This is part 11 of 30 of Hammertime. Click here for the intro.

CFAR has an underlying mantra “adjust your seat”: systematically modify every technique and class to fit your personal situation. It’s common sense nowadays that different things work for different people, but the extent to which is true still constantly surprises me. (Kierkegaard had a fun take on adjusting your seat which he called the Method of Rotation.)

If you wish to partake in Hammertime, feel free to adjust your seat as much as necessary. Draw out the practice of instrumental rationality over a longer period of time, pick and choose the methods that appeal to you, and scale them to your time constraints.

Hammertime: The Second Cycle

Hammertime is about cultivating a tiny number of powerful techniques for solving a huge variety of problems. In the second cycle, we will revisit and upgrade the tools we introduced in the first, and apply them to tougher problems:

Bug Hunt
Yoda Timers
TAPs and Reinforcement Learning
Design
CoZE
Focusing
Cruxes
Goal Factoring
Internal Double Crux
Self-Trust

The new ideas we will be introducing in the second half are devoted to developing higher levels of introspection and self-honesty, to figure out your true motivations and aversions, and what to do about them.

Before each post in the second cycle, take a moment to review its predecessor.

Day 11: Bug Hunt 2

Previously: Day 1.

Noticing your bugs continues to be our single most powerful technique. Training noticing involves lateral thinking, attention to detail, and self-honesty. Today, we focus on three high-level ways in which human beings systematically err.

Setup

First, review your Bug List from Day 1 and update it.

For each of the next three mini-essays: read it over, then set a Yoda Timer for five minutes and brainstorm as many bugs as you can during that time.

1. Identity

Paul Graham wrote Keep Your Identity Small. Being attached to your identity can often constrain your growth.

Rather than making an impartial decision on what kind of person to be, people often extrapolate their identity (and morality) from their previous actions. A friend of mine calls this coprolite: fossilized and over-fitted beliefs that originate from early childhood. Are you neat or messy, stingy or generous, introvert or extrovert, conscientious or agreeable, idealistic or cynical, engineer or artist, vim or emacs? Do you look down on people for being the...