(Cross-posted from MIRI's blog.)

MIRI's looking for a full-time office manager to support our growing team. It’s a big job that requires organization, initiative, technical chops, and superlative communication skills. You’ll develop, improve, and manage the processes and systems that make us a super-effective organization. You’ll obsess over our processes (faster! easier!) and our systems (simplify! simplify!). Essentially, it’s your job to ensure that everyone at MIRI, including you, is able to focus on their work and Get Sh*t Done.

That’s a super-brief intro to what you’ll be working on. But first, you need to know if you’ll even like working here.

A Bit About Us

We’re a research nonprofit working on the critically important problem of superintelligence alignment: how to bring smarter-than-human artificial intelligence into alignment with human values.¹ Superintelligence alignment is a burgeoning field, and arguably the most important and under-funded research problem in the world. Experts largely agree that AI is likely to exceed human levels of capability on most cognitive tasks in this century—but it’s not clear when, and we aren’t doing a very good job of preparing for the possibility. Given how disruptive smarter-than-human AI would be, we need to start thinking now about AI’s global impact. Over the past year, a number of leaders in science and industry have voiced their support for prioritizing this endeavor:

• Stuart Russell, co-author of the leading textbook on artificial intelligence and a MIRI advisor, gives a compelling argument for doing this work sooner rather than later.
• Nick Bostrom of Oxford University, another MIRI research advisor, published Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, which details the potential value of smarter-than-human AI systems as well as the potential hazards.
• Elon Musk (Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla), Bill Gates (Microsoft co-founder), Stephen Hawking (world-renowned theoretical physicist), and others have publicly stated their concerns about long-term AI risk.
• Hundreds of AI researchers and engineers recently signed an open letter advocating for more research into robust and beneficial artificial intelligence. A number of MIRI publications are cited in the corresponding Research Priorities document.

People are starting to discuss these issues in a more serious way, and MIRI is well-positioned to be a thought leader in this important space. As interest in AI safety grows, we’re growing too—we’ve gone from a single full-time researcher in 2013 to what will likely be a half-dozen research fellows by the end of 2015, and intend to continue growing in 2016.

All of which is to say: we really need an office manager who will support our efforts to hack away at the problem of superintelligence alignment!

If our overall mission seems important to you, and you love running well-oiled machines, you’ll probably fit right in. If that’s the case, we can’t wait to hear from you.

What it’s like to work at MIRI

We try really hard to make working at MIRI an amazing experience. We have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. Here’s how we operate:

Flexible Hours

We do not have strict office hours. Simply ensure you’re here enough to be available to the team when needed, and to fulfill all of your duties and responsibilities.

Modern Work Spaces

Many of us have adjustable standing desks with multiple large external monitors. We consider workspace ergonomics important, and try to rig up work stations to be as comfortable as possible.

Living in the Bay Area

We’re located in downtown Berkeley, California. Berkeley’s monthly average temperature ranges from 60°F in the winter to 75°F in the summer. From our office you’re:

• A 10-second walk to the roof of our building, from which you can view the Berkeley Hills, the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Francisco.
• A 30-second walk to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), which can get you around the Bay Area.
• A 3-minute walk to UC Berkeley Campus.
• A 5-minute walk to dozens of restaurants (including ones in Berkeley’s well-known Gourmet Ghetto).
• A 30-minute BART ride to downtown San Francisco.
• A 30-minute drive to the beautiful west coast.
• A 3-hour drive to Yosemite National Park.

Vacation Policy

Our vacation policy is that we don’t have a vacation policy. That is, take the vacations you need to be a happy, healthy, productive human. There are checks in place to ensure this policy isn’t abused, but we haven’t actually run into any problems since initiating the policy.

We consider our work important, and we care about whether it gets done well, not about how many total hours you log each week. We’d much rather you take a day off than extend work tasks just to fill that extra day.

Regular Team Dinners and Hangouts

We get the whole team together every few months, order a bunch of food, and have a great time.

Top-Notch Benefits

We provide top-notch health and dental benefits. We care about our team’s health, and we want you to be able to get health care with as little effort and annoyance as possible.

