Metus comments on Open thread, September 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong

0 Post author: David_Gerard 02 September 2013 02:07PM

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Comment author: Metus 02 September 2013 05:26:22PM 14 points [-]

The ancient Stoics apparently had a lot of techniques for habituation and changing cognitive processes. Some of those live on in the form of modern CBT. One of the techniques is to write a personal handbook with advice and sayings to carry around at all times as to never be without guidance from a calmer self. Indeed, Epictet advises to learn this handbook by rote to further internalisation. So I plan to write such a handbook for myself, once in long form with anything relevant to my life and lifestyle, and once in a short form that I update with things that are difficult at that time, be it strong feelings or being deluded by some biases.

In this book I intend to include a list of all known cognitive biases and logical fallacies. I know that some biases are helped by simply knowing them, does anyone have a list of those? And should I complete the books or have a clear concept of their contents, are you interested in reading about the process of creating one and possible perceived benefits?

Comment author: palladias 02 September 2013 07:05:40PM 7 points [-]

I'm also interested in hearing from you again about this project if you decide to not complete it. Rock on, negative data!

Comment author: Metus 02 September 2013 07:27:16PM 0 points [-]

Though lack of motivation or laziness is not a particularly interesting answer.

Comment author: Vaniver 02 September 2013 10:38:28PM 6 points [-]

Though lack of motivation or laziness is not a particularly interesting answer.

I have found "I thought X would be awesome, and then on doing X realized that the costs were larger than the benefits" to be useful information for myself and others. (If your laziness isn't well modeled by that, that's also valuable information for you.)