Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Teachable Rationality Skills - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 May 2011 09:57PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 May 2011 10:42:36PM 3 points [-]

Skill: Other introspection / reflectiveness. (Catchall for internal self-knowledge habits that don't go elsewhere.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 May 2011 12:02:14AM 9 points [-]

Subskill: Accept that an accurate description of yourself during any given frame-instant will involve some emotions, reasons why you act, and reasons why you believe, which are less than perfectly virtuous.

  • Don't lie about your life story to yourself - don't spruce up your history to make yourself look better. It may be easier to practice the above skill on the past than on the present, and it gets you used to the general idea.
  • Accepting that "What is the cause of my belief?" and "What is the justification of my belief?" will not always have the same answers - you have to accept this non-virtuous fact before you can properly process them as different questions.
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 May 2011 12:04:40AM 5 points [-]

Exercise: Find at least one thing which you do for less than perfectly noble reasons, which you are going to admit to everyone else in the study group, and not fix for at least a week. Everyone else in the study group will admit something similar to you. Possibly followed by group hug. (The idea isn't that any given flaw is okay, the idea is that it's okay to have a running accurate description of yourself which involves known flaws you haven't fixed yet, and all of you are in that same boat together.)

Comment author: wedrifid 28 May 2011 08:51:31AM 4 points [-]

Exercise: Find at least one thing which you do for less than perfectly noble reasons, which you are going to admit to everyone else in the study group, and not fix for at least a week. Everyone else in the study group will admit something similar to you. Possibly followed by group hug. (The idea isn't that any given flaw is okay, the idea is that it's okay to have a running accurate description of yourself which involves known flaws you haven't fixed yet, and all of you are in that same boat together.)

Could you clarify somewhat what you mean by "less than perfectly noble reasons"? What I think of as "things I do for less than perfectly noble reasons" is an entirely different set than "flaws I haven't fixed yet". The latter implies consideration only of things that you can, should, and want to change. This is in contrast to things I do because I'm not perfectly noble and being perfectly noble is not a goal.

I actually think confessions and acceptance of both of those kinds of deviations from perfect nobility could be valuable. It's ok to have an accurate running description of how you are and also ok to have an accurate running description on how you want to be.

Comment author: MixedNuts 28 May 2011 07:31:24PM 2 points [-]

Exercise: When you notice one of your justifications matches a common rationalizing pattern (e.g., "I snapped at my spouse because I was having a bad day, not because I'm jealous, of course I'm not jealous"), acknowledge it as a possibility. Don't try to evaluate its probability yet. Continue your train of thought as usual ("So I need to work on being nice when I'm in a bad mood..."), then start testing whether you're self-deceiving ("If I'm jealous, I should expect to see...").

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