5 ms·

Beware of Other-Optimizing (2009)

19 points by 0x54MUR41 8y ago

inglor 8y ago
The article makes a fair point which I'm having a hard time agreeing with based on anecdotal evidence. A lot of my habits and hobbies stemmed from other people giving me advice. This includes the physical activities I do, meditation, certain technologies and ways of learning and so on. I am incredibly grateful to the people who introduced me to those things. I will gladly give out similar advice to others. Advice from other people rather than summarised data and their personal experience has been invaluable for my personal growth. I think it's important to acknowledge there are a lot of unknowns and give advice in a personal way "this worked for me" vs. "this is how it should be done". I think that if advice is given from a place of "here's something cool to maybe try" and not "here's what you should do" then it's pretty great - people just tend to like absolutes a lot better since they're simpler. Edit: Not to mention the "You should check out this programming thing, it's pretty cool" which led to a fulfilling career which I love.
- inglor 8y ago
  Also, if a startup solves this for me (hobby and habit matching for an individual) I will pay $1000 for it or use a subscription service. These things are very time consuming and there has to be a better way to match people with ideas. I think that finding things you can rock at and self efficacy is very important for career development and I spend considerable amounts of time on my hobbies.
throwawayjava 8y ago
tl;dr: Everyone is different. Don't be that weirdo who tries to push advice from random internet listicles on people. Aside: if a board member tells you that you don't need a raise because you can use fucking coupon books, and you don't immediately get extremely offended, then maybe you're under-rating common sense and over-rating "rationalism"...
- Bjartr 8y ago
  What is the value in being offended, like, ever? Surely if you could genuinely acheive your goals by leveraging coupon books, wouldn't that be worth considering? And, if after consideration, you Vickie it's not a viable substitute to a raise, you'll have an understanding of why it won't work beyond "well it offended me". Assuming that the math work or such that using coupons would result in the same outcome from the perspective of your bank statement, the most likely reasons I can think of are either status (you don't get any from using coupons, but you do for having a higher salary), or the externalities if putting a coupon book habit into place and the overhead of actually using them. Of course the problem in the article was really one of communication. If the only problem to be solved was "keeping up with inflation" then coupon books could be a solution... once, until inflation continues and overcomes the buying power provided by the coupons. However it's a communication problem because the problem isn't "keep up with inflation", it's "maintain a consistent quality of life despite inflation". The latter would have meant the overhead of the coupons was a non starter unless they actually increased QoL beyond merely overcoming the impact of inflation on my back statement, which, they don't. It's a bit of a ramble as I've written it here, but this is the approach I find valuable (not saying you should do the same, only that I find it works well for me), and I would never take the time to do this kind of thinking if I rejected ideas that "should offend me" without consideration.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > What is the value in being offended, like, ever? It's a good bullshit detector. Instead of wasting time dealing with my board member's asinine suggestions, I can study interview questions and get a job at an employer that doesn't suck. An employer who suggests coupon books in lieu of CoL adjusted salaries is probably out-of-touch or manipulative in a lot of other ways. Call me irrational, but I don't want to spend my days working for a super manipulative employer... > Surely if you could genuinely acheive your goals by leveraging coupon books, wouldn't that be worth considering? Sure. But in lieu of raises that keep up with CoL? Hell No. > you'll have an understanding of why it won't work beyond "well it offended me". Again, I suggested common sense! Until I start seeing 2 for 1 mortgages, 1/2 off gasoline, BOGO surgeries, and 25% off tuition in coupon books? Well, it doesn't even take a spreadsheet for me to know that the things moving my CoL up aren't stocked in the Target or grocery stores... Again, hyper-rationalism that distracts you from using common sense is silly. > However it's a communication problem because the problem isn't "keep up with inflation", it's "maintain a consistent quality of life despite inflation". CoL is a quantitative measure of QoL. I'm having a really hard time imagining situations where inflation in the face of stagnant wages doesn't translate into lower QoL. Especially for folks who work for a living. > and I would never take the time to do this kind of thinking if I rejected ideas that "should offend me" without consideration. So you would really response neutrally to your employer handing out coupon books instead of annual raises? Then you're being had.
dcminter 8y ago
I'm baffled by this bit: > "Different things are true for different people" (which is simply false). I mean, "English is the easiest language to understand" is clearly true for me and untrue for others. I suppose one could couch it in terms of the specific point of view but that seems to be finesseing away the counter argument. I presume I'm missing something. What's the author getting at here?
