{"id":933,"date":"2013-03-28T22:08:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T05:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/?p=933"},"modified":"2013-03-28T22:08:36","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T05:08:36","slug":"strategy-overhaul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2013\/03\/strategy-overhaul\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategy Overhaul"},"content":{"rendered":"

"I have drastically, drastically underestimated the social costs of nonconformity\u2014costs I was paying, and quite possibly correctly so under reflection, but which I didn't notice<\/em> I was paying."<\/p>\n

"Say more."<\/p>\n

"Well, as discussed previously<\/a>, I had been modeling other people as defective versions of my model of myself, without realizing that this was a mistake on at least two counts: one, other people are not like my model of me, and two, I'm<\/em> not as much like my model of me as I had wanted to believe, both of which observations are manifestations of that horrifying fact which I'm only now starting to appreciate: that people are animals, that Darwinism isn't just a proposition to endorse, but it actually happened that way in real life<\/em>."<\/p>\n

"And how does that relate to the costs of nonconformity?"<\/p>\n

"I had expected people, including myself, to be fairly agent-like, when actually we're far more animal-like than I would have ever guessed: we're mostly just kludges of habits and heuristics; the skill of, of ... recomputing<\/em> how to behave in the service of some goal is rare, and it's justifiably<\/em> rare, because it usually doesn't work; most new ideas are wrong. We're told that school is about learning, and when I noticed that the things I do outside<\/em> of school are genuinely more intellectually meritorious than my official homework, I felt outraged and betrayed: why didn't anyone just tell me<\/em> that knowledge is good, and skill is good, and anything you do in the service of the acquisition of knowledge and skill is good?! But it was a rhetorical question; I didn't actually try to answer it. But it's not hard to figure out: the stories we tell about ourselves aren't very good models of our behavior, that's all. Insofar as we attribute purpose<\/em> to the evolved social institution of schooling, it's probably some weighted blend of learning, babysitting, signaling intelligence and conscientiousness, subordination training, and path-dependent noise. Insofar as we construe people as agents who want to learn stuff, paying for college is idiotic: that's what books are for. But as coordination technology for a civilization of crazy monkeys?\u2014if everyone expects a Bachelor's degree, who am I to tell them that it's just a signaling game, just a bubble?"<\/p>\n

"So, you're planning to finish your degree despite your recent, uh, setback?"<\/p>\n

"Well ... maybe. I certainly need to learn to fit in better with the other crazy monkeys by being more empathetic and agreeable\u2014I've had a lot of unacknowledged outgroup hostility going on that I should stop. But it should be clear now that the degree is strictly of instrumental value. That's how most people think of it, isn't it?\u2014just a job ticket. It shouldn't be heartbreaking to do something instrumentally, just for what it buys you. And yet ..."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"I have drastically, drastically underestimated the social costs of nonconformity\u2014costs I was paying, and quite possibly correctly so under reflection, but which I didn't notice I was paying." "Say more." "Well, as discussed previously, I had been modeling other people … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[58,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":934,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions\/934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}