Living Aligned With Your Values
I posted my last blog 23 days ago and said I was going to write 2-3 more posts that week. Surprise surprise, I haven't written any. Granted, I have many different blog fragments (titles pending) that I've started, but I haven't been able to fully convert any of them yet:
On Crocker's Rules
Some journal entries
Myveryshort why Negative (Utilitarianism)
Response to Toby Ord's "Why I'm Not a Negative Utilitarian"just learned of CRS’s responseLetter to my Sister and Brother-in-Law (a rejection of Christianity)
On Punishment, Justice, and Hard Determinism
Why I Don't Want Kids (modified for publication)
Why you need to read A Short Stay In Hell by Steven L. Peck
What’s it like to exist in a state of full neutrality?
A "6 paragraph blog post" summary of Reasoned Politics by Magnus Vinding
You should try out Logseq!
Why Vegan
Some Vegan Recipes even your barbecuing Dad will love
(I wrote this on the 11th. I haven't written anymore on this until today, the 16th. So even worse progress. Update: on the 22nd: haven't written again on this til now. I think I've actually come to a conclusion as to why this is at the end of this.)
So I've been asking myself:
Why can't I convert on any of these? What's stopping me?
I've clearly defined a set of values that I believe in. Why don't I live fully aligned with these values? Is it because I don't actually think they're true?
So I decided I should write this post first, to:
Try to figure out this problem.
Refer back to whenever I feel like I'm not living aligned with my values.
Provide introspection to whoever is reading this on how well they're living aligned with their values.
Instrumental and Terminal Goals
First, I want to define what terminal and instrumental goals/values are.
For example, if a given university student studies merely as a professional qualification, his terminal value is getting a job, while getting good grades is an instrument to that end. If a (simple) chess program tries to maximize piece value three turns into the future, that is an instrumental value to its implicit terminal value of winning the game.
So terminal goals are the thing you're actually trying to achieve, and instrumental goals are things you think will help you achieve your terminal goal.
But we could go further than this.
Why does a university student want to get a job? They want to make money (if they didn't make money from a job, they wouldn't get a job) AND/OR they want to create positive social impact.
Why does a university student want to make money? They want to be able to feed/shelter themselves (if making money didn't help them survive, they wouldn't want to make money).
Why does a university student want to feed/shelter themselves? They don't want to suffer AND/OR they want to survive.
Why does a university student not want to suffer? They find suffering painful. Terminal Goal. Therefore, a university student wants good grades in order to avoid suffering.
Why does a university student want to survive? They enjoy living.
Why does a university student enjoy living? Because living brings them happiness. Terminal Goal. Therefore, a university student wants good grades in order to be happy.
Why does a university student want to create positive impact? Because it's something they find terminally valuable, OR because it brings them happiness (which may or not be a terminal goal).
See The Stamp Collector for a refresher of why I think it's possible to not optimize for hedonism (pleasure/happiness).
Common wisdom says that it’s OK to optimize for multiple terminal goals in your life. Ex. it's OK to terminally optimize for happiness and positive social impact. The problem with optimizing for multiple terminal goals is that it's not possible to fully optimize. If something brought you happiness but was bad for your impact, would you still do it? If something brought you impact but was bad for your happiness, would you still do it?
Here, you could resolve the issue by making one of these your terminal goal (ie positive social impact) and having the other (happiness) be only instrumentally valuable. Here, you'd only value happiness if it let you achieve more positive social impact. Or, you could define happiness as your terminal goal, and find achieving positive social impact to only be instrumentally valuable to making you happier. You can't terminally optimize for both.
"But Brandon! What if I instead make a statement like 'my terminal goal is to optimize for social impact, inasmuch as my happiness is above some level x'? Or 'my terminal goal is to optimize for social impact, inasmuch as I get to spend x amount of quality time with my family/friends'? Gotcha there!"
My question here is why does your happiness need to be above some level x? Is that because, once it drops below a certain level, you can't optimize for social impact as well? Is it because you're only doing social impact things to make you happy? Is it because, if it drops below a certain level, it’ll harm your health? In this case, it's clear that there is still a differentiation between terminal and instrumental goals.
