I think that many people underestimate the importance of physical appearance (I will concentrate on fashion/clothing here), and overestimate the effort and cost it takes to improve it. Some of the benefits of good physical appearance are that we appear more trustworthy and competent, on average earn a higher salary, and have an easier time getting a job after an interview. Wearing good-fitting, clean, stylish clothes is a strong signal that we care about ourselves and are therefore also capable of caring for others (consider the opposite case—wearing ill-fitting, worn-out clothes signalling that we are not capable of looking after even ourselves). There are many sources of fashion advice for both genders to be found for free online, catering for every type of budget and body type. Even without increasing our yearly budget for clothes by much, by learning the basics of fashion we can focus on buying only the clothes that look good on us, and improve our lives without much effort.
Jakob_J
I can very much relate to the sentiment in this post, so would like to add some related thoughts. I think it’s nearly impossible not to strive for anything more in life, simply because we are so geared towards always learning and improving and wouldn’t be happy otherwise. Now, this doesn’t necessarily translate to always strive beyond one’s limits and expect nothing less than stellar greatness—this sounds more like perfectionism to me. Instead I prefer to think of it as slow and deliberate progress (or at least variety) in different aspects in life, eg:
Career: If you have a perfectly good job but you feel like you have stopped learning, maybe try a different role within the company or change sector? Changing jobs every 2-3 years is a good way to keep learning (see the S-curve theory of learning)
Hobbies: Pick up a hobby that has a lot of potential to let you grow over time. Try increasing the difficulty, eg. if you like cooking try more elaborate recipes, or pick up something new like sailing or scuba diving and get new qualifications. I like to call this one’s “life-career” because its something that we should be prepared to do over a long period in time and be consistent in practicing it.
Family and friends: I think there’s always ways to deepen connections with those around us and have more meaningful conversations. Practice initiating conversations with strangers, introducing people to each other, organise dinner parties etc. I can recommend the book The Art of Gathering for how to do this.
In short, strive for variety and improve life in a variety of ways, which doesn’t require one to become the next Elon Musk.
I agree completely with the sentiment in this post. While I think that AGI would be potentially dangerous, the existing progress towards it is blown completely out of proportion. The problem is that one of the things you’d need for AGI is to be able to reason about the state of the (simulated) world, which we have no clue how to do in a computer program.
I wondering if an hint of answer could be found by exploiting the fact that economic growth (which should be closely related to progress?) has been differential across the world over the past century. For example, you might argue that China and India are experiencing the same levels of economic growth as did Europe earlier in the 20th century. If this is the case, I would study how different indicators varies with the economic growth in Asia and Europe to find out if these indicators can explain the growth (or are explained by the growth). You could say look at whether energy (oil/gas/electricity/coal etc) usage is a leading or lagging indicator, and do something similar with “ideas” (patents/degrees/companies/advanced products). This should give some indication of what the most important factors of growth have been historically, and if they have been consistent in different parts of the world.
Thanks, knowing about this game mode makes me want to play Civ again!
I was wondering if you have any thoughts on how we as individuals might act to acquire useful information effectively. A lot of information out there that we normally consume (social media/news etc) is often eye-catching or interesting but not very useful (it doesn’t change our plans or outlook in life). Personally I would guess that books might be the best bet, but it can be hard to find the right ones.
Thanks, I agree that LW is a good place to start reading. I would add that LW can also be a good source for curated material, i.e. someone might post about the best primary and secondary sources to find out more about a topic.
I also get your point about “broad” vs “shallow”. I do wonder what a good model would look like for reading since broad understanding in itself is relatively useless—it needs to be translated into shallow, technical understanding at some point.
Where is the selection effect coming from? You’d think that the human body is large enough to host a range of different bacteria, so unless they have some way of competing within the body, sterilization would just remove some bacterial populations rather than select for those resistant to antibiotics.
Immigration issues aside, I second the choice of the United Kingdom. Having lived in several European countries, the UK probably has one of the strongest intellectual cultures I’ve seen. The population is roughly that of California and Texas combined, and yet its combined cultural and scientific outputs is on par with the US as a whole (it has received the second largest number of Nobel prizes in the world, and in terms of Nobel prizes per capita it outperforms the US by a factor ~2).
However, I would say that Oxford wouldn’t be my first choice:Most great things about Oxford are behind the walls of the colleges—if you are not a member of the university, you feel quite cut off from the intellectual life there. (Even as a member of the university, things are only active during term times, which are much shorter than elsewhere)
Living outside Oxford and commuting in is a pain—the roads are always clogged, even for buses. Commuting by train is possibly only from a few places.
I would recommend living near London:
London is a really fun city. Whatever your interests might be, it is quite likely that you will find groups with the same interests as you. Also the food scene is amazing—you could probably find both great restaurants and grocery shops specializing in any cuisine you want.
Public transport is pretty great, much better than what I have seen in e.g. NY. It is common to live >1 hr outside the city and commute in, so there are lots of places in the countryside which are affordable but with a direct train to central London.
The job market is very active, and it shouldn’t be a problem for two people to find a job here.
TEAM: a dramatically improved form of therapy
There are certainly similarities, but TEAM is a bit less “psychoanalytic” in the sense that it doesn’t seek to unveil childhood trauma or anything like that. Instead, it focuses more on the here and now, and more on a person’s positive qualities. The positive reframing step is meant to bring resistance to conscious awareness, since the patient usually do want to change their negative patterns of thought.
Thanks for your comment!
Regarding your prior, yes I agree with this, and I also think the effectiveness of TEAM decreases dramatically with an unskilled therapist. All of the recorded live sessions are with David Burns, which might be an indication that it takes extreme practice to fully master it. I have only ever used it for “self-therapy”, in order take the edge of some of my most self-critical thoughts as in the example. I think it works quite well for people who are looking for CBT-style therapy.
Awesome, really glad that you’ve found the episodes helpful! I have also found that the live sessions focused on relationship issues to be some of the most enlightening ones.
If you haven’t already found them, there are several more episodes on the same theme. For example, you might be interested in listening to the ones with Mark:
Live Session (Mark) — Introduction & Testing (Part 1)
and the session with Brian:
Anger in Marriage: The Five Secrets Revisited
Regarding the podcasts, I agree that they are somewhat confusing and seem out of context, unless you listen to a substantial amount of them. I discovered the podcast before Feeling Great came out, and while the book is great, I think the podcast has helped me more on the “gut level” as it really drives the point home. I can definitely recommend listening to the live sessions in addition to reading the book—I’ve put together a list of some of the best episodes here.
I’m glad I managed to rekindle your interest in TEAM therapy!
Unless you have heard them already, I think the first 15-20 episodes give a pretty good overview of the structure and motivation of TEAM. The episodes with Mark, 29-35, also provide quite a good breakdown of the structure, since they stop and comment on each section before proceeding.
Economic security is probably far more important than physical security, and much more difficult to obtain. The reason we don’t already see wealthy refugee cities in deserts and other remote areas is that the thing everyone is looking for, a stable income, is simply not available there, and constructing all the required infrastructure and local economy from scratch is a difficult task even for developed nations. Simply put, in the choice between moving to a deserted area of Nevada versus say LA or NY, most if not all would choose the big cities due to the far greater economic opportunities on offer there.
A related concept in my view is that of agency, as in how much I feel I am in control of my own life. I am not sure what is the cause and what is the effect, but I have noticed that during periods of depression I feel very little agency and during more happy periods I feel a lot more agency over my life. Often, focusing on the things I can control in my life (exercise, nutrition, social activities) over things I can’t (problems at work) allows me to recover from depression a lot faster.