xuenay | Travel diary, day 4

SIAI House, California. April 9.

Yesterday, I:

- Wrote a new blog post of my experiences here
- Continued working on the mindmap / analysis of my uncertainties and began actually making progress
- Attended the math workshop and realized that maybe geometry isn't so bad and soul-destroyingly horrible after all
- Joined a conversation where Anna, Alicorn and others were discussing emotional issues and understood how they related to some of my own issues
- Read all the published chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (they kept distracting me from work so I'm marking this as an accomplishment, all right? Now they won't distract me anymore, at least not until new chapters pop up)

Today, I will:

- Write a new blog post about my experiences, among other things summarizing what I learnt from the discussion yesterday
- Do the rest of the math assignments from yesterday's workshop
- Complete the mindmap / analysis of my uncertainties
- Work on something from the curriculum

Yesterday had its ups and downs. I didn't get very much done on my own. After finishing my travel diary entry, afterwards most of that day was wasted on random websurfing and that darned fanfic. I've always had difficulty with good focusing methods, and though coming here has made it somewhat easier to focus on the things I should be doing, it's no silver bullet. This also led to several rather angsty moments, with me again beginning to wonder whether I'm really any good (with anything), whether I should be here and whether I'm just deceiving myself and everyone that I'd be competent when I really aren't, etc.

Some moping around later, I realized a possible problem I was (and am) having. It's that I'm still not very clear on what exactly I'm expected to be doing here. Self-improvement and studying, sure. There's this wonderful library I should begin taking advantage of more. But other than that? I'd like to do something conrete here that I can't do back at home. Then I remembered that one purpose of the mindmap I'd been told to work on was to identify things we were uncertain of as a group, with the possibility of this revealing possible directions for research. We'll see what happens on Sunday, when everyone shares their mindmaps, and whether that sparks off any interesting projects.

This realization prompted me to start actually working on my own mindmap (which isn't a mindmap, as I realized a graphical format didn't work very well for me), and I finally settled into a format that allowed me to make progress. I kept working on it until Anna summoned us to her math workshop. The stated intention of the workshop and the ones after it was to give the interested participants a firm grounding in high school maths, to such a degree that we could theoretically pass the exam you need to pass to become a math teacher in California. Some others, who already knew the maths, attended anyway to watch Anna's teaching and learn how to tutor better. I went along because my math skills are rather uneven - I'm relatively good at some fields, but a lot of the stuff Anna was going to teach was geometry, which I've traditionally been bad at. I figured getting a refresher course couldn't hurt. At the workshop, Anna also mentioned that another purpose was to build our mathematical problem-solving skills in general, and afterwards that it'd also been intended to make us more comfortable with studying things and solving problems even though we weren't entirely sure we understood everything.

For my own part, the workshop went well and I enjoyed it, but there were some people with emotional traumas concerning math who dealt with it less well. Still, from my perspective even that was a good thing, because it led to a debriefing session where several people ended up discussing various emotional issues. And that led me to realize what one of the causes of my emotional issues were: adjective compliments. I'd already read of this problem in various places before, and realized that adjective compliments were behind part of my problems, but it never really clicked the way it did now. Others have already written of this better than I could at this late hour, so I'll just quote them. First Alicorn:

These books were my first exposure to the idea that you should not compliment your children, at least not in a broad adjectival way. Don't call them "smart" or "honest" or "creative". It feels good for a short time, but it makes them dependent on external praise (calling yourself smart or honest or creative doesn't feel the same, so you can't duplicate the esteem boost without someone helping), and will tend to call up counterexamples (calling a kid smart makes the kid think of the last six or seven stupid things they did, and even the smartest people have done stupid things). Instead, Faber and Mazlish recommend descriptive praise: just say what the kid did. This is pretty easy to duplicate alone. If you're used to praise coming in the form "you did your homework ahead of time and now you have all weekend to read!" instead of "you're responsible!", then it's pretty easy, when you're off at college and not getting external evaluation as frequently, to say "I did all my homework ahead of time and now I have all weekend to goof off!".

When I was in high school, I started to notice that in fact I got adjective compliments very frequently. In particular, people called me "smart" after talking to me for five minutes about something trivial, or after learning that I skipped a grade. I noticed that these compliments bothered me on some level, but I didn't make the connection with the contents of those books. I just concluded that praise from those people was worthless, because if they call me smart after talking to me for five minutes, or knowing that I skipped a grade without knowing all of the complicated drama that surrounded that, then they have very low standards for calling someone smart. I can't trust those people to help me figure out how smart I am, because they'd say that to anybody who gave them the least excuse.

