Matt Goldenberg's Short Form Feed

I desperately want people to stop using "I asked Claude or ChatGPT" as a stand-in for "I got an objective third party to review"

LLMs are not objective.  They are trained on the internet which has specific sets of cultural, religious, ideological biases, and then further trained via RL to be biased in a way that a specific for-profit entity wanted them to be.

FEELINGS AND TRUTH SEEKING NORMS

Stephen Covey says that maturity is being able to find the balance between Courage and Consideration. Courage being the desire to express yourself and say your truth, consideration being recognizing the consequences of what you say on others.

I often wish that this was common knowledge in the rationality community (or just society in general) because I see so many fights between people who are on opposite sides of the spectrum and don't recognize the need for balance.

Courage is putting your needs first, consideration is putting someone else's needs first, the balance is putting your needs equally. There are some other dichotomies that I think are pointing to a similar distinction.

Courage------->Maturity----->Consideration

From parenting literature:

Authoritarian------->Authoritative----->Permissive

From a course on confidence:

Aggressive------->Assertive----->Passive

From attachment theory:

Avoidant------->Secure----->Preoccupied

From my three types of safe spaces: [LW(p) · GW(p)]

We'll make you grow---->Own Your Safety---> We'll protect you.

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Certain people may be wondering how caring about your feelings and others feelings relate to truth seeking. The answer is that our feelings are based on system 1 beliefs. I suspect this isn't strictly 100% true but its' a useful model, one behind Focusing, Connection Theory, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Internal Double Crux, and a good portion of other successful therapeutic interventions.

How this caches out is that being able to fully express yourself is a necessary prerequisite to being able to bring all your beliefs to bear on a situation. Now sometimes, when someone is getting upset, its' not a belief like (this thing is bad) but "I believe that believing what you're saying is unsafe for my identity" or some similar belief.

However, if they think its' unsafe to express THAT belief, you end up in a situation where people have to protect themselves under the veneer of motivated reasoning. You end up in a situation where everybody is still protecting themselves, but they're all pretending to do it in pursuit of the truth (or whatever the group says it values).

In this sense, tone arguments are vitally important to keeping clean epistemic norms [LW · GW]. If I'm not allowed to express the belief that the way you're phrasing things means I'm going to die horribly and live alone forever (which may be an actual system 1 belief), then I have to come up with FAKE arguments against the thing you're saying, or leave the group where that belief of mine isn't being respected.

Which brings me back to the definition of Maturity. If you put your need to express what you think is true in the way you feel is true (which again, is based on your beliefs), over my feelings that I'm going to be alone forever if people take your arguments seriously), you not only are acting immature, but you're fostering an immature community with people who aren't in touch with their own beliefs. What was wrong with this example:

The conversation of the group shifted at the point when Susan started to cry. From that moment, the group did not discuss the actual issue of the student community. Rather, they spent the duration of the meeting consoling Susan, reassuring her that she was not at fault.

Was not that the group considered Susan's feelings, but that they put Susan's feelings above their own beliefs, instead of on equal footing.

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Here are some situations I've encountered where I wish people knew about the definition of Maturity:

A rationalist friend of mine got upset about being repeatedly asked about a situation after he asked the other person to stop. The other rationalist friend told him "The mature thing to do would be able to control your feelings, like this other rationalist I know." The mature thing is to control your feelings, but also sometimes express them loudly, depending on the needs in the moment.

A lover told me that they weren't going to lie to me, they were going to tell it like it is. I said that was in general fine, but that I wanted them to consider how the way and time they told me things affected my feelings. They said no, they would express themselves when and how they wanted, and they expected me to do the same. That relationship didn't last long.

People taking care of a friend at detriment to their own health.

Soooo many more.

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Lately, I've been considering adding a third factor, so it's no longer a dichotomy but a trichotomy. Courage, Consideration, and Consequences.

I know there's a strong idea around norms in the rationality community to go full courage (expressing your true beliefs) and have other people mind thmeselves and ignore the consequences (decoupling norms). As I've said elsewhere and above, I think in actuality this leads to a community that trains people to hide certain beliefs and lie about their motives, but do it in a way that can't be called out.

I think you should obviously think about the effects of what you say, on the culture, on the world, and on the person you're speaking to. I have beliefs about this, which cache out in me feeling very upset when people express the truth at all costs, because they're sacrificing their terminal values for instrumental ones, but I'm punished in the rationality community for saying this, so I'm less likely to express it. So the truth seeking norm is stifling my ability to tell the truth.

I think in general I'd love to see WAY more truth seeking norms in society, but I think that's because most of society is immature, they're way too much on the side of consideration, with barely thought to consequences and courage.

Meanwhile, some of the rationality community has gone way to much towards courage, ignoring consideration and consequences.

FITTING IN AND THE RATIONALITY COMMUNITY

One of my biggest learning experiences over the last few years was moving to the Bay Area, and attempting to be accepted into the "Rationality Tribe".

When I first took my CFAR workshop years ago, and interacted with the people in the group, I was enamored. A group of people who was into saving the world, self-improvement, understanding their own minds, connecting with others - I felt like I had found my people.

A few short months later I moved to the Bay Area.

I had never been good at joining groups or tribes. From a very early age, I made my friend group (sometimes very small) by finding solid individuals that could connect to my particular brand of manic, ambitious, and open, and bringing them together through my own events and hangouts.

In Portland, where I was before moving to the Bay, I really felt I had a handle on this, meeting people at events (knowing there weren't many who would connect with me in Portland), then regularly hosting my own events like dinner parties and meetups to bring together the best people.

Anyway, when I got to the Bay, I for the first time tried really hard to be accepted into existing tribes. Not only did I finally think I had found a large group of people I would fit in with, I was also operating under the assumption that I needed to be liked by all these peoples because they were allies in changing the world for the better.

And honestly, this made me miserable. While I did find a few solid people I really enjoyed, trying to be liked and accepted by the majority of people in the rationality community was an exercise in frustration - Being popular has always run counter to my ability to express myself honestly and openly, and I kept having to bounce between the two choices.

And the thing is, I would go as far as to say many people in the rationality community experience this same frustration. They found a group that they feel like should be their tribe, but they really don't feel a close connection to most people in it, and feel alienated as a result.

What feels real to me is that there are people in the rationality community that I like, and love. And there are people outside of the rationality community that I like and love. And that it makes a lot of sense for me to stop trying to bounce from round hole to round hole, trying to see if my square peg fits in.

Instead, like always, I'll just make my island, and invite the people who want to be there with me.

LESS BAD ORGANIZATIONS

The Gervais Principle says that when an organization is run by Sociopaths, it inevitably devolves into infighting and politics that the sociopaths use to make decisions, and then blame them on others. What this creates is a misaligned organization - people aren't working towards the same thing, and therefore much wasted work goes towards undoing what others have done, or assigning blame to someone that isn't yourself. Organizations with people that aren't aligned can sometimes luck into good outcomes, especially if the most skilled players (the most skilled sociopaths) want them to. They aren't necessarily dead players, but they're running on borrowed time - borrowed for the usefulness to the sociopaths.

Dead organizations are those that are run by Rao's clueless (or less commonly, by Rao's losers, in which case you have a Bureaucracy that outlived its' founder). They can't do anything new because they're run by people that can't question the rulesets they're in. As a clueless leading a dead organization, one effective strategy seems to be to accept the memes around you unquestioningly and really executing on them. The most successful people in Silicon valley make their own rules, but the next tier are the people who take the memes of Silicon Valley and follow them unquestioningly. This is how organizations enter Mythic Mode [LW · GW] - they believe in the culture around them so much that they channel the god of that culture, and are able to attract funding, customers, results etc purely through the resulting aura.

Running Good Organizations

Framing the Gervais principle in terms of Kegan:

Losers - Kegan 3

Clueless - Kegan 4

Sociopaths - Kegan 4.5

To run a great organization, the first thing you need is to be lead not by a socipath, but someone who is Kegan 5. Then you need sociopath repellent.

Short Form Feed is getting too long. I'll write more on good organizations at some point soon.

THE THREE TYPES OF RATIONALITY AND EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

The Instrumental/Epistemic split is awful.  If rationality is systematized winning, all rationality is instrumental.

So then, what are three types of Instrumental Rationality?

1. Generative Rationality
   1. What mental models will best help me/my organization/my culture generate ideas that will allow us to systematically win?
2. Evaluative Rationality
   1. What mental models will best help me/my organization/my culture evaluate ideas, and predict which ones will allow us to systematically win?
3. Effectuative Rationality
   1. What mental models will best  help me/my organization/my culture implement those ideas in an effective way that will help us to systematically win?

Evaluation typically gets lumped under "Epistemics" , Effectuation typically gets lumped under "Instrumentals" and Generation is typically given the shaft - certainly creativity is undervalued as an explicit goal in the rationality community (although it's implicitly valued in that people who create good ideas are given high status).

Great leaders can switch between these 3 modes at will.  

If you look at Steve Jobs' reality distortion field, it's him being able to switch between the 3 modes at will, only using evaluative reality when choosing a direction - other times he's operating on Generative and Effectuative Rationality principles. This allows him to eventually shape reality to the vision he generated using his effectuative principles.  By using the proper types of rationality at the right time, he's actually able to shape reality instead of merely predicting it.

If you look at Walt Disney, he used to frequently say a phrase that indicates he knew how to switch between these 3 modes: He used to talk about he was "actually 3 different Walts: The Dreamer, The Realist, and the Spoiler".    Access to these 3 modes allowed Walt to do things that other's would have looked at with their Evaluative Rationality and viewed as impossible."

