On Finishing Projects

[Note: If this sounds like it would undermine your productivity, you’re probably right, and you should consider emulating Nate rather than me.]

***

I have very recently become more comfortable with not finishing projects.

I am happy about this.

1.

Last week, I felt embarrassed about not finishing a project. I’d set an intention, on January 1st, to "write at least one sentence of fiction every day this year", then announced that on Facebook. I created a document called “sentence a day”, and set out to make an entry for every single day of the year.

On the 19th, I started missing entries.

It took me a couple days to fully acknowledge the reason this was happening: I’d chosen the wrong method of “writing a sentence a day”.

I’d meant for this to be an MEA, and although "compose a sentence of fiction" is an MEA, "write that sentence down in a specific document" is, apparently, not. I was struggling to do it, and feeling conflict with the motivation for my intention. I’d hoped to keep fiction writing on my mind in a way that conserves effort.

The obvious solution was to compose a sentence every day, but not worry about where I wrote it down, or maybe even whether I wrote it down.

It was hard to let go of the original version of the project, though.

I imagined "Sentence A Day" staring back at me from my desktop with its pitiful 19 sentences, and I felt ashamed. I had enough comfort with not finishing projects to abandon the document, but not enough to do so without my brain putting up a fight.

2.

I first recognized I was doing something wrong in late December, when I noticed I was feeling embarrassed at the prospect of posting an end-of-year wrap-up about the Tortoise Skills Project.

I didn’t want to write the post, because the project didn't progress as I'd originally envisioned, and posting would draw attention to that.

I'd planned to end up with at least 12 skills trained. In reality, if we don't count minor skills I didn't write about, skills gained as side effects, or meta-level thought patterns established, I only trained five tortoise skills in 2015.

The particular flavor of embarrassment was familiar. Specifically, it reminded me of how I used to feel while in the middle of a book I didn't like. “I set out to read this book, so if I stop without completing it, it means I’m not strong enough to complete this book.”

Fortunately, Malcolm broke me of that particular habit when he wrote a post about why he focuses on starting books instead of on finishing them. "You won’t finish everything you start," he said, "but you’ll finish nothing you don’t."

I’ve since maintained a policy of breaking up with books as quickly as possible, and I’ve completed a lot more books as a result. I occasionally discard a book that would have gotten better, I’m sure, but the total number of books I read and enjoy has gone way up. Plus, I’ve learned things from a bunch of introductions that I never would have seen if I’d insisted on slogging through every chapter of the previous book before getting to the next one.

My feeling about the Tortoise Skills project was exactly that kind of embarrassment, even though I reflectively endorse my reasons for changing course. “I set out to train twelve skills, so if I haven’t trained twelve skills by the time I stop, it means I’m not strong enough to complete the project.”

Not something I felt like focusing my attention on for the whole time it would take to compose a post. Not something I felt like pointing out to everyone else, either.

3.

But that feeling of embarrassment was clearly a mistake. Or, rather, it resulted from a mistaken pattern of thought.

The Tortoise Skills Project has created immense value for me, for Eliezer, and for many of the people who have written to tell me how it’s helped them. This very post, in fact, began when multiple thought patterns that established themselves during tortoise training came together to highlight a mistake I was making, and began fixing it without my conscious attention.

Training those five skills is one of the most important things I’ve ever done. I much prefer the worlds where I learned all there was to learn from attacking five bottlenecks by the tortoise method, to the worlds where I never started the project because I wasn't sure I could finish it, or the worlds where I deleted all trace of the project the moment I "fell behind" in the hopes of pretending the whole thing never happened.

(Come to think of it, the Tortoise Skills Project arose from a book I choose not to complete, and I have definitely wasted some motion on feeling embarrassed for not completing it.)

And although I slowed down and changed course for reasons I endorse, the above would still be true even if I looked back on why the project petered out, and saw that my reasons were awful.

There are projects I've abandoned for dumb reasons. It’s easy to feel bad about that.

It hardly ever occurs to me, though, to feel bad about projects I never started. Or about resources I’ve wasted while continuing down a predictably suboptimal course, just so I can maintain that “I finish what I start”.

My emotions aside, the mistakes I’ve made out of a need for completion are objectively much worse than any mistaken failure to complete a project. If I’m afraid to start any project I might not complete, I complete fewer projects. Worse, I sacrifice all the experience I might have gained along the way.

4.

I guess it takes a lot of trust in the consistency of my rationality to let go of the need to finish projects.

The "need to finish things" is a way of strong-arming my future selves into doing what I think they should do. It's a sort of black mail: "Unless you finish my project for me, I will reveal you as weak."

It feels good to be finally approaching a point where I can turn to my future selves and say, "Here are the goals and values motivating me to begin this project. Right now, it's the best way forward I can see. Please protect what I care about when deciding your own way forward, by only doing things we’d all reflectively endorse. I won't hold it against you if you see better than me, and choose another way as a result. Not even if I've just announced my intention publicly."

It’s taken a lot of growth to get to this point, though. “The value of finishing projects" is clearly an instrument of cognitive first aid.

I think most people probably have a harder time with motivation or endurance than I do. I used to complete most of my term papers one or two months early, for example. So perhaps for most people, when they pick up a strong emotional commitment device, they start actually getting shit done for the first time ever.

But once you are stable in your ability to finish things, I wonder if non-attachment to completion is, in general, the next step down the same path.

Night Lights

Here’s a weird experience that happens to me every single day.

