reer. I have ideas from time to time about how I could have done more—build­ing a larger busi­ness, hiring em­ploy­ees, start­ing a sum­mer camp. Maybe it’s merely say­ing that it’s time to let these plans go: a grace­ful exit, feel­ing that I don’t need to squeeze in more to feel suc­cess­ful. This sug­gests that I should not add new pro­jects to­ward fur­ther­ing my old ca­reer.

  You are in a po­si­tion of au­thor­ity in this situ­a­tion. Archety­pally, you are the New King, re­turned from your quest to claim your throne. How­ever, you are en­light­ened enough to re­al­ize that you are merely a part of a cy­cle, and that you must some­day yield your throne to the new kid in town, the younger, faster gun­slinger, the young turk, the next re­turn­ing hero, the next New King. Fret­ting about the in­evitable de­scent is sense­less. For now you must play your role to the hilt and use this gift of power to gov­ern your world as best you can. You are the best per­son for the job. That’s why you were cho­sen. Give it your per­sonal best.

  I did not con­sider that I might be fret­ting about my long-term de­cline in the con­text of pri­ori­tiz­ing these short-term pro­jects. Per­haps I am try­ing to do too much all at once, try­ing to run faster than the younger gen­er­a­tion in or­der to stay ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion. I should at least make sure I do a great job at the col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­jects I’m com­mit­ted to. Achiev­ing a good and timely re­sult there is more im­por­tant than in­vest­ing ex­tra time in learn­ing new skills.

  Chên is move­ment; Li is flame, whose at­tribute is clar­ity. Clar­ity within, move­ment with­out-this pro­duces great­ness and abun­dance. The hex­a­gram pic­tures a pe­riod of ad­vanced civil­i­sa­tion. How­ever, the fact that de­vel­op­ment has reached a peak sug­gests that this ex­traor­di­nary con­di­tion of abun­dance can­not be main­tained per­ma­nently.

  This con­nects with my value that I should have a good, con­scious rea­son for mak­ing con­se­quen­tial de­ci­sions. All my pro­jects are al­igned with my fun­da­men­tal de­sire to seek a more highly-im­pact­ful and re­ward­ing ca­reer. I feel as though I haven’t in­vested enough time in look­ing at al­ter­na­tives, and too of­ten dive in. For ex­am­ple, there are a num­ber of com­mu­nity col­lege pro­grams in my area. The one I’m at­tend­ing was cho­sen for rea­sons that are no longer rele­vant. I’m pur­su­ing a differ­ent aca­demic track, and so I should prob­a­bly make a stronger effort to meet or at least look up all the fac­ulty who teach classes in this new area. Maybe there are bet­ter op­tions. I keep push­ing that into the back­ground be­cause it feels like an­other un­fun thing on my plate, an­other un­cer­tain and po­ten­tially dis­rup­tive de­ci­sion to make.

  After spend­ing some time with the sec­ond half, which seemed more mys­te­ri­ous to me, I felt it might be sug­gest­ing a more cau­tious out­look on the fu­ture. It may be that changes in civ­i­liza­tion that are be­yond my con­trol will profoundly im­pact my ca­reer tra­jec­tory in ways I am un­able to an­ti­ci­pate. I can’t time the mar­ket, and it’s good to plan ahead, but I should take my plans for more than 6 months out lightly, and those for more than a year out as frag­ile. It may be that some of my pro­jects are de­pend­ing on enough fac­tors that there’s always a risk they’ll col­lapse. My com­mu­nity col­lege might get no state tu­ition sub­sidy and triple its rates. I might spend a year build­ing up a re­la­tion­ship with a teacher, only for him to have a heart at­tack and die. Don­ald Trump might be elected for a sec­ond term.

