Think of LessWrong as a hobbyist community, where the things we like to take apart to see how they're built, tinker with endlessly, and exult in learning more about...
...are our own minds.
First two things that popped into my head when I read this?
The subject comes up now and again but as communities that go that tinker with and learn about their own minds this one is neither particularly dedicated nor all that far ahead of the curve. (I would actually be rather embarrassed if that was our claim to fame!) We just aren't specialised in that area. It is one of many subjects of exploration, and not the first among them.
In fairness the grandparent was a semi-random thought that occurred to me on reading the OP. It's entirely possible I was projecting what I'd like LW to be about rather than accurately characterizing what it is about.
The 'minds' we discuss are quite often not specific to humans
Yep. That feels quite compatible with a hobbyist outlook though. I own one, you own one, we can compare the models we have and their specs, but it's also fun to speculate about what other models are out there, including the one that are out of practical reach, and even about what models could exist.
Investigations on, say, trends in 'forgiveness' behaviours among a selected population would never reach such a mammoth karma rating.
That seems again compatible with a hobbyist outlook: we're more interested in vignettes, field reports, even sheer bragging than we are in dry "scientific" investigation of our favorite plaything.
this one is neither particularly dedicated nor all that far ahead of the curve
Now you've made me really curious, which other communities did you have in mind? I'd appreciate pointers.
Don't forget you are not just a brain (or two brains), but also a body. A lot of intellectuals neglect the physical side of things. They might be brilliant, but how much more brilliant would they be if they ate right, exercised, dealt with stress effectively, etc.? There is also the influence on your emotional state. Maybe you feel anxious or unhappy simply because your body isn't expending energy the way it is supposed to. Sometimes you need to put the pen & paper down (or shut off the computer) and go lift something heavy or go for a run.
I think Terry Pratchett makes this point well, in "The thief of time". Can't find the exact quote, but here goes my paraphrasing from memory
"Human beings make decisions by committee. The stomach has a mind of its, own and wants to put food in the mouth.
Unreliable memory.. but here's a less opinionated, and closer to original sounding one.. although the source is dodgy.
And she felt hungry. And that also made no sense. The stomach was a bag for digesting food. It wasn't supposed to issue commands. The Auditors could survive quite well by exchanging molecules with their surroundings and making use of any local source of energy. That was a fact.
Try telling that to the stomach. She could feel it. It was sitting there, grumbling. She was being harassed by her internal organs. Why the ... why the. . why had they copied internal organs? Yuerkkk.
Frome here.
Note from the future: I asked a bunch of LLMs for Terry Pratchett quotes on the human stomach, and while there's no guarantee any of them are actual non-hallucinated quotes (in different conversations I got many different ones while no single one came up twice), I think they're all pretty good:
"All he knew was that his stomach had just started investigating some of the more revolutionary options available to it."
"The stomach is smarter than the mind, which is why it likes to make all the important decisions."
"His stomach was making the kind of noises that normally precede the arrival of a self-propelled meal."
"His stomach felt like it was trying to digest a live weasel while attempting to escape through his boots."
"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. And the trouble with having an empty stomach is that it wants food all the time."
“The stomach is an essential part of the nervous system. It tells the brain what it wants far more clearly than the brain manages to tell it.”
"The human stomach is an amazing thing. It can stretch to accommodate all sorts of things. In theory, anyway. It just doesn’t appreciate it when you try to prove it."
I recently did this for "career" specifically and I'd like to share it. It's not well written but that's not a problem. If I applied a critical lens I'd lose a lot. My next domain is friendships: What kind of friend do I want to be?
Anyone else care to share their equivalent for work? I find it does help me to hear how others phrase their values and understand meaning in their life.
a. I want to work in an environment that rewards hard work and where there is room to grow, both personally and professionally. I would like to work in a job where continued education and learning pays off.
b I would like to work in a place that treats its employees fairly and like adults, values results, and doesn’t breathe down my neck.
I would like to work in a cooperative environment. I want to learn from my coworkers. I want to be respectful and professional when needed but share parts of my life with my coworkers.
At work I would like to do my fair share as well as help others when they need it. I want to be reliable. I want to be willing to admit when I’ve made a mistake so accomplishing goals is the highest priority. I want to take pride in my work and work efficiently. I want work that is something that I am good at.
