Perhaps a better form factor for Meetups vs Main board posts?

14 lionhearted 28 January 2016 11:50AM

I like to read posts on "Main" from time to time, including ones that haven't been promoted. However, lately, these posts get drowned out by all the meetup announcements.

It seems like this could lead to a cycle where people comment less on recent non-promoted posts (because they fall off the Main non-promoted area quickly) which leads to less engagement, and less posts, etc.

Meetups are also very important, but here's the rub: I don't think a text-based announcement in the Main area is the best possible way to showcase meetups.

So here's an idea: how about creating either a calendar of upcoming meetups, or map with pins on it of all places having a meetup in the next three months?

This could be embedded on the front page of leswrong.com -- that'd let people find meetups easier (they can look either by timeframe or see if their region is represented), and would give more space to new non-promoted posts, which would hopefully promote more discussion, engagement, and new posts.

Thoughts?

On Empirical Truth and Affective Truth

-1 lionhearted 23 August 2015 11:45AM

"We've always been at war with Eastasia."

Being able to be cloaked in the mantle of "truth," unfortunately, is extremely profitable to all manner of people.

In the broader rationalist community, there's a concern with actual genuine truth via empiricism -- observation, analysis, hypotheses, testing, falsifiability, the scientific method, and so on. 

We can all laugh when the North Korean government makes a declaration along the lines of "Kim Jong-un is the third greatest leader of all time, only surpassed by his Great and Illustrious ancestors, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il" -- but what's not funny is that the ability to have this statement more-or-less accepted by 25 million people is quite literally a matter of life or death for the DPRK's leadership.

If we wanted to test whether Jong-un is a Great Leader, we'd probably ask for parameters. How many scientific advancements have happened under his leadership? How was the quality of life improved? Should we measure by GDP? Solving social ills? Lower disease rates, better access to medicine, reduced rates of starvation? Perhaps a more subjective measure, like the fairness and consistency of North Korean courts, perhaps as judged by inquiring and weighing the opinions of experienced and well-respected jurists across the world?

But this exercise is worthless -- even laughable -- because the North Korean government is not resting its claims on our kind of truth, empirical truth.

It seems to me, unfortunately, that humans don't naturally differentiate between the truth of Newton's Second Law of Motion "1 N = 1 kg⋅m/s2" and the truth of statements like "X Country is the greatest country in the world."

But I contend that it would be a severe mistake to fight against how the vast majority of how people think and process: the concept of "truth" has historically never been limited to empirical truth.

Furthermore, this piece started off with a statement that most people worldwide would feel to be false despite being asserted to be true and believed by a few people; that makes the job easier.

But consider instead, "Shakespeare is truth" or "I've been living a lie."

What are these?

These statements might, indeed, be true -- for some definition of true.

Indeed, to me personally, Shakespeare is truth. Xenophon is truth. I would assert that.

Though it's a different kind of truth than Newton or Maxwell.

We could call the "truth" of someone's life, art, and aesthetics "affective truth" to differentiate it from empirical truth.

"This place feel right to me" -- true! Affectively true.

If we wanted to have this enter into common parlance, we might use the words "empirically true" and "spiritually true."

When Kim Jong-un's press secretary puts out a piece about the Dear Great Leader, they're making claims of spiritual truth.

Indeed, for many definitions of religions, the North Korean government is trying to run a religion. A religion that almost all of us would call false -- affectively false, in that it feels wrong. It isn't true. It isn't a good way to live. We can feel that, intuitively. North Korea is a lie -- in terms of the claims they make about life and living.

North Korean's mythos is, certainly, also built on a house of empirical falseness, lies, empirical untruths.

But to try to argue empiricism with someone's spirituality[*] is, generally speaking, a wasted exercise. 

We often see hyper-rational people refuting objectively false statements that politicians make -- for all the good it does them!

Politicians are often making appeals to affective truth, rather than attempting to give their best estimations and judgments of empirical truth.

I think -- I suspect -- at least, I hope -- that if we narrowly scope the definition of "empirical truth" to narrow standards of involving observation, testing, and resting as much as possible on mathematics and hard science, and only making highly parameterized statements when dealing with more subjective issues -- in this case, I think we'll be allowed to have "empirical truth" stand as it is.

Hopefully it can be technical and boring enough that we can avoid it becoming a political or religious battleground.

That's not to say there won't be heated disagreements by experts in a field about what the empirical is -- such is normal and productive -- but ideally we can stop much of the wasted energy that comes from when a rationalist is making an argument about empirical truth, the other party is making an argument about affective truth, and both sides are getting frustrated.