You can see with Elon Musk too.  Look at that the difference between how he acts with budgeting and how he acts with deadlines.  When he's budgeting, he uses his evaluative rationality - when he's making deadlines, he's using his effectuative rationality - he knows large visions and hard to reach goals actually help people take better action.  You shouldn't view his deadlines as predictions, but as motivation tools.

Are great leaders then liars?  No, great leaders are Kegan 5 players who don't just say things, but are actually operating through these 3 frameworks (to a first approximation) at any given time.  When a great leader is generating, their not worried about evaluating their ideas.  When they're evaluating, theyre not worried about effectuating those ideas. When they're effectuating, they're not generating. 

They're using whatever framework can make the most MEANING out of the current situation, both now in the long term. They're skillfully cycling through these frames in themselves - and outputting the truth of whatever ontology they're operating through at the given moment.

One of my worries with the talk about Simulacra Levels and how it relates to Moral Mazes is that it's not distinguishing between Kegan 2 players (who are lying and manipulating the system for their own gain), with Kegan 4.5 players (who are lying and manipulating the system because they actually have no ontology to operate through except revenge and power), with Kegan 5 players (who are viewing truth and social dynamics as objects to be manipulated because there is no truth of which tribe their a part of or what they believe about a specific thing - it's all dependent on what will generate the most meaning for them/their organization/their culture).  

It's absolutely imperative that you create systems to filter out Sociopathic Kegan 4.5 lizard people if you want your organization to avoid being captured by self-interest. 

 At the same time, it's absolutely imperative that you have systems that can find, develop and promote Kegan 5 leaders that can create new systems and operate through all 3 types of rationality.  Otherwise your organizations/cultures values won't be able to evolve with changing situation.

I worry framing things as Simulacra levels don't distinguish between these two types of players.

Been mulling around about doing a podcast in which each episode is based on acquiring a particular skillset (self-love, focus, making good investments) instead of just interviewing a particular person.

I interview a few people who have a particular skill (e.g. self-love, focus, creating cash flow businesses), and model the cognitive strategies that are common between them. Then interview a few people who struggle a lot with that skill, and model the cognitive strategies that are common between them. Finally, model a few people who used to be bad at the skill but are now good, and model the strategies that are common for them to make the switch.

The episode is cut to tell a narrative of what the skills are to be acquired, what beliefs/attitudes need to be let go of and acquired, and the process to acquire them, rather than focusing on interviewing a particular person

If there's enough interest, I'll do a pilot episode. Comment with what skillset you'd love to see a pilot episode on.

Upvote if you'd have 50% or more chance of listening to the first episode.

The four levels of listening, from some old notes:

1. Content - Do you actually understand what this person is saying? Do they understand that you understand?

2. Subtext - Do you actually understand how this person feels about what they're saying? Do they understand that you understand?

3. Intent- Do you actually understand WHY this person is saying what they're saying? Do they understand that you understand?

4. Paradigm - Do you actually understand what all of the above says about who this person is and how they view the world? Do they understand that you understand?

SOCIOPATH REPELLENT FOR GOOD ORGANIZATIONS AND COMMUNITIES

The role of the Kegan 5 in a good organization:

1. Reinvent the rules and mission of the organization as the landscape changes, and frame them in a way that makes sense to the kegan 3 and 4s.

2. Notice when sociopaths are arbitraging the difference between the rules and the terminal goals, and shut it down.

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Sociopaths (in the Gervais principle sense) are powerful because they're Kegan 4.5. They know how to take the realities of Kegan 4's and 3's and deftly manipulate them, forcing them into alignment with whatever is a good reality for the Sociopath.

The most effective norm I know to combat this behavior is Radical Transparency. Radical transparency is different from radical honesty. Radical honesty says that you should ignore consideration and consequences in favor of courage [LW(p) · GW(p)]. Radical transparency doesn't make any suggestions about what you should say, only that everyone in the organization should be privy to things everyone says. This makes it exceedingly hard for sociopaths to maintain multiple realities.

• One way to implement radical honesty is to do what David Ogilvy used to do. If someone used BCC in their emails too much, he would fire them. That's an effective Sociopath repellent.
• Another way to implement radical honesty is to record all your conversations and make them available to everyone, like Bridgewater does. That's an effective Sociopath repellent.

Once I was part of an organization that was trying to create a powerful culture. Someone had just told us about the recording all conversations thing, so me and another leader in the organization decided to try it in one of our conversations. We found we had to keep pausing the recording because the level of honesty we were having with each other would cause our carefully constructed narratives with everyone else to crumble. We were acting as sociopaths, and we had constructed an awful organization.

I left shortly after, but it would have been an exceedingly painful process to convert to a good organization at that time. Creating sociopath repellent organizations is painful because most of us act like sociopaths some of the time, and operating from a place of universal common knowledge means that we have to be prepared to bring our full selves to every situation, instead of crafting ourself to the person in front of us.

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The second most effective norm I know to act as sociopath repellent is that anyone should be able to apply the norms to anyone else. Here's how I described that in a previous post:

Anyone should be able to apply the values to anyone else. If "Give critical feedback ASAP, and receive it well" is a value, then the CEO should be willing to take feedback from the new mail clerk. As soon as this stops being the case, the 3's get look for their validation elsewhere, and the 4's get disillusioned.

Besides selective realities, another way that sociopaths gain advantage is through selective application of the norms when it suits them. By creating norms that anyone can apply to anyone else (and making them clear by providing the opposites, as well as examples) you prevent this behavior from sociopaths and take away one of their main weapons.

Once, I was the leader of an organization (ok, I was actually the captain of a team in highschool, but same thing). I was elected leader because I exemplified the norms as good or better than most others, and had the skills to back it up. Once I became the leader, I eventually ran into challenges with sociopathic (again in the Gervais principle sense) behavior trying to undermine my authority. Instead of leaning back on the principles that had earned me the position, I leaned on my power to force people to do what I wanted, while ignoring the principles that got me there. This made others lose faith in the principles, and killed morale, leading to infighting and politics.

The lesson for me as a leader was to lead with influence based on moral authority, not power. But the lesson for me as an organization designer was to allow ANYBODY to enforce the norms, not just the leader, and to make this ability part of the norms themselves. This would have immediately prevented from ruining team morale when I descended into petty behavior.

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The final important behavior for sociopath repellent is to notice when the instrumental values of the organization aren't serving the terminal goals, and relentlessly redefine the core values to make them closer to spirit, rather than the letter. This is important because Gervais Sociopaths ALSO have this ability to notice when the instrumental values aren't serving the terminal goals, and will arbitrage this difference for their own gain. A good Kegan 5 leader will be able to point to the values, show how they're meant to lead to the results, then lead the organization in redefining them so that sociopaths can't get away with anything.

Occasionally, Kegan 5 leaders will have to take a look at the landscape, notice its' changed, and make substantial changes to the values or mission of an organization to keep up with the current reality.

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The next question becomes, if you want a long lasting organization, and a skilled Kegan 5 leader is necessary for a long running organization, how do you get a steady stream of Kegan 5 leaders? This is The Succession Problem. One answer is to create Deliberately Developmental organizations, [LW · GW]that put substantial effort into helping their members become more developed humans. That will be the subject of the next post in the sequence.

How to Read a Book is the quintessential how to book on gaining knowledge from a modernist perspective. What would a metamodern version of HTRAB look like?

HTRAB says that the main question you should be asking when reading a book is "Is this true?" The relationship you're concerned with is between the material and the real world.

But in a meta-modern perspective, you want to consider many other relationships.

One of those is the three way relationships between yourself, the material, and reality. Asking questions like "What new perspectives can I gain from this?" and "How does this relate to my other models of the world?"

Another is the relationship between the author and their source material. What does this writing say about the perspective of the author? Why did they choose to write this. This is bringing in a more post-modern/critical theory perspective.

HTRAB recommends "Synoptic Reading" - finding many books on the same subject or that circle around a specific topic to get a broad overview of the topic.

A meta-modern take would also look into other ways of grouping books. What about exploring facets of yourself through exploring authors that think differently and similarly to you? What about crafting a narrative as you dig into interesting parts of each book you move through?

What other takes would a Meta-Modern version of HTRAB encompass?

ON SAFE SPACES

There's at least 3 types of psychological "safe spaces":

1. We'll protect you.
We'll make sure there's nothing in the space that can actively touch your wounds. This is a place to heal with plenty of sunshine and water. Anyone who's in this space is agreeing to be extra careful to not poke any wounds, and the space will actively expel anyone who does. Most liberal arts colleges are trying to achieve this sort of safety.

2. Own your safety.
There may or may not be things in this space that can actively touch your wounds. You're expected to do what's necessary to protect them, up to and including leaving the space if need be. You have an active right to know your own boundaries and participate or not as needed. Many self-help groups are looking to achieve this sort of safety.

3. We'll make you grow.
This space is meant to poke at your wounds, but only to make you grow. We'll probably waterboard the shit out of you, but we won't let you drown. Anyone who's too fragile for this environment should enter at their own peril. This is Bridgewater, certain parts of the US Military, and other DDOs.

