All of ProofBySonnet's Comments + Replies

I ended up going in a  completely different direction with this: I intend to test my OWN rationality, and I figure that if rationality is about WINNING, about being EFFECTIVE, then I ought to find direct measures of the things I want, and test myself in 6 months or so (timeframe dependent on the toughness/length of the task). This will, in other words, be a test of my ability to understand the territory insofar as that understanding makes me more effective at a given task.

The things in particular, a few subgoals of my personal life-optimization:

  • artist
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Ah, speaking at a convention or a similar environment seems like a good idea, I have opportunities like that I can immediately think of. 

Can you elaborate on the usefulness of public speaking, though? You mentioned gaining status, and I could see that as somewhat useful for making myself more well-known -> gaining connections -> being offered better opportunities, but there's probably uses for it or consequences of it that I haven't thought of.

2Viliam
Just a quick summary of what comes to my mind, there is probably more: * every speech is an opportunity to advertise your products/services * giving speech on X makes you "an expert on X" in the eyes of the audience * possible transition to making videos? * when you socialize after giving the speech, you are no longer a stranger 1) Suppose you made a few video games and you are selling them. Or you are offering a paid course of Python for beginners, or perhaps an expensive individual tutoring on making games in Python. In other words, you have a product/service to sell. Now whenever people pay attention to you, a certain fraction of them later buys your service/product. Giving a speech is a way to get attention of hundred people for an hour. Not just random people, but people interested in the topic you are talking about. Think how much it would cost, if you tried to buy the same amount × quality of attention using ads. However, unlike ads, this type of advertising is not obnoxious (unless you make it so). The people have decided on their own to listen to you talking on given topic. If the topic is e.g. making games in Python, it is only natural to mention the games you made, as long as you say something interesting about them ("in my first game, Crappy Birds, I used a quantum algorithm for polygon collision, and it improved the performance by 80%"). It is also natural to be introduced as "XY, author of 'learn Python in 7 minutes' online course". Have a homepage that contains more information about the topic (but also links to buy your products and services), so that its URL can be mentioned in a schedule. (In context of sci-fi conventions, it is often authors giving speeches on various topics. They don't even have to mention their books explicitly, if you introduce someone as a "sci-fi author" to an audience of sci-fi fans, they will naturally be curious.) 2) By making a speech on X, you are associated in minds of your audience with X. If you made a speech

oh - and regarding this:

I think the musical skills are probably not worth it, unless it is something you really want to do.

Upon reading this, I had an instinctive negative reaction to you saying that they weren't worth it. So I suspect it is something I really want to do, or at least that something involved in giving up on it goes against my internal values.

I think you're right about social skills like public speaking or communication generally being important, those sorts of things are definitely scary to me but they'd definitely make me more effective at whatever I end up pursuing. 

I'll probably be practicing those communication skills here, first - I hope to write a lot more posts in the future, since exploring my ideas in written form in various notebooks has already been a habit of mine for a while. "Learn how to network" is also on my todo list, and friendmaking as well. My whole social toolkit gen... (read more)

2Viliam
I think this is quite common (having such thoughts). I suspect that the actual reason is your brain thinking: "if I get more money than is usual in my current social group, I will be different and become an outcast". I mean, imagine that your current good friends are millionaires. Would you still feel bad about becoming a millionaire? Or would it be normal and desirable to be on their level? Start with lower stakes. For me, the first was talking at a local sci-fi convention about some silly topic. And yes, that felt scary too, but after receiving positive feedback I gradually got more confident. It helps if you have a friend in the audience (you can imagine that you are talking for the friend). Some people recommend Toastmasters.

I had a similar experience, for sure. See the post immediately above yours, when sorted by "newest." Do you want to share your story here?

This wasn't precisely the reason I got here, but I think the biggest reason that I was open to the idea of rationality when I finally stumbled upon LessWrong and the whole Effective Altruism idea was my experience of becoming gay, after diverging from my christian upbringing. 

During my time going to bible school (yes, I was in that deep), there was a lot of theology where I was confused and felt like I didn't understand why something was true, but just accepted that "I'm sure some high-level theologian out there has a reasonable answer for this, I jus... (read more)