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Shadow Rebbe's avatar

Having a procedure menu sounds like something very useful to have when learning anything new (or living and dealing with life's problems)

Having a list of ~10 procedures with rough outlines of when they work would be a nice booster that I'd like. It would solve one of the hardest problems I have: How to start dealing with the problem. The amorphousness of that problem makes it high friction to even just sit down. Having a clear first step (look at the damn list) would help, even in cases where I'd decide I don't need the list.

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Tajwar Sangha's avatar

Thanks for engaging read as always David! When thinking about the differences between people, my mind got going on the function of lifestyles and principles in the context of the Manual. They probably work similar to how you describe experts as pattern-matching and reducing the search space of procedures but maybe slightly differently as well.

Thinking back on various points in my life, it seems like many of my procedures were not just suboptimal but actively bad — largely as a result of lifestyle issues. Imagine answers to questions like “How should I make ends meet this month?” Or “I need to pass this class that I’m so far behind on”.

Maybe the correct procedure, optimized for effort and self-perception & ability, was to sell drugs (which I’ve never done, to be clear lol) to all my classmates and to get both money and homework answers from them in exchange. It is A solution, but probably net negative for most everyone involved.

Principles, on the other hand, (often lacking in my youth) work very well to constrain the solution space and so even small ethical axioms can help one function like a more seasoned ethical expert. One of the old boons of pagan & religious community even — one need not be a priest etc etc.

My mind is trying to wriggle some analogous Gödel theorems into this context of principled decisions but not quite sure what that looks like haha…need some more noodling bike rides.

:)

Taj

P.s looking forward to hearing about these esoteric magics. Now that they’ve been teased, you’re almost obligated to share haha

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