- jstanley 8y ago
  The statement "English is the easiest language to understand" is either true or false, and doesn't reference any specific speaker. It may or may not be the "easiest language to understand for a specific person", but that is a different statement, which is also either true or false.
  - kgwgk 8y ago
    If it doesn't refer to any speaker at all it will be neither true nor false. It will just be meaningless.
  - Bjartr 8y ago
    Context is important, and not having a shared context, or thinking you do when you don't, is a major cause of miscommunication in my experience.
- lisper 8y ago
  That passage is pretty incoherent and badly needs a rewrite. But the point he's trying to make is that there are universal truths that are true for everyone, but that these are hard to discover, and it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you've discovered a universal truth when in fact what you have discovered is a locally contingent truth, you're just not aware of the local contingencies.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  "English is the easiest language to understand," is not true for you, because it is (strictly) a statement about the English language. When you say it you implicitly mean "English is the easiest language for me to understand," which is true for everyone because no matter who you are, you can look at dcminter and observe that English is the easiest language for them to understand.
analog31 8y ago
I once read a hypothesis, which is that all self help advice works because it makes people pay more attention to their own behavior for a while. And my own observation is that ideas for becoming more self disciplined always work for unusually self disciplined people. Another view of mine is that it's one thing to be rational, and another to be a good debater. I consider myself to be reasonably rational, but it doesn't mean I should be at the mercy of someone who's a better debater than I am. I'm a terrible debater. What it means is that if you present me with a seemingly well reasoned argument, I might have to find some socially acceptable way of declining your advice, well short of refuting it. I might think about your ideas, or I might not, but I won't make any promises on the spot. >>> Sometimes—I suppose—people are being lazy. It may be that laziness is an acquired behavioral trait that confers a survival advantage under some conditions. I'm lazy. I make my living inventing gadgets that remove the effort from difficult tasks. Assigning "laziness" is just an ad hominem argument anyway. It seems possible that a lot of our seemingly "irrational" traits actually allow us to survive in a social environment where other people are trying to manipulate us. Traits such as stubbornness and habit may have evolved for this reason.
3pt14159 8y ago
Eh. I disagree. Somethings really are just a matter of simple advice. I read a reddit thread where old people were asked what they wished they did different about 7 years ago. I started flossing daily. I quit smoking. I stopped consuming first pop and, later, 95% of my other refined sugar intake. I started biking to get around. I started running. I started doing body weight mobility exercises. I started standing while working for half of the day. I read in that thread how one of the older people said that the key to getting a new habit to stick was to do it multiple times per week and to not try to change anything else until it had normalized. I'm not sure if that works for everyone, but it really worked for me. Once every month or so I'd introduce a new small change. I'm so much healthier and attractive now than I was back then. It's changed everything about me. My politics. My mind set. I even came to accept that I wasn't just attracted to women. This article seems to be attacking something that I also agree should be attacked[0] but he throws the baby out with the bath water. The truth is, unless there is a serious medical condition involved, it is simple to lose weight. It is simple to have a healthy body. It is simple to have a healthy mouth and to keep your teeth into old age. What's hard is changing your default reaction to information. It's the perceived threat to your sense of self-worth. Some people never learn this lesson or never fully embrace it. If you have the right mind set and someone says "you should eat more veggies and less sugar" the humble person says "how do you make those taste good?"[1] instead of scoffing. [0] Those incessant listicle articles and garbage one-simple-trick magazine advice articles. [1] If I ever write an article on how to eat healthy I'm going to spend 50% or more of it on how to have food taste great[2]. The Atkins / keto crowd get flavour by default because fat and meat is naturally flavourful. [2] Coles notes below. Salads: Find fresh herbs, learn what they're useful for, and use them everywhere you can. For salads mix some combination of olive oil, butter, mustard, finely chopped raw garlic, an anchovy or three, salt, pepper. Don't use store bought salad dressing it's loaded with garbage. Favour mixed greens, kale, and shredded veggies over lettuce. Breakfast: Omelettes, make sure to get the right pan and jiggle the eggs. I prefer thyme, mushroom, onion, soy sauce, red hot chillies combos; but red onion, dill, and goat cheese is good too. If time is a concern you can pre-make breakfast burritos and freeze them or look up overnight oats. When you're not that hungry eat a banana or other fruit. Berries taste better the smaller they are.

