Shame is not an essential ingredient in the method. To see this, suppose the monitor has a button which freezes all the applications on the remote machine except for the application for communication between the parties.
That hasn’t helped me see it. It still seems as though, if you didn’t care one bit about someone seeing you timewasting, then the method wouldn’t work, and no amount of screen locking buttons would change that bit. Even if I consider it a friendly cajoling instead of a remote monitoring, it still wouldn’t work if you felt no qualms about ignoring the viewer’s cajoling and carrying on timewasting.
but the sort of constant temptation represented by on-demand video sites like Hulu is probably unprecedented. [..] am inclined to believe that regular procrastination what you get when you give a normal pathology-free person access to the modern internet.
The unprecedented temptation is a nice idea. I want the difference between me and people who can easily ignore it to be a learned behaviour, so I could potentially learn it, but I have no solid support for suggesting that it is. Maybe it isn’t and we are being trapped by addictive superstimulus.
[Edit: I see that I am procrastinating now, but I am not on Hulu, iPlayer or any other attention trap site (as I sometimes do), instead I am alternately reading Less Wrong and pacing up and down the room. This is anecdotal support that it is not the attractiveness of certain carefully designed attention hooks which is causing my (current) procrastination, but instead a repulsion away from what I should be doing.]
Shame is not an essential ingredient in the method. To see this, suppose the monitor has a button which freezes all the applications on the remote machine except for the application for communication between the parties.
That hasn’t helped me see it. It still seems as though, if you didn’t care one bit about someone seeing you timewasting, then the method wouldn’t work, and no amount of screen locking buttons would change that bit.
“The monitor has a button” was a poor choice of words, so I will rephrase.
Suppose the person monitoring me has a way to freeze my computer so that none of my keystrokes or mouse gestures have any effect.
Do you agree that that would give the person monitoring me a way to stop me from using my computer to procrastinate that does not rely on shame?
(It would work better if he had a way to freeze all the apps on my computer except for the app he is using to communicate with me because then he can give me pep talks or negotiate with me while my machine is in the (mostly) frozen state.)
Do you agree that that would give the person monitoring me a way to stop me from using my computer to procrastinate that does not rely on shame?
I do agree. That sounds like a slightly different experiment to the one described in the original post, though—such a system could not fail to work.
I wonder if cousin_it percieves the experiment differently to you—do you agree with his description “”“you become ashamed of procrastinating online. You get several “clean” hours every day, where you either do work or stay away from the computer—no willpower required.””” ?
(If you wish to try that in your experiment, Dameware Mini Remote Control (dameware.com) has a “lock remote keyboard and mouse” feature, and a 30 day free trial).
Do you want me to tell you how I think the arrangement Vladimir and I have been using produces the effects it does produce?
The short answer is, I do not know. And I doubt I will ever know because why I procrastinate and why this arrangement stops it are probably extremely complicated.
If I had sent you a short explanation the day before the start of the experiment of why I expected the experiment between Vladimir and I to succeed, the explanation would definitely not have contained the word “shame”.
I never felt nearly as ashamed while being watched by V as I felt the last time I procrastinated by watching a show on Hulu in the middle of the day. I have never procrastinated while being watched by V except for “sham procrastination” to verify that V is actually watching.
V and I were still getting to know each other when he started watching me, so of course I wanted to make a good impression on him like I would with any other person who was investing time and effort in getting to know me. My desire to make a good impression definitely affected my choices of what to work on and definitely caused me to try to work at a faster pace while he was watching. (I want to stop trying to work faster because I have read things that make me believe it does not actually make one work faster.)
I am not entirely sure what I want to know either, but how it does produce the effects it does produce are part of it.
Previously the idea of remote monitoring gave me a negative Orwellian feeling. When I first read the book which I quoted in email to you, I was surprised that the author could be comfortable with such a situation, which may be why I remembered it easily. You two doing something similar stood out and I am interested in why you both chose to do it, how well it works and what the cost of reduced procrastination is to you—learned negative feelings about using a computer at all would be a high cost, learned positive feelings about having company while working could be an unintended benefit and pretty much no cost, for instance.