"What about 'my terminal goals are both happiness and social impact: if I ever get unhappy doing social impact, I'll just pivot to doing things that make me happy for a while; if I ever stop doing social impact, I'll pivot away from happiness for a while'?"
There are (at least) two possibilities of error here:
The thing you're chasing is actually meaning or eudaimonia. In this case, you just pick this as your terminal goal.
You're rapidly pivoting between two different terminal goals. There is one that leads you more satisfied.
Here, the word satisfied points to eudaimonia. I don't know how else to state what I'm saying. I don't think all people optimizing for positive social impact do so to feel satisfied, and I also don't think this is true for people optimizing for happiness. I think it's possible they can both be goals in themselves. What I'm pointing at here, is that I think between these goals, there is one you actually want to satisfy. Given two worlds, one where you terminally optimize for happiness and the other for social impact, your preferences are most satisfied in one. The world where both are mixed I imagine has a number of satisfied preferences that are between that of the two worlds, or maybe even lower than both.
Also, in this case, I find it incredibly hard to believe your terminal goal isn't happiness if it isn't meaning. If you're doing something social impact related and it makes you terribly unhappy, you're almost guaranteed to avoid it. Even people who terminally optimize for social impact often find it difficult to do something social impact related when it makes them depressed, or to do social impact when they're depressed by something else. In fact, it's hard to do anything while you're depressed—depression sucks! It's really difficult to intrinsically want to terminally optimize for social impact. That's one of the reasons why happiness is still instrumentally valuable for most, if not all, terminal goals.
Luckily enough, most attempts at creating social impact bring people a great deal of happiness. We're extremely empathetic creatures. It might be possible that creating positive social impact brings you more happiness than any other activity.
I don't think that this is a fundamental truth though. I don't think creating social impact brings the greatest happiness to all people. If it was, I think the world would be an inconceivably better place. I think the overwhelming majority of people terminally optimize for happiness. They're focused on instruments like family, creativity, survival, money, sex, religion, etc.
"I don't care! I am going to terminally optimize for both social impact and happiness equally, and there's nothing you can do about it! I'll show you that it's possible!"
It's not possible. To be clear, you don't have to game your optimization for a terminal goal. The problem is that you're currently optimizing for some terminal goal whether you like it or not. That terminal goal probably changes quite frequently.
My terminal goal
I believe my actual terminal goal, or at least I believe what I want to terminally optimize for, is to have the most counterfactually positive social impact on the world that I can. If we recall this list from my first blog:
I want to attempt to have some amount of positive impact on the world.
I want to have some amount of positive impact on the world.
I want to have a job that produces some amount of positive impact.
My main goal in life is to have a positive impact on the world.
My only goal in life is to have a positive impact on the world.
I want to have some amount of counterfactually positive impact on the world, maybe via a job.
My main goal in life is to have a counterfactually positive impact on the world.
My only goal in life is to have a counterfactually positive impact on the world.
My main goal in life is to have the most counterfactually positive impact on the world I can.
My only goal in life is to have the most counterfactually positive impact on the world as I can (ala utility maximizing).
I'm (ideally) at 10. Edit: I received a comment along the lines of “maximizing is bad”. Discussing this was pretty much the entire goal of my first blog post. I consider reducing as much suffering as possible to be an inherent good. In actuality, the way that this is achieved is difficult and should be proceeded towards with great caution. Proceeding cautiously is actually the thing that maximizes the most amount of utility.
Instrumental goals related to social impact
Pretty much everything listed in my values section in my previous blog. Eg. I believe in suffering-focused ethics because I think reducing suffering produces the most counterfactually positive impact on the world. If I later discover this isn't true, I'd maybe optimize for reducing suffering and raising well-being equally. If not, preferences. If not, I'd terminally optimize for happiness or meaning.
It's also worth noting my first blog: if being admired for what you were doing didn't lead to more counterfactually positive social impact generated over time, I wouldn't care.
It's also possible that I'm chasing the goal of creating the most amount of counterfactually positive social impact instrumentally as a way of finding meaning, happiness, or something else entirely. I've thought enough about this that I don't think this is true, like I've said previously in this post, but more on that later.