Agile Methodologies

Our ops team follows standard Agile best practices, meeting regularly to plan, as a team, the tasks and priorities over the coming weeks. If the thought of being part of an effective, well-functioning operation gets you really excited, that’s a promising sign!

Other Tidbits

• Moving to the Bay Area? We’ll cover up to $3,500 in travel expenses.
• Use public transit to get to work? You get a transit pass with a large monthly allowance.
• All the snacks and drinks you could want at the office.
• You’ll get a smartphone and full plan.
• This is a salaried position. (That is, your job is not to sit at a desk for 40 hours a week. Your job is to get your important work done, even if this occasionally means working on a weekend or after hours.)

It can also be surprisingly motivating to realize that your day job is helping people explore the frontiers of human understanding, mitigate global catastrophic risk, etc., etc. At MIRI, we try to tackle the very largest problems facing humanity, and that can be a pretty satisfying feeling.

If this sounds like your ideal work environment, read on! It’s time to talk about your role.

What an office manager does and why it matters

Our ops team and researchers (and collection of remote contractors) are swamped making progress on the huge task we’ve taken on as an organization.

That’s where you come in. An office manager is the oil that keeps the engine running. They’re indispensable. Office managers are force multipliers: a good one doesn’t merely improve their own effectiveness—they make the entire organization better.

We need you to build, oversee, and improve all the “behind-the-scenes” things that ensure MIRI runs smoothly and effortlessly. You will devote your full attention to looking at the big picture and the small details and making sense of it all. You’ll turn all of that into actionable information and tools that make the whole team better. That’s the job.

Sometimes this looks like researching and testing out new and exciting services. Other times this looks like stocking the fridge with drinks, sorting through piles of mail, lugging bags of groceries, or spending time on the phone on hold with our internet provider. But don’t think that the more tedious tasks are low-value. If the hard tasks don’t get done, none of MIRI’s work is possible. Moreover, you’re actively encouraged to find creative ways to make the boring stuff more efficient—making an awesome spreadsheet, writing a script, training a contractor to take on the task—so that you can spend more time on what you find most exciting.

We’re small, but we’re growing, and this is an opportunity for you to grow too. There’s room for advancement at MIRI (if that interests you), based on your interests and performance.

Sample Tasks

You’ll have a wide variety of responsibilities, including, but not necessarily limited to, the following:

• Orienting and training new staff.
• Onboarding and offboarding staff and contractors.
• Managing employee benefits and services, like transit passes and health care.
• Payroll management; handling staff questions.
• Championing our internal policies and procedures wiki—keeping everything up to date, keeping everything accessible, and keeping staff aware of relevant information.
• Managing various services and accounts (ex. internet, phone, insurance).
• Championing our work space, with the goal of making the MIRI office a fantastic place to work.
• Running onsite logistics for introductory workshops.
• Processing all incoming mail packages.
• Researching and implementing better systems and procedures.

Your “value-add” is by taking responsibility for making all of these things happen. Having a competent individual in charge of this diverse set of tasks at MIRI is extremely valuable!

A Day in the Life

A typical day in the life of MIRI’s office manager may look something like this:

• Come in.
• Process email inbox.
• Process any incoming mail, scanning/shredding/dealing-with as needed.
• Stock the fridge, review any low-stocked items, and place an order online for whatever’s missing.
• Onboard a new contractor.
• Spend some time thinking of a faster/easier way to onboard contractors. Implement any hacks you come up with.
• Follow up with Employee X about their benefits question.
• Outsource some small tasks to TaskRabbit or Upwork. Follow up with previously outsourced tasks.
• Notice that you’ve spent a few hours per week the last few weeks doing xyz. Spend some time figuring out whether you can eliminate the task completely, automate it in some way, outsource it to a service, or otherwise simplify the process.
• Review the latest post drafts on the wiki. Polish drafts as needed and move them to the appropriate location.
• Process email.
• Go home.