Crossing the History-Lessons Threshold

34 lionhearted 17 October 2014 12:17AM

(1)

Around 2009, I embarked on being a serious amateur historian. I wouldn't have called it that at the time, but since then, I've basically nonstop studied various histories.

The payoffs of history come slow at first, and then fast. History is often written as a series of isolated events, and events are rarely put in total context. You can easily draw a straight line from Napoleon's invasions of the fragmented German principalities to how Bismarck and Moltke were able to unify a German Confederation under Prussian rule a few decades later; from there, it's a straight line to World War I due to great power rivalry; the Treaty of Versailles is easily understood in retrospect by historical French/German enmity; this gives rise to World War II.

That series of events is hard enough to truly get one's mind around, not just in abstract academic terms, but in actually getting a feel of how and why the actors did what they did, which shaped the outcomes that built the world.

And that's only the start of it: once you can flesh out the rest of the map, history starts coming brilliantly alive.

Without Prime Minister Stolypin's assassination in 1911, likely the Bolsheviks don't succeed in Russia; without that, Stalin is not at the helm when the Nazis invade. 

On the other side of the Black Sea, in 1918, the Ottoman Empire is having terms worse than the Treaty of Versailles imposed on it -- until Mustafa Kemal leads the Turkish War of Independence, building one of the most stable states in the Middle East. Turkey, following Kemal's skill at governance and diplomacy, is able to (with great difficulty) stay neutral in World War II, not be absorbed by the Soviets, and not have its government taken over by hard-line Muslims.

This was not-at-all an obvious course of events. Without Kemal, Turkey almost certainly becomes crippled under the Treaty of Sevres, and eventually likely winds up as a member of the Axis during World War II, or gets absorbed as another Soviet/Warsaw Pact satellite state.

The chain of events goes on and on. There is an eminently clear chain of events from Martin Luther at Worms in 1521 to the American Revolution. Meanwhile, the non-success the Lord Protectorate and Commonwealth of England turned out less promising than was hoped -- ironically, arguably predisposing England to being less sympathetic to greater democracy. But the colonies were shielded from this, and their original constitutions and charters were never amended in the now-becoming-more-disenchanted-with-democracy England. Following a lack of consistent colonial policy and a lot of vacillating by various British governments, the American Revolution happens, and Britain loses control of the land and people would come to supplant it as the dominant world power one and a half centuries later.

(2)

Until you can start seeing the threads and chains of history across nations, interactions, and long stretches of time, history is a set of often-interesting stories -- but the larger picture remains blurry and out-of-focus. The lessons come once you can synthesize it all.

Hideyoshi Toyotomi's 1588 sword hunt was designed to take away weapons and chances of rebellious factions overthrowing his unified government of Japan. The policy was continued by his successor after the Toyotomi/Tokugawa Civil War, which leads to the Tokugawa forces losing to the Imperial Restoration in 1868 as their skill at warfare had atrophied; common soldiers with Western artillery were able to out-combat samurai with obsolete weapons.

Nurhaci founded the Qing Dynasty around the time Japan was being unified, with a mix of better command structures and tactics. But the dynasty hardened into traditionalism and was backwards-looking when Western technology and imperialists came with greater frequency in the late 1800's. The Japanese foreign minister Ito Hirobumi offered to help the Qing modernize along the lines Imperial Japan had modernized while looking for a greater alliance with the Chinese. But, Empress Dowager Cixi arrests and executes the reform-minded ministers of Emperor Guangxu and later, most likely, poisoned the reform-minded Emperor Guangxu. (He died of arsenic poisoning when Cixi was on her deathbed; someone poisoned him; Cixi or someone acting under her orders is the most likely culprit.)

The weak Qing Dynasty starts dealing with ever-more-frequent invasions, diplomatic extortions, and rebellions and revolutions. The Japanese invade China a generation after Hirobumi was rebuffed, and the Qing Dynasty entirely falls apart. After the Japanese unconditional surrender, the Chinese Civil War starts; the Communists win. 

(3)

From this, we can start drawing lessons and tracing histories, seeing patterns. We start to see how things could have broken differently. Perhaps Germany and France were doomed to constant warfare due to geopolitics; maybe this is true.

But certainly, it's not at all obvious that Mustafa Kemal would lead the ruins of the Ottoman Empire into modern Turkey, and (seemingly against overwhelming odds) keep neutrality during World War II, rebuff Stalin and stay removed from Soviet conquest, and maintain a country with secular and modern laws that honors Muslim culture without giving way to warlordism as happened to much of the rest of the Middle East.