Other instrumental goals I have:
Resources (money, food, people)
Self-preservation
Spread my terminal goal (maybe)
Have more clarity about my terminal goal
Don't have my terminal goal changed (without good reason)
Knowledge/intelligence/self-improvement
Cooperation
Why is happiness not here?
I think I only want happiness for self-preservation, resource/knowledge accumulation
Sometimes I will not find some of these goals useful, ie. cooperating isn't universally useful and neither is money. That's why they're instrumental values. I can stop optimizing for them once they stop contributing to my terminal goal.
"So there's absolutely no way you're a perfect optimizer for your terminal goal. I mean, you literally spend a significant amount of time at school playing saxophone in a musical comedy group. In fact, based on your actions, I'm not sure you're even trying to optimize for your terminal goal at all!! I think you're just a hedonist!!"
We'll get there.
UPDATE
I did not get there. I stopped writing here for 2 weeks because I couldn’t.
The big question that has been stopping me from writing the rest of this post is the following:
Suppose I was captured by someone (person, AI) and was told I would be tortured forever (infinity). However, I could opt out of this torture, and if so, all beings would be killed, which may or may not include myself. Would I do so?
And I think I can answer this fine and say yes. If the tortured person was someone else besides me, I would also strongly encourage this person to opt out of torture. I'm suffering-focused.
But there's also another related question:
Suppose I was captured by someone (person, AI) and was told I would be tortured forever (infinity). However, I could opt out of this torture, and if so, all beings in existence would instead be tortured instead of me for infinity, at an intensity unknown to me. I'm guaranteed to exist in a completely positive state thereafter. The beings who are now tortured can never opt out of their suffering, and I can't ever reverse this decision. As far as I know, there's nothing I can do to overthrow the malevolent being, or ease the suffering of those being tortured. And as far as I know, my capturers are telling the truth. Would I do so?
And if reducing suffering is the actual thing I’m optimizing for, then the choice is obvious—I can't do this. If the torture of others was finite, I might be able to say yes under my framework (infinite suffering of one is worse than finite suffering of many, unless their suffering was infinitely worse than mine, or there is an infinite number of beings being tortured). But it's not.
If it came down to it, am I actually willing to be a martyr? To be tortured forever?
I have a hard time saying I would say yes.
And maybe this is because, if someone else decided to opt out of their suffering at the cost of everyone else, I wouldn't blame them. No one should be forced to be a martyr. And also, I'm guaranteed a completely positive existence, meaning that I won't then suffer endlessly due to the shame of having made such a decision.
Maybe if I was a classical utilitarian I'd be able to answer this question just fine: either by trying my best to live an existence so blissful that it outweighs all suffering, or just defaulting to infinite ethics (infinite blissful experience of one against infinite torture for many has an undefined conclusion).
Or maybe I have an extreme amount of overconfidence in myself in thinking that, given infinite time, I could overthrow the capturers. But if that were true, wouldn't I also think that, given an infinite amount of time, others would come to my rescue?
The main issue I have is with infinity. If my suffering was less than an infinite amount of time, I think I could muster the courage. But then again, would I if I knew I'd spend 3^^^3 years in a brazen bull? Especially given that I don't know the intensity others would be suffering?
So then I started thinking of things in a lexical context. One of my favorite works of fiction of all time is A Short Stay In Hell by Steven L. Peck. (I'm planning on writing a full blog post on it soon).
The plot is that the main character is sent to hell after dying, which happens to be located in a library. The library contains every text in existence that can be written on 410 pages, with 40 lines of 80 characters on each page, with all the characters on a standard keyboard. Therefore, the library contains every novel that has ever been written. Every novel with every possible spelling error. Every possible description imaginable. The character, and others in this Hell, can leave Hell once they've found the book that perfectly describes their life, with no errors (factual or grammatical or otherwise).
If you do the math it spoils the story, but the number of books comes out to a number that doesn't even snuff 100 trillion. But it also doesn't even snuff 3^^^3.
For a general idea, check this website out.
The lives of those in the library are otherwise fine: they can feed themselves whenever and whatever, they can form relationships, etc. The torture is the overwhelming monotony of their existence. This seems very conclusively lexically better than the same amount of time in a brazen bull, and likely much better than nearly any amount of time spent in a brazen bull, although I struggle to come up with a direct conclusion here. I think it'd be easy to say I'd trade time in a brazen bull, but once I entered one, I probably revoke my consent quickly?
