Let's get back to the "replacing guilt" series. Here's a quick recap of what we've covered so far: Part 1 was about replacing the listless guilt: if someone feels vaguely guilty for not really doing anything with their life, then the best advice I can give is to| Minding our way
Once, a friend of mine decided to make a drastic career change by teaching themselves a bunch of new skills from scratch, (with occasional assistance from me). They ran into occasional difficulties along the way, one of them being that they could not consider the possibility of failure without feeling| Minding our way
[Note: backported from LessWrong] A decade ago, I decided to save the world. I was fourteen, and the world certainly wasn't going to save itself. I fumbled around for nine years; it's surprising how long one can fumble around. I somehow managed to miss the whole idea of existential risk| Minding our way
I've spoken at length about shifting guilt or dispelling guilt. What I haven't talked about, yet, is guilt itself. So let's talk about guilt. Guilt is one of those strange tools that works by not occurring. You place guilt on the branches of possibility that you don't want to happen,| Minding our way
A few months ago, a friend of mine was describing her motivational issues to me. As an example, she explained she was having trouble making herself clean her room, despite her dissatisfaction with the constant messiness. I asked: "Have you considered just not forcing yourself?" She blinked, and| Minding our way
Today marks the end of my series on replacing guilt (table of contents). I began the series by discussing the "restless guilt," that people feel when some part of them thinks they aren't doing what's important. I argued that it's possible to care about things outside yourself, and| Minding our way
1 I'm not very good at feeling the size of large numbers. Once you start tossing around numbers larger than 1000 (or maybe even 100), the numbers just seem "big". Consider Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. If you told me that Sirius is as big| Minding our way
[Note: backported from LessWrong] This is the third post in a series discussing my recent bout of productivity. Within, I discuss two techniques I use to avoid akrasia and one technique I use to be especially productive. Deregulating Distraction I like to pretend that I have higher-than-normal willpower, because my| Minding our way
Content note: these next few posts are not going to be for the faint of heart. Sometimes, when people see that their life is about to get a lot harder, they start buckling down. Other times, they start despairing, or complaining, or preparing excuses so that they can have one| Minding our way
The first sort of guilt I want to address is the listless guilt, that vague feeling one gets after playing video games for twelve hours straight, a guilty feeling that you should be doing something else. Many people in my local friend group don't suffer from the listless guilt, because| Minding our way
Consider fictional Carol, who has convinced herself that she doesn't need to worry about the suffering of people who live far away. She works to improve her local community, and donates to her local church. She's a kind and loving woman, and she does her part, and (she reasons) that's| Minding our way
In my last post, I said that in order to address the listless guilt, step zero is believing that you can care about something, and step one is finding something to care about. This post is about step one. There are many different ways to care passionately about one thing| Minding our way
Most people don't think they "could" cure Alzheimers by snapping their fingers, and so they don't feel terrible about failing to do this. By contrast, people who fail to resist overeating, or who fail to stop playing Civilization at a reasonable hour, feel strongly that they "could| Minding our way
You probably don't feel guilty for failing to snap your fingers in just such a way as to produce a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Yet, many people do feel guilty for failing to work until they drop every single day (which is a psychological impossibility). They feel guilty for failing| Minding our way
Many people seem to think the 'good' state of being, the 'ground' state, is a relaxed state, a state with lots of rest and very little action. Because they think the ground state is the relaxed state, they act like maintaining any other state requires effort, requires suffering. This is| Minding our way
If you have money and want to save lives, you had better put a price on life. Scott Alexander explains it better than I can. But don't mix up the price of a life with the value of a life. I see this happen all too frequently. To correct this| Minding our way
I hang out around a lot of effective altruists. Many of them are motivated primarily by something like guilt (for having great resource and opportunity while others suffer) or shame (for not helping enough). Hell, many of my non-EA friends are primarily motivated by guilt or shame. I'm not going| Minding our way
This is a common scene at the MIRI offices: I have a decision to make, like what sort of winter fundraiser to run. Before making any choices, I take a few minutes to write down all the obvious things to do before making the decision: spend five minutes brainstorming options| Minding our way
This is a version of How We Will Be Measured, abridged for speech and delivered at the Bay Area 2019 winter solstice by request of the event organizers. Happy solstice! When all is said and done, and Nature passes her final judgement, you will not be measured by the number| Minding our way
Context: Multiple friends of mine have recently (independently) reported to me that they feel like they’re under conversational attack. Multiple friends have also independently told me that they are starting to doubt that their conversation partners are well-intentioned. I’m not particularly concerned about the specific conflicts that sparked| Minding our way
I often bump into people who want to do something big, interesting, or important, but who utterly lack the ability to commit themselves to a particular action (often because they lack the ability to convince themselves that something is worth doing). My suggested remedy comes in three parts. First, become| Minding our way
Here's a question I get asked pretty regularly: OK, I'm sold on this whole "do the best you can" thing, but how do you actually commit? When I look at my available options, none of them look great. I can take the one that seems best (despite its| Minding our way
"Believe in yourself" is perhaps the most common trope to be found in self-help books and motivational texts. It appears in fiction (especially children's books), film (especially sports films), and motivational posters. Coaches of sports teams labor to inspire. Low morale is the bane of teams. The model,| Minding our way
I often see friends run into a failure mode I call "false consistency," especially in the Effective Altruism and Rationality circles, where consistency is an important virtue. The False Consistency error is committed when someone has conflicting desires, thoughts, or beliefs, and bludgeons all but one of them| Minding our way
After nearly a year of writing, my "replacing guilt" sequence is coming to a close. I have just one more thing to say on the subject, by pointing out a running theme throughout the series. When all is said and done, and Nature passes her final judgement, you| Minding our way
The third dubious virtue is defiance. As with the other dubious virtues, it can get you into trouble. Remember the law of equal and opposite advice. Used correctly, it can play a key role in a healthy guilt-free motivation system. I used to tell people that I'm roughly 90% defiance-fueled.| Minding our way
The second dubious virtue is recklessness. As with desperation, there are many bad ways to be reckless. There is a nihilistic recklessness, in those with a muted ability to feel and care, that is self-destructive. There is a social recklessness, when peers push each other towards doing something dangerous that| Minding our way
The next three posts will discuss what I dub the three dubious virtues: desperation, recklessness, and defiance. I call them dubious, because each can easily turn into a vice if used incorrectly or excessively. As you read these posts, keep in mind the law of equal and opposite advice. Though| Minding our way
I apparently possess some sort of aura of competence. Some say I'm confident, others say I'm arrogant, others remark on how I seem very certain of myself (which I have been told both as compliment and critique). I was surprised, at first, by these remarks from friends and family — from| Minding our way