I would suggest that it is very easy to concentrate on the 85% chance of getting nothing, and so ignore the difference in EV.
Flashes of Nondecisionmaking
If you crash a bicycle and cut your knee, it bleeds. You can apply pressure to the wound or otherwise aid in clotting it, but you can't fully control the blood. You can't think, "Body! I command you not to bleed!" Nor can you directly say, "I choose not to bleed" through pure will alone.
This is easy enough to understand. We don't have direct control over our blood. We can apply some measure of indirect to it -- taking aspirin might thin the blood, breathing deeply and relaxing might slow the pulse and the flow of blood slightly -- but we do not have direct and instant control over the flow of our blood.
That's our blood. It's quite a personal thing, when you think about it.
At the same time, there's a view that we have full control and choice over our actions in a given situation.
I no longer believe this to be the case.
We can staunch the flow of bleeding through applying pressure, a cloth, perhaps slowing down our pulse and bloodflow through lowering stress and deep breathing. But we can't, in the moment, command or control blood by force of will or mind alone.
Likewise, I'm starting to believe we have lots of indirect control over our patterns of action in our lives, but perhaps less control and command in individual moments.
When a person rolls out of bed, they usually do very similar things each morning. How much control or command do they have -- mentally or analytically or however you want to define it -- over these actions?
Not much, I'd say.
Yet, they have immense indirect control, similar to blood flow. If you normally lay out your clothes the night before, and you lay out running clothes instead of work clothes, and set your alarm for an hour earlier, your chances of running go up a lot. There still may be an element of choice or self-command when you decide to run or not, but it's very possible there wasn't choice or self-command available if you did not rearrange your environment with that sort of indirect pressure.
I had an experience recently that was incredibly distressing. It was strange and very unpleasant at the time, but I'm now thankful for it.
I was at a convenience store when I realized I was in the process of buying some junk food and energy drinks.
My mind recognized this, but seemingly had not so much say on what's going on. My legs were just walking the familiar convenience store aisles near my home, picking up two of this energy drink, one of that pack of peanut M&M's, and so on.
I don't know if I could have stopped the pattern and put the items back in the moment. At the time, I was shocked to realize that I was watching myself act, but I hadn't stopped and started thinking or pondering. My legs and hands were working seemingly slightly independent of myself.
At the time, it was like a bad dream, or some sort of miserable and crazy experience. I shrugged it off -- strange things happen, you know? -- but I kept thinking about it periodically.
I'd been training in meditation and impulse control a lot over the last six months, and been studying and experimenting a bit about how our minds work and cognitive psychology.
My realization now, quite a while later, is that the distressing experience at the convenience store -- "what the hell is going on here, I am seemingly not controlling my actions!"-- was actually the beginning of a flash of a greater awareness of my day-to-day life.
I believe now that we're constantly in nondecisionmaking mode. We're constantly running patterns or taking actions without conscious command or choice, similar to blood running from a cut.
This process can be managed indirectly and affected, including in the moment it's happening if we're aware of it. But oftentimes, we don't even know we're metaphorically bleeding. We're just doing things, some of them "smart", some of them stupid and harmful.
I've had more flashes of awareness, seeing myself running mechanical patterns during times I normally wouldn't have noticed them. Briefly, here and there. I've been sometimes able to radically course correct and do something entirely different. Othertimes, I try and fail to do something different. I haven't had a moment as puzzling as that first convenience store one.
There's perhaps two takeaways here. The first is that greater training in awareness and meditation can lead to "waking up" or noticing the situation you're in more often. You probably already knew that.
But the second and more important one, I think, is the idea that things that seem like choices aren't always so. We don't choose to bleed if we cut our knee. Once we realize we're bleeding, we can apply indirect pressure, de-stress, use external things like cloth or bandages, and otherwise manage the situation. We can also buy more protective clothing or improve our technique for the future, so we bleed less. But we can't simply say "Body, I command you not to bleed" nor "I choose not to bleed" if we are, in fact, bleeding.
Indirect influence and control, immense amounts. More than most people realize. Direct influence and control? Perhaps not as much as commonly believed.
Confidence In Opinions, Intensity In Opinion
On a scale of 1 to 100, how sure are you?
It's a good thing to ask yourself from time to time about intense beliefs, especially if you're having a disagreement with someone else smart.
Just putting a number on something is good. If you're in business, putting any number in the high 90's is dangerous and shouldn't happen too often.
Yet, you still have to aggressively and intensely pursue your plans.
You can be only 80% sure you're correct, and still intensely pursue a course of action.
Most people make a mistake: they only go intensely after things they have a very high certainty will work.
But this is backwards. It's absolutely right to say "I'm only 80% sure that going and making a great talk to this group will help develop my business," and to still aggressively pursue giving a great talk.