5 seconds? Brazen bull. 60 seconds? Brazen bull? One hour? Unsure? 24 hours? Unsure? It's incredibly difficult for me to imagine the decision I'd make, especially because it's impossible to understand the length of time one would spend in the library.
Back to my point. If I knew my suffering was this, my time spent in the library, would I accept this fate to save everyone else's suffering? I think if I didn't think about it much, I'd answer with a resounding yes.
But what about once I'm in the library? Is there a point in time in which I beg for everyone else's infinite torture to escape? I still don't know. Even if we pick an option that is lexically better than the library, I still don't know.
The point
So my point is, can my terminal goal actually be reducing suffering if I might not be willing to be a martyr for even an inconceivably long but finite amount of time? Or even a conceivable amount of time if the suffering was intense enough?
So then I started thinking, OK well I guess that my answer is just yes. That I'd be a martyr under any circumstance. I say yes without thinking.
But what if I was allowed to revoke my consent at any time? To end my suffering and pivot it onto everyone else? Am I strong enough to never revoke it? I don't know.
So then I started thinking, OK well what if I just conclude my answer is no. Can I say this is OK because of my admiration clause? Can I say this answer is OK because I'm only human (after all lol)? Or do I have to conclude that my terminal goal is reducing my own suffering?
I tried to sort this problem out by saying that the odds of such a hypothetical ever happening is inconceivably close to zero that I can just ignore my answer. But I feel like this is a cop-out. I think that my ethical framework should hold up everywhere, not just where it's convenient. I also thought about this in the case of a completely rational being, like a superintelligent AI. If an AI was presented with the same questions, would it allow itself to be a martyr? Better yet, how might we even get an AI to be a martyr if the outcome was better for sentience?
And then I thought back to what I was talking about with biology/reproduction.
I wrote something out but then deleted it. TL;DR it seems evolutionary pressures solely encourage reproductive fitness, so anything we do that doesn’t aid this is already fighting our instincts.
Is this still the primary instinct of humanity? Or is it something like avoiding suffering? Idk, I’m not an evolutionary psychologist.
I have some suspicion that that's why we (well, I think it’s we-not-including-me at this point) care about things like existential risk so much. The actual terminal goal is to save reproduction, to save the human species.
I imagine that even the most reproduction-approving people would cave much faster than I would.
But then, I thought about my Mom. If my Mom was the one presented with the question, knowing me and my sisters would be the ones being tortured if she wasn't,
I don't think my Mom would ever give in.
Is this because my Mom has a biological intuition against it?
I don't know.
Is this because my Mom can't grasp exceedingly large numbers?
No, I don't think my Mom would ever withdraw her consent even if she could comprehend infinite torture.
Would my Mom withdraw her consent if say, she was being tortured by the FBI for the locations of myself and my sisters?
I think she could break at some point because she knows our torture would not be infinite, she has faith that we can evade the FBI, etc. Don’t all people break at some point under intense interrogation?
Update: apparently many people die during torture. But probably everyone caves somewhere under “perfect torture”? Or if not perfect torture, if their family is somehow at risk?
But because she knows in this scenario that it's her finite or infinite torture against our infinite torture, I don't think she ever gives in.
I think the choice becomes muddier if our torture is less than infinite, or if our torture is lexically better than hers, but I just find it incredibly hard to believe. Maybe I'm wrong and she does cave in, but there seems to be something very powerful about my Mom's love. (Shout out to my Mom).
Maybe I’m wrong and my Mom does give in, even though she knows my sisters and I will be tortured for infinity. Maybe it’s just impossible for humans to never cave. But I think she’d be one of our best chances. (Shout out to my Mom again).
So I've come to my conclusion. If I'm currently unsure what my answer is, I should put a significant amount of focus into ensuring that if such a question were to ever come up, I choose martyrdom every time. I think the way to do that is just to ensure that every action I take is in harmony with reducing as much suffering as I can. Steep task! Or, I find out how to love some subset of people as much as my Mom loves me and my sisters.
By having children?
No.