I've had this experience a lot. People vaguely telling me I'm smart, but without providing any kind of real reason. There was a kid in high school that I spent some time with, not particularly much but just hanging out a bit on the breaks. As far as I can remember, we hadn't even talked about anything very intellectual. On one day, though, entirely out of the blue he said that I was the smartest person he'd ever met.

I was really taken aback at that. At first I thought I'd misheard, but he repeated it, so I think I managed to mutter an embarassed "thanks". Even today, people who I don't know well and have only interacted a little with suddenly surprise me by stating I must be really smart.

Here's a quote from PJ Eby before I go on:

...one of [Dr. Carol Dweck]'s experiments showed that giving a child a single IQ test and telling them their score meant they were "smart", was enough to create a...

Lasting Negative Impact!

And I was utterly floored, because it brought back memories of something that happened around the second or third grade. Some kid I didn't know came up to me on the playground and told me how smart I was and that they admired me.

I tried to brush it off, because that wasn't how I saw myself. I felt like what I did was easy and anybody could do it and it was just a matter of applying yourself. In fact, that's what I told the kid.

But he wouldn't accept it as an answer, and he kept trying to persuade me, "no, you're really smart..." So finally, I gave in to his assessment, if only to stop him pestering me.

And that was about the time that...

Things Started To Go Badly For Me!

Because I adopted what Dr. Dweck refers to as a "fixed" mindset: the idea that your ability or talent in some area is a fixed quantity, and that it's an aspect of you, rather than something that is variable and under your control.

[...] once I defined my identity as "smart", I had to live up to it. After all, if I made any mistakes, I wouldn't be "smart" any more! [...]

You see, it doesn't matter whether you think you're "good" at something or "bad" at it -- all that matters is whether you think your ability is fixed. If so, then you will develop fears and neuroses, or compulsive compensating behaviors.

I won't try to hide it: I'm insecure. Not so insecure that I'd let most people see it, but when it comes to the few people I'm really close to, they'll know that I'm fishing for compliments a lot. Not for everything - there are some things about myself that I'm not insecure about, because I've proven them to myself with my actions. I know that I'm caring, and I know I'm loyal to those closest to me, because I've inconvenienced myself to come to their aid countless of times. For that, I've long since passed the point where I'd have any doubts.

But things like "smart"? I hear that from a lot of people, but I don't have all that much giving me external validation. Smart in the sense of having an IQ above the population average of one hundred? Sure, certainly. If I had to guess, I'd say I was in the top 30%, but not much better than that. Unfortunately, many people keep giving me the signal that I'd be even better than that. And that leads to trouble, because then I end up comparing myself to people who really are that smart, seeing that I'm nowhere near their caliber, and getting demoralized. Or then there's that one pair of real analysis courses I've kept beating my head against. The first time I failed them was simply because I didn't have the time to do all the exercises. Combined with an entrance exam that I failed five years back, also basically due to time constraints more than anything else, that's left me with a rather strong alief that I'm both stupid and bad with math. (Though it's true to some degree, and not a complete alief. If I really were as smart as some of the people seem to be claiming, I'd have passed that course even with the lack of practice. I know people who can do that.)

So, yeah. That's my problem. It's worsened by the fact that the feeling of being stupid also gets triggered when I just don't get anything done. That's not directly related to intelligence, but likewise creates a feeling of being worthless and never accomplishing anything. I need to somehow retrain my brain away from the "fixed" mindset, where one keeps thinking of their intelligence and other traits as fixed properties, and into a "growth" mindset where challenges are only seen as growth opportunities. Easier said than done...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Up until very recently, when I pondered whether I'd like to come to the Visiting Fellow program, a major source of reluctance for me was that fear of ending up not being useful. I could picture myself getting very angsty over there.

Just very recently I got rid of this fear. It's because I'm currently doing this thing I feel is productive (not disclosed here, but you know what I'm talking about probably), and realized that I could do this just as well over there. So if I came over there, I would have a fall-back plan that would allow me to feel useful.

The fact is, most of the useful stuff you can do over there you *could* do over here as well. Writing articles etc. falls into this category. Being there offers some benefits, like somewhat easier access to books and collaboration & discussion partners, but in the end, the difference between being there and here isn't *huge* in terms of what useful things you can do. A significant part of the point in going over there actually is just that if you keep working in this area, it's valuable that sooner or later you go visiting over there to get an IRL feel for some of your potential long-distance collaboration partners. Also it's valuable for SIAI to try to motivate you to work in this area instead of others ;)

So you shouldn't feel that you should be doing things you couldn't do over here. Mostly you probably should be doing the same things, just with some slight added benefits like mentioned above, and a circumstance where you can pick a small number of things to spend your energy on, instead of dealing with all the various things you mostly would need to deal with over here.

