It seems to be an important concept that setting goals is something that should be done. Why?

Advocates of goal-setting (and the sheer number of them) would imply that there is a reason for the concept.

I have to emphasis that I don't want answers that suggest - "Don't set goals", as is occasionally written.  I specifically want answers that explain why goals are good. see http://zenhabits.net/no-goal/ for more ideas on not having goals.

I have to emphasise again that I don't mean to discredit goals or suggest that the Dilbert's Scott Adams "make systems not goals" suggestion is better or should be followed more than, "set goals".  see http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102964992706/goals-vs-systems .  I specifically want to ask - why should we set goals?  (because the answer is not intuitive or clear to me)

Here in ROT13 is a theory; please make a suggestion first before translating:

Cer-qrpvqrq tbnyf npg nf n thvqryvar sbe shgher qrpvfvbaf; Tbnyf nffvfg jvgu frys pbageby orpnhfr lbh pna znxr cer-cynaarq whqtrzragf (V.r. V nz ba n qvrg naq pna'g rng fhtne - jura cerfragrq jvgu na rngvat-qrpvfvba). Jura lbh trg gb n guvaxvat fcnpr bs qrpvfvbaf gung ner ybat-grez be ybat-ernpuvat, gb unir cerivbhfyl pubfra tbnyf (nffhzvat lbh qvq gung jryy; jvgu pbeerpg tbny-vagreebtngvba grpuavdhrf); jvyy yrnq lbh gb znxr n orggre qrpvfvba guna bgurejvfr hacynaarq pubvprf.

Gb or rssrpgvir - tbnyf fubhyq or zber guna whfg na vagragvba. "V jnag gb or n zvyyvbanver", ohg vapyhqr n fgengrtl gb cebterff gbjneqf npuvrivat gung tbny.  (fgevpgyl fcrnxvat bhe ybpny YrffJebat zrrghc'f tbny zbqry vf 3 gvrerq; "gur qernz". "gur arkg gnetrg". "guvf jrrx'f npgvba" Jurer rnpu bar yrnqf gb gur arkg bar.  r.t. "tb gb fcnpr", "trg zl qrterr va nrebfcnpr ratvarrevat", "fcraq na ubhe n avtug fghqlvat sbe zl qrterr")

Qvfnqinagntr bs n tbnyf vf vg pna yvzvg lbhe bccbeghavgl gb nafjre fvghngvbaf jvgu abiry nafjref. (Gb pbagvahr gur fnzr rknzcyr nf nobir - Jura cerfragrq jvgu na rngvat pubvpr lbh znl abg pbafvqre gur pubvpr gb "abg rng nalguvat" vs lbh gubhtug uneq rabhtu nobhg vg; ohg ng yrnfg lbh zvtug pubbfr gur fyvtugyl urnyguvre bcgvba orgjrra ninvynoyr sbbqf).

I suspect that the word "goals" will need a good taboo, feel free to do so if you think that is needed in your explanation.

Kurzweil calls sugar the great white Devil. 

Seinfeld contends that cookies should be called chocolate-sons-of-bitches. 

Once upon a time I was paleo, and didn't feel carb cravings. But being paleo all the time is nearly as hard as being polyphasic. 

There must be a final solution. The lone star tick equivalent for sugar. 

Is there any effective way to stop liking sugar, chocolate, cheesecake etc??? Medidation, allergy, neural training, traumatizing, association learning, operant conditioning, transcranial stimulation. Anything that will stop my hands from eating those damn, evil, malignant objects? 

I just don't want to have my Cryo-Lapid saying "Here lies he who was born with one or two standard deviation greater desire for the set CnH2nOn (n is between 3 and 7) than the other members of his species, and whose IQ, many standard deviations above was not able to contain such desire".

I know dozens of others here face the same problem. Can't we solve this? It appears much simpler than world domination, moral uncertainty, FAI and CEV. 

Edit: I know this is unusual, but I'll try to compress my responses to the suggestions given to me in particular (thanks by the way) here:

On inducing nausea and vomit along with sugar:  I tried totally didn't work. Feel free to laugh at me. http://lesswrong.com/lw/h9b/post_ridiculous_munchkin_ideas/8ykn

On noticing what it feels like later: I totally feel ok after gorging 200 grams of white chocolate. I mean it. I feel nothing. I'll have it with mountain dew and cinnamon if you prefer.

On overeating to get traumatized: When I was 18 I decided to stop eating sugar, I bought about 5 kilos of ultra sugary stuff of all sorts, and I eat them over the course of a few days. I stopped for a bit, but soon regained my strength and desire.

