Search Ideas

Progress does not require a complete ranking of every live explanation. If B has a fatal flaw while no fatal flaw is currently known in A or C, the flaw in B is enough to reject B while A and C both remain live. There does not need to be one property that all three explanations possess to different degrees.

Take the same explanation in two possible realities. The explanation has the same content and the same HTV in both, but it can correspond to one reality and fail to correspond to the other. HTV alone therefore cannot determine correspondence.

An explanation can be harder to vary than a rival and still contain a fatal flaw of another kind. Unless every possible fatal flaw is itself a form of ETV, HTV cannot comprehensively determine which explanation should be rejected.

Explanation A surviving criticism does not establish that explanation A is objective progress over explanation B. But the claim that one fatal flaw in explanation B is enough to reject explanation B does not depend on explanation A being objective progress. Rejecting explanation B and establishing explanation A as objective progress are separate claims.

One fatal flaw in B is enough to reject B. A does not also need to possess some opposite property that makes it the winner.

https://youtu.be/boWSKR7OrUw?t=627&si=V4UOiSZym6i0ZhjO

From 10:27 onwards, this video goes over a variety of diet related elements that affect sleep. Might be useful.

Something simple you could try is heavily dimming your computer and other devices and using strong red filters for the last few hours before bed.

Not just the standard night shift features, which are often far too weak. I mean making the screen properly red so that almost all of the blue and green light is removed.

You might be surprised by how dim you can make your devices while still being able to use them fine. You just need to give your eyes a minute to adjust. I routinely have my iPhone and MacBook on their dimmest settings.

Dimming or reddening the room lighting could help too. (Following up on #5243.)

This doesn't rule out blue light from other sources disturbing your ability to wind down and fall asleep.

Becoming progressively less tired is compatible with physiological causes, such as those I mention in #5241.

Diet isn't ruled out just by comparing a large dinner with an empty stomach before bed.

You've said that you often put off eating and struggle to eat as much as you intend to. If you're regularly under-eating or going long stretches without food, that may be keeping adrenaline and cortisol elevated into the evening, making it harder to wind down, fall asleep and stay asleep.

That could also explain why you're physically tired but still mentally alert and able to keep working at night.

(Steel-manning the common sense view)

We assign implicit probabilities as an expression of our current state of knowledge.

"In the summer desert it will probably be sunny this afternoon" tends to come from some who has no reason to think it won't be sunny, but maybe hasn't investigated it enough to be confident. It roughly translates to "everything I know points to it being sunny this afternoon, but I don't have a grasp of all the factors involved, so I am allowing myself the slim possibility (lol) that I will be surprised".

Alternatively, you could make an option "allow revisions by other users" in the new idea form that is off by default.

5 Minute Creativity

TL;DR: When making a decision or working to solve a problem, spend 5 minutes (using a timer) just coming up with ideas. Managing your attention like this can supercharge your creativity.

A few days ago I was helping a friend flesh out an idea for an app that he is developing in his spare time. We came up with a new feature that we were both excited about, and we spent a few minutes going over how much more useful and fun the app was going to be with this new feature.

But in the spirit of philosopher Karl Popper, I asked my friend: "Is there anything wrong with this new feature idea?"

He spent about two seconds considering the question, before confidently answering "No!"

This took me by surprise. Somehow he had come to think that if a problem didn't jump out at him within the first two seconds of looking for problems, then for him the idea mustn't have any problems.*

I took some time later in the day to reflect on that moment. My first thought was about how irrational he was to have spent so little effort trying to poke holes in this new feature idea. After all, he was getting ready to spend hours of his valuable time bringing this new feature into reality. If he had just spent one minute thinking about what could be wrong with the new idea, and in that minute he discovered a fatal flaw in it, it might've saved him hundreds of minutes of wasted work over the next few weeks! Silly guy! Lucky he had me there to save him!

But then I thought about it some more, and realised that maybe I'm not actually that different to him. In many aspects of my daily life, I don't consciously give myself a meaningful amount of time to come up with new ideas or criticisms for the things I want to do. Many of my choices are kind of uncreative—I simply do the first thing that pops into my mind, in much the same way my friend decided there was nothing wrong with the new feature idea; because that was the first thing that popped into his mind.