You’re the one we’re looking for if:

• You are authorized to work in the US. (Prospects for obtaining an employment-based visa for this type of position are slim; sorry!)
• You can solve problems for yourself in new domains; you find that you don’t generally need to be told what to do.
• You love organizing information. (There’s a lot of it, and it needs to be super-accessible.)
• Your life is organized and structured.
• You enjoy trying things you haven’t done before. (How else will you learn which things work?)
• You’re way more excited at the thought of being the jack-of-all-trades than at the thought of being the specialist.
• You are good with people—good at talking about things that are going great, as well as things that aren’t.
• People thank you when you deliver difficult news. You’re that good.
• You can notice all the subtle and wondrous ways processes can be automated, simplified, streamlined… while still keeping the fridge stocked in the meantime.
• You know your way around a computer really well.
• Really, really well.
• You enjoy eliminating unnecessary work, automating automatable work, outsourcing outsourcable work, and executing on everything else.
• You want to do what it takes to help all other MIRI employees focus on their jobs.
• You’re the sort of person who sees the world, organizations, and teams as systems that can be observed, understood, and optimized.
• You think Sam is the real hero in Lord of the Rings.
• You have the strong ability to take real responsibility for an issue or task, and ensure it gets done. (This doesn’t mean it has to get done by you; but it has to get done somehow.)
• You celebrate excellence and relentlessly pursue improvement.
• You lead by example.

Bonus Points:

• Your technical chops are really strong. (Dabbled in scripting? HTML/CSS? Automator?)
• Involvement in the Effective Altruism space.
• Involvement in the broader AI-risk space.
• Previous experience as an office manager.

Experience & Education Requirements

• Let us know about anything that’s evidence that you’ll fit the bill.

How to Apply

Click here to apply by July 31, 2015!

P.S. Share the love! If you know someone who might be a perfect fit, we’d really appreciate it if you pass this along!

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1. More details on our About page. ↩

(Pomodoros have been talked about a bunch on LW. I, like elharo, first started using the technique after attending a CFAR workshop. Cross-posted from my blog.)

The pomodoro technique is, in short, starting a timer and doing 25 minutes of focused work on a single task without interruption, followed by a five minute break. Choose a new task, restart the timer, and repeat.

Throughout 2013 I used pomodoros to execute on pretty much all of my life projects, organized into the following categories:

• work – at MIRI
• bizdev – other income-generating projects
• growth – personal development projects (e.g. reading books, taking notes, making Anki decks; monthly reviews)
• misc – miscellaneous life maintenance projects (e.g. banking stuff, knocking off a bunch of small todo’s, house cleanup)
• health – exercise projects (mostly climbing, some running, some misc other stuff)

The Result: 5,008 Pomodoros

The end result was 2,504 hours of recorded work—5,008 pomodoros in total: 

Stacked Pomodoros by Week in 2013

A summary, by category (with hours in brackets):

• work – 2,457 (1,228.5h) – 47.3 (23.7h) avg/week
• bizdev – 700 (350h) – 13.5 (6.7h) avg/week
• growth – 996 (498h) – 19.2 (9.6h) avg/week
• misc – 448 (224h) – 8.6 (4.3h) avg/week
• health – 407 (203.5h) – 7.8 (3.9h) avg/week

Grand Total: 5,008 (2,504h) – 96.3 (48.2h) avg/week

My version of the pomodoro technique

To be clear, I didn’t use the pomodoro technique 100% faithfully. Certain things here, such as most Health (exercise) stuff, I never actually ran a pomodoro timer. But since I had a system for tracking where and how I spent my time, and since “claiming” all that time helped motivate me e.g. to climb regularly, I included them.

Ways I deviate from the “true” pomodoro technique:

• I don’t always take breaks. For example, if I do two pomodoros, get in the zone, and work for another two hours straight, I’d still record that as 6 pomodoros (3 hours) total.
• I don’t always use a timer. Sometimes I just start working, remembering to take small intermittent breaks, and record the total time in pomodoros (4h of work = 8 pomodoros).
• I don’t record interruptions. You’re supposed to track all internal and external interruptions, but I don’t bother with that. I merely try remain conscious of interruptions and eliminate/avoid them as much as possible.
• I don’t let interruptions cancel out pomodoros. Let’s say I work for fifteen minutes and someone comes in to chat about something important that’s been on their mind. I know that “a pomodoro is indivisible”, but screw it, I chat, and when the conversation ends I count a pomodoro after ten more minutes of work. Pomodoro blasphemy? Maybe.
• I don’t always set targets. I don’t constantly set detailed pomodoro targets and track how many pomodoros were actually required. I only do this occasionally if I think my estimating ability is getting really off. I do set weekly pomodoro targets by category.

