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pjeby comments on The Twin Webs of Knowledge - Less Wrong
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That's only true if the insight isn't accompanied by the ability to change that nature. Finding out just how messed up you are is liberating when you realize that 1) you're not to blame for the past, and 2) it doesn't have to be your future any more.
There is no ability to change human nature as yet.
What do you mean by 'human nature'? It seems like 'nature' is in general ill-defined in the first place. If you mean simply, "what it's like to be a human" then I think in many relevant ways we're changing that all the time.
As the Nietzschean quip goes, if the human nature is to be in flux, then you can't change it by changing yourself or others.
You can change it in 5 minutes with an icepick.
Modafinil removes the urge to sleep pretty well - but as thomblake mentions, it depends on how you define that ill-defined concept.
If you re-read the comment you're replying to, you'll see I was answering the part about "your own nature", not "human nature".
However, if you consider that most of what constitutes "human nature" is actually metaprogramming that drives the acquisition of our individual nature, then an enormous part of that nature is not actually hard-wired.
People who've not done any significant amount of mindhacking are horribly biased towards believing that aspects of their individual nature are in fact universal. (Actually, everyone is so biased, it's just that non-mindhackers are an order of magnitude worse, because they don't have the experience yet of seeing the consistent disconnect between their automatic thoughts and external reality.)
Stupid example: earlier this week I realized that I was choosing not to aggressively pursue certain goals because I felt the "rush" to complete them would be stressful. Then I realized that there was no intrinsic association between "rush" and "stress" -- that was a learned response, and a fairly specific one at that. (My mother always freaked out whenever she was late... which was virtually all the time.)
However, until I thought to question that specific assumption, I was not conscious of it being my individual nature - it was assumed to be part of human nature, or just the nature of the world itself. (i.e. "of course it's stressful to rush")
It's impractical to question every implicit association, though, and practical knowledge/experience is needed as a guide to know what assumptions to surface and question. (A good rule of thumb, though, is that anything that provokes a negative emotional reaction should be questioned thoroughly.)
For the individual at least. Eugenics of course gives the ability to change human nature (albeit with a time scale and logistical difficulties that make it useless to most purposes).
This is true, to some extent.
We are able to make small changes to human nature, including our own nature. Just how far do you think that can be taken, though? Can a lazy person recognize that they are lazy and go on to become a millionaire?
I'll wait to answer that question until I become a millionaire a second time, so I can replicate the result. ;-) (The first time might have been overly influenced by the dotcom boom, and in any event didn't involve me changing any personal characteristics.)
More seriously: I've changed a ton of other characteristics in myself, both minor and major, and this is not uncommon among people I've trained. Realizing that you do something for a reason -- even if it's a stupid, outdated, reason -- is often a relief in itself. But once you understand the reason, then using the right method(s) allows change to take place almost instantaneously. It's finding the reasons in the first place that's more complex, since the brain does not (alas) have a "view source" button.
How did you first become a millionaire?
Stock options.
In a dotcom startup that made it big? Were you a founder? Early employee?
Something like that. I designed a customer ticket tracking system that decreased customer-perceived latency of cases handled by email (using a novel scheduling technique derived from the Theory of Constraints), improved interdisciplinary co-operation across a physically and organizationally-distributed workforce, and enabled private-label support for OEM clients without needing dedicated staff for each client.
It made a huge difference to the ability to land private-label deals while keeping the overhead for each deal low, as well as easing product-line integration as the company expanded. In terms of value to the company, it was probably worth at least $20-30million during the time I worked there. I probably should've asked for more options. ;-)
And the skills required for this were? Programming experience and your innate intelligence, plus a modicum of business sense and what we would call rationality here?
I don't think that much of what gets discussed here would've helped much or been particularly relevant. It was more a matter of knowing what I wanted and what the company needed, as well as my previous 12+ years practical experience about what people will and won't do when confronted with a computer program that they don't necessarily want to use in the first place.
It was a problem of whole-system design, including both social and HCI aspects. For example, many characteristics of the system were designed specifically to promote viral adoption of the software within the company, as well as to create subtle social pressures towards customer- or company-beneficial behaviors. I had previously apprenticed under a teacher who taught me the social dynamics of business, as well as the art of designing systems that merged machine and human information processing with social manipulation to achieve business goals. (Specifically, in the field of real estate office management software, but the lessons were pretty universal.)
In a way, you could say my understanding of irrationality was at least as important, if not far more important, than my understanding of "rationality". (Though I learned a lot of instrumental rationality principles during my apprenticeship as well.)
Very interesting. And you must have been, what, 30 when you did this? 35?
That sounds interesting. Could you provide some examples?
I can think of 6 of my friends who became multi-millionaires at a young age. 4 of them got wild lucky breaks with stock options; 1 of them inherited it; 1 of them worked for 10 years to build a large company starting from nothing, which I think he still owns 50% of (the other 50% being owned by his initial angel investor).
So, 5 out of these 6 millionaires got there almost completely by luck. Ironically, at least 2 of these 5 are absolutely convinced that anyone in the US who is smart and works hard will become a millionaire.
that 5 of your friends all got very lucky seems very unlikely to me. Perhaps you have a biased sample of intelligent, motivated friends (i.e. more intelligent and motivated than average).
Perhaps Phil prefers making friends with people who are already millionaires.
It was not just luck in the stock-options cases. They wouldn't have gotten lucky if they weren't capable, motivated people. So, biased sample, yes. But, still, lucky.
saturn - No, I didn't initially know that they were millionaires.
how do you know? Do you have 5 other capable, motivated friends who shot for millionairedom and failed over and over again?
Which two?
They can. A lazy person recognizing they are lazy and becoming a driven go-getter type would be a far less plausible outcome.
Lazy + intelligent + flexible ethics is a reasonable combination for becoming a millionaire (or a prison inmate).