If I figure out this question, I maybe solve my issue? Seems like a Chris Lakin question to me.
Or, I just act as if every being in the universe is my child that I love? I've said previously that I care ~equally about all beings in existence, as well as those that will exist, but I don't think I love all beings in existence. Then again, when I think about the capture question, and then think about individuals like my friends or my mother, I feel much surer that my answer would be to never cave than before when I was primarily thinking of faceless individuals. Something something scope neglect.
UPDATE TWO
2/23/23 I remembered what I wanted to write about.
How can I expect myself to commit to something as intense as martyrdom if I often can’t even bring myself to stop procrastinating? Stopping procrastinating causes my personal suffering (well, it depends on who you ask, sometimes stopping procrastinating is a much more enjoyable experience than actively procrastinating) and I’m often not willing to give this up.
This seems like a really strong enforcer in my mind to not procrastinate. If I can’t bring myself to do something with such little pain intensity, like homework, how can I expect to hold myself to a higher standard elsewhere? Or other things that bring me suffering, like working out, eating healthily, etc. I talk about this all much more below, but I don’t bring up this specific idea. Being able to successfully do these things seems like a giant signal that I can and will create positive change.
*resume* How I’d ideally be behaving
If I was perfectly , meaning that I could behave with maximum optimization at all times, I have some idea of what that'd look like. Note that it's impossible(?) for humans, at least in our current state, to be pure optimizers. We suffer from our human weaknesses like akrasia (procrastination), emotions (depression, anxiety, hedonism), manipulation from others taking us away from our goals, etc.
What I'd ideally be doing
Become a machine dedicated to relieving as much suffering as possible. I'm omniscient and have perfect understanding of how to accomplish my terminal goal, as well as a perfect understanding of which instrumental goals I should accomplish. I then just go ahead and stomp all of those goals out to the best of my ability.
What my terminal goal maximization hypothetically looks like
Nearly all instrumental goals, when optimized terminally, don't lead to your terminal goal being advanced at all. I marked "spread terminal goal" as advancing my terminal goal, because my goal is to reduce suffering, and spreading this goal terminally would result in reducing suffering.
Because I'm a person, I still need things like food, money, etc., but I think that those kinds of resources quickly stop being effective towards terminal goal maximization, at least on a personal level. You could argue that I could use these resources, like money, for social impact, but I'm talking about only using those resources for myself. I imagine, for example, that there's value in living in modest housing instead of a motel, but above this, I don't think there's much value. Or, having nice technology to do work, up to a certain point.
What I'm actually doing right now
Not that.
Some reasons I'm not as effective as I'd like to be
Things out of my control
Biological and otherwise.
Socioeconomic Status
I grew up low income. I'm the first person in my family to go to college. I made it to Penn, but I feel noticeably ill-equipped compared to my peers.
Trauma
My childhood was not so great. Not to get into too many details, but I have cut off all ties with my father and his wife shortly into my time at Penn. I assume I’m going to deal with repercussions from my childhood for the rest of my life.
Generational Trauma
My mom was raised by a single mother after her father was sent away to prison for a felony when my mom was 5. He only just got out recently during COVID, serving ~40 years.
I suspect one of the primary reasons why he was never let out early on parole is because he's a Hispanic male.
My mom's mom was born to a Finnish immigrant father and a Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa mother on tribal lands in Michigan. None of her siblings, nor herself, ever went to college.
My father was raised by a single mother after his dad removed himself almost completely from my father's life after he and my grandmother divorced when my father was 2. He grew up in a trailer park, where his mother frequently dated men who were not always great (the man she’s married to now is really great though!).
My dad's mom was raised by a single mother after her dad (my great-grandfather) disappeared when she was a kid after he committed some sort of crime that warranted FBI troubles (at least, according to what I've been told).
If these grandparents end up reading this blog post at some point, first of all, hello! Second of all, I don’t harbor blame towards you for these actions. Better decisions probably could have been made, but c’est la vie.
Physical Health
I've struggled with Excessive Daytime Sleepiness and other related issues such as Sleep Inertia and excessive sleep since at least puberty. The other day I was finally diagnosed with Periodic Limb Movement Disorder: my legs average 60 movements an hour while I sleep, and about a quarter of those movements trigger oscillations from deep sleep to light sleep, or even partial/full wakefulness. Effectively, I'm never getting restful sleep.
