Can I focus my attention on my attention and get compounding results? :)

I do think theres truth to here being two ways to using the thought but I don't think its simply one side vs other side in humans. The left side (of right-handed individuals) has the speech centre, and thus is more involved in process of making sequences of chirps that achieve particular social purpose, and subsequently less involved in the decision making or reasoning.

In the split brain patients, when left side is presented with chicken, and right side is presented with snow, and the right side picks shovel as related, the left side explains that the shovel is for cleaning chicken shit. The left side doesn't have slightest clue why shovel was chosen, nor does have any need-to-know what so ever (even when the corpus callosum is present) as the optimum chirps are entirely dependent to listener and independent of motivation. The left side still has to employ massively parallel process to generate the chirps to the specific purpose - that's the only way brain can do it - clearly there's a lot of parallel processing required for coming up with an explanation how the shovel is related to chicken - but the chirps themselves are sequential in nature and so it appears as if there is some sort of serial process going on. It even looks like some sequences of chirps are consequences of other sequences of chirps, when the chirp making rule requires them to be produced in that order.

Then the people here have trouble with 'procrastination', 'akrasia', and the like, which is inevitable outcome of the disconnect between decision making (which decides not to do something) and speech synthesis (which talks of wanting something), and are generally a case of the pirate ship's parrot complaining of the weather. Letting the part-brained parrot take over the pirate ship is generally a bad idea, even if the parrot is very extensively trained. For one thing, the part-brained parrot doesn't know one thing about navigation and can't read the maps or charts, which are non verbal in nature. I would guess the parrot take-over corresponds to psychiatric disorders.

Arguably one of the best scientists, Albert Einstein, has lacked the parrot portion of the brain entirely.

Furthermore, an unusually high fraction of accomplished people (e.g. presidents) are left handed, which is a proxy for unusual brain architecture that doesn't implement standard clueless parrot. The evolution may easily have over-fitted us to some very specific situation where the speech is just noise, entirely unrelated to reasoning (which is the case for all smaller brained animals).

This is the sort of in-person, hands-on, real-life, and social exercise that didn't occur to me, or Anna, or anyone else helping, while we were trying to design the Bayes's Theorem unit. Our brains just didn't go in that direction, though we recognized it as embarrassingly obvious in retrospect.

There's something important here. Problem solving. That's the use of intelligence that got us to the Moon. That's the use of intelligence which gave us Bayes theorem. And the best way you can spend your time is focussing on this. It does not help you a whole lot if you can very rationally pick between two ways of teaching the students, if you cant generate those ways. For success, one needs, first and foremost, problem solving abilities. There may be general intelligence factor, but there is also a lot of very high IQ people who are comparatively bad at free form problem solving, and even at fairly basic combinatorial things like fitting most items into a box carefully so they won't break when transported. The rationality may help you de-bias yourself wrt which items you consider more and less 'important' - you may be able to rid yourself of bias of how dear an item is to you - but it won't so much help you process the immense number of combinations and generate the best one, and your packing will still be much less effective than the packing of someone irrational who puts a nearly indestructible object that is dear to them on the top, if they are just a bit better at processing the huge solution space.

So, first of all

The easiest way to help people learn this skill, I think, would be to teach people:

• Good posture

• How to relax and open their muscles and joints

• How to breath properly

And, the easiest way to teach people this skill, I think, is to instead teach them about this skill. This means that exercises should be somewhat indirect. Exercises should definitely get people to experience the problem instead of getting people to learn the solution, and only make available this solution as an option. Partly because the proposed solution is not the only solution - it is not an absolute solution - it does not work in all instances.

Lastly, teach people how to make the connection between their awareness of themselves (real situations) and the method of Checking Consequentialism. Get them to realize that it is applicable and usable almost all of the time, in good or bad situations, not just when something seems wrong or off, not just to improve their situations or make something better. If this isn't done, they won't use it when it's important.

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Now on to reasons why most attempts at teaching this will fail, and most exercises will not reach their audience in the desired way.

This one is REALLY HARD to teach

Seriously.

The reason this is really hard is because of the concept of habits and defense mechanisms and internal realities (such as the should reality).

As you already stated, when trying to check consequentialism, most people will come up with excuses or other defense mechanisms to maintain their reality, instead of actually checking. You mentioned many ways to overcome that, but they all require recognizing that the person is trying to maintain his/her reality.

When people have a habit, they will often go to extreme lengths to maintain that habit. This is especially true for addictions.

when people have a habit of retreating to a reality (such as the should reality), the teacher has to be very careful not to give them an opportunity to retreat further (don't say "this method should work," or "you should try this". Just plain don't say "should" unless you know what you're doing).

So, we have a problem of habits and defense mechanisms and realities. This is on the level of karma. This means that there are infinite reasons why people will continue doing this, and zero reasons why they will stop. This means that logic will not work. Trying to logic people into learning this skill will not work. There are infinite barriers in the way of teaching someone this skill directly, especially of when to use it.

