Discussion article for the meetup : Southern Arizona meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Southern Arizona meetup

EDIT: I am canceling this contest because I feel that the structure of the incentives were poorly thought out (see gwern's comments). I will be posting a new better structured contest in the near future (now posted). If you feel this is unfair or otherwise feel slighted, please contact me at my username at gmail.com.

I'm interested in making projects happen on Less Wrong. In order to find out what works and to inspire others to try things too, I'm sponsoring the following small project:

I hereby offer a prize to the first person to submit a good summary of the evidence on Spaced Repetition to the main page. The winner will get the prize, currently: $265 + 40 to charity (see comments)

The summary should address at least the following questions:

For the past few years my willpower has been steadily increasing. If it lasts and I use it to accomplish something noteworthy, I might write a post about it.

Anyway, what should a rational preference utilitarian with infinite willpower do? Assume that there are no negative effects (unhappiness, stress) with using this willpower, and that they can control their emotions at will.

Clearly they should work a lot more, not spend time on recreation (movies, TV, games), stand instead of sitting, etc..

What else? Should they listen to music? Should they keep their muscles flexed 24/7 ? What should they learn, where would they have the most relative advantage? How much time would be worth spending on social interaction?

I can figure out these things on my own, but those questions are important and good ideas are very valuable.

Lately I've resolved to try harder at teaching myself math so I have a better shot at the international olympiad (IMO). These basically involve getting, say, three really hard math problems and trying your best to solve them within 5 hours.

My current state:

• I have worked through a general math problem-solving guide (Art and Craft of Problem-Solving), a general math olympiad guide (A Primer for Mathematics Competitions) and practice problems.
• I've added all problems and solutions and theorems and techniques into an Anki deck. When reviewing, I do not re-solve the problem, I only try to remember any key insights and outline the solution method.
• I am doing n-back, ~20 sessions (1 hour) daily, in an attempt to increase my general intelligence (my IQ is ~125, sd 15).
• I am working almost permanently; akrasia is not much of a problem.
• I am not _yet_ at the level of IMO medallists.

What does the intrumental-rationality skill of LWers have to say about this? What recommendations do you guys have for improving problem-solving ability, in general and specifically for olympiad-type environments? Specifically,

• How should I spread my time between n-backing, solving problems, and learning more potentially-useful math?
• Should I take any nootropics? I am currently looking to procure some fish oil (I don't consume any normally) and perhaps a racetam. I have been experimenting with cycling caffeine weekends on, weekdays off (to prevent tolerance being developed), with moderate success (Monday withdrawal really sucks, but Saturday is awesome).
• Should I add the problems to Anki? It takes time to create the cards and review them; is that time better spent doing more problems?

Joseph Kadane, emeritus at Carnegie Mellon, released his new statistics textbook Principles of Uncertainty as a free pdf. The book is written from a Bayesian perspective, covering basic probability, decision theory, conjugate distribution analysis, hierarchical modeling, MCMC simulation, and game theory. The focus is mathematical, but computation with R is touched on. A solid understanding of calculus seems sufficient to use the book. Curiously, the author devotes a fair number of pages to developing the McShane integral, which is equivalent to Lebesgue integration on the real line. There are lots of other unusual topics you don't normally see in an intermediate statistics textbook.

Having came across this today, I can't say whether it is actually very good or not, but the range of topics seems perfectly suited to Less Wrong readers.

One of the main Eliezer Sequences, consisting of dozens of posts, is How To Actually Change Your Mind. Looking at all those posts, one gets the feeling that changing one’s mind must be Really Hard. But maybe it doesn't have to be that hard. I think it would much easier to change your mind, if you instinctively thought that your best ideas are almost certainly still far from the truth. Most of us are probably aware of the overconfidence bias, but there hasn't been much discussion on how to practically reduce overconfidence in our own ideas.

I offer two suggestions in that vein for your consideration.

1. Take the outside view. Recall famous scientists and philosophers of the past, and how far off from the truth their ideas were, and yet how confident they were in their ideas. Realize that they are famous because, in retrospect, they were more right than everyone else of their time, and there are countless books filled with even worse ideas. How likely is it that your ideas are the best of our time? How likely is it that the best ideas of our time are fully correct (as opposed to just a bit closer to the truth)?

2. Take a few days to learn some cryptology and then design your own cipher. Use whatever tricks you can find and make it as complicated as you want. Feel your confidence in how unbreakable it must be (at least before the Singularity occurs), and then watch it taken apart by an expert in minutes. Now feel the sense of betrayal against your “self-confidence module” and vow “never again”.

I'm doing some work for an old friend of mine.

His situation is interesting. Not too long ago, he lost his job and got divorced, and otherwise his life got pretty screwed up and off-track.

He left the United States, took a job below his old skill level for a while, and then stopped that and started a company. Now he's living an exceptional life, and on the verge of making a lot of money.

I thought that was awesome, and I was quite happy for him. After we'd gotten done going through a lot of numbers, choosing some vendors, designing some systems, and otherwise figuring business out on the phone, we talked personal life. I said, "Man, I'm so happy for you. So much is going right. Congratulations."

He wasn't excited. He was a little worried.

He said, "Sebastian, man... I hope I don't change. I like who I am right now, I hope this doesn't change me."

And you know what?

His fears are valid. He's going to change.

