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Will_Newsome comments on The Instrumental Value of Your Own Time - Less Wrong
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Whenever I start thinking about very unlikely hypothetical situations -- often self-glorifying to an extemely embarrassing extent -- I try to think about abstract/qualitative decision theory problems instead: things that I'm very unlikely to make any useful progress on, but are about as likely as the crazy hypothetical situation I was dreaming up before, and with much much much higher expected utility. I like thinking about such problems, too; the only reason I normally don't is because it's become so habitual throughout my life to be incredibly narcissistic. When I consciously think about e.g. game theory for superintelligence, I find the time spent much more rewarding. This has gotten to the point where I might be at a friend's house chilling by the pool and, instead of feeling bored or whatever, I'll close my eyes and remember interesting problems I've encountered and try to solve them. I'm not sure, but I think that if more really smart people picked up this habit then there would be an appreciable growth in scientific output.
More directly to the point, I think that very small hacks like the above would allow one to approach MTP towards their true goals than a very thorough analysis of exploration/exploitation in one's daily life.
I liked this post.
(No spellcheck used for this comment, I sincerely apologize for any errors.)
This reminds me of a bad habit I was able to drop pretty thoroughly almost as soon as I realized what I was doing (which took some decades). I would imagine things to be annoyed at-- what if someone said some infuriating thing, then what would my reaction be? I didn't some up with a substitute thing to think about, but I believe that just dropping that one (or cutting it off fast if it starts) has improved my quality of life somewhat.
Admittedly, that's low-hanging fruit, but just identifying and getting rid of the activities which give you nothing is a start.
And I'll put in a nice word for Sock Pro-- toothed plastic rings which mean you'll never need to sort your socks again, link from Kool Tools, the online descendant of the Whole Earth Catalog.
Here's a hard question: How do you evaluate the value of trying new things?
Once when I was with Marcello he went to Costco and bought a rather large amount of brand new socks -- all the same type, so that he didn't have to worry about mixing and matching. This made my impression of his instrumental rationality go up. (I'm sure a lot of people have different socks for different purposes, but it's something that I probably would have failed to optimize.)
Added: Thanks for linking to Kool Tools! I might travel the country for a year or two while trying to be as light as possible, and that site had a few items that seem like they would be pretty useful.
I am still mostly wearing socks from the massive online bulk order of identical boot socks I made four or five years ago..
I do this too, and my brother and I have communal socks. I hadn't thought of ordering online. Good idea.
I do this as well. Clearly this calls for a poll! How many of us avoid sock-sorting by buying bulk quantities of identical socks? (Or the alternative solution.)
I avoid sock-sorting by not buying or wearing socks, which is still more efficient.
I do this!
It's a practical move. Myself I have three roughly equal collections of socks - identical black ones, identical sports ones and assorted others (mostly either gifts or particularly high quality pairs that I use for marathons and long runs in general).
If you are serious about researching FAI, and see it as more than an idle hobby, you should put more emphasis on study of existing math, e.g. learn logic and recursion theory to graduate level.
Those are not my strengths. We have a lot of really smart people working from that approach already; and they're probably going to be a lot more useful than I ever will be or would be. But I feel a lot more comfortable playing around with concepts like timeless trade than recursion theory: probably because my weaknesses are less apparent there, but still.
We do? Like who? There are qualified people who don't work on the problem, and also a few unqualified people who do. Maybe six people I know of who are both qualified and possibly do useful work on the problem.
It's a matter of improving your sanity when thinking about conceptually difficult questions, not of narrow skill or "approach" (which is a weasel word, like "in my opinion", trying to lift responsibility). Anybody smart can study.
That's an important point. That is the main reason why I will learn learn math and computer science. Also I'd like to have a better idea of what's special about ADT. ;)
Your comment here expresses uncertainty about how narcissistic you really are (relative to the norm). If your level of narcissism is common then noticing you are that narcissistic shouldn't be evidence for much of anything (including your potential to do FAI research).