I've just started treatment (medication) for this, but I strongly suspect that it's not the only problem and that I also have Idiopathic Hypersomnia or Narcolepsy Type 2 (Narcolepsy without Cataplexy).
The main reasons why this sucks so bad:
It makes it incredibly difficult to sit in class and not fall asleep. It was hard enough in high school to stay awake, even when courses were interactive. Now, I pretty much exclusively sit through lectures, which obviously makes things more difficult. I walk out of class gleaning little to no information most of the time, which led to me just skipping class in college (not a good idea!!).
I sleep through my alarms all the time. Sometimes I remember waking up and turning them off and then sleep inertia prevents me from getting out of bed, and other times sleep inertia completely erases my memory of them ever happening. In K-12, someone was always up to get me out of bed if I completely missed an alarm. I don't have that anymore.
It makes it incredibly difficult to do work without falling asleep. Even if I do work with friends. It also makes it difficult to summon cognition for complex work.
In high school, I could solve this by begging my mom to call me out of school for the day so I could artificially shift deadlines.
Also, I was bright enough that I could do homework in other classes and still excel academically, even though I wasn't paying attention.
My philosophy was that I was going to probably fall asleep if I tried to focus anyhow, so it was better to put my attention elsewhere.
In high school, I never had massive physics problem sets to do. The classes that had the most commitment in high school were AP Biology, AP US History, and an independent research class I took. Doing work for AP US History and that research class in the same year sucked all the life out of me. Yes, I could do the work faster than my peers, but I was so unbelievably tired that I'd often wake up pencil in hand at home, shocked that I'd fallen asleep. It's why I used to set alarms for ~4am and do my work then because there was some sense of deadline (it had to be done by 5:45) and the adrenaline made some of the sleepiness shed away. It also helped to have some sleep in me first before I did work.
At university, all I’m doing is problem sets. It’s unbelievably draining for most people, even without a sleep disorder.
Mental health
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my second semester of college (March 2021), although I somewhat suspect that fixing my sleep issue (if possible) will relieve the worst of my ADHD symptoms.
A big sleep disorder symptom is forgetfulness and clouding of consciousness.
I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Minor Depressive Disorder in my fourth semester of college (January 2022).
My anxiety and depression got so bad during this semester that I effectively didn't leave my room for 3 months. The previous semester (semester 3) I also felt incredibly horrible towards the end of the semester. Semester 1 of college also started to dive horribly at the end of the semester.
My anxiety got much better about halfway through the summer (summer 2022), because I started Zoloft, an anti-depressant, due to a recommendation by my primary care doctor. It took a significant amount of time to kick in, hence the halfway through the summer.
However, I've been off Zoloft since November, because I scheduled a sleep test then and the sleep doctor asked if I can get off it because it can mess up the results. I'm not sure if I should get back on it now, because SSRIs like Zoloft can make leg movements worse at night, and possibly counteract the medication I'm trying to take to relieve those movements. But being on Zoloft made my anxiety and depression so much more manageable, and I've noticed a significant change in well-being since I've been off, so I'll probably go back on soon.
I also have some ugh fields that I am trying to figure out, but it's insanely difficult for me to work through them.
I had issues with ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression in high school and earlier (as early as 7 years old from what I remember), but things always felt more manageable when I was living at home / when the stakes were lower.
The sleep issue compounds EVERYTHING. Ex. feeling sleepy and then missing class or failing to do homework makes me more anxious and depressed.
Things somewhat in my control
Canonically I'm still a hard determinist and think everything is out of my control in some sense. But these are things I feel I should be able to have more influence over.
Procrastination
I'm a horrible procrastinator. I have been since I was at least 6. This is largely due to ADHD, anxiety, and sleep issues, but there are definitely ways I could ease symptoms of procrastination.
Some of the reasons I think I originally began to procrastinate:
My parents had a relatively low involvement in my education from the get-go. They saw I was a bright kid and let me be pretty independent. I formed poor habits fast.
Work felt useless. I didn’t want to make draw snowmen for homework—I wanted to solve math equations.
Or, I couldn’t make connections as to why things were actually useful.
I had “better things to do”. Like, playing video games.
These are still pretty prevalent today. But there are some new reasons too:
Fear of failure
Low energy
Confusion about how to start, how long a task will take, how to finish
Ex. I think the main reason I procrastinated finishing this blog was because I couldn’t answer some questions satisfactorily, so I decided to forgo writing so “I could think more” when writing through my thoughts probably would’ve been a more effective way to think.
“Useless” Hedonism
Social media
I spend an absolutely insane amount of time per week on YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. I'm pretty sure I just do it as an avoidance mechanism (to distract from thoughts and tasks).
Media
Basketball, video games, TV, etc.
“Consumption”
Food, content, etc.
"Valuable" Hedonism
Music
Playing instruments, listening to music, arranging music, finding new music, etc.
Reading
Learning new things that aren't particularly useful. Reading a lot of random things on Wikipedia. Ex. the other day I decided I wanted to learn more about the Columbian Exchange, so I did.
I also sometimes read works of fiction for enjoyment.
Friends
Having extensive, at the moment mainly text, conversations about things that don't advance me any closer to social impact. There are some friendships that I should probably sink less time into, but I strongly doubt that eliminating all conversation outside of impact would be the thing that actually maximizes my terminal goal. Even if you're looking at things in a purely logical utility-maximizing sense, good friendship seems to aid every single instrumental goal that I wrote earlier.
Anything I do towards achieving positive social impact that makes me happy but isn't maximizing
Eudaimonia(?)
I find myself searching for meaning at times. This was more evident for me years ago, but I still find myself searching on occasion.
This sometimes looks like creativity (music), and sometimes looks like me searching for “the meaning of life”.
Ways I can improve my situation
Eliminate distractions
I’ve deleted all social media apps on my phone, as well as all games. It doesn’t stop me from going on my mobile browser to find things, but it does make it cumbersome, and it makes it much more likely I turn to reading relevant non-fiction or papers instead during downtime. OR it encourages me to use my laptop, where I’m much more likely to end up doing something worthwhile.
I’d also like to commit to as little “consumption” as possible. Something like a dopamine detox.
I’d also like to re-evaluate the importance of keeping up with things like basketball. I’m sure the answer is that I shouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole, and if that’s the conclusion I come to, I’ll be better, and overwhelmingly likely happier, without it.
ADHD fixes
If you’re not familiar with body doubling, it’s where someone hangs around you while you complete a task. They don’t have to help you with a task, or even have to be productive themselves, as long as they aren’t distracting. But someone just being there helps immensely for people with ADHD.
Somedays I’ll promise myself I’ll do work, and then I’ll manage to get nothing done. This is somewhat a problem of not creating reasonable action steps, but if I just force myself to go to my nearest cafe, I’m always productive. Libraries less so. One of my problems at school I think was that I resorted too often to doing work alone in my room or at the library. When I go back, I hope to always be body doubling, probably at a cafe (Stommons! Stommons!).
Right now, whenever I am feeling like not doing work, I’m committing to forcing myself out of the house to do so.
I also hope to better utilize Logseq for task management. I started doing this during my last semester at Penn, but then some “fear of failure” procrastination crept in and I completely abandoned my task management system. I know I can manage my tasks in a vacuum. But it’s dire that I’m able to manage them in real life. The rule should be pretty close to “schedule everything”.
Reach out more
I could repeat “the bar for reaching out to someone should be extremely low!” from now until the day I die and I feel like I’d just barely eclipse the number of times I’ve heard this, especially in the Effective Altruism community.
I was pretty good at raising my hand in high school when I knew how to ask questions, but terribly bad at asking questions when I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Ex. in AP Biology I’d zone out all the time and then be incredibly confused. I’d feel embarrassed to then ask questions because I felt like they were answers everyone else would know. I’d be scared to ask questions after school because I didn’t want my teacher to know that I’d been confused the whole time without asking for help, and I was scared I wouldn’t even know what kinds of questions to ask.
I should improve my general questioning ability, and also reach out for answers much more often.
I think some of the other reasons I also don’t reach out are:
I feel incompetent.
