Group Rationality Diary, October 16-31

therufs

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 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.

Previous diary: October 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for October 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.

Previous diary: October 1-15

Rationality diaries archive

Sounds like it might be a good source of raw materials, if not a finished product per se. The lack of optimization is interesting though. Are you able to focus on large projects just as well as small ones (and you're just picking randomly), or is there a detectable upper threshold in the complexity of what you can engage with?

I'll be sure and try this out myself soon. Thanks for reporting on it!

I think I would need to first try my hand at a complex project to be able to answer your question; my ordinary life hasn't demanded anything of the kind from me lately. And anyhow, even so I couldn't make sure that the real bottleneck is my power of focus; generally poor organizational capability seems a likelier culprit for potential failure. Right now, only trying to assemble a syllabus for my math studies is giving me headaches; there are too many things to study and I should have been done with them three years ago anyway.

Presumably I select activities... (read more)