Sidestepping the politics here: I’ve personally found that avoiding (super)stimuli for a week or so, either by not using any electronic devices or by going on a meditation retreat, tends to be extremely effective in increasing my ability to regulate my emotions. Semi-permanently.
I have no substitute for it, it’s my panacea against cognitive dissonance and mental issues of any form. This makes me wonder: why aren’t we focusing more on this from an applied rationality point of view?
toonalfrink
Karma: 1,163
This seems to be a fully general counterargument against any kind of advice.
As in: “Don’t say ‘do X’ because I might want to do not X which will give me cognitive dissonance which is bad”
You seem to essentially be affirming the Zen concept that any kind of “do X” will imply that X is better than not X, i.e. a dualistic thought pattern, which is the precondition for suffering.
But besides that idea I don’t really see how this post adds anything.
Not to mention that identity tends to already be an instance of “X is better than not X”. Paul Graham is saying “not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X), and you just seem to be saying “not (not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X)) is better than (not (X is better than not X) is better than (X is better than not X))”.
At that point you’re running in circles and the only way out is to say mu and put your attention on something else.
Since this is the first Google result and seems out of date, how do we get the RSS link nowadays?
I may have finally figured out the use of crypto.
It’s not currency per se, but the essential use case of crypto seems to be to automate the third party.
This “third party” can be many things. It can be a securities dealer or broker. It can be a notary. It can be a judge that is practicing contract law.
Whenever there is a third party that somehow allows coordination to take place, and the particular case doesn’t require anything but mechanical work, then crypto can do it better.
A securities dealer or broker doesn’t beat a protocol that matches buyers and sellers automatically. A notary doesn’t beat a public ledger. A judge in contract law doesn’t beat an automatically executed verdict, previously agreed upon in code.
(like damn, imagine contracts that provably have only one interpretation. Ain’t that gonna put lawyers out of business)
And maybe a bank doesn’t beat peer to peer transactions, with the caveat that central banks are pretty competent institutions, and if anyone will win that race it is them. While I’m optimistic about cryptocurrency, I’m still skeptical about private currency.
I was in this “narcissist mini-cycle” for many years. Many google searches and no luck. I can’t believe that I finally found someone who recognizes it. Thank you so much.
fwiw, what got me out of it was to attend a Zen temple for 3 months or so. This didn’t make me less narcissistic, but somehow gave me the stamina to actually achieve something that befit my inflated expectations, and now I just refer back to those achievements to quell my need for greatness. At least while I work on lowering my expectations.
It does not, but consider 2 adaptations:
A: responds to babies and more strongly to bunnies
B: responds to babies only
B would seem more adaptive. Why didn’t humans evolve it?
Plausible explanation: A is more simple and therefore more likely to result from a random DNA fluctuation.
Is anyone doing research into which kinds of adaptations are more likely to appear like this?
Can you come up with an example that isn’t AI? Most fields aren’t rife with infohazards, and 20% certainty of funding the best research will just divide your impact by a factor 5, which could still be good enough if you’ve got millions.
For what it’s worth, given the scenario that you’ve at least got enough to fund multiple AI researchers and your goal is purely to fix AI, I concede your point.
I don’t like this post because it ignores that instead of yachts you can simply buy knowledge for money. Plenty of research that isn’t happening because it isn’t being funded.
Balance motivation and discipline
A Shor-to-Constance translation would be lossy because the latter language is not as expressive or precise as the former
Great work.
I wonder just how far this concept can be stretched. Is focusing a translation from the part of you that thinks in feelings to the part of you that thinks in words? If you’re translating some philosophical idea into math, are you just translating from the language of one culture to the language of another?
And if so, it strikes me that some languages are more effective than others. Constance may have had better ideas, but if Shor knew the same stuff as Constance (in his own language) perhaps he would have done better. Shor’s language seems to be more expressive, precise and transferable.So:
In a given context, which language is “best”?
In a given context, which languages have the best ideas/data?
Where might we find large opportunities for arbitrage?
For example, I think we should be translating spiritual ideas into the language of cognitive science and/or economics. Any others?
Personalized mythic-mode rendition of Goodhart’s law:
“Everyone wants to be a powerful uncompromising force for good, but spill a little good and you become a powerful uncompromising force for evil”
The parent-child model is my cornerstone of healthy emotional processing. I’d like to add that a child often doesn’t need much more than your attention. This is one analogy of why meditation works: you just sit down for a while and you just listen.
The monks in my local monastery often quip about “sitting in a cave for 30 years”, which is their suggested treatment for someone who is particularly deluded. This implies a model of emotional processing which I cannot stress enough: you can only get in the way. Take all distractions away from someone and they will asymptotically move towards healing. When they temporarily don’t, it’s only because they’re trying to do something, thereby moving away from just listening. They’ll get better if they give up.
Another supporting quote from my local Roshi: “we try to make this place as boring as possible”. When you get bored, the only interesting stuff left to do is to move your attention inward. As long as there is no external stimulus, you cannot keep your thoughts going forever. By sheer ennui you’ll finally start listening to those kids, which is all you need to do.
Aphorisms on motivation
Look, if you can’t appreciate the idea because you don’t like it’s delivery, you’re throwing away a lot of information
It’s supposed to read like “this idea is highly unpolished”
Here’s an idea: we hold the Ideological Turing Test (ITT) world championship. Candidates compete to pass an as broad range of views as possible.
Points awarded for passing a test are commensurate with the amount of people that subscribe to the view. You can subscribe to a bunch of them at once.
The awarding of failures and passes is done anonymously. Points can be awarded partially, according to what % of judges give a pass.
The winner is made president (or something)
It might be hard to take a normative stance, but if culture 1 makes you feel better AND leads to better results AND helps people individuate and makes adults out of them, then maybe it’s just, y’know, better. Not “better” in the naive mistake-theorist assumption that there is such a thing as a moral truth, but “better” in the correct conflict-theorist assumption that it just suits you and me and we will exert our power to make it more widely adopted, for the sake of us and our enlightened ideals.
Case study: A simple algorithm for fixing motivation
So here I was, trying to read through an online course to learn about cloud computing, but I wasn’t really absorbing any of it. No motivation.
Motives are a chain, ending in a terminal goal. Lack of motivation meant that my System 1 did not believe what I was doing would lead to achieving any terminal goal. The chain was broken.
So I traversed the chain to see which link was broken.
Why was I doing the online course? Because I want to become better at my job.
Do I still think doing the online course will make me better at my job? Yes I do.
Do I want to get better at my job? Nah, doesn’t spark joy.
Why do I want to get better at my job? Because I want to get promoted.
Do I still think doing better will make me get promoted? Yes I do.
Do I want to get promoted? Nah, doesn’t spark joy.
Why do I want to get promoted? Because (among other things) I want more influence on my environment, for example by having more money.
Do I still think promotion will give me more influence? Yes I do
Do I want more influence? Nah
Why do I want more influence (via money)? Because (among other things) I want to buy a house and do meetups, and live with close friends at the center of a vibrant community that helps people
Do I think more money will get me this house? Yes I do
Do I want to live with close friends at the center of a vibrant community that helps people? Well, usually yes, but today I kind of just want to go to the beach with my gf, and decompress.
Well okay, but most days you do want this thing.
Shit you’re right, I do want to do this online course
And motivation was restored. Suddenly, I feel invigorated. To do the course, and to write this post.
A thought experiment: would you A) murder 100 babies or B) murder 100 babies? You have to choose!