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Swimmer963 comments on Open thread, October 2011 - Less Wrong
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You may have to explain some context here, because I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'not seeing anything that you should go out and do.' Do you find your lack of employment/social/romantic opportunities distressing? If not, then there isn't a problem unless you want there to be a problem. If you do want to change this situation, then I can't point out the opportunities you have because I know nothing about your day-to-day. However, you're right that unless your situation is very unusual, it's unlikely that there are really no opportunities.
I don't see how asking for rationalist techniques to make me better at noticing opportunities requries any context. Not that I'm unwilling to give context, I just think it would be irrelevant. I'm asking if there's anything I can to do get better at spotting opportunities. What was unclear about my question that prompted you to assume I was asking for specific opportunities to be identified for me?
Hold off on proposing solutions and discuss the situation.
I suggested a general technique that worked well for me in my first comment. I think it's the only technique that has ever worked well for me. When you said I'd misunderstood your problem, and I reread your comment and decided I still didn't understand, I realized that our life-situations were probably different enough that any technique I suggested based on personal experience would inevitably not work for you. This may be a flaw in my thinking, but I have trouble thinking of any "general" rationalist techniques that would work to optimize a particular person's life in a particular context. My brain is now trying to produce more solutions, but I'm not really expecting them to be helpful to you.
If I'm understanding the original question properly, the issue is along the lines of the following situation: EphemeralNight finds emself sitting at home, thinking 'I wish there was something fun I could do tonight. But I don't know of anything. So how might I find something? I have no idea.' It's not that e's running into akrasia on the path to doing X, it's that e doesn't have an X in the first place and doesn't know how to find one.
Useful answers will probably be along the lines of either 'try meeetup.com/okcupid/your local LW meetup/etc', or 'here's how you find out about things like meetup.com/okcupid/LW meetups/etc'.
That's what I thought, too, but the comment seemed to be asking for a general rather than a specific solution.
This is still one step ahead of the problem I'm actually trying to solve (Ie. it's on the level of answers to "What am I supposed to just go out and do?") but advice on that level could be somewhat useful. However, what I was actually asking about in my original post are cognitive tools that will help me get better at answering that question myself.
Yeah, the big thing with specific solutions is that while they may be helpful, they don't teach you a new way to think. (Also, what might be fun for one person could be boring or unpleasant for someone else. I don't know whether you enjoy debating, or sports, or watching plays, etc. But I'm assuming you know what would be fun for you.)
In terms of why no one is getting at the root of the problem... for me at least, I've never thought about it consciously. School happened to me, work happened to me, and the few times I decided to spontaneously start a new activity (i.e. taekwondo) I just googled "taekwondo in Ottawa", found a location, and showed up. If anything, my problem has always been noticing too many opportunities to do fun things and been upset that I couldn't do all of them. So there may well be something that you do differently than I do, but since 'noticing' fun things to do happens below the level of my conscious awareness, trying to figure out the cognitive strategies involved takes a lot of work.
You're still attempting to solve the wrong problem.
"Just go out an do it" doesn't even apply to the problem of finding the cognitive flaw in my ability to identify opportunities that is damaging my ability to figure out what I can "just go out and do". You're trying to solve a problem that is two whole steps ahead of the one my post was about. What was it about my original question that was unclear?
Maybe that it's so far removed from any state I've experienced that I'm not even sure what you mean. Hopefully there is someone else on this site who has been in a similar place before and can recognize it. But it does look to me like you're trying to solve a specific problem, not a general problem. I just interpreted the wrong specific problem when I read your comment.
Also, all the answers my brain produces when I ask it to imagine "cognitive biases that would result in not noticing opportunities" come out sounding judgmental, and as a general rule I don't write things down if they sound judgmental or negative.
Here are two ways to find more opportunities. 1) is to get out and DO!, which exposes you to more opportunities.
2) is to get better at spotting them when they're around.
The only way I can think of to achieve 2, personally, is practise. How do you practise? Well, you do 1), and expose yourself to as many opportunities as possible, and see how many you notice in time, and when you notice one too late you think about how you could have noticed it quicker.