19 points by 0x54MUR41 8y ago

The article makes a fair point which I'm having a hard time agreeing with based on anecdotal evidence. A lot of my habits and hobbies stemmed from other people giving me advice. This includes the physical activities I do, meditation, certain technologies and ways of learning and so on. I am incredibly grateful to the people who introduced me to those things. I will gladly give out similar advice to others. Advice from other people rather than summarised data and their personal experience has been invaluable for my personal growth. I think it's important to acknowledge there are a lot of unknowns and give advice in a personal way "this worked for me" vs. "this is how it should be done". I think that if advice is given from a place of "here's something cool to maybe try" and not "here's what you should do" then it's pretty great - people just tend to like absolutes a lot better since they're simpler. Edit: Not to mention the "You should check out this programming thing, it's pretty cool" which led to a fulfilling career which I love.

inglor 8y ago
Also, if a startup solves this for me (hobby and habit matching for an individual) I will pay $1000 for it or use a subscription service. These things are very time consuming and there has to be a better way to match people with ideas. I think that finding things you can rock at and self efficacy is very important for career development and I spend considerable amounts of time on my hobbies.

throwawayjava 8y ago

tl;dr: Everyone is different. Don't be that weirdo who tries to push advice from random internet listicles on people. Aside: if a board member tells you that you don't need a raise because you can use fucking coupon books, and you don't immediately get extremely offended, then maybe you're under-rating common sense and over-rating "rationalism"...

Bjartr 8y ago
What is the value in being offended, like, ever? Surely if you could genuinely acheive your goals by leveraging coupon books, wouldn't that be worth considering? And, if after consideration, you Vickie it's not a viable substitute to a raise, you'll have an understanding of why it won't work beyond "well it offended me". Assuming that the math work or such that using coupons would result in the same outcome from the perspective of your bank statement, the most likely reasons I can think of are either status (you don't get any from using coupons, but you do for having a higher salary), or the externalities if putting a coupon book habit into place and the overhead of actually using them. Of course the problem in the article was really one of communication. If the only problem to be solved was "keeping up with inflation" then coupon books could be a solution... once, until inflation continues and overcomes the buying power provided by the coupons. However it's a communication problem because the problem isn't "keep up with inflation", it's "maintain a consistent quality of life despite inflation". The latter would have meant the overhead of the coupons was a non starter unless they actually increased QoL beyond merely overcoming the impact of inflation on my back statement, which, they don't. It's a bit of a ramble as I've written it here, but this is the approach I find valuable (not saying you should do the same, only that I find it works well for me), and I would never take the time to do this kind of thinking if I rejected ideas that "should offend me" without consideration.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > What is the value in being offended, like, ever? It's a good bullshit detector. Instead of wasting time dealing with my board member's asinine suggestions, I can study interview questions and get a job at an employer that doesn't suck. An employer who suggests coupon books in lieu of CoL adjusted salaries is probably out-of-touch or manipulative in a lot of other ways. Call me irrational, but I don't want to spend my days working for a super manipulative employer... > Surely if you could genuinely acheive your goals by leveraging coupon books, wouldn't that be worth considering? Sure. But in lieu of raises that keep up with CoL? Hell No. > you'll have an understanding of why it won't work beyond "well it offended me". Again, I suggested common sense! Until I start seeing 2 for 1 mortgages, 1/2 off gasoline, BOGO surgeries, and 25% off tuition in coupon books? Well, it doesn't even take a spreadsheet for me to know that the things moving my CoL up aren't stocked in the Target or grocery stores... Again, hyper-rationalism that distracts you from using common sense is silly. > However it's a communication problem because the problem isn't "keep up with inflation", it's "maintain a consistent quality of life despite inflation". CoL is a quantitative measure of QoL. I'm having a really hard time imagining situations where inflation in the face of stagnant wages doesn't translate into lower QoL. Especially for folks who work for a living. > and I would never take the time to do this kind of thinking if I rejected ideas that "should offend me" without consideration. So you would really response neutrally to your employer handing out coupon books instead of annual raises? Then you're being had.

dcminter 8y ago

I'm baffled by this bit: > "Different things are true for different people" (which is simply false). I mean, "English is the easiest language to understand" is clearly true for me and untrue for others. I suppose one could couch it in terms of the specific point of view but that seems to be finesseing away the counter argument. I presume I'm missing something. What's the author getting at here?

