I tend to think of “Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease ” as belonging into the “A Human’s Guide to Words” sequence. As I remember, the example of “what is a desease” is much more relevant, motivating and enlightening than any example in Yudkowsky’s sequence.
Bobertron
Me, too! I’ve taken the survey and would like to receive some free internet points.
He revealed his super-secret patronus that Dumbledore told him to keep secret, a super secret.
Not that it were very important, but actually Harry told Dumbledore to keep the patronus secret, not the other way around.
Your example acually exists. It’s called actually useful horoscopes. It’s creators are from Less Wrong.
Apps that somehow aid in behavior modification or decision making could be described as “for rationalists”, while games or technical apps could not. While “for rationalists” might not be the best choice of words, it’s not completely redundant either.
“Effective self-care” or “effective well-being”.
Okay. The “effective”-part in Effective Altruism” refers to the tool (rationality). “Altruism” refers to the values. The cool thing about “Effective Altruism”, compared to rationality (like in LW or CFAR), is that it’s specific enough that it allows a community to work on relatively concrete problems. EA is mostly about the global poor, animal welfare, existential risk and a few others.
What I’d imagine “Effective self-care” would be about is such things as health, fitness, happiness, positive psychology, life-extension, etc. It wouldn’t be about “everything that isn’t covered by effective altruism”, as that’s too broad to be useful. Things like truth and beauty wouldn’t be valued (aside from their instrumental value) by either altruism nor self-care.
“Effective Egoism” sounds like the opposite of Effective Altruism. Like they are enemies. “Effective self-care” sounds like it complements Effective Altruism. You could argue that effective altruists should be interested in spreading effective self-care both amongst others since altruism is about making others better off, and amongst themselves because if you take good care for yourself you are in a better position to help others, and if you are efficient about it you have more resources to help others.
On the negative side, both terms might sound too medical. And self-care might sound too limited compared to what you might have in mind. For example,one might be under the impression that “self-care” is concerned with bringing happiness levels to “normal” or “average”, instead of super duper high.
I tend to read http://lesswrong.com/r/all/new/
After short googleing, I found this checklist. Apparently it’s based an an article by Kahneman (and others).
The first Item on my morning routine checklist would be: “Get checklist”. I just know that I couldn’t work with checklists. I couldn’t make myself to print them out and waste all the paper. Or even if I did, I’d run out of them and forget to get new ones. Or I’d loose the checklists, or there would be another of a million possible complications. There should be something like “checklist paper” where you write down the items of the checklist once and only a small strip of paper is used to make the check-marks and teared off. I suppose that’s what rich people have smartphones for...
This already was on less wrong not too long ago
If you hate yourself and think you’re worthless, take a moment to consider whether you have any evidence that you’re objectively doing any worse than anyone else
Okay, suppose I’m objectively doing worse than everyone else, is that a reason to hate myself? I don’t think so.
What I want is a life worth living, people worth living with and a culture worth living in—quality, not quantity
There might be differences in how to archive that, but I’m pretty sure everyone here agrees to that in general.
irrational things like religion, magical thinking and art
One of those things definitely doesn’t belong in this list (hint: it’s art).
Trying to maximize happiness via rationality is a fool’s quest! The happiest people I know are totally irrational!
You are confusing the concept of increasing happiness by rational means and increasing happiness by teaching rationality to people. If you only care about happiness and people that engage in magical thinking are systematically happier, it would be completely rational to teach magical thinking. If you teach rationality to people it will destroy some of their irrational beliefs. Depending on whether those irrational beliefs make them happy or unhappy, the impact on happiness would (I think) depend heavily on the person.
If maximal rationality is your goal
It certainly isn’t.
Ideas about what a society would look like after ten years with no kids are also welcome.
Do you know “Children of Men”? It shows a world after 20 years with no kids.
I never really stopped wearing diapers.
If he ignores all traditions, just because they don’t seem to make sense, it will get him into trouble. Reason as memetic immune disorder would be relevant.
I consider diseased thinking to be an unofficial part of the sequence on words (of which “37 ways words can be wrong” is the hub). It gives an example for how words can influence our thinking that is not contrived, practical, not obvious and important. It’s a nice example of clear thinking.
If it was the first of April, I’d upvote.
I like the animation and the voice, but I dislike the text. I don’t need it and it really distracts from the animations. And if I did need to read along with what you say, I think YT has a subtitle feature that would be much less distracting and could be turned off. I suppose I’ve seen videos using the style you attempt here, but I’m not sure I like then, either, and they typically use text only, while you also use pictures.
Oh, and I suppose you would be faster in producing those videos if you were to give up on the text.
I think that CBT techniques could be helpful. They tend to be about reasoning things out on paper in a structured manner.
You could work on realistically assessing how likely the feared result is, and on assuring yourself that, even if it happened, you could cope with it.
“Psychology for mathematicians” sound to me like the coolest thing ever to be thought at an university.
Buddhism focuses on the human factors of belief, how belief can lead to dukkha (suffering, discontent), and how dukkha can be avoided.
Actually, that’s what CBT is all about, too. There are therapies that combine CBT and buddhist elements, like Dialectical behavior therapy.
The concept of self is a convention, not an absolute, it refers to a constantly changing composite. The meaning of self depends on context. Clinging to an inappropriate concept of self can lead to dukka.
Similar notions are taught in CBT. If there is no permanent or “true” self, it’s impossible to have a rotten, bad, evil, worthless (etc.) permanent self. It’s an idea that can help in getting rid of some emotional problems and create an attitude that helps to change oneself.
I’d propose that there are a some advantages to starting with CBT, before one learns Buddhism:
It’s easy. For example learning about Cognitive distortion might be a low hanging fruit for many.
It’s focused on small practical results, not some grand things like “enlightment”
There is no mysticism or magic.
That down-to-erath and practical attitude about belief and suffering is the same attitude I think should be used when studying buddhism.
Buddhism is not inherently rational
Right. I see buddhism as a form of therapy created in a mystical context. Any form of rationality found in buddhism is just a by-product of trying to get rid of suffering. As this is not the main goal of LW-type rationality one would expect systematic differences between LW and Buddhism.
Of course CBT is not inherently rational either. It might be interesting how a good cognitive therapy would be done on a LW-person, who knows about propability theory and compartmentalises less. There might be a danger of being “too smart” for the therapist! (“every flaw you learn how to detect makes you that much stupider”)
What aspects of Buddhism should be refactored or eliminated?
Buddhists meditate and therefore can be considered experts on introspection, experience, the psyche and so on. But we know that, if you are locked inside a room, you can learn a lot about yourself but not about the world outside the room. So I wouldn’t expect to find anything good in buddhist metaphysics.
Also, the term “enlightment” sounds overly religious to me. It might lead to a Affective death spiral and become so great, that it is unarchiveable anyway, so why would you even bother?.
Done