Well-written post.
But given the relatively high numbers of upvotes received by many of the recent posts in this vein (including yours and the posts you link), it’s not at all clear to me that the particular intellectuals who read Less Wrong are really engaging in “sub-optimal levels of careful introspection.” It’s also possible to go too far in the introspection direction.
I thought it sounded like it's meant as an introduction to LessWrong. Especially with those recommended links toward the end. People who already read this site aren't the target audience.
And it could also be a compendium of arguments for LW readers to use to convince non-LW readers to try checking in on quality of life.
sqrt(-1) and Nancy got my intentions :)
I especially want to attract people in academia and positions of intellectual leadership to being actively and morally rational, since their attitudes spread to their students and apprentices. When you have an intelligent mentor who isn't using her intelligence to directly analyze and improve her own life, you're unconsciously less convinced it's a fruitful pursuit. When the opposite happens, it can really start a cascade.
Provided such a cascade preserves peoples' sense of morality, which requires some serious care to ensure, it can be a great thing for them and the people around them.
Data point: I have definitely been engaged in "sub-optimal levels of careful introspection" for most of my life. Articles on Less Wrong prompted me to introspect more, and the benefits I've gained from doing so have definitely been greater than the expected benefit from anyb obvious alternative use of that time would have been.
I'm not sure whether the current amount of resources I spend introspecting (after LW's effect) is greater or less than optimal, but overshooting a little is probably better than undershooting and missing insights.
Phil, that's why I included "Introspect carefully, not constantly" and "Re-evaluate on an appropriate time-scale." I've also experienced over-inactivity due to planning/introspection, so I worked to make my introspection events more efficient and more punctual. Then I felt better about doing them, and got more actual living done.
I've been reading Less Wrong for about four months now and I haven't really made the effort to optimize my introspection levels. Alicorn's series and this post, plus some other outside influences, have placed doing that higher on my list of priorities. I'm not necessarily the average Less Wrong reader, however.
What if your primary problem is that you have no answer to this?
At the risk of sounding harsh, this sounds like an excuse rather than a problem.
The exercise suggested in the OP is quite straightforward: take a pen and paper, or bring up an empty text file in Notepad or TextEdit or whatever. Also take a kitchen timer. Set the timer to ten minutes.
At the top, write these words: "How do I want my life to affect me and other people?"
Start the timer. Spend the next ten minutes writing, not stopping to cross out or edit. That is the important part. Write, whatever happens. If you can't think of a sincere answer, write an insincere one. Write something that you reject entirely for the first five minutes, then draw a horizontal line and spend the next five writing about what's wrong with this insincere answer.
Do this exercise. Seriously. It will cost you only ten minutes and you will learn a lot from it. Also, you will have material that you can bring back to LW for further discussion.
I have this problem, too (and it doesn't feel like an excuse to me, though I don't as much class it as a problem as a fact about me, at this point), and this sounds like an interesting approach.
My answer would start with 'For the most part I honestly don't care, but...'.
You might have a "convince yourself that life is pointless" bias...
Something else that might help is to rephrase the question and ask what you would do.
If there was a button to safely stop a happy, healthy, responsible mother from getting hit by a car, would you push it? Or maybe, would you have pushed it in the past? Not do you care but would you push it?
If there were two buttons, one to make the tasty food in your house disappear, and one to make the garbage disappear, and you could only push one, which one would it be? Not do you care, but which one?
You could take your choices as evidence that some part of your brain might care. If you're going to do these things anyway, and they don't seem common-sensically-morally wrong, then why not try to care more about doing them?
You can do that by making a decision that your choices will follow a system. Being aware of the system, over time, the effect of cognitive dissonance resolution might just be that your emotions get more involved and you actually start caring more.
It happened to me, for reals :)
You might have a "convince yourself that life is pointless" bias...
I'd expect to be having trouble with general apathy and/or depression if that were the case, and I'm not. (I do experience a fair bit of apathy, but it's the comfortable 'hey, not my problem' kind of apathy: not troublesome, actually very close to contentment.)
If there was a button to safely stop a happy, healthy, responsible mother from getting hit by a car, would you push it?
