Hmm, sure my approach is definitely instrumental rationality-oriented, but I value epistemology a lot and you won't find me complaining about it. As far as I can predict the experience of someone who has a pressing need to learn epistemic rationality efficiently and tries LW, they are going to be very frustrated (beyond the standard sequences). Eliezer worked not only as idea-adder, but also as idea-distiller and sequence-stringer. So maybe it's just that the rest of LW engages in idea-adding only?
About my instrumental ideas, sure I'm interested in sharing them, but because of excessive lurking I have built quite some inferential distances in a few areas that are important to me. So for now I feel like it's easier to write about things that I do not know too much about... (It's actually a good meta-example of how "sentence-stringing" could be seen as the real "magic" behind teaching and learning rationality, and it's (maybe?) a separate vital skill not many people have?) I'm generally baffled about how to communicate about this, especially the stuff related to "rationality of happiness" - I guess mostly because I know this part would sound utterly uninteresting. Mostly: here's a bunch of methods that work not too bad, if you fine tune them for a long time... here's some splitting of mental buckets to have more nuanced language... here's a few tricks I stole from various sources and tested empirically... here's my rough model of how to start success spirals of self change by slowly building confidence and accountability, but who the hell knows how it works really, I only tested this on myself so there may be dozens of other factors. You get the idea.
All this reminds me of how it typically goes when you try talk to people about regulating sleep. Problem 1: everyone is an expert. Problem 2: there's no single method that works. Problem 3: no method works instantly. Problem 4: for anything to work, it needs to be fine tuned for the individual and it also depends on all other factors, so you can't test these things in isolation. Problem 5: hearing a description of a method that works does not seem to justify the effort, until you experience by yourself what the benefits are. Problem 6: the benefits are spread over time, so it's hard to notice them even if they are big and obvious in the "big picture" view.
All of this basically applies to teaching/learning instrumental rationality.
Mostly: here's a bunch of methods that work not too bad
not a terrible way to offer solutions.
about regulating sleep
I wrote a very long list of sleep maintenance suggestions to help. Not so
I really like lists as a way to gather the possible good and possible bad solutions to the problem. So long as people recognise it's a list of ideas; not an instruction manual or the answers. I would like to get around to writing about . Understanding that if this advice worked for someone there was a way that it worked. And considering if there is a way to m...
Note 1: I'm not very serious about the second part of the title, I just thought it sounds more catchy. I'm a long time lurker writing here for the first time, and it's not my intention to alienate anyone. Also, hi, nice to meet you. Please leave a comment to achieve a result of making me happy about you having left a comment. But let's get to the point.
I think you might be familiar with TED Talks. Recall the last time you watched one, and how you felt while doing it.
[BZRT BZRT sound of imagination working]
In my case, I often got the feeling like if I was learning something valuable while watching most TED Talks. The speakers are (mostly) obviously passionate and intelligent people, speaking about important matters they care about a lot. (Granted, I probably haven't watched more than a dozen TED Talks in all my life, so my sample is quite small, but I think it isn't very unrepresentative.)
But at some point, I started asking myself afterwards:
Which translates in my internal dialect to:
(Note 2: don't treat this "one sentence summary" thing too strictly - of course it's only a reflex/shorthand that is useful in many situations, but not all. I like it because it's simple enough that it's installable as a subconscious trigger-action.)
And I could not state afterwards anything actually useful that I have learned from those "fascinating" videos (with at most one or two small exceptions).
This is exactly what I mean by "Education as Entertainment".
It's getting the enjoyable *feeling* of learning without any real progress.
[DUM DUM DUM sound of increasing dramatism]
And now, what if you use this concept to look at rationality materials?
For me, reading the core Eliezer's braindump (basically the content of "From AI to Zombies"), as well as braindumps (in the form of blogs) of several other people from the LW community, had definite learning value.
I take notes when I read those, and I have an accountability system in place that enables me to make sure I follow up on all the advice I give to myself, test the new ideas, and improve/drop/replace/implement as needed.
However, when I read (a significant part of) the content produced by the "modern" community-powered-LessWrong, I classify its actual learning value at around the same level as TED Talks.
Or YouTube videos with cats, only those don't give me the *impression* that I'm learning something.
THE END
Please let me know what you think.
Final Note: Please take my remarks with a grain of salt. What I write is meant to inspire thoughts in you, not to represent my best factual knowledge about the LW community.