CS student, blogging and editing at https://www.thinkingmuchbetter.com/. PM me your fluid-g-increasing ideas
NicholasKross
Karma: 176
Socially oblivious question: Is this part of that genre of “posts that are secretly about a specific person or employer”? (aka “subtweeting”)
It can even do both in different areas for the same person! (N-not that I would know...)
Possible idea here of a “motivation treadmill”, where we can only motivate to do hard things by “using up” the supply of good things to link them to. (Relatedly: the demotivating ideas of “nothing motivates me” or “nothing I try works”).
I bet solutions have been somewhat found/sustained in other contexts (high-performance research teams, low-runway startups, warfare, uh… maybe astronauts?).
Agreed! Burst work can be most effective when done on things that amplify or aid steady work (e.g. setting up new software, process automation, learning a skill).
Thanks! And there’s theoretical reasons my prior would be on steady work (including some HN or SO or book comment I saw (maybe related to personal slack?) claiming that 40% was the optimal capacity to work ourselves at in general, due to task throughput concerns)
This might help me think through some health things, thank you
Good point, yeah. Burst work may or may not help, but it becomes necessary in such situations
[Question] Burst work or steady work?
Anyone know/have advice on:
making the most of time spent on the deep thinking?
methods to find the best/most-diversely-explained sources of information?
Thanks! Meds during meals works well for me also.
Sorry that you haven’t had much success, but I am interested in which tactics you used turned out best.
Obligatory comment where I’m jealous of having that much dopamine.Dopamine helps motivation, but my meds don’t make me more viscerally-goal-directed (i.e., right now I’m just reading and writing comments, instead of goals I’ve actually come up with for myself).Anyone here have this problem? Energy, goals, and not enough linkage between them? (Currently thinking it’s related to dark flow or superstimuli, but some Agenty people still do “fun” things without spiralling or neglecting their Big Goals.)
I think I’m describing natural strengths, and I just didn’t think to call it that until you pointed it out just now. I thought linking “Parable of the Talents” would intuition-pump that, but I should be more explicit in the future.
These are intriguing, thanks! But I guess I’m looking for things like these where each skill-section is unbundled. Like if each category of the ASVAB, were its own test.
I remember taking something like this in high school! This is a decent example of what I’m looking for! Not quite the database-of-tiny-skills, but it seems to target the more-specific-strengths thing.
[Question] How to test tiny skills?
I tried to do this with a Twitter alt account, to get info about one specific topic. Then I got lazy and used it as a dumping ground to follow any account I came across. But maybe this could’ve worked there, too.
I’ve noticed a thing happening (more? lately? just in my reading sample?) similar to what you describe, where the emphasis goes more onto the social/community side of rationality as opposed to… the rest of rationality.
The Moral Mazes examples are related to that. Also topics like reputation, and virtues ‘n’ norms, and what other people think of you.
At some point, a person’s energy and resources are finite. They can try to win at anything, but maybe the lesson from recent writings is “winning at social anything is hard enough (for a LW-frequenting personality) to be a notable problem”.
Some thoughts on this issue:
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Codify, codify, codify. Most people in the LW community are lacking in some social skills (relative to both non-members and the professional-politician standard). Those who have those skills: please make long detailed checklists and email-extensions of what works. That way, the less-socially-skilled among us can avoid losing-at-social without turning into Mad-Eye Moody and losing our energy.
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Is there a trend where communities beat around the bush more over time? Many posts do what I’ve heard called “subtweeting”. “Imagine a person X, having to do thing Y, and problem Z happens...”. Yes, social game theory exists and reputation exists, but at least consider just telling people the details.
Common/game-theory/vague/bad: “Let’s say somebody goes to $ORG, but they do something bad. We should consider $ORG and everyone there to be infected with The Stinky.”
Better/precise/detailed/good: “Hey, Nicholas Kross went to MIRI and schemed to build a robot that outputs anti-utils. How do we prevent this in the future, and can we make a preventative checklist?” [1]
If you are totally financially/legally dependent on an abusive organization or person, obviously writing a call-out post with details is game-theoretically bad for you. In that case, don’t leave in those details. For everyone else: either write a postmortem or say “I’m under NDA, but...”.
We get it, we need Slack, and society doesn’t give enough of it for our purposes. Can somebody with higher dopamine coordinate or promote any method so we can setup living arrangements to escape mainstream social pressures?
(If your AGI-will-give-us-Slack timeline is shorter than a community-Slack-project, how much should you really worry about long-term politics-style social/reputational-game-theoretic threats to the community’s Slack?)
Interested in more thoughts on this.
This is a fictional example. Plus, it’s not even slyly alluding to any situations! (Well, as far as I know.) ↩︎
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phew!