I used to be not so good at going to sleep. I’ve slowly made many small changes that have added up to going sleep fairly easily at around the same time every night: melatonin, bedtime rituals, red lighting on my devices and in my home, not drinking anything right before bed, no caffeine, and not using a lighted screen in bed.

The most recent addition, which has been working surprisingly well, is changing the order in which I turn off the lights in my bedroom.

I have two red lights in my room: an overhead light controlled by a switch near the door, and a bedside light controlled by a button near my bed.

My final bedtime ritual used to be this:

1. Turn on the bedside lamp,
2. turn off the overhead light,
3. grab a book,
4. lie down in bed,
5. and read till I feel like sleeping.

It worked pretty well, but would sometimes fail when the book was engrossing or I was feeling rebellious about having to go to sleep.

Then, I changed the order to this:

1. Grab a book,
2. turn off the overhead light,
3. lie down in bed,
4. turn on the bedside lamp,
5. and read till I feel like sleeping.

The re-ordering results in about five seconds where my room is completely dark. It stays that way until I push the button to turn on the bedside lamp, which I do while lying down in bed.

The thing is, I never actually turn on the bedside lamp.

I think I’ve done it, like, once, just to prove to myself that I could.

But it always happens that as soon as I’m lying down in bed with all the lights off, I no longer want to turn on the bedside lamp and read. It’s all dark and warm and comfortable. I just want to close my eyes and drift off. So I always sleep with my book beside me, but I never actually read it in bed.

What makes this a weird experience is the part right before I flip the switch by the door to turn off the overhead lamp.

Every single time, before I flip the switch, I want to read in bed. And every single time, after I flip the switch, I no longer want to read in bed.

It took a couple weeks for the strangeness to sink in, but eventually it became downright disturbing.

After maybe a month of this, it came to pass that while reaching for the light switch, I would consistently find myself thinking as vividly as possible about pleasant memories of reading in bed at night, my favorite things about the book I’m reading, and about how I really do have plenty of time before I actually need to be asleep.

Last night, I noticed that I was imagining all of those things as usual, but I was simultaneously feeling sort of hopeless. I think it’s probably for the best, overall, that I not read in bed at night, and as I reached for the switch, I was aware of that as well. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.

Yet, as I played through those pleasant memories, I did so with desperation, as though clutching at my last moments of desire before they were inevitably snatched away by the future.

Every night when I go to bed, I literally flip a switch to modify my preferences.

Verbal Processing: Take Two

Who wants to do some SCIENCE!?

Back in August, as part of my Tortoise Skills project, I briefly examined my experience of linguistic processing. (My hearing is fine, and the problem extends to reading while people are talking.) Habit installation as I was approaching it didn't seem to be the right tool for the job, so I moved on.

Yesterday, I paid close attention to my experience of a 4-person conversation in a coffee shop, and found that this remains one of my main obstacles - maybe the main obstacle - to comfortable socialization. So much of my processing power seems to go to translating the sounds people are making into coherent language that there's hardly anything left over for thought, speech, or empathy.

In fact, it occurs to me for the first time that my apparently "low empathy" could result almost entirely from this, given that I have no problem reading fiction.

I'd like to take another stab at this, targeting the most common types of face-to-face conversation and using whatever tools seem appropriate.

To get started, I'm going to need some help.

WHAT I NEED:

• 22 one-minute audio clips of someone talking. (Hundreds would be better if this happens to be trivial, since that would support a training program instead of just a test.) 10 should be of person 1 talking, and 12 should be of person 2. Both people should be male, and they should all be of equal audio quality. The topics should be something I'd have no trouble comprehending if I were reading the words instead of listening (so like not an advanced physics lecture).
• a transcript of two of the clips.
• some super basic mixing, just putting one clip on top of another and varying volumes
• people to grade me by listening to the clips and reading my summaries
• improvements to the design of this test

I can't do that stuff, 'cause I need to not know what's in the clips.

THE TEST:

• Trial 0: I'll read one of the transcripts, then immediately summarize it in writing from memory.
• Trial 1: I'll listen to the first clip, then immediately summarize what I just heard in writing.
• Trial 2: Same with clip 2, but with meaningless noise in the background.
• Trial 3: Clips 3 and 4 simultaneously, with 4 at lower volume. I'll try to only pay attention to 3.
• Trial 4: Clips 5 and 6 at the same volume, paying attention to 5.
• Trial 5: Clips 7 and 8, paying attention to 7 but with 8 at higher volume.
• Trial 6: Clips 9 and 10 at equal volume, paying attention to both at once, then summarizing each.

My summaries should be graded on detail and accuracy (separately), and I'll try to predict my scores in advance. Graders should compare to the raw clips without interference, and shouldn't know which trial they're grading.

Then I'll make some kind of training program, and take the test again (with different clips, of course) at the end.

Naturally, I'll blog about it all afterward.

So, is anybody out there excited by this idea? Interested in lending a hand with part or all of it? So interested that you want to take charge of adding more trials (like testing visual interference, music, other voices, more voices, etc.)? Want to try the test yourself when it's ready? Have clever ideas for training auditory processing? Know of a test just like this one that already exists and I should just take that instead?

Talk to me about any of these things.

Attunements

1 of 4

It was positive.

Sarah tossed the pregnancy test into the air and whooped. It clattered around the stall as she laughed, before coming to rest face-up on the floor in front of her.