  In the face of risk, it makes sense to di­ver­sify and hedge my bets, while keep­ing a level head and not re­spond­ing over­much to the ups and downs. Both in terms of per­sonal re­ward and al­tru­is­tic im­pact, I think I’m mak­ing the strongest bet I can; I have to trust that over the next few decades, fu­ture-me will ride the waves as well as pos­si­ble, whether seas are stormy or calm. When those risks hit, I can take time to re­assess, but if I’m hedg­ing and di­ver­sify­ing ap­pro­pri­ately, I should be able to miti­gate the im­pact to some ex­tent.

  THE JUDGEMENT

  ABUNDANCE has suc­cess.

  The king at­tains abun­dance.

  Be not sad.

  Be like the sun at mid­day.

  Be­ing a stu­dent means fru­gal­ity with my money and time. It’s stress­ful at times, and can make me sad about what I’m miss­ing out on. This could mean to stay pos­i­tive about the trade­offs—my main strat­egy—or it could be sug­gest­ing that I aim for a full, abun­dant life for my­self even in the midst of all the work. I have to ad­mit that the ques­tion of how to have an abun­dant life right now is far from my mind. I don’t want to see these as “lost years.” Maybe I re­ally do need to be as proac­tive and en­er­getic about bring­ing an abun­dance of joy into my life as I am about work­ing hard.

  Maybe that means set­ting aside “me time” ev­ery day, mak­ing more plans with friends, be­ing more open to tak­ing trips, buy­ing things I like, be­ing OK with OK but always look­ing for fuck yeah. I think that would mean con­sid­er­ing ac­tions that I cur­rently ne­glect or re­ject be­cause they would make me joyful, rather than pro­duc­tive, and in­ten­tion­ally tak­ing a gam­ble on them. It may be im­por­tant to start with the ap­pear­ance of joy and abun­dance, the rit­ual, and trust that over time, it will ma­ture into the real thing. I’m go­ing to make a list of sev­eral easy ac­tivi­ties that might bring me joy, and in­ten­tion­ally set aside a rea­son­able amount of qual­ity time for them ev­ery day, and see if it’s adding to my life.

  It is not given to ev­ery mor­tal to bring about a time of out­stand­ing great­ness and abun­dance. Only a born ruler of men is able to do it, be­cause his will is di­rected to what is great. Such a time of abun­dance is usu­ally brief. There­fore a sage might well feel sad in view of the de­cline that must fol­low. But such sad­ness does not befit him. Only a man who is in­wardly free of sor­row and care can lead in a time of abun­dance. He must be like the sun at mid­day, illu­mi­nat­ing and glad­den­ing ev­ery­thing un­der heaven.

  This quote re­minds me that it’s nec­es­sary but not suffi­cient to have a will di­rected to­ward great­ness. Re­gres­sion to the mean is a thing; time and tide ruin all struc­ture. I need to be ex­cited and glad of the op­por­tu­nity to make even mod­est achieve­ments. I need to be in the habit of prais­ing what I and oth­ers do, always look­ing for and speak­ing to the good. This is a cau­tion to LW and EA per­spec­tives, which of­ten fo­cus on rais­ing con­cerns and doubts, and can give rise to a some­what mechanis­tic dis­course. There’s a time for sober de­liber­a­tion, and a time for praise and delight in what­ever pos­i­tive out­comes are achieved. I do feel as though I’m fo­cused so much on the former that I’m ne­glect­ing the lat­ter.

  Per­haps I can make a men­tal habit of ex­press­ing more glad­ness for the pos­i­tive out­comes of my de­ci­sions, and to counter ac­tivity bias by re­mind­ing my­self that I also have agency over as­pects of my life that I’ve come to take for granted, and that they also war­rant con­tinued al­ter­na­tions of praise and de­liber­a­tion.

  THE IMAGE

  Both thun­der and light­ning come:

  The image of ABUNDANCE.

  Thus the su­pe­rior man de­cides lawsuits

  And car­ries out pun­ish­ments.