If it were convenient, sure. I wouldn't go especially far out of my way to, though, in practice.
If there were two buttons, one to make the tasty food in your house disappear, and one to make the garbage disappear, and you could only push one, which one would it be? Not do you care, but which one?
This comes under 'basic maintenance', in my book. I'd be willing to devote as much energy to pushing the 'remove garbage' button as I'd be willing to put into cleaning my house the normal way (which is, um, not actually very much), and perhaps a little more for the novelty value.
You could take your choices as evidence that some part of your brain might care. If you're going to do these things anyway, and they don't seem common-sensically-morally wrong, then why not try to care more about doing them?
Why should I value 'caring more'? I'm quite satisfied with my life as it is now.
(It might be useful to note for context that I appear to be a satisficing consequentialist by nature. 'Good enough' makes lots of sense to me, and most of the bits of the world that I seem most likely to be able to change are already good enough. The bits that aren't good enough, I do put effort into fixing, including long-term effort. But the idea of having some sort of intentional long-term effect on things mostly just makes me go o.O)
I'm quite satisfied with my life as it is now.
Ah, I got the impression when you said
I have this problem, too
that you viewed this as a problem, but I guess now that you were just continuing the already-established word choice.
ETA: Something to note... you seem to be distinguishing yourself by your aversion to effort:
"hey, not my problem" ... "I wouldn't go especially far out of my way to, though, in practice." "as much energy ... as I'd be willing to put into cleaning my house the normal way (which is, um, not actually very much)"
That doesn't mean you care or feel strongly about avoiding effort moreso than the people your description aims to distinguish you from, but simply that you assign more negative utility to it.
Good start. Next time, keep going for ten minutes. (It's OK if you decide to keep the result to yourself instead of posting it as a comment.)
Well, first lets think about what you want for yourself. My main suggestion is to consider the possibility that you want to feel a certain way... maybe feel happy, healthy, intellectually stimulated, loved...
When I first did this, I accepted that the answer was mine to give, and I could decide randomly if I wanted to (or didn't want not to). For lack of a better idea, I made a list of small decision trends I exhibited that seemed instinctively desirable to me, like "going swimming", or "eating oranges". I made a "line of best fit" and concluded that I wanted my life to be intellectually and emotionally stimulating, when integrated over time. Then I gradually modified my disposition a little, to make this approximation more accurate.
I later realized that certain emotions like happiness were physically healthier and conflicted less with intellectual functioning, thus being instrumental to a) achieving a balance between emotional and intellectual stimuli, and b) living longer to experience more stimuli. It took longer to start realizing what I wanted for others, because that involves what they want, which is often more complicated and something I can't measure directly. Nonetheless, I've found myself compelled in thought experiments to help others even when it wouldn't result in positive experiences or memories for me, so some of my morals are definitely terminal (not in place just to serve my other values).
This was a very qualitative description, but nonetheless, it gave me some structure to build on and explore.
You might try a similar approach to finding what you want for yourself: extrapolate from trends you like, or maybe away from trends you don't. Don't worry about how "fundamental" this makes your choice... it's your choice, you can make it however you want to, or don't want not to ;)
I'd strongly encourage you to consider being happy and thoughtful as things you might want for yourself. Maybe look at this pyramid.
While you're focussed on yourself like this in order to get started, do keep in mind an intention to examine morals in due time as well. They're harder to figure out, but I'd say they're worth it!
Applying optimal foraging theory to rationality is something we've been discussing at the NYC-LW meetup group for a few months now. I think this is related to this post.
Sounds promising. What kind of rationality did you discuss in relation to OFT -- epistemic or instrumental? Or, in other words, what quantity did you substitute for the energy to be maximized -- improvement of one's map of reality or progress towards one's goals? Did you attempt to quantify these?
Both really. How much time should we dedicate to making our map fit the territory before we start sacrificing optimality? Spend too long trying to improve epistemic rationality and you begin to sacrifice your ability to get to work on actual goal seeking.
On the other end, if you don't spend long enough to improve your map, you may be inefficiently or ineffectively trying to reach your goals.
We're still thinking of ways to be able to quantify these. Largely it depends on the specific goal and map/territory as well as the person.