How did I track?

Near the end of 2012 I whipped up a simple web app that I use for tracking all of my pomodoros. Here’s a sample screenshot from a week from earlier this year:

Every pomodoro added is given a description, project, major area, and count. This way I can view all pomodoros by project, area, over a given date range, etc. (I’m pretty sure there are other apps out there that let you do basically the same thing, but I haven’t taken much time to explore them.)

Why I think it’s worked really well for me

Of all the productivity hacks I’ve tried over the last decade, the pomodoro technique was, for me, the hands-down most effective technique. My thoughts on why the pomodoro technique has worked so well for me:

• It helps you start – start the timer and then just start working. You’ve already decided what to work on, so just start already.
• It helps you focus on one thing at a time – work on only one thing and ignore everything else.
• It helps you prioritize – look at your lists/projects/tasks/whatever, pick the most important thing to work on, and then just start already.
• It helps create success spirals – when you have 5 successful pomodoros under your belt, it’s motivation to keep going.

In summary, if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend giving the pomodoro technique a try.

MIRI is gathering a bunch of Eliezer’s writings into a nicely-edited ebook, currently titled The Hard Part is Actually Changing Your Mind. This book will ultimately be released in various digital formats (Kindle MOBI, EPUB, and PDF). Much of the initial work for this project is complete. What we need now are volunteers to review the book's chapters to:

• verify that all the content has been correctly transferred (text, equations, and images),
• proofread for any typographical errors (spelling, punctuation, layout, etc.),
• verify all internal and external links,
• and more.

This project has been added to Youtopia, MIRI’s volunteer system. (Click “Register as a Volunteer” here to sign up. Already signed up? Go here.)

LW Karma Bonus

For this special project, every point earned in Youtopia will also earn you 3 karma on LW!

Points are awarded based on the amount of time spent proofreading the book. For example, an hour of work logged in Youtopia earns you 10 points, which will also get you 30 LW karma. Karma is awarded by admins in a publicly-accountable way: all manual karma additions are listed here.

Questions about this project can be directed to alexv@intelligence.org or in the comments.

Another gem from xkcd: Is It Worth the Time? It visually answers the question:

How long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you're spending more time than you save? 

Of course, he's not the first person to ask this question, but the visual is handy. Note that the times are calculated assuming you'll save the time over five years.

For example, I've been pondering how to shorten my showers. If I can shave off 1 minute daily, I should be willing to invest up to (but no more than) an entire day to do it. If I think I can shave off five minutes preparing my breakfast, I should be willing to spend up to six days attempting to do so. 

MIRI needs volunteers to proofread our soon-to-be-released publications, such as Eliezer's "Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics." Some reasons to get involved:

• Get a sneak peek at our publications before they become publicly available.
• Earn points at MIRIvolunteers.org, our online volunteer system that runs on Youtopia. (Even if you're not interested in the points, tracking your time through Youtopia helps us manage and quantify the volunteer proofreading effort.)
• Having polished and well-written publications is of high-value to MIRI.
• Help speed up our publication process. Proofreading is currently our biggest bottle-neck.

Some of the papers that are sitting in the pipeline and ready for proofreading right now (or will be very soon):

• "Avoiding Unintended AI Behaviors" by Bill Hibbard
• "Decision Support for Safe AI Design" by Bill Hibbard
• "A Comparison of Decision Algorithms on Newcomblike Problems" by Alex Altair
• "Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics" by Eliezer Yudkowsky

How proofreading works:

• Youtopia, with the help of some shared Google Docs, is used to manage and track the available documents and who's proofread what.
• Proofreading entails checking for basic grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting errors; pointing out areas of confusion or concern; and making general style and flow suggestions.
• Don't worry, you don't have to proofread entire documents, just as many individual pages as you like.
• (This is explained in more detail once you've joined the MIRI Proofreaders group.)

