All of William_Darwin's Comments + Replies

I've been thinking about people's mindset as it relates to spending their free time. Specifically, when you go to do something 'productive' like learn about a new topic, work through exercises in a textbook, go through an online course, etc...do you feel that you have to intentionally decide not to play video games, watch Netflix, etc and forego short-term happiness? Or do you feel that this decision is straightforward because that's what you would prefer to be doing and you don't feel like you sacrifice anything?

You say that "If America can copy those methods and create even more prosperity, fantastic" but when the author states "We may find important truths needed to bring about American revitalization." you say this is as meaningful as saying "WE MUST RESTORE THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE!"

Seems to me that you and the author share a common belief, that successful Chinese policies or frameworks should bring about reflection and positive changes for American government (or any government, it just so happens that this post was framed by an American).

Also...whenever you say "me" to make your points, you lose me as someone who isn't you.

0Mason Spangler
"Seems to me that you and the author share a common belief, that successful Chinese policies or frameworks should bring about reflection and positive changes for American government (or any government, it just so happens that this post was framed by an American). " Yeah that was literally the point of my last paragraph. Was trying to demonstrate that I don't disagree with the obvious (and basic) sentiment underpinning the original post, I only disagree with the way it was presented - cagey, but ultimately nationalistic rhetoric about 'feelings' in place of meaningful information about the specific differences in China and America's policies. Harry Fankfurt's On Bullshit 101... seriously... Clearly this site's just full of Americans who don't read very closely and thought I was being racist *shrug* No skin off my teeth.

Sounds interesting. I think it may be difficult to find a person, let alone multiple people on a given topic, who are have a particular skill but are also able to articulate it and/or identify the cognitive strategies they use successfully.

Regardless, I'd like to hear about how people reduce repetitive talk in their own heads - how to focus on new thoughts as opposed to old, recurring ones...if that makes sense.

4Matt Goldenberg
Is this ruminating, AKA repetively going over bad memories and negative thoughts? Or is it more getting stuck with cached thoughts and not coming up with original things?

Hmmm..I think personal experience tells me that distraction-avoidant behaviour will still choose intellectual work, as long as it is quicker than the alternative.

I might choose a game over writing a LW shortform but I will still choose a LW shortform over writing a novel.

This post is an expansion/remix of elityre's post here:

I am looking for some criticism/comments of the below post, does anyone find this type of exploration useful? Why? Would diagrams/images assist or detract from the post? Should my formulas be more concise and use mathematical equations or is writing them out in markdown code sufficient?

Introduction

A topic that is at the heart of the way our civilisation functions is that of power or status. A powerful person in business has connections, the ability to make things happen and, ultimately, has a greater

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Excellent reply, strong upvote. Have a feeling I really want to go to the gym but because nutrition is poor (not eating enough), my gym feedback loops have been spiralling downward to the point where I have given up.

Will certainly look into how to make my nutrition more compelling now, perhaps that means learning to cook better or something similar. Very much appreciate your comment and may actually look at looking more deeply into this idea, maybe I will turn it into a blog post.

Edit: In the spirit or learning this idea more deeply, I am very interested i

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3Gordon Seidoh Worley
Oh, the answer to that is pretty esoteric, which is why I was vague about it. I'll just say here that I attained to what I would call second path, but also identify with Kegan stage 5 or the "teal" level of development.

Very interesting comments, any thoughts on how you might make a certain activity compelling again? Would explicitly framing an activity such that it highlights a particularly important feedback loop be worthwhile? Minimising the impact/importance of your other desired loops?

Do you believe a manipulation like this is possible or do you think it would have to organically align with the types of loops you deem to be necessary at the time?

Just thinking from the point of, say, getting back into the gym...compelling myself to go seems to be overrided by other loops, at least until the point where my health has sufficiently declined to warrant a re-prioritisation.

6Gordon Seidoh Worley
So I don't think you can go back to the way things were. The kind of thing I'm describing causing these changes is a thing that once seen cannot be unseen. You might say there's no blue pill for the kind of change of relationship to reality that made something cease to be a super powerful motivator. What I do think you can do is find new way to do the things you did before, if they make sense to do where you are now. To take your case of the gym, maybe in the past you went because it was super stimulating in that you were constantly satisfying many set points at once and were minimizing prediction error, possibly strongly in the form of taking actions to bring your model of yourself in line with your observations of yourself via changing your observations by changing your body so that they matched the model. Or maybe it was some other specific predictions powering things. If that's fallen away for some reason and you want to go back to the gym, I can think of at least two questions: * Do you really want to be going to the gym, or do you just want to want to go to the gym? * If you really want to go to the gym, why don't you? I think failures of motivation often come from mixing up genuine wanting with wanting to want (and then suffering because you think you want something and then you don't do it because you don't realize you don't really want it). If that's the case, the problem is you are not convinced going to the gym is worthwhile. Maybe it's not for you, I don't know; I heard all the arguments and didn't start going to the gym regularly (twice a week) until I was reminded a few years ago that I could go to the climbing gym and just climb walls instead of "working out" and since I find climbing fun (something we could expand but I'll leave be for now) it made gym going appealing and even "working out" like strength training desirable since it makes me better at and have more fun climbing. To return to the gym you probably need something similar that make

Appreciate the formatting assistance thankyou - this looks much closer to the markdown result I was hoping for. Additionally, I will keep that spacing requirement in mind for future posts.

That's correct, seems like the headings didn't work so the formatting looks off here on LW.

My scheduled post with working markdown formatting is here: https://willdarwin.com/p/878c8019-efc3-411b-9139-a53c61102ae4/

This will turn into willdarwin.com/idea-leverage-points/ on September 1st (doesn't use this URL yet as it is not publicly available)

4Raemon
I updated the formatting to be closer to what seemed to be the intent. One central issue is that apparently the LW markdown requires you to have a space after the ### "heading" syntax.

