"Applied Rationality Training Regime" Review#4

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January 29, Review Day#4 --  I focus on applied rationality as per Anton Chekhov:  "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." (Even if it's rephrased a little.) It's his 160th birthday, and I try to make my TAP-dancing Charlie Checklist as vividly concrete as I can, with TAP-shoes and cane (the cane TAPs on items I'm supposed to remember: this morning at 4, after taking the dog out when I got up, I checked the garage temperature and didn't close the garage  door quietly. My daughter's bedroom is right overhead. Okay, I have practiced closing that door quietly, and an echo of Charlie has started to remind me for other doors as well as that one. (The "echo of Charlie" or "version of Charlie" idea is basically that I can have different Charlies who are themselves evoked as TAPs by triggers like doors, coffee pots, chairs, whatever. I can't handle many, but a few seems okay.))

I am going a bit beyond Mark Xu's ten-times rule for TAP reinforcement in that I try for spaced repetition, and this does help. To make it work better, Charlie has a pocket-watch. This doesn't work well yet. And, at least today, I haven't been asking him for help Sarah and Jim with solving actual problems via Murphyjitsu, even toy ones. Okay, tomorrow I will look at a toy problem, a puzzle from today's email, and I will try to think about "form-building".

 Today is also W.C. Fields' 140th: "Start every day off with a smile, and get it over with." This, too, is applied rationality, but Marian remarks that Fields' misanthropic humor is exactly the kind of distancing that I created her to warn me against. It has its place, I'm not gonna leave it behind entirely, but I do appreciate the warning. Maybe Fields' over-the-top version of it is really all right, some of the time: "I am free of all prejudice -- I hate everyone equally" is certainly an interesting approach to overcoming bias. But I think I'll start tomorrow with a toy problem.