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Trying to find web developer work in the SF Bay area.
Because SF is awesome and where all the great stuff in webdev is happening.
In response to
[LINK] Analysis of why excluding hostile people is worth it
I wonder how to detect and exorcise one's inner asshole. Or whether this is even an instrumentally useful thing to do.
It made me think of your inner asshole from slide one. By all means, try to do it. try this: http://1000awesomethings.com/ Try anything.
In response to
What makes you different from Tim Ferriss?
So, I came to this post not knowing anything about Tim Ferriss.
I clicked on the three links in the first paragraph (yes, there are three links) and discovered next to nothing about him. Oh, he wrote a fad diet once that EY probably didn't end up trying? Hurray? The last link barely mentions him at all.
Then I read the rest of the post, and let me tell you, I have no idea why I should care about how your friends react to this mythological figure, Tim Ferriss. He's just, like, a guy, or something?
Fixed.
What makes you different from Tim Ferriss?
Do not read this if you don't know anything about this Tim Ferriss person
I suspect anyone here is less different from Tim Ferriss than they'd like to be able to justifiably claim (see here, here, here, here).
I don't mean Tim the Result. Results are clouded by what has been brought to attention in one of the 2009/2010 rationality quotes here
Were it possible to trace the succession of ideas in the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, during the time that he made his greatest discoveries, I make no doubt but our amazement at the extent of his genius would a little subside. But if, when a man publishes his discoveries, he either through a design, or through habit, omit the intermediary steps by which he himself arrived at them, it is no wonder that his speculations confound them, and that the generality of mankind stand amazed at his reach of thought. If a man ascend to the top of a building by the help of a common ladder, but cut away most of the steps after he has done with them, leaving only every ninth of tenth step, the view of the ladder, in the condition which he has pleased to exhibit it, gives us a prodigious, but unjust view of the man who could have made use of it. But if he had intended that any body should follow him, he should have left the ladder as he constructed it, or perhaps as he found it, for it might have been a mere accident that threw it in his way... I think that the interests of science have suffered by the excessive admiration and wonder with which several first rate philosophers are considered, and that an opinion of the greater equality of mankind, in point of genius, and power of understanding, would be of real service in the present age." - Joseph Priestly, The History and present State of Electricity
I mean Tim the method.
The varieties of achievements he's done are behaviourally distinct from living normal life. They are not so complicated to learn though.
I invite you to ask the following question: What is one thing he's done I haven't that probably I could do, and what is the explanation I invented to myself for not having done it? Do I truly believe this explanation? Think for a minute before reading more
When I ask this to friends who read some of his stuff, I see three kinds of answers:
This is impossible for anyone who doesn't have property X (where X is always a fixed characteristic, like place of birth, blondness, impeccable genetic motivation)
We have very different values, and there is no point in trying that about which I don't care - interestingly, with every new book, there are more interests on the table to be considered "not my values", but no one suddenly came to me and said: Wow, finally he cares about throwing knives! I have reason to try after all. Are my friends values narrowing in proportion to Tim's expansions?
There are a lot of people who don't want to have more money, learn languages, work less, or travel a lot, but there are much fewer people who besides all of those don't want to exercise effectively, learn quickly, improve their sex lives, throw knives, memorize card decks, program, dance tango, become an angel investor, be famous, write books, cook well, get thinner, read quicker, contact interesting people, outsource boring stuff and so on...
The third kind is personal attack. People claim he has property E, which makes him Evil, and his evil either is proof of the falsity of his accomplishments, or is proof that emulating Tim means you are a dark creature who shall not pass through the gates of heaven. The most interesting E's are "He's a brilliant marketing man, selling profitable lies, but marketing is Evil." "He doesn't understand survivor bias, and how lucky he was, and has not read outliers to know it takes min4000 hours to get good at stuff" "He's a good looking ivy league blonde, this makes him evil" (this girl probably had in mind Nietzsche's lamb morality, from Genealogy of Morals).
