I realized afterward that I'd just turned into Harry in Chapter 16 of HPMOR, except that instead of asking how I could use every object in the room to kill someone, I was glancing at every single object in the room around me and reinterpreting it in terms of how I could use it to achieve my current objective of "block visibility into the room". And that apparently other people don't automatically think this way when confronted with real-life problems, and CFAR needs to come up with some sort of training method.
Really? Even the rather potent near mode goal of copulation isn't enough to prompt people to enter that sort of creative problem solving mode? While I believe it I'm still surprised. I have acted out rather similar privacy construction scenarios and thought nothing of it.
Well, the problem wasn't "we can't have sex", the problem was, "we can have sex but not privacy". I suspect that people are much less likely to go Munchkin when faced with something they can just grit their teeth for, however inconvenient.
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of September 17th. 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!
Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.
(Sorry for being late, I don't even have an excuse at all! Oh well.)