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savageorange comments on What are your rules of thumb? - Less Wrong
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I agree that reminding yourself that your reasoning powers have diminished as you become strongly emotional, is a useful measure.
Needs clarification though. by "doing something wrong" do you mean 'thought something incorrect, self defeating, or unhelpful', or 'taken an action which is considered by others or society as "wrong"'?
The former is true AFAICS (see Cognitive Behaviour Therapy). The latter is definitely not (no particular correlation, and can even occur when doing things that are considered good/ the right thing to do.).
Whatever the case, currently it's rather open to the interpretation 'when I feel bad, I did something wrong'; a misapprehension that's all too common.
"doing something wrong" = didn't maximize my payoff.
On reflection, I have to disagree. Maximizing your payoff can equate to doing things that make you temporarily feel you're undergoing hell on earth*. If you don't accept this as normal, you are not maximizing/optimizing, but satisficing ('Do the thing that feels least wrong' just orbits your current habits and mindset)
* Because humans aren't actually utilitarians or optimizing agents, of course. And because maximizing payoff usually (always?) requires some level of necessarily disturbing personal change.
Indeed. To give an example, I currently have a bad habit of often being late for my first class of the day (in college). It’s a 50-minute long math lecture. When I’m late, I might arrive outside the classroom 15 minute after class has started. Standing outside, before I go in, I have an urge to skip the class entirely to avoid the embarassment of entering and sitting down in the middle of lecture, which would slightly disrupt class and draw the professor’s attention to my lateness. But when I gather my courage and enter anyway, I’m usually glad that I did, because I learn useful things in the remaining 35 minutes of class.