John_Maxwell_IV comments on Alien parasite technical guy - Less Wrong

61 Post author: PhilGoetz 27 July 2010 04:51PM

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Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 31 July 2010 05:24:32PM *  4 points [-]

How do you explain people who do manage to save for retirement, wear condoms, etc.?

I think some folks are genetically predisposed to having rational brains with more influence, and that it's also possible to achieve this through training. My self-observation is that training has probably improved my effectiveness in this by at least an order of magnitude.

Training could either be in the form of changing brain fundamentals OR learning to instinctively use and apply an assortment of heuristics like "if your morale is low, don't mope--instead, do things that have been shown experimentally in the past to improve your morale".