Maybe we don't want specific things in a consistent way. Generalizing from that to we don't want things seems premature. Maybe we just want the taste of tea and are willing to adapt that desire to whatever sort of tea cup we see moment by moment. I would say those recent posts have explored the degree to which we have goals, not effectively opened the question of whether or not we have them.

At the very least goals which we write down and tell others about have some impetus in our lives, through social reinforcement, commitment effects, and the capability to enlist others and build structures which cause those goals to be expressed more powerfully.

Though it seems our brains might not be very good at having explicit goals in useful ways.

On the contrary, skeptical sir!

skeptical sir or madam :)

I will now present an exercise which rapidly becomes reflexive, in a manner which will cause it to become reflexive, which separates the exercise from the situation so that you can learn the requisite acting skills separately!

I don't follow at all how the writing exercises help me ask "what's in it for [what I care about]?" in deciding what to pay attention to. They seem like fine exercises, but other than the fact that you're choosing a topic, I see no relation.

I remember GEB being entertaining but not mind-blowing. I'd already studied mathematical logic, though.

Act like Suspicious, Smart, Rich People Do. Assume everyone and everything is both an opportunity and an encounter with a parasite, and don’t act like it unless it’s socially convenient.

Do you think there might be any downsides to this?

I like Anna's perspective that being wrong is like admitting that you're smarter now than you were in the past. It helps me be willing to see my beliefs as things I used to believe and haven't rethought about from my new, improved perspective, and remember to try and update when appropriate.

First link after searching for Mind Projection Fallacy.

E. T. Jaynes used the term Mind Projection Fallacy to denote the error of projecting your own mind's properties into the external world.

Other-optimizing is a subset.

My name is Peter Scheyer. I am a professional entrepreneur. I have attended the 2011 Minicamp and Boot Camp as a sometime instructor and all-time participant in business theory and practice. I will be writing on many topics, including defense against/ how to use the Dark Arts, Granularization, Rational Task Completion, and topics related to my new startup based around building software which uses rationality concepts to make being addictive productive.

All are using their near-complete control of effortless immediate actions to make up for their incomplete control of high-effort long-term actions.

I am interested in examples any non-trivial optimizations that have been achieved by stitching together "effortless immediate actions", any mental equivalents of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip

Eliezer is a tribal leader, so we want him to succeed!

Really? I thought we wanted the tribal leader to fail in a way that allowed ourselves or someone we have more influence over to take his place.

I would like to see a thorough analysis of how someone raising funds can use the tricks from Cialdini's Influence to effectively contribute to charity. Even those without funds could use that sort of lesson to contribute meaningfully.