Too busy to think about life

First two things that popped into my head when I read this?

• Omega isn't going to visit me. No, really, he's not. The 'minds' we discuss are quite often not specific to humans or even concrete entities, much less ourselves.
• How our minds actually handle excuses is a far narrower and somewhat different topic than how we like to discuss excuses. Investigations on, say, trends in 'forgiveness' behaviours among a selected population would never reach such a mammoth karma rating. It got to 88 (as of now) because it had a few practical implications but a whole bunch of simple game theory.

The subject comes up now and again but as communities that go that tinker with and learn about their own minds this one is neither particularly dedicated nor all that far ahead of the curve. (I would actually be rather embarrassed if that was our claim to fame!) We just aren't specialised in that area. It is one of many subjects of exploration, and not the first among them.

I think Terry Pratchett makes this point well, in "The thief of time". Can't find the exact quote, but here goes my paraphrasing from memory

"Human beings make decisions by committee. The stomach has a mind of its, own and wants to put food in the mouth.

I thought it sounded like it's meant as an introduction to LessWrong. Especially with those recommended links toward the end. People who already read this site aren't the target audience.

Data point: I have definitely been engaged in "sub-optimal levels of careful introspection" for most of my life. Articles on Less Wrong prompted me to introspect more, and the benefits I've gained from doing so have definitely been greater than the expected benefit from anyb obvious alternative use of that time would have been.

I'm not sure whether the current amount of resources I spend introspecting (after LW's effect) is greater or less than optimal, but overshooting a little is probably better than undershooting and missing insights.

Yes, that was my thought too. I need less thought and more action.

I've been reading Less Wrong for about four months now and I haven't really made the effort to optimize my introspection levels. Alicorn's series and this post, plus some other outside influences, have placed doing that higher on my list of priorities. I'm not necessarily the average Less Wrong reader, however.

At the risk of sounding harsh, this sounds like an excuse rather than a problem.

The exercise suggested in the OP is quite straightforward: take a pen and paper, or bring up an empty text file in Notepad or TextEdit or whatever. Also take a kitchen timer. Set the timer to ten minutes.

At the top, write these words: "How do I want my life to affect me and other people?"

Start the timer. Spend the next ten minutes writing, not stopping to cross out or edit. That is the important part. Write, whatever happens. If you can't think of a sincere answer, write an insincere one. Write something that you reject entirely for the first five minutes, then draw a horizontal line and spend the next five writing about what's wrong with this insincere answer.

Do this exercise. Seriously. It will cost you only ten minutes and you will learn a lot from it. Also, you will have material that you can bring back to LW for further discussion.

Well, first lets think about what you want for yourself. My main suggestion is to consider the possibility that you want to feel a certain way... maybe feel happy, healthy, intellectually stimulated, loved...

When I first did this, I accepted that the answer was mine to give, and I could decide randomly if I wanted to (or didn't want not to). For lack of a better idea, I made a list of small decision trends I exhibited that seemed instinctively desirable to me, like "going swimming", or "eating oranges". I made a "line of best fit" and concluded that I wanted my life to be intellectually and emotionally stimulating, when integrated over time. Then I gradually modified my disposition a little, to make this approximation more accurate.

I later realized that certain emotions like happiness were physically healthier and conflicted less with intellectual functioning, thus being instrumental to a) achieving a balance between emotional and intellectual stimuli, and b) living longer to experience more stimuli. It took longer to start realizing what I wanted for others, because that involves what they want, which is often more complicated and something I can't measure directly. Nonetheless, I've found myself compelled in thought experiments to help others even when it wouldn't result in positive experiences or memories for me, so some of my morals are definitely terminal (not in place just to serve my other values).

This was a very qualitative description, but nonetheless, it gave me some structure to build on and explore.

You might try a similar approach to finding what you want for yourself: extrapolate from trends you like, or maybe away from trends you don't. Don't worry about how "fundamental" this makes your choice... it's your choice, you can make it however you want to, or don't want not to ;)

I'd strongly encourage you to consider being happy and thoughtful as things you might want for yourself. Maybe look at this pyramid.

While you're focussed on yourself like this in order to get started, do keep in mind an intention to examine morals in due time as well. They're harder to figure out, but I'd say they're worth it!

Sounds promising. What kind of rationality did you discuss in relation to OFT -- epistemic or instrumental? Or, in other words, what quantity did you substitute for the energy to be maximized -- improvement of one's map of reality or progress towards one's goals? Did you attempt to quantify these?

Everything is covered by the above. Everything.

Whoops! Computronium. There goes the cosmic commons again.

Have you read Thou Art Godshatter?

I agree with Eliezer that my values are an ad-hoc assembly of things that happened to increase the genetic fitness of my ancestors, and that this ad-hoc-ness is why I do not solely value my own genetic fitness. If natural selection were smarter, I would. But naturally, I'm satisfied with the values I got instead :)

From the perspective of a hypothetical, evolution-personified designer who "created" me, my morals might just be signals. So I'm careful that I might be running on hostile hardware that might try overtaking my conscious values to, say, become a corrupt and promiscuous political leader with many offspring. But I don't identify with this hostility as "my values", and will make much conscious effort to prevent such corruption.

ETA: You might really have those values; I just want to draw attention to them not being an inevitable consequence of evolution or "realizing one's true purpose". Thankfully, used as such "true purpose" doesn't have to mean anything non-subjective, nor in particular equate to "temporally earlier in-some-sense-implicitly-conceived purpose".

Not sure if it is quite what you are looking for but I find Evernote very useful as a kind of digital memory extension. I use it to note down thoughts, ideas, links, quotes, book titles etc. for later review and organization. Not exactly organizing thoughts or a brainstorming aid but more a tool for offloading and organizing memory.

I have a lot of friends who use workflowy, and personally I used project maps and goal-factoring with [yED]{www.yworks.com}.

90% of GTD material is about next actions and project levels. How did you learn to do this kind of high level analysis?