Romashka comments on Open thread, Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: MrMind 28 September 2015 07:13AM

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Comment author: Romashka 30 September 2015 11:12:28AM 3 points [-]

Noticed a weird thing about myself today... Probably more useful for its vagueness, so reporting it here.

I owe a friend, who is also a colleague, 100 hrivnas. Recently, I found an unused gift certificate allowing to buy things for 150 hrn in a book shop, and thought, wow, I can just give it to her: her child has just started school, and the shop sells basic school supplies among other stuff - or better yet, since my child is going to school in a few years, I can just buy copybooks and give her two thirds of the loot. Great!

Then I went to the shop, and learned that the certificate was out of date.

I was relieved.

I mean, I have no problem thinking about paying her back, and I know I could be relieved because the copybooks could be overpriced... And yet I still would not have predicted being relieved, and it is really simple. Makes me wonder at my predicting capacities.

Comment author: Dagon 30 September 2015 03:45:27PM 1 point [-]

I think I need further description about the situation and why you're relieved. It sounds like you're 150hrn poorer than you thought, and I'm not sure why that's a relief.

Was there an unstated worry about repaying your friend in goods rather than cash?

Comment author: Romashka 30 September 2015 05:32:32PM 0 points [-]

After I'd thought about it for a while, I decided that I was relieved by not having to choose between what could benefit both of us and a potentially interesting book I could have found just for myself. (There wasn't one.)