#9 Typing speed: I think my own belief is that typing speed is probably less important than you appear to believe, but I care enough about it that I logged 53 minutes of typing practice on keybr this year (usually during moments where I’m otherwise not productive and just want to get “in flow” doing something repetitive), and I suspect I still can productively use another 3-5 hours of typing practice next year even if it trades off against deep work time (and presumably many more hours than that if it does not).
#10 Obvious questions. I suspect that while sometimes ignoring/not noticing “obvious questions/advice” etc is coincidental unforced errors, more often than not there is some form of motivated reasoning going on behind the scenes (eg because this story will invalidate a hypothesis I’m wedded to, because it involves unpleasant tradeoffs, because some beliefs are lower prestige, because it makes the work I do seem less important, etc). I think training myself carefully to notice these things has been helpful, though I suspect I still miss a lot of obvious stuff.
#11 Tiredness, focus, etc..I haven’t figured this out yet and am keen to learn from my coworkers and others! Right now I take a lot of caffeine and I suspect if I were more careful about optimization I should be cycling drugs over a weekly basis rather than taking the same one every day (especially a drug like caffeine that has tolerance and withdrawal symptoms).
Typing speed: Interesting! What is your typing speed?
Obvious questions: Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. It seems unlikely to be the case for me, but I haven’t tried to observe such a connection either. I observed the opposite tendency in me in the sense that I’m worried about being wrong and so probe all the ways in which I may be wrong a lot, which has had the unintended negative effect that I’m too likely to abandon old approaches in favor of ones I’ve heard of very freshly because for the latter I haven’t come up with as many counterarguments. I also find rehearsing stuff that I already believe to be yucky and boring in ways that rehearsing counterarguments is not. But of course I might be falling for both traps in different contexts.
Typing speed: Interesting! What is your typing speed?
Only 57.9 according to keybr. I suspect a) typing practice will be less helpful for me if my typing speed is higher (like David’s) and b) my current typing speed is below average for programmers (not sure about researchers).
(It’s probably relevant/bad that my default typing system on those typing test layouts (26 characters + space only uses about 5 fingers. I think I go up to 8 on a more (normal) paragraph like this one that also uses shift/return/slash/number pad. I think if I’m focused on systematic rather than incremental changes to my typing speed I’d try to figure out how to force myself to use all 10 fingers).
Obvious questions Hmm I think a lot of people have motivated reasoning of the form I describe, but I don’t know you well enough and I definitely don’t think all people are like this.
There is certainly a danger as well of being too contrarian or self-critical.
Have you tried calibration practice?
Maybe also make an explicit effort to write down key beliefs and numerical probabilities (or even just words for felt senses) to record and eventually correct for overupdating on new arguments/evidence (if this is indeed your issue).
Do you use the guided lessons of Keybr or a custom text? I think the guided lessons are geared toward your weaknesses, which probably leads to a lower speed than what you’d achieve with the average text.
my current typing speed is below average for programmers
That’s something where I’ve never felt bottlenecked by my typing speed. Learning to type blindly was very useful, though, because it gave me a lot more freedom with screen configurations. (And switching to a keyboard layout other than German, where most brackets are super hard to reach. I use a customized Colemak.)
Have you tried calibration practice?
Yeah, it’s on my list of things I want to practice more, but the few times I did some tests I was mostly well-calibrated already (with the exception of one probability level or what they’re called). There’s surely room for improvement, though. Maybe I’ll do worse if the questions are from an area that I think I know something about. ^^
Maybe I’m also too impressionable by people who speak with an air of confidence. I might be falling for some sort of typical mind fallacy and assume that when someone doesn’t use a lot of hedges, they must be so sure that they’re almost certain to be right, and then update strongly on that. But I’m not quite convinced by that theory either. That probably happens sometimes, but at other times I also overupdate on my own new ideas. I’m pretty sure I overupdate whenever people use guilt-inducing language, though.
#9 Typing speed: I think my own belief is that typing speed is probably less important than you appear to believe, but I care enough about it that I logged 53 minutes of typing practice on keybr this year (usually during moments where I’m otherwise not productive and just want to get “in flow” doing something repetitive), and I suspect I still can productively use another 3-5 hours of typing practice next year even if it trades off against deep work time (and presumably many more hours than that if it does not).
#10 Obvious questions. I suspect that while sometimes ignoring/not noticing “obvious questions/advice” etc is coincidental unforced errors, more often than not there is some form of motivated reasoning going on behind the scenes (eg because this story will invalidate a hypothesis I’m wedded to, because it involves unpleasant tradeoffs, because some beliefs are lower prestige, because it makes the work I do seem less important, etc). I think training myself carefully to notice these things has been helpful, though I suspect I still miss a lot of obvious stuff.
#11 Tiredness, focus, etc..I haven’t figured this out yet and am keen to learn from my coworkers and others! Right now I take a lot of caffeine and I suspect if I were more careful about optimization I should be cycling drugs over a weekly basis rather than taking the same one every day (especially a drug like caffeine that has tolerance and withdrawal symptoms).
Typing speed: Interesting! What is your typing speed?
Obvious questions: Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. It seems unlikely to be the case for me, but I haven’t tried to observe such a connection either. I observed the opposite tendency in me in the sense that I’m worried about being wrong and so probe all the ways in which I may be wrong a lot, which has had the unintended negative effect that I’m too likely to abandon old approaches in favor of ones I’ve heard of very freshly because for the latter I haven’t come up with as many counterarguments. I also find rehearsing stuff that I already believe to be yucky and boring in ways that rehearsing counterarguments is not. But of course I might be falling for both traps in different contexts.
Only 57.9 according to keybr. I suspect a) typing practice will be less helpful for me if my typing speed is higher (like David’s) and b) my current typing speed is below average for programmers (not sure about researchers).
(It’s probably relevant/bad that my default typing system on those typing test layouts (26 characters + space only uses about 5 fingers. I think I go up to 8 on a more (normal) paragraph like this one that also uses shift/return/slash/number pad. I think if I’m focused on systematic rather than incremental changes to my typing speed I’d try to figure out how to force myself to use all 10 fingers).
Obvious questions
Hmm I think a lot of people have motivated reasoning of the form I describe, but I don’t know you well enough and I definitely don’t think all people are like this.
There is certainly a danger as well of being too contrarian or self-critical.
Have you tried calibration practice?
Maybe also make an explicit effort to write down key beliefs and numerical probabilities (or even just words for felt senses) to record and eventually correct for overupdating on new arguments/evidence (if this is indeed your issue).
Do you use the guided lessons of Keybr or a custom text? I think the guided lessons are geared toward your weaknesses, which probably leads to a lower speed than what you’d achieve with the average text.
That’s something where I’ve never felt bottlenecked by my typing speed. Learning to type blindly was very useful, though, because it gave me a lot more freedom with screen configurations. (And switching to a keyboard layout other than German, where most brackets are super hard to reach. I use a customized Colemak.)
Yeah, it’s on my list of things I want to practice more, but the few times I did some tests I was mostly well-calibrated already (with the exception of one probability level or what they’re called). There’s surely room for improvement, though. Maybe I’ll do worse if the questions are from an area that I think I know something about. ^^
Maybe I’m also too impressionable by people who speak with an air of confidence. I might be falling for some sort of typical mind fallacy and assume that when someone doesn’t use a lot of hedges, they must be so sure that they’re almost certain to be right, and then update strongly on that. But I’m not quite convinced by that theory either. That probably happens sometimes, but at other times I also overupdate on my own new ideas. I’m pretty sure I overupdate whenever people use guilt-inducing language, though.
I filled in Brian Tomasik’s list of beliefs and values on big questions at one point. :-D