Yesterday I got what was probably a mass email to all of someone's friends, but phrased as a personal request, "Would you please do me this huge favor? Read (this Kickstarter project) and forward it on if you agree with it." I read the Kickstarter project; it was obviously hopeless. And since I'd recently gotten bitten on it, I managed to disagree with the internal part that said, "If you don't explain why this is doomed, nobody will ever tell it to this person; you are the only one who is willing to accept any personal cost, like loss of relationship-points, to bring a benefit to others, like warning them about a doomed project" with the recently formed heuristic "Assume anyone below the level of Julia is probably outside the tiny class of people who experience anything but useless pain on hearing their personal ideas specifically contradicted with any amount of politeness I know how to wield, until specific evidence to the contrary has been gathered in some low-cost way."
Techniques used:
1) Actually update on the evidence eventually.
2) Talk to other people out loud about the problems I've been having about updating on this evidence in hopes this causes my brain to actually remember next time what happened last time.
Technique it seems like I could've used but didn't explicitly invoke:
3) Stop living in the should-universe.
What was the project about and why was it obviously hopeless?
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of June 11th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
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!
(Previously: 5/14/12, 5/21/12, 5/28/12, 6/4/12)