Kaj_Sotala comments on Basics of Animal Reinforcement - Less Wrong

45 Post author: Yvain 05 July 2011 08:42PM

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Comment author: Will_Sawin 05 July 2011 10:32:54PM 17 points [-]

4: Also relevant: checking HP:MoR for updates is variable interval reinforcement. You never know when an update's coming, but it doesn't come faster the more times you reload fanfiction.net. As predicted, even when Eliezer goes weeks without updating, the behavior continues to persist.

This type of situation was one of the main reasons I started using an rss feed reader to do almost all of my internet browsing.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 06 July 2011 09:15:32AM 5 points [-]

Other examples include checking for Facebook notifications, new e-mails, replies to your Less Wrong comments, or highlights/interesting discussions on IRC.

Those four combined have caused serious damage to my productivity, to the point where I'm forced to use things like LeechBlock and limiting myself to a slow Internet connection to stop myself from checking them all the time. And even those measures frequently fail.