Not entirely sure where the downvotes and disagreements are from, specifically since I think the piece links neatly to the “Wisdom” part of Duncan’s “Sazen” post. If anyone wants to comment why, I’d appreciate that.
Hugo L
Karma: 21
Sounds like you discovered the concept of sazen (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k9dsbn8LZ6tTesDS3/sazen). Nice one! Give Duncan’s post a read, I think you’ll enjoy it 😊
I think this could be partially explained by Joseph Henrich’s “The Secret of Our Success”; he explains that a large chunk of our knowledge is not understanding-based, but rather culture-based, with optimisation for copying, conformity, and tradition-following in the absence of understanding of why something is done.
Examples in hunter-gatherer tribes include:
Bow-making. They know which branches and vines to use for the bow, and which arrows and tips work best, but not why, and there is no experimentation with other materials.
Poison use. E.g., arrow-tip, fish-killers, etc. They have complex preparation steps, but aren’t sure why they do it.
Food taboos/Detoxifying food. They know what to do, but don’t know why it works or which steps are extraneous; they do it “because this is how it has always been done”.
Mostly, humans developed a process or area of knowledge based on necessity, then effectively found a local minimum that achieved their base requirements, and rarely—if ever—explored beyond this scope due to the low perceived likelihood of benefit vs cost of breaking tradition and effort. Any improvements where coincidental to the materials they used when exposed to unfamiliar environments and requirements, and those rare instances of exploration of approach or technique.
Basically, we are actually superbly adapted to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and any improvements beyond that have to occur against the resistance of breaking tradition and failing many times before succeeding. There is a theory that becoming agriculturalists gave us stable food supplies/security and the ability to grow our populations to the point where greater specialisation was more feasible, thus allowing for more experimentation and the transfer of knowledge from experimenting master to student.
I see you are wandering into the territory of barefoot shoes! If you want to do more reading around it, the term “barefoot shoe” should send you to the right places. Turns out our feet are actually quite excellent at being feet, and all we really need is some protection from sharp stuff + insulation +/- weatherproofing, and we’re good.
If you enjoy wide toebox shoes, you might even like zero drop shoes; I know that all my knee pains and sprained ankles disappeared like magic once I switched to feet-shaped, zero-drop, thin sole shoes. Sure, it was a bit uncomfortable walking “barefoot” at first, but my sole and foot/ankle/calf muscles adapted within a week or so. Never looking back!
Also worth mentioning that I try actually walking barefoot (as in unshod, not in barefoot shoes) as often as possible, and did so before switching to barefoot shoes, so ymmv.
I had seen your post on “loudly giving up” from 2023, and was about to draw upon my experience in the medical field to tell you that “actually, we don’t just tell someone in the green shirt to call 911⁄999, but also tell them to inform you when they have or haven’t done it; this is called closing the loop”. Then I saw you discussed it explicitly here! Nice!
We use it a lot in medicine e.g., “get them cannulated, tell me when you’re done or if you struggle”, or “attach the defib pads, let me know when they’re set up so we can do a pace check”.To add to your points in this post, I think closing the loop is also beneficial because it enables the leader/requester to move on to the next step once the prerequisite is met; you can do a pacing check and administer shocks once the defibrillator pads are attached, you can get blood transfusions into the patient once the cannula is in, etc. It also lets them know that the person is now available for more tasks.
In all, a great tool! Thank you for discussing it :)
it is best to focus on the 1-X fraction of the probability space that you control
Crewmate: “Captain, we are hurtling towards the iceberg!”
Captain: “What probability do you give that we will hit?”
Crew: “Our best engineers say 80% in the next 5 to 10 minutes, sir!”
Capt: “It’s best to focus on the 20% likelihood we don’t hit; you can probably do something about the worlds where that is true. Don’t worry about the 80% worlds worlds where we are doomed; we’re doomed anyway if that’s the case!”
Crew: “But Captain, if I think about the 80%, I might be able to mitigate it!”
Capt: “You will be OK!”
Damn, this doesn’t bode well if these are our captains...
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, eh?
I disagree with your take.
Suffering is quite unlike shit in that once we get rid of shit, the shit you got rid of does not come back, crawling up the toilet. Suffering is not some “thing” you can get rid of, but rather a quirk of our neurophysiology. Get rid of the most immediate cause of suffering, and your brain adjusts its thresholds to seek the next worst thing; this is called upregulation.
Two related real-life examples: if you are walking in an uncomfortable shoe, you are aware of the uncomfortable shoe. Step on a bad thorn that pierces your shoe and foot, and now your attention is wholly on the thorn. Take the thorn out, and once your wound has healed, your attention is back on that shoe. Inversely, imagine getting a cast on your foot and ankle because you broke it. It may be uncomfortable at first, but as you heal it becomes alright. After a month or two, the cast is removed. When you step on the floor, it is intensely painful! You would not be alone; many patients feel this pain after removing a cast, because their foot has become sensitive from not walking. The same applies to people who wear shoes all the time trying to walk barefoot on gravel; it really hurts them, but those who walk barefoot all the time can do it without issue.
