This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for December 16-31.
It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
- Established a useful new habit
- Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
- Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
- Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
- Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
- Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
- Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
- Tried doing any of the above and failed
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.
Immediate past diary: December 1-15
I've noticed that at least for myself, things which are very warm/hot and things which are very cold (by the standards of food) taste better than lukewarm things, independent of flavor. I'm not sure whether this is a general principle, but suspect it is.
I am beginning to think so, yes. I have long noted that cold drinks taste more like coldness than like anything else(which is why so many people who dislike beer, myself included, prefer their beer icy cold), but I've always associated my preference for hot food/drink as a preference for freshness - you want to eat it before it goes stale and congeals and whatnot, not so much because of the actual flavours. Thinking about it, though, there's not much difference between right out of the pan versus half an hour old, and yet I'll take the former every time.
I now want to experiment to see what exactly I'm experiencing and thinking when I'm eating foods at different temperatures.