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What skills or habits have lasting value through time? 2021-01-12T01:54:13.268Z

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Comment by Duff on Calibration proverbs · 2022-01-12T04:36:18.669Z · LW · GW

Remember when tempted to keep going 'til it burns
that everything has a point of diminishing returns.

Comment by Duff on What is going on in the world? · 2021-01-18T03:37:17.377Z · LW · GW

There is a strong chance that we live in a simulation

Is there a version of simulation theory that is falsifiable?

Comment by Duff on How can I find trustworthy dietary advice? · 2021-01-18T03:34:26.644Z · LW · GW

90% of it comes down to "eat more vegetables" and "cook what you think are balanced meals, from scratch." Also don't smoke and drink less alcohol. And if you are overweight, eat a little less.

But I also appreciate the nutritional advice on places like examine.com.

Comment by Duff on What skills or habits have lasting value through time? · 2021-01-13T22:28:56.923Z · LW · GW

I agree, the responding to the alarm thing should not be at the expense of sleep. I get 8.5 hours so I think I'm good. If I don't do the alarm, I scroll my phone endlessly in bed though, so this has been helpful for me.

Comment by Duff on What skills or habits have lasting value through time? · 2021-01-13T22:27:44.566Z · LW · GW

The real question of course is whether someone that types already should alter layout or go full stenography?

Or go for speech to text dictation, since most people can easily speak 150-200 wpm.

I do agree that speed does not equal productivity. That said, the faster you can do repetitive things, the more time you can spend on the important things that cannot be rushed.

Change your alarm to birdsong so that you don't want to stick a gun in your mouth as your first act of consciousness.

LOL. Yea I use an iOS app called Progressive Alarm Clock which has a soothing singing bowl sound which starts soft and becomes progressively louder.

Comment by Duff on What skills or habits have lasting value through time? · 2021-01-12T19:31:08.924Z · LW · GW

Well-phrased. So following up on specific health conditions and illness one knows they have. I've done this by attempting to troubleshoot my own chronic digestive issues. But obviously each person's will be unique.

We might add to also proactively do the things which address the most common health conditions that are lifestyle caused. For instance, quit smoking, drink less alcohol, exercise 30-60 minutes a day, eat more veggies, etc.

Comment by Duff on What skills or habits have lasting value through time? · 2021-01-12T19:29:04.682Z · LW · GW

Yes, I very much agree. So learning the skill of creating new positive habits. I like B.J. Fogg's idea of Tiny Habits for that (aka Implementation Intentions or if-then plans from Peter Gollwitzer). Although sometimes we also need to deliberately grow them from a tiny habit to a full-blown habit too.

Comment by Duff on What skills or habits have lasting value through time? · 2021-01-12T19:27:41.701Z · LW · GW

I agree and I'd add to it. You could do this as 25/5, 50/10, 90/15 or whatever else. The key thing to me is to single-task during the time period (work on one thing in an undistracted manner). Also I'd add to get up to a maximum sustainable level of single-tasking on hard things (ala Cal Newport's Deep Work).

Comment by Duff on In Defense of Twitter's Decision to Ban Trump · 2021-01-12T00:27:09.056Z · LW · GW

I very much agree, especially with point #8. Communities, online and off, by default start out with little to no moderation. Moderation is added typically only when there are elements that poison the ecosystem, as you put it.

I co-hosted an in-person philosophical discussion group for over a decade. At first we invited everyone to join, then we quickly learned that some styles of discussion destroy good conversation, so we started moderating or even asking people who could not refrain from them to leave the group. It was painful to do, but also necessary to preserve the culture.

A while back I saw some study showing that banning the most toxic subreddits greatly reduced the number of racial slurs on Reddit as a whole. It is for these sorts of reasons that banning toxic users generally and Trump specifically makes sense for Twitter.

Comment by Duff on Group house norms really do seem toxic to many people. · 2021-01-12T00:18:08.003Z · LW · GW

Sorry to hear you had such bad experiences. Community is often hard. I lived in a community house in my 20s, and it was quite chaotic. We were more hippie co-op than rationalist collective, but we had one particularly dramatic conflict between older, more responsible progressives and the younger, party-oriented anarchists.

I also met my wife at that co-op and we are still happily married. So it wasn't all bad. :)

Creating a culture and formal rules, especially for negotiating differing values and/or personal conflicts can really help. Don't shy away from governance, or even creating an official co-op with a charter and so on.

Comment by Duff on Efficiency Wages: A Double-Edged Sword · 2021-01-12T00:12:50.461Z · LW · GW

I didn't want to like this argument but I think you have at least partially convinced me. I often feel like one of the bad parts of society is that people doing good work are paid less, but you have made a strong argument that this would be difficult to correct, since people with less moral guidance and more love of money would be more interested in high paying jobs and far less likely to take lower paying jobs that do great good.

The question then becomes how can we structure society to better align money with doing good? Or is that a lost cause?

Comment by Duff on A dozen habits that work for me · 2021-01-07T05:10:38.119Z · LW · GW

I set a really low bar for my meditation practice.

What got me to actually meditate consistently after years of attempts was to set a goal of 1 minute a day. I told myself "If I'm having fun, I can keep going." Now I do an hour consistently.