Group Rationality Diary, June 16-30

therufs

Group Rationality Diary, June 16-30 — LessWrong

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I didn't want to exercise a couple times, but then I thought about how I'd actually feel pretty good after I did and how the time-wasting media consumption it would interrupt wasn't that great.

I also didn't want to exercise and didn't a couple other times.

Rationality self-evaluation: B-

More interestingly; I've found that when browsing Amazon, populating my wish list does a pretty good job of sating my desire to consume, while being quite a bit cheaper. You can also add to cart, then "save for later" as you trim down the initial cart, which is effectively the same as wish-listing.

But then again, maybe I'm buying more than I would otherwise, and Amazon is merely at the next level of consumer psychology.

gjm12y00

Like whales, I've found the same with my Amazon wishlist. I also quite like being the kind of person who has over 1000 books on their Amazon wishlist -- which may or may not say something bad about my character. Disclaimer: I also have thousands of books on my shelves, hundreds of which I have not yet found time to read, which (1) may also say something bad about my character and (2) should leave you in some doubt about the wisdom of emulating my book-buying-management habits.

2whales12y

I've had a similar experience with wishlists. There are some worthwhile corollaries: rather than follow interesting-looking links as you encounter them, open them in new tabs or add them to a read-later list. Or rather than look up everything you have a passing curiosity about, or switch to whatever task catches your immediate attention, add a note to yourself in your GTD/whatever system. If you're like me, your immediate desire will be satisfied by the knowledge that you'll get to it soon if it's important. And when you get around to reviewing these things, you'll be in a more reflective mode and will notice that many of these things are not in fact worth your time. There's the same caveat: avoiding these things (like sources of potentially worthless links) in the first place might be a better solution for you (depending on density of chaff, to what extent lists and tab explosions stress you out, how likely you are to responsibly prune these things, whether you'll still capture the important things without universal capture, and so on). Try both, decide for yourself.

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Group Rationality Diary, June 16-30

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Group Rationality Diary, June 16-30

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