Anybody else have some ideas?
In AI, this is known as the exploration/exploitation problem. You could try Googling "Multi-armed bandit" for an extremely theoretical view.
My biggest recommendation is to do a breadth-first search, using fermi calculations for value-of-information. If people would be interested, I could maybe write a guide on how to do this more concretely?
First, understand the domain of the problem so you can identify poential downsides. Is this area Black Swan prone? Does this resemble Newcomb's problem at all? What do (I think) the shape of risk is here?
For most things people need to do in daily life, we might just consider the cost of further optimization against cost of remaining ignorant and being wrong as a result of that ignorance. It can ne good to be aware of the biases that Prospect Theory talks about--am I putting off reasonably winning big because I'm so afraid of losing pennies?
If someone asks you what you want for yourself in life, do you have the answer ready at hand?
Yeah: To gather knowledge, to learn and understand everything.
Everything is covered by the above. Everything.
Everything is covered by the above. Everything.
Whoops! Computronium. There goes the cosmic commons again.
No. That's the problem.
I interpreted your first post as pointing out to XiXiDu's that his goals were problematic for people who weren't him (they'd be killed or at best forcibly merged with him). I replied to note that if his goals were as stated, that observation wouldn't be of interest to him. I'm not sure how to interpret your reply, which in my framing becomes "Yes. That's why it would.".
do you want the useful signal answer or the real answer? real: I want to acquire resources to make myself more attractive to the opposite sex. I want to extend my possibilities for mating as far into the future as I can. signal: i want to make the world a better place or something.
Have you read Thou Art Godshatter?
I agree with Eliezer that my values are an ad-hoc assembly of things that happened to increase the genetic fitness of my ancestors, and that this ad-hoc-ness is why I do not solely value my own genetic fitness. If natural selection were smarter, I would. But naturally, I'm satisfied with the values I got instead :)
From the perspective of a hypothetical, evolution-personified designer who "created" me, my morals might just be signals. So I'm careful that I might be running on hostile hardware that might try overtaking my conscious values to, say, become a corrupt and promiscuous political leader with many offspring. But I don't identify with this hostility as "my values", and will make much conscious effort to prevent such corruption.
ETA: You might really have those values; I just want to draw attention to them not being an inevitable consequence of evolution or "realizing one's true purpose". Thankfully, used as such "true purpose" doesn't have to mean anything non-subjective, nor in particular equate to "temporally earlier in-some-sense-implicitly-conceived purpose".
I'm not quite sure that's what the parent meant. I understood it literally and it does make sense as well.
I never talked about what nazgulnarsil's values meant, but my own ;) This was intentional. S/he really might have those values consciously; I only provided a foil to that possibility. So I just ETA'd to clarify that; sometimes I sincerely forget that consistent pronouns aren't explicit enough to convey intention.
I was being fairly literal. no one says as much because it is a very low status thing to say.
natural selection wasn't smart enough to keep me from getting a vasectomy. happiness: 1, genetic utility: -infinity
Wait a minute... Do you think status is the main reason people don't say they only value reproduction? It's not, say, because they don't only value reproduction?
Or are you just saying that among the few people who really only have that terminal value, few say so because of the status it signals?
That may be true. But more importantly (since it's so easy to observe what people say), I bet that even among the people who would say they value only reproduction, most respond to real-life in a way that reflects otherwise.
for natural selection reproduction is a terminal value and mating is an instrumental value. for me mating is the terminal value. to me it seems like males have mating as a terminal value and females have reproduction with a high status male as a terminal value. their signals seem to reflect this pretty accurately.
Why have you split your claim between genders? Are these values are naturally different between genders or that the differences are learned? In a society with large gender differences such as ours (or at least mine) it's hard to separate the differences in values due to gender (if there even are any) from the learned behaviour of members of the different sexes.
Yes, those particular differences are what you would expect to see given the different selection pressures that operate on male and female humans. As my previous link explains:
In many non-monogamous species, the benefit to a male's reproductive fitness of mating with multiple females is large, whereas the benefit to a female's reproductive fitness of mating with multiple males is small or non-existent. In these species, there is a selection pressure for whatever traits enable a male to have more matings. The male may therefore come to have different traits from the female.
and later:
Some biologists theorise that a species' degree of sexual dimorphism is inversely related to the degree of paternal investment in parenting. Species with the highest sexual dimorphism, such as the pheasant, tend to be those species in which the care and raising of offspring is done only by the mother, with no involvement of the father (low degree of paternal investment).