On increasing desire for bitterness instead of decreasing for sweets: Bitter things taste terrible. I hate coffee, beer alcoholic drinks, arugula, scotch, anything that people call acquired tastes. I kind of commit the mind projection fallacy, and somewhere deep down, I alieve that people also hate all that stuff, but they pretend they like it for the same reason they pretend they like suits and ties.

On forgetting system one and just using the classic system two avoidance (not going hungry to supermarkets etc): I do this, but it is insufficient (It's sufficient to avoid making me fat, not to avoid making me unhealthy).

On making deals so that those around you don't expose sugar to you: Yes, I make those deals, and they help.

On munchin and spitting what you want to hate one at a time: Will try, will post results later.

On changing your sense of identity into "I don't like sugar": I do that with other stuff, and it is very effective. I don't want it to fail with sugar and therefore cause me to trust my overall identity less, so I'm not trying it with something with such high likelihood of failure, but others who like sugar less should try.

On having more Sex and Sport: Tried, helps to keep healthy and looking good, makes no difference whatsoever in my desire for the high octane devil.

Slowly progressing to dark chocolate: I don't love chocolate, I love sugar. I tolerate milk chocolate so that I can get that fuzzy sugar deep down my tongue. If all the cocoa in the world disappeared tomorrow, my life would be worse, because on fewer occasions other people would be eating chocolate that is too bitter for me (like chocolate cakes and such) and thus I would have even more occasions to infect myself with the disease agent.  Thank goodness for other (crazy) people liking dark chocolate.

My overall take is, thanks everyone, I'll try the spitting thing, I had already tried nearly all strategies suggested here, and I thoroughly ask for recommendations besides those above.

This was originally a comment to VipulNaik's recent indagations about the academic lifestyle versus the job lifestyle. Instead of calling it lifestyle he called them career options, but I'm taking a different emphasis here on purpose.

Due to information hazards risks, I recommend that Effective Altruists who are still wavering back and forth do not read this. Spoiler EA alert. 

I'd just like to provide a cultural difference information that I have consistently noted between Americans and Brazilians which seems relevant here. 

To have a job and work in the US is taken as a *de facto* biological need. It is as abnormal for an American, in my experience, to consider not working, as it is to consider not breathing, or not eating.  It just doesn't cross people's minds. 

If anyone has insight above and beyond "Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism" let me know about it, I've been waiting for the "why?" for years. 

So yeah, let me remind people that you can spend years and years not working. that not getting a job isn't going to kill you or make you less healthy, that ultravagabonding is possible and feasible and many do it for over six months a year, that I have a friend who lives as the boyfriend of his sponsor's wife in a triad and somehow never worked a day in his life (the husband of the triad pays it all, both men are straight). That I've hosted an Argentinian who left graduate economics for two years to randomly travel the world, ended up in Rome and passed by here in his way back, through couchsurfing.  That Puneet Sahani has been well over two years travelling the world with no money and an Indian passport now. I've also hosted a lovely estonian gentleman who works on computers 4 months a year in London to earn pounds, and spends eight months a year getting to know countries while learning their culture etc... Brazil was his third country. 

Oh, and never forget the Uruguay couple I just met at a dance festival who have been travelling as hippies around and around South America for 5 years now, and showed no sign of owning more than 500 dollars worth of stuff. 

Also in case you'd like to live in a paradise valley taking Santo Daime (a religious ritual with DMT) about twice a week, you can do it with a salary of aproximatelly 500 dollars per month in Vale do Gamarra, where I just spent carnival, that is what the guy who drove us back did.  Given Brazilian or Turkish returns on investment, that would cost you 50 000 bucks in case you refused to work within the land itself for the 500. 

Oh, I forgot to mention that though it certainly makes you unable to do expensive stuff, thus removing the paradox of choice and part of your existential angst from you (uhuu less choices!), there is nearly no detraction in status from not having a job. In fact, during these years in which I was either being an EA and directing an NGO, or studying on my own, or doing a Masters (which, let's agree is not very time consuming) my status has increased steadily, and many opportunities would have been lost if I had a job that wouldn't let me move freely. Things like being invited as Visiting Scholar to Singularity Institute, like giving a TED talk, like directing IERFH, and like spending a month working at FHI with Bostrom, Sandberg, and the classic Lesswrong poster Stuart Armstrong. 

So when thinking about what to do with you future my dear fellow Americans, please, at least consider not getting a job. At least admit what everyone knows from the bottom of their hearts, that jobs are abundant for high IQ people (specially you my programmer lurker readers.... I know you are there...and you native English speakers, I can see you there, unnecessarily worrying about your earning potential). 

A job is truly an instrumental goal, and your terminal goals certainly do have chains of causation leading to them that do not contain a job for 330 days a year.  Unless you are a workaholic who experiences flow in virtue of pursuing instrumental goals. Then please, work all day long, donate as much as you can, and may your life be awesome! 

