Group Rationality Diary, May 1-15

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for May 1-15.

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.

Previous diary: April 16-30

Next diary: May 16-31

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for May 1-15.

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.

Previous diary: April 16-30

Next diary: May 16-31

Rationality diaries archive

Good habits:
+Not only maintained but improved upon my exercise routine. Body weight focus twice a week, cardio focus twice a week, mixed exercises at least once a week, yoga and stretching daily, stretching every half hour at work. I was already slim so no real visual rewards yet, but I certainly feel good.
+Returned to reading the sequences after a break in which my lack of formal math training made it seem pointless. Almost through the Quantum Physics and the rewards have been quite good. The concepts have reached a point where they feel intuitive, maybe not on a gut level but at least on a reflex level. I'm glad for this because it also makes them easier to change/reject/assimilate when I learn more and understand better. The concepts of Many-World and Timelessness feel less like a fire and more like wood to burn for a more lovely fire. As do all concepts that I understand on a gut level.
+Begun to meditate.
-But have not optimized my meditation habit. Still need to improve upon it. -Dropped attempting to learn piano or Spanish as well as attempting to utilize more open source software such as Linux. The reasons were many but the results are still a negative.

Bad habits:
-Still involved in a habit that is a time sink but which I have a great emotional attachment too. Am currently determining my best course and cost and benefits of trying to optimize it or cutting it.

New evidence:
This one was hard on me. I've recently had some kerfluffles regarding job opportunities. When an opportunity suddenly opened for a job in my very very isolated, very poor hometown, I did not want to take it. My family pressured me to do so. However, I realize that my decision not to take the job was ignorant. It is an opportunity for money and work that I can terminate when something better comes along. While I know that the reasons my family wants me working at the job (nearness to home, isolation from my peers) are things I want to avoid, this is no reason I cannot utilize the job to maximize my own position.

New beliefs:
I'm currently updating my beliefs about the LW community and the related sister communities. I still have the sensation of an outsider looking in, but I find myself relating to or agreeing with more of the socially strange beliefs of the community. Not because they come from the community but because, as I read about these beliefs, I find they make sense. And as long as they make sense, I have no real choice but to accept that they seem to make sense until I find reasons that show them not to make sense.

FOLLOW UP EDIT:
I imagined which world I would most need my time sink habit in. After all, my time sink habit isn't something like smoking or video gaming addiction. It isn't directly unhealthy nor does it demolish my social life. It is merely and inefficient use of time and unsatisfying in the long term. However, it does provide some, short-term emotional satisfaction, and I can imagine a world where that small benefit outweighs the price. Some circumstances demand a short-term emotional reward to accomplish long-term goals.
So, I tried to picture the world I would have to live in to justify spending time for the small emotional benefit of the habit. The world that match is the one I am now in; that is, the situations I am now living through, where the habit already seems inefficient and unsatisfying in the long-term, are BEST suited for keeping the habit. They provide the most payoff for the least price.
If this is the best world for using that particular past-time, then clearly the past-time is not worth using, as part of this world is my desire to rid myself of it. So, I did. Any change in my world now will lead either to the habit being less desired or less needed. This was the only place it could have been worth having and there is no room for it here. So there is no room for it at all.

I hate to double post, but I feel this deserves its own space.

I have recently been re-evaluating Newcomb's problem. I had not considered Newcomb's problem since I was quite a bit younger, and I two-boxed in those days, thinking "But certainty-" followed by something unrelated to probabilities. Since then, I've re-examined the problem and decided that one-boxing holds the most water. Anything less is accepting less. It's losing.

Now, proud in my new appraisal of the problem, I have a chance to apply it to real life. Great.

Box A: I live in a ... (read more)

0[anonymous]12y

This is all good. You also have to be aware of frequency bias and confirmation bias. If you see the same argument a lot, and you see a bunch of evidence for that belief (because the stuff you're reading a lot has mostly positive evidence) of course beliefs are going to sound better. When I first came to lesswrong (I do this with any community I encounter that has certain signs of a cult), I first look for counter arguments against their core beliefs, which gives proper perspective.