How to join Youtopia and specifically the MIRI Proofreaders group:

1. Go go MIRIvolunteers.org.
2. In the right sidebar click on Register as a Volunteer and fill out your info.
3. Once your Youtopia account is created (this could take a day or two), head here and click on "Join Organization.”
4. Once your membership is approved you will have have access to detailed proofreading instructions and draft versions of our publications.

Questions can be directed to alexv@intelligence.org.

As you may have heard, the Singularity Institute is in the process of creating an official ebook version of The Sequences (specifically, Eliezer's Major Sequences written between 2006 and 2009). 

Now is an opportune time to make any alterations to the contents of the Sequences. We're looking for suggestions about:

1. Posts to add to the Sequences. E.g., "scope insensitivity" is not currently a part of any sequence, perhaps it should be? Preferably suggest a specific location, or at least a specific sequence where you think the addition would logically go.
2. Posts to remove from the Sequences. Are there redundant or unnecessary posts? To call the Sequences long is a bit of an understatement.
3. Alternatives to "The Sequences" as a title, such as "How to be Less Wrong: The Sequences, 2006--2009."

Put separate suggestions in separate comments so that specific changes can be discussed. All suggestions will be reviewed, with final changes made by Eliezer. Next thing you know, you'll be sipping a hot mocha in your favorite chair while reading about Death Spirals on your handy e-reader.

The Sequences that will be present in the ebook:

• Map and Territory
• Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions
• A Human's Guide to Words
• How to Actually Change Your Mind (includes all posts from all its subsequences)
• Reductionism (includes all posts from Joy in the Merely Real and Zombies)
• Quantum Physics
• Metaethics
• Fun Theory
• The Craft and the Community

I'm helping CMR create a 'rationality checklist'. The basic idea is this: 

• Answer a series of clear-cut, unambiguous yes/no questions that reflect your current level of rationality; obtain a score.
• Test again in the future as a means of measuring progress in your rationality training.

Sample application: before and after a minicamp. Target market: LWers.

I made a checklist for Curiosity (below). Others are in the works. A question like "Am I a curious person?", while it is useful to know, is too vague for this checklist and too susceptible to bias.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. It is easy to answer yes/no? Is anything missing? Anything unclear? Would you find this useful?

Curiosity

1. Do you have specific habits for getting curious when you notice you're not curious about something important?
2. Do you, in every situation, endeavour to have an accurate map of the territory?
3. Do you regularly acknowledge and accept the possible worlds that may exist? E.g. "If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it it hot; if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool."
4. Do you regularly ask, “What are the causes of my beliefs? Why do I think this? What’s the source?”
5. Do you regularly ask, “What would I expect to see differently if x was or was not the case?”
6. Do you regularly ask, when unexpected things happen, “Why didn’t I expect x to happen?”
7. When you sit down to think, or to look something up, do you regularly ask, "What am I chasing? Why am I doing this? Am I asking myself questions about this?"
8. Do you frequently stop to consider what information will be most valuable to achieving your goals?
9. Do you frequently ask, "What do I most want to accomplish?"
10. Do you focus your curiosity on the information you need to achieve your goals? E.g. "What do I need to know in order to achieve that thing? What is most likely to help me learn this and figure it out?"
11. Do you stop reading when a source becomes irrelevant?
12. Do you actively seek out more useful information? E.g. "What are the best sources? Where is the best information?"
13. Do you gravitate to inquiries that seem most promising of producing shifts in belief?
14. Do you gravitate to inquiries that are least like the ones you've tried before?
15. Do you ever call topics or ideas boring, shallow, crazy, beneath you, or confusing (or other words that close off thought)?
16. Do you notice when conflicting emotions cut off your curiosity?
17. Do you, in every social interaction, ask what that person can teach you?
18. Do you, in every situation where you receive feedback, treat it as potentially valuable?

Followup to: Communicating rationality to the public: Julia Galef's "The Straw Vulcan"

I wrote a summary of Julia Galef's "The Straw Vulcan" presentation from Skepticon 4. Note that it is written in my own words, but all of the ideas should be credited to Julia and her presentation (unless I unintentionally misrepresent any of them!).

