More seriously, this is a very powerful set of ideas and attitudes and I wish I had known them about 15 years earlier. (For contrast, during my school work experience I painted lines on country roads.)
You know my views about high schoolers being systematically underestimated and fully capable of greatness, so well done for bucking the trend. That said, there is such a thing as too much agency (e.g. starting a company without checking the competition or without knowing what the market fit is; e.g. starting a big impact-oriented project without looking to see if it’s been done).
It seems likely that summers spent reading whatever you feel like, and even years spent just becoming yourself, yields certain virtues and groundedness which full blown first-order life optimisation doesn’t. The annoying thing is that I can’t say which of the two any given person needs more of on the margin.
(See also Owen on overoptimisation or Elizabeth on being a potted plant.)
[On the title—you gotta have fun with these things haha]
Thanks Gavin!
Yes, the laws of equal and opposite advice defo apply here.
I also wonder whether this sort of thing becomes zero sum within a small enough environment (e.g. if everyone starts lowering their bar for asking for help, people will raise their bar for saying yes, because they will be inundated with requests). Could lead to competitor dynamics (discussed in the comments of this post), which seems unfortunate.
I really like the point of spending years ‘becoming yourself’. Like, I probs just want my younger siblings to chill out and spend a lot of time with their friends and doing stuff that feels hedonically good to them. I like the point about groundedness. I felt ungrounded and uncertain when I was first immersed in EA, and I think this could (?) have been less if I was older. I’m kinda unsure, and think it’s maybe inevitable to feel unsettled when you are introduced to and immersed in a very new culture/worldview in a short space of time.
Where is Elizabeth’s post on being a potted plant? Could you send it?
To avoid the “opposite advice” thing, maybe we can just talk about in absolute terms what are good amounts to ask for help?
My guess is that people should ask their friends/colleagues/acquaintances for help with things a few times a week, and ask senior people they don’t know for help with things a few times a year. This is based on a sense of “imagining everyone was doing this” and wondering where I want to turn the dial to. I’m interested if others have different takes about the ideal level.
I think if people are asking noticeably less than that they should be seriously asking themselves if they should be ramping it up. And if people are asking noticeably more they should be seriously asking themselves if they should be turning it down.
I think that people receiving requests should tend to look for signals that suggest that the person makes few/many requests, and be more inclined to be positive if they make few or more inclined to be negative if they make many—in order to try to get the overall incentive landscape right to encourage people to make about the right number of requests. Of course this is kind of hard to detect particularly if someone is cold emailing you … anyone have better ideas?
My guess is that people should ask their friends/colleagues/acquaintances for help with things a few times a week, and ask senior people they don’t know for help with things a few times a year. T
Is this a few times each person, or a few times total? It’s hard for me to tell because either seems slightly off to me.
I meant like maybe 3-15 times total (“few” was too ambiguous to be a good word choice).
Writing that out maybe I want to change it to 3-30 (the top end of which doesn’t feel quite like “a few”). And I can already feel how I should be giving more precise categories // how taking what I said literally will mean not doing enough asking in some important circumstances, even if I stand by my numbers in some important spiritual sense.
Anyway I’m super interested to get other people’s guesses about the right numbers here. (Perhaps with better categories.)
Sure that makes more sense to me. I was previously reading “few” as 2-4 times, and was thinking that’s way too few times to be asking for help from coworkers total in a week, but a bit too high to be asking (many) specific senior people for help each year.
I’m sure it’s context dependent and depends on size of favours. But I’m not sure it depends that much—and I’m worried that if we don’t discuss numbers it’s easy for people who are naturally disinclined to ask to think “oh I’m probably doing this enough already” (or people who are naturally inclined to do this a lot already to think “oh yeah I totally need to do that more”).
Maybe you could give a context where you think my numbers are badly off?
As an occasional antidote to forced-march
life: consider yourself as a homeostatic organism with a particular trajectory. Like a plant in a pot.
What does a plant need? Water, light, space, soil, nitrogen, pest defence, pollinators. What are the potted human equivalents? What would an environment which gave you this without striving look like? What do you need to become yourself?
(You can reshape a plant, like bonsai, but really not too much or you’ll kill it or stunt it.)
[Was this title written by an inner optimiser?]
