I'm writing a more in-depth review of the State of Feedbackloop Rationality. (I've written a short review on the original post)

But I feel like a lot of people have some kind of skepticism that isn't really addressed by "well, after 6 months of work spread out over 1.5 years, I've made... some progress, which feels promising enough to me to keep going but is not overwhelming evidence if you're skeptical."

So, this post is sort of a rant about that.

A lot of people have default skepticism about "the feedbackloop rationality paradigm" because, well, every rationality paradigm so far has come with big dreams and underdelivered. I, too, have big dreams, and I am probably not going to achieve them as much as I want. That's not a crux^[1] for me.

A lot of people also have some notion that "building multiple feedback loops" is a kind of elaborate meta that puts your head in the clouds. Dudes, the whole point of multiple feedback loops is to put you in direct contact with reality in as many ways as practical.

The thing that drives me nuts is, is that the basic premise here is:

If you put in a lot of effortful focused, practice...
...on the edge of your ability
...with careful attention to immediate feedback
...and periodic careful attention to "is this process helping my longterm goals?"

...you will get better at thinking.

(And, if a lot of people systematically do that and we track what works for them, we can get from the domain of Purposeful Practice to Deliberate Practice^[2])

This seems so reasonable. This really is not promising a free lunch.

(I should clarify: I am not saying that there is robust scientific evidence for deliberate practice working for thinking. There is not – the evidence for meta-learning is generally confused and sucks and there particularly is not evidence that ~~deliberate~~ purposeful practice works on openended conceptual questions. I'm saying "c'mon, what the fuck do you think will work better at improving your ability to think? a) careful, focused practice on the edge of your ability with careful attention to feedback b) just generally trying to do object level work in domains where you ~never get much feedback on whether you're really accomplishing your ultimate goals?")

There are a lot of followup questions that aren't as obvious, but it seems crazy to not believe that. And if you took it seriously, I don't think the right ...

Elias Malisi

Elias Malisi

Elias Malisi

Elias Malisi

Elias Malisi

Elias Malisi