  This image seems both mys­te­ri­ous and harsh to me. I’ve never con­sid­ered thun­der and light­ning as sym­bols of abun­dance. To me, the “su­pe­rior man” is who I’m be­com­ing: a per­son ca­pa­ble of shoulder­ing big re­spon­si­bil­ities and work­ing with adults. Cur­rently, I work with chil­dren, and have cul­ti­vated a kindly, re­cep­tive, soft per­sona. This image sug­gests that I’ll need to make my­self into a force of na­ture, a mover and shaker, stick­ing by my de­ci­sions once they’re made, in or­der to have the kind of im­pact I want. This doesn’t seem too rele­vant to my cur­rent pro­jects, since I’m not in a po­si­tion of com­mand in any of them. It might sug­gest that I should fight for such a com­mand­ing role as a way to prove my­self, some­thing I had not con­sid­ered be­fore.

  It could also mean that just de­cid­ing to dis­rupt my life and pur­sue a differ­ent ca­reer, de­spite the ob­jec­tions and dis­be­lief of my fam­ily and friends, is a way of tak­ing com­mand in this way. I need to cul­ti­vate cred­i­bil­ity as an au­thor­ity, from the way I speak and dress, to the way I live, to the roles I take on. In all that, it’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that on col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­jects, my de­ci­sions will im­pact other peo­ple: it’s not all in my head.

  This hex­a­gram has a cer­tain con­nec­tion with Shih Ho, BITING THROUGH (21), in which thun­der and light­ning similarly ap­pear to­gether, but in the re­verse or­der. In BITING THROUGH, laws are laid down; here they are ap­plied and en­forced. Clar­ity [Li] within makes it pos­si­ble to in­ves­ti­gate the facts ex­actly, and shock [Chên] with­out en­sures a strict and pre­cise car­ry­ing out of pun­ish­ments.

  I think this is about tak­ing anal­y­sis se­ri­ously and putting it into ac­tion. Only in this way does think­ing mat­ter. I’ve made some im­por­tant de­ci­sions already, and it’s im­por­tant to im­ple­ment them and en­force them de­spite the bar­ri­ers the world puts up and my own re­bel­lious­ness.

  The fo­cus on pun­ish­ment here is challeng­ing. I think about this very lit­tle. I’m not a gov­er­nor or man­ager, and have no au­thor­ity to pun­ish any­one ex­cept my­self. How­ever, in my pro­jects, peo­ple will no doubt let me down in var­i­ous ways. I need to be pre­pared at least to for­mally ac­knowl­edge vi­o­la­tions and is­sue rep­ri­mands to oth­ers, or to call my­self to ac­count, when there has been a failure of re­spon­si­bil­ity. “Strict and pre­cise” means go­ing be­yond merely feel­ing bad and let­ting it go. It means hav­ing some­what more of an ex­plicit pro­cess, by which vi­o­la­tions are tracked, and ap­pro­pri­ate pun­ish­ments are con­sid­ered be­fore they are car­ried out.

  Timeli­ness mat­ters too. I once was ac­cused of im­proper lane vi­o­la­tion, and con­tested the ticket I re­ceived in court. The officer never filed a re­port, and didn’t show up for the court date, so it was au­to­mat­i­cally dis­missed and my record was cleared.

  Come to think of it, I’ve ac­tu­ally been do­ing rea­son­ably well with this. When I had a sloppy and di­s­or­ga­nized physics teacher a cou­ple quar­ters ago, I called him on it, brought in the rele­vant col­lege au­thor­i­ties, and was very proac­tive about mak­ing sure I was treated fairly.

  That sug­gests that these pro­jects will have value not only as con­crete ac­com­plish­ments, but also in sup­ply­ing me with sto­ries I can tell to es­tab­lish my abil­ity to work through challenges and demon­strate my per­sonal and pro­duc­tive virtue. That will re­quire some re­flec­tion, per­haps af­ter the fact, as I am do­ing here. Part of a good court sys­tem is main­tain­ing ac­cu­rate and fair records. So per­haps I should also be cre­at­ing a jour­nal of these sorts of sto­ries and en­gag­ing in pe­ri­odic re­flec­tion of this kind.

