rhollerith_dot_com comments on Anti-akrasia remote monitoring experiment - Less Wrong

45 Post author: cousin_it 27 September 2010 11:34PM

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Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 28 September 2010 07:56:29PM *  1 point [-]

Do you not have other browsers besides Firefox installed?

My brain know that it can get around Leechblock by using Safari or Chrome.

In fact, my brain knows it can disable Leechblock by going Tools > Add-ons and clicking on the appropriate "Disable" button. Or if Leechblock lacks a "Disable" button, by uninstalling Leechblock and installing it again later.

Comment author: Vladimir_Golovin 29 September 2010 11:37:36AM *  4 points [-]

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:

# My Blocklist
127.0.0.1 pics.timesink.com
127.0.0.1 youtube.com
127.0.0.1 little-farm.flashgames.com

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.

Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 29 September 2010 03:26:52PM *  0 points [-]

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.