jstanley 8y ago
The statement "English is the easiest language to understand" is either true or false, and doesn't reference any specific speaker. It may or may not be the "easiest language to understand for a specific person", but that is a different statement, which is also either true or false.
- kgwgk 8y ago
  If it doesn't refer to any speaker at all it will be neither true nor false. It will just be meaningless.
- Bjartr 8y ago
  Context is important, and not having a shared context, or thinking you do when you don't, is a major cause of miscommunication in my experience.
lisper 8y ago
That passage is pretty incoherent and badly needs a rewrite. But the point he's trying to make is that there are universal truths that are true for everyone, but that these are hard to discover, and it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you've discovered a universal truth when in fact what you have discovered is a locally contingent truth, you're just not aware of the local contingencies.
whatshisface 8y ago
"English is the easiest language to understand," is not true for you, because it is (strictly) a statement about the English language. When you say it you implicitly mean "English is the easiest language for me to understand," which is true for everyone because no matter who you are, you can look at dcminter and observe that English is the easiest language for them to understand.

analog31 8y ago

I once read a hypothesis, which is that all self help advice works because it makes people pay more attention to their own behavior for a while. And my own observation is that ideas for becoming more self disciplined always work for unusually self disciplined people. Another view of mine is that it's one thing to be rational, and another to be a good debater. I consider myself to be reasonably rational, but it doesn't mean I should be at the mercy of someone who's a better debater than I am. I'm a terrible debater. What it means is that if you present me with a seemingly well reasoned argument, I might have to find some socially acceptable way of declining your advice, well short of refuting it. I might think about your ideas, or I might not, but I won't make any promises on the spot. >>> Sometimes—I suppose—people are being lazy. It may be that laziness is an acquired behavioral trait that confers a survival advantage under some conditions. I'm lazy. I make my living inventing gadgets that remove the effort from difficult tasks. Assigning "laziness" is just an ad hominem argument anyway. It seems possible that a lot of our seemingly "irrational" traits actually allow us to survive in a social environment where other people are trying to manipulate us. Traits such as stubbornness and habit may have evolved for this reason.

3pt14159 8y ago

Eh. I disagree. Somethings really are just a matter of simple advice. I read a reddit thread where old people were asked what they wished they did different about 7 years ago. I started flossing daily. I quit smoking. I stopped consuming first pop and, later, 95% of my other refined sugar intake. I started biking to get around. I started running. I started doing body weight mobility exercises. I started standing while working for half of the day. I read in that thread how one of the older people said that the key to getting a new habit to stick was to do it multiple times per week and to not try to change anything else until it had normalized. I'm not sure if that works for everyone, but it really worked for me. Once every month or so I'd introduce a new small change. I'm so much healthier and attractive now than I was back then. It's changed everything about me. My politics. My mind set. I even came to accept that I wasn't just attracted to women. This article seems to be attacking something that I also agree should be attacked[0] but he throws the baby out with the bath water. The truth is, unless there is a serious medical condition involved, it is simple to lose weight. It is simple to have a healthy body. It is simple to have a healthy mouth and to keep your teeth into old age. What's hard is changing your default reaction to information. It's the perceived threat to your sense of self-worth. Some people never learn this lesson or never fully embrace it. If you have the right mind set and someone says "you should eat more veggies and less sugar" the humble person says "how do you make those taste good?"[1] instead of scoffing. [0] Those incessant listicle articles and garbage one-simple-trick magazine advice articles. [1] If I ever write an article on how to eat healthy I'm going to spend 50% or more of it on how to have food taste great[2]. The Atkins / keto crowd get flavour by default because fat and meat is naturally flavourful. [2] Coles notes below. Salads: Find fresh herbs, learn what they're useful for, and use them everywhere you can. For salads mix some combination of olive oil, butter, mustard, finely chopped raw garlic, an anchovy or three, salt, pepper. Don't use store bought salad dressing it's loaded with garbage. Favour mixed greens, kale, and shredded veggies over lettuce. Breakfast: Omelettes, make sure to get the right pan and jiggle the eggs. I prefer thyme, mushroom, onion, soy sauce, red hot chillies combos; but red onion, dill, and goat cheese is good too. If time is a concern you can pre-make breakfast burritos and freeze them or look up overnight oats. When you're not that hungry eat a banana or other fruit. Berries taste better the smaller they are.