The I Ching Series (2/​10): How should I pri­ori­tize my ca­reer-build­ing pro­jects?

• AllAmericanBreakfast 9 Jul 2019 19:25 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Vaniver's comment on: The Re­sults of My First LessWrong-in­spired I Ching Divination

  I heard an idea on the Ra­tion­ally Speak­ing pod­cast to­day of “befriend­ing a straw man.” The idea is that rather than putting forth the most char­i­ta­ble in­ter­pre­ta­tion of a poorly ar­tic­u­lated thought, or just straw­man­ning it, you take the poorly ar­tic­u­lated idea se­ri­ously ex­actly as stated and see if you can find merit in it that you’d oth­er­wise not have dis­cov­ered. This seems valuable. I think the idea here is to get out of your men­tal ruts, and to do that you might need to be ex­posed to ideas that don’t make ob­vi­ous sense and re­ally try to treat them as fact.

  This “befriend the straw man” idea would im­ply that it’s most im­por­tant to con­sider the as­pects of the div­ina­tion that make the least sense or seem ob­vi­ously wrong. By con­trast, a YouTube video I watched of an old lady giv­ing les­sons on con­struct­ing hex­a­grams said to ig­nore those bits.

  So in the end, we’re sort of ask­ing what we think the func­tion of the div­ina­tion is, and then de­ter­min­ing how to in­ter­pret it based on that.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 8 Jul 2019 21:58 UTC

  1 point

  on: The Re­sults of My First LessWrong-in­spired I Ching Divination

  Edit: This com­ment turned into a whole sec­ond half of the OP, so I added it above.

The Re­sults of My First LessWrong-in­spired I Ching Divination

• AllAmericanBreakfast 8 Jul 2019 20:35 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Raemon's comment on: Steel­man­ning Divination

  I can think of a few fur­ther purely spec­u­la­tive in­fer­ences. Clearly, some­body cre­ated the div­ina­tion sys­tems used in var­i­ous cul­tures through­out the world. The Xunxi quote gives rea­son to be­lieve that for some mem­bers of at least some cul­tures, sys­tems of rit­ual, per­haps in­clud­ing div­ina­tion, were per­ceived as some­thing like a use­ful tech­nol­ogy. With per­haps daily use by a num­ber of prac­ti­tion­ers, pos­si­bly en­gag­ing in on­go­ing in­ter­gen­er­a­tional dis­cus­sions about the effi­cacy of their div­ina­tion sys­tem, it might have been sub­ject to many op­ti­miz­ing tweaks.

  The I Ching does ap­pear to have differ­ent ver­sions. From Wikipe­dia: “Var­i­ous mod­ern schol­ars sug­gest dates rang­ing be­tween the 10th and 4th cen­turies BC for the as­sem­bly of the text in ap­prox­i­mately its cur­rent form” (em­pha­sis mine). It seems to me that any­one tel­ling for­tunes for a reg­u­lar clien­tele will stay in busi­ness longer if their ad­vice offers at least the ap­pear­ance of util­ity. Roy­alty might have been more ed­u­cated and more so­phis­ti­cated con­sumers of div­ina­tion; per­haps they knew ex­actly what they were buy­ing. After all, if it’s pos­si­ble for div­ina­tion to offer both the mere ap­pear­ance of util­ity and the real thing, all else be­ing equal we’d ex­pect the lat­ter to drive the former out of the mar­ket.

  When I syn­the­size the posts of Vaniver and Said Ach­miz, it seems to sug­gest that div­ina­tion is use­ful both when ran­dom and when the an­swers have an op­ti­mal word­ing and fre­quency dis­tri­bu­tion.