This is a half formed thought that seems to ping enough of my other important concepts that it seems worth sharing. Which one you think should be default relates a lot to how you view the world

It relates to:

- Why you would choose decoupling vs. contextualizing norms (https://www.lesswrong.com/…/decoupling-vs-contextualising-n… [LW · GW])

- Why you would allow or not allow punch bug (https://medium.com/@Th…/in-defense-of-punch-bug-68fcec56cd6b)

-Whether you want to protect Cluess, Losers, or Sociopaths (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/…/the-gervais-principle-or-the-…/)

- The left/right culture war.

There's a pattern I've noticed in my self that's quite self-destructive.

It goes something like this:

• Meet new people that I like, try to hide all my flaws and be really impressive, so they'll love me and accept me.
• After getting comfortable with them, noticing that they don't really love me if they don't love the flaws that I haven't been showing them.
• Stop taking care of myself, downward spiral, so that I can see they'll take care of me at my worst and I know they REALLY love me.
• People justifiably get fed up with me not taking care of myself, and reject me. This triggers the thought that I'm unlovable.
• Because I'm not lovable, when I meet new people, I have to hide my flaws in order for them to love me.

This pattern is destructive, and has been one of the main things holding me back from becoming as self-sufficient as I'd like. I NEED to be dependent on others to prove they love me.

What's interesting about this pattern is how self-defeating it is. Do people not wanting to support me mean that they don't love me? No, it just means that they don't want to support another adult. Does hiding all my flaws help people accept me? No, it just sets me up for a crash later. Does constantly crashing from successful ventures help any of this? No, it makes it harder to seem successful, AND harder to be able to show my flaws without having people run away.

As part of the Athena Rationality Project, we've recently launched two new prototype apps that may be of interest to LWers

Virtual Akrasia Coach

The first is a Virtual Akrasia Coach, which comes out of a few months of studying various interventions for Akrasia, then testing the resulting ~25 habits/skills through internet based lessons to refine them.  We then took the resulting flowchart for dealing with Akrasia, and created a "Virtual Coach" that can walk you through a work session, ensuring your work is focused, productive and enjoyable.

Right now about 10% of people find it useful to use in every session, 10% of people find it useful to use when they're procrastinating, and 10% of people find it useful to use when they're practicing the anti-akrasia habits. The rest don't find it useful, or think it would be useful but don't tend to use it.

I know many of you may be wondering how the idea of 25 skills fits in with the Internal Conflict model of akrasia. One way to frame the skills is that for people with chronic akrasia, we've found that they tend to have certain patterns that lead to internal conflict - For instance, one side thinks it would be good to work on something, but another side doesn't like uncertainty.  You can solve this by internal double crux, or you can have a habit to always know your next action so there's no uncertainty.  By using this and the other 24 tools you can prevent a good portion of internal conflict from showing up in the first place.

Habit Installer/Uninstaller App

The habit installer/uninstaller app is an attempt to create a better process for creating TAPs, and using a modified Murphyjitsu process to create setbacks for those taps.

Here's how it works.

1. When you think of a new TAP to install, add it to your habit Queue..
2. When the TAP reaches the top of the Habit Queue, it gives you a "Conditioning Session" - these are a set of audio sessions that take you through processes to strengthen habits, such as visualization, memory re-consolidation, and mental contrasting.
3. The app will check in with you about how frequently you've been executing the TAP, using a spaced repetition schedule, giving you more conditioning sessions when you're likely to fail at your habit, starting frequently then less and less frequently as you master the habit.
4. When the habit is 10% mastered, you'll be walked through a murphyjitsu process, coming up with new habits and actions that can prevent you from failing to install this habit.
5. Any new habits you create using the Murphyjitsu process are added to the habit queue, making the process fractal.
6. When a habit is 100% mastered, you no longer receive conditioning sessions or checkins, allowing you room to install more TAPs.

The app is definitely in prototype form, and quite ugly and hacky, but I've personally find it quite useful for creating new habits.

As an experiment for this particular app based on learning from our previous Akrasia Coach prototype, we're charging a small ($2.99) fee for trying the prototype. The fee is basically to get more committed users, and will of course be refunded if at any point you decide the app is not for you or too early stage.

If you're interested in that, the link to test it out is here.

Note that we've been getting reports of the confirmation emails ending up in spam, so be sure to check your spam folder once you sign up.

Anyways, feel free to try both of those out, and if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer.

Trying to describe a particular aspect of Moloch I'm calling hyper-inductivity:

The machine is hyper-inductive. Your descriptions of the machine are part of the machine. The machine wants you to escape, that is part of the machine. The machine knows that you know this. That is part of the machine.

Your trauma fuels the machine. Healing your trauma fuels the machine. Traumatizing your kids fuels the machine. Failing to traumatize your kids fuels the machine.

Defecting on the prisoner's dilemma fuels the machine. Telling others not to defect on the prisoner's dilemma fuels the machine.

Your intentional community is part of the machine. Your meditation practice is part of the machine. Your art installation is part of the machine. Your protest is part of the machine.

A select few will escape the machine. That is part of the machine. The machine will simplify, the machine will distort, the machine will politicize, the machine will consumerize.

Jesus is part of the machine. Buddha is part of the machine. Elijah is part of the machine. Zuess is part of the machine.

Your Kegan-5 ability to see outside the machine is part of the machine. Your mental models are part of the machine. Your bayesianism is part of the machine. Your shitposts are part of the machine.

The machine devours. The machine creates. Your attempts to protect your ideas from the machine is part of the machine.

Your attempts to fix the machine is part of the machine. Your attempts to see that the machine is an illusion is part of the machine. Your attempts to use the machine for your own purposes is part of the machine.

The machine's goal is to grow the machine. The machine does not have a goal. The machine is designed to be anti-fragile. The machine is not designed.

This post is part of the machine.
 

Recently went on a quest to find the best way to minimize the cord clutter, cord management, and charging anxiety that creates a dozen trivial inconveniences throughout the day.
 

Here's what worked for me:

1. For each area that is a wire maze, I get one of these surge protectors with 18 outlets and 3 usb slots: https://amzn.to/33UfY7i

2. For everywhere I am that I am likely to want to charge something, I fill 1 -3 of the slots with these 6ft multi-charging usb cables (more slots if I'm likely to want to charge multiple things). I get a couple extras for travel so that I can simply leave them in my travel bag: https://amzn.to/33RV48T

3. For everywhere that I am likely to want to plug in my laptop, I get one of these universal laptop chargers. Save the attachments somewhere safe for future laptops, and leave the attachment that works for my laptop plugged in at each place. I get an extra to keep and put into my travel bag: https://amzn.to/3iwHjkf

4. I run the USB cords and laptop cord through these nifty little cord clips, so they stay in place: https://amzn.to/31KdcPA

5. All the excess wiring, along with the surge protector, is put into this cord box. I use the twisty ties with that to secure wires from dangling, and ensure they go into the box neatly. Suddenly, the wires are super clean: https://amzn.to/2PIGbxA

6. (Bonus Round) I have a charging case for my phone, so the only time I have to worry about charging it as night. I use this one for my Pixel 3A, but you'll have to find one that works for your phone: https://amzn.to/31MuxHn

7. (Bonus Round 2): Work to go wireless for things that have that option, like headphones.

This will set you back $200 - $500 (depending on much of each thing you need) but man is it nice to not ever have to worry about finding a charging cord, moving a cord around, remembering to pack your charger, tripping over wires or having the wire jungle distract, etc.

In response to a "sell LW to me" post:

I think that the thing LW is trying to do is hard. I think that there's a legitimate split in the community, around the things you're calling "cyber-bullying" - I think there should be a place for crockers rules style combat culture reasoning, but I also want a community that is charitable and respectful and kind while maintaining good epistemics.

I also think there's a legitimate split in the community around the things you're calling "epistemically sketchy" - I think there should be a place for post-rational ponderings, but I also think there should be a place for not catering to them..

I have an impression that LW is trying to cater to both sides of the splits, and basically ending up in a middle ground that no one wants, driving a lot of the most interesting posters away.

That being said, I'm quite impressed by the team running LW. I'm quite impressed by the product that is LW. I'm also quite impressed by the experiments and direction of LW - I perceive it as actively getting better over time, and grappling with hard questions. I don't know a better place to put things to create common knowledge about things I with were common knowledge in the rationalist community, and I expect that things I put there will benefit from the improvements over time.

I think that the mods are justifiably being very careful about imposing norms, because splitting the community is very dangerous, but I do have a small amount of faith they'll navigate it correctly - enough to make posting on there worth it.

A frequent failure mode that I have as a leader:

• Someone comes on to a new project, and makes a few suggestions.
• All of those suggestions are things we/I have thought about and discussed in detail, and we have detailed reasons why we've made the decisions we have.
• I tell the person those reasons.
• The person comes away feeling like the project isn't really open to criticism feedback, and their ideas won't be heard.

I think a good policy is to just say yes to WHATEVER experiment someone who is new to the project proposes, and let them take their own lumps, or pleasantly surprised.

But, despite having known this for a bit, I always seem to forget to do this when it matters. I wonder if I can add this to our onboarding checklists.

I think philosophical bullet biting is usually wrong. It can be useful to make a theory that you KNOW is wrong, and bite a bullet in order to make progress on a philosophical problem. However, I think it can be quite damaging to accept a practical theory of ethics that feels practical and consistent to you, but breaks some of your major moral intuitions. In this case I think it's better to go "I don't know how to come up with a consistent theory for this part of my actions, but I'll follow my gut instead."

Note that this is the opposite of becoming a robust agent. [LW · GW] However, the alternative is CREATING a robust agent that is not in fact aligned with its' creator. I've seen people who adopted a moral view for consistency, and now make choices that they NEVER would have endorsed before they chose to bite bullets for consistency.