The pink plus sign swam in her blurring vision. She imagined the embryo dividing in her abdomen, her hormones re-adjusting, her body making room for a new resident.

This was happening. This was her life now.

She hadn’t known she could be so frightened and happy at the same time.

Gulping, she tore a fist full of toilet paper from the roll and dabbed at her eyes. She didn’t have time to celebrate just now, nor to re-do her makeup. She needed to get into her leotard and warm up.

Tonight, she’d put on one hell of a show.

*

Telling Matt had been even better than finding out herself.

He’d been working for months, a little at a time, to prepare their house for an infant. He’d painted the nursery with a meadow-themed mural, rendering each blade of grass in adoring detail.

She loved him almost as much as she loved the dance.

He kissed her for a long time when he got the news, and then they talked for even longer. He was patient, trying to understand what she wanted before pushing her into anything. Was she absolutely certain about this? Did she understand the sacrifices she might have to make?

She was worried, of course. She understood that ballet would become a second priority for a long time, that her child would always come first.

But this had been her dream, all this time. In a couple years she would retire from the company, and open a studio close to home.

And then, she would teach her child to dance.

*

She was only five months in when the contractions started.

Matt rushed her to the hospital, but by the time they arrived, it was too late to stop the delivery. Sarah made it through, but the baby didn’t.

Matt held her as they both wept.

“We’ll try again,” he told her, after hours of silence.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

* * *

2 of 4

It was positive.

Sarah threw the pregnancy test against the wall. It clattered around the stall, before coming to rest face-up on the floor in front of her.

The pink plus sign she was staring at grew blurry.

Sniffing, she tore a square of toilet paper from the roll and dabbed at her eyes. She didn’t have time for grief, nor to re-do her makeup. She needed to get into her leotard and warm up.

She’d deal with this after the show.

*

Telling Matt had been even scarier than finding out herself.

He was three years younger than she was. He’d been training incessantly for the lead in La Bayadère this fall, and damned if he wouldn’t have a real shot at it come audition time.

She loved him almost as much as she loved the dance.

He’d taken it well, though, skipping straight through shock to begin weighing options. He was patient, trying to understand what she wanted before pushing her into anything.

No, she’d never felt called to be a mother. No, not even after she left the company. After that, she wanted to open her own studio and pour herself into teaching as she’d done with performance.

Yes, she understood she could still dance even as a mother.

But would she still want to?

In every sacrifice she’d made throughout life, dancing had won. Every time. With her priorities re-written to feature her children, what would win next time?

And who would be making that decision?

*

The paperwork for the adoption was almost complete on the day the contractions started. Matt held her hand.

When the long birth was over, the nurse bundled the infant in a powder blue blanket before letting it sleep on Sarah’s chest.

He scrunched up his face in a yawn, stretching his hands wide open. Sarah stroked his palm, and his tiny hand closed automatically around the tip of her finger.

“Matt,” Sarah whispered. Tears were pooling on the sweat-soaked pillow beneath her head. “Cancel the adoption. His name is Alex, and I’m keeping him.”

*

By the time he was three, Alex had a little sister.

They were both perfect. Sarah loved them more than anything in the universe. She could no longer imagine her life without them.

She only missed Matt sometimes.

She thought of dancing hardly at all.

* * *

3 of 4

It was positive.

Sarah threw the neophyte test against the wall. It clattered around the stall, before coming to rest face-up on the floor in front of her.

The green plus sign she was staring at grew blurry.

She imagined the spores swimming through her head, snipping this neural connection, strengthening that one.

Sniffing, she tore a square of toilet paper from the roll and dabbed at her eyes. She didn’t have time for grief, nor to re-do her makeup. She needed to get into her leotard and warm up.

She’d deal with this after the show.

*

Telling Matt had been even scarier than finding out herself.

He was three years younger than she was. He’d been training incessantly for the lead in La Bayadère this fall, and damned if he wouldn’t have a real shot at it come audition time - provided he avoided her spores.

She loved him almost as much as she loved the dance.

He’d taken it well, though, skipping straight through shock to begin weighing options. He was patient, trying to understand what she wanted before pushing her into anything.

Had she ever felt called to serve the Udall? Was she curious about learning from a transcendent consciousness?

No, she didn’t want to serve. No, not even after she left the company. After that, she wanted to open her own studio and pour herself into teaching as she’d done with performance.

Yes, she understood she could still dance even as a servant. But would she still want to?

In every sacrifice she’d made throughout life, dancing had won. Every time. With her priorities re-written by the spores, what would win next time?

And who would be making that decision?

*

She was still holding strong on the morning of inoculation.

It would hurt, she knew, but she took calming breaths as she trembled, playing her proudest moments in Carmen over and over in her head, straining to feel their meaning. Matt held her hand.

As the nurse drew bright orange liquid into a syringe, a member of the Udall Itself crawled in to oversee the procedure.

It flapped Its stabilizing fins at her, clicking Its beak warmly. Its skin glistened, and Sarah’s breath caught.

The vision of her twirling skirt wavered.

She imagined long feeding tentacles resting on the back of her head as she lay before a throne in full prostration.

“Matt,” Sarah whispered. Tears were pooling on the sweat-soaked pillow beneath her head. “Tell them to stop. Tell them I want to serve.”

*

Her Udall master was perfect. She loved It more than anything in the universe. Sarah could no longer imagine her life without It.

She only missed Matt sometimes.

She thought of dancing hardly at all.

* * *

4 of 4

It was positive.

