Group Rationality Diary, January 1-15

therufs

Happy new year to those who observe the Gregorian calendar! This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for January 1-15.

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 16-31

Rationality diaries archive

Happy new year to those who observe the Gregorian calendar! This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for January 1-15.

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 16-31

Rationality diaries archive

I usually don't make enough eye contact with people, so I tried the eye contact exercise described by Nick Winter, which involves pairing up with someone unfamiliar and gazing into each other's eyes for 15 minutes. This was just a week ago, and I already noticed mild improvements in my ability to maintain eye contact. I haven't yet noticed anything as dramatic as described by Winter or Luke (who did a much more intense version of this exercise, starting over when eye contact was broken), though to be fair both accounts sound like the effect did not get noticed immediately.

"Eye contact" is a misleading term. People who say they want more eye contact don't mean they want you to look at their eyes for extended periods of time. It helps to move your gaze to a different part of their face every five seconds or so.

1falenas10812y

I did this over 3 years ago, and I still notice the effect today. I look directly in people's eyes much more. Whether this is a good or bad things is debatable. I have seen that it makes me more noticed in (small) crowd. If a teacher or presenter is saying something, my default is to make eye contact. They usually maintain this for a bit, and from then on tend to speak more at me than others. I do sometimes have to consciously break eye contact, because very prolonged eye contact does make some people uncomfortable.

0hyporational12y

If you look in between of people's eyes, instead of directly into them, most people won't notice and you should get less distracted. This might even make staring a bit too easy and people might get uncomfortable if you're not careful.