...
According to Daly and Wilson, "The sexes differ more in human beings than in monogamous mammals, but much less than in extremely polygamous mammals."
The differing parental investment between males and females together with the differing ease of confirming parentage both tend to encourage a mating preference in males for quantity and a mating preference in females for quality.
The precise degree to which this holds in humans is obviously an empirical question. The evidence I have seen leads me to place a high probability on it being more true for humans than is commonly acknowledged. If you want references I can provide some. So to answer your questions: yes, there are strong reasons to expect a difference between genders in this regard and yes, there are strong reasons to expect the particular differences nazgulnarsil suggested.
The differing parental investment between males and females together with the differing ease of confirming parentage both tend to encourage a mating preference in males for quantity and a mating preference in females for quality.
There are several reasons why females might find a preference for quantity beneficial. By mating with multiple males, a female can create confusion about the paternity of her offspring, encouraging several males to help feed her and her children. By having children with many males, instead of just one, a female gives her children greater genetic diversity and increases the likelihood of beneficial genetic traits. Also, there is some evidence that sperm may actually compete for egg fertilization, so by mating with multiple males, a female can create a situation where the "best" male is the parent of her child.
Allow me to head off a possible confusion: are you asking for unambiguous evidence to go with the theoretical prediction? That would be what I would be seeking had I made your comment.
"for me mating is the terminal value." You mean that you act close to as if it was?
I think that you get pleasure from many other things too, and even if you would loose the interest in mating, you would go on getting pleasure from many of those other things.
I rationally think that I value the happiness of myself and others as a terminal value. I also get pleasure of it. To some extent this increases my mating chances but some of it decreases. The same seems to be true to people similar to you, although to a smaller extent: you are in between these two positions.
What is a" value"? Is it what I think as my value and try to achieve, or is it the thing towards which my genes (and memes?) are optimized? I think that it is closed to the former, but in my case neither of them is exactly mating, although I am a male.
I'd say that basic English pragmatics lead us to interpret it as "the terminal value relevant to this situation" rather than "the only terminal value I have". The relevant question would thus be not, "don't you enjoy other things unrelated to mating?" but rather, "If you stopped deriving pleasure/interpersonal connection/etc from mating, would you still be interested in doing it?"
Define mating so that “you stopped deriving pleasure/interpersonal connection/etc from mating” is a possible future state of the world. :-)
I remember coming across some comments on a LessWrong post (which I haven't been able to find again) where people were discussing software they use to 'organize' their thoughts and help brainstorm - relating to this blog post because it's a great way to help become better at your life (it's way too easy to lose profound realizations in the back of your mind). Does anybody have software they recommend? - Google turns up a lot of sub-par programs.
Not sure if it is quite what you are looking for but I find Evernote very useful as a kind of digital memory extension. I use it to note down thoughts, ideas, links, quotes, book titles etc. for later review and organization. Not exactly organizing thoughts or a brainstorming aid but more a tool for offloading and organizing memory.
I have a lot of friends who use workflowy, and personally I used project maps and goal-factoring with [yED]{www.yworks.com}.
90% of GTD material is about next actions and project levels. How did you learn to do this kind of high level analysis?
That's the remaining 10%. You know, the part which isn't covered in 'teach yourself GTD in one hour' audiobooks.
But seriously, there's much stuff about higher levels of planning in GTD. See 'someday maybe' lists, monthly review, putting analysis tasks on monthly lists, analysing farther horizons periodically, etc.
I actually read the book, which covers all levels. Most people who get into GTD have problems with the lower levels, thats why so much is written on them. But David Allen does alot to cover the highler spheres too, both in his lectures and his writing.
Very well, I accept.
I shall return on the morrow having done so, using this public commitment to assist this decision's entrance into my subconscious desires. Results shall be posted tomorrow. Wish me luck, saluuud
Don't interrupt your work every 20 minutes to wonder whether it's your true purpose in life. Respect that question as something that requires concentration, note-taking, and solid blocks of scheduled time.
