Shownotes Transcript
A fool learns from their own mistakes The wise learn from the mistakes of others. – Otto von Bismark
A problem as old as time: The youth won't listen to your hard-earned wisdom. This post is about learning to listen to, and communicate wisdom. It is very long – I considered breaking it up into a sequence, but, each piece felt necessary. I recommend reading slowly and taking breaks. To begin, here are three illustrative vignettes:
** The burnt out grad student** You warn the young grad student "pace yourself, or you'll burn out." The grad student hears "pace yourself, or you'll be kinda tired and unproductive for like a week." They're excited about their work, and/or have internalized authority figures yelling at them if they aren't giving their all. They don't pace themselves. They burn out.
** The oblivious founder** The young startup/nonprofit founder [...]
Outline:
(00:35) The burnt out grad student
(01:00) The oblivious founder
(02:13) The Thinking Physics student
(07:06) Epistemic Status
(08:23) PART I
(08:26) An Overview of Skills
(14:19) Storytelling as Proof of Concept
(15:57) Motivating Vignette:
(17:54) Having the Impossibility can be defeated trait
(21:56) If it werent impossible, well, then Id have to do it, and that would be awful.
(23:20) Example of Gaining a Tool
(23:59) Example of Changing self-conceptions
(25:24) Current Takeaways
(27:41) Fictional Evidence
(32:24) PART II
(32:27) Competitive Deliberate Practice
(33:00) Step 1: Listening, actually
(36:34) The scale of humanity, and beyond
(39:05) Competitive Spirit
(39:39) Is your cleverness going to help more than Whatever That Other Guy Is Doing?
(41:00) Distaste for the Competitive Aesthetic
(42:40) Building your own feedback-loop, when the feedback-loop is can you beat Ruby?
(43:43) ...back to George
(44:39) Mature Games as Excellent Deliberate Practice Venue.
(46:08) Deliberate Practice qua Deliberate Practice
(47:41) Feedback loops at the second-to-second level
(49:03) Oracles, and Fully Taking The Update
(49:51) But what do you do differently?
(50:58) Magnitude, Depth, and Fully Taking the Update
(53:10) Is there a simple, general skill of appreciating magnitude?
(56:37) PART III
(56:52) Tacit Soulful Trauma
(58:32) Cults, Manipulation and/or Lying
(01:01:22) Sandboxing: Safely Importing Beliefs
(01:04:07) Asking what does Alice believe, and why? or what is this model claiming? rather than what seems true to me?
(01:04:43) Pre-Grieving (or leaving a line of retreat)
(01:05:47) EPILOGUE
(01:06:06) The Practical
(01:06:09) Learning to listen
(01:10:58) The Longterm Direction
The original text contained 14 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
The original text contained 4 images which were described by AI.
First published: December 9th, 2024
Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5yFj7C6NNc8GPdfNo/subskills-of-listening-to-wisdom)
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO).
Images from the article:
)
)
)
)
)
Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts), or another podcast app.