# Introducing the Instrumental Rationality Sequence

**What is this project?**

I am going to be writing a new sequence of articles on instrumental rationality. The end goal is to have a compiled ebook of all the essays, so the articles themselves are intended to be chapters in the finalized book. There will also be pictures.

I intend for the majority of the articles to be backed by somewhat rigorous research, similar in quality to [Planning 101](http://lesswrong.com/lw/oka/planning_101_debiasing_and_research/) (with perhaps a few less citations). Broadly speaking, the plan is to introduce a topic, summarize the research on it, give some models and mechanisms, and finish off with some techniques to leverage the models.

The rest of the sequence will be interspersed with general essays on dealing with these concepts, similar to [In Defense of the Obvious](http://lesswrong.com/lw/oi1/in_defense_of_the_obvious/). Lastly, there will be a few experimental essays on my attempt to synthesize existing models into useful-but-likely-wrong models of my own, like [Attractor Theory](http://lesswrong.com/lw/or4/attractor_theory_a_model_of_minds_and_motivation/).

I will likely also recycle / cannibalize some of my older writings for this new project, but I obviously won’t post the repeated material here again as new stuff.

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**What topics will I cover?**

Here is a broad overview of the three main topics I hope to go over:

(Ordering is not set.)

Overconfidence in Planning: I’ll be stealing stuff from Planning 101 and rewrite a bit for clarity, so not much will be changed. I’ll likely add more on the actual models of how overconfidence creeps into our plans.

Motivation: I’ll try to go over procrastination, akrasia, and behavioral economics (hyperbolic discounting, decision instability, precommitment, etc.)

Habituation: This will try to cover what habits are, conditioning, incentives, and ways to take the above areas and habituate them, i.e. actually putting instrumental rationality techniques into practice.

Other areas I may want to cover:

Assorted Object-Level Things: The [Boring Advice Repository](http://lesswrong.com/lw/lih/2015_repository_reruns_boring_advice_repository/) has a whole bunch of assorted ways to improve life that I think might be useful to reiterate in some fashion.

Aversions and Ugh Fields: I don’t know too much about these things from a domain knowledge perspective, but it’s my impression that being able to debug these sorts of internal sticky situations is a very powerful skill. If I were to write this section, I’d try to focus on Focusing and some assorted S1/S2 communication things. And maybe also epistemics.

Ultimately, the point here isn’t to offer polished rationality techniques people can immediately apply, but rather to give people an overview of the relevant fields with enough techniques that they get the hang of what it means to start making their own rationality.

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**Why am I doing this?**

Niche Role: On LessWrong, there currently doesn’t appear to be a good in-depth series on instrumental rationality. Rationality: From AI to Zombies seems very strong for giving people a worldview that enables things like deeper analysis, but it leans very much into the epistemic side of things.

It’s my opinion that, aside from perhaps Nate Soares’s series on [Replacing Guilt](http://mindingourway.com/guilt/) (which I would be somewhat hesitant to recommend to everyone), there is no in-depth repository/sequence that ties together these ideas of motivation, planning, procrastination, etc.

Granted, there have been many excellent posts here on several areas, but they've been fairly directed. [Luke's stuff on beating procrastination](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/), for example, is fantastic. I'm aiming for a broader overview that hits the current models and research on different things.

I think this means that creating this sequence could add a lot of value, especially to people trying to create their own techniques.

Open-Sourcing Rationality: It’s clear that work is being done on furthering rationality by groups like Leverage and CFAR. However, for various reasons, the work they do is not always available to the public. I’d like to give people who are interested but unable to directly work with these organization something they can use to jump start their own investigations.

I’d like this to become a similar Schelling Point that we could direct people to if they want to get started.

I don’t meant to imply that what I’ll produce is the same caliber, but I do think it makes sense to have some sort of pipeline to get rationalists up to speed with the areas that (in my mind) tie into figuring out instrumental rationality. When I first began looking into this field, there was a lot of information that was scattered in many places.

I’d like to create something cohesive that people can point to when newcomers want to get started with instrumental rationality that similarly gives them a high level overview of the many tools at their disposal.

Revitalizing LessWrong: It’s my impression that independent essays on instrumental rationality have slowed over the years. (But also, as I mentioned above, this doesn’t mean stuff hasn’t happened. CFAR’s been hard at work iterating their own techniques, for example.) As LW 2.0 is being talked about, this seems like an opportune time to provide some new content and help with our reorientation towards LW becoming once again a discussion hub for rationality.

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**Where does LW fit in?**

Crowd-sourcing Content:  I fully expect that many other people will have fantastic ideas that they want to contribute. I think that’s a good idea. Given some basic things like formatting / roughly consistent writing style throughout, I think it’d be great if other potential writers see this post as an invitation to start thinking about things they’d like to write / research about instrumental rationality.

Feedback:  I’ll be doing all this writing on a public Google Doc with posts that feature chapters once they’re done, so hopefully there’s ample room to improve and take in constructive criticism. Feedback on LW is often high-quality, and I expect that to definitely improve what I will be writing.

Other Help: I probably can’t come through every single research paper out there, so if you see relevant information I didn’t or want to help with the research process, let me know! Likewise, if you think there are other cool ways you can contribute, feel free to either send me a PM or leave a comment below.

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**Why am I the best person to do this?**

I’m probably not the best person to be doing this project, obviously.

But, as a student, I have a lot of time on my hands, and time appears to be a major limiting reactant in this whole process.

Additionally, I’ve been [somewhat involved](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ool/cfar_workshop_review_february_2017/) with CFAR, so I have some mental models about their flavor of instrumental rationality; I hope this translates into meaning I'm writing about stuff that isn't just a direct rehash of their workshop content.

Lastly, I’m very excited about this project, so you can expect me to put in about 10,000 words (~40 pages) before I take some minor breaks to reset. My short-term goals (for the next month) will be on note-taking and finding research for habits, specifically, and outlining more of the sequence.