I may, at some point, and for other reasons. Lets say, if I were to start drinking some rather foul-tasting protein or something -- it would be nice to potentially taste less of that. But, in general, deliberately and severely impairing my ability to taste the things I like for about two weeks, only to be able to taste in that way for a meal or two post-recovery is probably not the sort of tradeoff that I'd find myself making regularly.

Recently, I had a strange reaction to Sensodyne Whitening and Gum Sensitivity toothpaste. As luck would have it, I happen to fall into the subset of the population that lose much of their ability to taste certain flavors after using the toothpaste for a couple of days.

I happened to catch on pretty quickly and ended up switching toothpastes within the week, but it still resulted in about two weeks where I could not taste salt, and could hardly taste anything sour, sweet, or whatever makes buffalo sauce taste like buffalo sauce. It felt like I was coating my mouth with flavorless lard, in case anyone was curious.

What I found most fascinating about this experience came after my tongue recovered. Despite only having lacked those tastes for about two weeks, my perception of them became a lot stronger -- apple juice, which I previously would not have called sour, suddenly seemed to have a bit of a twang to it (which is to say nothing for how sweet it was). The taste of salt, surprisingly, did not become overwhelming without amounts that I'd regularly consider to be a lot.

I suppose that this shouldn't be particularly surprising -- this happens with vision. For example, staring at the color yellow, and then looking at a black background will show you a stygian blue, which is impossible to perceive normally. Still, I find this interaction fascinating, and have to wonder what might happen if I were to blind myself for a couple of days, or deprive myself of sound or smell. I must also note that it's incredibly disappointing that I will likely never taste apple juice in that way again, it was probably one of the best drinks I've ever had.

That's a very interesting outlook -- I haven't really considered action being a sum of motivations up until now. So, I guess my question then would be, what does encouraging/discouraging sources of intrinsic motivation look like for you?

This is a very interesting approach, and one that I haven't really considered. I fear that the temptation to start from scratch might be quite strong, but then I suppose that having very good documentation serves to blunt that problem in the first place.

I can certainly see the appeal of social pressure/the potential reward of better social standing for sticking a long-term goal through. I've employed this tactic on a few occasions, and, at least with my current circles, it doesn't seem to do much for me -- or, at least, whatever improvement it offers isn't enough for me to make it substantially farther.

I feel that I am expected to bail by default -- I've done so many times -- and that I'm not going to be changing worlds if I come through. With that said, I don't think I've been as deliberate as I could have been in picking people to talk about my projects with. Maybe it is the case that if I were more strategic about it, I would get more mileage out of myself. Certainly worth a try.

That certainly could be the case, but my reason for asking after manipulation of passion specifically is that commitment sans passion would likely breed disdain in long-term scenarios. But, I could be wrong, and it would certainly at least be worth trying something like Beeminder, I suppose. It just seems that, in this situation, want of a deep desire to finish isn't great.

I think these are pretty good, if not somewhat intrusive strategies to mitigate the problems that concern me. Kudos!

> I feel that one of the best uses of a probability-weighted knowledgebase is to gather information on things that suffer from a miasma of controversy and special interests.

I think you meant "don't suffer".

It wasn't a typo; disregarding manipulation, weighted contributions in murky circumstances might produce behavior similar to that of a prediction market, which would be better behavior than a system like Wikipedia exhibits under similar circumstances.

In a similar vein, perhaps adding monetary incentive -- or, more likely, giving users the ability to provide a monetary incentive -- to add correct information to a topic would be another good mechanism to encourage good behavior.

This is an interesting idea, but I worry about the database's resilience in the face of adversarial action.

While using a more personally identifiable account, like a PayPal account, as a means of admittance is a step in the right direction, I'd imagine that it would still be relatively easy to create sockpuppets which could then amass credibility in banal topics and spend it to manipulate more contested ones.

If the database were to grow to the size and prevalence of Wikipedia, for example, then one might see manipulation for political gain during elections, or misinformation campaigns run by nation states.

Obviously, this does not preclude the usefulness of such a database in 99% of cases, but I feel that one of the best uses of a probability-weighted knowledgebase is to gather information on things that suffer from a miasma of controversy and special interests.

In a public system, perhaps a means by which one could choose to allocate some of the tax dollars they pay towards such a project?

It would mean a loss of funds elsewhere, if we are to avoid rasing taxes/spending less money, but might achieve some of what a kickstarter-like process might offer.