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brazil84 comments on 2015 New Years Resolution Thread - Less Wrong
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It's interesting that you use the phrase "Schelling point." Strictly speaking, is there any advantage for people who want to improve themselves to coordinate their efforts to start on the same day? Perhaps, but I don't think that's what you meant -- I suspect it's about coordination among the internal factions in one's brain/mind.
I too vote to avoid inflationary use of the phrase "Schelling point" (which dates back to this post, maybe?) People in the LWsphere are using it to mean "point of note" and that's lame. If you've got a fuzzy thought to share, you should use short fuzzy words. Don't use long precise words... you'll gradually destroy their precision over time, and they're also less accessible.
I'm not sure I'd vote with you on that :). Because I'm serious about considering the concept of an internal Schelling point. Arguably, self-improvement is about coordinating the internal, competing aspects of one's mind.
To illustrate, my normal exercise routine includes 30 minutes on the cardio machine. Not 31 minutes and not 29 minutes. I've been doing 30 minutes a day for a long time now. Quite possibly it would be better for my fitness to do less exercise some days and more others. Or to exercise for some other length of time. But 30 minutes is a nice round number which all my internal processes can seem to agree on. Does it make sense to think of 30 minutes as a Schelling Point? I'm inclined to think so.
In fact, I think it's very useful to see self-improvement through this paradigm, i.e. coordination of competing factions within the mind and trying to come to a sustainable consensus among parties which often don't communicate all that well.
(I also agree that one can think of New Year's as a Schelling Point (for New Year's resolutions) in the more traditional sense. For example if you want to start going to the gym every day with a friend or a group of people.)
I was thinking of social support of other people's goals.
Not really, but there's an advantage to having one particular day on which to do things, to avoid the "I'll do it someday" problem.
I think that's probably true, although I think it's along the lines of what I mentioned earlier -- a kind of internal Schelling Point.
There's also the problem that it might create another kind of "I'll do it someday" problem. For example, a person might pig out on Thanksgiving and Christmas and justify it to himself saying "Starting January 1 I will eat healthy and hit the gym every day."