Problem: I'm depressed and bored. Covid took away dance/bjj and I need physical touch/play. I at least need something to be fixated on. Single with no roommates and not close to family. All my friends have disappeared into their relationships. My job isn't fulfilling and I'm not even sure if I need any more money to make it the rest of my life so idk why I'm still in it.
Retrospective: More useful than I thought it would be. Partially because it increased my resolve for the things I had kinda sorta considered now that I feel like I've finished considering my alternative options
I love so many of your ideas. Kink based dating apps. For me, 50 works okay but cant make up for too little social contact. 41 is great. 2 is good. I tried 1 but it took over my life.
I intentionally chose a pretty thorny problem because I think a lot of the blockage around it is just a lack of self-efficacy. I left it sort of loosely defined, but the general thrust was 'lessen the impact fibromyalgia has on my everyday functioning':
Fibromyalgia
I ended up posting my "solstice speech" babble, but last night I also tried "fix my sleep problems" babble, and am amused that I, too, considered
hire Sarah Constantin to fix it for me
Problem: I'm often having trouble falling asleep.
Nice list! Some other ideas: on 10: Consider Magnesium. (Citrate as opposed to Oxide. Avoid supplements that also have vitamin D) I've found it to relax me before bed. I take it in addition to some melatonin. re 7, 20, 41, the general idea of having a mental routine in bed: A mental habit I have before bed is to go over my day. Usually twice, once at a high level and then again trying to remember all the details (instead of thinking, "then I read some things on lw" try to remember all the posts in detail). I also highly recommend blue blight blocking glass...
problem: I don't do enough focused work in a day.
Time taken: 20 minutes
More things I thought of after reading Rafael Harth's response:
As an excercise in meta-babble, I first babbled for 5 mins to find problems I could solve in my life:
Problems I could think about:
Of these problems, I chose to think about becoming better coupled with the economy (in other words, have an income stream), due to the importance of the problem, because I think I can come up with some interesting solutions, and because I’ve been thinking about this problem for a while.
This challenge was a good bit faster for me than my previous babble challenge - it took me 38 mins + 4 seconds to do all 50, and I think it took just over 15 mins to do the first 30. I challenged myself to see how many I could come up with in 5 minute “chunks”, the first 3 chunks I came up with ~10 ideas (plus or minus one) in each 5 minute chunk, the last few chunks were slightly slower, but were still a good pace. For the fourth chunk, I probably would have gotten to 10, but I started laughing quite a bit after writing idea #37 (it was a little too on the nose…), so I only got 7 ideas in that round, and then it took me 2 more chunks (plus a little extra time after the second chunk) to finish it up
Problem I am trying to fix: I feel like I don't really succeed at doing deep work and having time to properly think about what I want LessWrong todo, and what I want to do in my life. Here are some ideas on how to fix that:
Problem: I have parts operating at different time scales. I want them to be able to work together.
check how orgs help people with different time horizons work together
spend 5 minutes befre a task investigating the short term rewards that doing it will get you, qualitative and quantitative
during a work sprint you can sit quietly or work, but nothing else
notice and slowly disentangle the violence inherent in doing the task
get an accountability buddy
make lists of things you'll be able to do once the thing is done
investigate the things you are held back from doing because the thing isn't done
notice the frustration of all the scaffolding and Just Do It instead
set a time box for work periods and stick to it religiously
treat an urge to work the same as an urge to sleep, something people who don't take seriously wind up with worse outcomes
investigate the work play distinction and dissolve it
see work as getting one over on others
make lists of mental moves involved, mental talk, mental image, sensory feeling. Bring in the elements that aren't present.
treat it as stuck energy and an integral part of spiritual advancement
notice the union of goals
get clearer on goals by figuring out where you want to be and why the different aspects of this feel at odds with each other
notice the hedonic saturation and unsatisfactoriness of most short term joys
notice the malaise of undone to do list items that hangs over and reduces the enjoyment of other things
sit with avoidance
treat any focused work as practice for all focused work. so doing taxes really does help you do more deep research work.
