This is an Uno

Seize the Maximal Information Density Decision (MIDD)

1) What is it

Instead of trying to learn and decide how to do things, and to continuously update your decision, abstract one layer above yourself and think of all the possible moments that decision will have to potentially be made. Focus and concentrate on deciding in the moment with maximal information density.

2) Practical example

You want to invest 10% of your money in risky assets – say, cryptocurrency – instead of constantly keeping track of crypto, think of the universe as a non-homegenous liquid where some parts have higher information density about cryptocurrencies, and some have less. The brains of some people and some websites have more.
Do the same with time. So your current brain has some info, your brain in a month may have more, but in two months you may have forgotten or not be updated.

Now abstract one level up and take the bird’s eye view. Looking from above at this 4 dimensional fluid, where are the best spots to make the decision of where to invest?
How can you get closer to the most dense centers of information (say, befriending the inventor of one, or finding secret websites). How much do you intend to be updated at which times.

Since life has too much to be done, it pays to only make decisions when you are in that high density part of the fluid, either close to a compressed good and trustworthy information source, or you’ve made yourself into one. You’ve found a MIDD.

The same goes for most life decisions, from whom to marry to which career to take.

3) Why is it important

If you were a stock trader a large part of your life would be dedicated to understand and otpimize one dimension. But since you are not, you are all the time trying to optimize several dimensions at once – such as happiness, meaningfulness, wealth, fun, power, charity, lives saved per second, friendships developed. This means you are always wading through a non-homogenous four dimensional fluid of different density of information of a lot of different things that matter to you. You can’t always store and retrieve information to make decisions on all of them. So you have to make trades. The most efficient way of getting the best deal of all the dimensions together is to try to infer if you are in a “high density of info for this dimension” part of the fluid we call spacetime for that particular thing you optimize for at that moment. If so, it is a good time to make decisions on that node.

4) How to transform your life in that direction

Here is a simple related idea I wrote a while ago:
Seize the Maximal Probability Moment

It is not quite as effective, but it is certainly simpler as a Trigger Action Pattern (TAP – Taps are a technique for remembering to do things where you establish a trigger that causes you to act, instead of assuming your brain will magically know when to do things).

Here is a complicated – 100 pgs – related idea Yudkowky wrote a while ago:
Timeless Decision Theory.

5) What do you gain from that

Some of your goals can be described as optimization functions, things you want to be a specific way (optimize). You get more optimization power. More of the things you want happen.