I'm going to second the recommendation of using psychometrics to further your self-awareness.
For narrowing things down beyond what's been turned up as typical human reactions to things, you can try personality tests like Myers-Briggs or Big Five.
As the Wikipedia articles discuss, Myers-Briggs doesn't enjoy a great reputation among psychologists. Nevertheless, the INTP profile describes me, and probably a lot of people here, with freaky accuracy.
The Big Five is a great recommendation. It is very well respected in psychology, and I find especially useful for understanding disagreements with others. There is a big difference between how intelligent people who are low and high in openness view the world. Furthermore, differences in Agreeableness are a big source of interpersonal conflict.
your intelligence types,
I would stay away from this one. Gardner's notion of multiple intelligences has theoretical problems and does not enjoy empirical support.
categorize your love language
For something scientifically validated on how people handle relationships, check out the concept of attachment style. Here's a quiz. I'm convinced that a lot of relationship problems are due to diff...
I find the factors for the big 5 a little odd in that they seem to be arranged in clear good/bad pairs, unlike Myers-Briggs which seems to be more arranged as 'not better, just different'. Maybe I'm suffering from some kind of bias but it seems like one would want to score highly on openness, conscientiousness, extroversion and agreeableness and low on neuroticism. They look more like D&D ability scores than alignments.
There's a major body of literature designed to figure out just what the hell happens inside our skulls: it's called psychology, and they have a rather impressive track record.
Of outstanding displays of confirmation bias, illusory correlation, observer-expectancy effect, and ignoring overwhelming experimental evidence?
Don't get me wrong, we know a lots about the human mind thanks to the skill and dedication of various cognitive scientists, but psychology's track record is still somewhat patchy.
"While you're at it, give some thought to your intelligence types, categorize your love language1 - anything that carves up person-space and puts you in a bit of it."
Hey Alicorn. I think what you're trying to do with luminosity is awesome, but I think it's important to note that it's very easy to just make up different ways of categorizing people (with no evidence), just like it's easy to make up your own school of psychology (http://lesswrong.com/lw/2j/schools_proliferating_without_evidence/). For example, while people certainly have different c...
Cross-posted from Seven Shiny Stories
1. Words
Maria likes compliments. She loves compliments. And when she doesn't get enough of them to suit her, she starts fishing, asking plaintive questions, making doe eyes to draw them out. It's starting to annoy people. Lately, instead of compliments, she's getting barbs and criticism and snappish remarks. It hurts - and it seems to hurt her more than it hurts others when they hear similar things. Maria wants to know what it is about her that would explain all of this. So she starts taking personality tests and...
I dug up some expert opinions on the validity of the Myers Briggs Personality Test (please suggest additional experts). The evidence I could find so far for its validity is weak:
Is the Myers-Briggs personality test meaningful?
As mattnewport already alluded to below, I think there's a strong possibility that the popularity of the test is due to the Barnum effect.
Perhaps you could argue that even if the test is not scientific, then it could still be useful for help exploring your personality. But then again, that benefit may be negated by encouraging beliefs...
The outside view has gotten a bit of a bad rap
Not in the context of "luminosity" or related topics, though; only when applied to certain kinds of futurism.
You may be planning to get to this later in the sequence, but if not: could you give examples of what it looks like to use outside view or psych or personality assessments as a jumping-off point? E.g., examples of the types of predictions one might make this way, or of the types of improvements you or others have found?
I'm having trouble picturing what it looks like to go through one's life and focus on data and prediction. If I have many concrete examples, they'll seed my brain so that the kinds of self-prediction you're recommending are easy or automatic to start in on.
Also, any tips on how to get friends/family to give useful and honest feedback?
The predictions you should make from personality assessments and the like about yourself should be fairly isomorphic to those you'd make about other people upon learning the same data. For instance, if I know someone with a particular Myers-Briggs result, and then I learn that another person has the same one, I will expect a certain level of similarity between the two people on that basis; I should make the same guess if I discover that I have the same Myers-Briggs score as someone I know. Tests themselves often supply predictions, although they're very vague and may require some precisification.
I'll use the love language idea because that's so easy to implement. There's five of them, and while I think there's a test available, it probably doesn't improve much on self-diagnosis. So, I look at the descriptions of the languages, conclude that I'm a "quality time" person because that fits best, and read what it says to expect from myself: Hmm, are distractions, postponed dates, or the failure to listen especially hurtful to me? And then I take off from there. (If I can't easily answer the question or refine my self-model relative to the provided suggestion, I assume th...
it helps to ask about specific situations ("Do you think I'm just tired?" "Was I over the line back there?") rather than general traits that feel more judgmental to discuss ("Am I a jerk?" "Do I use people?").