I think this is one of my major disagreements with Raemon's view of becoming a robust agent.

Something I've been thinking about lately is the concept of Aesthetic Pathology. The idea that our trauma's and beliefs can shape what we allow ourselves to see as beautiful or ugly.

Take for instance the broad aesthetic of order, or chaos. Depending on what we've been punished or admired for, we may find one or the other aesthetic beautiful.

This can then bleed into influencing our actual beliefs, we may think that someone who keeps order is "good" if we have the order aesthetic, or have the belief that "in order to get things done we must maintain order".

The counter to this is to begin to develop what you could call Aesthetic Nuance - Recognizing that different things can be beautiful or ugly for different situations.

Chaos can in fact have it's own beauty, once we realize that, that can bleed through in our beliefs, and we can realize that in this situation, in order to act fast enough to get things done, we must embrace the beauty of chaos.

I've seen this show up in the Postrationality community - many were traumatized by the rationality aesthetic. They develop an Aesthetic Pathology for the unexplainable.

The aesthetic nuance here is - The innefable is beautiful, as is the explained from different perspectives in different situations.

Similarly, for a long time I've had an Aesthetic Pathology related to growth. I find stagnation abhorrent. However, as I begin to develop Aesthetic Nuance for stagnation, I can see the beauty in the eternal and unchanging.

Something else in the vein of "things EAs and rationalists should be paying attention to in regards to Corona."

There's a common failure mode in large human systems where one outlier causes us to create a rule that is a worse equilibrium. In the PersonalMBA, Josh Kaufman talks about someone taking advantage of a "buy any book you want" rule that a company has - so you make it so that you can no longer get any free books.

This same pattern has happened before in the US, after 9-11 - We created a whole bunch of security theater, that caused more suffering for everyone, and gave government way more power and way less oversight than is safe, because we over-reacted to prevent one bad event, not considering the counterfactual invisible things we would be losing.

This will happen again with Corona, things will be put in place that are maybe good at preventing pandemics (or worse, making people think they're safe from pandemics), but create a million trivial conveniences every day that add up to more strife than they're worth.

These types of rules are very hard to repeal after the fact because of absence blindness - someone needs to do the work of calculating the cost/benefit ratio BEFORE they get implemented, then build a convincing enough narrative to what seems obvious/common sense measures given the climate/devastation.

Was thinking a bit about the how to make it real for people that the quarantine depressing the economy kills people just like Coronavirus does.

Was thinking about finding a simple good enough correlation between economic depression and death, then creating a "flattening the curve" graphic that shows how many deaths we would save from stopping the economic freefall at different points. Combining this was clear narratives about recession could be quite effective.

On the other hand, I think it's quite plausible that this particular problem will take care of itself. When people begin to experience depression, will the young people who are the economic engine of the country really continue to stay home and quarantine themselves? It seems quite likely that we'll simply become stratified for a while where young healthy people break quarantine, and the older and immuno-compromised stay home.

But getting the time of this right is everything. Striking the right balance of "deaths from economic freefall" and "deaths from an overloaded medical system" is a balancing act, going too far in either direction results in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Then I got to thinking about the effect of a depressed economy on x-risks from AI. Because the funding for AI safety is

1. Mostly in non-profits

and

2. Orders of magnitude smaller than funding for AI capabilities

It's quite likely that the funding for AI safety is more inelastic in depressions than than the funding for AI capabilities. This may answer the puzzle of why more EAs and rationalists aren't speaking cogently about the tradeoffs between depression and lives saved from Corona - they have gone through this same train of thought, and decided that preventing a depression is an information hazard.

When trying to browse LW keyboard only using Vimium, there are some tasks I get blocked on because they're not marked as links or buttons. E.g. the "Read More" button is not recognized as clickable by Vimium so I have to use the mouse.

I suspect this means that the read more button is also not picked up by many accessibility tools. Something for the LW team to look at, and may be worth doing a general accessibility audit.

# HOW TO CONSISTENTLY USE BLOCKING SOFTWARE
One of my favorite life hacks to stop procrastinating is to install website/app blocking software on your phone and computer.

However, many people have tried this method, and found that they can't do it consistently. They inevitably end up uninstalling or disabling the software a few months into using it.

In a moment of "weakness", they uninstall/disable/remove the software, and then never end up reinstalling/enabling it for months.

The truth is, this moment of "weakness" isn't weakness at all. It's a natural human response to lack of autonomy, which Self-Determination Theory posits as one of the three basic human needs.

When a wall is getting in the way of our basic autonomy, our natural response is to knock down the wall.

Solutions to procrastination should never feel like you're **coercing** yourself into doing the "right behavior" as decided by you at a particular point in time - these are unsustainable and actually create more procrastination in the long run because we're taking away the autonomy of our present selves.

Rather, environmental solutions to procrastination should feel more like you're **cooperating** between your past, present, and future selves, taking input from all 3 selves to decide what makes the most sense in the moment.

## TURN WALLS INTO GATES
For blocking software, the solution to this issue is to turn walls into gates. Instead of making it impossible to get to the other side, you want to make a series of gates, which take some effort to get through, but allow you increasingly more freedom as you go through each successive gate.

This way you're not limiting your freedom, but instead just allowing a short reminder from your past self saying "Hey, just a reminder I wasn't so thrilled about what's on the other side of this gate," while allowing your present self to say "I hear, and this one time I'm deciding that it's important for us to go on the other side of the gate now."

In addition to turning walls into gates, you need to make sure your gates are robust enough that it's not easier to just knock them down then to go through them.

If you build your gates really flimsy, it's to easy for your present self to say "Oh, I just want to get onto the other side of the gate the fastest way possible" while forgetting to cooperate with your past and future selves. The path of least resistance has to be to pass through security you've set up at the gate.

## HOW TO CREATE ROBUST GATES WITH BLOCKING SOFTWARE

So the first way to make sure you use blocking software is to make sure it's hard to just knock down. Your blocking software should have robust protection against all the easy ways to knock down the gate like:
- Removing it from startup
- Uninstalling or disabling it
- Closing it using the task manager
- Using a different browser
- Switching computer users

In addition, the software should make it easy to install various levels of gates with differing security to get through various blocking plans, like:
- Having a way to pause the plan for just a little time, that you need to enter a random set of characters to access.
- Having a way to enter a few random characters to whitelist a particular site, so that for instance you can whitelist a particular youtube video you need without allowing all of youtube.
- Having a setting that will automatically re-enable plans at the beginning of a new day, so that even if you've decided to enter your random password and take a day to just lounge and watch Netflix, it doesn't require any intervention to re-erect the gate.
- Having Pomodoro style blocking plans that can continually block then allow short breaks on a schedule.

## WHAT SOFTWARE ALLOWS THE CREATION OF ROBUST GATES?
The only software I know of that has these features (having tried between half a dozen and a dozen different blocking software and tools) is FocusMe. It's not the most user friendly blocking software out there, but it's incredibly good at creating robust gates that allow you to cooperate between your past/present/future selves.

Unfortunately the Android version isn't yet that great at creating gates, but the Mac/Windows version incredible.

I highly recommend this blocking software if you're working on overcoming procrastination, and learning the settings to use to create a system of gates.

It also has excellent customer service, and a "lifetime plan" which prevents you from having to subscribe.

If you're interested in the software, you can check it out using my affiliate link here: https://focusme.com/?ref=102&campaign=LW

Or, if you're not down with the affiliate thing, use a non-affiliate link here: https://focusme.com/

I'm also interested if anyone knows any Android blocking software that allows for the creation of robust gates!

I think one of the biggest problems with ouble crux is that by finding double cruxes, it implicitly encourages us to look at the most mutually legible parts of our maps.

However, the biggest differences in frames aren't where you think X and I think not X, it's where you think X and I think "What the hell do you mean by X?" or "Why do you even care about X anyway it seems irrelevant?"

In my previous startup, this led to a situation where we were agreeing on what to do, but there were deep unaddressed differences in why we were doing it, leading to a million different decisions at the level of "how it was done."

One of the things that excites me about Frame double crux and Aesthetic double crux is that it seems to be getting at some of these deeper issues. However, I think the entire frame of double crux is slightly broken for getting to these deeper issues, because again its' always focused on mutual legibility that as "what parts of your map are also important in my map" and not "How can I understand which parts of your map are most important to you?

Does anyone here struggle with perfectionism? I'd love to talk to you and get an understanding of your experience.

One of the enduring insights I've gotten from elityre is that different world models are often about the weight and importance of different ideas, not about how likely those things are to be true. For instance, The Elephant in the Brain isn't about whether or not signalling exists, its' about how central signalling is to the worldview of Simler and Hanson. Similarly with Antifragility and Nassim Taleb.

One way to say this is that disagreement is often about the importance of an idea, not its' truth.

Another way to say this is that worldview differences are often about the centrality and interconnectedness of a node within a graph, and not its' existence.

A third way to say this is that disagreements are often about tradeoffs, not truths.

I've used all of these when trying to point to this idea, but I'd like a single, catchy word or phrase to use and a blog post I can point to so that this idea can enter the rationalist lexicon. Does this blogpost already exist? If not, any ideas for what to name this?

I've had a draft sitting in my posts section for months about shallow, deep, and transfer learning. Just made a Twitter thread that gets at the basics. And figured I'd post here to gauge interest in a longer post with examples.

