

Things I wish I’d known when I was younger - hhm
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/things-i-wish-i%E2%80%99d-know-when-i-was-younger.html

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mhartl
_People are oddly consistent. Liars usually tell lies. Cheaters cheat whenever
it suits them._

This not only isn't true, it's famously false. Psychologists call it the
"fundamental attribution error". It may be counter-intuitive, but lying,
cheating, and virtually all other behaviors, rather than being consequences of
consistent personality traits, are in most cases highly contextual.

~~~
eyudkowsky
There is such a thing as personal variance, you know. The fundamental
attribution error kicks in when you're trying to judge by single events. If
you observe someone for a year, it's a lot more reasonable to expect them to
be much the same next year. I would agree with the statement "people are oddly
consistent", it's just that it's not so easy to judge from single events, and
when we do judge we're likely to miss consistent background causes or
consistent reactions, and think in terms of consistent personal attributes.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I meet someone who actually improves over
time in any visible way. I don't go around expecting it.

~~~
mhartl
You always say stuff like this, Eliezer. :-)

 _I would agree with the statement "people are oddly consistent"_

I agree, too, for sufficient values of "consistent". It's just that when this
statement is followed by "Cheaters cheat whenever it suits them" it smacks of
the FAE.

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mattjung
He is surely right with almost all his points. But if I would have known all
that stuff already when I was 15 years old - I would have been already an old
man at that age. I prefer to find out those things myself with all the
failures on the way.

~~~
eyudkowsky
One path to becoming a genius is to be as smart as an adult at age 14, then
grow around as much between 14 and 24 as most people do.

~~~
Shamiq
That is true, though it's a shame that our brain chemistry, and all that mumbo
jumbo, interferes with this.

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dhimes
One thing I'd add to this very good list: if you write a list with the intent
of fostering discussion, use a _numbered_ list rather than a _bulleted_ list.
I still find myself screwing that one up time-to-time, and I always regret not
being able to easily refer to, say, "number 6."

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pavelludiq
I realised most of that between 15 and 17. The thing is that knowing this does
not always prevent you from making mistakes, but it helps you to figure out
where you screwed up quickly. You can't be prepared for everything.

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orib
This was all freely available and common knowledge.

Part of being young is not listening and trying to find your own way.

~~~
qwph
Youth is wasted on the young...

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nazgulnarsil
bullet points 8 and 10 are contradictory. if you don't try to please others
you invariably come off as kind of an asshole.

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sabat
Most of this is insightful, and even got this 45-year-old (who should know
everything by now!) thinking.

I objected to this, though: "However hard you try, you can’t avoid being
yourself."

That's a semantic trap. Who you are changes, and can change, and you can be
the creator of that change.

~~~
wynand
I also found it insightful and was quite surprised that so many of those who
commented thought that the points were negative.

"However hard you try, you can’t avoid being yourself." Perhaps he should have
reformulated it as something like "Personal change takes time; you can't
change yourself in an instant and insisting on this is a great source of
unhappiness".

~~~
igorhvr
Yeap.

"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you
become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate
actions, brave by performing brave actions."

Aristotle

Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