As to suggestions for a project, how about that Singularity FAQ an early version of which recently came up? Translating stuff to Finnish would also be an endless source of productive work, though personally I don't actually consider this extremely advisable, since scientifically literate people should be able to read in English anyway, and I don't value other audiences very much... But the utility is non-zero anyway, so this could be your fall-back plan; a new Finnish FAQ better than the current transhumanism stuff we have bothered to write up, maybe even planning a site for a Finnish branch of SIAI.

Also, dude, you really have no reason to wonder whether you're any good at anything! How many people have published three informative books (on separate topics, even) by your age? Or been as useful to a new political party as you've been? I wish I'd been as productive as you've been in the last few years. (Well, a part of me wishes, while another part has enjoyed being an evil lazy bastard.)

Also, on that smartness thing, I find it obvious that even though it's possible to point to people with higher IQs than you (rare are the ones in whose cases this wouldn't apply...), you have no significant handicap in that department (even though your 30% estimate might be correct, I don't know). What I mean by this is precisely this:

Your intellectual talent level is sufficient that the difference between you and those somewhat higher up has really only to do with the *speed* in which you are able to carry out various intellectual tasks. One has to go pretty far towards the genius level, around to where Bostrom is, for things resembling qualitative differences in capabilities to start to appear.

The key thing that you do have, and what I'd guess the person in high school was already referring to, is the *attitude* of a genuine intellectual. The resolve to strive for unbiased clarity in your thinking, a natural predisposition towards rationality in the lesswrong.com-sense of the word. With this, one is able to achieve a lot more than those with even higher IQs but who lack this clarity of thinking. This property often shows in everyday interaction, with most people calling it "being smart".

Thanks - that makes quite a bit of sense. (Both comments.)

Kaj, you wrote sensibly about your feelings and now you have all weekend to read!

Oh wow, I've felt like this for most of my life but never knew there was a term for it. I've always hated adjective compliments, because I feel that they don't really explain anything important and that they sometimes undervalue your true achievements. It's like... having empty words that you can just throw around to make people feel good, without actually concentrating on the person themselves.
When I give compliments or criticism I try to concentrate on giving people more descriptive praise, something that highlights what they just did instead of what they should be.

Also, this totally explains why I get embarrassed easily by what other people perceive as compliments. I always feel that they've misunderstood me somehow, or that they can't really mean what they say. If someone gives me a clearer compliment (for example, based on individual achievement such as "wow, your computer colouring technique has improved a great deal in the past year" instead of saying "eeee, you're so talented!") I can accept it easier and it makes me feel happier about my achievement.

Thanks for posting about this. :) It really opened my eyes.

You're welcome. :) Yeah, getting generic praise is really more frustrating than anything.

Great comment, by the way. ;)

First of all, top 30%? I hate to sound like I'm complimenting you, but you're at least top 5%. At least by US standards; all the Finns I know are crazy smart, and I don't know if that's a sampling effect or actually reflects your country.

Remember, unless you're judging based on standardized tests or something, you're judging yourself relative to the people you know. You probably hang out with people around as smart as you are, so you probably think you're much closer to the average than you actually are. In fact, someone once suggested to me that everyone except the top few geniuses in the world think of themselves as only moderately smart, because they rise to a level appropriate to them where everyone around them is about as smart as they are. You've found that level at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence Visiting Fellows program. I think that itself says quite a bit.

(compare this to all the happiness research stuff that says money buys happiness not when it makes you rich, but when it makes you richer than the people around you.) You're probably smarter than entire countries full of people suffering from childhood iodine deficiency, but you're not likely to take that as a compliment and it wasn't intended that way.

I have the same reaction to compliments as you do. If someone calls me smart, well, it's not something I won through pluck and virtue, it's just something that happened to me. Someone calling attention to it is faintly embarrassing, like someone saying "Hey, you were born to a rich family and so had every advantage in life." I sort of feel like apologizing for it: "Yeah, I guess I was born to a rich family, but I promise I feel suitably guilty about it and know how lucky I am and won't try to take unfair advantage of it. Please don't hate me." I also start wondering whether I'm unconsciously showing off or trawling for compliments.

You might be right about the 30% thing. I was drawing on a sample of the people I usually hang out, but then afterwards I remembered the people I was together with back in elementary school and even high school. Thinking about it, pretty few of that earlier sample was at the level of the later sample. I'm not so sure of the top 5% thing, but yeah, the original 30% may have been an underestimate.

Kaj, you have nothing to worry about in the domain of 'smart'. You have respect from Rationalists and Singularitarians. And you are one of Less Wrong's top contributors. Need I say more?

The original article describes how identifying yourself as 'smart' will be counter-productive, because you constantly have to live up to fixed image and any sign that this isn't true will be a threat to your ego. Thus trying to convince the author that "yeah but you really are smart" is completely opposing to the idea he represented!

Travel diary, day 4

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