I once talked to a LessWronger who said that he had basically no problems with akrasia,
Did this LWer accurately assess his own 100% defeat of akrasia? ("No problems?" Like, ever?)
because his image of himself as someone who "had his shit together" prevented him from doing things he knew to be stupid.
Was he actually avoiding objectively stupid things? Or just things he deemed as stupid as the self-reported Conquerer of Akrasia? Did he really have "his shit together"? Or is it possible he was mistaken? Perhaps he was a b...
Firstly, this post is awesome.
Secondly though, this post brushes on the topic of intuition as a useful tool, something I think far too many Logic-Based types throw out without considering the practicality of. It's better not to think of it as being an substitute for logical thinking, but rather as a quick and dirty backup, for when you don't have all the information.
Intuition can occur in up to two seconds, operates almost completely below conscious awareness, and begins effecting your body immediately. Here are some excerpts from Blink, a book by Malcolm ...
Sorry this has come so late, but I've been really puzzling over your statement about intelligence. What type of intelligence are you referring to when you say my maximum is fixed?
Are you saying something similar to, "I can practice baseball every day for 30 years, and improve by a huge margin, but I will only be ever so good, simply because my mind will only ever go so fast, and my body can only strengthen so much?"
One who possesses a maximum-entropy prior is further from the truth than one who possesses an inductive prior riddled with many specific falsehoods and errors. Or more to the point, someone who endorses knowing nothing as a desirable state for fear of accepting falsehoods is further from the truth than somebody who believes many things, some of them false, but tries to pay attention and go on learning.
Records definitely sound like a good idea. I've found that I'm very poor at judging how much progress I've made one something, (usually underestimate), and having some solid information sounds like the perfect solution to this problem. In addition, it should let me decide the next course of action off of numbers, rather than vague feelings on the situation.
As for social skills, it's already on my "High Priority" list of things to do. When researching things I try to collect information from a wide range of perspectives, and see what people agree ...
Ah, so the confidence spiral approach? I've been getting that recommendation a lot lately, which is a good sign that it's effective. Anki is another good point too, I've started using it for memorizing the LessWrong Sequences, and intend to use as a resource for school when that starts, or anything in general that I'd like to memorize.
I appreciate your input, I'll see about trying SICP as well.
Excellent point, I'll definitely want to incorporate compounding actions immediately, and as far as exercise goes, I make it a point to do it every day I can, which is most days.
The reason I started was simply because I didn't want to be out of shape, but then I read spark, which makes the case that exercise not only improves the brain, but also increases happiness and productivity.
I'm assuming you came across the same information, one way or another. Thanks for the input.
On August 4th, I will be turning 15, and I've decided to initiate a very large project, which for lack of a better name, I will dub "The Plan".
I intend to spend the days leading up to my 15th Birthday by taking information from an enormous variety of sources on what life improvements can be made, what skills are most useful, and what areas should be studied, to reach the ultimate goal of gaining as much benefit possible, as quick as possible.
There's tons of things to consider, even assuming I have a tireless work ethic and can implement...
Sorry, how are Hermione and McGonagall, "essentially as flawed as they were in the original text", exactly? I always saw their characters as being a step up from their original descriptions, and it's clear that the difficulties that Eliezer is having them overcome are not random things that no other characters have, but rather, the sorts of problems with thinking we see in the real world. Hermione and McGonagall have made more progress over the book than many of the other characters. You can point out that this means they started out weaker, but ...
Harry told his patronus to specifically seek out Hermione, which lead him to the Troll. He also got a response back of "AHHHHHHHHHH", which seems suspicious enough, but not completely solid evidence. These details don't seem to match up with the idea that somebody else died in Hermione's place.
I think we are meant to assume that Hermione did die, or at least experienced something close enough to death that Dumbledore was alerted.
Hi! I want to use the Rationality Methods to improve my understanding of myself and how to improve. I guess you could say I had a strange way of "waking up" to Rationality. Many say they looked to rationality after realizing their religion was .... yeah. Well... That was a bit strange for me. when my parents married, "I was born about a year later", they were both from christian families and just went with it. When they realized that Christianity didn't match with the way things actually worked, the explained it all out to me. I was 5...
Finished and turned in.