Post 36: My Sense of Aesthetics
Introduction
I care a lot about the feelings of joy, fulfilment and excitement. They’re a big part of what makes life worth living. But the things that spark joy for me, are often weird and not what sparks joy for other people! I find this interesting and peculiar, and it means that to maximise my joy, I need to understand myself and my sense of fulfilment better. Because it’s subjective, it’s peculiar to me, and can’t be understood by learning about anyone else’s. I think of the weird mix of values and impulses that form my utility function as my sense of aesthetics
So my goal in this post is to do that - explore the things in my life that make me happy, find examples of them, look for high-level trends, and think about how I do and could shape my life to best achieve them.
This is a pretty experimental post! I expect this to be valuable if you happen to weird in similar ways to how I’m weird (my past self would definitely have appreciated this post!) or if you know me and want a deeper insight into my personality and how I work. If I’m just a random guy on the internet to you, I expect you’d find my other posts more interesting, and I recommend moving on! This is also by far my most narcissistic post, since it’s literally a list of examples of cool things I’ve done and ways that my life is awesome - so if this annoys you, you were warned! But I found it useful to write, which is good enough for me! I found it harder to properly categorise and build a framework than I’d hoped, so the overall thing is fairly scattershot and a load of disjointed thoughts. But utility functions are complicated and messy, so I guess this is to be expected!
And finally, I’d be excited to see similar posts by other people! One part of my sense of aesthetics is to overcome the typical mind fallacy - to better appreciate all of the weird and wonderful ways people’s minds differ. And I’d love to learn more about what it’s like you be you, and what sparks joy in your life.
My Aesthetics
Making a counterfactual difference. Shaping the world so that things are better, and in a way that clearly beats the default.
Adding value to somebody else’s life
Eg, seeing that I’ve inspired somebody else. Or given useful advice, or helped them to fix a problem
This feels far more resonant when they can point to something tangible that is different - a specific improvement, a specific insight, or a specific action
This feels pretty similar if it’s passive, from something I’ve made (eg, a friend once told me they thought a blog post of mine had given them a 20% productivity boost), or from something active - actively engaging with their problem, giving help and encouragement
Eg, seeing that I’ve helped somebody else understand something!
Method: The best way to achieve this is to surround myself with a lot of people, and then enthusiastically seek upside risk! Be willing to go out of my way to be helpful, to offer advice, to try to fix things. Do the things that are mildly annoying if they fail, but incredibly valuable if they succeed!
And, since a lot of the joy comes from the tangible feedback and compliments, follow-up with people, ask for specific details and be a pleasant person to give compliments to!
Surround yourself with people who are interesting and agenty - who will do cool things, fix things and make progress, if given enough of a nudge! Find a niche that is high-leverage
Having made something. Having something tangible I can point to and show to other people, something I’ve made
Eg blogging, podcasting, producing talks, producing notes, etc
Method: Being willing to create media! Seek upside risk! Make something ridiculously scalable - if it sucks nobody will consume it, if it doesn’t then arbitrarily many people can! I still occasionally get messages from people enjoying notes and talks I made over a year ago
Method: The social aspect is important! Make it something that naturally comes up, eg writing blog posts about ideas I naturally want to bring up
I expect many other forms of being creative would bring this - making art, programming projects, etc. I expect to get more value from things that feel useful
It helps to find things that I excel at. Something I can do, that leverages my comparative advantage and situation
Eg, networking, introducing pairs of friends, and generally making connections
This feels a lot more resonant, because it feels like I was needed. That I have made a real difference, rather than a fake difference
Method: Try many things! Notice what you get complimented on, what you enjoy, what feels low energy, and double down on it
Organising events!
Eg throwing parties, encouraging friends to go with me to things, organising 1-1s with people
Method: Seek social initiative. It takes some energy to overcome the social anxiety at first, but this fades dramatically with time.
Method: Follow-up, and find ways to tell whether or not it added value! If not, this is useful. If yes, I get the tangible joys of happiness!
I find it somewhat interesting that the word counterfactual feels resonant here - I think that comes from a place of caring a lot about truth. Feeling reluctant to take satisfaction or pride in something, unless I’m confident it’s justified. And I think this is an aesthetic sense that I endorse
Achieving efficiency. Finding free wins. The general sense that the world is not a zero sum game. That being smart and strategic can just make things better, rather than being an ugly and messy trade-off
Realising that problems are for fixing, and successfully solving them! Putting in effort now, to forever make my life better
Eg, practicing my ability to make conversation, ask interesting questions and figure out how to mine people for interesting ideas - this now comes pretty naturally to me now :)
Further - finding ways to shift the default of my life, so my life is just automatically better
Eg, setting the lights of my room to automatically turn off at 10pm, and creating a system where good sleep is a clear default action
Finding ways to save effort - hacks to get the same results but in an easier way
Eg, keeping track of my friends in my spreadsheet, and using Calendly to coordinate scheduling - I currently have this down to about 20-30 minutes of efforts a week to keep in touch with an arbitrary number of people!
