Against lone wolf self-improvement

cousin_it

LW has a problem. Openly or covertly, many posts here promote the idea that a rational person ought to be able to self-improve on their own. Some of it comes from Eliezer's refusal to attend college (and Luke dropping out of his bachelors, etc). Some of it comes from our concept of rationality, that all agents can be approximated as perfect utility maximizers with a bunch of nonessential bugs. Some of it is due to our psychological makeup and introversion. Some of it comes from trying to tackle hard problems that aren't well understood anywhere else. And some of it is just the plain old meme of heroism and forging your own way.

I'm not saying all these things are 100% harmful. But the end result is a mindset of lone wolf self-improvement, which I believe has harmed LWers more than any other part of our belief system.

Any time you force yourself to do X alone in your room, or blame yourself for not doing X, or feel isolated while doing X, or surf the web to feel some human contact instead of doing X, or wonder if X might improve your life but can't bring yourself to start... your problem comes from believing that lone wolf self-improvement is fundamentally the right approach. That belief is comforting in many ways, but noticing it is enough to break the spell. The fault wasn't with the operator all along. Lone wolf self-improvement doesn't work.

Doesn't work compared to what? Joining a class. With a fixed schedule, a group of students, a teacher, and an exam at the end. Compared to any "anti-akrasia technique" ever proposed on LW or adjacent self-help blogs, joining a class works ridiculously well. You don't need constant willpower: just show up on time and you'll be carried along. You don't get lonely: other students are there and you can't help but interact. You don't wonder if you're doing it right: just ask the teacher.

Can't find a class? Find a club, a meetup, a group of people sharing your interest, any environment where social momentum will work in your favor. Even an online community for X that will reward your progress with upvotes is much better than going X completely alone. But any regular meeting you can attend in person, which doesn't depend on your enthusiasm to keep going, is exponentially more powerful.

Avoiding lone wolf self-improvement seems like embarrassingly obvious advice. But somehow I see people trying to learn X alone in their rooms all the time, swimming against the current for years, blaming themselves when their willpower isn't enough. My message to such people: give up. Your brain is right and what you're forcing it to do is wrong. Put down your X, open your laptop, find a class near you, send them a quick email, and spend the rest of the day surfing the web. It will be your most productive day in months.

I'm not saying all these things are 100% harmful. But the end result is a mindset of lone wolf self-improvement, which I believe has harmed LWers more than any other part of our belief system.

I've put in a bit of effort into running a local self-improvement community (link in Finnish), but one of the problems I've had in making self-improvement be actually a group effort is that a lot of it is actually something that you just need to do yourself.

To be more specific: we can do workshops on dealing with various problems and figuring out your values, we can do coaching meetings where people say what they've done since last time and what they'd like to try/discuss next, we can do coworking spaces... but if your problem is, say, "I need to complete my thesis", there's only as much that we can do to help. At best we can offer a co-working opportunity where there's slightly more social pressure for you to work on your thesis while everyone around you is also working on their own stuff. But you're still the one who needs to do 98% of the work and there's not that much we others can do.

I've personally even had several periods when I've been thinking, "man, I'm really preoccupied with this thing I need to solve... so I think I'll miss out on some of our community stuff because I'm too busy solving my problem". I've heard similar tales from some others - them dropping out of our stuff because they need to actually solve their problems.

I'm not sure how to solve this: if anyone has any ideas, I'm open. The best thing I've come up with is to also have some light social get-togethers, so that people who are busy and stressed with stuff can at least come to events to just relax a bit with friends, without needing to put in the mental energy for some active self-improvement workshop. That, and pairing people up so that they have regular one-on-one peer coaching sessions with each other, which seems to empirically be very useful but also doesn't involve them in the broader community.

if your problem is, say, "I need to complete my thesis", there's only as much that we can do to help

Recommend someone who writes that stuff for money? That already improves one's economical thinking. :P

0cousin_it9y

My post was about classes, not "self-improvement communities". I'm very skeptical about the latter. For writing a thesis, I guess a class in scientific writing (with lots of practice) would be helpful.

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Against lone wolf self-improvement

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Against lone wolf self-improvement

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