Group Rationality Diary, January 16-31

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for January 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: January 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for January 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: January 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

What it takes to alienate a typical LWer may differ from what it takes to alienate a typical member of the population at large.
Upvotes and downvotes on LW may be less about (non-)alienation than acceptance and rejection in the "normal" world.
Your behaviour on a non-real-time internet forum dedicated to rationality may be drastically different from your behaviour in "real life".
Social skills are not just about what topics you choose to discuss and what words you use, but also about things like tone of voice, physical appearance, etc., that are completely invisible in the LW context.

It is (for all I know) entirely possible that your social skills are far better than you think they are, or for that matter far worse. (In particular, my making the above observations is not intended as any kind of suggestion that your social skills are in fact bad.) But I don't think having a good LW karma balance is any evidence either way.