deliberate practice frame, noticing the micro movements that make deep work less engaging or frictional and practicing them until smooth
rewire core metaphors like motorcycle racing slow is smooth, smooth is fast
set mini time limits on things so that parts don't spin in forever feelings
figure out what blocks schedules/alarms you can respect
create a facebook pomodoro group or similar
treat things more like cultivation, changing tasks being just as good as 'taking a break' "a change is as good as a rest"
deity yoga for spiral power
notice the CT skill of including anything as an objection
experiment more with methylphenidate
track what happened directly before you feel strong motivation and do more of those things
reward yourself with good food
notice what bad things you are tolerating in order to ignore things you don't like
try more intermediate solutions without worry that they aren't permanent
clean your workspace and kon marie the relevant items
set a big reward for big project goals, spend up to a significant fraction of the value of the goal, like 10%
assume that despite the fact that everyone else does something a certain way that that way just isn't working for you and find a new way. Taboo actions. i.e. if you magically couldn't do it that way, how else would it get done?
'I wanna be the very best'
See my current health project as a sign of my commitment to investigating and improving energy as an upstream input into motivation. This babbling too. Look for other things to see as integrated with this.
Start collecting things you find motivating in a note and investigate why you find them motivating, then turn up the volume on those underlying factors
Print out a picture of the thing you want
Ask someone to be taught by you about a project in chunks as you complete those chunks yourself
Write a post on the structure of akrasia using what you learn by taking notes on distractions
Deity yoga for slowness, japanese art forms
Figure out who you admire and imagine them being proud. Figure out who you dislike and imagine them being angry that you are succeeding.
Notice negative motivations and invert them. Spend more time on this than you think you should.
Investigate conscientiousness in the academic literature and try on the mental moves of various sub compenents.
Notice what feels off about good mental moves (like using your left hand for things) and get past the initial activation a la exposure therapy.
Do actor training on someone with grit
Treat yourself like you've been imprisoned in this simulation by someone who would be shocked if you escaped quickly.
Bring your whole self to the table.
Clear a space and create a one page plan
Murphyjitsu
spend more time with people who have more regular work schedules
join a coworking space and then feel dumb for wasting money if I don't work
investigate the part that feels like certain time boxes are too short to get anything done in
Improving programming / machine learning skills
I have been working on this on and off for a couple of years as a potential career switch but akrasia is a big barrier so most of my suggestions are to combat this.
I found this a lot harder but I do think the practice with the previous exercises helped me on this one to search wider for solutions, especially as I got nearer the end. Some are things I've already done/started but could do more/better.
Create a fun exercise:
(The problem I have selected is not necessarily the most important one in my life; I confess I tried to pick one that would let me produce lots of answers, be reasonably relatable for others, and not leak more personal information than I am comfortable with.)
Problem: I don't have so much money that I feel able to retire with confidence that I won't run out. (I am still rather younger than the age at which most people retire, but I would like to be able to do it early, although I might choose to retire only partially in various ways.)
Solutions (I am including partial solutions that definitely don't solve the problem completely, and unlikely solutions that probably don't help at all but could, and stupid solutions that might solve the problem or at least help with it, but at other unacceptable costs):
I want to spend time with more meaningful things, therefore:
50 ways to simplify life/save time (some of these things solve the problem indirectly. For example going out of my comfort zone and making communicating routine results having it easier in future social situations etc.):
Time it took: When I remove the time I spend on writing something down, getting up and doing it and than coming back to delete the thing I wrote (sometimes, sometimes not) .... It took me less than... forty/fifty minutes?
2 and 4 are both things I implemented with great results.
Do you have a good link about mind palaces?
Problem: What speeches should Ray give or cause to happen at Solstice this year?
The problem I have and wish to solve is, of course, the accurséd Akrasia that stops me from working on AI safety.
Let's begin with the easy ones:
1 Stop doing this babble challenge early and go try to solve AI safety.
2 Stop doing this babble challenge early; at 11 pm, specifically, and immediately sleep, in order to be better able to solve AI safety tomorrow.
In fact generally sleep seems to be a problem, I spend 10 hours doing it every day (could be spent solving AI safety) and if I fall short I am tired. No good! So working on this instrumental goal.
