Group Rationality Diary, March 1-21

gjm

This is the public group rationality diary for March 1-21, 2015. It seems to be traditional to put a jokily defensive remark about downvoting here, but let's try omitting it and see what happens. Usually these are for 2-week periods, but as I write this it's already the 6th so I've extended it one week; but I recommend that the next be for 2 weeks again, March 22 to April 4. Here's the usual explanation:

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: February 15-28

Rationality diaries archive

This is the public group rationality diary for March 1-21, 2015. It seems to be traditional to put a jokily defensive remark about downvoting here, but let's try omitting it and see what happens. Usually these are for 2-week periods, but as I write this it's already the 6th so I've extended it one week; but I recommend that the next be for 2 weeks again, March 22 to April 4. Here's the usual explanation:

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: February 15-28

Rationality diaries archive

The remark wasn't "jokily defensive", it's because for a while someone was serially downvoting everything I posted, and I wanted to know why.

I still want to know why!

Noted. I'll hazard a guess that it didn't have anything much to do with the Rationality Diaries. -- Did you by any chance get involved in discussions of politics, gender or race, and take a position that would not generally be described as "really right-wing"? Most of the cases of mass-downvoting I've encountered on LW seem to have been done by neoreactionaries. (Quite possibly just one neoreactionary, who has I think had two different accounts banned for doing this.)