LW doesn't seem to have a discussion of the article Epiphany Addiction, by Chris at succeedsocially. First paragraph:
"Epiphany Addiction" is an informal little term I came up with to describe a process that I've observed happen to people who try to work on their personal issues. How it works is that someone will be trying to solve a problem they have, say a lack of confidence around other people. Somehow they'll come across a piece of advice or a motivational snippet that will make them have an epiphany or a profound realization. This often happens when people are reading self-help materials and they come across something that stands out to them. People can also come up with epiphanies themselves if they're doing a lot of writing and reflecting in an attempt to try and analyze their problems.
I like that article because it describes a dangerous failure mode of smart people. One example was the self-help blog of Phillip Eby (pjeby), where each new post seemed to bring new amazing insights, and after a while you became jaded. An even better, though controversial, example could be Eliezer's Sequences, if you view them as a series of epiphanies about AI research that didn't lead to much tangible progress. (Please don't make that statement the sole focus of discussion!)
The underlying problem seems to be that people get a rush of power from neat-sounding realizations, and mistake that feeling for actual power. I don't know any good remedy for that, but being aware of the problem could help.
When I was young I was known as "the shy one," and I was awkward around girls. So I started reading instructional books on dating. A few chapters in, each book said "The most important thing is that you put down this book right now and go practice the thing I just told you to do." But I just kept reading, because I was learning so much, and having all those epiphanies felt like getting stronger.
After two years of epiphany addiction and no sex, I finally took some liquid courage and went out and actually talked to women. And then I started to become stronger.
If CFAR and the JDM community can invent an applied rationality that reliably makes people more powerful, it won't be because they've written lots of epiphany-producing writing. It will be because they've discovered teachable rationality skills that can be practiced day after day.
That advice fights the natural tendency to read forward. It's always hard to get people to stop and do the exercises.
Are there ways they could? Hmm... First, you could advise the reader to read through one time, then come back and do the advised exercises. That way they're not fighting the urge to read through... but then they're fighting the urge to put down the book.
You could structure it kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure, with the choices being how your encounter went. That way, there is no one, natural place to go next. Could help, but it would ... (read more)