Group rationality diary, 12/10/12

cata

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of December 10th. 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!

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of December 10th. 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!

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

I tried to spend five days, 10. - 14. Dec 2012, without web browsing, even without reading LW. As a reward I gave myself a small piece of chocolate at the evening (inspired by Story 1 in this article). It worked. This week, 17. - 21. Dec 2012, I will try it again. (Why not? I still have 2/3 of the original chocolate.)

I am rather surprised by this, because my model of myself predicted that it wouldn't work; that a small piece of chocolate could not make that big difference in a behavior I've been having problems with for years. But I had nothing to lose, so I tried it. It seems like trivial rewards work really well.

If the experiment replicates successfully the next week, I will consider using the same reinforcement for other things I want myself to do or to avoid doing (probably replacing chocolate with something smaller, like M&Ms). And then I can measure whether the new motivating system works better than the old one. Yay, sweet utilons!

You might want to experiment with flipping a coin and giving yourself chocolate only if it's heads, or similar--variable reinforcers are supposedly more compelling than constant ones.