Love kindle, love Evernote. But never highlight good ideas. It's level one reading. Instead use written notes and link important ideas to previous concepts you know.

Level 1: What's important? What does this mean?

Level 2: How does this link to compare/contrast to previous concepts or experiences? Do I believe this?

Level 3: How is this a metaphor for seemingly unrelated concepts? How can this frame my thinking?

4 questions to get to level 2:

• How is this similar to other things I know?
• How is this different from other things I know?
• What previous experiences can I relate this to?
• In what circumstances would I use this knowledge? How would I use it?

3 Questions to ask to get to level 3:

• How does it feel to view the world through this lens?
• How does this explain everything?
• What is this a metaphor for?

In the early 2000s, we all thought the next productivity system would save us. If we could just follow Tim Ferriss's system and achieve a four-hour workweek, or adopt David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (GTD) methodology, everything would be better. We believed the grind would end.

In retrospect, this was our generation's first attempt at addressing the growing sacredness deficit disorder that was, and still is, ravaging our souls. It was a good distraction for a time—a psyop that convinced us that with the perfect productivity system, we could design the perfect lifestyle and achieve perfection.

However, the edges started to fray when put into action. Location-independent digital nomads turned out to be just as lonely as everyone else. The hyper-productive GTD enthusiasts still burned out.

For me, this era truly ended when Merlin Mann, the author of popular GTD innovations like the "hipster PDA" and "inbox zero," failed to publish his book. He had all the tools in the world and knew all the systems. But when it mattered—when it came to building something from his soul that would stand the test of time—it didn't make a difference.

Merlin wrote a beautiful essay about this failure called "Cranking" (https://43folders.com/2011/04/22/cranking). He mused on the sterile, machine-like crank that would move his father's bed when he could no longer walk. He compared this to the sterile, machine-like systems he used to get himself to write, not knowing what he was writing or why, just turning the crank.

No amount of cranking could reconnect him to the sacred. No system or steps could ensure that the book he was writing would touch your soul, or his. So instead of sending his book draft to the editor, he sent the essay.

Reading that essay did something to me, and I think it marked a shift that many others who grew up in the "productivity systems" era experienced. It's a shift that many caught up in the current crop of "protocols" from the likes of Andrew Huberman and Bryan Johnson will go through in the next few years—a realization that the sacred can't be reached through a set of steps, systems, lists, or protocols.

At best, those systems can point towards something that must be surrendered to in mystery and faith. No amount of cranking will ever get you there, and no productivity system will save you. Only through complete devotion or complete surrender to forces beyond yourself will you find it.

CW: Don't recommend reading this post if you're prone to disordered eating.

Am I being being too incautious by doing an 88 hour fast once a week? It seems pretty unstudied in the long term, there's mostly studies on 48 hour fasts, and then like 30 day fasts.

The few studies on people with cancer or arthritis seem to indicate only good things, and the animal studies point to some really good things like resetting parts of your immune systems in great ways.

It also seems to be the most consistent way for me to get the type of calorie restriction that has been show to increase longevity.

Subjectively, I'm near the most productive I've ever been, feel close to the healthiest I ever have, and am energetic and happy.

What say you?

I can't wrap my brain around the computational theory of consciousness.

Who decides how to interpret the computations?  If I have a beach, are the lighter grains 0 and darker grains 1?  What about the smaller and bigger grains? What if I decide to use the motion of the planets to switch between these 4 interpretations.

Surely under infinite definitions of computation, there are infinite consciousnesses experience infinite states at any given time, just from pure chance.

Here are some of the common criticisms I get of myself. If you know me, either in person, through secondhand accounts feel free to comment with your thoughts on which ones feel correct to you and any nuance or comments you'd like to make. Full license for this particular thread to operate on Crocker's rules and not take my feelings into account. If you don't feel comfortable commenting publicly, also feel free to message with your thoughts.

• I have too low epistemic rigor.
• Too confident in myself
• Not confident enough in myself.
• Too focused on status.
• I don't keep good company.
• I'm too impulsive.
• Too risk seeking.

I've had a similar conversation many times recently related to Kegan's levels of development and Constructive-developmental theory:

X: Okay, but isn't this just pseudoscience like Myers-Briggs?

Me: No, there's been a lot of scientific research into constructive-developmental theory.

X: Yeah, but does it have strong inter-rater reliablity?

Me: Yes, it has both strong inter-rater reliablity and test retest reliablity. In addition, it has strong correlation with other measures of adult development that themselves have a strong evidence base.

X: Sure, but it seems so culturally biased.

Me: There's also strong preliminary reports on cross-culture validity.

It makes me want to make a post summarizing the evidence for Constructive-Developmental theory so people don't keep pattern matching to less-valid psychometrics like Myers-Briggs

RUNNING GOOD ORGANIZATIONS

Framing the Gervais principle in terms of Kegan:

Losers - Kegan 3

Clueless - Kegan 4

Sociopaths - Kegan 4.5

To run a great organization, the first thing you need is to be lead not by a sociopath, but someone who is Kegan 5. Then you need sociopath repellent.

The Gervais principle works on the fact that at the bottom, the losers see what the sociopaths are doing and opt-out, finding enjoyment elsewhere. The clueless, in the middle, believe the stories the sociopaths are telling them and hold the party line. The sociopaths, at the top, are infighting and trying to use the organization to get their own needs met.

In a good organization, the people at the top are Kegan 5. They have varying rules and models in their head for how the organization should act, and they use this as a best guess for the VALUES the organization should have, given the current environment - IE, they do their best to synthesize their varying models into a legible set of rules that will achieve their terminal goals (which, because they're Kegan 5, aren't pure solipsism)

The reason that they need to do this distillation process is that they need something that works for the Kegan 3's and Kegan 4's. The Kegan 4's SHARE the terminal goal of the Kegan 5 (or some more simplified version of it), and believe in the values and mission of the organization as the ONE TRUE WAY to achieve that goal.

Because the rules of the organization are set up to be legible and reward actions that actually help the terminal goal, the Kegan 3's can get their belonging and good vibes in highly legible, easy ways that are simple to understand before them. Notice now that the 3's, 4's, and 5's are all aligned, working towards the same ends instead of fighting each other.

Two important things about the values, mission, and rules of the organization.

1. The values must have sincere opposites that you could plausibly use for real decision making, otherwise they don't help the Kegan 3's and disillusion the Kegan 4s. You can't run an organization or make decisions based on "being unproductive" so "productivity" isn't a valid goal. You can make decisions that tradeoff short term productivity for long term productivity, so "move fast and break things" is a valid value, as is "Move slowly and plan carefully."

2. Anyone should be able to apply the values to anyone else. If "Give critical feedback ASAP, and receive it well" is a value, then the CEO should be willing to take feedback from the new mail clerk. As soon as this stops being the case, the 3's get look for their validation elsewhere, and the 4's get disillusioned.

Two good examples of values: Principles by Ray Dalio, The Scribe Culture Bible

The role of the Kegan 5 in this organization is twofold:

1. Reinvent the rules and mission of the organization as the landscape changes, and frame them in a way that makes sense to the kegan 3 and 4s.

2. Notice when sociopaths are arbitraging the difference between the rules and the terminal goals, and shut it down.

Short Form Feed is getting too long. Next time, I'll wrote more about Sociopath repellent.

CHANGE IS GOOD

Something I've been noticing lately in a lot of places is that many people have the intuition that change is bad, and the default should be to maintain the status quo. This is epitomized by the Zvi article Change is Bad.

I tend to have the exact opposite intuition, and feel a sense of dread or foreboding when I see a lack of change in institutions or individuals I care about, and work to create that change when possible. Here's some of the models that seem to be behind this:

• Change is inevitable. The broader systems in which the systems I care about exist are always changing (the culture, the economic system, etc). Trying to keep things static is MORE effort than going with the flow, so I don't buy the "conserve your energy" argument. Anyone who has ever TRIED to fight the flow of broader systems within their local system knows this to be true.
• By Default Change is Inevitable but usually non-directed. What I mean by that is that as stated above, the systems are always changing. However, many times this is a result of local actors following local incentives and acting within local constraints. Rarely are the trickle down effects on the things you care about in any way shape or form directed towards making that thing better for human flourishing. This means that there's much gain to be had by simply working to direct and shape the change that will be happening any way to make it actually GOOD. This is also an argument for EAs being less shy about systemic change.
• Even if change isn't inevitable, entropy is. Even in a relatively stable system, the default is not for things to stay the same, but for them to fall or drift apart. I've found that change injects a NEWNESS into the system that provides its' own momentum. This is all metaphorical, but will probably hit for anyone who has run an organization that meets regularly. If you keep doing the same thing, there's a staleness that causes people to drift away. Trying to rally the troops and prevent this drifting in the face of the staleness is like pulling teeth. However, doing something NEW in the organization, organizing a new event, a new initiative, anything, provides new energy that makes people excited to continue, and is actually EASIER than simply struggling against the staleness.

I can hover over quick takes to get the full comment, but not popular comments.

Had an excellent interview with Hazard [LW · GW]yesterday breaking down his felt sense of dealing with fear.

As someone who does parkour and tricking, he's had to develop unique models that navigate the tension between ignoring his fear (which can lead to injury or death) and being consumed by fear (meaning he could never practice his craft).