Have you considered that maybe all the writing and philosophising about suffering might be for a reason, and that generations worth of our brightest minds have considered this issue and thought “damn, this suffering thing is inescapable, even if its previous causes vanish!” and then asked “but why is this the case?”.
In fact, I think you may have hinted at it in your comment about people living many happy years as boring and empty. What are those but types of suffering? And why? What makes it so? Furthermore, have you not joined the ranks of these very same people, philosophising about suffering?
Respectfully, I think you’ve fallen into the mistake of dismissing the Sazen (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k9dsbn8LZ6tTesDS3/sazen) of many prior thinkers, perhaps because you did not exercise the skill of “listening to wisdom” (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5yFj7C6NNc8GPdfNo/subskills-of-listening-to-wisdom).
Maybe if you find the truth in the core of the “suffering is inevitable” approach, you might realise that seeking discomfort, in wise and non-permanently-harmful ways, is actually a way of reducing the suffering you experience from things that once used to harm you. Of course this is within the limits of your body, but the barefoot walking example of earlier is a decent one, and is up there with working out and fasting, amongst many others.
I really like that sazen is a great mix of the Polish word “Sążen” (i.e., fathom, in the measurement-of-depth context) and the Zen word Zazen (i.e., the Zen sitting meditation). I actually like that fathom also stands as an analogue of “undeestand”. I’m not sure if you did this intentionally, but either way I really like this!
Ah, I think I wasn’t clear on this in my original response: I encountered your post before I started my degree, but I found I couldn’t fully implement your concept until I joined it with the two studies I outlined above. In other words, I wasn’t paying attention to my learner’s level, because it wasn’t something I had conceptualised yet.
Your article itself helped me realise that modelling the listener is essential to convey worthwhile information, and that you need to identify their “sticking points” (or cruxes, or grieving points; similar concepts) in order to make progress. Simply put, some people resist psychologically load-bearing updates, and it is important to identify why.
Where I was struggling was in fully applying your concept to my own life, thus my review including the piece of learning that helped me “unlock” the rest of the wisdom of your post (i.e., a/the sticking point might simply be that they aren’t able to engage at the level you are approaching them from). No doubt some people wouldn’t need my insight, but this review was for those that do or did, like me.
In other words, I actually didn’t know #4.
I hope that answers your question, let me know if not.
Out of all the LW posts I read in 2024, I think this one was the most beneficial to my daily life. As a review of this article, I think it might be useful to link it to the current literature on communicating information from one person (often a teacher) to the other (often a student); I think it “fills in the blank” where I previously struggled to implement Raemon’s knowledge.
I’m currently doing a masters degree in education, as such I think a useful contextual addendum to this article—with the goal of improving the required skill of “Modelling Others”—would be the interface between Grow (1991) and Mohanna et al.’s (2007) learning and teaching styles, respectfully.
I’ll start with a brief overview of the two (1 and 2), link them to each other (3), and then link them to this “Listening to Wisdom” article by Raemon (4), because I think it makes the whole concept click into place, and gives me tacit ways to apply Raemon’s insights.
1. & 2. Grow’s (1991) Stages of Self-Directed Learning & Mohanna et al.’s (2007) Four Styles of Teaching
Students start out dependent on the teacher for learning, and view the teacher as an authority or coach; teaching is provided with immediate feedback, and is informational. Imagine students being a cup, and the teaching filling it with liquid learning. They then become interested learners, and the teacher is a motivator or guide, giving lectures that point to a greater truth and guiding discussion plus encouraging goal-setting in the students. Picture the teacher moulding the ‘clay’ that is the students. Students are then involved, with the teacher facilitating discussions as an equal, navigating concept-space with them, and giving group-projects where the student engages with the material in a semi-supervised setting; imagine the teacher leading students on a hike where the destination is mutually agreed upon between student and teacher. Finally, students become self-directed, and the teacher is a consultant in their learning; students pick their own topics, their own interests, and the expert teacher reviews the student’s output and gives advice on how to perfect it. Imagine the students having their corner of a garden, explaining their aim to the teacher, and the teacher praising and advising where needed.
3. Integrating Grow and Mohanna
This is the important part, and you will start to see links to Raemon’s article. It is important that the teacher correctly identifies the stage of learning that the students are currently at, and approaches it using the correct stage of teaching. For example, if you approach a level 1 student (still dependent on the teacher) with facilitation or consulting methods, they will be resentful of the freedom they have been offered; you have effectively dropped non-swimmers into a deep reef with a strong current, and are trying to teach them how to freedive as they sink down, drowning. On the flipside, if you have competent and self-directed swimmers, teaching them how to tread water will leave them bored and resentful of the simplicity of the teaching; they might want to scubadive, freedive, or maybe even surf, and you’re railroading them.
4. Linking this to Raemon (2024, hehe)
Any person at any stage of learning might face a problem that you tacitly understand, and you realise you need to communicate to them the importance of that problem as well as hand over the information you think they would benefit from soulfully, tacitly understanding. How? Well, a great first step is to consider where they are on the spectrum of learning, and often this is through asking open questions to assess their level, as well as their overall aims.
