Group rationality diary, 1/9/13

cata

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of January 7th. 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 everyone who contributes! Happy New Year to folks; my resolution is to always post these on Monday evenings instead of letting them slip to Tuesday or Wednesday : >

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of January 7th. 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

Thanks to everyone who contributes! Happy New Year to folks; my resolution is to always post these on Monday evenings instead of letting them slip to Tuesday or Wednesday : >

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

Several reasons:

Franklin was an atheist, and explicitly chose his list to be sure that no one would find it incompatible with their religion. That's solid evidence that the elements of the list will be chosen for practicality.
With 13 subdivisions, it's more narrowly focused than the cardinal virtues, which are my next best candidate of practical virtues, and thus more likely to expose deficiencies.
I get the impression, from the distance of centuries, that young Franklin is similar to present me, and old him is a good target to shoot for. Thus, anything he took seriously I should take seriously, and daily consideration of the list (and attempting to conform my life to it) seems like a more thorough introduction to it than just reading it and thinking about it.
"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." Supposing there is a better set of virtues out there for me, I will be better prepared to tell after having done this.

Franklin was an atheist, and explicitly chose his list to be sure that no one would find it incompatible with their religion. That's solid evidence that the elements of the list will be chosen for practicality.

Where did you get this idea? As far as I know, Franklin was a deist until the day he died and even thought organized religions, such as Christianity, were necessary to maintain morality amongst the common people.

2gwern13y

5. Franklin is a high-status individual in American culture; emulating him may serve both to increase one's own motivation and to serve as defense against unpleasant criticism/mockery by others. 6. Franklin's rules are well-known on top of his high status; hence it saves effort explaining, and has other network-effect-like benefits (or maybe Schelling point is a better analogy) - you can probably find examples by other people and compare your attempt, which could be very interesting/entertaining.