3 Get blackout curtains to improve sleep quality
4 Get sleep mask to improve sleep quality
5 Get better mattress to improve sleep quality
6 Find a beverage with more caffeine to reduce the need for sleep
7 Order modafinil online to reduce the need for sleep
And heck while we're on the topic of stimulants
8 Order adderall online or from a friend to increase ability to focus
9 Look up good nootropics stacks to improve cognitive ability and hence ability to do AI safety
Now another constraint when doing AI safety is that I don't have a good shovel-ready list of things to try, and it's easy for me to get distracted if I can't just pick something from the task list
10 Check if complice solves this problem
11 Check if some ordinary getting-things-done (that I can stick into roam) solves this problem
12 Make a giant checklist and go down this list
13 Make a personal kanban board of things that would be nice for solving AI safety
And instrumentally useful for creating these task lists?
14 Ask friends who know about AI safety for things to do
15 Apophatically ask for suggestions for things to do via an entry on a list of 50 items for a lesswrong babble challenge
Anyway, I digress. I'm here to solve akrasia, not make a checklist. Unless I need more items on this list, in which case I will go back to checklist construction. Is this pruning? Never mind. Back to the point:
16 Set up some desktop shortcut macro thing in order to automatically start pomodoros when I open my laptop
17 Track time spent doing things useful to AI safety on a spreadsheet
18 Hey, I said "laptop"! Get a better mouse to make using the laptop more fun so I'm more likely to do hard things when using it
19 Get a better desk for more space for notes and to require less expensive shifting into/out of AI safety mode
20 On notes, use the index cards I have to make a proper zettelkasten as a cognitive aid
(Does this solve akrasia? Well, if I have better cognitive aids, then doing cognitively expensive things is easier, so I'm less likely to fail even with my current levels of willpower)
21 Start doing accountability things like promising to review a paper every X time period
22 I said levels of willpower - Google for interventions that increase conscientiousness (there's gotta be some dodgy big-5 based things) and do those?
Back to the top of the tree
23 Quit my job because it's using up energy that I could be using to do AI safety
24 Instead of doing my job, pretend to do my job while actually doing AI safety
25 Set up an AI safety screen on work laptop so it's easy to switch over to doing AI safety during breaks or lunches
Hey, I said lunch
26 Use nutritionally complete meal replacements to save time/willpower that would be spent on food preparation
27 Use nutritionally complete meal replacements to ensure that nutrient intake keeps me in top physical form
28 Exercise (this improves everything, apparently) by running on a treadmill
29 By lifting weights
30 By jogging in a large circle
31 Become a monk and live an austere lifestyle without the distractions of rich food, wine, and lust
32 Become an anti-monk and live a rich lifestyle to ensure that no willpower is wasted on distractions
33 Specifically in vice use nicotine as a performance enhancing stimulant by smoking. Back to stimulants again I guess
34 ... or by using nicotine patches or gum or something
35 By using nicotine only if I do AI safety things, in order to develop an addiction to AI safety
Hey, develop an addiction to doing AI safety! People go to serious lengths for addictions, so why not gate it on math?
36 Do so with something very addictive, like opioids
37 Use electric shocks to do classical conditioning
etc. there was a short sci-fi story about this kind of thing let me see if I can find it. Hey, actually, since I said sci-fi, adn this is a babble challenge:
38 Promise very hard to time travel back to this exact point in time, meet future self, recieve advice
(They're not here :( Oh well) Back on that akrasia-solving:
39 Make up a far-future person who I am specifically working to save (they're called Dub See Wun). Get invested in their internal life (they want to make their own star!). Feel an emotional connection to them. I'm doing it for them!