Have they encountered the information a while ago and are starting to be interested, and mistakenly think they can solve all the problems they’ve faced, despite problems being complex and the solution-space being thoroughly explored by thousands before them? Then guide them to set these lofty goals (e.g., “solve world hunger”) and facilitate brief discussions towards prior attempted solutions. When they come up with solutions, ask them to see if this has been thought of before, and maybe help them identify why said solutions didn’t work beforehand, if they can’t come up with these reasons themselves.
Are they becoming more involved in the concepts, and have a grasp of the fundamentals and common pitfalls, but still flounder with more complex solution-spaces? Go on a facilitated journey with them, together, and let them pick the route; have the resources to come out of dead-ends, and emphasise the rational tools needed to foresee and mitigate these dead-ends in the future.
Do they have a solid grasp of the topic, and now know enough to independently direct their own learning? If you are an expert, act as a safe base for them to consult you as needed, and offer guidance when asked.
You might note that dependent learners rarely make the mistake of dismissing wisdom, because they don’t know enough to make any conclusions (if they are sufficiently self-aware). Similarly, self-directed learners have usually encountered reality enough that they are self-sufficient purely by virtue of tacitly learning that real solutions are rarely neat and tidy implementations of theory. It is the interested and involved learners who tend to make the mistake of ignoring tacit, soulful knowledge/wisdom, either as unknown unknowns or overestimation of known knowns / underestimations of known unknowns.
Overall, if you can reliably identify where the person is, through questions about their knowledge-base, assessments of how interested or engaged they are in the subject, and adjustments of your own approach to teaching them, then you can usually convey information to them in a way that they are ready to receive. It’s up to you, now, to decide if it is worth your time and effort.
I think this context is important in the overall post, as I originally had difficutly implementing this knowledge when teaching or discussing with others; I found that sometimes my attempts landed, and other times they were floundering with excess information. As you said, Raemon, a Giver needs good modelling of others to properly communicate what they need to, and I hope this adds to that skill.
“I taught you everything you know, but I haven’t taught you everything I know,” I say.
What a beautiful way of phrasing that. I will definitely be using this!
flesh-manning
I presume, in this phrasing, you meant flesh-manning to be equivalent to ITT. If not, I suspect I misunderstood.
Your thoughts will do what they can to distract you from your true underlying fear.
I see a clear link between this and the “Hostile Telepaths Problem”, in that one might be fixating on this matter to hide from the inner problems (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5FAnfAStc7birapMx/the-hostile-telepaths-problem). Same with your suggestion; perhaps there is a link here, where one must respect one’s unwillingness to engage with the “why” of fixating on “AI doomerism”, but gently hypothesise around what it might be, as well as building power to escape one’s addiction.
If your left arm was working before your stroke, the little voice that ought to tell you it might be time to reject the “left arm works fine” theory goes silent. The only one left is the poor apologist, who must tirelessly invent stranger and stranger excuses for why all the facts really fit the “left arm works fine” theory perfectly well.
How interesting… I wonder how much of this is the reason why some people with dementia confabulate so convincingly, and this is impenetrable to them; perhaps the region of the brain responsible for this paradigm shifting is no longer working, just as in the stroke patients who do not recognise their own arm.
I really like this post, it outlines the fact that we all self-deceive, and uses an excellent example from literature (often rationalist literature) to encourage us to consider this fact. It has made me kinder to myself when I find a self-deception, and the examples you gave have helped me gently tease apart why I might be performing occlumency.
One of my immediate initial responses to this idea was “doesn’t this just discourage you from finding out areas of inefficiency? sounds like a bad idea to me!” but you tied in your reasoning to power and ability to act safely, and—to me—that perfectly packaged the whole concept; it is a great insight to realise that the places I reflexively flinch or turn away from are the same that I am working on unconsciously, and that this “turning away” is a self-preservation mechanism that I would do best to respect and gently hypothesise (without checking) around.
On that note, this post makes real and tacit the usually very hidden machinations of the unconscious, which has been studied at length, and is part of the reason why I think you “hit the nail on the head”, so to speak.
Thank you for this post, I would indeed love to see a further post on shame, as I can see how that ties in but would love to see your insight.
Ouch, I’m sorry that you’ve had people talk to you in that way in a non-genuine manner, so much so that you interpreted my comment as such. No, it wasn’t passive-aggressive, perhaps just an awkward attempt to share my delight that you rediscovered—by first principles—what I consider to be a really strong insight; it was not intended to dismiss your realisation. For example, if you rediscovered Newton’s laws, I would similarly be impressed; “Nice one!” I might even say. I hope you can take my word for it, in that what I wrote is a true reflection of my intent.
That brings me to my initial query, though: in what way is this separate from Sazen? In other words, what is the quality of your realisation that differs from Sazen?
I don’t think I saw a direct response to that, yet. No worries if you don’t have the time or energy; if so, just say so and I’ll try figure out your reasons by myself. It would really help if you gave me a hint, though.