Reply to: A "Failure to Evaluate Return-on-Time" Fallacy
Lionhearted writes:
[A] large majority of otherwise smart people spend time doing semi-productive things, when there are massively productive opportunities untapped.
A somewhat silly example: Let's say someone aspires to be a comedian, the best comedian ever, and to make a living doing comedy. He wants nothing else, it is his purpose. And he decides that in order to become a better comedian, he will watch re-runs of the old television cartoon 'Garfield and Friends' that was on TV from 1988 to 1995....
I’m curious as to why.
Why will a randomly chosen eight-year-old fail a calculus test? Because most possible answers are wrong, and there is no force to guide him to the correct answers. (There is no need to postulate a “fear of success”; most ways writing or not writing on a calculus test constitute failure, and so people, and rocks, fail calculus tests by default.)
Why do most of us, most of the time, choose to "pursue our goals" through routes that are far less effective than the routes we could find if we tried?[1] My guess is that here, as with the calculus test, the main problem is that most courses of action are extremely ineffective, and that there has been no strong evolutionary or cultural force sufficient to focus us on the very narrow behavior patterns that would actually be effective.
To be more specific: there are clearly at least some limited senses in which we have goals. We: (1) tell ourselves and others stories of how we’re aiming for various “goals”; (2) search out modes of activity that are consistent with the role, and goal-seeking, that we see ourselves as doing (“learning math”; “becoming a comedian”; “being a good parent”); and sometimes even (3) feel glad or disappointed when we do/don’t achieve our “goals”.
But there are clearly also heuristics that would be useful to goal-achievement (or that would be part of what it means to “have goals” at all) that we do not automatically carry out. We do not automatically:
- (a) Ask ourselves what we’re trying to achieve;
- (b) Ask ourselves how we could tell if we achieved it (“what does it look like to be a good comedian?”) and how we can track progress;
- (c) Find ourselves strongly, intrinsically curious about information that would help us achieve our goal;
- (d) Gather that information (e.g., by asking as how folks commonly achieve our goal, or similar goals, or by tallying which strategies have and haven’t worked for us in the past);
- (e) Systematically test many different conjectures for how to achieve the goals, including methods that aren’t habitual for us, while tracking which ones do and don’t work;
- (f) Focus most of the energy that *isn’t* going into systematic exploration, on the methods that work best;
- (g) Make sure that our "goal" is really our goal, that we coherently want it and are not constrained by fears or by uncertainty as to whether it is worth the effort, and that we have thought through any questions and decisions in advance so they won't continually sap our energies;
- (h) Use environmental cues and social contexts to bolster our motivation, so we can keep working effectively in the face of intermittent frustrations, or temptations based in hyperbolic discounting;
.... or carry out any number of other useful techniques. Instead, we mostly just do things. We act from habit; we act from impulse or convenience when primed by the activities in front of us; we remember our goal and choose an action that feels associated with our goal. We do any number of things. But we do not systematically choose the narrow sets of actions that would effectively optimize for our claimed goals, or for any other goals.
Why? Most basically, because humans are only just on the cusp of general intelligence. Perhaps 5% of the population has enough abstract reasoning skill to verbally understand that the above heuristics would be useful once these heuristics are pointed out. That is not at all the same as the ability to automatically implement these heuristics. Our verbal, conversational systems are much better at abstract reasoning than are the motivational systems that pull our behavior. I have enough abstract reasoning ability to understand that I’m safe on the glass floor of a tall building, or that ice cream is not healthy, or that exercise furthers my goals... but this doesn’t lead to an automatic updating of the reward gradients that, absent rare and costly conscious overrides, pull my behavior. I can train my automatic systems, for example by visualizing ice cream as disgusting and artery-clogging and yucky, or by walking across the glass floor often enough to persuade my brain that I can’t fall through the floor... but systematically training one’s motivational systems in this way is also not automatic for us. And so it seems far from surprising that most of us have not trained ourselves in this way, and that most of our “goal-seeking” actions are far less effective than they could be.
