Dr_Manhattan comments on Approving reinforces low-effort behaviors - Less Wrong

91 Post author: Yvain 17 July 2011 08:43PM

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Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 15 July 2011 02:39:08PM 5 points [-]

All are using their near-complete control of effortless immediate actions to make up for their incomplete control of high-effort long-term actions.

I am interested in examples any non-trivial optimizations that have been achieved by stitching together "effortless immediate actions", any mental equivalents of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip

Comment author: beriukay 19 July 2011 05:34:15AM 4 points [-]

Well, my recent experience with learning how to program was largely stitched-together immediate actions. Download Python one day. A week later, when clearing out my downloads folder, install it. Then open the tutorial guide but not read it. Then realize I've had the guide open for a few days, so start reading it. Get annoyed at not understanding stuff, so Google for more guides, and find Learn Python The Hard Way. Open the .pdf, start reading it. Get gedit and start following the examples. Whenever it gets hard, stop, but leave gedit and the command prompt open in the background reminding me it is all there. Make sure there are quick links to everything so if they aren't already open, they are one double-click away. <Insert some non-effortless non-immediate actions>. Step 3, post stuff on github and like it enough to keep wanting to learn more.

I may not have accomplished much with it, but it is hardly trivial, and since I first learned about Python in 2007 and have only started working on it this past year, I can rather confidently say that it wouldn't have happened any time soon otherwise.

Comment author: Duk3 26 July 2011 04:07:20AM 5 points [-]

You could consider the creation of the modern economy as a series of effortless immediate actions, an implementation of the greedy algorithm which is codified after the fact into law.