Note-taking could be bad advice. Here's an article that echoes my thoughts: Epiphany Addiction.
So, I missed my goal of scoring 100% in the Stanford AI class. Time to do better - to do what others can't, or just haven't thought of yet.
Many adults maintain their intelligence through a dedication to study or hard work. I suspect this is related to sub-optimal levels of careful introspection among intellectuals.
If someone asks you what you want for yourself in life, do you have the answer ready at hand? How about what you want for others? Human values are complex, which means your talents and technical knowledge should help you think about them. Just as in your work, complexity shouldn't be a curiosity-stopper. It means "think", not "give up now."
But there are so many terrible excuses stopping you...
Too busy studying? Life is the exam you are always taking. Are you studying for that? Did you even write yourself a course outline?
Too busy helping? Decision-making is the skill you are aways using, or always lacking, as much when you help others as yourself. Isn't something you use constantly worth improving on purpose?
Too busy thinking to learn about your brain? That's like being too busy flying an airplane to learn where the engines are. Yes, you've got passengers in real life, too: the people whose lives you affect.
Emotions too irrational to think about them? Irrational emotions are things you don't want to think for you, and therefore are something you want to think about. By analogy, children are often irrational, and no one sane concludes that we therefore shouldn't think about their welfare, or that they shouldn't exist.
So set aside a date. Sometime soon. Write yourself some notes. Find that introspective friend of yours, and start solving for happiness. Don't have one? For the first time in history, you've got LessWrong.com!
Reasons to make the effort:
Happiness is a pairing between your situation and your disposition. Truly optimizing your life requires adjusting both variables: what happens, and how it affects you.
You are constantly changing your disposition. The question is whether you'll do it with a purpose. Your experiences change you, and you affect those, as well as how you think about them, which also changes you. It's going to happen. It's happening now. Do you even know how it works? Put your intelligence to work and figure it out!
The road to harm is paved with ignorance. Using your capability to understand yourself and what you're doing is a matter of responsibility to others, too. It makes you better able to be a better friend.
You're almost certainly suffering from Ugh Fields: unconscious don't-think-about-it reflexes that form via Pavlovian conditioning. The issues most in need of your attention are often ones you just happen not to think about for reasons undetectable to you.
How not to waste the effort:
Don't wait till you're sad. Only thinking when you're sad gives you a skew perspective. Don't infer that you can think better when you're sad just because that's the only time you try to be thoughtful. Sadness often makes it harder to think: you're farther from happiness, which can make it more difficult to empathize with and understand. Nonethess we often have to think when sad, because something bad may have happened that needs addressing.
Introspect carefully, not constantly. Don't interrupt your work every 20 minutes to wonder whether it's your true purpose in life. Respect that question as something that requires concentration, note-taking, and solid blocks of scheduled time. In those times, check over your analysis by trying to confound it, so lingering doubts can be justifiably quieted by remembering how thorough you were.
Re-evaluate on an appropriate time-scale. Try devoting a few days before each semester or work period to look at your life as a whole. At these times you'll have accumulated experience data from the last period, ripe and ready for analysis. You'll have more ideas per hour that way, and feel better about it. Before starting something new is also the most natural and opportune time to affirm or change long term goals. Then, barring large unexpecte d opportunities, stick to what you decide until the next period when you've gathered enough experience to warrant new reflection.
(The absent minded driver is a mathematical example of how planning outperforms constant re-evaluation. When not engaged in a deep and careful introspection, we're all absent minded drivers to a degree.)
Lost about where to start? I think Alicorn's story is an inspiring one. Learn to understand and defeat procrastination/akrasia. Overcome your cached selves so you can grow freely (definitely read their possible strategies at the end). Foster an everyday awareness that you are a brain, and in fact more like two half-brains.
These suggestions are among the top-rated LessWrong posts, so they'll be of interest to lots of intellectually-minded, rationalist-curious individuals. But you have your own task ahead of you, that only you can fulfill.
So don't give up. Don't procrastinate it. If you haven't done it already, schedule a day and time right now when you can realistically assess
Eliezer has said I want you to live. Let me say:
I want you to be better at your life.