2017-11-27 RRG Notes
- To say that people do things for signalling value is not contradictory with people doing things because of authentic desires
- People draw a distinction between signalling with conscious intent and signalling with as a secondary cause of authentic desire
- Society disapproves of conscious signalling - looking good is okay, but if you do something just because it makes you look good, that's not okay
- However, the consequences of a behavior are the same, whether it was done with conscious intent or not
- Allegorical story describing the educational process and the process of getting a job and finding success as a series of levels in a game
- Start with "The Maze of Tests" - grade school
- Advance by giving the right answers
- Figure out that the maze is designed by other people and that you don't "really" need to understand the content of the tests, if you can predict what the person designing the tests is looking for
- Move on to the "Swamp of College Admissions"
- Need to hire a "test prep guide" in order to do well on one of the three-letter tests
- Do test prep guides actually work? Studies show that they're of dubious benefit
- Going to a test prep tutor might be more about reassurance and social signalling than anything else
- Come up with a good story about how you're benefiting society
- Once in college, you need the "magic smoke of the right names" in order to get a good job
- Interning at a well-known company means you'll get good offers even if you didn't really do any work
- Need to put the right names on your resume
- This is the part of the essay I disagreed with the most
- Completely contradicts my lived experience - I didn't go to a "good" school; I didn't have any of the right names, and yet Amazon still reached out to me
- Yes, who you know matters more than what you know, but what you know determines who you know
- Also disagree about "you will do very little real work" - the interns at both Amazon and Microsoft were doing real dev work
- Then, in order to move up in the world, you need the "magic rope of the right relationships"
- Find your higher-ups' deepest fears and insecurities
- Exploit them, so that you become indispensable
- Wait as your superiors do the work of moving you up
- The Inside Game
- The "insiders" have a fast-track to the top
- They're the ones that control the game
- Once you start playing the game you can't stop
- You can't? Are you sure about that?
- Once you play the inside game and get to the top, you realize that there are no right answers or true stories - it's all made up by the people who've advanced farther than you in the game
- In which a bitter rationalist doesn't really understand the real world and how to succeed in it
- This entire essay is a combination of over-cynicism and impostor syndrome
- Especially the part about getting job offers - sorry, but in Silicon Valley it doesn't matter whether you went to Harvard or you went to Podunk University - you go through the same interview process, answering the same questions
- "Hard Mode" defends against Goodhart's Law
- Hard mode is about working for your values, even when it would be easier to go along with what society expects
- Hard mode is about making yourself better, even if that results in slower improvements in externally visible metrics
- Hard mode is about being true to yourself
- Easy mode is analyzing systems and finding the most efficient path to your goal
- Easy mode strategies can fall victim to Goodhart's Law, where you lose sight of your end goal and instead become sidetracked by the proxy metric you're trying to maximize
- Easy mode lets you get to your goals faster, but playing in easy mode doesn't make you a better person
- Easy mode is "selling out"
- Both easy mode and hard mode have their uses
- You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em
- Know when to walk away and know when to run
- You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table
- There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done
- --Kenny Rogers, "The Gambler"
- Guilt and shame are unhealthy long-term motivators
- If you want to be highly effective, know what your true goals are
- Work towards those goals, and put in the minimum amount of effort to succeed elsewhere
- Pick a target and hit it, knowing that achieving higher than the target quality is as bad as achieving lower than target quality
- If you want to spend maximum effort, set the goal really high, and then work hard towards hitting it
- If you're a perfectionist, be a perfectionist about the process rather than the result
- Optimize towards achieving your goal with a minimum of effort, rather than getting a perfect outcome
- Thinking about a particular quality goal and hitting with a minimum of wasted motion breaks you out of the false dichotomy between being a slacker and a tryhard
