Group Rationality Diary, March 22 to April 4

gjm

This is the public group rationality diary for March 22 - April 4, 2015. Here's the usual summary of what it's about:

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 22 - April 4, 2015. Here's the usual summary of what it's about:

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

I've started consulting the I Ching in the morning. (Today was "difficulty at the beginning," with a side of "abundance," if I remember correctly.)

Reasons why:

I've been trying to read at least the foundational works of Chinese culture (I read the Analects and Dao de Jing a while back, and am reading through the Romance of the Three Kingdoms now), and this is one of them. But simply reading through the structure seems less instructive than actually engaging with the book as intended. (Compare reading the Hail Mary once, versus actually procuring a rosary and going through the motions.)
A while back, someone made a "rationalist horoscope," with the premise that there were a bunch of generally useful things you could remind someone of, and systematically reminding people of those things (and scoring the horoscopes based on helpfulness) is a useful thing to spend attention on. (As I recall, they didn't have that large of a stable of advice, and so fairly quickly had to resort to repeating themselves.)
A similar venture is Ben Franklin's virtues, which I've attempted to track at least once but didn't find particularly helpful. The I Ching operates on a slightly different level--instead of operating on modes of behavior / reactions, it operates on perceptions of situations.
I've kept a diary for at least a year now, but have rarely managed to work a solid reflection component into it and will often go weeks without entering anything. By consulting the I Ching, I'm provided with a constantly changing perspective to apply to my day, and then at the end of the day can record what that made me notice and how I reacted.

I will also note that up until recently I was primarily familiar with the numerological component of this particular form of divination (consult the RNG for wisdom!) but not the philosophical component. That is, the best advice is designed with its particular listener in mind, but there is value in a library of advice (that one learns how and when to apply by trying it through continually changing circumstances). Indeed, one might see this sort of divination, at its heart, as randomized trials applied to life!

(Incidentally, I immediately thought of three parts of my life where the situation was as described by the lot I cast, and a fourth on the drive to work. I also would not have applied one of the pieces of advice in the baseline history, but on considering why not it seemed like the reason was insufficient relative to the potential benefit.)

Proposal:

Generate your random hexagrams with a computer. (You probably already do.)
At the end of each day, indicate which of the things the computer told you turned out to be useful (or harmful) that day.
Have the computer keep track of which hexagrams are most frequently useful.
- (Perhaps allowing for some time-varying component -- e.g., varying with day of week or season of year.)
Have it generate more-frequently-useful ones more often. (Not to the exclusion of others. Though this might be a self-correcting problem -- if you hear something too often, being reminded may be useful to you less often.)

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Group Rationality Diary, March 22 to April 4

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This is the public group rationality diary for March 22 - April 4, 2015. Here's the usual summary of what it's about:

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Group Rationality Diary, March 22 to April 4

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This is the public group rationality diary for March 22 - April 4, 2015. Here's the usual summary of what it's about:

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