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The classic Hollywood example of rationality is the Vulcans from Star Trek. They are depicted as an ultra-rational race that has eschewed all emotion from their lives.

But is this truly rational? What is rationality?

A “Straw Vulcan”—an idea originally defined on TV Tropes—is a straw man used to show that emotion is better than logic. Traditionally, you have your ‘rational’ character who thinks perfectly ‘logically’, but then ends up running into trouble, having problems, or failing to achieve what they were trying to achieve.

These characters have a sort of fake rationality. They don’t fail because rationality failed, but because they aren’t actually being rational. Straw Vulcan rationality is not the same thing as actual rationality.

What is real rationality?

There are two different concepts that we refer to when we use the word ‘rationality’:

1. The method of obtaining an accurate view of reality. (Epistemic Rationality) — Learning new things, updating your beliefs based on the evidence, being as accurate as possible, being as close to what is true as possible, etc.

2. The method of achieving your goals. (Instrumental Rationality) — Whatever your goals are, be them selfish or altruistic, there are better and worse ways to achieve them, and instrumental rationality helps you figure this out.

These two concepts are obviously related. You want a clear model of the world to be able to achieve your goals. You also may have goals related to obtaining an accurate model of the world.

How do these concepts of rationality relate to Straw Vulcan rationality? What is the Straw Vulcan conception of rationality?

“Straw Vulcan” Rationality Principles

Straw Vulcan Principle #1: Being rational means expecting other people to be rational too.

Galef uses an example from Star Trek where Spock, in an attempt to protect the crew of the crashed ship, decides to show aggression against the local aliens so that they will be scared and run away. Instead, they are angered by the display of aggression and attack even more fiercely, much to Spock’s dismay and confusion.

But this isn’t being rational! Spock’s model of the world is severely tarnished by his silly expectation for everyone else to be as rational as he would be. Real rationality would require you to try to understand all aspects of the situation and act accordingly.

Straw Vulcan Principle #2: Being rational means never making a decision until you have all the information.

This seems to assume that the only important criteria for making decisions is that you make the best one given all the information. But what about things like time and risk? Surely those should factor into your decisions too.

We know intuitively that this is true. If you want a really awesome sandwich you may be willing to pay an extra $1.00 for some cheese, but you wouldn’t pay $300 for a small increase in the quality of a sandwich. You want the best possible outcome, but this requires simultaneously weighing various things like time, cost, value, and risk.

What is the most rational way to find a partner? Take this example from Gerd Gigerenzer, a well-respected psychology describing how a rationalist would find a partner:

“He would have to look at the probabilities of various consequences of marrying each of them—whether the woman would still talk to him after they’re married, whether she’d take care of their children, whatever is important to him—and the utilities of each of these…After many years of research he’d probably find out that his final choice had already married another person who didn’t do these computations, and actually just fell in love with her.”

But clearly this isn’t optimal decision making. The rational thing to do isn’t to merely wait until you have as much information as you can possibly have. You need to factor in things like how long the research is taking, the decreasing number of available partners as time passes, etc.

Straw Vulcan Principle #3: Being rational means never relying on intuition.

Straw Vulcan rationality says that anything intuition-based is illogical. But what is intuition?

We have two systems in our brains, which have been unexcitingly called System 1 and System 2.

System 1—the intuitive system—is the older of the two and allows us to make quick, automatic judgments using shortcuts (i.e. heuristics) that are usually good most of the time, all while requiring very little of your time and attention.

System 2—the deliberative system—is the newer of the two and allows us to do things like abstract hypothetical thinking and make models that explain unexpected events. System 2 tends to do better when you have more resources and more time and worse when there are many factors to consider and you have limited time.

Take a sample puzzle: A bat and ball together cost $1.10. If the bat costs $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

When a group of Princeton students were given this question, about 50% of them got it wrong. The correct answer is $0.05, since then the bat would cost $1.05 for a total of $1.10. The wrong answer of $0.10 is easily generated (incorrectly) by our System 1, and our System 2 accepts it without question.