I fear they’ll never respond.
I fear reaching out will put me into some sort of contractual obligation I might not be willing to commit to.
I should consistently work to abandon these feelings!
Don’t fail with abandon
See here by Nate Soares.
Seek incredibly positive friendships
A difficult task! But I imagine that positive friendships and relationships probably enhance my impact potential many times over. Especially friends that share similar values as I do.
Please reach out if you think we’d be good friends :)
Affirmations
I have a list of affirmations I read daily:
Once I start working, I literally enjoy it.
There are so many people that want to help you.
Think about how my day could be if it were to go really well, and then imagine how it would go if it went 10x better.
Think about who you wanna be every day, and then be that person.
If this was easy, what would it look like?
As I have been brave before, I can be brave every day of my life; when I'm brave, I enjoy who I am the most.
If you're finding it hard to do anything all the time, talk to someone: talk to a doctor, talk to a friend, get help, ask for help.
Set yourself up so that it is as easy as possible to do the hardest thing possible.
Don't wait! Just do!
It's better to try and fail than to not try at all.
When you procrastinate, you're probably not procrastinating because of the pain of working, because on a moment-to-moment basis, being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating.
Re-evaluate commitments
When at university, I spend a lot of time playing saxophone in a musical comedy group. It’s an insane amount of fun, and I love the people in the group to death. But there are probably other ways I should be spending my time. I’m going to think considerably about this.
Health fixes
I’m actively working to resolve my sleep issues! But for other physical health things, I think I ought to start working out. Working out just seems to be insanely good all around for physical and mental health.
I already eat really healthily, but there are ways I could be even healthier that I’m currently exploring and aiming to commit to.
My sleep schedule is highly irregular, both at home and at school. At school, I find it incredibly difficult to maintain a regular sleep schedule. But it’s probably something I need to figure out how to do, regular sleep schedules seem really important, especially for people with sleep disorders.
School
I’d like to commit to never skipping class and to sitting as close to the front of the classroom as possible. Hopefully, I’ve resolved a good amount of my sleep issues by this point so I don’t end up falling asleep directly in front of a professor!
I also want to make it a point to attend office hours regularly and to be less afraid to ask questions, like I’ve mentioned before.
Journaling
I had a morning and night journaling habit that I steadily maintained from January to March last year before I pretty much completely stopped. I need to bring this back.
Get smart
I’ve been consistently afraid of getting smarter about some topics I think. I have a strong aversion to improving my coding skills (even though I have fun when I do), and I also have a strong aversion to reading academic papers (sadly, many aren’t fun to read).
I don’t know how much of a solution I have to this. I probably just need to constantly body double or make commitments with friends. But I know this stuff is actively important to reducing suffering. So it’s something I must get better at.
I am currently enrolled in the Center for AI Safety’s ML Safety course!
Conclusions
Most of these fixes I have in mind aren’t rocket science. In fact, they’re pretty mutually transferable across terminal goals! If you have some in mind, please let me know!
I’m feeling much better after finishing this. I hope to keep these things in mind as I move forward. Hopefully, this has caused some more introspection on what you value and how you want to live accordingly.
Also, if you’d like to set up mutual accountability with me, please do let me know.
Afterword
A bit over 7,000 words. It’s currently 5:30am, been writing since about 9:00pm for the last push. I don’t think this was the hardest of the 3 I’ve written so far, but it definitely was the hardest to complete. Probably because the whole nature of the post is that I need to change quite a few things!
I’ve been pretty publicly vulnerable in much of this post. Surprisingly, I didn’t find this part as difficult as I thought I would. The main difficulty was getting past wanting to do nothing instead of writing this, and admitting to myself that I have a problem.
OK, now I’m hoping to get some of my posts in my drafts out at a good pace. I’m pretty busy this weekend so it’ll have to wait til Tuesday or Wednesday, but I feel good about my pace from here on out. Now I’m at 3 posts done of 50 for the year (2023), if you haven’t been keeping track of my goal.
Feel free to leave comments or DM me on Twitter @brandonsayler! If you don’t have Twitter, you can also email me at brandon(dot)sayler@gmail(dot)com, or you can try your luck finding me on Facebook Messenger.
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