Less Anti-Dakka

post by Mateusz Bagiński (mateusz-baginski) · 2024-05-31T09:07:10.450Z · LW · GW · 5 comments

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It is written in More Dakka [LW · GW]:

If something is a good idea, you need a reason to not try doing more of it.

Taken at face value, it implies the following:

If something is a bad idea, you need a reason to not try doing less of it.

Labels/concepts, such as More Dakka [? · GW], Inadequate Equilibria, etc point to a puzzling phenomenon. When more of X gives better results (consistently, ~proportionally to the dose of X, etc), people surprisingly often stop adding/doing more of X long before they hit the point at which the costs of more X start to outweigh the marginal benefits of more X.^[1]

We should be just as puzzled by the dual phenomenon. When less of X gives better results (consistently, ~[inversely proportionally] to the dose of X, etc), people typically stop decreasing X long before they hit the point at which the costs of removing X (e.g. because you need some amount of X to survive/live comfortably/whatever) start outweighing the marginal benefits of there being less of X.

Examples:

• If you feel better, healthier, and/or have better biomarkers, when you decrease the amount of X in your diet, maybe you would benefit from cutting it down to zero.
• If you feel slightly more free whenever you eliminate some unnecessary clutter, maybe you would benefit from removing all the clutter.
• If you have consistently benefited from simplifying your code, maybe you would benefit from simplifying it as much as possible.
  • More globally, maybe you would benefit from adopting the "don't add complexity before you need it" approach.
• You noticed you're trying to do too many things per day/week/month/year. You realize you don't care that much about most of those things, so you eliminate some of them. Your daily/weekly/monthly/yearly to-do list has only 10 items now. Your goals are clearer than before. You feel more free than before. Maybe you would benefit from cutting your list down to 5.
• You've noticed more freedom/ease/flow when you simplified your note-taking system. Maybe you would benefit from simplifying it even more.
• Some of your flashcards are badly formulated or contain information that is neither important nor interesting to you. Sometimes you get annoyed at one or two during your daily review, so you remove them. Maybe you would benefit from going on a purge and deleting all flashcards that you suspect might be net-negative. Maybe you should be way more selective in what information to turn into flashcards.
• You have drastically cut down the amount of time spent on social media. Now you feel better and have more time and focus. Maybe you would benefit from eliminating social media (or whatever is your most distracting thing) altogether or scheduling one small context/time window when you are allowed to go on sites of category X.
  • Maybe you are one of these people who would do better without home internet.
    • If not, maybe you should still have a specified short time window during which you can access the internet.
• You notice that the less time you spend with person X, the better you feel, and the more time you have for others. Is there a reason to keep them in your social circle?
• Ever since middle school, doing X was a big part of your identity. You still see yourself as a person who does X. But doing X conflicts with your current priorities. You are forced to cut down on X. A few weeks later you realize that you are very happy to have cut down on X. Should you keep doing X at all?
• You are still trying to stay up-to-date with what's happening in the wider world. Previously you were a news junky but eventually, you came to your senses and figured out that >99% of news does not benefit you in any way (usually quite the opposite). If you ditched your news habits entirely, what are the odds that you would miss anything really important?
• How often do you really need to shower?

I'm not making any claims, just raising questions. Answer each of these (or any subset of them you like, including $\varnothing$) for yourself.

---

If something is a bad idea, you need a reason to not try doing less of it.

What constitutes "a (valid/good) reason for not doing less of it"? Sometimes you have a reason. Sometimes you have an excuse that masquerades for a reason. Some examples of either include:

• Sticky status quo. Other areas of your life are locally adapted to a particular range/value of X so decreasing X below some critical threshold is detrimental to those areas of your life, even though it would be beneficial otherwise.
  • Leaving a cult-ish movement risks losing all of your social network, including the closest relationships.
  • Switching to a better (more healthy, more ethical, etc) diet or lifestyle can cause difficulties/awkwardness in social contexts.
  • You are C++.
  • You are Tony Hoare.
• Subtractive improvement bias. People seem to be blind/neglectful of the possibility of improvement that involves eliminating something, instead of adding something (link).

1. ^{^}

   Those returns include stuff like "willpower", time, opportunity costs, "social credit, and other "squishy human stuff".

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