Almost guaranteed.

What's the mental burden of trying to do something? What's it cost? What price are you going to pay if you try to do something out in the world.

I think that by figuring out what the usual costs to doing things are, we can reduce the costs and otherwise structure our lives so that it's easier to reach our goals.

When I sat down to identify cognitive costs, I found seven. There might be more. Let's get started -

Activation Energy - As covered in more detail in this post, starting an activity seems to take a larger of willpower and other resources than keeping going with it. Required activation energy can be adjusted over time - making something into a routine lowers the activation energy to do it. Things like having poorly defined next steps increases activation energy required to get started. This is a major hurdle for a lot of people in a lot of disciplines - just getting started.

Opportunity cost - We're all familiar with general opportunity cost. When you're doing one thing, you're not doing something else. You have limited time. But there also seems to be a cognitive cost to this - a natural second guessing of choices by taking one path and not another. This is the sort of thing covered by Barry Schwartz in his Paradox of Choice work (there's some faulty thought/omissions in PoC, but it's overall valuable). It's also why basically every significant military work ever has said you don't want to put the enemy in a position where their only way out is through you - Sun Tzu argued always leaving a way for the enemy to escape, which splits their focus and options. Hernan Cortes famously burned the boats behind him. When you're doing something, your mind is subtly aware and bothered by the other things you're not doing. This is a significant cost.

Inertia - Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote that humans are "Adaptation-Executers, not Fitness-Maximizers." He was speaking in terms of large scale evolution, but this is also true of our day to day affairs. Whatever personal adaptations and routines we've gotten into, we tend to perpetuate. Usually people do not break these routines unless a drastic event happens. Very few people self-scrutinize and do drastic things without an external event happening.

The difference between activation energy and inertia is that you can want to do something, but be having a hard time getting started - that's activation energy. Whereas inertia suggests you'll keep doing what you've been doing, and largely turn your mind off. Breaking out of inertia takes serious energy and tends to make people uncomfortable. They usually only do it if something else makes them more uncomfortable (or, very rarely, when they get incredibly inspired).

Ego/willpower depletion - The Wikipedia article on ego depletion is pretty good. Basically, a lot of recent research shows that by doing something that takes significant willpower your "battery" of willpower gets drained some, and it becomes harder to do other high-will-required tasks. From Wikipedia: " In an illustrative experiment on ego depletion, participants who controlled themselves by trying not to laugh while watching a comedian did worse on a later task that required self-control compared to participants who did not have to control their laughter while watching the video." I'd strongly recommend you do some reading on this topic if you haven't - Roy Baumeister has written some excellent papers on it. The pattern holds pretty firm - when someone resists, say, eating a snack they want, it makes it harder for them to focus and persist doing rote work later.

Neurosis/fear/etc - Almost all humans are naturally more risk averse than gain-inclined. This seems to have been selected for evolutionarily. We also tend to become afraid far in excess of what we should for certain kinds of activities - especially ones that risk social embarrassment.

I never realized how strong these forces were until I tried to break free of them - whenever I got a strong negative reaction from someone to my writing, it made it considerably harder to write pieces that I thought would be popular later. Basic things like writing titles that would make a post spread, or polishing the first paragraph and last sentence - it's like my mind was weighing on the "con" side of pro/con that it would generate criticism, and it was... frightening's not quite the right word, but something like that.

Some tasks can be legitimately said to be "neurosis-inducing" - that means, you start getting more neurotic when you ponder and start doing them. Things that are almost guaranteed to generate criticism or risk rejection frequently do this. Anything that risks compromising a person's self image can be neurosis inducing too.

Altering of hormonal balance - A far too frequently ignored cost. A lot of activities will change your hormonal balance for the better or worse. Entering into conflict-like situations can and does increase adrenalin and cortisol and other stress hormones. Then you face adrenalin withdrawal and crash later. Of course, we basically are biochemistry, so significant changing of hormonal balance affects a lot of our body - immune system, respiration, digestion, etc. A lot of people are aware of this kind of peripherally, but there hasn't been much discussion about the hormonal-altering costs of a lot of activities.

Maintenance costs from the idea re-emerging in your thoughts - Another under-appreciated cognitive cost is maintenance costs in your thoughts from an idea recurring, especially when the full cycle isn't complete. In Getting Things Done, David Allen talks about how "open loops" are "anything that's not where it's supposed to be." These re-emerge in our thoughts periodically, often at inopportune times, consuming thought and energy. That's fine if the topic is exceedingly pleasant, but if it's not, it can wear you out. Completing an activity seems to reduce the maintenance cost (though not completely). An example would be not having filled your taxes out yet - it emerges in your thoughts at random times, derailing other thought. And it's usually not pleasant.

Taking on any project, initiative, business, or change can generate these maintenance costs from thoughts re-emerging.

Conclusion I identified these seven as the mental/cognitive costs to trying to do something -

1. Activation Energy
2. Opportunity cost
3. Inertia
4. Ego/willpower depletion
5. Neurosis/fear/etc
6. Altering of hormonal balance
7. Maintenance costs from the idea re-emerging in your thoughts

I think we can reduce some of these costs by planning our tasks, work lives, social lives, and environment intelligently. Others of them it's good to just be aware of so we know when we start to drag or are having a hard time. Thoughts on other costs, or ways to reduce these are very welcome.