40 Specifically put up a "do it for them" poster modelled off the one in the Simpsons
41 DuckDuckGo "how to beat akrasia" and do the top suggestion
42 Adopt strategic probably false beliefs (the world will end in 1 year!! :0) in order to encourage a more aggressive search for strategies
"Aggressive search for strategies" is the virtue that the Sequences call "actually trying", so in the Sequences-sphere
43 Go to a CFAR workshop, which I heard might be kind of useful towards this sort of thing
44 Or just read the CFAR booklet and apply the wisdom found in there
45 Or some sequence on Lesswrong with exercises that applies some CFARy wisdom
Of course all this willpower boosting and efficiency and stuff wouldn't help if I was just doing the wrong thing faster (like that one Shen comic, you know the one). So:
46 Consider how much of what I think is working on AI safety is actually just self-actualisy math/CS stuff, throw that out, and actually try to solve the problem
47 Deliberately create and encourage a subagent in my mind that wants to do AI safety (call em Dub See Wun)
48 Adopt strategic infohazards in order to encourage a more focused and aggressive search for strategies
49 Post a lot about AI safety in public forums like Lesswrong so that I feel compelled to do AI safety in my private life in order to maintain the illusion that I'm some kind of AI-safety-doing-person
50 Stop doing this babble challenge at the correct time, and continue to do AI safety or sleep as in 1) or 2). Hey, this one seems good. Think I might try it now!
Problem: I have few friends and am becoming depressed. I have a few roommates but they already have full social lives to fulfil them. The zoom calls at work are not sending my brain signals that I am an accepted member of the clan. Having been isolated like this before, I know I will become increasingly depressed until all my outputs suffer.
Write "Talk to me about anything" on a whiteboard and sit in a public park. Wait for people to approach and talk to me.
Join a crossfit group. People are always talking about it so it must be fulfillling. It's expensive but worth.
Join an ultimate frisbee team. They are dormant atm but some people play pickup on weekends.
Talk to EVERY PERSON at the frisbee pickup. Invite them out for dinner on a Monday night. Someone must be lonely too.
Text my roommates all the time asking how their days were. Try and add enough value to be let in.
Download grindr. Say on my profile "not gay but I need friends, invite me out with your crew"
Download coffee meets donut
Borrow a fancy camera and talk Bokeh effect pictures for my bumble, so I go on more dates -> more social contact
Start running every saturday morning. Crisscross the city. If I see a pack of runners, seemlessly integrate with them.
Adopt a dog.
Try to network into other programs at my university. Maybe make friends in the economics deparment.
Hang out in bookstores and look busy. Start conversations with people about books.
Every evening do my studies in a random outdoor cafe. Bring the "talk to me" sign.
Make a friend with a dog. Over to walk their dog for them. Use the dog to make friends with other dog owners. Walk their dogs. Repeat.
Join the local radical libertarians. Maybe they hang out in person???
There are no volunteer opportunities in my city, but in other cities that would be a great way to make friends.
Go kayaking alone. Wait around on rocks and try to make friends on them like a mermaid.
Go on a long distance bike trip. Try and track down other bikers and befriend them.
Make way more eye contact in other interactions.
On the weekends groups of young men stand around outside a pizza place. Every weekend night try to make friends with at least one of them.
Print out signs that say "friends wanted" and have my phone number around town.
Get in stupid arguments on the internet so I feel some interaction.
Move to China.
Move to a different city that is more open.
Spend my weekends across the state lines in a more open area.
Sit on the benches in my university with the "talk to me about anything" sign.
Run around and look for stairs that people run up and down. Become one of the stairs running people. Friends. Profit.
Bring brownies to the frisbee games. People feel indebted to me. They become my friend.
Hang out in front of the White House and give directions to tourists for the social interaction.
Sign up for any and all events I can find. Show up alone. Talk to at least one person per venue.
Try never mentioning to other people that I'm lonely for a week. If they don't know, they might hang out with me.
Learn a street performance skill like breakdancing. Perform in parks.
Do all of my reading in public parks, so that I have a chance to meet someone.
Give up and become depressed.
Move to a rural area where people don't social distance.
Spend an entire day outside, more time = more opportunities for friendmaking. Stay out of my room 12 hours a day.
Go to popular brunch places. Sit outside with a sign that says "new in town, want to get brunch?"
Go to parks with my frisbee every day before dark. Throw the frisbee for myself. Invite local parkgoers to join.
Go to the local basketball court. I'm terrible but could make friends.
Call all the local churches. Ask if they have in person services. Make friends there.
Call all the local mosques. Go to the post-mosque tea-drinking sessions (I speak Arabic).