Method: Thinking in systems
Having something work well - having it exceed my expectations, feeling like a major win relative to the effort put in
Eg, blogging!
Method: Seek upside risk!
Social efficiency! Noticing when social norms are dumb and force me into a negative sum game, and realising that I can dissolve them
Eg, dissolving awkwardness by making my and their goals and expectations common knowledge, and establishing that we’re playing on the same team
Eg, resolving conflicts by just both explaining our goals, being collaborative, and finding the best compromise solution
Method: Clearly signal that this is an important part of how I think and communicate. Be sincere, actually take other people seriously and value their happiness and goals. Cultivate the skill of good communication. Filter my life for people who respond well to this
Noticing incentive structures and biases that point in unhelpful directions, and overcoming them! Finding ways to step outside my role and cached thoughts, and achieve my true goals
Eg, when my exams were essentially cancelled this year, revising and trying to deeply understand only the parts of the courses I intrinsically cared about, rather than sticking in the role of the student
Eg, realising that spaced repetition is basically a free win for true knowledge retention, when I step outside the incentive structure of exams
I think this one is a mix of realising that I can do better than my default path, and the contrarian smugness of finding a better route than everyone else around me.
A good chunk of the joy comes from noticing the default incentives trapping me, and that I have the agency to move out of those structures and pursue what I actually care about.
Method: Notice Goodhart’s Law. Notice when I am confusing a proxy goal for my true goal, the subtle hints of frustration and things feeling unnecessary. And realising that I can step outside of my default role
All things social! I am highly extraverted, and this forms a fairly big chunk of my total life happiness
When someone else in my life is awesome! When they’re an agent - deviating from the default path of doing nothing, finding something worthy they didn’t have to do, and taking the initiative to actually do something!
Eg, I once realised that there was a big systematic failure to help students in my course make course choices, and decided to collect data. And then, discovered that someone else had independently decided this, and made a beautiful website to solve the problem, and just needed more data!
Method: Look for people with interesting lives, and encourage them all to actually do things
Being helped! When someone I care about is active, in a way that makes me happier. When they’re thoughtful, when go out of their way to be nice to me, in a way that they obviously didn’t have to.
Eg, friends thinking to introduce me to awesome friends, give unsolicited (and useful!) advice
Eg, when I’m vulnerable and seek emotional support, and this is supported and accepted
Eg, when I have a problem that’s bothering me, and friends help me work through it, break it down and make meaningful progress
Method: Surround yourself with awesome, delightful people! Try to improve their lives in turn
Validation and compliments! Having it feel clear that people value me, that I have tangibly improved their lives, and that they appreciate this
Novelty! Meeting somebody new, feeling the sense of progress from unfamiliarity to getting on well, and really understanding them and how their mind works
Method: The world is full of people! Go out and meet them, and cultivating the skill of skipping past small talk and talking about what you actually care about
Respect and status - that I add value, am well regarded, and people care about what I do
Eg, people valuing that I can teach things well (and getting messages accordingly)
Eg, writing blog posts that people find valuable and insightful
Interestingly, this one feels pretty tied to things that are not deeply in my self-image already. Eg I feel this way more for teaching than directly solving maths problems, even though I expect I’m notably better at the latter
Method: Look for things I excel at. Try to become awesome at things, and thus worthy of respect. Find the things I care about, and look for people who share my values
It’s easy to Goodhart this and instead change what I do or what awesomeness means - fuck that!
Feeling “in character”
I’m somewhat confused by this one - I get a lot of joy from generally playing up to surface level impressions people have of me, and my core traits. Eg, applying an overly logical and analytical mindset to something, stretching things to logical extremes, being frustrated/confused by social norms, etc.
I especially get joy from finding things that are weird, but make sense when you actually think about them
Eg, emotional hedging - notice outcomes I’m emotionally invested in and making bets that they go badly (eg, going short myself for exam results). This is utterly weird, but lowers my emotional risk! And thus is a pretty good trade
Having a sense of community
Eg, feeling part of the Effective Altruism community. Having a sense of shared norms, beliefs and ideas. A sense of familiarity with strangers. An understanding that we can ask each other for favours, that there is a common mission to align behind
Method: Figure out your values. Look for people who share those. Be willing to invest effort, to cooperate without obvious expected reward.
