Using present pain to reason more mathematically about intertemporal options.
For a while I've been thinking that when facing a trolley problem, I should pinch my left arm once while reasoning about letting the one person be killed. And my right arm five times, for the five people that should be saved. More interestingly it seems that when reasoning about a problem in the far future mental slot versus a near future one, bringing them both to the present in the form of pleasure could aid thinking/motivation accuracy. I see no reason why the same would not work for pain.
Seems dangerous. If you inflict pain on yourself when thinking about the future, you might train yourself to not think about the future.
Why don't we have Life Hack thread like we do have Media Threads and Rationality Quote Threads?
Well, now we do.
I'm copying in the comments some hacks previously written about by others for your convenience, also check out the Munchkin post if you haven't, there are many interesting hacks there. Timewise, I've made it quarterly because it is harder to face a life hack than it is to face o quote, so less frequency may improve average quality. Below is a suggested description for them with structure taken from media threads. Any further ideas on how to improve the thread are welcome and should be made at the Metathread tree.
This is the quarterly thread for posting Life Hacks of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Four main thread-trees will be in the comment section.
1) There is substantial evidence for it (please post pointers to it)
2) I tried/ Friends tried/ There is some small evidence for it
3) Seems like a cool idea
4) Metathread
Rules: