to the heavens
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
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
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
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
"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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Imagine two different software engineers in job interviews. Both are asked for an algorithm that solves some programming puzzle, such as "identify all palindromes in a string of characters." The first candidate, Alice, reflexively enters problem-solving mode upon hearing the problem. She pauses for a few seconds as
As far as I'm concerned, there are two seasons — summer and winter. Each one begins on an equinox (when daylight and darkness are balanced), and then waxes to a height (at the solstice) and then wanes into the next equinox. The foliage gets particularly interesting when passing
Yesterday, scores of people came together for the Bay Area Secular Solstice. The secular solstice is a winter holiday for the non-religious. It's an opportunity for people to come together and remember the times when every winter was a harsh trial, to appreciate everything that our ancestors built,