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Area under the curve, Eat Dirt, Broccoli Errors, Copernicus & Chaos — LessWrong

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They’ll track their productivity, and try to get the number as high as possible. They’ll look at the amount of weight they can lift, and try to push the envelope. They’ll seek out more and more and more of whatever particular trait or thing they’re currently prioritizing—money, connection, excitement, knowledge. You could think of life as a graph, where the X axis is time and the Y axis is the trait in question. In this maximizing mindset, the goal is to get the line as high as possible—or sometimes, for people who set process goals rather than outcome goals, to make the slope of the line as steep as possible. CFAR claims that this mindset is a mistake. Overt maximization often ignores other costs and constraints, like trying to get eight extra hours per day by not sleeping. It doesn’t work—or at least, not for very long. The key insight is that the property we really care about is the area under the curve. You could think of the total amount of awesomeness in a given week as being equ

x Area under the curve, Eat Dirt, Broccoli Errors, Copernicus & Chaos — LessWrong CFAR Handbook Techniques Rationality Frontpage 45 Area under the curve, Eat Dirt, Broccoli Errors, Copernicus & Chaos by CFAR!Duncan 8th Aug 2022 9 min read 0 45 Area Under The Curve People often try to maximize . They’ll track their productivity, and try to get the number as high as possible. They’ll look at the amount of weight they can lift, and try to push the envelope. They’ll seek out more and more and more of whatever particular trait or thing they’re currently prioritizing—money, connection, excitement, k

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