[wenc]

I actually changed my mind based on some simple ideas.

Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset, which talks about two mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. The idea is super simple, and you don't even need to read the book to know what it is. But just knowing that idea changed my entire motivation to do things, and now I believe that even if I'm not talented at something, I can get surprisingly far. (for instance, I'm a deep introvert, but I'm able to socialize for long periods of time and talk to strangers easily now, but only after I kept practicing for a period of 2 years -- I discovered it's possible to "bend" your introversion if you don't put yourself in a box and are willing to make an effort)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_growth_minds...

Arguably the science around fixed vs growth mindsets is fuzzy, but here's the other insight: sometimes you can blunder into the right by holding some vague ideas loosely (the rationalist crowd think that avoiding biases leads you to correct actions -- in real life I have found this to be false).

There are two kinds of rationality: epistemic rationality (believing the right things) and instrumental rationality (believing in ideas that work to get you the ends desired, even if the ideas themselves are not 100% rational).

In business and life, instrumental rationality is much more useful and works more of the time (this is why the LessWrong crowd isn’t good at stochastic domains like business because their models, though logical, are insufficient -- this is a realm where instrumental rationality leads to success). That's another idea that changed my life.

[dcl]

It's great you've found techniques that work for you and you are correct the science is fuzzy...

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism

> Timothy Bates, a psychology professor at the University of Edinburgh, has been trying for several years to replicate Dweck's findings, each time without success, and his colleagues haven't been able to either.[23]

The statistics in Dweck's papers also fail the GRIM test which is a potential indicator of fraud (fake/false statistical values).

[wenc]

So for me, it's all about instrumental rationality -- do the thing that works, not the thing that ought or ought not to work. It's important to put things into practice.

Social science is full of hypotheses that are difficult to measure scientifically. Some are straight out wrong.

Others are instrumentally rational -- they are correct enough of the time if done in the right context (which may not always arise, but when they do, you're golden). The latter are the stuff we need to try out. Growth vs fixed mindset is a heuristic -- this means it's not always right, but it's useful enough that when applied you can often see meaningful results.

[afpx]

You just blew my mind. Dweck's theories are used all over the corporate-sphere.

Here's the article (the wikipedia link 404d): https://web.archive.org/web/20210216192213/https://www.spect...

[digilypse]

This seems to be focused on general intelligence. I always assumed it was more about the ability to learn skills and abilities rather than increasing IQ.

[abacadaba]

yes the corporate-sphere is.. how to say.. very dumb.

[blowski]

Corporations are the aggregation of thousands of individual agendas being compromised semi-publicly as you watch. Having some scientific-sounding bullshit support your agenda often works.

[ulnarkressty]

How do you get past the feeling that nothing you do actually matters?

[thealchemistdev]

Congratulations. You drew the intelligence card. You're right. This is all like one big board game where everything eventually goes back into the box. Your money, possessions, accomplishments, productions, ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Back to the box. So pick a character class compatible with what you rolled and don't forget to have fun.

Oh, and head up; you're going to suffer anyway, so make sure to maximize how much of it is by your own choosing.

[_l4jh]

I give it value.

Value is just some human made up currency after all. "Is it worth the time?" etc.

If I were to approach life with the mindset "well everyone I know is going to die some day and humanity will die out so what's the point?" I'm not going to have a very positive outlook to life.

But I figure I'm here. I get 90 years or so if I am lucky. I might as well enjoy them while this combination of atoms is me.

[pegasus]

Doing nothing does that for me. Seriously. I'm regularly confronted with this feeling, and one thing I found over the years to consistently lift me out of that trough of meaninglessness is meditation. It boils down to "if nothing seems to matter, then just don't do anything". But I have to resist the temptation to just engage in some form of escapism and just sit there with that boredom. Initially it's hard, but after about half an hour to an hour the feeling of boredom and meaninglessness recedes, and my mind becomes more calm, focused and purposeful. It's as simple as that, at least for me.

[sifar]

There are multiple ways to look at this.

One is to stay small - the things you do matter in your individual sphere.You don't take care of your body, you die. You don't exercise your brain, it atrophies. You can increase this sphere to friends, families, community etc till you can see the effects and have feedback. Of course as in all system, those might be a bit delayed, so it helps to have some context.

Or you can go meta, why should things matter. This innate drive that we have to find meaning in all things is very confusing. Things simply are - accept them.

And if nothing actually matters at all - then you have a blank canvas to paint what you want.

[BonitaPersona]

I've began to see nihilism as a memetic virus or disease. Once you begin wandering outside the boundaries where you were raised, you almost invariably end up catching the nihils. Some people have few symptoms and can easily continue living meaningful lives. However, other people are heavily affected by them, and become abated and purposeless. We know the symptoms to the nihils.

Then, it's a matter of taking care of yourself and antibodies will begin to build.

I know you are asking about this second part, and I'm sorry I can't give you a straightforward answer (a vaccine, could be said).

The most I can be confident to say is that, as every memetic phenomena, it has a strong subjetive charge. I don't think it is 100% subjective, as humans have more in common that we'd like to admit. And, most likely, the best vaccines for your case are already suggested and proven countless times before. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Also, be wary of bullshitty alternatives to vaccines/medicine (superfluous and toxic feel-good coaching).

