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by justsomeguy3591 2526 days ago
- Following your curiosity and passion often leads to amazing things

- Sometimes you simply don't have enough information to make a super calculated decision and you have to trust your gut and just go for it

- Performing stack traces on my beliefs and following them down to the people & things I originally got them from has allowed me to clear some real garbage out of my mind
1 comments
Bootwizard 2526 days ago
I'm really interested in how that third one works. Can you elaborate on the process involved?
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justsomeguy3591 2525 days ago
Absolutely!

So this really began with reading through Eliezer Yudkowsky's post series on LessWrong about Fake Beliefs [0].

In summary: start with a thought/opinion/belief (the more recurring or obvious the better; thoughts about what I should or shouldn't do, beliefs about society, economics, politics, or biology). I then try to write out my understanding of that concept and try to dig at two questions (and I find typing this stuff out is much better than doing it in thought, but talking to someone works as well):

1. Where did I obtain this understanding of the world - was it my education, something in the media, friends, coworkers, family, childhood) and is it factually accurate? Generally this involves research and attempting to see how in line this understanding of the world is with evidence-based literature or people I trust.

2. Does this belief or understanding actually allow me to make falsifiable predictions about the future or the state of the world, or does it merely give me the feeling of doing that while occupying space in my brain? [1]

Personally, this involved facing and digging into assumptions I had about the world that were given to me before I had a chance to form my own judgement of their validity. Beliefs about morality, societal expectations, and sexuality were at the top of the list but I fixed plenty of my perceptions of economic policies and government regulation. I will say this is an ongoing process, one that I think will never actually end - but it's allowed me to become much more sure of who I am and what I base my decisions on.

[0] - https://www.lesswrong.com/s/7gRSERQZbqTuLX5re

[1] - https://www.lesswrong.com/s/7gRSERQZbqTuLX5re/p/a7n8GdKiAZRX...

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