Sarcastic Practical Advice Series: 1 How Not to Make Money

I'm calling this a series because I would like it to be a series, feel free to write your own post on "how not to do something many people want to do", especially you, future me. 

I'm very good at not making money, and maybe this is a skill you have found yourself needing to perfect. 

But worry not. Stop rationalizing! I'll teach you some of the craft before you can say all the palindromes in the Finnish language. 

(1) Be one of those people who actually turn knowledge, general knowledge, into personally designed actions/policies. The kind of people who, upon learning that driving is more dangerous than being attacked by spiders, and experiencing the first person evolved fear of spiders, understands that he should be as afraid of driving badly as he is of spiders, or much more, and drives accordingly.

(2) Understand that there is no metaphysical Self, only a virtual center of narrative gravity (Read Dennett), whose manner of discounting time is hyperbolic (Read George Ainslie), weirdly self-representative (Read GEB), and basically a mess. 

(3) Read Reasons and Persons, by Parfit, and really give up on your Naïve intuitions about personal identity over time. Using (1) act accordingly, i.e. screw future retired you. 

(4) Go through a university program in the humanities, so no one tempts you by throwing money at you after you graduate - This has happened to an academically oriented friend of mine who graduated a Medical Doctor, but actually wanted to be in the lab playing with brains. - If you can make into Greek Mythology, or Iranian Literature, good for you, Philosophy is ok, as are social sciences, as long as you do theory and don't get into politics or institutional design later on. If you go to psychology, you are dangerously near Human Resources, so be sure to be doing it for the reasons Pinker would do it, because you want to understand our internal computer, not to treat people. 

(5) Have some cash: This seems obvious, but it’s worth reminding if you are a machine discounting hyperbolically, you'd better be safe for the next two months. 

(6) Study research on happiness and money: Money doesn't buy happiness, and when it does, it's by buying things to others, regardless of Price. Giving a bike, a Porsche, or a Starbucks coffee to your friends provides you the same amount of fuzzies. Use (1) act accordingly. 

(7) Be curious: If you are the kind of person who knows by heart that the Finish language is more propense to palindromization, you are in a great route not to make money. If you get really excited about space, good for you. If you are so moved by curiosity you can't sleep before you finally figure it out, worry not, money ain't coming your way. Don’t forget all those really cool books you want to read.

(8) Avoid being Anhedonic: Anhedonia is one of the great enemies of those who don't want to make money. If all feels more or less the same to you, there is great incentive to go after the gold, it won't harm you much, and it will afford you the number one value of the Anhedonic, a false sense of security, and the illusion that happiness lies somewhere ahead of you in the future.  If you can be thrilled or excited by the latest Adam Sandler movie, if a double rainbow will make you cry like a baby even in a video, and if you watch this sax video with a young, healthy, fertile female more than once because it’s a good video, rest assured, you’ll be fine.

(9) What do you care what other people think?:
Feynman nailed this aspect of the no-money making business. You may not have noticed but everyone, especially your family, thinks you should make money, Graham says

All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves, simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won’t get a share in the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant, you’ll have to deal with the consequences. - How to do what you love.

It’s not just parents; everyone gets more shares of your money than of your excitement. If this was not the case, Effective Altruists would be advocating roller coasters and volcano lairs with cat people, not high income careers.

(10) Couchsurf and meet couchsurfers and world travelers: If you never did it, go around couchsurfing for a while. As it happens, due to many factors, travelling all the time, a dream of the majority, is cheaper than staying in one spot. Meeting world travelers like 1Mac Madison, 2Puneet Sahani, 3Frederico Balbiani, and 4Rand Hunt  made me realize, respectively, that: 1 It’s possible to travel 2/3^rd of the time as a CS major; 2 Indian Citizenship and zero money won’t stop you; 3 Not speaking English or wanting to work with what gave you degrees doesn’t stop you; 4 Spending 90 dollars in 100 days is possible. You’ll feel much less pressure to make money after meeting similar people and being one of them.

(11) Don’t experience Status Anxiety: The World suffers from an intense affliction. Alain de Botton named it Status Anxiety. You are not just richer than most people nowadays. You are unimaginably, unbelievably wealthy (in term of resources you can use) in comparison to everyone that ever lived.  But the point is, the less time you spend comparing, regardless of who you are comparing with, the happier you feel.

(12) Be persuadable by intellectuals outside traditional science, like De Botton and Alan Watts, but not by really terrible The Secret style self-help.