Your System 1 is prone to biases, and it is also incredibly powerful. Our intuition tends to do well with purchasing decisions or other choices about our personal lives. System 1 is also very powerful for an expert. Chess grandmasters can glance at a chessboard and say, “white checkmates in three moves,” because of the vast amount of time and mental effort spent playing chess and building up a mental knowledge base about it.

Intuition can be bad and less reliable when based on something not relevant to the task at hand or when you don’t have expert knowledge on the topic. You opinions of AI may be heavily influenced by scifi movies that have little basis in reality.

The main thing to take away from this System 1 and 2 split is that both systems have strengths and weaknesses, and rationality is about finding the best path—using both systems at the right times—to epistemic and instrumental rationality.

Being “too rational” usually means you are using your System 2 brain intentionally but poorly. For example, teenagers were criticized in an article for being “too rational” because they could reason themselves into things like drugs and speeding. But this isn’t a problem with being too rational; it’s a problem with being very bad at System 2 reasoning!

Straw Vulcan Principle #4: Being rational means not having emotions.

Rationality and emotions are often portrayed in a certain way in Straw Vulcan rationalists, such as when Spock is excited to see that Captain Kirk isn’t dead, and then quickly covers up his emotions. The simplistic Hollywood portrayal of emotions and rationality is as follows:

Note that emotions can get in the way of taking actions on our goals. For example, anxiety causes us to overestimate risks; depression causes us to underestimate how much we will enjoy an activity; and feeling threatened or vulnerable causes us to exhibit more superstitious behavior and and likely to see patterns that don’t exist.

But emotions are also important for making the decisions themselves. Without having any emotional desires we would have no reason to have goals in the first place. You would have no motivations to choose between a calm beach and a nuclear waste site for your vacation. Emotions are necessary for forming goals; rationality is lame without them!

[Galef noted in a comment that the intended meaning is in line with “Emotions are necessary for forming goals among humans, rationality has no normative value to humans without goals.”]

This leaves us with a more accurate portrayal of the relationship between emotions and rationality:

How do emotions make us irrational? Emotions can be epistemically irrational if they are based on a false model of the world. You can be angry at your husband for not asking how your presentation at work went, but then upon reflection realize you never told him about it so how would he know it happened? Your anger was based on a false model of reality.

Emotions can be instrumentally irrational if they get in the way of you achieving your goals. If you feel things are hopeless and there are no ways to change the situation, you may be wrong about that. Your emotions may prevent you from taking necessary actions.

Our emotions also influence each other. If you have a desire to be liked by others and a desire to sit on a couch all day, you may run into problems. These desires may influence and conflict with each other.

We can also change our emotions. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy has many exercises and techniques (e.g. Thought Records) for changing your emotions by changing your beliefs.

Straw Vulcan Principle #5: Being rational means valuing only quantifiable things, like money, efficiency, or productivity.

If it isn’t concrete and measurable then there is no reason to value it, right? Things like beauty, love, or joy are just irrational emotions, right?

What are the problems with this? For starters, money can’t be valuable in and of itself, because it is only a means to obtain other valued things. Also, there is no reason to assume that money and productivity are the only things of value.

The Main Takeaway

Galef finishes off with this final message:

“If you think you’re acting rationally but you consistently keep getting the wrong answer, and you consistently keep ending worse off than you could be, then the conclusion you should draw from that is not that rationality is bad, it’s that you’re bad at rationality.

In other words, you’re doing it wrong!”

First three images are from measureofdoubt.com > The Straw Vulcan: Hollywood’s illogical approach to logical decisionmaking.
You're Doing It Wrong image from evilbomb.com.

We are not automatically strategic. Since we want to get stuff done, it only makes sense to try harder—and what better time than the start of a new year?

In short: the New Year is a great time to do some life review and planning. How are things going? How was the past year? Do a thorough personal review to find out. What are you going to do next year? Make a plan. How can you increase your chances of success? Take all of your plans, projects, and goals and optimize them based on what you have learned on Less Wrong.

