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

Habits:

Going for streaks of getting ALL my daily habits done. These streaks were broken during my trip to California, which I stubbornly refused to put attempting productivity on hold for.

VOI

Hung around Berkeley and Bay Area to get some idea if I'd like it there. My sense from this trip was that I really, really hate cities. They're expensive and noisy. I did like the diversity, you don't really get that in Utah. Salt Lake is as diverse as it gets here, and there it's mostly homogeneous with small pockets of prideful "This subculture exists!". But I wouldn't necessarily live in the middle of the city, so that doesn't tell me anything too useful. This was last-minute and not terribly well-planned, I failed to visit the rationality grouphouses I'd most likely attempt to move in/near to. I had fun, but didn't accomplish much for my primary goal.
Stopped following the mathematical philosophy class on coursera. I will look into the later videos of the course which seem to pertain to bayesian reasoning and epistemology for curiosity's sake, but I'm not seeing a lot of personal value in learning philosophy. I was mostly interested in it for self-signaling that I'm smart and cultured, but I really want to be usefully informed more than I want to impress academics.

Optimization/Meta:

Planning to do some offline training of my morning routine. Right now I look at my to-do list and spend some time waffling about which morning activity to do first. Some items take more time or mental energy than others, so I subtly put off starting them.
Put a picture of a valkyrie on the head of my info board as a reminder to find and protect the "life force" (goals, happiness, well-being) of my closest people. Tsuyoku Naritai -- I actually want it done, not just to satisfy my impulse to feel like a caring person.

Emotional responses

Also just generally trying to train my visceral imaginings to what is likely to happen instead of what happens to be cognitively available. For example, when thinking about how to keep family safe I realized I ought to be picturing heart issues, diabetic neuropathy, worsening asthma, UTIs, and drowsy driving reaction times more frequently than dramatic spinal cancer, or getting hit off the road by a drunk driver, or stabbed to death by a random stranger. Next action is to look up actuarial tables.

habits

I joined a challenge to do duolingo Spanish daily. Now I've stopped enforcing daily duolingo practice. It's still on my habits as something to reward myself for, but it won't hit me as a negative thing if I don't do it every single day.

metagame

Stopped keeping a daily assessment of how far I'm going with a "perfect day" streak, in which I get all my daily repeat items done. My system already supplies rewards for streaks. If you try to use a stick instead of a carrot on my subconscious, it will take the stick from you and start beating

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