Mlu-2016-Compilation
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- 1 - - 2 - Foreword: This is a collection of blog posts that appeared on mindlevelup in 2016. I’ve gone through them all and made some slight edits for readability. In addition, I’ve added a small annotation [like this] before each essay that either summarizes it or details how I’ve changed my mind on the topic it’s about. The content here is a mixture of introspection, cognitive science, and motivation. Above all, I’m trying to write about human rationality, the art of becoming more right and winning at life. If you want a quick intro to the field, I’d recommend reading Rationality 101 (the last essay) first. As a collection of essays written throughout the year, the writing quality does follow an upward trend. If you just want the “good” essays, I’d recommend starting from Living in the Moment and skipping everything before that. Lastly, I’d recommend not being-reading all of these and instead picking a few that seem interesting at a time and checking them out. I think you get more value if you give the ideas some time to bounce around in your head. I hope you find this helpful! - - 3 - Contents: Foreword: ......................................................................................................... - 2 - 1. Life as a Student: .................................................................................... - 5 - 2. Why Try Hard? ........................................................................................ - 8 - 3. Metacognition and Mindfulness: ....................................................... - 14 - 4. Precommitment: ................................................................................. - 17 - 5. Looking at the Bright Side of Things: ................................................. - 21 - 6. How Your Thoughts Turn Into Words: .............................................. - 23 - 7. Your Strength as a Student *: ............................................................ - 25 - 8. Why Are Things Why They Are?.......................................................... - 30 - 9. What Actually Works? .......................................................................... - 33 - 10. Frames: It’s All a Matter of Perspective: ............................................ - 35 - 11. Wanting to Win: ................................................................................... - 37 - 12. Miracle Barriers: .................................................................................. - 39 - 13. Mark Your Progress:............................................................................ - 40 - 14. Multiple Modes: ................................................................................... - 41 - 15. The Rocks: ............................................................................................ - 43 - 16. Musings: Motivation and Attitude: .................................................... - 45 - 17. Learning: A Better Way *: ................................................................... - 48 - 18. Macro States and Micro Actions: ....................................................... - 56 - 19. Living in the Moment *: ...................................................................... - 57 - 20. Opportunities vs Potentials *: ............................................................ - 62 - 21. Fighting Procrastination *: ................................................................. - 64 - 22. Measuring Students: ........................................................................... - 73 - 23. Akrasia (Sort Of) Explained: ................................................................ - 77 - 24. Is Mindlevelup Even Helpful? ............................................................. - 80 - 25. Predictions and People *: ................................................................... - 82 - - 4 - 26. Realistic Expectations *: ..................................................................... - 88 - 27. Cooperation Across Time: .................................................................. - 92 - 28. Exploring the Thingspace of Thingspace: ......................................... - 94 - 29. Revisiting Motivation: .......................................................................... - 97 - 30. Being Superrational: ........................................................................... - 99 - 31. Prepare for Your Worst: .................................................................... - 102 - 32. Actually Practicing *: ......................................................................... - 103 - 33. Moloch: Briefly Explained: ................................................................ - 107 - 34. IAT and CEV *: .................................................................................... - 109 - 35. Insight Porn *: .................................................................................... - 111 - 36. In Defense of the Obvious *: ............................................................ - 114 - 37. Intent to Overkill: ............................................................................... - 116 - 38. Overriding Defaults *: ....................................................................... - 118 - 39. Categorizing Insight: ......................................................................... - 121 - 40. One Year Review *:............................................................................ - 123 - Bonus: Rationality 101 *: ........................................................................... - 129 - Starred (*) essays are ones that I think offer the most value in terms of insight or practicality. - 5 - 1. Life as a Student: [This was the essay that started things off. I like a good deal of the rhetoric used here, although I haven’t actually thought too much about education reform. Mainly to get people at school thinking a bit more.] Our school system has been under attack for a while now, it seems; especially salient is the stress high schoolers face as they prepare for college. Getting into college is now like an ultra-high stakes game– and everyone is playing to win. Here in the Bay Area especially, many students have their eyes set on those top-tier colleges, which easily come to mind– UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, and the like. That in itself is not a bad thing. The problem is these colleges can take only so many students, and they’re also very exclusive. The schools we seem to all want to go to only accept 10% or less of applicants. Which means right off the bat, the other 90% of us aren’t getting in. But this doesn’t seem to faze us. We take those extra classes, cram in those extracurricular and vie to be just “a little more extraordinary” than the person before us, hoping that extra summer lecture we took at Stanford on molecular biology will make all the difference. And this has some startling effects on our surroundings. Tutoring centers are a great example of this. We’ve created a $100 billion dollar industry that profits off this hope. We think that extra boost in grades is what it takes– it’s become more of a norm than ever to take SAT boot camps– and of course the tutoring centers are more than happy to oblige. I’ve seen instructors who say they are happy to work at tutoring centers because it allows them to help students realize their goals and reach their dream schools. That’s great for the student who can afford the help, but getting into college is a zero-sum game– a student who is “pruned” for colleges effectively takes spots away from applicants who don’t have access to those kinds of resources. But equitableness aside, there’s a fundamental issue that I believe is more disruptive– what colleges look for. - 6 - “Academic excellence. Dedication. Genuine Interest.” These are trite descriptions of what colleges look for. And we’ve taken it to the extreme. We’ve taken to shooting for 4.0’s, becoming president of 3 clubs, and hunting for summer internships at universities to rise to the occasion. What does this imply about the type of person colleges look for? Times are changing. In a global society, we’re facing problems that test our commitment to not just our local communities, but to citizens across the world. To create the next generation of leaders, problem solvers, and visionaries, we need feeling, thinking, open-minded humans. We need people able to deal with the rapidly changing world environment, create new ideas, and offer new perspectives. But the current school system is not doing this. We’re saying that success looks like straight A’s and juggling multiple after-school activities. We’re not stressing thinking, life skills, or a broader world view. Being a human is more about doing well in classes. But it seems that job has been relegated elsewhere. Instead, students are led to believe that they can bolster their college application by seeing who can “complete the most objectives”, and the scores from standardized testing only increases this terrible example of gamification. Testing, often, isn’t the most effective way to gauge learning at all. So it’s not just the fact that we have students overworking themselves for a sliver of possibility, but that the entire process isn’t what optimal learning looks like. What can we do? There are all sort of ideas for reforming the system. Hopefully, we can work on those. But in the meantime, it’s worth it to examine how school fits in with your personal value framework. - 7 - What do you care about? Past that 4.0, past the Ivy League education, what are you looking for? If you’re hell-bent on