—

In the spirit of communal winning, here are the details on how I do my yearly review. Maybe you will find this process as useful as I have? I’m not quite sure if this is LW quality, so let me know with the karma.

For starters, I break down my life into fourteen areas, not necessarily of equal importance or in any specific order:

Worldview & Purpose – Do you have something to protect? Your worldview is your complete set of beliefs about everything—the past, present, and future; what is valuable, virtuous, and just. Do you have clarity as to your existence, purpose, and place in the universe? What is your philosophy of life? What do you want to get out of life?

Contribution & Impact – How are you giving value to the world? Are you making a difference? How much impact does your existence have environmentally, socially, and cognitively? Are you practicing optimal philanthropy?

Location & Possessions – Are you tied to one location? Are you mobile? This includes your current living situation, where you are in the world; your home, possessions, electronics, toys, and material sufficiency.

Money & Finances – Do you have savings, investments, assets, and debt? Do you have a budget and do you follow it? Are your finances organized and managed? Do you know where you spend your money?

Career & Work – Your work, job, career, or business; your source of income. Is what you do your calling? Are you engaged? Have you optimized your job? Are you networked within your industry?

Health & Fitness – What do you eat? Do you exercise regularly? How often do you get sick? What is your overall energy level and resistance to illness? What are your major health issues and susceptibilities?

Knowledge & Education – What do you know? Are you developing your mind and learning new things? Do you have any talents or skills? Are you being educated?

Communication – Are you spreading ideas? Do you spend time discussing, influencing, persuading, arguing, philosophizing, debating, interacting, writing, or speaking?

Intimate Relationship – The intimate relationship(s) you have or want to have; your partner; the quality of your relationship.

Social Life – This covers your home life, relationships with family members, friends, and social experiences. Are you networking? Are you meeting new people? Are you a member of any clubs and organizations?

Emotions – Your general feeling about life. Are you optimistic or pessimistic, positive or negative? Are you aware of your emotions as they are happening?

Character & Integrity – Your intelligence, integrity, honesty, courage, compassion, honor, self-discipline, etc.

Productivity & Organization – Your memorized solutions, daily routine, and schedule. How good is your productivity? Do you act effectively? Are you organized?

Fun & Adventure – Are you experiencing what you want to experience? Are you enjoying life? Are you doing things for fun? Do you have any hobbies or regular recreation? Do you have any creative pursuits?

Review and Planning

I do four things with the above breakdown, generally over the course of at least a few days, and in all cases using mind maps.

1. Review the current state of my life.

Everything. Every little detail about each area of my life. Spend time in reflection. Gather up what life data I can find. Be honest!

2. Review my ideal future.

How do I want things to look? What do I want to be doing? Long-term and medium-term goals, plans and projects. What would the ideal me look like?

3. Extract the important things I want to work on over the next year.

This is usually in the form of 3-5 ‘major’ goals. I try to spread them out across various levels: some are life optimizing, others are specific projects.

Example 1: Read all LW posts – I’ve been cherry-picking posts/sequences for a long time. A comprehensive read-through is in order.

Example 2: Lead climb a 5.12c route – Climbing is amazing: it’s social or solo depending on your mood; you make constant, noticeable, incremental progress; it’s extremely fun; it uses all of your body and core; it’s mentally challenging; and it’s exercise to boot!

Example 3: Review and optimize my philanthropy – Review what I'm giving. Cancel those useless donations. Sort out my money situation. Determine how much I can give away and the most optimal way to do it.

4. Optimize for success!

I used to use an unorganized mish-mash of techniques that I’ve picked up over the years, but now that we have a clear outline of what makes us happy and why we procrastinate, among other things, this step got a whole lot easier.

Using what we know, I try to optimize all of my goals to increase their chances of success. For example: break things down into smaller parts when possible; make it clear how my projects tie in with my bigger life goals; make sure my goals are specific and measurable, and so on.

I also use a compact year calendar to hold all my big deadlines, project timelines, and special events. This helps me keep a big-picture view of the year. Aside from that, everything is electronic, in calendars, mind maps, documents, etc.

That pretty much sums it up. Anyone else going to do some reviewing and/or planning for next year? How do you plan on doing it?