Adding a note because I said “quotes don’t belong in this thread” elsewhere. However, this quote belongs in this thread, because
I’ve tried pretty hard to wrap my head around his ideology (he’s incredibly long winded) and this is what I got from it
apophenia
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That would be great, but it would be more in the keeping of this thread to try and condense some section of this site to a dozen or so words. (Not leaving in everything, of course)
No, quotes don’t belong in this thread, your intuition is wrong. This thread is about something closer to learning how to speak in original quotes.
Great subset to have picked! Are there ways to shorten this style-wise or throw out technical vocabulary to make it accessible? Is some part of it less important than others, so that you can throw out ideas as well?
Could you break down that intuition? Why?
If you think that because it’s short, I STRONGLY disagree—value added is not proportional to length.
If you think that because it’s an exercise, I disagree, although that’s a stronger case. We happen to be doing original research in exercise form, and evidence shows exercises work better than academic articles.
If you think that for some other reason, or something like the above but not quite, I’d love to hear it!
thanks, this is exactly the case. a better objection is, it’s not strictly true because things can be some complex net of the above cases, and it doesn’t always break down into one of the four, but that doesn’t fit in “15” words, and it’s less important
edit: also it’s possible in rare cases for things to be uncorrelated but causally connected
Chip & Dan Heath, Made to Stick:
Communicate one thing.
Judea Pearl, Causality:
If two things are correlated, there is causation. Either A causes B, B causes A, they have common cause, or they have a common effect you’re conditioning on.
Edit: If two variables are correlated, there is causation. Either A causes B, B causes A, they have common cause, or they have a common effect you’re conditioning on.
EXACTLY.
I’d be interested in writing this one. I don’t your divide is a real one; it’s basically the same skill. But it’s still worth talking about in that context.
I just launched the alpha of forget.io, a service for developing habits and recording data in self-experimentation. It texts you on your phone; you text it back. My stereotypical question (and the one I invented it for) is “How happy are you on a scale of 1-10?” Free to minicamp participants; costs a small fee for everyone else (although only enough to pay for the text messages).
Absolutely. I can give better resources if you can be more specific as to what you’re looking for.
I recommend The Checklist Manifesto first as an overview, as well as a basic understanding of akrasia, and trying and failing to make and use some checklists yourself.
The resources I spent most of my time with were very specific to what I was working on, and so I wouldn’t recommend them. However, just in case someone finds it useful, Human Factors of Flight-Deck Checklists: The Normal Checklist draws attention to some common failure modes of checklists outside the checklist itself.
This is awesome. I might remove the examples, print down the rest of the list, and read it every morning when I get up and every night before going to sleep.
Interesting you should say that. About a week ago I simplified this into a more literal checklist designed to be used as part of a nightly wind-down, to see if it could maintain or instill habits. I designed the checklist based largely on empirical results from NASA’s review of the factors for effectiveness of pre-flight safety checklists used by pilots, although I chased down a number of other checklist-related resources. I’m currently actively testing effects on myself and others, both trying to test to make sure it would actually be used, and getting the time down to the minimum possible (it’s hovering around two minutes).
P.S. I’m not associated with CFAR but the checklist is an experiment on their request.
If you were to test your suggestion for two weeks, I would be interested to hear the results. My prediction (with 80% certainty) is: Lbh jvyy trg cbfvgvir erfhygf sbe n avtug be gjb. Jvguva gra qnlf, lbh jvyy svaq gur yvfg nirefvir / gbb zhpu jbex naq fgbc ernqvat vg, ortva gb tynapr bire vg jvgubhg cebprffvat nalguvat, be npgviryl fgbc gb svk bar bs gur nobir ceboyrzf. (Gur nezl anzr znxrf zr yrff pregnva guna hfhny—zl fgrerbglcr fnlf lbh znl or oberq naq/be qvfpvcyvarq.)
So, let’s call the thing I’m talking about “winning”. It is EXTREMELY helpful although not logically necessary to think winning is a good idea in order to win. I’m talking about how to convince people of that helpful step, so they can, next, learn how to win, and finally, apply the knowledge and win.
Either you’re talking about a rationality that doesn’t consist of winning, or I’m hearing: “You cannot use the ‘winning’ part of their brain to convince them that it is good to win, because the ‘winning’ part of them already knows that, it’s just not in charge.” Why on earth should I restrict myself to some arbitrary ‘winning’ part of their brain, if such a thing existed, to convince them that it’s good to win? That sounds silly.
Please let me know if I even make sense.
Figure out your goals, and then make plans for when you get off work to optimize for those. Working as a cashier doesn’t seem optimal for almost any purpose—maybe you could start by figuring out how to make money more efficiently, if that’s your goal?
Learn the major system or memory palace. This would let you store a list of things to think about or do when at work. It’s also quite easy to practice while at work, once you get the basics down. I’d recommend this first, if you really won’t be allowed to write.
Solve problems. See what problem-solving methods work and which don’t. See what kinds of problems you are worst/best at, and become better at those. Math problems, world-modeling (prediction and underlying event deduction), and introspection are especially easy to do in your head.
Try to figure out why stuff around you is the way it is. (Why did that person buy that item?). Make predictions. Calibrate and get higher accuracy as well.
Introspect. Find out why you believe what you believe, and whether you should.
Don’t improve your rationality, do something else with your time.
Optimize your job as a cashier, as much as is possible. Figure out how to do stuff in the least time. Experiment when interacting with customers to see if you can get tips or interesting conversation. Get a different job (manager?) at the same establishment somehow. A useful problem will motivate you more than a non-useful problem.
Combine all these.
Downvoted for “It’s probably good for your brain somehow.”
I can’t give another suggestion unless you tell me what’s undesirable about watching TED. There’s a transcript on the site, but he uses graphics copiously, so I’m curious how useful it is. Less Wrong says it is too long to post as a comment.
I’ve studied game theory and rationality, and I don’t use game theory even when applying rationality to game design! I’ve used some of the nontechnical results (threats, from Shelling’s book) to negotiate and precommit but that’s about it. Has someone else used game theory in real life?
Unless someone else responds to this comment, my guess is that this topic is of greater interest to readers than it is of any use.
By “via rationality” I assume you mean “via logical argument or sound science”, which is an absurd substitution. Rationalists should win. The Dark Arts therefore are a type of instrumental rationality. That said, I still disagree, at least for some irrational people (let’s roughly say anyone I could convince to eating a food that gives them a stomachache).
They can be convinced they should study [instrumental] rationality, it just requires you present unreasonably large amounts of evidence and don’t use logical inference or experiments. (And when I say unreasonably large, that’s for people in college studying science. For merely average twenty-somethings, you may need to beat them over the head with solid bricks of evidence.) Caveat: I do not often interact with allegedly common people who don’t meet the minimum bar of adjusting expectations based on (sufficient) observation, so this comment does not apply to such persons. It is still a useful comment.
I.e. look, I used this thingy called rationality and I made/saved thousands of dollars, got a boyfriend, and fixed significant mental problems. Seemed to work for me okay. You need to go REALLY overkill on the evidence for non-science folks though. Again, beat them over the head with it. Make it something that will help them personally, too. I’ve found it useful to get people to agree (not verbally and aloud, though that’s an interesting experiment) that whatever mysterious method I used to I do that, it would be a good thing to learn, BEFORE I revealed that the answer is something weird or “educational” sounding. This second half is only slightly dark-artsy (consistency bias).
“15 words” is a secretly a verb rather than a noun. I definitely think discussion and clarification is good, although in this particular thread I’m sad to some people engaging solely in that and missing an opportunity to try out the exercise instead.