Sarah tossed the neophyte test into the air and whooped. It clattered around the stall as she laughed, before coming to rest face-up on the floor in front of her.

The green plus sign swam in her blurring vision.

She imagined the spores swimming through her head, snipping this neural connection, strengthening that one.

This was happening. This was her life now.

She hadn’t known she could be so frightened and happy at the same time.

Gulping, she tore a fist full of toilet paper from the roll and dabbed at her eyes. She didn’t have time to celebrate just now, nor to re-do her makeup. She needed to get into her leotard and warm up.

Tonight, she’d put on one hell of a show.

*

Telling Matt had been even better than finding out herself.

He’d been working for months, a little at a time, to prepare their home for her transformation. What had once been a storage space was now a climate-controlled rebirthing chamber, stocked with all the nutrients and equipment a growing pupa might need - with room for two, just in case his own spores took hold sooner than expected.

She loved him almost as much as she loved the dance.

He kissed her for a long time when he got the news, and then they talked for even longer.

He was patient, trying to understand what she wanted before pushing her into anything. Had she considered a synthetic cocoon? Was she absolutely certain she wanted to go through with it?

Yes, she was sure. Yes, she understood it was irrevocable. Of course she was worried.

This is what it had all been for, though, all this time. She’d studied dance for years, and though she enjoyed performing for her fellow humans, her dream was to serve the Udall.

She was ready to dance for her new masters.

*

She was only five months in when the cocoon began to tear.

Matt rushed her to the hospital, but by the time they arrived, it was too late to stop the premature emergence. Sarah made it through, but the process had to be reversed. Her spores did not survive.

Matt held her as they both wept.

“We’ll try again,” he told her, after hours of silence.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “Not yet.”

When Your Left Arm Becomes A Chicken

1.

I was struck by this passage from Jennifer Khan's CFAR article.

One participant, Michael Gao — who claimed that, before he turned 18, he made $10 million running a Bitcoin mine but then lost it all in the Mt. Gox collapse — seemed appalled when I suggested that the experience might have led him to value things besides accomplishment, like happiness and human connection. The problem, he clarified, was not that he had been too ambitious but that he hadn’t been ambitious enough. "I want to augment the race," Gao told me earnestly, as we sat on the patio. "I want humanity to achieve great things. I want us to conquer death."

Descriptively, Jennifer's prediction is often right. Devoting a lot of resources to a goal and failing does often cause people to not just change tactics, to not just change goals, but to change (or at least re-prioritize) values.

The implications of changing values, whether on purpose or otherwise, has been on my mind a lot recently. It’s a creepy and fascinating phenomenon.

2.

I hazily remember a stretch in college when I was a straight A student. Not just “I had a 4.0”, but “I got an A on literally every graded paper, test, quiz, or assignment”.

The value of academic excellence, and especially of performing beyond the grading system's ability to measure, was a huge part of what I felt myself to be. Then came my first ever test in logic class.

I got a C.

My first reaction was devastation.

My second reaction was rationalization. Would it still count if I dropped the class? Of course it would. And P200 Introductory Logic is a requirement for a philosophy degree anyway.

I don’t have to get a philosophy degree…

What if logic counts as math? I already know I’m Bad At Math, and I don’t take math classes so I don’t have to fail math tests. Maybe this was a math test?

But I took this test anyway and thought I’d pass…

I was in a terribly uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance for a couple days. Academic excellence was nearly my ultimate criterion, the preference that won over any other preference in a trade off. I sacrificed a lot of important things in service of it: My leisure time, socialization, sleep, mental health, actually learning things instead of just jumping through academic hoops…

And suddenly, my standard of academic excellence seemed forever out of reach.

From the perspective of past me, I had a central value that looked unsatisfyable. In past me’s mind, having an unsatisfiable central value was some sort of unstable state that had to be corrected; I had no choice in the matter, the way a spinning coin has no choice but to come to rest. Therefore, either my belief that I’d lost my straight A status was wrong, or my value was wrong.

I was too intellectually honest to delude myself about the grade itself, even then. So, I took my failure as a lesson that academic excellence wasn’t so important after all, and I should care more about other things.

3.

If you’re like me, that story makes you feel confused.

On the one hand, the sane thing to do - the policy recommended by my reflective equilibrium - was not to pursue academic perfection at the cost of all else. Some other balance of attempted value satisfaction would have yielded higher utility, predictably. So it shouldn’t surprise me that I escaped a local maximum once I stopped doing that.

On the other hand, it’s not the case that I thought, “actually, I can harvest more utils total by sacrificing academic excellence for success in other things”. What I thought, and what actually happened, was that I valued academic excellence less than I used to.

“I can harvest more utils total by sacrificing academic excellence for success in other things” is a thought past me was simply incapable of having. Why is that? I think it’s because it would require believing my central value would not be satisfied.

Provided I must believe my central values will be satisfied, isn’t adjusting my values until they’re satisfiable a wise policy?

And that’s essentially what Jennifer was recommending to Gao, I think. “Your values were ridiculously hard to satisfy; didn’t learning that cause you to adjust your values?”

But I’m glad he didn’t. I wouldn’t have met him at that CFAR workshop, for one thing. But in general, the worlds in which Gao stops valuing things that prove difficult to attain seem sadder to me.

4.

Kierkegaard explores this weird bit of value theory by postulating three kinds of people.

Imagine three peasant men who are hopelessly in love with a princess who will never return their affections, and each of them is fully aware that she’s unattainable.