  Given that differ­ent so­cieties will fea­ture very differ­ent pres­sures and power struc­tures, it seems un­likely to me that a sys­tem of div­ina­tion op­ti­mized for one cul­ture (or seg­ment of that cul­ture, such as roy­alty) will nec­es­sar­ily trans­late with perfect fidelity to other con­texts. It may not even op­ti­mize the con­scious goals of the in­di­vi­d­u­als us­ing it, or the sur­vival of their so­cieties as a whole.

  I can think of two ways div­ina­tion sys­tems might be re­tained. One is through con­quest. If they pro­mote that ac­tivity suc­cess­fully, it might lead to the spread of the div­ina­tion sys­tem. Another is through pro­mo­tion of in­di­vi­d­ual flour­ish­ing. If a div­ina­tion sys­tem helps peo­ple achieve their aims, they might con­tinue to use it, teach it to their chil­dren, pro­mote it among their friends, and be imi­tated by their en­e­mies.

  I’d ex­pect a sys­tem that does both to be most suc­cess­ful, and my mind im­me­di­ately jumps to the dual na­ture of many re­li­gions, which are by turns war­like and peace­ful. Though the “doves” and “hawks” of each cul­ture or re­li­gion of­ten seem to de­spise each other, they may very well work syn­er­gis­ti­cally to pro­mote the spread of their shared cul­ture. The “hawks” pro­mote an at­ti­tude of con­quest and hardline defen­sive­ness, while the “doves” pro­mote the benefits of a fo­cus on peace­ful in­di­vi­d­ual flour­ish­ing. Both can be use­ful pro­pa­ganda tools both within their own bor­ders and to out­siders. In or­der to be con­vinc­ing to oth­ers, they need to be ut­terly con­vinced them­selves that they are rigid hawks or com­mit­ted doves. A savvy leader would known how to make use of both.

  This is get­ting a bit away from div­ina­tion at this point, so I’ll leave it there. I do think that any ac­count of the util­ity of a div­ina­tion prac­tice (or other cul­tural prac­tice) needs to ex­plain for whom it pro­vides util­ity and the mechanism by which it does so. That’s the rea­son for di­gress­ing into my “hawks and doves are best friends” the­ory. My guess is that even when a re­li­gion doesn’t have an ob­vi­ous div­ina­tory prac­tice, that it has other ways of ac­com­plish­ing some­thing similar.

  I’m less fa­mil­iar with Is­land and Ju­daism, but in Chris­ti­an­ity, it seems to me that ser­mons, ro­tat­ing se­lec­tions of the Bible cho­sen for study, prayer, and calls to take these words and rit­u­als to heart in ways that are per­son­ally mean­ingful for the con­gre­ga­tion are some­what “ran­dom”—or at least out of the hands of the con­gre­ga­tion un­less they’re will­ing to change churches—and op­ti­mized, as judged by the size and growth of the con­gre­ga­tion, or the suc­cess of cul­tures that and their varied prac­tices.

  It would be in­ter­est­ing to spec­u­late on how much the phys­i­cal form of the ran­dom­iza­tion prac­tice or any refer­ence text/​image plays in the effi­cacy of these prac­tices. Can yarrow sticks be re­placed with a ran­dom num­ber gen­er­a­tor, if we’re aware that’s all that’s hap­pen­ing? Or would that make it less effec­tive? Per­haps there is some as­pect of hu­man neu­rol­ogy that makes div­ina­tion done with cer­tain phys­i­cal im­ple­ments more com­pel­ling than that done with oth­ers.

• AllAmericanBreakfast 8 Jul 2019 5:31 UTC

  7 points

  on: Con­test: $1,000 for good ques­tions to ask to an Or­a­cle AI

  Added to the open archive of ra­tio­nal­ist/​EA cash-prize con­tests.

Here Be Epistemic Dragons

• AllAmericanBreakfast 4 Jun 2019 19:48 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: Pattern's comment on: What is the ev­i­dence for pro­duc­tivity benefits of weightlift­ing?

  … I thought this was a com­ment. I guess I’ll just have to learn to like the pun­ish­ment.