I did some e-sleuthing around this thought and found On Creativity - The joys of 5 minute timers by Neel Nanda. It suggests literally using timers to make sure we spend meaningful time thinking about the things that matter. It might be worth reading if you identify at all with anything I have just said.

My favourite part of the article is this:

Set a 5 minute timer, and make a list of problems in your life - things that annoy you, things you want to work on, things that could be better. And then, go through that list, and cross off any you’re confident you’ve spent at least 5 minutes of focused time trying to solve. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have an embarrassingly long list left over. I’d be pretty curious about what happens if you try doing a 5 minute brainstorm for anything left.

I also found Nate Soares blogposts talking about using this approach (I’m guessing the Neel Nanda article was at least partly inspired by Nate Soares).

In 'Obvious advice', Nate Soares writes:

When you're about to make a big decision, pause, and ask yourself what obvious things a reasonable person would do before making this sort of decision. Would they spend a full five minutes (by the clock) brainstorming alternative options before settling on a decision? Would they consult with friends and advisors? Would they do some particular type of research?

Then, actually do the obvious things.

In 'Be a new homunculus', Nate Soares writes:

Notice the guilt, listen to the message it bears, and actually write down the behavioral pattern that you wish to change. Then spend five minutes (a full five minutes, by the clock) brainstorming ways that you might change the pattern and start retraining your mind.

I think if I dedicated 5 minutes each week to thinking about all the things I could do that week, I would come up with a lot of stuff. Some of those ideas would suck, but some of them would probably be a lot more useful and interesting than whatever I would’ve done otherwise that week if I hadn't spent 5 minutes exclusively thinking about it. I might even start using 5 minute timers each morning to decide what I want to do that day. Time to explore.

It's worth mentioning that 5 minutes is just a nice round number to get started with. Some problems merit more dedicated time, and others less. If you are considering using a smaller number of minutes, I urge you to keep in mind why it is you're doing this in the first place—you're intentionally giving yourself more time to think than you would give yourself naturally. This is about experimenting with a new thinking pattern, so consider allowing yourself to feel some amount of boredom or friction when you are first trying it, rather than cutting the 5 minutes shorter. (The boredom may also be a sign that the problem isn't worth 5 minutes of your time, in which case... find a different problem!)

Let me know what you think about all this. Going forward, I expect to be using timers for a lot more than just cooking!

*Needless to say, I suggested he spend a little longer thinking about it before he added the feature to his plans. In less than a couple minutes, he found three or four legit problems that would need to be addressed before the feature would merit inclusion in the project. Yay Popper!

Pretty close!

🦉 = wisdom / focus / attention

🐚 = the fractal, recursive aspects of life, particularly in epistemology / striving towards "inward infinities"

🕯️ = this / having "the lights on" (being sentient, as opposed to being a philosophical zombie or a mindless animal)

🚀 = progress / striving towards "outward infinities" / let's colonise the galaxy!

I realise I don't have any overtly moral emojis in that set. But maybe that is fine.

I think users will expect reposts to appear on their profile alongside their posts on the wall. That seems natural.

Suggestion: Allow reacts to be used in the activity feed.

That way I can quickly add colour to whatever has been happening recently on the site.

I like the thrust of the idea.

Like, when parents worry that their kids are having too much fun, and when socialists are suspicious of companies turning a profit… is that an expression of the same fear?

I believe these both stem from the same zero-sum worldview: that any gain anywhere must come at an equivalent cost somewhere else. Businesses making profit must be exploiting something or someone to do so. Children doing what is fun must come at the cost of their Proper Education or their dopamine receptors, etc.

To this sort of person, no good thing can ever be an unmitigated good thing.

5 Minute Creativity

TL;DR: When making a decision or working to solve a problem, spend 5 minutes (using a timer) just coming up with ideas. Managing your attention like this can supercharge your creativity.

A few days ago I was helping a friend flesh out an idea for an app that he is developing in his spare time. We came up with a new feature that we were both excited about, and we spent a few minutes going over how much more useful and fun the app was going to be with this new feature.

But in the spirit of philosopher Karl Popper, I asked my friend: "Is there anything wrong with this new feature idea?"

He spent about two seconds considering the question, before confidently answering "No!"