Become a sex worker.
Buy a car and drive uber.
Figure out which TV shows are popular right now. Watch them all. Bring up in conversation.
Start a bookclub. Put up signs about my bookclub all over the neighbourhood. Pick fun books to read.
Get a lobotomy.
Buy a cat. Take the cat on walks???
Build a boat out of driftwood on the shore of the potomac.
Start a serious drug habit. Move into a house with other drug users. Make friends.
Learn to unicycle. Become that guy who unicycles around town (or pogo stick or skateboard).
Take up rock climbing.
Wow that does feel better.
50 Ways of improving my financial situation:
1) Look for a higher paying job
2) Look for a bank account that pays a higher rate of interest
3) Put money in an ISA
4) Research undervalued shares, and then buy some
5) Search for treasure
6) Buy cheaper food
7) Go on fewer holidays
8) Buy a lottery ticket
9) Cancel the TV license
10) Move to a property where you have to pay less council tax
11) Be more careful at turning off electrical appliances when you aren't using them to reduce the electricity bill.
12) Wash less often to reduce the water bill.
13) Stop using my smart phone.
14) Sign up to a site that pays you for doing surveys
15) Join Amazons Mechanical Turk
16) Sell things I no longer need on an online website
17) Find somewhere to live with a lower rent
18) Turn the heating down
19) Try and find an electricity provider with lower prices
20) Try and find and internet service provider with lower charges
21) Buy more things second hand
22) Look for a part time job in the weekends/evenings
23) Put more money into the pension
24) Wait for sales before buying things, if there purchase can be delayed
25) Found a company, and hope it is a big success
26) Look for a self help book on getting rich
27) Do training for a profession where the salaries are higher
28) Take any overtime opportunities if they are offered at work
29) Go on fewer day trips
30) Try and get more done during the working day in the hope of getting a bigger bonus
31) Be careful to use any vouchers you get at the supermarket
32) Hunt around for any discount codes you can use with on line retailers
33) Move the bank account to one that pays you an incentive for switching
34) Do more research to find the lowest possible price before buying something
35) Move to a country with a lower tax rate
36) Recycle old ink cartridges for cash
37) Ask for a pay rise
38) Take advantage of refer a friend offers
39) Use split ticketing more often to cut the amount spent on rail tickets
40) Write a book and try to get it published
41) Enter competitions to win things instead of buying them
42) Take part in medical drug trials for money
43) Make a horrible piece of modern art and enter it for the Turner prize to win a lot of money
44) Don't visit the family as often
45) Invest in companies via brokers that charge lower fees
46) Ensure my savings accounts that pay the highest amount of interest always have the maximum amount of money in them
47) Take advantage of zero percent credit card deals to delay paying them off. I will gain a bit more money by keeping it in the bank for longer.
48) Try and find a company that will insure my possessions for less.
49) Learn how to repair clothes instead of buying new ones.
50) Create a website and get money from hosting adverts
The intutive way of reading the question as (trying to) solve an actual problem seems very hard for me. (Challenge factor real) (Challenge factor personal). I get to essentially pick what I would try to solve and I feel overwhelmed by that (Challenge factor choice paralysis).
I still feel like sticking to a timelimit is helpful and actually working your brain is helpful. However I am going to massively chicken on this one. I don't f grow stronger if after putting shoes on and then practising trying shoelaces I am suddenly thrust into a marathon.
Faced with the sandbox of the universe, what one should do? (This problem is still somewhat relevant as depression and meaninglessness are actual rather than hypothetical issues)
(The facing the question phase seems to have already practised the babble skill as I have circumnavigated areas that feel suppressive into an area where I geniunely feel I can accomplish something (yes,but... rather than no))
~ 50 minutes
Question too nebolous to do safeties.
I felt that I got around limitations in thinking. The problem framing started to shift a lot around 32. It didn't seem that I actually shifted question. I feel like getting the first stuff out of the way was helping in the process. There seems to be some meta-blockage that was in fact cleared by "just doing it" and what the "it" was seemed nebolous but it also seemed helpful it was allowed to be nebolous. It allowed me to stay true also to the minority thoughts.