The first man, recognizing his value cannot be satisfied, abandons his love for the princess. “Such a love is foolishness,” he says. “The rich brewer's widow is a match fully as good and respectable.” He stops valuing the love of the princess, and goes looking for a more easily satisfied value. Kierkegaard calls this person an “aesthete”. (Fair warning, there might be a couple different kinds of people he calls “aesthete”, but I’m only talking about this version here.)

The second man, recognizing his value cannot be satisfied, goes right on loving the princess as much as he always did, and also believes he will get the princess. He believes an outright contradiction: His value will be satisfied, and his value cannot be satisfied. Kierkegaard calls this person the “Knight of Faith”.

The third man, recognizing his value cannot be satisfied, goes right on loving the princess as much as he always did, all the while believing her love is unattainable. This person Kierkegaard calls the “Knight of Infinite Resignation”.

These seem to me to cover the possibility space. Either you stop loving the princess, you do some weird doublethink about the princess, or you truly believe in your own doom.

I’m at least a little concerned by every option here.

The Knight of Faith will have a bad problem if he wants to make accurate predictions about the world, since his epistemology is about as broken as I know how to make a thing. And maybe he doesn’t care about making accurate predictions in order to control the world. But, like, I do.

The aesthete’s perspective sounds sort of reasonable at first, but then I think it through to its necessary conclusion. If my policy says to adjust my values so I prefer the rich brewer’s widow over the princess, then my policy also says to adjust my values so I prefer dirt to the rich brewer’s widow.

Truly is the Way easy for those with tautological utility functions. As the saying goes.

But some people bite this bullet. Here’s a passage from Chapter Five of the Zhuangzi (the Ziporyn translation):

Ziyu said, “How great is the Creator of Things, making me all tangled up like this!” For his chin was tucked into his navel, [and a bunch of other stuff was going wrong with his body due to illness]. But his mind was relaxed and unbothered. He hobbled over to the well to get a look at his reflection. “Wow!” he said. “The Creator of Things has really gone and tangled me up!”

Ziji said, “Do you dislike it?”

Ziyu said, “Not at all. What is there to dislike? Perhaps he will transform my left arm into a rooster; thereby I’ll be announcing the dawn. Perhaps he will transform my right arm into a crossbow pellet; thereby I’ll be seeking out an owl to roast. Perhaps he will transform my ass into wheels and my spirit into a horse; thereby I’ll be riding along - will I need any other vehicle? Anyway, getting it is a matter of the time coming, and losing it is just something else to follow along with. Content in the time and finding one’s place in the process of following along, joy and sorrow are unable to seep in. (…) But it has long been the case that mere beings cannot overpower Heaven. What is there for me to dislike about it?”

In other words, as Sheryl Crow put it, “It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got.” And sometimes, what you’ve got is a chicken for a left arm.

By my reading, the Zhuangzi prescribes either constantly adjusting your values so that they’re always perfectly satisfied by the current state of the world, or not having any values at all, thereby achieving a similar outcome. Most of the practices it references seem to be aimed at accomplishing that.

(I make no claims about whether the Zhuangzi prescribes the opposite as well.)

It’s sort of like wireheading, but it sidesteps the problem wherein your values might involve states of the world instead of just experiences.

5.

I can’t quite tell whether I have a principled objection to this perspective on value policy, though I sure as hell have an unprincipled one.

When I imagine the world where everyone is a perfect Taoist sage, with preferences that perfectly adapt to the state of the world, I feel super not ok with that; it makes me even more uncomfortable than thinking about orgasmia.

In orgasmia, I’m clear on why things are non-awesome: People are ultra happy all the time, but their values haven’t necessarily changed, so anybody who values things besides happiness will never get what they want. And I value people getting what they want.

The Taoist sages, unlike wireheaders, aren’t even happy! A Taoist sage’s mental state is whatever her mental state happen to be -

- which is presumably “extreme suffering”, right up until she dies of starvation. I mean, why would she eat? When she got hungry, she’d value her hunger, never seeking to “overpower Heaven” by trying to change how her stomach felt. If I recall correctly, there’s even a point somewhere in the Zhuangzi where a student asks a teacher precisely this question - Why don’t the sages starve to death? - and the teacher… never really answers. shrug

But! The Taoist sages happen to value exactly whatever mental state they’re in at any moment, since their mental states are part of the world. And they value whatever state the world is in at the moment, even if that happens to be “my left arm is a chicken”, or, “everyone’s starving to death”, or “there’s an asteroid headed toward Earth that will sterilize the entire planet”.

So at the very least, I feel like I can conclude this about the aesthete: Anyone who adjusts their values in response to finding them too hard to satisfy is only being reasonable if they want to be down with their left arm becoming a rooster.

6.

And that brings us to the Knight of Infinite Resignation.

(I’m probably with you about Continental philosophers over all, but you’ve got to admit, they have a flair for the dramatic.)

There was a recent post on Lesswrong in which Anna and Duncan talked about wielding the power of “despair”.

“Despair can be a key that unlocks whole swaths of the territory. When you’re ‘up,’ your current strategy is often weirdly entangled with your overall sense of resolve and commitment — we sometimes have a hard time critically and objectively evaluating parts C, D, and J because flaws in C, D, and J would threaten the whole edifice. But when you’re ‘down,’ the obviousness of your impending doom means that you can look critically at your past assumptions without having to defend anything.”

