TheOtherDave comments on My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination - Less Wrong

81 Post author: lukeprog 10 February 2012 02:48AM

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Comment author: thomblake 22 February 2012 05:00:49PM 0 points [-]

You probably don't want to get rid of the planning fallacy - or people are less likely to want to employ you.

It might be true that lying about the amount of time it will take you to do something will get you a job; there are lots of things you can lie about that might get you a job.

Is your concern that doing away with the fallacy will make you a worse liar?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 22 February 2012 06:32:07PM 0 points [-]

It might also be true that telling the truth about how long it will take me to do something will cause a planner who is using my inputs to estimate the overall project, and is accustomed to compensating for the planning fallacy in others, to miscalculate estimated time.

Of course, if they do that, there's a sense in which it's their fault rather than mine, which can matter when what we care about is assigning blame.

My usual way of splitting the difference is to give low, high, and most likely estimates. Pretty much uniformly, I'm then asked for a single number, and I ask which one they want and give it to them.