More seriously, this is a very powerful set of ideas and attitudes and I wish I had known them about 15 years earlier. (For contrast, during my school work experience I painted lines on country roads.)
You know my views about high schoolers being systematically underestimated and fully capable of greatness, so well done for bucking the trend. That said, there is such a thing as too much agency (e.g. starting a company without checking the competition or without knowing what the market fit is; e.g. starting a big impact-oriented project without looking to see if it’s been done).
It seems likely that summers spent reading whatever you feel like, and even years spent just becoming yourself, yields certain virtues and groundedness which full blown first-order life optimisation doesn’t. The annoying thing is that I can’t say which of the two any given person needs more of on the margin.
(See also Owen on overoptimisation or Elizabeth on being a potted plant.)
[On the title—you gotta have fun with these things haha]
Thanks Gavin!
Yes, the laws of equal and opposite advice defo apply here.
I also wonder whether this sort of thing becomes zero sum within a small enough environment (e.g. if everyone starts lowering their bar for asking for help, people will raise their bar for saying yes, because they will be inundated with requests). Could lead to competitor dynamics (discussed in the comments of this post), which seems unfortunate.
I really like the point of spending years ‘becoming yourself’. Like, I probs just want my younger siblings to chill out and spend a lot of time with their friends and doing stuff that feels hedonically good to them. I like the point about groundedness. I felt ungrounded and uncertain when I was first immersed in EA, and I think this could (?) have been less if I was older. I’m kinda unsure, and think it’s maybe inevitable to feel unsettled when you are introduced to and immersed in a very new culture/worldview in a short space of time.
Where is Elizabeth’s post on being a potted plant? Could you send it?
To avoid the “opposite advice” thing, maybe we can just talk about in absolute terms what are good amounts to ask for help?
My guess is that people should ask their friends/colleagues/acquaintances for help with things a few times a week, and ask senior people they don’t know for help with things a few times a year. This is based on a sense of “imagining everyone was doing this” and wondering where I want to turn the dial to. I’m interested if others have different takes about the ideal level.
I think if people are asking noticeably less than that they should be seriously asking themselves if they should be ramping it up. And if people are asking noticeably more they should be seriously asking themselves if they should be turning it down.
I think that people receiving requests should tend to look for signals that suggest that the person makes few/many requests, and be more inclined to be positive if they make few or more inclined to be negative if they make many—in order to try to get the overall incentive landscape right to encourage people to make about the right number of requests. Of course this is kind of hard to detect particularly if someone is cold emailing you … anyone have better ideas?
Is this a few times each person, or a few times total? It’s hard for me to tell because either seems slightly off to me.
I meant like maybe 3-15 times total (“few” was too ambiguous to be a good word choice).
Writing that out maybe I want to change it to 3-30 (the top end of which doesn’t feel quite like “a few”). And I can already feel how I should be giving more precise categories // how taking what I said literally will mean not doing enough asking in some important circumstances, even if I stand by my numbers in some important spiritual sense.
Anyway I’m super interested to get other people’s guesses about the right numbers here. (Perhaps with better categories.)
Sure that makes more sense to me. I was previously reading “few” as 2-4 times, and was thinking that’s way too few times to be asking for help from coworkers total in a week, but a bit too high to be asking (many) specific senior people for help each year.
My guess is that it’s just very context dependent — I’m not sure how generalisable these sorts of numbers are.
It also seems like the size of favours would vary a ton and make it hard to give a helpful number.
I’m sure it’s context dependent and depends on size of favours. But I’m not sure it depends that much—and I’m worried that if we don’t discuss numbers it’s easy for people who are naturally disinclined to ask to think “oh I’m probably doing this enough already” (or people who are naturally inclined to do this a lot already to think “oh yeah I totally need to do that more”).
Maybe you could give a context where you think my numbers are badly off?
From memory:
As an occasional antidote to forced-march life: consider yourself as a homeostatic organism with a particular trajectory. Like a plant in a pot.
What does a plant need? Water, light, space, soil, nitrogen, pest defence, pollinators. What are the potted human equivalents? What would an environment which gave you this without striving look like? What do you need to become yourself?
(You can reshape a plant, like bonsai, but really not too much or you’ll kill it or stunt it.)