Fortunately the title of the page gives it away: it's srdiamond, who I believe still posts occasionally as common_law.

Since English isn't Sound and like 90% of English words simply don't have real definitions, I'm not sure I want to tangle with this guy's work.

Well he did write it in German.

Let me ask a rude question: What makes you so sure you want to "do good"? If you do, this would be a most unusual appetite. People do what they want for other reasons, and then they explain it to themselves and others as "doing good." The motivation to "do good" isn't a primary motive. How could it be? From where might it come ? To root that sort of motive in nature, one pretty much has to invent some form of moral realism; you must cross the "is" versus "ought" chasm. Now's not the time to address the moralistic illusion, but without the prior need to morally justify one's sense of seeking right, I think moral realism would appear the fantasy it is.

One tries to do right but ends up seeking status. Then one asks: how do I weaken or redirect my status seeking? That may seem the obvious problem, but then why would someone who is smart, studies rationality, and tries to apply his conclusions end up failing to achieve his goals?

I don't buy the cynical line of that Dirty Old Obfuscator Robin Hanson: that status is our primary drive. This is a transparent rationalization for its being his primary goal. There are more important drives, call it effectance, competence, or Nietzsche's "will to power." Even "self-actualization" may do in a pinch. You obviously haven't succeeded in engaging any deep interests (in the sense of "intellectual interests" not the sense of "source of comparative advantage.") As it looks to me, that's your problem. .

You're right, of course, that signaling status often distracts from what's productive. And perhaps everyone needs to work on being distracted less. Theoretically, this could be accomplished in one of two ways. One might 1) observe the environmental triggers for status-oriented thinking and decrease one's exposure to them; or 2) find ways to gratify status striving through the objectively more valuable activity. Only 2 seems to have been discussed, but I think it's less important; even, unworkable. The problem is that indulging status drives, like most nonhomeostatic (appetitive) drives, increases their strength. If you recognize status seeking as a distraction, you're probably better off limiting your exposure to what precipitates it. (Serving as head of a political party is certainly well-calculated to be an effective trigger of status seeking.)

But, while these elements of truth impart to your analysis a sense of truthiness, they don't apply to your situation as you describe it. You weren't merely distracted; you directly subverted your own goals. No situationist tinkering will address a problem that really lies elsewhere. The problem is, it seems to me, that you are so concerned with what you "should do," ethically speaking, that either you don't recognize your intellectual interests or you refuse to follow them.

It is easy to become intellectually enchanted with an idea, whether the Singularity, the Pirate Party, or (for that matter) a religious ideal. But this doesn't mean you believe it with the certainty that your intellect claims. Your balking at the goals you set yourself suggests that beneath your conscious intellect, you are at best indifferent to them; I would go further and say you're probably downright hostile to your professed goals.

Bad habits like reading crap on the Internet, watching TV, watching porn, playing video games, sleeping in, and so on are obvious losses.

Objection: I like all of these things. Well, except watching TV. Calvin said it best: "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want."

But I actually like the goal of becoming (the equivalent of) a thousand-year-old vampire, too. And there's not enough time for that, either. That is, ultimately, what convinced me that death is bad and life extension is good: There's not enough time to do life right. Doing it right, at least for me, means both becoming awesome and sleeping in when I feel like it.

It's not just bad habits, though; a lot of it is your broader position in life that wastes time or doesn't. For example, repetitive wage work that doesn't challenge you is really just trading a huge chunk of your life for not even much money. Obviously sometimes you have to, but you have to realize that trading away half your life is a pretty raw deal that is to be avoided. You don't even really get anything for commuting and housework. Maybe I really should quit my job soon...

If your field of expertise pays, you can level up while still getting paid by changing jobs regularly. I am not sure how often "regularly" should be, but I noticed a huge boost in my own skills the last couple times I started a new job in my field, followed by eventually getting bored and leveling off. Assuming you're following a normal career, you can't change too often or getting the next job will become hard; but if you're bored, complacent, and inert, it's probably time to move on.

[Edit: is Noticing Boredom a recognized mental skill? Because it should be.]

Full disclosure: I'm in the process of trying to do exactly this now. Note to six-month future self: Reflect on whether I actually did experience a similar skills boost after switching.

I have 168 hours a week, of which only 110 are feasible to use (sleep), and by the time we include all the chores, wage-work, bad habits, and procrastination, I probably only live 30 hours a week. That's bullshit; three quarters of my life pissed away. I could live four times as much if I could cut out that stuff.

Amen.

Also, on the topic of social environment, here is the obligatory plug for the Less Wrong Study Hall. If you're outside the Bay Area and have no one to work with, come work with us. We have cookies. (cookies may be a lie)

Here is some clarification from Zinsser himself (ibid.):

"Who am I writing for? It's a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You're writing for yourself. Don't try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience - every reader is a different person.

This may seem to be a paradox. Earlier I warned that the reader is... impatient... . Now I'm saying you must write for yourself and not be gnawed by worry over whether the reader is tagging along. I'm talking about two different issues. One is craft, the other is attitude. The first is a question of mastering a precise skill. The second is a question of how you use the skill to express your personality.

In terms of craft, there's no excuse for losing readers through sloppy workmanship. ... But on the larger issue of whether the reader likes you, or likes what you are saying or how you are saying it, or agrees with it, or feels an affinity for your sense of humor or your vision of life, don't give him a moment's worry. You are who you are, he is who he is, and either you'll get along or you won't.

N.B: These paragraphs are not contiguous in the original text.

When philosophers use a word—"knowledge", "being", "object", "I", "proposition", "name"—and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?—What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. You say to me: "You understand this expression, don't you? Well then—I am using it in the sense you are familiar with."— As if the sense were an atmosphere accompanying the word, which it carried with it into every kind of application.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 116-117

Picture of Eliezer in monk's robes (That is you, right?), stories about freemason-esque rituals, specific vocabulary with terms like, "the Bayesian conspiracy".

It's all tongue in cheek, and I enjoy it. But if you're trying to not look like a cult, then you're doing it wrong.

This would be explicitly against Yudkowsky's stated goals for the story,

The Rule of Rationalist Fiction states that rationality is not magic; being rational does not require magical potential or royal bloodlines or even amazing gadgets, and the principles of rationality work for understandable reasons. A rationalist!hero should excel by thinking - moreover, thinking in understandable patterns that readers can, in principle, adopt for themselves. As opposed to the hero just being a born “genius” who comes up with amazing gadgets through an opaque discovery process, or who flawlessly pulls off incredibly complicated gambits that would fail miserably if the reader tried something similar in real life.

All he has that we don't is more facts. (Which is often a hindrance; it was easier for us to figure out Lucius's blood debt, because we had less "memory" to search through.) If he could also exceed natural human cognitive constraints, this wouldn't be rationalist fiction.

(source: http://hpmor.com/info/)

re: magical insights, yeah - we could have theorized about how potions worked, but we could not test those theories the way Harry did. Since Harry has experiments we don't have access to, he has magical insights we don't have access to

I will let Eliezer see my log if he lets me read his!