Still, I’m keen to train. I know people who are far more strategic than I am, and there seem to be clear avenues for becoming far more strategic than they are. It also seems that having goals, in a much more pervasive sense than (1)-(3), is part of what “rational” should mean, will help us achieve what we care about, and hasn't been taught in much detail on LW.
So, to second Lionhearted's questions: does this analysis seem right? Have some of you trained yourselves to be substantially more strategic, or goal-achieving, than you started out? How did you do it? Do you agree with (a)-(h) above? Do you have some good heuristics to add? Do you have some good ideas for how to train yourself in such heuristics?
[1] For example, why do many people go through long training programs “to make money” without spending a few hours doing salary comparisons ahead of time? Why do many who type for hours a day remain two-finger typists, without bothering with a typing tutor program? Why do people spend their Saturdays “enjoying themselves” without bothering to track which of their habitual leisure activities are *actually* enjoyable? Why do even unusually numerate people fear illness, car accidents, and bogeymen, and take safety measures, but not bother to look up statistics on the relative risks? Why do most of us settle into a single, stereotyped mode of studying, writing, social interaction, or the like, without trying alternatives to see if they work better -- even when such experiments as we have tried have sometimes given great boosts?
Once I held passing interest in Mensa, thinking that an org of super-smart people would surely self-organize to impact the world (positively perhaps, but taking it over as a gameboard for the new uberkind would work too). I was disappointed to learn that mostly Mensa does little, and when they get together in meatspace it is for social mixers and such. I also looked at Technocracy, which seemed like a reasonable idea, and that was different but no better.
Now I'm a few decades on in my tech career, and I have learned that most technical problems are really people problems in disguise, and solving the organization and motivational aspects are critical to every endeavor, and are essentially my full-time job. What smoker or obese person or spendthrift isn't a Type 3, above? Who doesn't absorb into their lives with some tunnel vision and make type 2 mistakes? Who, as a manager, hasn't had to knowingly make a decision without sufficient information? I know I have audibly said, "We can't afford to be indecisive, but we can afford to be wrong", after I make such decisions, and I mean it.
Reading some of these key posts, though, points out part of the problem faced in this thread: we're trying to operate at higher levels of action without clear connections and action at lower levels. http://lesswrong.com/lw/58g/levels_of_action/
We have a forum for level 3+ thinking, without clear connections to level 1-3 action. The most natural, if not easy, step would be to align as a group in a fashion to impact other policy-making organizations. To me, we are perfecting a box of tools that few are using; we should endeavor to have ways to try them out and hone the cutting edges, and work then to go perform. A dojo approach helps with this by making it personal, but I'm not sure it is sufficient nor necessary, and it is small-scale and from my newbie perspective lacking shared direction.
Take dieting, for a counter example: I can apply rationality and Bayesian thinking to my dietary choices. I recall listening to 4-4-3-2 on Sat morning cartoons, and I believed every word. I read about the perils of meats and fat, and the benefits of vegetable oils and margarine. I heard from the American Heart Association to consume much less fat and trade out for carbs. I learned from the Diabetes Association to avoid simple carbs and use art'f sweeteners. Now I've learned not to blindly trust gov'ts and industries, and have combined personal experience, reading, and internet searching to gain a broader viewpoint that does not agree with any of the above! Much such research is a sifting and sorting exercise at levels 2-4, but with readily available empirical Level 1options, as I can try out promising hypotheses upon myself. As I see what works, and what doesn't, I can adapt my thinking and research. Anybody else can too.
Would a self-help group assist my progress? Well, an accountability group helps, but it isn't necessary. Does it help to "work harder" at level 1 alone? No....key improvements for me have come with improving my habits and managing desire, and then improving how I go about improving those. Does it help to have others assisting at level 3 and up? To an extent, it is good to share via e-mail and anecdote personal experiences, books, and thoughts.
The easy part is the vision, though -- I want to be healthier, lighter, stronger, and live longer. Seems pretty clear and measurable -- weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, 1-mile run time, bench-press pounds.
So what is the vision here? What are our relevant and empirically measurable goals?