[taneq]

If nothing matters then there’s no reason not to.

[layer8]

Maybe by understanding that “mattering” is a subjective, internal thing, not an objective property in the world.

[wenc]

Can I ask where you're coming from with this question? (just want to understand the context before I answer)

[ulnarkressty]

It's something that inevitably pops in my head whenever I try to do something without an immediate benefit. Sometimes I try just for the hell of it to follow through, weeks or months. In the end it's just not fulfilling enough and I lose interest. After doing this for a while, now every time I see one of these 'better yourself' ideas I just think what's the point? But there has to be something else, since you and others swear that it somehow changed your life. Hence my question.

To the person talking about therapy, the above also applies to that.

[Mezzie]

To train your brain to handle being able to do things that aren't fulfilling. It's basically the neurological version of working out and keeps your willpower at a point where if you need to exercise it, you can. As an extreme, imagine someone who doesn't have the willpower to fast being confronted with medical tests that require it. If the 'exercise' is necessary for health, might as well pick exercises with long term benefits.

[thanatos519]

To understand that worthlessness is worthless leads to the Buddha.

-- from Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left For The East (1989)

[SanderNL]

Therapy and lots of it.

[MrPatan]

> In business and life, instrumental rationality is much more useful and works more of the time (this is why the LessWrong crowd isn’t good at stochastic domains like business because their models, though logical, are insufficient.

One of the ideas that helped me there comes actually from them: "Rationality wins". Which is the old: "If you're so smart why aren't you rich?".

Not easy to apply for anybody, it's much easier to be a smart loser.

[F-W-M]

> for instance, I'm a deep introvert, but I'm able to socialize for long periods of time and talk to strangers easily now, but only after I kept practicing for a period of 2 years -- I discovered it's possible to "bend" your introversion if you don't put yourself in a box and are willing to make an effort

How did you practice?

[wenc]

I went to Meetups and talked to strangers. I want to say I had a specific practice routine, but the fact is I just went out and did it.

At first it was awkward and tiring, but because I truly wanted to get better at being a conversationalist, I kept doing it. I picked up a few conversation starters like "what keeps you busy these days?" but a lot of it is just reading the person and coming up with the right questions. And there were definitely ups and downs but now I'm able to walk into a room and have an easy conversation with a stranger (most of the time).

It does help that I can read social cues very well, an ability without which would have made it much harder. But we are all dealt a different deck of cards, and the idea of growth mindset is not to achieve some specific goal (we all have limits), but knowing that it's possible to get a lot better from where we started. That change of mindset is huge -- I've often been surprised by how far I'm able to push myself by not allowing myself to be put in boxes.

Introversion is not a binary setting. It's a social energy tank. And I've discovered the size of that tank can grow with practice. I've also discovered that introversion and antisocial tendencies are orthogonal concepts. Many introverts who have learned to grow their tank can be very social people. Their tanks drain much slower than unpracticed introverts.

[taneq]

Get out of your box. Go to a foreign city, take public transport, wander around public places, and just talk to strangers.

[sharemywin]

I think the parent comment was pointing out ideas without habits(or you called it practice) won't really get you very far.

[wenc]

So habits are different from practice (I meant it in the sense of “application”, not so much in the sense of practicing the piano).

Habits refer to repetition, which implies you already know what to do so you’re just trying to get better at it. This works in closed domains where there is already a body of knowledge or pedagogy.

What I meant by practice is more about “applying” something — which means lots of experimentation to figure out what works. (In other words being a practitioner of ideas, rather than just a knower of them)

A lot of ideas that sound nice often fail when the rubber meets the road, which is why you have to subject them to the crucible of the real world through practice.

[metisto]

Great insight about different kinds of rationality! Any recommendations to dive deeper into instrumental rationality topic?

[wenc]

I came across the idea on this website (https://commoncog.com/start-here/), which I feel is far more "applied" than the Farnam Street blog (https://fs.blog/). The latter is a distillation of essentially rationalist type mental models that sound good but often don't work in real life without a specific context (context really matters in real life).

The specific part about rationality is here: https://commoncog.com/putting-mental-models-to-practice-part...

The author of Commoncog actually puts stuff into practice and allows reality be the teacher. He also talks about "concept instantiation" in ill-structured domains. Most of our learning in school is geared toward structured domains where things behave in known ways. Our education system is based around abstract and principles based thinking, where a + b = c. And to be fair, this kind of thinking works very well.... in structured domains.

However, when you get into unstructured domains with lots of higher order effects like say, business or the battlefield or love, those ideas no longer work. First principles reasoning no longer gets you success -- instead you actually have to do the opposite, which is to reason analogically and "instantiate concepts" by assembling context fragments, not principles (e.g. "this has been done before under this context, which is similar to my context in these ways but different in these ways"). That's another insight that changed how I reasoned about ill-structured domains (note: only ill-structured domains! First-principles reasoning still works really well in structured domains so don't make the mistake of abandoning it... only know when to switch to analogical reasoning when you're in the realm of the ill-structured)

https://commoncog.com/cognitive-flexibility-theory-the-rules...

[kirso]

Yep, its the only resource known to me that delves into these topics with a lot of ins & outs and its not just white & black business advice.

[calculated]

This Wikipedia article was great. Thank you very much for sharing it.