Arguably, Internet culture has a tremendous amount of information on the dangers of Scientology in particular. (And I'm one of the people who put it there personally.) But you are entirely correct: people are convinced they're much less manipulable than they are. I need to write something for LW on the subject (as I've been idly contemplating doing for about 6 months).

I find your basic proposal sympathetic, since I have more or less been following the idea of optimal employment myself, but with different preferences. In that light, I find your advice highly specific, which is very useful for people with similar preferences, but less interesting for others like me.

To add my current personal choice to the mix: Here in Germany the cost of being enrolled at university is relatively low: from 50-500€ / semester, depending on federal state and university. On the other hand, you get the benefit of being able to work as "Werkstudent", where you pay only a flat amount of social security, which is usually the largest deduction from income. I work as a programmer on that basis, and have very flexible working hours, and lots of free time to pursue academic interests, and enough money to pay my bills. If I want or need extra money, I can choose to work more. I think this is a good choice if you like to live in an urban environment, especially since most German cities have a good public transport system and biking everywhere is reasonable.

If your values contradict, then what're you going to do, lay on the floor flopping around trying to do multiple contradictory things at once? You want to sort out exactly how much you value each relative to the other and to what extent they contradict each other so that, well, you can act in accordance with your values. Hypocrisy is more about giving lip service to one set of values while acting on others.

Is not being hypocritical a moral value in itself, or is it above morality? Either way, why?

If my values contradict, but I don't care about hypocrisy, should it matter to me?

Out of interest, how many of the people who listened to your pitch subsequently gave donations?

Germany, NRW, Gütersloh

A method to apply the "lottery technique" to overcome an Ugh field might be to report any relevant subgoal to a partner, who decides on a set of rewards and a mode of giving them, whereas each subgoal is a "lottery ticket". This has the advantages: this precise chances of winning are hidden, which may lead to motivation to figure out "the system", there can be hidden prizes and social accountability

You may do likewise for the partner. If this proves successful, it could be facilitated by a website where people track each others goals.

If the actual preference is neither acted upon, nor believed in, how is it a preference?

It is something you won't regret giving as a goal to an obsessive world-rewriting robot that takes what you say its goals are really seriously and very literally, without any way for you to make corrections later. Most revealed preferences, you will regret, exactly for the reasons they differ from the actual preferences: on reflection, you'll find that you'd rather go with something different.

See also this thread.

Revealed preference as opposed to actual preference, what they would prefer if they were much smarter, knew much more, had unlimited time to think about it. We typically don't know our actual preference, and don't act on it.

Well, hello. I like this place and it gives me things to think about, but I don't have the energy to post more than a wee comment or question occasionally.

Cheers!