(13) Consider money over-valued: In economics, the price of things is determined by the supply and demand of that particular thing. The interesting thing is that demand is not measured by how many people want something how badly, but this multiplied by each person’s wealth…  If so many (wealthy) people value Rolex watches, they will be overpriced for you, especially if they are paying in luck, inheritance, or interest, and you are paying in work (though both use money as a medium).
Money is a medium of trade, how could it be over-valued?
Simple, there are many other mediums of trade (being nice, becoming more attractive, being a good listener, going to the “right place at the right time”, knowledge, enviable skills, prestige, dominance, strength, signaling, risk – i.e. stealing, Vegas, or bitcoin - , sex, time, energy). If you think these items are cheaper than money, you go for them as your medium of trade. And indeed they are cheaper than money, because everyone knows that money is valuable, and nearly no one thought consciously of the trade value of those things.

(14) Fake it till you don’t make it: My final advice would be to try out not spending money. Do it for a month (I did it for two), set a personal unbearably low barrier according to your standards. Dine before going to dinner with friends, by bike, of course. Carry water instead of buying it. Deny any social activity that would be somewhat costly and substitute it for some personal project, internet download, or analogous near-free alternative. Exercise outside, not in the gym. Take notes on how good your days were, you may find out, as did Kingsley that: “We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”  Furthermore, with Barry Schwartz, you may find out that less is more, and when you have fewer options of what to do, this gives you not only happiness, but extra capacity to use your psychological attention to actually do what you want to do, do as Obama did, save your precious share of mindspace.

There, I hope you feel more fully equipped not to make money, should you ever need this hard earned, practical life-skill. You’re welcome. 

In a recent discussion a friend was telling me how he felt he was not as smart as the people he thinks are doing the best research on the most important topics. He said a few jaw-dropping names, which indeed are smarter than him, and mentioned their research agenda, say, A B and C.  

From that, a remarkable implication followed, in his cognitive algorithm: 

Therefore I should research thing D or thing E. 

Which made me pause for a moment. Here is a hypothetical schematic of this conception of the world. Arrows stand for "Ought to research"

Humans by Level of Awesome (HLA)             Research Agenda by Level of Importance. (RALI)

HLA                 RALI

Mrs 1 --------> X-risk #1

2 --------> X-risk #2 

3 --------> Longevity

4 --------> Malaria Reduction 

5 --------> Enhancement 

1344 --------> Increasing Puppies Cuteness

Etc... 

It made me think of the problem of creating match making algorithms for websites where people want to pair to do stuff, such as playing tennis, chess or having a romantic relationship.

This reasoning is profoundly mistaken, and I can look back into my mind, and remember dozens of times I have made the exact same mistake. So I thought it would be good to spell out 10 times in different ways for the unconscious bots in my mind that didn't get it yet: 

1) Research agenda topics are polygamous, they do not mind if there is someone else researching them, besides the very best people who could be doing such research. 

2) The function above should not be one-to-one (biunivocal), but many-to-one. 

3) There is no relation of overshadowing based on someone's awesomeness to everyone else who researches the same topic, unless they are researching the same narrow minimal sub-type of the same question coming from the same background. 

4) Overdetermination doesn't happen at the "general topic level". 

5) Awesome people do not obfuscate what less awesome people do in their area, they catapult it, by creating resources. 

6) Being in an area where the most awesome people are is not asking to "lose the game" it is being in an environment that cultivates greatness. 

7) The amount of awesomeness in a field does not supervene on the amount of awesomeness in it's best explorer. 

8) The Best person in each area would never be able to cause progress alone. 

9) To want to be the best in something has absolutely no precedence over doing something that matters. 

10) If you believe in monogamous research, you'd be in the akward situation where finding out that no one gives a flying fuck about X-risk should make you ecstatic, and that can't be right. That there are people doing something that matters so well that you currently estimate you can't beat them should be fantastic news! 

Well, I hope every last cortical column I have got it now, and the overall surrounding being may be a little less wrong. 

Also, this text by Michael Vassar is magnificent, and makes a related set of points. 

EDIT: No one was doing what the post suggests, so I accepted an idea from one of the comments, and embedded my response in a comment, not the post itself

I'd like to ask this question to you, and I'll respond it myself as well.

What Is The Worst Problem You've Ever Encountered and Solved? And the One You Didn't, Yet!

Some prior considerations:

1) I mean "problem" in a very general sense, it could be a math problem, an existential problem, a social problem, an akrasia problem,  a disease problem etc...

2) I'd like people to give informative/didactic responses.  Try not only to state the facts, but also to help someone who'd encounter similar situations to be able to deal with them.

3) When talking about the one you didn't, give enough specifics that someone would actually be able to help you.

The general idea is to teach people how to Win by example, taking in consideration all the shortcomings of biases etc...

Well, that is all. One solved, one not yet solved. State your own issues and help others here. Someone else's rationality is always welcome.