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Ideas That Changed My Life

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Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#81

Post by wenc »

dcl wrote: post #70
wenc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually changed my mind based on some simple ideas. Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset, which talks about two mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The idea is super simple, and you don't even need to read the book to know what it is. But just knowing that idea changed my entire motivation to do things, and now I believe that even if I'm not talented at something, I can get surprisingly far. (for in…

It's great you've found techniques that work for you and you are correct the science is fuzzy... From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism > Timothy Bates, a psychology professor at the University of Edinburgh, has been trying for several years to replicate Dweck's findings, each time without success, and his colleagues haven't been able to either.[23] The statistics in Dweck's papers also fail the GRI…

So for me, it's all about instrumental rationality -- do the thing that works, not the thing that ought or ought not to work. It's important to put things into practice.

Social science is full of hypotheses that are difficult to measure scientifically. Some are straight out wrong.

Others are instrumentally rational -- they are correct enough of the time if done in the right context (which may not always arise, but when they do, you're golden). The latter are the stuff we need to try out. Growth vs fixed mindset is a heuristic -- this means it's not always right, but it's useful enough that when applied you can often see meaningful results.

Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#83

Post by Ensorceled »

I found the biases revealed by some of the examples fascinating, for example:

> 16. Russell Conjugation: Journalists often change the meaning of a sentence by replacing one word with a synonym that implies a different meaning. For example, the same person can support an estate tax but oppose a death tax

Why did they choose “journalists” when the “death tax” narrative was created by politicians, a much better example group for this conjugation.

> 18. Overton Window: You can control thought without limiting speech. You can do it by defining the limits of acceptable thought while allowing for lively debate within these barriers. For example, Fox News and MSNBC set limits on what political thoughts they consider acceptable, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re both fairly conventional.

While this is true of MSNBC, Fox News is clearly swinging to the right more and more.

> 41. The Invisible Hand: Markets aggregate knowledge. Rising prices signal falling supply or increased demand, which incentivizes an increase in production. The opposite is true for falling prices. Prices are a signal wrapped in an incentive.

More recently, the invisible hand has been shown to have its thumb on the scale.

Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#84

Post by SanderNL »

ulnarkressty wrote: post #63
wenc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually changed my mind based on some simple ideas. Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset, which talks about two mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The idea is super simple, and you don't even need to read the book to know what it is. But just knowing that idea changed my entire motivation to do things, and now I believe that even if I'm not talented at something, I can get surprisingly far. (for in…

How do you get past the feeling that nothing you do actually matters?

Therapy and lots of it.

Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#85

Post by MrPatan »

wenc wrote: post #40
mif wrote: post #11

One idea that changed my life is stop believing that other people have changed their lives based on ideas. The only way of change is by habit.

I actually changed my mind based on some simple ideas. Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset, which talks about two mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The idea is super simple, and you don't even need to read the book to know what it is. But just knowing that idea changed my entire motivation to do things, and now I believe that even if I'm not talented at something, I can get surprisingly far. (for in…

> In business and life, instrumental rationality is much more useful and works more of the time (this is why the LessWrong crowd isn’t good at stochastic domains like business because their models, though logical, are insufficient.

One of the ideas that helped me there comes actually from them: "Rationality wins". Which is the old: "If you're so smart why aren't you rich?".

Not easy to apply for anybody, it's much easier to be a smart loser.

Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#86

Post by m463 »

mdp2021 wrote: post #78
m463 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- get enough sleep - don't eat junk - get out and exercise 6 days a week - commit - don't overcommit - forgive yourself - be sovereign

> Eric Idle: «Now, here's the meaning of life. (Thank you, Brigitte.) M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations» ~~~ Monty Python, The Meaning of Life

very very misguided view of life. avoid eating sugar!

Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#87

Post by thanatos519 »

ulnarkressty wrote: post #63
wenc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually changed my mind based on some simple ideas. Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset, which talks about two mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The idea is super simple, and you don't even need to read the book to know what it is. But just knowing that idea changed my entire motivation to do things, and now I believe that even if I'm not talented at something, I can get surprisingly far. (for in…

How do you get past the feeling that nothing you do actually matters?

To understand that worthlessness is worthless leads to the Buddha.

-- from Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left For The East (1989)

Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#88

Post by digilypse »

afpx wrote: post #74
dcl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great you've found techniques that work for you and you are correct the science is fuzzy... From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism > Timothy Bates, a psychology professor at the University of Edinburgh, has been trying for several years to replicate Dweck's findings, each time without success, and his colleagues haven't been able to either.[23] The statistics in Dweck's papers also fail the GRI…

You just blew my mind. Dweck's theories are used all over the corporate-sphere. Here's the article (the wikipedia link 404d): https://web.archive.org/web/20210216192213/https://www.spect...

This seems to be focused on general intelligence. I always assumed it was more about the ability to learn skills and abilities rather than increasing IQ.

Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#89

Post by abacadaba »

afpx wrote: post #74
dcl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great you've found techniques that work for you and you are correct the science is fuzzy... From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism > Timothy Bates, a psychology professor at the University of Edinburgh, has been trying for several years to replicate Dweck's findings, each time without success, and his colleagues haven't been able to either.[23] The statistics in Dweck's papers also fail the GRI…

You just blew my mind. Dweck's theories are used all over the corporate-sphere. Here's the article (the wikipedia link 404d): https://web.archive.org/web/20210216192213/https://www.spect...

yes the corporate-sphere is.. how to say.. very dumb.

Re: Ideas That Changed My Life

#90

Post by majewsky »

BugsHack wrote: post #33

This post is right from ChatGPT. Like, “tell me 50 life wisdoms which can be earned through time” or something. We arrived the end of internet as we know it. I hate this.

No, it's the reverse. Posts like this are a dime a dozen, so they are probably over-represented in GPT's training set.
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