Likewise, we can clearly see how the policies of Empress Dowager Cixi ended the chance for a pan-East-Asian alliance, trade bloc, or federation; it's not inconceivable to imagine a world today were China and Japan are incredibly close allies, and much of the world's centers of commerce, finance, and power are consolidated in a Tokyo-Beijing-Seoul alliance. Sure, it's inconceivable with hindsight, but Japan in 1910 and Japan in 1930 are very different countries; and the struggling late Qing Dynasty is different than the fledgling competing factions in China after the fall of the Qing.

We can see, observing historical events from broad strokes, the huge differences individuals can make at leveraged points, the eventual outcomes in Turkey and East Asia were not-at-all foreordained by geography, demographics, or trends.

(4)

Originally, I was sketching out some of these trends of history to make a larger point about how modern minds have a hard time understanding older governments -- in a world where "personal rule" is entirely rebuffed in the more developed countries, it is hard to imagine how the Qing Dynasty or Ottoman Empire actually functioned. The world after the Treaty of Westphalia is incredibly different than the world before it, and the world before strict border controls pre-WWI is largely unrecognizable to us.

That was the piece I was going to write, about how we project modern institutions and understandings backwards, and how that means we can't understand what actually happened. The Ottomans and Qing were founded before modern nationalism had emerged, and the way their subjects related to them is so alien to us that it's almost impossible to conceive of how their culture and governance actually ran.

(5)

I might still pen that piece, if there's interest in it -- my attempt at a brief introduction came to result in this very different one, focused on a different particular point: the threshold effect in learning history.

I would say there's broadly three thresholds:

The first looks at a series of isolated events. You wind up with some witty quips, like: Astor saying, "Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink." Churchill: "If I were married to you, I'd drink it." 

Or moments of great drama: "And so the die is cast." "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." "There is nothing to fear except fear itself."

These aren't so bad to learn; they're an okay jumping-off place. Certainly, Caesar's decision to march on Rome, Nobunaga's speech before the Battle of Okehazama, or understanding why Washington made the desperate gamble to cross the Delaware all offerlessons.

But seeing how the Marian military reforms, Sulla's purges, and the Gracchi brothers created the immediate situation before Julius Caesar's fateful crossing is more interesting, and tracing the lines backwards, seeing how Rome's generations-long combat with Hannibal's Carthage turned the city-state into a fully militarized conquest machine, and then following the lines onwards to see how the Romans relied on unit cohesion which, once learned by German adversaries, led to the fall of Rome -- this is much more interesting. 

That's the second threshold of history to me: when isolated events start becoming regional chains; that's tracing Napoleon's invasion of Germany to Bismarck to the to World War I to the Treaty of Versailles to WWII.

Some people get to this level of history, and it makes you quickly an expert in a particular country.

But I think that's a poor place to stop learning: if you can truly get your mind around a long stretch of time in a nation, it's time to start coloring the map. When you can broadly know how Korea is developing simultaneous with Japan; how the Portugese/Spanish rivalry and Vatican compromises are affecting Asia's interactions with the Age of Sail Westerners; how Protestantism is creating rivals to Catholic power, two of which later equip the Japanese's Imperial Faction, which kicks off the Asian side of World War II -- this is when history starts really paying dividends and teaching worthwhile lessons.

The more you get into it, the more there is to learn. Regions that don't get much historical interest from Americans like Tito's Yugoslavia become fascinating to look at how they stayed out of Soviet Control and played the Western and Eastern blocs against each other; the chain of events takes a sad turn when Tito's successors can't keep the country together, the Yugoslav Wars follow, and its successor states still don't have the levels of relative prosperity and influence that Yugoslavia had in its heyday. 

Yugoslavia is hard to get one's mind around by itself, but it's easy to color the map in with a decent understanding of Turkey, Germany, and Russia. Suddenly, figures and policies and conflicts and economics and culture start coming alive; lessons and patterns are everywhere.

I don't read much fiction any more, because most fiction can't compete with the sheer weight, drama, and insightfulness of history. Apparently some Kuomintang soldiers held out against the Chinese Communists and fought irregular warfare while funding their conflicts with heroin production in the regions of Burma and Thailand -- I just got a book on it, further coloring in the map of the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War, and that aspect of it upon the backdrop of the Cold War and containment, and how the Sino/Soviet split led to America normalizing relations with China, and...

