This is my favorite kind of lesswrong post—a quick rationality technique that I can immediately go try and report back on.
I was able to prototype it quickly in my notes list by using a dedicated symbol as the marker. It looks like any weird/unused symbol could be used as this. Seems like a quick hack to work with any digital list (I used §).
Question about non-stationarity: How often is the “stable” prerequisite violated in practice?
E.g. if a bunch of items are physically exhausting, and a bunch are not, I might want to not do physically exhausting items in sequence. I didn’t run into this personally in my tiny trial, so at least the answer isn’t “all the time”.
I interpreted it as… suppose the items are, in order: play video games, rearrange furniture, work out. That’s the reverse of the order I want to do them in right now, so I mark them all and go work out. Then after working out, I’m supposed to rearrange furniture. But if I started from scratch here, I’d want to play games first, to rest. How often does that sort of thing happen?
This is my favorite kind of lesswrong post—a quick rationality technique that I can immediately go try and report back on.
I was able to prototype it quickly in my notes list by using a dedicated symbol as the marker. It looks like any weird/unused symbol could be used as this. Seems like a quick hack to work with any digital list (I used §).
Question about non-stationarity: How often is the “stable” prerequisite violated in practice?
E.g. if a bunch of items are physically exhausting, and a bunch are not, I might want to not do physically exhausting items in sequence. I didn’t run into this personally in my tiny trial, so at least the answer isn’t “all the time”.
Can you clarify your question? I started writing a response, but then realised I wasn’t sure if I was interpreting it correctly.
I interpreted it as… suppose the items are, in order: play video games, rearrange furniture, work out. That’s the reverse of the order I want to do them in right now, so I mark them all and go work out. Then after working out, I’m supposed to rearrange furniture. But if I started from scratch here, I’d want to play games first, to rest. How often does that sort of thing happen?
Sure!
It seems like the prerequisite assumptions are likely to be violated sometimes (in general most assumptions aren’t total rules).
My question is about the rate of violations to this prerequisite assumption.
A few ways to cut at it (feel free to answer just one or none of them):
When going through a list subsequent times, how often do you notice/feel internally that your views on a past item have shifted?
How often do you make a new list and start the process anew, even though you have an existing list that could be continued on?
How often do you go back and erase or modify marks on a list while using this process?
I think I find my internal experience (and relation to stuff on my to-do list) changes pretty significantly over the course of a day.