The explicit lesson in this is that we should always be looking for self-improvements: skills to gain, fixes for our flaws, etc. There is a related lesson, a bit easier to apply, which I would like to highlight:
Every possible avenue for self-improvement that comes to our attention is important, important enough to take seriously, where "take seriously" means a minimum of five minutes of thought, concluding with a cost-benefit analysis, a firm decision to pursue, reject, or shelve it, and if the decision is to pursue it, a concrete next action. Skipping any one of these steps means losing experience points.
Today's post, Tsuyoku Naritai! (I Want To Become Stronger) was originally published on March 27, 2007. A summary (from the LW wiki):
This post is part of a series rerunning Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts so those interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Self-deception: Hypocrisy or Akrasia?, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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