...it never ends, and it's been one of the most insightful areas of study across my life.

History in that first threshold -- isolated battles, quotes, the occasional drama -- frankly, it offers only a slight glimmer of what's possible to learn.

Likewise, the second level of knowing a particular country's rise and fall over time can be insightful, but I would encourage anyone that has delved into history that much to not stop there: you're not far from the gates unlocking to large wellsprings of knowledge, a nearly infinite source of ideas, inspiration, case studies, and all manner of other sources of new and old ideas and very practical guidance.

Flashes of Nondecisionmaking

28 lionhearted 27 January 2014 02:30PM

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

0 lionhearted 04 September 2013 04:56PM

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

13 lionhearted 02 September 2013 05:45PM

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.

A Rational Approach to Fashion

19 lionhearted 10 October 2011 06:53PM

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.

"Technical implication: My worst enemy is an instance of my self."

-3 lionhearted 22 September 2011 08:46AM

I think this one needs more discussion, it looks like a really valuable and interesting train of thought.

In "You'll be who you care about," Stuart Armstrong wrote -

Instead of wondering whether we should be selfish towards our future selves, let's reverse the question. Let's define our future selves as agents that we can strongly influence, and that we strongly care about.

Wedrifdid replied with this gem of insight (bold added) -

Technical implication: My worst enemy is an instance of my self.

Actual implication: Relationships that don't include a massive power differential or a complete lack of emotional connection are entirely masturbatory.

It is critical to consider that thing which is "future agents that we strongly care about and can influence" but calling those things our 'future selves' makes little sense unless they are, well, actually our future selves.

 

Pedanterriffic feels the same way about it I did -

This explains so much.

The basic point has already gotten some good discussions, but let's talk about the implication. Assuming for a moment that your future self is an agent you can strongly influence and strongly care about, does that make your worst enemy an instance of yourself?

Let's not get too hung up on the words "worst enemy" - I think swapping in "main adversary" or "chief competitor" makes the point stand. Your thoughts?

Malice, Stupidity, or Egalité Irréfléchie?

24 lionhearted 13 June 2011 08:57PM

Anyone who has decided to strike off the mainstream path has experienced this: Strong admonitions and warnings against what they were doing, and pressures not do it.

It doesn’t really matter what it is you’re trying to change. If you’re trying to become a nondrinker in a drinking culture, if you’re trying to quit eating junk food, if you’re trying to become a vegetarian or otherwise have a different diet, this will have happened to you.

If you decide to pursue a nontraditional career path (artist, entrepreneur, etc), you will have experienced this.

If you try to live a different lifestyle than the people around you – for instance, rising each day at 4:30AM and sleeping early instead of partying, you will have experienced this.

People will pressure and cajole you in many different ways to keep doing it the old way. Almost always, it will be phrased as though they’re looking after your best interest.

The specifics will vary. It could be phrased as cautious prudence – “What if your business doesn’t succeed and you don’t have a college degree? That could be really bad for you.”

It could be phrased as desiring for you to have the best way in life – “Go on, live a little, a beer won’t kill you.”

It could be encouraging you to do whatever you’ve set out to change without any specific reasoning at all.

I used to wonder why this is so common. Are people stupid? Or malicious? They must be one of those two.

If someone has a preference that has an expected value of a better life for them and they really want to live that preference, then why would someone that’s in their peer group or family want to discourage them? Is it because they have different calculations of what’s valuable, even when pursuing obvious no-brainer decisions like quitting the lowest quality junk foods? Is it because they’re malicious and want to hold you back and tear you down?

I think now – neither. Rather, I think it’s an uncritical, unexamined form of desire for equality.

continue reading »

Chemicals and Electricity

6 lionhearted 09 May 2011 05:55PM

I'm doing some work for an old friend of mine.

His situation is interesting. Not too long ago, he lost his job and got divorced, and otherwise his life got pretty screwed up and off-track.

He left the United States, took a job below his old skill level for a while, and then stopped that and started a company. Now he's living an exceptional life, and on the verge of making a lot of money.

I thought that was awesome, and I was quite happy for him. After we'd gotten done going through a lot of numbers, choosing some vendors, designing some systems, and otherwise figuring business out on the phone, we talked personal life. I said, "Man, I'm so happy for you. So much is going right. Congratulations."

He wasn't excited. He was a little worried.

He said, "Sebastian, man... I hope I don't change. I like who I am right now, I hope this doesn't change me."

And you know what?

His fears are valid. He's going to change.

Almost guaranteed.

continue reading »

View more: Next