It turned out to be more interesting as you are both two halves of the same experiment and getting similar results out of it, but apparently both doing so via different reasons, and might be considering the experimental purpose differently.
I don’t really have any reason to dig further—thank you for elaborating on it.
That hasn’t helped me see it. It still seems as though, if you didn’t care one bit about someone seeing you timewasting, then the method wouldn’t work, and no amount of screen locking buttons would change that bit. Even if I consider it a friendly cajoling instead of a remote monitoring, it still wouldn’t work if you felt no qualms about ignoring the viewer’s cajoling and carrying on timewasting.
The unprecedented temptation is a nice idea. I want the difference between me and people who can easily ignore it to be a learned behaviour, so I could potentially learn it, but I have no solid support for suggesting that it is. Maybe it isn’t and we are being trapped by addictive superstimulus.
[Edit: I see that I am procrastinating now, but I am not on Hulu, iPlayer or any other attention trap site (as I sometimes do), instead I am alternately reading Less Wrong and pacing up and down the room. This is anecdotal support that it is not the attractiveness of certain carefully designed attention hooks which is causing my (current) procrastination, but instead a repulsion away from what I should be doing.]
“The monitor has a button” was a poor choice of words, so I will rephrase.
Suppose the person monitoring me has a way to freeze my computer so that none of my keystrokes or mouse gestures have any effect.
Do you agree that that would give the person monitoring me a way to stop me from using my computer to procrastinate that does not rely on shame?
(It would work better if he had a way to freeze all the apps on my computer except for the app he is using to communicate with me because then he can give me pep talks or negotiate with me while my machine is in the (mostly) frozen state.)
I do agree. That sounds like a slightly different experiment to the one described in the original post, though—such a system could not fail to work.
I wonder if cousin_it percieves the experiment differently to you—do you agree with his description “”“you become ashamed of procrastinating online. You get several “clean” hours every day, where you either do work or stay away from the computer—no willpower required.””” ?
(If you wish to try that in your experiment, Dameware Mini Remote Control (dameware.com) has a “lock remote keyboard and mouse” feature, and a 30 day free trial).
I am not entirely sure what you want to know.
Do you want me to tell you how I think the arrangement Vladimir and I have been using produces the effects it does produce?
The short answer is, I do not know. And I doubt I will ever know because why I procrastinate and why this arrangement stops it are probably extremely complicated.
If I had sent you a short explanation the day before the start of the experiment of why I expected the experiment between Vladimir and I to succeed, the explanation would definitely not have contained the word “shame”.
I never felt nearly as ashamed while being watched by V as I felt the last time I procrastinated by watching a show on Hulu in the middle of the day. I have never procrastinated while being watched by V except for “sham procrastination” to verify that V is actually watching.
V and I were still getting to know each other when he started watching me, so of course I wanted to make a good impression on him like I would with any other person who was investing time and effort in getting to know me. My desire to make a good impression definitely affected my choices of what to work on and definitely caused me to try to work at a faster pace while he was watching. (I want to stop trying to work faster because I have read things that make me believe it does not actually make one work faster.)
I am not entirely sure what I want to know either, but how it does produce the effects it does produce are part of it.
Previously the idea of remote monitoring gave me a negative Orwellian feeling. When I first read the book which I quoted in email to you, I was surprised that the author could be comfortable with such a situation, which may be why I remembered it easily. You two doing something similar stood out and I am interested in why you both chose to do it, how well it works and what the cost of reduced procrastination is to you—learned negative feelings about using a computer at all would be a high cost, learned positive feelings about having company while working could be an unintended benefit and pretty much no cost, for instance.
It turned out to be more interesting as you are both two halves of the same experiment and getting similar results out of it, but apparently both doing so via different reasons, and might be considering the experimental purpose differently.
I don’t really have any reason to dig further—thank you for elaborating on it.