Before Eliezer fixed my Seasonal Affective Disorder by replacing our entire apartment with light bulbs, I spent a lot of time depressed. When I was depressed, my beliefs about whether my values could ever be satisfied were often wrong. I often believed, for instance, that I’d never again feel happy.

But even though I was wrong, the ease with which those thought floated through my mind is notable.

If it were the case that I’d never again be happy, and I encountered strong evidence of that, I’d have experienced no resistance at all to updating toward the truth, even though I valued happiness highly (despite being unable to remember what it felt like.)

The Knight of Infinite Resignation is not necessarily depressed, yet he can do a thing past me could not do when she got a C, and could only ever do from the depths of despair: He encounters evidence that his values cannot be satisfied, and he updates. Simple as that. No great spiritual battle, no rationalization, no resistance to seeing the world as it is. Just, “Oh, I guess I’m doomed, then.” And he goes on believing that, forever, unless contrary evidence convinces him otherwise.

The Knight of Infinite Resignation is epistemically stronger than most of us - that is, he has greater power to make accurate predictions that allow him to control the world. Maybe he feels despair in response to his revelation of doom - appropriate, I think - but he doesn’t need to be in despair to have the revelation in the first place.

Still, this Knight also disturbs me, in the limit.

Imagine you have exactly one value: the princess’s love. You find out she’ll never love you back no matter what. You don’t deceive yourself into believing she’ll somehow love you anyway, so you know your one and only value will never be satisfied.

Now do you want to be down with your left arm becoming a chicken?

7.

I strive to wield the power of despair without having to be depressed. I would like to be able to believe that I am doomed when I am doomed, else I’ll resist believing that I am in danger when doing so would let me prevent harm.

Also, I strive not to believe contradictions, or to rationalize, or to play other strange games with myself that let conflicting beliefs hide in separate corners of my mind.

Also also, I don’t want to be down with my left arm becoming a chicken, or with an asteroid destroying the Earth.

So, now what?

[ETA: Someone asked for clarification on my issue with the Knight of Infinite Resignation, since the Knight of IR seemed to them to be a correct thing to want to be. Here's an abstract summary: My issue with with Knight of IR is that if I built a person from scratch, I would not give them unsatisfiable values, from which I infer that I would prefer people not end up with unsatisfiable values. If I would prefer people not end up with unsatisfiable values, then (I think?) I must also prefer that people who end up with unsatisfiable values later end up without them. And if I'd prefer their values change by accident in that situation, I must also condone that people change their values on purpose if they develop an unsatisfiable value. But if I think people should change their values when they discover them to be unsatisfiable, then I think people should want to be Taoist sages. And I don't want people to be Taoist sages.]

[Edit edit: You know, I think I'm actually just wrong here, and people should be Potential Knights of Infinite Resignation. I guess a lot of the Sequences is basically a handbook on how to become a Potential Knight of Infinite Resignation. But I'm still confused about things involving changing values.]

Pantheon

Pantheon is a storytelling game. It's made to be played with friends as a role playing game, but can also be played alone as a writing exercise. By the end of it, you’ll have created the plot of an entire novel, to do with as you please.

I can’t seem to find the quote, but some author or other (maybe one of the Orsons?) said that a good plot is a combination of something ordinary and something extraordinary. The Hero’s Quest is one of the seven basic story plots [CN: That's a link to TV Tropes], as old and familiar as storytelling itself. In Pantheon, the ordinary comes from the tried and true story structure, while the extraordinary comes from the Vision cards, and from competition for control of the plot.

The Basic Idea

There are three roles for Pantheon players: The Hero, The Pantheon, and The Muse. Any number of players can form teams as The Hero and The Pantheon, but there is only one Muse.

The Muse’s goal is to inspire the Pantheon to send a worthy Hero on a quest so grand that it will outlive the gods themselves in song and legend.

The Pantheon’s goal is to torment the Hero so he gives them a good show, and reveals himself to be worthy of their attention.

The Hero mainly wants to survive all of this.

The Pantheon can contain any number of gods, each of whom may choose which human motivations they embody. There might be a God Of Love, who wants to pull the story toward romantic interests, or a God Of Chaos, who delights in giving the Hero particularly surreal experiences, and struggles against the Muse’s notion of an orderly plot.

The Hero can also be played by any number of people. He has an Inner Coalition, multiple values and interests making up his personality, all tugging his actions in different directions. Precisely what those are is determined in game, but once established, different players can represent different parts of the Hero.

For example, perhaps one player represents the Hero’s desire to stay close to home so he can care for his ailing mother, and tries to convince the rest of the Coalition to take safer actions less likely to get him killed. Another player responsible for the Hero’s preference utilitarianism pulls toward actions most likely to benefit the greatest number of people. A third is on the side of the Muse, an aesthetic part that wants nothing more than a glorious tale to tell to his grandchildren. The caretaker part and the aesthetic part will probably spend a lot of time in direct conflict, while the utilitarian part tries to pull the rope sideways.

Game Play

The Muse has much lighter responsibilities than Game Masters of most tabletop RPGs - once you've got the deck, there's no prep-work required - but she guides the players in two ways. One, she has a deck of Story Cards representing essential plot elements, like setting and conflict, which she presents in the right order to send game play through a solid story structure.

Two, she sends the players Visions, depicted on a second deck of Vision Cards. I have cards with interesting pictures from a game called Dixit, but a Taro deck would also work beautifully.

