Group rationality diary, 12/10/12

In the spirit of this ridiculously chord-striking XKCD comic, I have been training myself to feel a warm sense of satisfaction whenever I don't respond to people who are wrong on the internet. It's a lot easier than I imagined. I simply visualise an angry and frustrated future version of myself, and make a better decision on his behalf.

I'm considering keeping a record of the subject of every intractable and drawn-out argument I fail to get into for subsequent review.

My semester in review

Victories: I posted almost four months ago that I'd stopped biting my nails. I haven't bitten my nails since then. (Except two times in an emergency situation, where the nail was ripped and could have ripped off painfully unless I took care of it in a more controlled way.) This is probably the longest my nails have ever been. I am still working on getting myself to stop scraping them on my teeth (yes, it's a weird habit), but I'm not biting them anymore.

One big victory is that I did go rockclimbing once a week, every week, until the climbing wall closed. We even got some of the meetup group to come once or twice, which was also fun.

More ambiguous events: I've been reflecting on my original plan for this semester and how it worked out overall. I did very well for the first half or so; I used Beeminder to track my study time and rock climbing habits, and how often I did a 'weekly review' of planning my tasks for the week and taking care of bureaucratic annoyances. This worked well; I got 9 hours of sleep per night, I did my work in advance, I took care of bureaucratic annoyances, and I stayed on a reasonable schedule. But after I broke my streak once, I basically gave up and didn't get enough sleep or go to bed at a reasonable hour or do my homework in advance for several weeks in a row. So next time, I clearly need to plan how I will deal with such setbacks whille I make the plan.

The thing about Beeminder was that I'm a poor college student, and having broken my streak on Beeminder, more than anything else, motivated me to stop using it. It seemed like a waste of money to do, when I could just be tracking things on my own. This might not actually be true. I'm unsure about it, which makes me very hesitant to spend money on it; I don't actually have that much to spare.

I stopped using Fitocracy partway through the semester, which didn't seem to affect me much.

After my several weeks of not-enough-sleep streak, I decided I'd had enough and started making myself get 9 hours, strictly, every night. To this end, I tried stopping all work / computer usage at 11pm; that didn't work out so well because I still had a bit of a homework backlog that required me to stay up late, but I still got enough sleep because I have very late classes. That was a nice thing that I won't be able to take advantage of next semester.

Insights: I also noticed that I've been telling myself things like "I shouldn't do too many things, I'll get burned out" a lot. Then I thought about the last time I was doing a whole lot of things, like last fall, and realized I was quite possibly happier then. So, I'm making an effort to ramp up the number of social commitments and projects I take on, because I think I may not have enough right now.

I tried to spend five days, 10. - 14. Dec 2012, without web browsing, even without reading LW. As a reward I gave myself a small piece of chocolate at the evening (inspired by Story 1 in this article). It worked. This week, 17. - 21. Dec 2012, I will try it again. (Why not? I still have 2/3 of the original chocolate.)

I am rather surprised by this, because my model of myself predicted that it wouldn't work; that a small piece of chocolate could not make that big difference in a behavior I've been having problems with for years. But I had nothing to lose, so I tried it. It seems like trivial rewards work really well.

If the experiment replicates successfully the next week, I will consider using the same reinforcement for other things I want myself to do or to avoid doing (probably replacing chocolate with something smaller, like M&Ms). And then I can measure whether the new motivating system works better than the old one. Yay, sweet utilons!

I'm giving workflowy a try, after paulfchristiano's suggestion.

Earlier this morning, I looked at my project list, and tried to figure out which were acorns that could lead to oaks and which were just small projects. I've significantly shifted my priorities for projects as a result. (I still want to do most of the small projects, but it's the sort of thing where I should be spending twice as much time per week on the big projects than the small projects, rather than the reverse.)

A few weeks ago I tried to close out small projects, to reduce the total number of things that I could be thinking about. I don't think that worked particularly well, but I don't know how much of that is an artifact of the current project list I have (where several projects require waiting until some future point to do the next task), or what an optimal number of projects for me to have is.

I've re-established the habit of recording the time I spend practicing. I record the times to the minute, rather than close estimates - if I sit down at the piano at 4:52, I'll write down 4:52 not "ten to five".

Even though there's no one checking my diary for practice times, it helps keep me focused and I'm more likely to practice for the length of time I've committed to and to meet my goals within the practice session.

I'm trying pomodoro with the added twist that I have a piece of candy each time I start a new block. I will not eat candy at any other time for the duration of this experiment.

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Having worked through a number of models of EPR, I now put more weight into an MWI-like approach vs Penrose-style objective collapse due to gravity. As a result, I expect that a well-isolated macroscopic cantilever in this experiment will be shown to remain quantum.

Decided-behavior: I've deliberately started posting in current threads here rather than occasionally commenting on whatever sequence I'm going through. This is part of an ongoing effort to break my social isolation.

Surprising-beliefs: I'm genuinely sorrowful at funerals or the misfortune of friends, yet I'm a raging misanthrope and I cheer for Death when, say, I see a car on fire on the side of the road. On reflection I came to the conclusion that I set a radical boundary between people in my personal circle, and everyone else, and pretty much only care about the former. I think this also explains why I don't give much of a damn about the existential risks that seem to worry many people here; unless they occur within the next fifty years or so, they will only affect people I don't care about.

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

See my post on alief in.. something.

Trying to do something everyday that is useful or cool enough to tell people about (at work). There are obvious visibility arguments for doing this but I've also found it a great motivator. Asking "who cares?" seems to cut through a lot of prioritisation fuzz. (Only 11 workdays in so far.)