I use GitBook.com, functions very well as a personal wiki (can link to other pages, categorise, etc)

Maybe it has something to do with the sentiment that "if it's free, the product is you". Perhaps without paying some form of subscription, you feel that there is no 'bounded' payment for the service - as you consume more of any given service, you are essentially paying more (in cognitive load or something similar?).

Kind of feels like fixed vs variable costs - often you feel a lot better with fixed as it tends to be "more valuable" the more you consume.

Just an off-the-cuff take based on personal experience, definitely interested in hearing other takes.

Very much appreciate your input and the kind words in regards to the merits of the post. I don't think I understand what it means to 'frame' something as you specified in this comment:

It might be useful to come up with frames and give them names and put them in a list, so you can do this:

Frames [Frame 1] [Frame 2] etc.

Any chance you could clarify/provide an example of what this kind of thing would look like? Thanks again.

4Pattern
(This is meant to be purely illustrative, not taken seriously. Also, given how hard it was to come up with frames, it might be better to replace using lenses this way with 'questions that are always good to ask'.) Idea [1]____1___________2__________3 Lenses:__Economic__Narrative [3] Empiricism [4] [1] Movies these days seem to be lacking realism[2]/X. 1) Is there not an audience for realism/X? (Or is this a market failure?) Are most movies produced by studios that aren't good at writing realism/X? Is it more expensive to produce movies which are more realistic/X? Harder to make money off of? Is this the result of government regulation? Self-regulation? Do the people involved in making movies (scriptwriters, directors, etc.) prefer less realistic**/X movies? Find it easier to make such movies? [2] What is the alternative to realism that is more common? (Realistically, the best way to make progress on a question like this is probably by unpacking 'What you mean by "realism"/X.') [3] A struggle between the forces of good and evil. 2) Who controls Hollywood, good or evil? Both? Neither? What reasons might they have for doing this? Good: It's easier to have the good guys win in movies if you're less realistic. It also delivers a particular message 'you will win if you're good, no matter how ridiculous that sounds. Bad: It lulls people into a false sense of security. "All evil needs to prevail is every good person doing nothing." As it is hard to get people to do nothing, the nothing must be obscured by an illusion of doing something - thus, meaningless visual media, Netflix, etc. Neither: a) Life isn't perfect. People go to the movies to get away from it all/see the people they agree with win. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be entertaining and end happily. b) Movie makers don't care about realism. Conflicts of Good versus Evil, where the good guys always win, in movies that don't make sense aren't about Good versus Evil. They're j
2Pattern
(Update: it might be better to just come up with a list of questions that are always good to ask/have been really useful in the past (in other domains) and use that instead. The chart is just 1) a row of such questions 2) a row where you add a checkmark after you've answered that question (about the topic you're trying to understand.) A lens/frame/framework is a way of looking at things. I meant this to be a suggestion to see how a lens can be applied to other domains by constructing a chart/checklist as follows: There are n columns and 2 rows, where n is the number of lenses. The first column tells you what is in each row. The top element of the first column contains 'the name of your idea'. The bottom element of the first column can contain the word "lens". The bottom row (after the first element) contains the name of each lens (that you have given it). The top row (after the first element) contains either blank spaces or check marks*. Coming up with a procedure to see if you've thought through all the implications of a model may also be useful. *One could also put a page number in it, and write about that idea through that lens on that page.

Looking for HARSH criticism on some musings about the application of leverage points from systems analysis to the idea generation process:

Leverage Points

Systems analysis is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "the process of studying a procedure or business in order to identify its goals and purposes and create systems and procedures that will achieve them in an efficient way".

The concept of 'leverage points' is synonymous with the idea of single points of power - whether that be a single hero in an action movie or a miracle cure for disease. C

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4Raemon
Formatting question: it looks like maybe this was meant to be formatted in markdown or something but then the whitespace got squashed and the formatting looks a bit busted. Does that seem accurate? I feel like if title sections were broken into separate lines this'd be easier to read.
4Pattern
Great post by the way, it was really useful to see all these, together as one system.
2Pattern
Relatedly, I'd suggest 'Things you create or skills you have.' The least useful feedback? Try more things, see if you enjoy them. (Also, sometimes you can learn from things you don't like - a story with a specific form of bad storytelling might teach you something about the right way to tell stories.) . This section didn't have bold parts. Why wouldn't "Idea Rate = Ideas per (Unit of Time)" ? It would seem one could increase the amount/rate of ideas they have, not only by increases their ideas per opportunity, but also by increasing their number of opportunities. I didn't understand this until I copied it here, and the formatting clicked, and then it all made sense. (Emphasis added.) Problems are important, as is coming up with them/having good sources for them. It might be useful to come up with frames and give them names and put them in a list, so you can do this: [New Idea]: (check) Frames [Frame 1] [Frame 2] etc. Also see how you can implement an idea, particularly - quickly. (This one can be hard.) More generally, release "Delays" period. Having a model of the process can help with this. (It's possible the low hanging fruit has been picked in communication technology on the raw speed front*, but it's useful to note how this can speed up things we do.) *To such an extent some may find it detrimental. One could compare the quality of comments on twitter with the quality of letters, or the quality of of moves in a live chess game versus one by post. (It's also easier to draw on paper.) That's hard to do with such a good idea. The section above is related to that fact that "idea quality" can be subjective - coming up with ideas that sound great is all well and good, but reality is the final arbiter. (Though this kind of depends on what you're working on.) Finding ways to implement things or ideas/testing things out might help. I'd also ask where these "first principles" come from. If you enjoy something, you might not learn as much. Consider the po