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Now, with that said, it should still be possible to teach this as a skill. It's obvious that people won't use it all the time, but if they learn how to use it, they might just use it little by little.

The thing that I do instead of checking consequentialism is that whenever I notice that I am in a cycle, I exit the cycle; I stop participating in the cycle. This requires willpower that most people don't have, and an awareness of the present that most people don't have (and sometimes requires a safety net that many people don't have); however it does not require analytical skills.

The two concepts could be combined, though. It is much easier to discern a cycle than it is to determine whether an idea has gone unchecked or ducked under the radar. If someone finds themselves thinking the same thing multiple times, that person is in a cycle. If someone finds themselves compelled to do something that person has a habit of, that person is in a cycle (a minor addiction). If someone finds themselves emotionally reacting to a trigger word, that person is in a deep cycle related to that word. The thing about unchecked consequentialism is that it's really hard to catch the first time it happens (for each subject), but easy to catch the second time (and if it happens once without being fixed, it WILL happen again in a similar way).

If you want people to learn how to catch it the first time it happens (for each subject before it impacts their lives), you have to teach them how to meditate (the Taoist way, which essentially just means teach people to become aware of themselves and their surroundings). Otherwise, instead teach them how to recognize when it has happened in the past, and how to recognize when it happens again. If you do not teach them meditation, then forget about trying to get them to recognize it the first time it happens.

Man, even after writing all that, I still don't have any good ideas for exercises.

Actually, I want to take some of my criticism back. It seems to me that there are several instrumental goals that would help with the terminal goal of getting people to routinely be specific at useful times in the future. No one exercise has to encompass all of the instrumental goals. The list I see right now is:

1) Make people better at being specific.

2) Get people to appreciate the value of being specific.

3) Get people to recognize situations where they or other people aren't being specific.

4) Get people to react negatively to a lack of specifics.

5) Make it occur to people to be specific.

6) Show/get people to think of contexts to apply their new skill of being specific.

7) Get people to be specific as a habit, without thinking about it.

Your exercise could help with #1, and also #2 if the contrast between personality test results strikes the students as significant.

Mine is intended to help with #4, and with good scenarios, could help with #3 and #6. If the scenario involves something practical, it could also help with #2.

Feel free to add to my list.

Okay, so split into sets of 2 people (or, split into 2 teams, or even dynamic teams could work). Person A asks a simple personal question about person B (such as "do you have a girlfriend?" or "do you have a college degree?" or "do you prefer dogs or cats?"). Person B then tries to answer like the people in the video did, by telling an abstract related story, or by answering a different question contained within or related to the question (like "well, dolphins are really my favorite animal" or "college degrees aren't really an indication that someone is able to perform well in their field of expertise"). Person B tries to talk as much as possible in response to person A's question without actually answering person A's question. Person A then tries to redirect person B toward A's intended subject by asking different or more specific questions ("what about as a pet?"). In summary: Person B tries to avoid answering person A's question, and person A tries to force person B to be specific by asking the right questions.

And of course, things like the ladder of abstraction can (and should) be explained before starting the exercise so that the people have references to draw from to reach their goal (person A trying to get an answer, and person B trying to not give an answer while still answering)

The primary reason why skills can be transmissible from master to apprentice, but not replicable by exercises is because the skill in question has multiple difficulties associated with it which are disconnected at the level of the exercise. Most people are naturally (through karma/disposition or experience) capable of easily getting past a few of the difficulties, and have problems with a few of the others. These people have no idea that they were able to get past a few of the difficulties, because they weren't difficult.

The problem with exercises is that they tend to concentrate on certain difficulties. So, the people who lack the related experience, or have the karma where they find exceedingly difficult the difficulties not expressed in the exercise, are not going to be able to get anything immediately useful out of the exercise. And in addition, these people won't know why they weren't able to get anything out of the exercise, or even what could be done to help them.

You (Eliezer) addressed this subject in this post by providing examples of related concepts. The problem is that those related concepts are all true, and so are a few others you didn't mention, as well as a few others you aren't even aware of; and certain ones are true for certain people, and untrue for others.

Here are some difficulties you didn't mention:

• Common people are emotionally driven. Sensationalist methods attract their attention, and fool them into thinking positive thoughts about the subject. These people who were presenting start-ups were not simply being non-specific, they were trying to pander to an audience (which they were taught to do in school). They weren't even trying to express their ideas when they first started talking.

• Going deeper into concreteness, many of their ideas were still ideas: partially concrete in their minds, but not concrete for people who come from a different perspective. One skill here that is useful that isn't learning how to be concrete is instead learning how to interpret others' questions, to translate from one perspective to another.

• When emotionally charged (as in a presentation), many people have the tendency to both respond to emotional triggers and try to trigger emotions in the audience. Through this, these people tend to go up the ladder of abstraction. Sometimes these people can benefit by just being aware that the audience (Paul Graham) is not trying to trigger them.

