I feel unhappy with this post, and not just because it called me an idiot. I think epithets and thoughtless dismissals are cheap and oversupplied. Patience and understanding are costly and undersupplied.
A lot of the seemingly easy wins in Mark’s list were not so easy for me. Becoming more patient helped me a lot, whereas internal vitriol made things worse.I benefitted hugely from Mr. Money Mustache, but I think I was slower to implement his recommendations because he kept calling me an idiot and literally telling me to punch myself in the face.
If a bunch of people get enduring benefits from adopting the “such an idiot” frame, then maybe I’ll change my mind. (They do have to be enduring though.)
Here is a meme I would be much happier to see spread:
You, yes you might be able to permanently lower the cost of exercise to yourself if you spend a few days’ worth of discretionary resources on sampling the sports in Mark Xu’s list. But if you do that and it doesn’t work, then ok, maybe you really are one of the metabolically underprivileged, and I hope you figure out some alternative.
Side notes:
It seems like this post is in tension with Beware Other Optimizing. And perhaps also a bit with Do Life Hacks Ever Reach Fixation? Not exactly, because Mark’s list mostly relies on well-established life upgrades. But insofar as there is a tension here, I will tend to take the side of those two posts.
Perhaps this is a needless derail, and if so I won’t press it, but I’m feeling some intense curiosity over whether Mark Xu and Critch would agree about whether Critch at all qualifies as an idiot. According to Raemon, Critch recently said, “There aren’t things lying around in my life that bother me because I always notice and deal with it.”
I find something both cliche and fatalistic about the notion that lots of seemingly maladaptive behaviors are secretly rational. But indeed I have had to update quite a few times in that direction over the years since I first started reading LessWrong.
I don’t have strong takes on the “idiot” stylistic choice; introspectively it feels fun and it takes the bite out of my self-flagellations when I notice leaving value on the floor. I won’t claim to have any empirical support that this actually works better or worse for me.
I mostly like this post for the advice. Concretely, after reading it:
I’ve bought copies of exercise equipment I like for my parents’ house so that when I am exercising relatively regularly, I don’t break a streak by visiting them.
I own two laptops, two kindles, have multiple chargers (some of which live in travel bags so I always have them)
I often invoke this when deciding whether to try an experimental purchase that might make my life better, but is a little pricey.
Rebought multi-colour pens, which tend to be useful for me for a stretch, and I don’t consider rebuying them when they might be useful again.
Bought an external battery.
That collection feels like it was probably net-positive.
Some of the things that Mark suggests have been really good for me but I already did them (have a password manager, bright rooms). There are some I disagree with, so haven’t (re)tried after reading it (drink lots of water, summarize things you’ve read, reliably sleep 6-9 hours a night (on the margin, for me)). And then there are some that seem likely good that I haven’t tried.
I will push against.
I feel unhappy with this post, and not just because it called me an idiot. I think epithets and thoughtless dismissals are cheap and oversupplied. Patience and understanding are costly and undersupplied.
A lot of the seemingly easy wins in Mark’s list were not so easy for me. Becoming more patient helped me a lot, whereas internal vitriol made things worse.I benefitted hugely from Mr. Money Mustache, but I think I was slower to implement his recommendations because he kept calling me an idiot and literally telling me to punch myself in the face.
If a bunch of people get enduring benefits from adopting the “such an idiot” frame, then maybe I’ll change my mind. (They do have to be enduring though.)
Here is a meme I would be much happier to see spread:
Side notes:
It seems like this post is in tension with Beware Other Optimizing. And perhaps also a bit with Do Life Hacks Ever Reach Fixation? Not exactly, because Mark’s list mostly relies on well-established life upgrades. But insofar as there is a tension here, I will tend to take the side of those two posts.
Perhaps this is a needless derail, and if so I won’t press it, but I’m feeling some intense curiosity over whether Mark Xu and Critch would agree about whether Critch at all qualifies as an idiot. According to Raemon, Critch recently said, “There aren’t things lying around in my life that bother me because I always notice and deal with it.”
I find something both cliche and fatalistic about the notion that lots of seemingly maladaptive behaviors are secretly rational. But indeed I have had to update quite a few times in that direction over the years since I first started reading LessWrong.
I don’t have strong takes on the “idiot” stylistic choice; introspectively it feels fun and it takes the bite out of my self-flagellations when I notice leaving value on the floor. I won’t claim to have any empirical support that this actually works better or worse for me.
I mostly like this post for the advice. Concretely, after reading it:
I’ve bought copies of exercise equipment I like for my parents’ house so that when I am exercising relatively regularly, I don’t break a streak by visiting them.
I own two laptops, two kindles, have multiple chargers (some of which live in travel bags so I always have them)
I often invoke this when deciding whether to try an experimental purchase that might make my life better, but is a little pricey.
Rebought multi-colour pens, which tend to be useful for me for a stretch, and I don’t consider rebuying them when they might be useful again.
Bought an external battery.
That collection feels like it was probably net-positive.
Some of the things that Mark suggests have been really good for me but I already did them (have a password manager, bright rooms). There are some I disagree with, so haven’t (re)tried after reading it (drink lots of water, summarize things you’ve read, reliably sleep 6-9 hours a night (on the margin, for me)). And then there are some that seem likely good that I haven’t tried.