On Seeking a Shortening of the Way

I called it an applause light last time because it makes you sound responsible, mature, and Deeply Wise without containing usable advice. I'd retract this if you could give examples of what in particular we should be doing.

If you consider mystical methods unlikely to bear fruit, and worse than a maximum ignorance prior, say it outright and justify it. But I can't tell if you're talking only about mystical "techniques" or also about psychological and Bayesian "techniques", and you think you're making a positive point instead of a negative one. I just can't figure out what that positive point is.

Yes, if there's something we know for sure increases rationality, we should be spending more time doing it instead of brainstorming new techniques. But first, there aren't many such things, and second, our inability to do them as much as we'd like is the akrasia complaint, which we've already flagged as something we need to work on.

Compare alcoholism. The mundane solution to alcoholism is to say "Just stop drinking so much" - this seems in keeping with your diet metaphor. This mundane solution very rarely works, thanks to a particularly nasty form of akrasia. The Alcoholics Anonymous program, various anti-alcoholism drugs, and other "gimmicks" are much more effective. We need techniques for an Irrationalists Anonymous program.

Everyone in the world is already having a lot of mundane experience, and it doesn't seem to have helped them much. We better do something different...and not just take more baths. Not necessarily some mystical ritual. It could just be learning a little more Bayesian math, studying lists of fallacies, or going to a philosophy class.

If your candidate for "do something different" is "pay more attention to mundane experience", then you need to define specific ways we can do that. If you literally just mean we should consciously try to elevate the level of mental attention with which we attend to daily tasks, then that's Zen. Hard Zen. Back during my Zen phase, I used to try this. Even a few minutes were unbearably difficult. It may be a valuable technique, but if it's really what you mean it needs more respect and rigor than you give it here.

If you want to continue this post as a series, please post some concrete examples of what we should be doing differently.

One claim that's been repeated frequently is that we're looking for rationality tricks, shortcuts and clever methods for being rational. Problem is: there aren't any.

I strongly disagree with this statement. There are many techniques for being and becoming more rational. The reason I read this site is because I often encounter rationality techniques here that I consider valuable. All of the people who posted in The Most Important Thing You Learned seem to agree.

People generally want novelty and gimmicks. They're exciting and interesting! Useful advice tends to be dull, tedious, and familiar.

I disagree again. If advice sounds dull and familiar, then it's probably repeating something we've already heard. Advice is only useful if it contains some insight which is new to the person receiving it. That insight may support the familiar conclusion, but it has to be there. Familiar advice for familiar conclusions has no effect on beliefs or behavior, whether it ought to or not.

We've heard it all before, and it sounded like a lot of hard work and self-discipline.

Telling someone to be more disciplined tends to have the opposite effect. On the other hand, cognitive behavior therapy actually can make people more disciplined, and we have a cognitive behavior therapist (pjeby) posting here.

We talk about the importance of being rational, but don't determine what's necessary to do to become so.

There are quite a few posts here trying to specify what's necessary to become rational, albeit unsuccessfully, in my opinion.

I spend quite a lot of time describing the drop-dead elementary basics, like "The Bottom Line" and avoiding deliberate self-deception. What do you consider to be the basics?

What is it that the readers of lesswrong are looking for? One claim that's been repeated frequently is that we're looking for rationality tricks, shortcuts and clever methods for being rational. Problem is: there aren't any.

If there aren't shortcuts, then that means there is only one path on the way to rationality. It means that there's not a roundabout way one could come in to it. It means that once one has become Mr. Rational, he won't ever look back and say "I wish I would've done this differently."

I would strongly suggest that people wanting to discuss Zen, or apply it to the study and implementation of rationality, take some time to find out what it is first.

How can you possibly say there are no shortcuts? On what evidence? The science only just got good enough to begin looking in the right places.

Also: discipline is a trick too, the way exercise is a trick - you're twiddling levers that were built by evolution to react to circumstances, not to intent. They're just both dumb slow tedious painful brute force tricks that work (to a strictly limited extent and far less than optimal). Better tricks would be better, don't you think?

I think this is pretty informative! I think we should focus on both mundane familiar stuff and more head-in-the-clouds stuff. I sympathize with some of your aversion to high-falutin' talk about why it's good to be rational more than practical techniques to do it, but it's important to realize that Eliezer has been writing a book on OB and he mostly focuses on the philosophical framework, not a nitty-gritty compilation of everyday insights. I'm sure he could produce the latter as well, but would probably consider it a waste of time. People have to figure out the low-level details for themselves, based on abstract motivation from "higher" arguments.

It actually does look like there can be little tricks to being more rational, like doing the math. If rationality were so easy, then it wouldn't require pioneers and geniuses to establish and contribute to fields like heuristics and biases. We would have recognized and corrected for the H&B long ago if "everyday experiences" were enough.

There are shortcuts. For example, when you hear someone speaking in emphatic generalities in front of a cheering crowd, it should tell you to be extra careful. When somebody pulls out the Bible as justification for something, it's reasonable to lower your expectation of that person being right. If a certain level of rationality is to become automatic, there had darn well better be short cuts.

I don't really understand your objection here - it seems that a few recent posts have been putting more focus on solving everyday problems than is the usual OB standard.

And your post doesn't seem to bring much new either in terms of solutions or new directions to explore. "We talk about the importance of being rational, but don't determine what's necessary to do to become so." is especially vague,

I don't think that this community is especially biased away from "ordinary things" and in favor of "flashy" things - we might have a slight bias in that direction but not much more than other humans (the tendancy to think in the "outside the box" box), and not in a way that can be easily and systematically countered.

So, basically, you're saying, "pay attention to ordinary things"? I think we do that already.

Or maybe I'm just a genius.

It must say something about the Karma system that the most frequently and most significantly downvoted poster is at No. 3 on the top posters list.

It must say something about the Karma system that the most frequently and most significantly downvoted poster is at No. 3 on the top posters list.

It must say something about the Karma system that the most frequently and most significantly downvoted poster is at No. 3 on the top posters list.

Maybe we're not geniuses because we don't bother paying attention to ordinary things.

I can see the futility in spending time debating increasingly exotic counterfactual decisions. However I'm not convinced that 'ordinary' things are the route to genius either. I say focus on whatever works best. Not on

Problem is: there aren't any.

DON'T PANIC