• Many people are taught how to pander to an audience. Often, these people don't even know that they are pandering to an audience. Instead of teaching these people how to do the opposite, instead teach them both how to pander, and how to know when they are pandering to an audience, and follow up by teaching them how to know when to, and when not to, pander to an audience. For many people, after they learn this, the opposite side of learning how to be specific is easy.

• All of the people in that Paul Graham office hours YouTube video seemed to me to be trying too hard to answer the specific questions asked. They interpreted the question to refer to one concept, and tried to convey that concept. These people would benefit from learning how to interpret questions from multiple angles. rather than trying to find the concept the questions is truly asking, they should be trying to find all of the concepts the questions is addressing. From there, they can pick the concept that they DO have a specific answer for, or determine that they don't have an answer, or don't understand the question.

Many exercises designed to help people get through difficulties like this would work better if they addressed the opposite. Get people to experience the problem; so that they can recognize it and try to find a solution, and become aware that it is indeed a problem. Don't get people to try to find a solution; because they usually aren't even aware of the problem, much less have a concrete understanding of it. For example,... oh, I just thought of a good exercise: [Idea moved to top so that it is the first thing people see. Not going to edit post to make it coherent in that order because I'm too lazy.]

This isn't related to the entire post so much as it is a response to the problem with the scientific method. The scientific method does start with a hypothesis in relation to individual experiments. The hypothesis starts with general observations made from previous experiments or just some kind of general observation.

If we assume complete ignorance about NaCl (Sodium Chloride), but previously observed that pure sodium (Na) explodes in the presence of water, we might decide to devise an experiment to see what happens when we place other compounds with sodium in water. Our hypothesis might be something like, everything that has sodium explodes in water. It is not necessary to write down this hypothesis, because the hypotheses we generally make are made in our head when we are not in some kind of laboratory setting. By that I mean we constantly make hypotheses about subjects before we observe the results of our 'experiments.'

Anyway, we toss a block of sodium chloride in a bucket of water and observe that an explosion does not immediately follow. We had previous observations from former experiments, or general observations, to suggest that stuff with sodium will explode, but our observational evidence suggests that our previously made hypothesis is not true.

We make plenty of observations before making hypotheses, but we always make some sort of hypothesis before making some sort of observation when starting an experiment of any manner.

Here's something I'd love to put into an entire article, but can't because my karma's bad (see my other comment on this thread):

Many people make the false assumption that the scientific method starts with the hypothesis. They think: first hypothesize, then observe, then make a theory from the collection of hypotheses.

The reality is quite the opposite. The first point on the scientific method is the observation. Any hypotheses before observation will only diminish the pool of possible observations. Second is building a theory. Along the process, many things are observed without using a hypothesis to observe them; only needing a question and a desire to explore for the answer. Last is using the theory to create hypotheses; which are then used to confirm, alter, or reject the theory.

The exploration phase is where interesting new observations come up for the first time, and everyone who nears the end of this phase wants to talk to people about it; because it's really cool! Lots of amazing stuff is observed before any real theory can be made. Lots of plausible, valid, and important ideas come up which should indeed be discussed, as they are relevant to many subjects.

However, the people who take the wrong path, make the false assumption that the scientific method starts with the hypothesis, are afraid to take a step out of their reality. Taking in new information as an observation with no hypothesis or theory attached, which is what is available to them from the exploration stage, would be taking a step out of their reality.

the response you get of "why should I believe x? He doesn't have a PhD" is fundamentally the same as the response "prove it. Until you prove it, why should I listen to you?". These people don't want to observe or theorize. They don't want to explore. They don't want to work toward the goal I want to work toward. They want to stay in their world until they have a reason to involve something new in their world. The result of that isn't an improvement, either, because they still have the same problem of living in their own world.

This objection is a fallacy coming from false assumptions. The thing I have observed to be a/the source of this fallacy is the false start of the scientific method cycle.

FYI, "pseudo-scientists" have a related problem where they are either unable or unwilling to leave the exploration phase (often because the theory they are exploring is wrong, but sometimes because they're just looking in the wrong direction). Religions have another related problem where they are unable or unwilling to enter the exploration phase; which is not entirely unlike the problem I described about normal science, which is why many people call science a religion.

If you're having trouble changing, one easy thing I have found to work for me is: Take it upon myself to do the things I would normally do out of habit, and do them on purpose. Take it upon myself to do the things I would normally do as a reaction, and do them independently.

This, for me, sets my mind on the path of being conscious of and in control of what I was previously unable to change. So, I think you should do the opposite of the lesson you've learned from this. I think you should, for a short period of time, purposefully act the way you are currently acting.

and while doing so, keep in mind: It's none of my business what other people think of me. It's none of my business what other people want from me. It's none of my business how other people react to me. The only thing that's my business is my business.

How can you tell the difference?