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Mark_Friedenbach comments on Rationality Reading Group: Introduction and A: Predictably Wrong - Less Wrong Discussion
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How can the content of this sequence be made practical? Or, how do you plan to apply it in your day to day life?
I have this compulsion where I obsessively reread things I've written after sending them, but I didn't have any insight about why I do this until I read the essay about the illusion of transparency.
Immersing myself in my perspective via obsessive and uncareful rereading serves (I think, probably) to assuage my anxieties about any lack of coherence and clarity in my writing. By blinding myself to my writing's ambiguities I can feel more assured of its quality, and also feel better about my abilities as a writer. So I think this behavior is caused, at least partially, by an unintentionally acquired habit of leaning into this bias.
I hope to notice myself engaging in this behavior and treat it as a warning that what I've written is probably quite ambiguous.
That's an interesting perspective! I also have a habit of repeatedly rereading whatever I wrote, and the idea that it's to assuage anxieties about lack of coherence never came to me. I always thought that I reread my writing simply because it gives strange satisfaction: like the favorite book of an author being their own.
Hrm.. I also have that habit, but in my case I often feel I am going back to see if my intention was clear as some distance let's me see it with relatively fresh eyes. I'm a little confused that you think it serves the opposite purpose for you. What's you're frame of mind when re-reading what you have wrote? Do you not notice sources of error after there has been some time separation?
A critical and focused rereading is my goal when I start; however my focus is not long lasting, and the process inevitably devolves into mindless retreading of whatever trail of thought I wish I was communicating, with little effort devoted to verifying that this is how I should realistically expect to be interpreted. It is repetition past this point which I suspect is motivated primarily by a desire to feel self-assured. I was wrong to believe that I could treat this behavior as evidence of ambiguity when its cause is likely unrelated to the specific content of my writing.
This is the one thing I've found which reliably helps.
By the way, thanks a lot for the work you've put into this group!
Something practical is something that helps you achieve your ends, right? Well, I've very recently had the thought that the vast majority of the population shares the same two terminal values, or terminal virtues, of happiness (some combo of pleasure + satisfaction) and goodness (concern for the happiness of others) in varying ratios, whether they are conscious of this or not. (I'll probably write more and share this idea here soon.)
So in my case, the biggest practical value I got out of reading the content of these sequences was an increase in happiness; I felt personally satisfied after reading them. They clearly articulated a lot of intuitions I had in the past. I liked the ideas. They made sense. Basically, this sounds really cheesy, but they brought me joy, which I consider an end in itself.
I'm about 40% through the ebook now, and I'm learning tons and tons of new facts about evolution and neurology and hearing many new ideas that will probably change my life. I don't think that this section itself will really change my life though, only because I feel like I knew these concepts intuitively and already applied them pretty well on a day to day basis. That said, having read this section, I can now express these ideas much more clearly to others, so people who don't naturally think like this can learn to, too :)
Actually, upon reading the summaries you wrote (big thanks for that) there was one bias that I didn't intuitively understand or catch very well in my day to day thinking, and that's #5, availability. I'm going to re-read that one and see if I can think of any good examples to share.