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Alicorn comments on How To Have Things Correctly - Less Wrong
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Right, I'm just uncertain how to tell the difference between "I want a flannel cloak, and in order to justify the purchase of a flannel cloak, I will wear it when it is not the best thing in my wardrobe." and "I believe that the addition of this flannel cloak to my wardrobe will have a positive net effect."
This is because I know it would be awesome for me to have a cloak, but I would have to change my current patterns of behavior in order to wear it regularly. I am one of the people that would leave it in the back of the closet except for special events, and I would not be satisfied with the purchase of a cloak. I am not someone for whom the addition of a cloak would be a net positive.
I also know that I could decide to change, and instead wear a cloak often enough that the investment was justified. I could choose to change into the kind of person who gets value out of wearing a cloak. I don't know what other changes would be associated with that- and without a lot more information on which to gauge the expected results of changing the kind of person I am, I won't do it.
I was trying to determine if the particular anecdote I just encountered was an example of someone changing their habits knowingly and in advance, or someone who simply knew what their habits were already going to be, and made a correct value judgement.
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The opening of that section starts with the idea of 'change into the person who will benefit from the decisions you have made', while the closing is very much 'correctly evaluate whether you will benefit from the decisions you are about to make'.
These aren't really in tension. Do you want to bake muffins? Then arrange to bake muffins. Do you not want to bake muffins? Then don't buy a muffin tin. Do you want to have and benefit from a cloak? Then acquire and arrange to wear a cloak. Do you not want to have and benefit from a cloak? Then don't acquire a cloak. The failure mode we wish to avoid is "want to use thing, wind up not actually using thing".
Thank you- what you have just described, in terms of my original question, is that you correctly predicted that you would wear that cloak and acquire significant value from it.
Perhaps it might be better off described as "Get into the habit of doing the things that you believe are optimal." If you get into the habit of not baking muffins because you don't have a muffin tin, then getting a muffin tin will not break the habit of not baking. The step 'break the habit of not doing something you want to do' is pretty important in acquiring value out of an item which enables you to do something that you want to do.
I suspected, however, that your actual advice was 'change so that you want to do things so that you can acquire value from things which enable you to do those things'.