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Vladimir_Golovin comments on Anti-akrasia remote monitoring experiment - Less Wrong
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Here's a recipe for a bigger trivial inconvenience. If you're running Windows, you can edit the WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/DRIVERS/ETC/hosts file to include some lines like this:
This way, the domains you listed will force-resolve to 127.0.0.1 (a.k.a. localhost). Once done, this will introduce a pretty big trivial inconvenience between you and your favorite timesinks -- hosts is a system file, so you'll have to deal with OS warnings and prompts every time you want to edit it.
Oh, I've been doing that for years.
To increase the size of the obstacle it represents, I once modified the command I am in the habit of using to open files for editing so that any request to open /etc/hosts got changed to a request to open the file containing my to-do list.
But the next time it wanted to go to one of the sites on my blocklist, it took my brain about 5 seconds to realize that if it requested the opening of /:/etc/hosts (the /: being a quoting convention in Emacs) rather than /etc/hosts, it could get around my obstacle.
Some small software changes have proved effective obstacles for months, but the above was not one of them.
I will continue to maintain a blocklist in /etc/hosts because it causes my brain to observe my policy on work and procrastination more than it would without it, but the reason I am involved in remote-monitoring experiments is because it is a more powerful anti-akrasia technique.
For which versions of Windows does this happen? I'm running Windows XP and I also use my hosts file to block time-wasting websites, but I don't ever get any warnings when I edit my hosts file in Notepad. This makes the hosts file not so inconvenient, because all you have to do is (Windows key) + R > type in "cmd" and hit enter, and in command line type: "edit c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts" and you're done.
This can be done in about 15 seconds, unfortunately, and having the line "#127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com" in my current hosts file is a testament to that fact ("#" comments everything out after it on that line).
I've actually got mine pinned on the taskbar. ;)
Useful for web development... I redirect to my linux VM.
Uh, I guess that my advice won't work for programmers and admins then. I'm using Windows 7 under a non-admin / restricted account with UAC set to its default setting, level 3, and I don't use command-line to edit. I do it the normal way :) -- I double-click it, it asks me for an admin password, then to chose a program to open it, I chose Notepad, edit it, it won't let me save, I save to Desktop, then close Notepad and copy the file over, it asks me to copy or replace etc. etc.
BTW I just tried "edit c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts" in Win7 under both admin and non-admin accounts (had to replace 'edit' with 'notepad'). It indeed opened the file but it won't let me save the edits afterwards -- probably due to Windows File Protection.