Group Rationality Diary, March 16-31

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for March 16-31.

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 cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Immediate past diary: March 1-15

Next diary: April 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for March 16-31.

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 cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.

Immediate past diary: March 1-15

Next diary: April 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

Recently put into words why I find weightlifting and similar so difficult to motivate myself into doing; despite the demonstrated benefits, it still feels like enemy attire, and every time I attempt it, this alief gets reinforced. I haven;t thought of any good ways to fight the gut reaction, but at least now I'm thinking about it.

I've had similar objections in the past. What helped me overcome that was to think about it like I was "going undercover" and "behind enemy lines" to steal their secrets and techniques to use against them. I was going to get strong, yes -- but I was going to do awesome stuff with my strength, not lame stuff.

As Nornagest put, I totally had the geek mentality of "Physicality is for jocks/oppressors!!" Eventually I realized that they were winning on a lot of important levels, and I was avoiding successful methodologies because th... (read more)

2Nornagest12y

Nicely put. I used to wonder why other transhumanists seemed to neglect their bodies so much. All this talk about becoming perfect, immortal machines, yet aside from nootropics and the occasional trendy diet, hardly a one put any effort into optimizing what they had; even the really simple stuff, like maintaining decent hygiene and occasionally wearing things other than T-shirts with clever references on them, often fell by the wayside. The answer, of course, was that the transhumanist identity for most of these people grew out of their geek identity, and that physical and social fitness were seen as threatening or at least alien for male, American geeks of that era: they coded as the domain of jocks or scenesters or boring preppies. I hadn't fallen into the same trap because I'd been disillusioned with the culture for a while by then, but perhaps another solution would have been to change the precedence of those identities. Alternately you could try looking into the Quantified Self scene; I expect that might make the instrumental nature of e.g. weightlifting more salient.

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Group Rationality Diary, March 16-31

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