Problem: I want to keep learning, growing and levelling up in various skills. Become a better musician, coder, designer, leader, and so forth. I want to avoid plateauing in domains I care about.
I'm afraid I find the challenge statement inconsistent and confusing.
First you say "hurled into existence, facing an empty universe". Then you talk about things like uncomfortable chairs and math olympiad scores. And then you say "in your life". Are you looking for each participant to identify a specific problem they actually face? Or one a hypothetical person might face? Or one someone in an otherwise empty universe might face?
I think you intend the first of those. But the rhetorical flourishes around the challenge all seem to point in other directions, so I want to check.
Thanks. (I see that once again I have made an answer where I intended to make a comment. LW devs, if any are reading this: maybe consider whether there's a way to make this mistake harder to make? Though it's possible that I'm just uniquely careless and no one else has the same problem.)
I found it confusing as well (but decided it had to be the first since it wouldn't otherwise be called 'applied babble').
This week we’re trying something new: applied babble. I haven’t tried it before, so am very curious to see what will happen.
By my count, this is the second applied babble challenge jacobjacob has given us. But I guess not all of us yearn for the stars to the same degree I do.
Back again. Let’s become stronger.
This week’s challenge:
Years ago you found yourself hurled into existence, facing a vast universe with a mind capable of the Art of Rationality, reading a LessWrong post at this very moment.
Yet in your life there is a particular problem. I don’t know what it is. Maybe your chair is uncomfortable; you’re not getting as high scores as you want at the Math Olympiad; or you’ve got insomnia.
Whatever it is, pick one specific problem in your life.
Find a way to solve it.
You have 1 hour to come up with 50 ways.
(But no need to implement the solutions within 1 hour!)
Here are the champions who made it to 50 last week, with stars indicating their streak:
★★★ Slider, gjm, Harmless, jacobjacob, Tetraspace Grouping
★★ athom, johnswentworth, ryan_b, Ericf, Bucky, Mark Xu, CptDrMoreno, Yonge
★ TurnTrout, Tighe, knite
Why measure streaks?
Last week Bucky commented:
I don't like measuring things by streaks - if you want to do a list I think doing it by total number of challenges completed is better. Streaks are a less accurate indication of effort put in or potential gains achieved and have more potential to create unhealthy incentives.
But I disagree. I replied:
One of the goals of the challenge is building a culture of practice. I think consistency is an incredibly important part of that. That's how you get compound returns. A portfolio that grows 7% every year will grow ~30x over fifty years. But a portfolio that grows that much only every other year will only grow about ~5x. (Even though the first one only put in "twice as much effort".)
I’m now entering week 4 out of the 7-week babble streak I committed to. If you want more regularity in practicing your creativity, feel free to post a comment committing to also going all the way to 7.
This week we’re trying something new: applied babble. I haven’t tried it before, so am very curious to see what will happen. Feel free to add a note to your comment about how useful you found the exercise, and whether you thought about good things you hadn’t considered before.
Any answer must contain 50 ideas to count. That’s the babble challenge.
However, the 1 hour limit is a stretch goal. It’s fine if it takes longer to get to 50.
This is really important. Sharing babble in public is a scary experience. I don’t want people to leave this having back-chained the experience “If I am creative, people will look down on me”. So be generous with those upvotes.
If you comment on someone else’s post, focus on making exciting, novel ideas work — instead of tearing apart worse ideas.
Reward people for babbling — don’t punish them for not pruning.
I might remove comments that break this rule.
The prompt is very underspecified. If your chair is uncomfortable, consider sitting on a sofa, on the ground, in a pool, or on a trampoline. I've often found that 1 great idea can hide among 10 bad ones. You just need to push through the worse ones. Keep talking. To adapt Wayne Gretzky's great quote: "You miss 100% of the ideas you never generate."
If you spend 5 min agonising over not having anything to say, you’re doing it wrong. You’re being too critical. Just lower your standards and say something, anything. Soon enough you’ll be back on track.
This is really, really important. It’s the only way I’m able to complete these exercises.
—
Now, go forth and babble! 50 ways of solving a problem in your life!