I just added to my book recommendations post that I want to read nerdy books about the principles of baking and power-lifting [separate books to be clear, though tbf I would totally read a book that was like "the optimal cakes for building muscle" or something. Though that is probably just "cakes with as much protein as is practical to put in a cake".]

Anyway, the common factor is: I think in some domains, I'm under-utilizing my bent towards/talent for understanding systems/principles, or something?

i.e., there are various practices that throughout my life I've worked on and been either informally or formally educated in, but that I've not learnt very 'systematically'. By that I mean, it wasn't like someone sat me down and was like 'ok, here are the basic building blocks of this activity, here's what all the different moving parts do, here are simpler techniques that you can build into complex techniques...'

And two of those are weightlifting and baking - other examples might be singing and social or emotional skills of various kinds. In most of these cases, I haven't learned these things systematically partly because I've been a casual learner and wasn't prioritizing them. But it's also partly - and I think this is especially the case for social skills - that I alieved that they were not the sort of thing that *could* be learned systematically, or even *had* a system. When I've had teachers (as in for singing and weightlifting), they haven't approached things in a first-principles way. And for e.g. baking, most people get into baking via "try some recipes", not "understand exactly what certain ratios of sugar to flour to fat tend to do" - so that's also what I did. And for social skills, people call them "soft" skills, which I guess means "you *can't* learn this systematically".

But now I think that there must be some kind of system behind all these things, and maybe they are not generally taught systematically just because most people have limited appetites for that and learn better by imitation/trial and error?

It's kinda like how, on Duolingo, they don't teach grammar. I assume this is because for most people, immersion and repetition works better than grammar-learning, grammar just confuses them and makes it boring for them. But *I* have studied lots of complicated grammar (when studying Latin and Greek and such), and so it *wouldn't* confuse me, and I'm often like 'just tell me the grammar dammit! I'd be able to remember the sounds easier if I knew the system behind them!'

Similarly maybe most singing or weight-lifting or baking learners don't want "let's start with an extensive 2 hour lecture where I tell you about the science of your lungs/your muscles/flour", but I would totally enjoy that and it would probably help me a lot.

Beware thought patterns that approximate to "Everything they said made sense until they reached their conclusion, which felt obviously false, so I dismissed them/the argument."

I think even smart people will often think or say this without realizing how big a sign it is that they failed a confusion check.

Maybe the speaker made a mistake! Some verbal sleight-of-hand? If so, you should be able to spot it, articulate it, argue it. Not immediately, maybe, but eventually.
Otherwise, gut feeling/vibes/intuition are hard to distinguish from pattern matching to "too weird" or "wrongthink."

The things that your gut feelings/vibes/intuitions are "expert" on are your own preferences and desires. If someone tries to use "reason" or "logic" to get you to not enjoy something you enjoy, or to enjoy something you don't enjoy, that seems like manipulation.

But for fact-claims about reality, separate your preferences? Feelings aren't robust truth detectors.

They're expectation and prediction aggregations, indicating how much weight you place on things you believe, or how "vital" those beliefs are to holding up the rest of your beliefs.

To be extra clear, this is also *not* saying that you should *accept* anything you hear just because the arguments for it are reasonable.

This isn't about the "acceptance vs rejection" mental motion. It's about the "notice confusion and investigate" one.

It's definitely true that intuitions are great at handling things you have encountered many times before, distilling experiences and knowledge into gut feelings. It makes sense to rely on intuitions to help sort through most of the bullshit you encounter day to day.

My claim specifically is that the intuitions that are built on real knowledge are not *distinguishable* from the intuitions that are built on tradition, peer pressure, and other false beliefs we take for granted.

That inner feeling of "this seems like bullshit" does not distinguish the two; it takes careful, conscious effort.

Lots of people in EA/rationality spheres are interested in concepts of ‘the value of one's time’ or ‘trading money for time’ - for example they might talk about whether it's worth it to hire a cleaner, or take an uber rather than a bus, because it costs you money but saves you comparatively more time.

In these discussions, it's usually assumed that the value of your time is something like your hourly salary or hourly rate. (This seems true from the first few 'non-EA-world' google results too). So e.g., if you make $20/hour (the theory goes), it's not worth it to spend an hour to save less than $20 (by, say, taking a slower and cheaper bus rather than a faster and more expensive train).

But I’m not sure sure this is the right way to look at it. Everyone needs rest. Let’s imagine that A can work the standard 40 hours a week, but if they try to work more than that, they quickly become tired and unproductive. And let’s imagine that they make $20/hour (based on dividing their salary by hours worked). You might think that by putting in an hour of time, they get $20 ‘out’. But in order to put in 40 hours at their job, they need to also rest for the remaining weekly hours (128). So if their weekly salary is 40 hours x $20/hour = $800, then in order to ‘get out’ that money, they really need to put in not just their working hours, but also the 128 rest hours in between (without which they couldn’t do their working hours). So the real value of their hour is not $800/40, but $800/168, which is $4.70 — quite a bit less!

I think this perspective could be applied to other things: the production of value often requires more hidden, shadowy supports.

Consider a big company where the CEO makes millions, but the factory workers make minimum wage. From a pro-capitalist/more classical-liberal perspective, this might be fair enough: the CEO has unusual specialist skills that generate lots of value for the company, whereas the factory workers don’t. If you put a random factory worker in the CEO role they’d probably do way less well at it.

But from a more leftist/anti-capitalist perspective, this is actually unjust, because the CEO couldn’t make *any* money without the factory workers. This is why unionizing and striking works (and why progressives usually support it): you can coordinate to prove to the bosses that they really need your labour.

This feels analogous to the work hours thing: the value produced by the CEO depends on the support of the workers who actually make the product.

For another example, people who work in the formal economy are often supported in hard-to-see ways by loved ones labouring outside the formal economy. The stereotypical example is a man who works 9-to-5 (for pay) while his wife cleans, cooks, does admin, and looks after the children (for no formal pay). Feminists have talked about this a lot. It seems as if the man’s money comes from the labour he puts in; but in fact, he can work the hours he does only because his other needs are taken care of.

Another possible example: often when we think of social impact, we think of individual heroes or geniuses. But usually, such people couldn’t do what they did without the support of more ‘average’ and less famous people who took care of their basic needs, or created communities and institutions they could thrive in.

It strikes me that which lens you take is influenced by your politics: liberals, centrists and libertarians might be inclined to focus on the individuals who "actually" produce the value, whereas socialists, leftists, anarchist might be more inclined to focus on the collectives and communities that work together to enable valuable things to be produced. And surely both lenses capture some truth.

I’m not really sure how coherent this thought is or how well the examples really map. Thoughts?