At the beginning of a round, the Muse looks at the next Story Card in her sequence, but doesn’t reveal it to the other players yet. She draws three Vision Cards, and chooses the one she most wants to send the players in this round. She plays her chosen Vision Card, and then sets a timer for thirty seconds (or, preferably, turns a very small hour glass).

Everyone who's active that round (the viewpoint characters, if you will) looks at the Vision card, not yet knowing what exactly it’s for, and spends thirty seconds free associating with the image. I imagine everyone shouting out whatever thoughts come to mind, but the players can also brainstorm by silently writing if they prefer.

Next, the Muse plays a Story Card. The players then use their inspirations from the Vision to fill in concrete details of the story they’re creating.

For example, suppose it’s the Pantheon’s round. The vision the Muse sent was of a rhinoceros covered in feathers, and she’s just played the Inciting Incident card. On the back of the Inciting Incident card are some questions: “How do the gods make their plans known to the Hero? What event acts as The Call To Adventure?” The Pantheon collaborates to answer these questions in a way that they somehow associate with a rhino covered in feathers. Having already established that the Hero’s Quest is to steal the Terrible Weapon from the Evil Emperor, maybe they decide that the Hero will learn of his quest when he happens to be on safari in the same place as the Emperor, sees him test his contraption on an innocent rhino, and recognizes how much destruction will inevitably ensue if the mad old man is allowed to wield such a powerful device.

Once the gods have exerted their mysterious influence, it is time for the Hero to respond. The Muse places Story Cards (usually preceded by a Vision card) that work as leading questions. Example: The Story Card “The Adventuring Party” asks the Hero, “Who will accompany you on your quest? Must you raise an army? Convince one loyal friend to join you? How do you do that?”

Gameplay progresses through chapters, beginning with “Prelude”, in which the Character and Setting are established, and ending with “Resolution”. This is what the game might look like halfway through Chapter Two.

You'll see there are three Vision cards on a single Story card at the end of Chapter One. Most rounds will just get one Vision card, but a few - Internal Coalition, in this case - get some other number. The appropriate number of Vision cards is written at the top right corner of each Story card.

Most chapters consist of four rounds. For example, “The Call” is the chapter in which the Pantheon designs the Hero’s Quest. It includes “Adversary”, “The Hero’s Goal”, “The Inciting Incident”, and “Or Else…” (which asks the gods what incentives they’ll offer if the Hero resists his call to adventure).

In some chapters, a single team plays four rounds back to back. In others, such as The First Challenge, the teams alternate, usually with the gods throwing things at the Hero and the Hero trying to bat them away or catch them to use as projectiles later. (Metaphorically speaking. Maybe.)

Here's the full list of chapters as they currently stand:

1. Prelude
2. The Call
3. The Quest
4. First Challenge
5. Second Challenge
6. Nightmare
7. Resolution
8. Ending

And here's all the Story Cards laid out in order. The cards on the far left are just chapter titles, and would be part of the game board if I had one. Each of the other cards represents a round.

During the Challenge and Resolution chapters, the round structure dissolves somewhat, with the Hero and Pantheon duking it out organically. The Muse presents Visions whenever she sees fit, and decides when the Hero has adequately overcome the Pantheon’s obstacles. If she’s not satisfied with the story, the chapter continues.

Divine Intervention

Finally, there is a Divine Intervention option. Any time the Hero's active, he can pray to the gods for a miracle. The gods can choose from two types of responses: “Yes, but…” and “No, and furthermore…”. The Muse, of course, inspires their answers with a Vision. The Hero never gets a straight “yes” when the gods answer his prayers - that would be bad story craft - but sometimes he can trade one problem for another (though of course he might just get extra problems on top of the one he hoped to dodge). Perhaps if he tries bargaining with the gods, they’ll respond to his prayers more favorably? It’s entirely up to the gods.

Your Turn

Here's a spreadsheet with the full list of Story Cards and everything the Muse needs to know to play them. Just write it all down on index cards, or print it out, and get yourself a Tarot deck or some clever alternative.

This version is for alpha testing, and can surely be dramatically improved. If you make up a deck and try this yourself, please do leave comments and let me know how it goes! Feel free to ask questions about the game here or through email (brienneyudkowsky@gmail.com).

May you live happily ever after.

CTAPS for Speedy Fiction, and WriterKata.com

I'm trying to learn to write quickly for NaNoWriMo.

I’ve always written very slowly. For NaNoWriMo, I’ll need to write 50,000 words in November. That’s an average of 1667 words per day. To me, that’s a lot of words.

Since I’ve started studying fiction (a month or two ago)*, I’ve become convinced that no matter how much theory I pack into my head, I’m not going to see much improvement until I’ve written a bunch. I don’t think this because of the standard writing advice, which claims competence in writing happens after a million words. I don’t buy that claim.**

But efficient practice requires fast feedback loops. One way or another, feedback loops in writing will consist of words. So to get fast feedback loops, I need to write words quickly. That’s not the same as writing a bunch of words, but it does result in a bunch of words.

I’ve tried to practice writing quickly in three ways: Daily free writing, one exercise a day from Story Starters, and one kata cycle a day from Writer Kata. I did free writing for about three months, Story Starters for about three weeks, and I’ve so far done Writers Kata for about a week.

The first two methods didn’t do much for my speed, but Writer Kata is working.

Every day, or almost every day, I perform one “kata cycle”. A kata cycle is a total of ten writing prompts.

