This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for April 16-30.
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.
Previous diary: April 1-15
Next diary: May 1-15
As a plan D for my current employment situation (A already failed, B has 10% failure risk, C is slow-going) I looked up information on welfare aid and contacted the local job center. I didn't file anything yet but I got the valuable information that I welfare aid can be applied to for the running month and which kind of requirements are needed.
This did nothing to my situation by itself but together with considering all the options and consequences gave me feeling that the overall situation was much less depressing than I had pictured it in some lonesome moments.
++ arbitrary internet points for putting an estimate on one of your plans. Quantifying is better than vague worrying or endless flipflopping between intense fear and hope, don't you think?
Murphy-proofing does seem to have that effect of making a bad situation seem much less depressing. It's a bit surprising for an activity that is so heavily based on putting detail to everything that could possibly go wrong. I suppose I have an implicit expectation that the scary fog of uncertainty is always obscuring even worse monsters, and this expectation is getting proven wrong. It turns out that most monsters are easier to hit or hide from when you can see them coming.