He implicitly breaks down fear into four categories, each with their own steps:

1. Fear Alarm Bells

2. Surfacing From Water

3. Listening

4. Transmuting to Resolve (or Backing off)

At each step, he has tools and techniques (again, that were implicit before we chatted) telling you how to move forward. Just over the past day, I've already had a felt shift in how I relate to fear, and navigated a couple of situations differently.

If you're interested in learning this model, I'd love to teach you! All I ask is that you let me use some of the clips from our teaching session in my podcast on the framework!

Let me know if you're interested!

Couldn't Eliezer just remove every reference to Harry Potter and publish it separately? It worked for E.L James.

"Medium Engagement Activities" are the death of culture creation.

Expecting someone to show up for a ~1-hour or more event every week that helps shape your culture is great for culture creation, or requiring them to wear a dress code - large commitments are good in the early stages.

Removing trivial inconveniences to following your values and rules is great for building culture, doing things that require no or low engagement but help shape group cohesion.  Design does a lot here - no commitment tools to shape culture are great during early stages.

But medium commitment tools are awful, a series of little things that take 5-50 minutes a week to work on - these things are death to early stage cultures.  It's death by a 1000 cuts of things they can't see clear immediate benefit for, and which they can see clear immediate cost for.

I don't know why exactly this is, and haven't really mapped out what's behind this intuition, it's something about the benefits of building identity vs. the time required, it's ushaped, the tails are a much more effective tradeoff than the middle.

 A strong vision can cover for a lot of internal tension - the external tension between your vision and what you want can hide internal tension related to not meeting all your needs.

But, it can't cover forever - eventually, your other needs get louder and louder until they drown out your vision, leading to a crash in productivity.

It can help to know what your leading indicators for ignoring your needs... that way, you can catch a crash before it happens, and make sure you resolve that internal tension.  For me, it's my weight creeping up.  I use food as a way to ignore negative emotions.

So, when I see my weight creeping up over the course of a few days, I take time out to process emotions, take care of myself, and see what needs I've been ignoring.  1 hour of attending to other needs can save me weeks of total burnout.

3 Possibilities for a Lesswrong talk:

1. In this shortform [LW(p) · GW(p)],  I show how the attractor for a cult (Kegan 4.5 leaders) is very easy to confuse with the attractor for a great culture (Kegan 5 leaders).   This is a pattern I've noticed a bunch when looking at good cultures, and I'd love to do a talk called "Cult is the root of culture"  where I show a bunch of instances of this.

2. I've been continuing to explore the idea aesthetic bias in beliefs and the concept of aesthetic pathology [LW(p) · GW(p)].  I'd love to do a talk exploring some of those ideas and giving examples.

3. The thing I've been spending most of my time on is teaching how to overcome akrasia.  I have a workshop that shows experientially what it's like to act from a non-coercive place (that goes over much of the material in this comment [LW(p) · GW(p)]) and I'd love to lesswrongify it and run some exercises during the talk.

Which of these would you be most interested in as a talk?

Grudgingness is the productivity killer.

We've noticed all our choices. We've brainstormed better options. We've decided that this is the best course of action.

And yet, it's an awful choice. Reality forced us into a bad situation, and we hold a grudge against.

So we do our task.

But we kick, and scream, and moan about having to do it. We can do it, but we're not gonna like it! We can do it, but by god are we gonna expend energy showing ourselves how much we don't like it.

And so we sit there, pushing against that which can not be moved.

Holding on to our grudge against reality.

Shoulding ourselves in the foot.

And it's at this point we can ask ourselves... is this serving us?

Sometimes, the answer is yes. This grudge connects us to our values, or protects us from a truth we're not equipped to handle.

But often... far far more often, the answer is no.

All that kicking against a brick wall has done for us is to give us a stubbed toe.

So we stare at this grudge, and we thank this grudge for connecting us to our values. And we ask ourselves, with an open heart:

Is it time to let this go?

*Virtual Procrastination Coach*

For the past few months I've been doing a deep dive into Procrastination, trying to find the cognitive strategies that people who have no trouble with procrastination use to overcome their procrastination.
--------------
This deep dive has involved:

* Introspecting on my own cognitive strategies
* Reading the self help literature and mining cognitive strategies
* Scouring the scientific literature for reviews and meta studies related to overcoming procrastination, and mining the cognitive strategies.
*Interviewing people who have trouble with procrastination, and people who have overcome it, and modelling their cognitive strategies.

I then took these ~18 cognitive strategies, split them into 7 lessons, and spent ~50 hours taking people individually through the lessons and seeing what worked, what didn't and what was missing.

This resulted in me doing another round of research, adding a whole new set of cognitive strategies, (for a grand total of 25 cognitive strategies taught over the course of 10 lessons) and testing for another round of ~50 hours to again test these cognitive strategies with 1-on-1 lessons to see what worked for people.
-------------------------------------
The first piece of more scalable testing is now ready. I used Spencer Greenberg's GuidedTrack tool to create a "virtual coach" for overcoming procrastination. I suspect it won't be very useful without the lessons (I'm writing up a LW sequence with those), but nevertheless am still looking for a few people who haven't taken the lessons to test it out and see if its' helpful.

The virtual coach walks you through all the parts of a work session and holds your hand. If you feel unmotivated, indecisive, or overwhelmed, its' there to help. If you feel ambiguity, perfectionism, or fear of failure, its' there to help.

If you're interested in alpha testing, let me know!

POST-RATIONALITY IS SYSTEMATIZED WINNING

John is a Greenblot, a member of the species that KNOWS that the ultimate goal, the way to win, is to minimize the amount of blue in the world [LW · GW], and maximize the amount of green.

The Greenblots have developed theories of cooperation, that allow them to work together to make more green. And complicated theories of light to explain the true nature of green, and several competing systems of ethics that describe the greenness or blueness of various actions, in a very complicated sense that actually clearly leads to the color.

One day, John meets Ted. Ted is a member of the Lovelots. John is aghast when he finds out that Lovelots can't perceive the difference between Blue and Green. Ted is aghast that John can't perceive the difference between love and hate. They both go on their merry way.

The next day, John is doing his daily meditation, imagining the cessation of endless blue and the ascendance of endless green, but thoughts of Ted and his inability to perceive this situation keep intruding. Suddenly, John experiences a subject-object shift [LW · GW]. He is able to perceive his meditation as Ted perceives it, with both colors being the same. In the next moment, he has a flash of the Greenblots celebrating when they've achieved their goal, and John now knows what its' like to experience the thing Ted called love.

John is confused, he thought the Greenblots had built a a fullproof theory of winning, of how to maximize the green and minimize the blue. But then he experienced endless green, and knew how it was for that to not be winning at all. And he experienced the thing Ted was describing, and the sensation of winning felt the same. John thought he knew everything about winning, but in fact he knew nothing.

John vows to understand the true nature of winning, and develop the discipline of being able to work with the sensation just like he previously was able to work with beliefs about making things greener. John will become the Greenblots' first post-rationalist.

Enjoyed this video by Veritasium with data showing how Politics is the Mind Killer

 

Want to help me out?

Vote on the book cover for my new book!

It'll be up for a couple of days. The contest website only gives me a few days before I have to pick finalists.

https://form.jotform.com/243066790448060

Are there big takeaways from Moral Mazes that you don't get from The Gervais Principle?

Having trouble being decisive? Turns out there's only two simple mindset shifts that separate decisive people from indecisive people.

Indecisive people view decisions as a fork in the road. They can stand there forever, trying to decide which way to go.

Decisive people view decisions more like a train switch, that will change the direction of the train they're already inside. If they don't pull the lever in time, the decision to stay on their current path is made for them.

When indecisive people try out this metaphor, sometimes they discover something... thinking of decisions like this is really stressful!

This brings us to the second big mindset shift. Indecisive people view all decisions as the same! Decisive people don't do that.

Instead, they bucket their decisions. They have in mind a clear picture of the things they value, and their vision for the future. If a decision doesn't effect those things, they make it quickly and intuitively. Only if does do they put more time into the decision.

This allows them to not sweat most decisions, and makes decision making much less stressful. It also allows them to put more time and effort into the truly important decisions, because they're not wasting time on the decisions that don't matter.

The things that I'm most qualified to teach are the things that I'm worst at.

Take procrastination for example. My particular genetic and cultural makeup ensured that focus would never be a strong suit. As a result, I went through basically every problem that someone who struggles through procrastination goes through. I ran into a ton of issues surrounding it, attacked it from a variety of angles, and got to a point where I can ship cool projects and do great work. Probably average or slightly above in productivity, but functional.

Meanwhile, when I teach overcoming procrastination, I can truly talk about the path you need to learn the material. When a student runs into an issue, its' rare that it's an issue I haven't overcome myself (usually multiple times in different forms) and I can give excellent advice on a path to success.

Meanwhile, the things that I'm best at are the things I'm worst at teaching.

Take constructing conceptual models. It's something that has always come naturally to me. Upon realizing that it was a particular strength of mine, I worked to hone it and understand it and push it to the limits. However, even with this deep understanding, I'm still not great at teaching it. I can tell people what it feels like, and my introspection on the parts of it, and all of the systems I've built to enhance it and the reasoning behind them.

But, I cannot tell them the path to go from not having the skill of conceptual model building to having it. It's like breathing to me. If they run into a problem in acquiring the skill, I cannot help them overcome it because I never ran into it myself. It's much harder for me to truly understand what it's like to be someone who struggles with the skill.

INSTRUMENTAL RATIONALITY CURRICULUM

A few weeks ago I ran a workshop at the EA hotel that taught my Framework for internal debugging [LW · GW]. It went well but there was obviously too much content, and I have doubts about the ability for it to consistently effect people in the real world.