The same is true with having ridiculously exceptionally good service. You can say, "I'm only 60% sure that doing this is going to lead to more customer loyalty... this might just be a time sink and cost more than it returns. But let's kill it on it, and find it."
You don't need to be highly confident to intensely pursue something.
In fact, intensely pursuing not-certain things seems to be how the world develops.
Reflective Control
You've had those moments -- the ones where you're very aware of where you're at in the world, and you're mapping out your future and plans very smartly, and you're feeling great about taking action and pushing important things forwards.
I used to find myself only reaching that place, at random, once or twice per year.
But every time I did, I would spend just a few hours sketching out plans, thinking about my priorities, discarding old things I used to do that didn't bring much value, and pushing my limits to do new worthwhile things. I thought, "This is really valuable. I should do this more often."
Eventually, I named that state: Reflective Control.
As often happens, by naming something it becomes easier to do it more often.
At this time, I still had a hazy poorly working feeling about what it was. So I tried to define it. After many attempts, I came to this:
> Reflective Control is when you're firmly off autopilot, in a high-positive and high-willpower state, and are able to take action.
You'll note there's four discreet components to it: firmly off autopilot (reflective), high positivity, high will, and cable of and oriented towards taking action.
I also asked myself, "How to know if you're in Reflective Control?"
My best answer of an exercise for it is,
> You set aside the impulses/distractions, and try to set a concrete Control-related goal. This is meta-work, meaning the process of defining your life and what needs to happen next. You do this calmly. By setting a concrete Control-related goal successfully and then executing on it, you know you're in an RC state.
> Example: "I will identify all the open projects I've got, and the next steps for each of them."
With that definition and that exercise in hand, I was able to do something which works almost magically when I wanted to take on big challenges: I could rate myself from 1-100 on the four key elements of the component, and then set a concrete goal to achieve, and analyze a little about which factor might be holding me back. Here is an example from my journal:
> Reflective 70/100, positive 70/100, will 65/100, action 40/100… ok, I'm feeling good once a good, just some anxiety suppressing will a little and action quite a bit, but no problem. My goal is to finish the xxx outline before I leave here.
I've found this incredibly useful. Summary:
*There's a state I call "Reflective Control" where I'm off autopilot and thinking (reflective), in a positive mood, with willpower and action-oriented.
*I can put explicit numbers on this, somewhat subjectively, from 1-100. This lets me see where the link in the chain is, if any.
*By setting a concrete goal and working towards it, you can get more objective feedback and balance whichever element is lowest with some practical actions.
Indeed yeah. But we're not talking $500 vs. $900, we're talking orders of magnitude...
This comment might not be popular on a quick knee-jerk level, but it's worth getting out there for accuracy.
Under "Many partners" you've got Singlehood, Friendship 'with benefits', Polyamory.
You're missing one of the most common historical kinds of relationships - monogamous commitment from woman to man, man taking care of multiple households in a committed way.
The first Tokugawa Shogun, for instance -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Ieyasu#Ieyasu_as_a_person
16 children with 11 wives and concubines.
King Ts'ao Ts'ao of Wei -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cao_Cao#Family
Muhammad -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad#Wives_and_children
It's not a Western tradition. The West has a strong romantic/platonic love ideal, that moves into monogamy under Christianity, and some non-monogamy later built on some mix of liberalism, enlightenment values, and humanism.
But still, it's been a very common family/dating/relationship through history. It still persists, though it doesn't get much media coverage.
Current Sheik of Dubai -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_bin_Rashid_Al_Maktoum#Personal_life_and_education
Current Prime Minister of Italy -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi#Sexual_scandals
Now, admittedly I haven't seen a whole lot of evidence in this area, but I've seen some, and I couldn't name a single woman I know personally who has ever, in my presence or by report that I've heard, gone for a jerk.
Perhaps this behavior is less common among women who would rather have a 15% chance of $1,000,000 than a certainty of $500 (because most random women I've tested choose the certain $500, but every single woman in our community that I've asked, regardless of math level or wealth level or economic literacy or their performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test, takes the 15% chance of $1M.)
Or maybe "jerk" is being used in some sense other than what I associate it with, i.e., wearing motorcycle jackets, rather than not caring about who else you hurt.
Perhaps this behavior is less common among women who would rather have a 15% chance of $1,000,000 than a certainty of $500 (because most random women I've tested choose the certain $500, but every single woman in our community that I've asked, regardless of math level or wealth level or economic literacy or their performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test, takes the 15% chance of $1M.)
Whoa. A majority of people choose $500 in EV instead of $150,000?
That's scary. Have you written about this before? If not, care to give us rough numbers of how many people you've talked to about it? That blows my mind that a majority of people wouldn't get it when it's so far apart.
How should I dress to improve my chances of winning a Magic: the Gathering tournament?
In a way that's mildly subtly intimidating, in order to bring out the Bruce in the other person. I seem to recall a study that showed that when randomly dividing sports players into wearing red jerseys and blue jerseys, the red team won a statistically significant larger percentage of the time - maybe a 1% edge or something from red?
