So you see warm fuzzies, status boost, and societal good as subtypes of the utilon output of altruistic activities? Interesting.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. As it happens, I disagree with your premise that the negative emotion of the incomplete assignment is almost certainly what makes me procrastinate. Yes, that's a potential factor, but only one of many. For example, there's the difference between anticipated and actual difficulty of performing a procrastinated task progress.
But in the the spirit of rationality, I will give your suggestions a fair trial. You are absolutely correct that the most effective way to figure out what works is to use the scientific approach - design an experiment to test the hypothesis, test, assess the results, and go from there.
I found this article both interesting and informative. I definitely plan to spend some time studying picoeconomics.
One interesting effect that I have found in personal productivity efforts is that applying techniques to enforce resolution and overcome passive resistance can change the perceived emotional weighting between alternatives, often quite rapidly.
For example, let's say I'm reading LW instead of writing a term paper. I've made a (probably irrational) decision that the negative emotion of exerting the effort to write the term paper exceeds the n...
You've actually missed a key distinction here: the negative emotion of the incomplete assignment is almost certainly what makes you procrastinate... and you're mistakenly interpreting that negative emotion as being about the writing.
What happens is this: since you feel the unfinished item pressure every time you think about doing the task, you literally condition yourself to feel bad about doing the task. It becomes a cached thought (actually a cached somatic marker) tagging the task with the same unpleasantness as the unpleasantness of it "hanging ...
Good point. Joining a group introduces a level of implied assent to the group's publicly visible aspects. As Eliezer suggests, if there's a net gain from the utility of the positive aspects of the group less the utility of the negative, on the balance it's worth consideration as long as the negatives aren't fundamental issues. The issue is managing that implied assent.
Perhaps another way to look at this is to explore how to cultivate an individual persona that exhibits independence, but also exhibits a visible capability to deliberately subsume that ind...
Yes, it's a great temptation to draw broader conclusions than the actual test results would warrant. This type of test only measures a subset of the factors that inform behavior.
An interesting correlated effect of perceiving someone as awesome is the "we're not worthy" starstruck reaction to meeting the object of your admiration in person. And as Eliezer mentions, you often find reality diverges from the perception that you had. I noticed that a number of bloggers that attended the SXSW conference expressed surprise at the amount of cognitive dissonance that they encountered both in meeting other bloggers whose work they admired, and when admirers of theirs exhibited starstruck behaviors.
I find that in the rare instanc...
I'll also cast my vote for most hard sci-fi. My exceptionally fundamentalist parents tried to keep me from reading fiction of any sort, particularly sci-fi and fantasy. Once I managed to get my own library card it was all over pretty quickly. In particular I recall being impressed by Heinlein's protagonist's stubborn individualism and resistance to dogma.
Nicely done, well summarized. I definitely agree with your point that there are almost always multiple conflict sources behind any given instance of akrasia. It's often an exercise in peeling the onion.
My other key takeway from this article was your reminder that it's an important, perhaps core, rationalist skill to learn to look past philosophical differences (law of attraction, religious belief, etc) with experts in any given field, not just self-help or anti-akrasia techniques. Apply your own filter and look for the underlying value. Don't just dismiss the source because some portion of their content is irrational.
Indeed. Or more precisely, distrust people's theories, but listen to their experiences and try to understand their methods, because the... (read more)