I've started planning for the next workshop, and creating test content. The idea is to teach the material as a series of habits where specific mental sensations/smells are associated with specific mental moves. These implementation intentions can be practiced through focused meditations. There are 3 "sets" of habits that each have seven or 8 meditations attached to them.

The idea is that the first course, the way of focus, teaches people the basic skills of working with intentions and focusing that are needed to not procrastinate. That is there are basic skills to focusing, that even if you don't have any internal conflict or trauma, you still need to get things done. The first course starts with that.

THE WAY OF FOCUS (Overcoming Akrasia).

1. Noticing dropped intention -> Restabilizing intention

2. Noticing Competing Intention -> Loving Snooze (+ Setting Up Pomodoros or Consistent Break Schedule)

3. Noticing Potential Intention -> Mental Contrasting

4. Noticing Coercive Intention -> Switching to Non-coercive Possiblity

5. Noticing Ambiguious/Overwhelming Intention -> Generating Specific Next Action

6. Noticing Context Switch -> Intention Clearing (+ Habits for Removing Distractions)

7. Noticing Productivity - > Reinforcing Self-Concept as Productive Person (+ Changing Environment to That of Productive Person)

THE WAY OF LETTING GO (Overcoming Trauma)

Sometimes, you'll have competing intentions come up that are very persistent, because they're related to deep emotional issues/trauma. You can find them by looking for feelings of avoidance or the inability to avoid, and then use the following techniques to dispell.

1. Noticing Avoidance-> Fuse with the Feeling

2. Noticing Magnetism -> Dissociate from Feeling

3. Inhabiting Feeling -> Finding Emotional Core

4. Finding Emotional Core -> Re-experince Memories

5. Sticky Belief -> Question Belief Via Work of Byron Katie

6. Sticky Feeling -> Let Go of Feeling Via Sedona Method

7. Sticky Memories -> Reframe Memories Via Lefkoe Belief Process

8. Process Fails-> Find Second Layer Emotion.

THE WAY OF ALIGNMENT (Overcoming Internal Conflict)

Sometimes, you'll notice competing intentions that aren't unambigiously negative or positive, and it's hard to know what to do. In those cases, you can notice the "conflicted" feeling, and use the following habits to deal with them over a period of time.

0. Noticing Conflict -> Fuse/Dissociate With Feeling (Already Taught)

0. Easy to Fuse/Dissociate -> Find Emotional Core (Already Taught)

1. Familiar Conflict-> Alternate Fusing/Dissociating (practice switching perspectives)

2. Easy to shift perspectives -> Practice holding both at once

3. Easy to hold both at once -> Internal Double Crux

4. Memory Reconsolidated -> Stack Attitudes

5. Attitudes Stacked -> Core Transformation

6. Core Transformed -> Parental Timeline Reimprinting

7. Timeline Reimprinted -> Modality Mind Palace

ASK:

I'm just finishing up the content for THE WAY OF FOCUS, and I'm looking for people to help test the material. It will involve commiting 30 minutes over the internet a day for 7 days. 10 minutes to practice previous meditations, 10 minutes to teach the new material, and 10 minutes to practice the new material via a new type of meditation.

(Taken from a comment)

One of the problem's with Rao's Gervais principle that I later realized(that I think Zvi's sequence shares to some degree) is that it doesn't distinguish between Kegan 4.5 Sociopaths, and Kegan 5 leaders.  This creates the impossible choice between having freedom as a loser, meaning as a clueless, or influence as as a sociopath, pick one.

Similarly, Zvi's sequence gives the choice of truth as a simulacra 1,  belonging as Simulacra 2, and influence as Simulacra 4.

Neither framing admits that it's possible to get to a stage of leadership in which you can fluidly cycle between variations of the 3 modes.

It seems like the spirit of the Litany of Gendlin is basically false?

Owning up to what's true makes things way worse if you don't have the psychological immune system to handle the negative news/deal with the trauma or whatever.

And it's precisely the things that you are avoiding looking at that are  most likely to be those things you can't handle, as that's WHY you developed the response of not looking at them.

Just had an excellent chat with CFAR Cofounder (although no longer a part of CFAR) Michael Smith breaking down in excruciating detail a skill he calls "Breaking Free."

A step by step process to:

1. Notice auto-pilot scripts you are running that are causing you pain.

2. Dissolve them so you can see what actions will lead to what you truly want.

Now, I'm looking for people to teach this skill to! It would involve a ~2 hour session where I ask you why you want the skill, and teach it to you, then a ~30 minute followup session a couple weeks later where we talk about what the skill has done for you.

I'm happy to give free coaching on the skill to anyone who asks, all I ask is that I can use the recordings of your session in the podcast about the skill.

Anyone interested?

CFAR's "Adjust Your Seat" principle and associated story is probably one of my most frequently referenced concepts when teaching rationality techniques.

I wish there was a LW post about it.

My biggest win lately (Courtesy of Elliot Teperman) in regards to self love is to get in the habit of thinking of myself as the parent of a child (myself) who I have unconditional love for, and saying what that parent would say.

An unexpected benefit of this is that I've started talking like this to others.

Like, sometimes my friends just need to hear that I appreciate them as a human being, and am proud of them for what they accomplished and its' not the type of thing I used to say at all.

And so do I, I didn't realize how much I needed to hear that sort of thing from myself until I started saying it regularly.

One could call this Internal Parent Systems. Not to be confused with the default installed one that many of has that judges, criticizes, or blames in our parents' voice :). A close cousin of Qiaochu Yuan's Internal Puppy Systems

• Today I had a great chat with a friend on the difference between #Fluidity and #Congruency
• For the past decade+ my goal has been #Congruency (also often called #Alignment), the idea that there should be no difference between who I am internally, what I do externally, and how I represent myself to others
• This worked well for quite a long time, and led me great places, but the problems with #Congruency started to show more obviously recently.
• Firstly, my internal sense of "rightness" wasn't easily encapsulated in a single sense of consistent principles, it's very fuzzy and context specific. And furthermore, what I can even define as "right" shifts as my #Ontology shifts.
• Secondly, and in parallel, as the idea of #Self starts to appear less and less coherent to me, the whole base that the house is built on starts to collapse.
• This had led me to begin a shift from #Congruency to #Fluidity. #Fluidity is NOT about behaving by an internally and externally consistent set of principles, rather it's being able to find that sense of "Rightness" - the right way forward - in increasingly complex and nuanced situations.
• This "rightness" in any given situation is influenced by the #Ontology's that I'm operating under at any given time, and the #Ontologies are influenced by the sense of "rightness".
• But as I hone my ability to fluidly shift ontologies, and my ability to have enough awareness to be in touch with that sense of rightness, it becomes easier to find that sense of rightness/wrongness in a given situation. This is as close as I can come to describing what is sometimes called #SenseMaking.

STEELMANNING KEGAN 3 (OR, KEGAN 3, TO THE TUNE OF KEGAN 4)

Ruby recently made an excellent post called Causal Reality vs. Social Reality [LW · GW]. One way to frame what he was writing was he was trying to point at that 58% of the population is on Kegan's stage 3, and a lot of what rationality is doing is trying to move people to stage 4.

I made a reply to that (knowing it might not be that well received) essentially trying to steelman Kegan 3 from a Kegan 4 perspective - that is, is there a valid systemic reason based on long term goals to act as if all you care about is how you make yourself and others feel.

Here's my slightly edited attempt:

The thing we actually care about... Is it how everyone feels? People being happy and content and getting along, love and meaning - it seems to be based in large part on the fundamental question of how people feel about other people, how we get along - the questions that are asked in Kegan 3.

It might be understandable if you're a person that cares about a world where people love and cherish each other, and are able to pursue meaning - you might think that the near term effects of how people think and feel relate to what happens effect the long term of how people think and feel and relate as well. If you don't have a lot of power, you might even subconsciously think that the flowthrough effects from your ability to effect how people around you feel is your best chance at affecting the "ultimate goal" of everyone getting along.

And when you run into someone who (in your mind) doesn't care about that reality of how their actions effect the harmony of the group, and instead is focused on weird rules that discard those obvious effects, you might think them cold and calculating and importantly in opposition to that ultimate goal.

Then you might write up a post about how sure, rules and Kegan 4 and principles of action are important sometimes, but the important thing is just being good and kind to other people, and things will work themselves out - That Kegan 3 actions are actually the best way to achieve Kegan 4 goals.

WHY VIBING IS IMPORTANT

Vibing is a type of communication where the content is a medium through which you can play with the emotional rhythm. I've said before that the Berkely rationalist community is missing this, and that that's important, but have never really explained why vibing is important.

Firstly, vibing is one of the purest forms of play - if you're playing with others, but you're not vibing, there's an important emotional connection component missing from your play.

Secondly, vibing is a way to screen for people whose emotional rhythm can sync up with a group. It's a vital screening mechanism to figure out if you can brainstorm well together, work well together, and get along.

Finally, the speed at which you communicate vibing means you're communicating almost purely from System 1, expressing your actual felt beliefs. It makes deception both of yourself and others much harder. Its much more likely to reveal your true colors. This allows it to act as a values screening mechanism as well.

Surprising thing I've found as I begin to study and integrate skillful coercive motivation is the centrality of belief in providence and faith of this way of motivating yourself. Here are some central examples: the first from War of Art, the second from The Tools, the third from David Goggins. these aren't cherry picked (this is a whole section of War of Art and a whole chapter of The Tools).

