Can we choose who we are? (with Gavin Leech)

1. Embrace Activities Outside Identity

Purposely engage in activities that are contrary to your current self-perception or identity, as these are often the areas where you can experience the most significant personal growth and benefit.

2. Intentional Deprivation for Change

Intentionally deprive yourself of a habit or comfort (e.g., leaving computer at home to avoid video games) to force new behaviors and intellectual exploration, as this can lead to radical personal change.

3. Choose Influential Social Groups Wisely

Select your social groups carefully, as being part of a group that deeply values a certain behavior or interest can strongly influence you to adopt those values and change your own behavior accordingly.

4. Choose Your Preferences

Understand that your preferences are adaptive, meaning if you intentionally engage in activities, you can grow to like them, thereby choosing aspects of who you are.

5. Master Foundational ‘Methods Fields’

Gain a strong grasp of foundational ‘methods fields’ like statistics, mathematics, philosophy, and computer science, as these provide underlying principles and tools that grant you the license to work effectively across a wide variety of disciplines.

6. Cultivate Cross-Disciplinary Thinking

Embrace a generalist or polymathic approach by mixing ideas and methods from different fields, as this cross-pollination can provide a significant creative advantage for invention and discovery.

7. Undertake Challenging Projects

Engage in incredibly challenging projects, such as starting a business, as they force you to perform unprecedented tasks, fostering greater capability and agency.

8. Utilize Therapy for Radical Improvement

Consider therapy, with the right therapist and focus, as a potentially life-changing intervention to overcome issues like addiction, anxiety, or depression and radically improve your well-being.

9. Strategic Personality Change Possible

Recognize that while average personality traits may be stable, strategic and intentional interventions can lead to significant personal change beyond typical life drift.

10. Use Pretexts, Social Support

To change a self-concept (e.g., from intellectual to physically active), find a ‘pretext’ (e.g., scientific evidence for benefits) and seek out social support (e.g., a like-minded friend) to ease into new behaviors and identity.

11. Seek Life-Changing Interventions

Actively seek out dramatic, potentially life-changing interventions like a 10-day meditation retreat or Burning Man, as these can occasionally lead to profound personal transformation.

12. Immerse in Desired Social Groups

To understand or adopt new behaviors and perspectives, actively seek out and spend time with social groups that embody those traits, observing and trying their activities.

13. Challenge ‘Never Done It’ Barriers

Avoid not doing something simply because you’ve never done it before; challenge this as a ‘stupid reason’ to limit your experiences and personal growth.

14. Strategically Avoid Undesirable Preferences

Consciously decide not to cultivate preferences or hobbies that you deem expensive, risky, or otherwise undesirable, even if you know you could grow to like them.

15. Develop Broadly Applicable Thinking Strategies

Focus on developing powerful, cross-applicable thinking strategies, such as critical thinking, as these serve as broad tools that enhance your ability to analyze and solve problems in diverse contexts.

16. Sharpen Critical Thinking Through Philosophy

Engage with philosophical training or principles to sensitize yourself to sloppy arguments, ambiguities, and overloaded words, thereby improving the rigor and clarity of your own thinking and communication.

17. Utilize Forecasting for Policy Decisions

Recognize that judgmental forecasting (e.g., superforecasting) provides demonstrably better information than traditional expert opinion, making it incredibly valuable for improving policy decisions, even if the advantage seems small.

18. Supplement Probabilistic Forecasts with Causal Models

Understand that while probabilistic forecasts provide better information, they don’t mechanistically explain problems or dictate actions; supplement them with causal models (e.g., SEIR models for disease) to better guide policy and decision-making.

19. Sustain Prediction Markets with Incentives

To maintain the relevance and accuracy of internal prediction markets, ensure there are strong incentives for participation, sufficient volume of users, and consistent updating of forecasts.

20. Explore Paid Prediction Market Services

For businesses and nonprofits, seek out or advocate for prediction market services that offer guaranteed predictions on specific topics for a fee, providing a clear way to exchange money for valuable, crowd-sourced information.

21. Present Forecasts Appropriately for Audience

When communicating forecasts to decision-makers, be aware of their preference for clear, definitive answers; sometimes simplifying the presentation (e.g., removing error bars) is done to ensure the information is used, even if it’s a compromise.