1. The first four prompts ask you to write a sentence: “Write a sentence containing a metaphor describing a walk through a snow storm.”
2. The next three prompts ask you to write a paragraph: “Write a paragraph where an argument breaks out in an inappropriate place.”
3. Then there are two prompts for “sketches”, essentially tiny fictions with little or no plot that are all about description. “Write a sketch, containing dialogue, describing two women who find a baby in a basket next to the river.”
4. Finally, there’s a story prompt: “Write a story, containing mono no aware, where a Roman boy walks through a bloody battlefield somewhere in the middle East.”

You gain experience points for completing kata, and you can spend experience points to skip prompts you don’t like. The prompts change every day - they’re user-generated and then curated, and you can gain XP by creating prompts that get accepted - but the form is always the same. Four sentences, three paragraphs, two sketches, and a story. You can also gain XP by making your writing public.

A week ago, it took me three hours to complete a kata cycle. Three days ago, it took me one hour. Today, it took me twenty-eight minutes.

Why is this working?

First of all, there’s a warm up. By the time I’m actually writing a story, my mind’s already worked itself into a creative mode, and I’m not paralyzed by a blank sheet of paper. It’s a lot easier to write the first sentence when it’s the only sentence. So I start with pressure almost as low as in free writing, and only increase the pressure after establishing momentum.

Secondly, the existence of a constant form allows me to time myself meaningfully, and therefore to know whether I’m progressing and by how much.

I’ve tried timing simple word count while free writing or doing other writing exercises, but that doesn’t seem to work as well. By timing free writing, the thing I’m actually practicing is putting any kind of word whatsoever on the page. I have written whole paragraphs that say “dog dog dog…” just to keep my pen moving. Yes, it teaches me to get words on paper - and that’s proved somewhat useful - but the skill fails to transfer the moment it matters at all what the words are.

By timing other kinds of writing exercises, the thing I’m actually practicing is filling the paper with words related to that specific prompt. That sounds good at first, but there are two problems. One, I’m not practicing completing the prompt. In fact, I might be practicing blabbering on well past where the end of the story should have been, which may be actively counterproductive. Also, if I try to solve this by “completing as many exercises as possible in an hour” and my exercises vary a lot in form, then my exercise counts by day aren’t comparable.

Maybe on Monday I completed five exercises that were about as difficult as “describe ten different ways of killing someone with a helium balloon”, while on Tuesday I completed only one exercise, but the exercise was “write five sketches, each depicting a different character learning to ice skate for the first time”. Did I write faster on Monday, or on Tuesday? Writing speed isn't as straightforward as it may seem at first.

Timing simple word count isn’t the only way of measuring “how fast I write”, and I suspect it’s not the best way. I don’t know how many words I wrote in my last kata cycle, and I don’t care very much. I’m not exactly practicing writing words. I’m practicing writing sentences, paragraphs, sketches, and stories. I’m practicing imagining and then immediately articulating ten completely unrelated fictional circumstances as quickly as possible, with increasing amounts of story content as I progress through the cycle.

Timing simple word count trains brute speed, while kata cycles train both brute speed and creative agility. The thing that slows me down is something like, “I hold onto my current thought too tightly, and use my attention to perfect it instead of to capture it on paper and flow forward to the next thought.” When I’m fixated on one thought, quickly writing it down results in a few words, followed by a lot of staring at the page and thinking of other ways to arrange the words, or other ways to express the same thought. When I can have a fluid stream of thoughts, quickly writing each down as it happens results in a lot of words.

The third reason Writers Kata works is that there are fast feedback loops within individual kata. This is why I’ve been able to develop a specific mental motion that lets me write quickly. There’s a feeling of searching for exactly the right word to use, or exactly the right idea to have. If I realize I’ve just spent thirty seconds searching for exactly the right word to use in Sentence One, then if I feel the same pausing, searching, weighing sensation while writing Sentences Two, Three, or Four, I’ll match it up immediately with the mistake still hanging in short term memory.

So now I have a speed-writing Cognitive Trigger-Action Plan: If I notice a pausing, searching, weighing sensation while trying to write quickly, then I’ll write down whatever thought I’m having and run with it.

I've needed to add an extra CTAP to support the last that goes, “If I feel worried that the thing I wrote down doesn’t make sense, I’ll move on anyway.” Today I wrote the sentence, “My toes tingled with cold, and my boots bit the snow.” My boots bit the snow? I thought. What the hell is that? And then I noticed I was worrying that the thing I wrote made no sense, so I moved on.

I’ll need further speed-writing skills to complete a 50,000 word novel in a month, which I expect will involve running with ideas at the level of large story arc and character. Developing those is much of why I want to do NaNoWriMo in the first place. With any luck, the relevant mental motions will prove similar to the ones I’m learning from the kata cycles.

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*I haven't been blogging a lot because I've been studying fiction, because I'm tired of trying to teach things in the form of non-fiction, because the things I want to teach involve imagined experiences, which are best conveyed through fiction.

**It seems that how you practice matters at least as much as how much you practice, and I don’t expect that the people experiencing the “competence after a million words” phenomenon were practicing very well, since people practice poorly by default. It’s not going to take me a million words to become a competent fiction writer. Furthermore, given that I think more than ten percent of published novelists have written greater than ten novels worth of words in their lives, and I consider less than one in ten randomly selected novels to include “competent” writing, writing a million words is not sufficient for competence. So I’d be focused on more than just “writing a bunch of words”, even if a million words were my goal.