I found this suggestion extremely helpful for getting useful feedback. At first I began with asking general questions which not only felt judgmental to the friends I asked, but were also difficult to answer. Asking a very broad question made them draw a blank - nothing specific came to mind, only vague images...
I get my priors for my self-beliefs based on what's generally proven about human mental architecture. Your second sentence should be rewritten to indicate that you think we should take priors from somewhere beyond introspection.
I don't even think "priors" is meaningful as used. It's all just evidence to me. If there is some idiosyncratic personal prior belief in me, not due to evidence, I can either accept it (I do), or try to assume on faith that I'm like others except for this different prior, and adjust my prior until I match the conclusi...
I don't think my scores on many of these tests are stable throughout different situations. I remember taking a Meyers-Briggs self-test and I ended up placing myself in the dead center of one of the dimensions scale. (I can't remember which one.) I no longer fit neatly into the introverted/extroverted category. I used to act like an introvert, and I'm still comfortable with solitary activities, but I'm far more inclined to talk to strangers than most people I've met. (This is, at least in part, desperation.) I also like performing, usually don't get "stage fright", and am generally comfortable with being the center of attention.
I've generally found most of these types of tests to read very much like astrological personality descriptions or examples of cold reading. They're just too vague and imprecise to derive information from. They appear to me to be not even wrong. Incidentally these types of personality tests were not even mentioned during my psychology degree - I don't think the psychology department at my university deemed them worthy of serious discussion. Even Freud got more respect, if only out of historical interest and as a case study of how easy it is for people to get things wrong when studying the human mind.
Think of the tests like writing to an advice columnist. The idea is only ostensibly to get advice from the columnist and then obey it. Most people who write to them are just looking for something to react to. The columnist will say "do X", and then the reader will say either "X is exactly right! I should do X, just like the columnist says!" or "No way! That's completely wrong for me! I can't do X - I guess I just have to do Y, then!" But the same reactions would have been possible if Y had been recommended in the first place. The columnist's exact advice only provides a weak impetus towards the recommended action - mostly, it lets you change "decide on what to do" into "agree or rebel".
personality tests
Another test set is Gallup / Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 (http://www.strengthsfinder.com/113647/Homepage.aspx).
For me, the results were far more useful than the various "personality profiles" I have taken , sometimes at considerable cost to my employer.
"The CSF is an online measure of personal talent that identifies areas where an individual’s greatest potential for building strengths exists. ... The primary application of the CSF is as an evaluation that initiates a strengths-based development process in work and academ...
I don't really think anyone else can know what's going on inside my head except me. Perhaps I'm being a bit solipsistic here, but how could they? Empathy is more important than sympathy, so the only person I would trust to give me a reliable model of myself (better than I could model myself due to biases) would be someone whose already gone through that transformation. I think most people on LW are fairly intelligent people and so there will be very few people who are intelligent enough to develop that model.
"Where do you get your priors, when you start modeling yourself seriously instead of doing it by halfhearted intuition?"
Is the thought that here that you should try to find out what your priors ought to be by figuring out how you work psychologically? That seems odd. If you think some priors are special, why think they'd be the ones that you'd have in particular? If you think no priors are special, why bother trying to use your own?
Apart from the intrinsic interest of self-knowledge, I would have thought the point of making your psychological ...
Recite the Litany of Tarski a few times, if that helps: if you have a trait, you desire to believe that you have the trait. If you do not have a trait, you desire to believe that you do not have the trait.
On the other hand, the reason self-deception evolved was so that you could effectively signal and lie to others about your abilities. It might be a good idea to read up on only the positive traits that you might have.
In fact, if there ever was a place where you want to deliberately indulge in epistemic irrationality, this is probably it.
Sequence index: Living Luminously
Previously in sequence: You Are Likely To Be Eaten By A Grue
Next in sequence: The ABC's of Luminosity
You can start from psych studies, personality tests, and feedback from people you know when you're learning about yourself. Then you can throw out the stuff that sounds off, keep what sounds good, and move on.
You may find your understanding of this post significantly improved if you read the first story from Seven Shiny Stories.
Where do you get your priors, when you start modeling yourself seriously instead of doing it by halfhearted intuition?
Well, one thing's for sure: not with the caliber of introspection you're most likely starting with. If you've spent any time on this site at all, you know people are riddled with biases and mechanisms for self-deception that systematically confound us about who we are. ("I'm splendid and brilliant! The last five hundred times I did non-splendid non-brilliant things were outrageous flukes!") Humans suck at most things, and obeying the edict "Know thyself!" is not a special case.
