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

During my 2013 review, I've noticed one habit I've strengthened over the year: a certain curious skepticism.

When people share interesting facts with me, I've moved from responding "wow" or "I didn't know that" etc and filing the fact away to share myself, to something like "how fascinating, I wonder if that's true?" or "huh, I want to know more about that!" followed by taking out my phone and googling (or making a note to research it later.)

This includes wonder the same when I'm the one sharing the fascinating fact - "hang on, I've never checked if that's actually true."

I'm quite proud that to the best of my knowledge I can do this without offending people, or dropping out of the conversation.

On a related note, I've sometimes spent my morning compute write carefully phrased rebuttals to junk my family / friends share on facebook. Asked mum recently if I have been successful in arguing respectfully, learnt that I had, and in fact had caused something to be taken down. "Yeah, I hadn't looked deeply into that."