This took me by surprise. Somehow he had come to think that if a problem didn't jump out at him within the first two seconds of looking for problems, then for him the idea mustn't have any problems.*

I took some time later in the day to reflect on that moment. My first thought was about how irrational he was to have spent so little effort trying to poke holes in this new feature idea. After all, he was getting ready to spend hours of his valuable time bringing this new feature into reality. If he had just spent one minute thinking about what could be wrong with the new idea, and in that minute he discovered a fatal flaw in it, it might've saved him hundreds of minutes of wasted work over the next few weeks! Silly guy! Lucky he had me there to save him!

But then I thought about it some more, and realised that maybe I'm not actually that different to him. In many aspects of my daily life, I don't consciously give myself a meaningful amount of time to come up with new ideas or criticisms for the things I want to do. Many of my choices are kind of uncreative—I simply do the first thing that pops into my mind, in much the same way my friend decided there was nothing wrong with the new feature idea; because that was the first thing that popped into his mind.

I did some e-sleuthing around this thought and found On Creativity - The joys of 5 minute timers by Neel Nanda. It suggests literally using timers to make sure we spend meaningful time thinking about the things that matter. It might be worth reading if you identify at all with anything I have just said.

My favourite part of the article is this:

Set a 5 minute timer, and make a list of problems in your life - things that annoy you, things you want to work on, things that could be better. And then, go through that list, and cross off any you’re confident you’ve spent at least 5 minutes of focused time trying to solve. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have an embarrassingly long list left over. I’d be pretty curious about what happens if you try doing a 5 minute brainstorm for anything left.

I also found Nate Soares blogposts talking about using this approach (I’m guessing the Neel Nanda article was at least partly inspired by Nate Soares):

In 'Obvious advice', Nate Soares writes:

When you're about to make a big decision, pause, and ask yourself what obvious things a reasonable person would do before making this sort of decision. Would they spend a full five minutes (by the clock) brainstorming alternative options before settling on a decision? Would they consult with friends and advisors? Would they do some particular type of research?

Then, actually do the obvious things.

In 'Be a new homunculus', Nate Soares writes:

Notice the guilt, listen to the message it bears, and actually write down the behavioral pattern that you wish to change. Then spend five minutes (a full five minutes, by the clock) brainstorming ways that you might change the pattern and start retraining your mind.

I think if I dedicated 5 minutes each week to thinking about all the things I could do that week, I would come up with a lot of stuff. Some of those ideas would suck, but some of them would probably be a lot more useful and interesting than whatever I would’ve done otherwise that week if I didn’t spend 5 minutes exclusively thinking about it. I might even start using 5 minute timers each morning to decide what I want to do that day. Time to explore.

(It's worth mentioning that 5 minutes is just a nice round number to get started using this idea with. Some problems merit more dedicated time, and others less. But don't let impatience cause you to reduce the number of minutes you go with—the best ideas often come when we are getting bored or feeling a little friction. The point of this practice is to spend more time thinking about something than you would naturally.)

Let me know what you think about all this. Going forward, I expect to be using timers for a lot more than just cooking!

*Needless to say, I suggested he spend a little longer thinking about it before he added the feature to his plans. In less than a couple minutes, he found three or four legit problems that would need to be addressed before the feature would merit inclusion in the project. Yay Popper!

Why 5 minutes? That number is completely arbitrary.

Many people write for introspective purposes. I wonder how much of the value of that simply comes from the fact that they are dedicating time to thinking through their problems, when they otherwise might not. In this respect the writing itself might be secondary—it might be spending the time to figuring out what to write that bears fruit for a lot of people.

I would like to follow you but I don't want my notifications full of bug fix stuff 😅

If there was more granularity to the follow function I would use it a lot I think.

If I mute a discussion, does that stop me from getting notifications from the people I follow, when they interact with that discussion?

Search is site-wide. I have in mind a feed of what people are writing, that isn't in discussions.

I understand this might be too social-media-y for your taste, but I think it would be good to have. It doesn't need to be prominent. Discussions can remain the main focus.

A lot of policies you describe are not explained. A simple, high level explanation of the goals of each section would go a long way. One or two sentences each at least. I would like to know how you have arrived at your policy ideas, not just what they are.

For example: what is the purpose of the 1% tax? Why are you rolling back building regulations? What is the proper role of government in education? What is the goal of your immigration policy?

Predatory businesses can’t limit customers’ creativity without the consent of the customer, so these issues are inextricably bound.

It is not the business of the government to prevent people from severely limiting their own creativity.