What is one thing he's done you haven't that probably you could do, and what is the explanation you invented to yourself for not having done it? Do you truly believe this explanation? Would your best rationalist friend truly believe that explanation?
However, I've seen guides on here for things like becoming bisexual and learning to enjoy polyamory, which seems much more impressive.
It does? You mean http://lesswrong.com/lw/453/procedural_knowledge_gaps/3i49 and http://lesswrong.com/lw/79x/polyhacking/ ?
Personally, an asexuality hack would impress me the most. But I think that may be beyond possibility, barring drugs. :)
Sometimes, I'm not sure what to do and I can't even start.
The trick is just to start anyway, unless this is prohibitively expensive; things start falling into place after enough steady work on a single problem. I like this saying to remind me of this:
Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it. -- "the cult of done manifesto" (here)
It's like 'the fact that you haven't yet started' is a looming tyrant that you have to overthrow, and once you have, you can only then begin genuinely THINKING. It's like that often for me. But I have found that with practice this effect is reduced.
I suspect, about the bissexuality hack, that just going there and kissing a non bearded guy works faster, and only if that doesn't do the trick one should start using slowmotion behaviorism.
I need to be productive, because if I don't donate as much as I can to the best charity I can find, hundreds of innocents will die.
Ah. We have a motivation!
Do you expect that completing this project will get you money to donate immediately? Or is it one step in a long process that will someday result in doing paid work for money, so you can someday donate money and save lives? If it's the latter, it's easy for me to understand why you're frustrated. You're (faced with the prospect of) putting all this effort into something and getting (what feels like) absolutely nothing for it. Of course you're having trouble wanting to do it!
If it's clear what I need to do, and I don't run into unforseen problems, then this is how it is. Often, I have no trouble working for an hour or so until I run into such a roadblock. Sometimes, I'm not sure what to do and I can't even start.
Sounds like you're taking on a difficult project, then, or at least one that's difficult for you. Doing an activity that requires creativity, such as writing or programming, tends to be much harder than doing something you can reduce to a series of habits. Solving a cubic equation symbolically is easy if you can look up the cubic formula, but deriving the formula on your own is nearly impossible. When I've had writer's block, standard advice such as "write an outline" is useless, because if I could have written an outline, I wouldn't have been stuck in the first place. The hard part of writing isn't what happens when a writer is typing, it's what happens while a writer is staring at a blank screen "doing nothing".
Anyway, the best productivity/motivation hack I can offer is this:
Don't work alone.
Get yourself a partner and work together with that person. If you get stuck, maybe your partner won't be, and you'll probably get much less frustrated with the work itself. You'll also keep each other on track, too. This can backfire if you start fighting with your partner, but overall I find myself becoming much more capable of doing things when I'm doing them with someone else.
I suspect working with someone only works when the someone you work with is goal driven by a goal that matters at least a little bit to you. I have no one who shares my goals enough to both 1) want to work alongside me 2) be among those whom I'd have working alongside, if given a chance.
BTW my goals can 90% be achieved alone in the sense of without a partner, but not in the sense of without a motivational human driving force.
But if you really have no desire to work, then erasing such thoughts could just lead to utter blissful unproductivity.
That's still a step up from the given alternative of miserable unproductivity.
I suspect it is possible to be blissfully improductive forever, and that thought alone can dominate my attention for weeks.
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Society, by survival, in the survival of the fittest sense, stimulates people to be of service, be interesting, useful, effective, and even altruistic.
I suspect, and would like to know your opinion, that we are, for that social and traditional reason biased against a life of personal hedonic exploration, even if for some particular kinds of minds, that means, literally, reading internet comics, downloading movies and multiplayer games for free, exercising near your home, having a minimal amount of friends and relationships, masturbating frequently, and eating unhealthy for as long as the cash lasts.
So two questions, do you think we are biased against these things, and do you think doing this is a problem?