This has interesting implications given that as a society (at least in america) we've historically been motivated by this type of masculine, apollonian motivation - but have increasingly let go of faith in higher powers as a tenet of our central religion, secular humanism.This means the core motivation that drives us to build, create, transcend our nature... is running on fumes. We are motivated by gratitude, w/o sense of to what or whom we should be grateful, told to follow our calling w/o a since of who is calling.

We've tried to hide this contradiction. our seminaries separate our twin Religion (Secular Humanism and Scientific Materialism) into stem and humanities tracks to hide that what motivates The Humanities to create is invalidated by the philosophy that allows STEM o discover. But this is crumbling, the cold philosophy of scientific materialism is eroding the shaky foundations that allow secular humanists to connect to these higher forces - this is one of the drivers of the meaning the crisis.

I don't really see any way we can make it through the challenges we're facing with these powerful new technologies w/o a new religion that connects us to the mystical truly wise core that allows us to be motivated towards what's good and true. This is exactly what Marc Gafni is trying to do with Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, and what Monastic Academy is trying to do with a new, mystical form of dataism - but both these projects are moonshots to massively change the direction of culture.

My sense is that most people who haven't done one in the last 6 months or so would benefit from at least a week long silent retreat without phone, computer, or books.

I just realized that humans are misaligned mesaoptimizers. Evolution "wanted" us to be pure reproduction maximizers but because of our training distribution we ended up valuing things like love, truth and beauty as terminal values. We're simply misaligned AIs run amok.

How do you nominate a post for the 2019 review.  When I click on "Nominations" I only see posts that were already nominated.  When I go to a posts page to make a comment, I don't see any obvious way to make it a nomination.

Edit: Found it! Click the 3 dots menu at the top of a post.

Alright, now somebody needs to write the "Pain is a contextually useful unit of effort of which the value varies depending on your situation, genetics, and upbringing" post.

I sort of want to create a gpt-3 bot that automatically does this for any X is Good or X is Bad post.

Mods are asleep, post pictures of mushroom clouds.

Is there much EA work into tail risk from GMOs ruining crops or ecosystems?

If not, why not?

When interviewing people who were both very productive, and enjoyed work immensely, they turned out to be remarkably similar in terms of the emotional content of how they related to tasks. Here are the 5 emotions that can make work productive and enjoyable:

1. Unqualified Desire
   1. Definition: Wanting the outcome of your task without reservation. Wanting to do the task without reservation.
   2. Questions:
      • What's bad about this outcome or task?
      • How can I remove the bad aspects?
2. Resolve
   • Definition: A sense that "I will do this task". As opposed to Unqualified Desire, which is a sense that "I want this outcome."
   • Questions:
     • How do I feel currently about the project or task?
     • How will I feel once the project or task is done?
     • How can I make that difference real to myself?
3. Playfulness
   • Definition: A sense of intrinsic enjoyment for your task.
   • Questions:
     • What is the nearest state to what I'm currently feeling, that includes a sense of enjoyment?
     • What does a task need for it to be intrinsically enjoyable to me?
     • Which of those things can I add to this task to most quickly get to that Nearest Playful State?
4. Meaning
   • Definition: A sense that you're connected to your deepest values when doing a task.
   • Questions:
     • What is the nearest state to what I'm currently feeling, that includes a sense of Meaning?
     • What are my values?
     • Which of those values can I tie to this task, to more quickly get to that Nearest Meaningful State
5. Intentionality
   • Definition: A state where you feel as if you choosing to do what you want to do, when you want to do it.
   • Questions:
     • What is the nearest state to what I'm currently feeling, that includes a sense of Intentionality?
     • What can I do to move myself into that state?
     • Is that something I'll actually do from my current state?

One of the things I've been working on in the background over the past ~year is changing my relationship to money. This has allowed me to make more of it while feeling great about it.

Here are the 2 biggest shifts I made:

1. I had a deep-rooted sub-conscious belief that if I got money, it would corrupt me, amplify the worst parts of me. Then, I realized that having money will allow me to hire coaches and advisors who's sole purpose is to help me reach my deepest values. I spent lots of time consciously visualizing this, and recognizing on a deep level that I could consciously direct my money to amplify the best parts of me.

2. I used to view money as a transaction, a fair trade between giving money, and getting something back of equal or greater value. But, that caused me to miss out on the human component of money - it caused me to focus on the money and the product, rather than the people behind them.

Another parallel perspective I've adopted is that money is a gift. A gift of trust in the person being bought from, a gift of freedom in the sense of what the money means. When someone gifts me money, I've gotten in the habit of consciously "receiving" that money, with gratitude and love. This has changed how I approach my products, and how I approach my "customers".

These two shifts have allowed me to be more comfortable with money, even develop a powerful, mutually beneficial relationship with it :).

I had one of my pilot students for the akrasia course I'm working on point out today that something I don't cover in my course is indecision. I used to have a bit of problem with that, but not enough to have sunk a lot of time into determining the qualia and mental moves related to defeating it.

Has anyone reading this gone from being really indecisive (and procrastinating because of it) to much more decisive? Or is currently working on making the switch I'd love to talk to you/model you.

As a bonus thank you, you'll of course get a free version of the course (along with all the guided meditations and audios) when it's complete.

ON HEAVEN AND ENLIGHTENMENT

https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/56656099_10220056198495676_9079758874621247488_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_oc=AQm42c-keDXguTwDHsVQz7hGt5AK-DkYK_eG13XXmHcybXql4JvgoYZC4r0Uy4LvMAU&_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.xx&oh=bb4a1f996cfde07165c9e22fdfe7c06d&oe=5D901596

At the extremes, people have one of four life goals: To achieve a state of nothingness (hinayana enlightenment), to achieve a state of oneness (mahayana enlightenment), to achieve a utopia of meaning (galts gulch), or to achieve a utopia of togetherness (hivemind).

In practice, most people exist somewhere in the middle, depending on how much they want to change their conception of the world (enlightenment) vs. changing the world itself (heaven), and depending on how much they view their identity as seperate from other things (individualism) or the same as other things (collectivism).

I think I'm already past stream entry, and this is why the above diagram scares the shit out of me:

It seems like hinayana enlightenment may be an attractor state even if I have a significant amount of values that would want to create a utopia of meaning.

If I was confident that I could go the mahayana path, there's the "Bodhisattva option" - stepping back from your enlightenment to bring others in, thus creating heaven.

But it's not clear to me that I won't end up at nothingness instead of oneness, and I'm not aware of a path to step back from nothingness and create a utopia of meaning, in fact they feel almost diametrically opposed.

Hence 'Stream entry considered harmful.'

It seems like the obvious thing to do with a model like o1 trained on reasoning through problems would be to train it to write code that helps it solve reasoning problems.

Perhaps the idea was to not give it this crutch so it could learn those reasoning skills without the help of code.

But it seems like from the examples that while its great at high level reasoning and figuring out where it went wrong, it still struggles with basic things like counting, which, if it had the instinct to write code in those areas which it's likely to get tripped up, would be easily solved.

Zuck and Musk point to energy as a quickly approaching deep learning bottleneck over and above compute.

This to me seems like it could slow takeoff substantially and effectively create a wall for a long time.

Best arguments against this?

Yes, but people also constantly exchange increased reproductive capacity for love, truth, and beauty (the world would look very different if reproductive capacity was the only terminal value people were optimizing for).  It's not that reproductive capacity isn't a terminal value of humans, it's that it's not the only one, and people make tradeoffs for other terminal values all the time.

It sort of seems like Predictive Processing provides a grounded foundation for the simulation argument.

Random question for traders?

What percent of "gains" from trading do you think currently come from algorithms and AI vs. human traders?

Is society just a tool to get Kegan 3 frames to want to LARP Kegan 4 and Kegan 5 frames?

I have a visceral negative reaction to the comments on this post.

It really annoys me that rationalists are so bad at understanding and using analogy.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HzDcLf2LJg4x66fcH/not-all-communication-is-manipulation-chaperones-don-t [LW · GW]

What can I do to get an intuitive grasp of Kelly betting? Are there apps I can play or exercises I can try?

But can't you just believe in Rokos anti-basilisk, the aligned AI that will punish you if you bring a malevolent AI into existence?

I've been thinking a bit about the relationship between Perfectionism, Fear-of-Failure, and Fear-of-Success, as I've been teaching them this week in my course.

They all have a very similar structure, where each has a component of a "shadow value" - something that's important to us that we tend not to acknowledge, as well as a "acknowledged value" - something that we allow ourselves to acknowledge as important.  

The solution for all 3 is similar - separate the shadow value from the known value, then figure out if each value (both shadow and known) actually applies to the situation, and how best to apply it.

For Perfectionism, the Shadow Value is pleasing/being loved by/being accepted by others. The acknowledged value is having high standards for ourselves and our work.

For Fear-of-Failure, the Shadow Value is protecting our identity. The acknowledged value is dealing with the negative external consequences of failure.

For Fear-of-Success, the Shadow Value is being deserving of what we receive. The acknowledged value is dealing with the negative external consequences of success.

What bugs me is... I don't know why all 3 of these happen to develop this very similar structure.  It could just be a coincidence, but my gut tells me there is something unifying all 3 of these items together that I'm not seeing, and that understanding what it is would give me a more complete understanding of Procrastination.  

They all seem to somehow be related to "Standards" - but I'm still not seeing the underlying system.