Group Rationality Diary, July 1-15

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for July 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: June 16-30

Next diary: July 16-31

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for July 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: June 16-30

Next diary: July 16-31

Rationality diaries archive

I'm talking about akrasia, not about literally possessing the explicit goal "enjoyably waste time". This is unlikely to be a goal anyone needs help achieving, and yet there exist a wide variety of lists to help people achieve it nonetheless.

What I'm getting at is that lists facilitate getting things done. If that thing is an explicit goal we have, the goal is more likely to be achieved. In these cases, where no lists (or poor lists) exist, we want to create or improve them.

Some things which aren't our explicit goals automatically produce their own lists which don't work in our best interests. In these cases, we want to disrupt those lists.

Makes sense. So the goal is something else entirely, you end up on the self-list-producing activity by mistake, and then it's hard to escape from. The anti-listing idea is a way of escaping from the mistake.