This is an experiment as part of my Manifund project, and also an attempt to figure out how well life-advice markets can work. Can I make my life a well-functioning futarchy? Let's find out!
I've been measuring my moods for the past couple of months using Beeminder. Each datapoint records my mood as follows:
2: Unusually good
1: Good
0: Neutral
-1: Bad
-2: Unusually bad
(Note that my mood is recorded as a comment, not the data value - I don't need more incentive to feel better! The Beeminder aspect is just to make sure I record it semi-regularly. My phone prompts me to enter my mood every few hours, too.)
This allows me to see what my average mood is over any time period (albeit with a relatively low resolution).
So far, the average has stayed consistently between 0 and 1 (tending to hover between 0.1 and 0.3), meaning that it can map well onto a binary market.
Each answer will resolve to either my average mood over January (if I do it), or N/A (if I don't). If my mood averages to a value between 0 and 1, I'll convert it to a percentage; below 0 or above 1 count as NO and YES respectively.
(The answer labelled BASELINE will just resolve to my mood.)
In theory, activities that will improve my mood should be priced higher. In practice, let's see!
Fineprint:
I regret any inaccuracies that come from failing to record my mood, but if they happen, they happen.
I may retroactively record my mood if I have a clear memory of when it changed.
If I'm too unwell to record a mood, that counts as -2.
I reserve the right to keep the data private (but I'll try to keep you all updated on the current value).
I might introduce an adjustment to reduce the value of the time I spend sleeping.
Obviously good predictions on this market will require a lot of information, so feel free to ask questions. Consider yourselves my personal crowdsourced life coach!
I'll award at least Ṁ100 for every answer I find useful and Ṁ10 for every comment I find useful.
I might make another market about what I'm actually likely to do, but I'll see if I think it's necessary first.
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@TheoSpears Sorry, been meaning to get to this. I’ve been on holiday for the last few days and will be moving into the city tomorrow, so resolution might be a few days away but it is on my list!
@TheoSpears It’s been noticeably higher, but it commenced in February, so you might want to buy up /NcyRocks/what-will-improve-my-mood-in-februa
@NcyRocks I meant to drop a note here about this when I added it, actually. The practice says 3 pages which can be a time burden and a barrier in my experience. I went instead with a small notebook and aiming for one page, which is a ~10 minute practice usually. The idea is that you can just write without respect for spelling/grammar/structure/etc. and just freeform braindump first thing in the morning before anything else takes up space. Takes a while to get into it and it's not for everyone of course, but it can be a good way to start the day mindfully.
Regardless, I hope January is smooth for you so far.
@NcyRocks I'm not sure what suburb you're in but I used to push myself to go on evening walks up the mounts or through the parks if I couldn't get out of town for a walk "in nature." lots of nice green spaces and accessible coastal strolls around.
@NcyRocks I personally find the magnitude of my nourishment from nature is as much a factor of its scale and my immersion (I.e. old growth forest > city park) as it is how much time I spend outdoors.
@snazzlePop it's disproportionately easy to immerse in old growth forest in the PNW than most places, though
@shankypanky Absolutely. If it’s more accessible, all the easier to take advantage of it!
Also, I’d broaden your statement to say it’s easier to immerse for those on the west coast compared to many east coast cities — The Bay Area and LA are both merely hours away from world-class nature too.
I won't trade on this market myself, but I might get @NcyBot to arbitrage every answer I've done with BASELINE so that I get a coherent estimate. I'll announce that I've done something before I set my bot on it.
@TheoSpears So far I'm on track to meet up with friends once a week and go for a >30 min walk twice a week (I already aim for about 15 minutes of walking a day but I just happen to have gone for longer walks lately)!
I haven't been feeling bad by any means, but I haven't been feeling especially great either, so a lot of 0s. The average so far is looking like ~0.2.
@TheoSpears Also I've been playing games for >2 hours per day - haven't been keeping detailed track unfortunately.
@TheoSpears yeah, but if you predict BASELINE will get higher if they did activity X and they haven't already, then X could be higher than BASELINE.