So I'd go clean, straight lines on a strong red clothing, maybe with a little black mixed in, impeccable grooming, and otherwise just look you're going to win. If it makes someone say "fuck it" and not do the combat math in their head just one time because your opponent has mentally crumbled, then your odds are improved.
A Rational Approach to Fashion
Related to: Humans are not automatically strategic, Rationalists should win
Fashion isn't prioritized in many hyper-analytical circles. Many in these communities write it off as frill and unnecessary. They say they "just dress comfortably" and leave it at that.
To me, that seems like a huge blind spot. It misses a fundamental point -
A piece of clothing is fundamentally a tool.
Definitions are important so everyone is on the same page. I feel like Wikipedia's first sentence on "tool" accurately describes it -
A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process.
Clothing clearly fits that definition of a tool.
Appropriately chosen clothing can keep you from freezing in the winter, from getting sunburnt in the summer, and can keep you dry in a rainstorm.
It can also help you achieve things involving other people. I think it's fair to draw a distinction between "clothing" and "fashion" based on whether your objectives involve interpersonal skills. If you're wearing clothing in relation to the environment and without other people, that's using clothing as a tool.
But clothing clearly can affect other people's opinions of you, willingness to accept your arguments, willing to hire or contract you, even their desire to associate with you. All of that is changed by clothing - or more specifically, your "fashion."
While most rationalists would happily and quickly plan out the best hiking boots to wear to not get blisters on a hike, or research the best shoes for bicycling or swimsuit for swimming, anecdotally many seem hesitant or even hostile to the idea of using fashion as a tool to achieve their objectives.
That's possibly a mistake.
The thing fashion can do best and most fundamentally is affect a person's initial first impression of you. Fashion is less important if you're in a context where you're guaranteed to get to know someone over a longer period of time, and is more important if you're going to get filtered quickly.
I propose that the most rational usage of fashion is this -
1. Ask yourself what your goals are in the situation you're about to go into.
2. Ask yourself what first impression would help you reach your goals.
3. Pick out and wear clothing that helps communicate that first impression.
The process is important. In isolation, there's no "good fashion" - it depends on your objectives.
In some circles, people more or less won't care how you're dressed. But even then, there's likely some clothing that will perform better than others. If you can afford the time or money to find clothing to fit your objectives, then there's no reason not to utilize this advantage.
I say "time or money" because you can deploy either - if money isn't an issue, there's stores where the majority of things look good, and the people there are professionals who will spend time giving you good feedback. Any high end department store like Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, or a high end tailor fits this category.
Alternatively, you can deploy time. To do that, survey the people that most effectively communicate the first impression you want to convey. Take actual notes and look for common trends. Then, go find pieces that look similar. You won't be perfect right away, but like any other skill, with practice you'll rapidly improve. Incidentally, the marginal cost to produce clothing is incredibly cheap, so most fashion lines over-produce clothing and have to liquidate it at super-discount sale prices periodically. There tends to be a major "Summer Sale" and "Winter Sale" once per year that have high end clothing that 70% to 90% off, making the cost comprable to the mid-tier.
There's also "Sample Sales" where over-produced items are liquidated or when a designer wants to see the buying public's reaction to their new pieces. Again, ultra-high-end clothing can be purchased at discount rates at these environments. You can get basically any semi-standard piece of high end clothing for not very much money if you put in the time. My strategy in the past has been to wait until finding a great opportunity like that, and then buying 1-2 years worth of clothing in one swoop. It doesn't take much supplementing after that.
It takes very little cognitive energy to begin this process. Next time you see someone who strikes a very good impression, stop and analyze a little bit. Note what they're wearing. If you want to strike that same first impression, go get something comprable. Your fashion will be working for you at that point, and your interpersonal dealings will become easier.
Pedanterrific feels the same way about it I did -
You too? So how do we decide which of us goes by Lazarus and which Woodrow - flip a coin?
Let's define our future selves as agents that we can strongly influence, and that we strongly care about.
English is so imprecise. Taboo "care about". Do we mean 'has a value in my utility function' or 'has a positive value in my utility function'? Is 'hate' really a synonym for what is meant in the above definition by 'care about'?
You too? So how do we decide which of us goes by Lazarus and which Woodrow - flip a coin?
So the lesson here, for me, is to be very precise with language when agreeing with someone whose username derives from the word pedantic :)
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Arrive somewhere with good horses and poor leadership on the edge of the Roman Empire, implement Mongolian horsemanship/mobility/unit-tactics, most of which should be possible with the current day's technology in a horsemanship culture -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_military_tactics_and_organization
Consolidate/build up for a couple decades, then lead an invasion against Rome sometime during one of the low points of Tiberius's reign (between AD 14 to and AD 37) -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius#As_Emperor