[Sorry for picking out a somewhat random point unrelated to the main conversation. This just struck me because I feel like it’s similar to a divergence in intuitions I often notice between myself and other EAs and particularly people from the ‘rationalist’ community. So I’m curious if there is something here it would be valuable for me to better understand.]
To give a silly human example, I’ll name Tim Ferriss, who has used the skills of “learning to learn”, “ignoring ‘unwritten rules’ that other people tend to follow”, and “closely observing the experience of other skilled humans” to learn many languages, become an extremely successful investor, write a book that sold millions of copies before he was well-known, and so on. His IQ may not be higher now than when he begin, but his end results look like the end results of someone who became much more “intelligent”.
Tim has done his best to break down “human-improving ability” into a small number of rules. I’d be unsurprised to see someone use those rules to improve their own performance in almost any field, from technical research to professional networking.
Here is an alternative hypothesis, a bit exaggerated for clarity:
There is a large number of people who try to be successful in various ways.
While trying to be successful, people tend to confabulate explicit stories for what they’re doing and why it might work, for example “ignoring ‘unwritten rules’ that other people tend to follow”.
These confabulations are largely unrelated to the actual causes of success, or at least don’t refer to them in a way nearly as specific as they seem to do. (E.g., perhaps a cause could be ‘practicing something in an environment with frequent and accurate feedback’, while a confabulation would talk about quite specific and tangential features of how this practice was happening.)
Most people actually don’t end up having large successes, but a few do. We might be pulled to think that their confabulations about what they were doing are insightful or worth emulating, but in fact it’s all a mix of survivorship bias and people with certain innate traits (IQ, conscientiousness, perhaps excitement-seeking, …) not occurring in the confabulations doing better.
Do you think we have evidence that this alternative hypothesis is false?
I think the truth is a mix of both hypotheses. I don’t have time to make a full response, but some additional thoughts:
It’s very likely that there exist reliable predictors of success that extend across many fields.
Some of these are innate traits (intelligence, conscientiousness, etc.)
But if you look at a group of people in a field who have very similar traits, some will still be more successful than others. Some of this inequality will be luck, but some of it seems like it would also be related to actions/habits/etc.
Some of these actions will be trait-related (e.g. “excitement-seeking” might predict “not following unwritten rules”). But it should also be possible to take the right actions even if you aren’t strong in the corresponding traits; there are ways you can become less bound by unwritten rules even if you don’t have excitement-seeking tendencies. (A concrete example: Ferriss sometimes recommends practicing requests in public to get past worries about social faux pas—e.g. by asking for a discount on your coffee. CFAR does something similar with “comfort zone expansion”.)
No intellectual practice/”rule” is universal—if many people tried the sorts of things Tim Ferriss tried, most would fail or at least have a lot less success. But some actions are more likely than others to generate self-improvement/success, and some actions seem like they would make a large difference (for example, “trying new things” or “asking for things”).
One (perhaps pessimistic) picture of the world could look like this:
Most people are going to be roughly as capable/successful as they are now forever, even if they try to change, unless good or bad luck intervenes
Some people who try to change will succeed, because they expose themselves to the possibility of good luck (e.g. by starting a risky project, asking for help with something, or giving themselves the chance to stumble upon a habit/routine that suits them very well)
A few people will succeed whether or not they try to change, because they won the trait lottery, but within this group, trying to change in certain ways will still be associated with greater success.
One of Ferriss’s stated goals is to look at groups of people who succeed at X, then find people within those groups who have been unexpectedly successful. A common interview question: “Who’s better at [THING] than they should be?” (For example, an athlete with an unusual body type, or a startup founder from an unusual background.) You can never take luck out of the equation completely, especially in the complex world of intellectual/business pursuits, but I think there’s some validity to the common actions Ferriss claims to have identified.
[Sorry for picking out a somewhat random point unrelated to the main conversation. This just struck me because I feel like it’s similar to a divergence in intuitions I often notice between myself and other EAs and particularly people from the ‘rationalist’ community. So I’m curious if there is something here it would be valuable for me to better understand.]
Here is an alternative hypothesis, a bit exaggerated for clarity:
There is a large number of people who try to be successful in various ways.
While trying to be successful, people tend to confabulate explicit stories for what they’re doing and why it might work, for example “ignoring ‘unwritten rules’ that other people tend to follow”.
These confabulations are largely unrelated to the actual causes of success, or at least don’t refer to them in a way nearly as specific as they seem to do. (E.g., perhaps a cause could be ‘practicing something in an environment with frequent and accurate feedback’, while a confabulation would talk about quite specific and tangential features of how this practice was happening.)
Most people actually don’t end up having large successes, but a few do. We might be pulled to think that their confabulations about what they were doing are insightful or worth emulating, but in fact it’s all a mix of survivorship bias and people with certain innate traits (IQ, conscientiousness, perhaps excitement-seeking, …) not occurring in the confabulations doing better.
Do you think we have evidence that this alternative hypothesis is false?
I think the truth is a mix of both hypotheses. I don’t have time to make a full response, but some additional thoughts:
It’s very likely that there exist reliable predictors of success that extend across many fields.
Some of these are innate traits (intelligence, conscientiousness, etc.)
But if you look at a group of people in a field who have very similar traits, some will still be more successful than others. Some of this inequality will be luck, but some of it seems like it would also be related to actions/habits/etc.
Some of these actions will be trait-related (e.g. “excitement-seeking” might predict “not following unwritten rules”). But it should also be possible to take the right actions even if you aren’t strong in the corresponding traits; there are ways you can become less bound by unwritten rules even if you don’t have excitement-seeking tendencies. (A concrete example: Ferriss sometimes recommends practicing requests in public to get past worries about social faux pas—e.g. by asking for a discount on your coffee. CFAR does something similar with “comfort zone expansion”.)
No intellectual practice/”rule” is universal—if many people tried the sorts of things Tim Ferriss tried, most would fail or at least have a lot less success. But some actions are more likely than others to generate self-improvement/success, and some actions seem like they would make a large difference (for example, “trying new things” or “asking for things”).
One (perhaps pessimistic) picture of the world could look like this:
Most people are going to be roughly as capable/successful as they are now forever, even if they try to change, unless good or bad luck intervenes
Some people who try to change will succeed, because they expose themselves to the possibility of good luck (e.g. by starting a risky project, asking for help with something, or giving themselves the chance to stumble upon a habit/routine that suits them very well)
A few people will succeed whether or not they try to change, because they won the trait lottery, but within this group, trying to change in certain ways will still be associated with greater success.
One of Ferriss’s stated goals is to look at groups of people who succeed at X, then find people within those groups who have been unexpectedly successful. A common interview question: “Who’s better at [THING] than they should be?” (For example, an athlete with an unusual body type, or a startup founder from an unusual background.) You can never take luck out of the equation completely, especially in the complex world of intellectual/business pursuits, but I think there’s some validity to the common actions Ferriss claims to have identified.