For all of these, both filtering the people I hang out with, and working hard on explicit norm setting and clear, direct communication is extremely valuable. And is a major component of this working so well
Getting a sense of progress
Conceptual progress. Feeling that I have learned something on an intuitive level. That I understand it, that I’ve achieved something
This is one of the main joys of learning maths for me! Much of the joy comes from understanding the concepts in an area of maths, and dwelling on it for a while until it all clicks into place and I have a sense of the high-level picture - the motivations, the intuitions, and how it all fits together
Method: Teaching things to other people! Force yourself to be concise, to zoom out. Have an extremely neurotic irritation with lack of conciseness and confusion, and keep working at things until they make sense or I decide they aren’t worth my time. Having a deep conviction that there must be a better way
More generally, the joy of something confusing me for a while and seeming like there must be a more efficient way, until I eventually find one and it all clicks
Eg, being deeply frustrated by the proof of Jordan’s Lemma, until I realised that if I took a triangular contour rather than a circle, it’d all work beautifully
Interestingly, I get far more joy out of understanding a topic on a conceptual level than from problem solving - this is not at all what I’d have expected back when doing olympiads!
Internal progress - that I am closer to the kind of person I want to be
Eg, being willing to go outside my comfort zone, and to seek upside risk
Eg, overcoming insecurities and becoming willing to take on ambitious projects, and do hard things
Method: Try to build my sense of desired self-image deeply into my motivation structure - picture the person I want to be, and use this to build enough activation energy to do it
Building good habits - small things that accumulate day by day, and slowly nudge me towards being stronger
Eg, noticing when I am meandering and wasting motion, and fixing it
Eg, noticing the impulse to procrastinate and supressing it
Eg, noticing when I intend to do something but don’t make a plan, and making it concrete
Method: Mainly Trigger Action Patterns, and Noticing
Seeing stark personal progress - that I have gained a skill, become stronger. That when I compare myself to a past benchmark, I have far surpassed it!
Eg, seeing the total I can get done per unit time increase.
Eg, finding that the time it takes me to prepare a talk has fallen massively over time
Eg, finding it easy to meet new people, keep in touch and gain a network, in a way that Neel of 3 years ago would have had no hope at
Eg, feeling able to ask people for favours
Method: To achieve the progress, consistently make debugging and self-improvement a priority and worth putting time into. To notice the progress, talk to people, try to summarise my journey and give advice. And, in the process, realise that small, incremental steps build up to a lot over time!
It also helps to actually track things! Have data to look at, so you can avoid scope creep and the hedonic treadmill, and notice actual progress
Being wrong, and learning from it! Making mistakes, dissecting and identifying the mistake, figuring out how to fix it, and implementing it. Changing my mind on something meaningful
Eg, committing to action points at the end of a coaching session, and utterly forgetting about it. Then, in the next one, figuring out what had gone wrong, and setting up a system so that doing action points was the default
Method: Care deeply about truth seeking. Find good, supportive environments where this is socially rewarded, not punished. Where it’s easy to back down if need be.
Method: If informed of a mistake, don’t flinch away. Try to understand it. Paraphrase it back until you can
Maximising. Finding things that I value, that bring me joy, and which don’t seem to wear off. And continuing to do them!
Eg, meeting new people! The joy still hasn’t worn off
Eg, expressing gratitude! Having a system in my weekly review to send people thank you messages
Method: Try new things! Find the ones that work and stick with them, discard the ones that don’t
Method: And when something is awesome, keep doing it. This is surprisingly hard, but often utterly worth it!
In all of these, it’s super helpful to find tangible ways of tracking progress! Quantifiable things, like words written, ratings, etc. Feedback that I trust
Flow states - finding times when I am utterly invested in the moment, it’s taking up all of my attention, yet I feel secure and happy with things
Being in my comfort zone, and spontaneous
Eg, giving a well-prepared talk. I have a high-level structure and know where I’m going, but in the moment I ad-lib and riff off of whatever feels most interesting
Eg, working on a hard maths problem, but one that is just at the edge of my comfortable ability - where I have a good toolkit, I never run out of ideas to try. Where victory feels earned, but where I always feel as though I’m making progress
A big component of this is instantaneous feedback. Having extremely low friction environment, one that is easy to shape to my whims, and one that is low frustration
Eg, having a conversation with someone I really connect with - where they react in ways that make sense to me, provide spontaneity and novelty in turn, but where I always have easily available ways to interact. Essentially improv comedy, but way more fun
Consistency - finding ways to be true to my values, to notice internal contradictions and resolve them, and to do things right and well
Truth seeking - noticing what I’m wrong about, and fixing it
Having integrity - being able to admit to mistakes, and make them right
Doing the right thing