The outside view has gotten a bit of a bad rap, but I'm going to defend it - as a jumping-off point, anyway - when I fill our luminosity toolbox. There's a major body of literature designed to figure out just what the hell happens inside our skulls: it's called psychology, and they have a rather impressive track record. For instance, learning about heuristics and biases may let you detect them in action in yourself. I can often tell when I'm about to be subject to the bystander effect ("There is someone sitting in the middle of the road. Should I call 911? I mean, she's sitting up and everything and there are non-alarmed people looking at her - but gosh, I probably don't look alarmed either..."), have made some progress in reducing the extent to which I generalize from one example ("How are you not all driven insane by the spatters of oil all over the stove?!"), and am suspicious when I think I might be above average in some way and have no hard data to back it up ("Now I can be confident that I am in fact good at this sort of problem: I answered all of these questions and most people can't, according to someone who has no motivation to lie!"). Now, even if you are a standard psych study subject, of course you aren't going to align with every psychological finding ever. They don't even align perfectly with each other. But - controlling for some huge, obvious factors, like if you have a mental illness - it's a good place to start.
For narrowing things down beyond what's been turned up as typical human reactions to things, you can try personality tests like Myers-Briggs or Big Five. These are not fantastically reliable sources. However, some of them have some ability to track with some parts of reality. Accordingly, saturate with all the test data you can stand. Filter it for what sounds right ("gosh, I guess I do tend to be rather bothered by things out of place in my environment, compared to others") and dump the rest ("huh? I'm not open to experience at all! I won't even try escargot!") - these are rough, first-approximation priors, not posteriors you should actually act on, and you can afford a clumsy process this early in the game. While you're at it, give some thought to your intelligence types, categorize your love language1 - anything that carves up person-space and puts you in a bit of it.
Additionally, if you have honest friends or relatives, you can ask for their help. Note that even honest ones will probably have a rosy picture of you: they can stand to be around you, so they probably aren't paying excruciatingly close attention to your flaws, and may exaggerate the importance of your virtues relative to a neutral observer's hypothetical opinion. They also aren't around you all the time, which will constrict the circumstances in which their model is tested and skew it towards whatever influence their own presence has on you. Their outside perspective is, however, still valuable.
(Tips on getting friends/family to provide feedback: I find musing aloud about myself in an obviously tentative manner to be fairly useful at eliciting some domain-specific input. Some of my friends I can ask point-blank, although it helps to ask about specific situations ("Do you think I'm just tired?" "Was I over the line back there?") rather than general traits that feel more judgmental to discuss ("Am I a jerk?" "Do I use people?"). When you communicate in text and keep logs, you can send people pastes of entire conversations (when this is permissible to your original interlocutor) and ask what your consultant thinks of that. If you do not remember some event, or are willing to pretend not to remember the event, then you can get whoever was with you at the time to recount it from their perspective - this process will automatically paint what you did during the event in the light of outside scrutiny.)
If during your prior-hunting something turns up that seems wrong to you, whether it's a whole test result or some specific supposed feature of people in a group that seems otherwise generally fitting, that's great! Now you can rule something out. Think: what makes the model wrong? When have you done something that falsified it? ("That one time last week" is more promising than "back in eighty-nine I think it might have been January".) What are the smallest things you could change to make it sit right? ("Change the word "rapid" to "meticulous" and that's me to a tee!") If it helps, take in the information you gather in small chunks. That way you can inspect them one at a time, instead of only holistically accepting or rejecting what a given test tells you.
If something sounds right to you, that's also great! Ask: what predictions does this idea let you make about your cognition and behavior? ("Should you happen to meet a tall, dark stranger, you will make rapid assumptions about his character based on his body language.") How could you test them, and refine the model? (Where do the tall, dark strangers hang out?) If you've behaved in ways inconsistent with this model in the past, what exceptions to the rule does that imply and how can you most concisely, Occam-esque-ly summarize them? ("That one tall, dark stranger was wearing a very cool t-shirt which occluded posture data.")
Nota bene: you may be tempted to throw out things because they sound bad ("I can't be a narcissist! That wouldn't be in keeping with the story I tell about myself!"), rather than because they sound wrong, and to keep things because they sound good ("ooh! I'm funny and smart!"), rather than because they sound right. Recite the Litany of Tarski a few times, if that helps: if you have a trait, you desire to believe that you have the trait. If you do not have a trait, you desire to believe that you do not have the trait. May you not become attached to beliefs you may not want. If you have bad features, knowing about them won't make them worse - and might let you fix, work around, or mitigate them. If you lack good features, deluding yourself about them won't make them appear - and might cost you opportunities to develop them for real. If you can't answer the questions "when have you done something that falsified this model?" or "list some examples of times when you've behaved in accordance with this model" - second guess. Try again. Think harder. You are not guaranteed to be right, and being right should be the aim here.
1It looks cheesy, but I've found it remarkably useful as a first-pass approximation of how to deal with people when I've gotten them to answer the question.