Rationality Quotes Thread March 2015

Vaniver

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Realistic goals do not need a lot of dream investment but rather time and effort and it is safe to invest dreams in unrealistic ones.

I think this is factually untrue. It seems to me that time and effort investment follows dream investment, for basic psychological reasons.

When I have read Eliezer's mis-investment of emotions argument it came accross to me an elitistic Bay Area upper middle class thing.

I think that's because you misread it, or you're identifying correct financial attitudes with being upper middle class and throwing in the rest of the descriptions for free. Here's the part where he talks about mechanisms:

If not for the lottery, maybe they would fantasize about going to technical school, or opening their own business, or getting a promotion at work—things they might be able to actually do, hopes that would make them want to become stronger.

Going to technical school is not an "elitistic Bay Area upper middle class thing." Yes, later he talks about dot-com startups doing IPOs, but the vast majority of new businesses started are things like barbershops and restaurants, and people go to technical school to learn how to repair air conditioning systems, not to learn how to make Yelp. A person who dreams about owning their own barbershop or being an AC repairperson or demonstrating enough responsibility at work to earn a promotion is likely to do better than someone who dreams about being a lottery prince.

That is, I think a key component of grinding successfully is dreaming about grinding.

Basically you are saying constant grinding requires constant motivation - or discipline?

But in reality all it takes is the precommitment of shame.

Example 1. you come from a working-class or slum family, get into a university as the first one in the family. Your mom and grandma brags the whole kin and neighborhood full with what a genius you are. At that point, you are strongly precommitted, not exactly through your own choice, you don't want the shame of 100 people treating yoiu like a genius to be let down by you dropping out.

Example 2. you get your firs... (read more)

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Rationality Quotes Thread March 2015

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Rationality Quotes Thread March 2015

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