More from Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog, as we only got through about half of it last time. Including:
Though they sound straightforward, that the ability to do the last two tasks are the primary atoms that let you program your brain -- to institute appropriate, perhaps-unintuitive behaviors at the right time, and to get rid of such behavior. If we can do this -- practice doing it, make a habit of this practice -- then we can make ourselves more awesome in fine detail.
I'd love to have a conversation about what it'd look like to take these ideas seriously. And, since we only did one round last time, let's play a bit more of the Training Game. Maybe with a little more structure. :j
See you there!
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I just read Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog. It's full of things relevant to our interests, like:
and so on. I suspect this is fundamental stuff if you're interested in becoming an excellent human.
I'll basically present the contents of Don't Shoot the Dog, highlighting those points most salient to our interests. I'd love to have a conversation about what it'd look like to take these ideas seriously..
And also, let's play the Training Game, therein described, which sounds silly and enlightening. "Silly and enlightening" is my favorite combination. :D
Hope to see you there!
If you're in the San Francisco Bay area, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list. Regular meetups in Mountain View and Berkeley, and other events, are announced and discussed there.
This would avoid camaraderie, team spirit and reputation management being organisational factors.
Er, why would you want to do this? Do you have a specific management domain in mind, where these things actually don't matter?
If not, perhaps you can just watch what happens in carefully-selected, massively-multiplayer games? Eve, maybe?
I've run meetups on this topic twice now. Every time I do, it's difficult to convince people it's a useful skill. More words about when estimation is useful would be nice.
In most exercises that you can find on Fermi calculations, you can also actually find the right answer, written down somewhere online. And, well, being able to quickly find information is probably a more useful skill to practice than estimation; because it works for non-quantified information too. I understand why this is; you want to be able to show that these estimates aren't very far off, and for that you need to be able to find the actual numbers somehow. But that means that your examples don't actually motivate the effort of practicing, they only demonstrate how.
I suspect the following kinds of situations are fruitful for estimation:
Others? Does anyone have examples of when Fermi calculations helped them make a decision?
It's been four whole weeks since we last played board games! How has this happened!?
The Quixey office has quite a few board games, so we won't be short, but you're more than welcome to bring anything else you might like to play. I will ensure that both Zendo and The Resistance are available. :)
If you're in the San Francisco Bay area and reading this, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list. Regular meetups in Mountain View and Berkeley are announced and discussed there, and other events of interest to the local community.
Entering the Quixeyplex: Our doors will be locked in the evening, and it's not always the case that someone's watching them for passerby. If you need to be let in, you can call me at 608.698.2959.
In the time I've spent volunteering with DI, I've learned a few fun improv games. I also know a few other tricks for evoking helpful, unusual social atmospheres. Let's try these:
Aaron and Jess will open the doors at 7:00pm; we'll get started at 7:30.
If you're in the San Francisco Bay area and reading this, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list. Regular meetups in Mountain View and Berkeley are announced and discussed there, as are other events of interest to the local community.
Get Curious is an explicit injunction to practice becoming curious whenever it's useful. Or pleasant, I suppose. I've just started, in the very most tiny way, to think and play with this, and I have a couple more ideas about how we could try to practice this skill. I want to bounce these ideas off of people and see if they work for anyone else. I really want to know if anyone has alternate suggestions for inducing curiosity that work for them.
In any case, Let's Try It, and see what comes of it.
Moreover, invoking curiosity seems like a skill that could be fruitfully practiced for something like 5 minutes a day. I'm very interesting in putting together some social mechanism to practice this and similar skills; I'd quite like to set one up at the meetup.
(Standard mailing list plug)
If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list Regular meetups in Mountain View and Berkeley are announced and discussed there, as are other events in the local community.
Later. Keep the project requirements small until it's working well. Get it to serve one desired purpose very well. Only then look at extending its use.
This is true for any coding project, but an order-of-magnitude more true for a volunteer project. If you want to get a programmer to actually volunteer for a project, convince them that the project will see great rewards while it's still small. In fact, you basically want to maximize intuitive value, while minimizing expected work. It feels so much better when your actual, original goal is achieved with a small amount of work than it feels when your tiny, first step is only the start of achieving your goal.
"Being specific" doesn't seem like a skill that we can say much about, in the abstract. (Though this post does anyway.) Nonetheless, we usually aren't all that specific. How might we practice to become more specific?
I have a few ideas, a couple of concrete exercises, and at least one moderately amusing game to try in this vein. You all get to try them!
If you're at the Quixey door and need to be let in, you can call me at 608.698.2959.
See you there!
If you're in the San Francisco Bay area and reading this, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list. Regular meetups in Mountain View are Berkeley are announced and discussed there, and other events of interest to the local community.
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Oh, right! I actually did the comute time vs. rent computation when I moved four months ago! And wound up with a surprising enough number that I thought about it very closely, and decided that number was about right, and changed how I was looking for apartments. How did I forget that?
Thanks!