22. Prioritize Arguments Over Authority

While respecting expertise, prioritize the strength of arguments and reasoning over mere authority; be willing to update your beliefs based on compelling evidence, even if it contradicts an expert’s initial claim.

23. Practice Deference to Experts

When engaging with experts, particularly when challenging their views, demonstrate that you have listened carefully and understood their arguments; this proper deference can make them more receptive to your perspective.

24. Proactively Unlearn Discredited Information

Actively identify and unlearn information that has been discredited or found to be less robust than initially thought (e.g., from replication failures), to avoid spreading misinformation and maintain an accurate understanding of the world.

25. Understand Field’s Methodological Limitations

As a scientist or researcher, critically understand the average methodological standards and their insufficiencies within your field to improve your own practice and contribute to better science.

26. Avoid Misinterpreting Replication Failures

When evaluating scientific findings, be cautious not to misinterpret a failed replication (e.g., not reaching statistical significance) as definitive proof that an effect doesn’t exist, as it might simply indicate a small effect size or insufficient power.

27. Understand True Scope of Peer Review

Recognize that peer review in most fields primarily ensures a paper is not facially absurd or below average for its field, rather than guaranteeing its absolute correctness or rigorous mathematical verification.

28. Design Tiered Credentialing for Research

Advocate for or design a system where all research can be published, but with tiered credentialing (from highly stringent expert review and data checks to basic publication) to indicate the level of scrutiny and reliability.

29. Implement Identity-Linked Comment Threads

Support or implement online comment threads for scientific papers where commenters’ identities are linked (e.g., showing their academic credentials), with anonymous comments potentially down-ranked, to foster accountable and high-quality critique.

30. Leverage Online Platforms for Critique

Utilize platforms like Twitter for rapid and public scientific criticism and discussion, and consider ways to incentivize high-quality, constructive ’trolling’ to improve the scientific discourse.

31. Advocate for Post-Publication Review

Consider advocating for or participating in systems of post-publication review, where research is made public first and then filtered and critiqued, as a potential improvement over traditional pre-publication peer review.

32. Recognize Journals’ Role in Attention

Understand that journals serve a valuable role in allocating attention to meaningful or noteworthy research, beyond just peer review, by acting as a filter for what is considered worth reading by a broader audience.

33. Be Wary of AI Voice Spoofing

Be highly cautious of unexpected or distressed voice calls, particularly from family members, as AI speech generators can spoof voices with minimal audio, making spear phishing and identity theft a significant risk.

34. Exercise Skepticism Towards AI Content

Develop a strong skepticism towards audio and video content, especially if it’s unusual or controversial, as AI can now generate highly convincing deepfakes for misinformation or malicious purposes.

35. Downgrade Confidence in Unverified Media

Proactively reduce your default confidence in unverified audio and video evidence, recognizing that advanced AI tools make it increasingly easy to create convincing fakes.

36. Be Aware of Deepfake Spread

Understand that AI-generated deepfake videos can craft highly specific and convincing narratives that spread rapidly online, potentially misleading millions before their inauthenticity is revealed.

37. Utilize Digital Signatures for Authenticity

For critical visual evidence, seek out or advocate for the use of cameras with digital signing modules that cryptographically certify image authenticity, making it possible to detect manipulation.

38. Be Mindful of AI Simulation

Be aware that AI can create highly accurate simulations of individuals based on their online text, potentially allowing others to interact with a ‘model’ of you without your involvement, raising new privacy and identity concerns.

39. Respect Autonomy Over AI Simulation

When considering creating an AI simulation of another person, even with disclaimers, respect their explicit wishes regarding such simulations, as individuals may not want their identity or beliefs represented by an AI model.

40. Establish Early Digital Identity

Consider establishing a substantial digital footprint of your original work (e.g., blogging) before advanced AI simulation becomes ubiquitous, as this could serve as a ‘cryptographically signed proof’ of your human authorship and thought.

41. Address Innumeracy in Decision-Makers

Recognize that a significant lack of basic probabilistic understanding (innumeracy) among policymakers can hinder the effective use of forecasts, suggesting a need for improved quantitative literacy.

42. Be Aware of Justification Bias

Understand that policymakers may seek forecasts not for objective decision-making, but for retroactive justification of already chosen policies, which can limit the impact of accurate forecasting.