What life improvement intervention suggested would I found most useful?
50
332
resolved Jul 23
75%0.9%
Join a regular dance class just for fun
14%0.0%
For relationships: build close platonic relationships with people of the opposite gender to practice being good at the relating part of relationships
7%1.9%
Explore improv class
4%19%
Explore digital minimalism
0.0%
Try Tailwind CSS on my next frontend project
0.0%
Try taking Ritalin
0.0%
Try taking antidepressants
0.0%
Join an Improv group
0.0%
Try polyphasic sleep
0.0%
Try Modafinil
0.0%
Use a sleep mask
0.0%
Use earplugs when sleeping
4%
Try FocusMate
0.0%
Befriend a dog and take it on walks
0.0%
Try Beeminder
0.0%
HEPA filter in bedroom
0.0%
Read the gospels
0.0%
Do at least one reflection question every day from this list: https://www.marcandangel.com/2008/07/24/20-questions-you-should-ask-yourself-every-sunday/
0.0%
Keep an earlier, more consistent bedtime with www.Emile.chat
How is this going to be resolved: I commit to trying at least 3 top suggested interventions and resolve the market in proportion of how useful I found each. (I may also try more than 3 suggestions if I find them particularly attractive) What kind of interventions should you suggest? - This is meant to be fairly broad. Some non-exhaustive areas of life that can be optimized include: - energy - creativity - life satisfaction - productivity - longevity - relationships - reducing friction from common every-day interactions - Please see an initial set of options I've added for examples A bit about myself: - I'm Vlad - https://twitter.com/VladyslavSitalo - A single Software Engineer living in San Francisco. - How do I spend my days: - Work on projects following my curiosity/what seems fun - broadly in the space of augmenting human cognition though building software (other names: Tools for Thinking and Future of programming) and do coaching to help people become better at Software Engineering - Mostly work from home, though sometimes cowork with people in random places/work from coffee-shops. - Random computer environment facts: - macOS - Colemak keyboard layout - heavily using Alfred & Karabiner to automate things - swear by JetBrains IDE's - Kotlin is probably my favorite programming language, but I've been mostly reluctantly doing Typescript on frontend because of better tooling - I know that this is sparse and incomplete. Feel free to ask more questions in the comments about myself/ things I’ve tried before/things I care about Things in this vein that I tried in the past: - & found impactful - Speeding up audio/video I listen/watch (current default is 2.3x) - Listening to audiobooks in general - Finding & attending more social event I enjoy (and/or organizing them) - Using Karabiner to customize/optimize my keyboard usage. - Getting an iPad to optimize my reading experience - & didn’t find impactful - Taking Magnesium to improve sleep quality - Meditation Caveats: - There is a limit to how drastic of a life change I'm willing to make at the will of the market 😛. - Generally I may skip any suggestion for any reason, but will try not be arbitrary about it. May 31, 5:14pm: Description ended up a bit of a mess, as the white spaces (section indentation) is not preserved. I hope it's still understandable Jun 6, 11:49am: Options I have already tried & happily using won't be considered for selection. though, I can see trying things that I tried before again. And you can trade on that in case you think it's worth it! (e.g. Modafinil option, which is unfortunately invisible now) Jun 6, 11:51am: This now also has IRL money bounty for new options attached to it 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/groups/bountiedrationality/posts/3222271488016892 Close date updated to 2022-07-07 11:59 pm
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Oh man, I lost so much mana on this! But (I think) not because I was proven wrong but because I was pushing the price up on "go deeper down the Beeminder rabbit hole" in hopes of inducing you to try that. I meant to keep doubling down to make sure it was one of the top options so you'd be committed to actually trying it but I think I got distracted and let it slip down the rankings. I did put some mana on Complice too and it sounds like you did try that. So I guess that part counts as being proven wrong!

Anyway, I still like the idea of wagering on Beeminder working for people if they go all in on it.

@dreev I think the mismatch here was that I'm currently at a stage of my life where dance and improv are a better "vibe match".
And I try to structure my life in a way that it's effortless to do things I want to do and Beeminder is a tool that I feel likes help me do things that I want to do but in an "effortful" way 🤔 (https://vlad.roam.garden/How-do-I-read-things-on-the-internet#s_rQBrVKe is an example of what I'm talking about )

  • public date-me doc didn't really do much, though it was an interesting exercise to write it

  • complice was interesting to explore and pick ideas from, but didn't really stick

  • ritalin was interesting, but not epic. though maybe need more experimentation

  • @Kronopath is cool!

@vlad Nobody convinced you to take HRT in the end, huh?

@vlad Hmm, we do have proper fixed multiple choice markets now, but not sure if @EllieHigh is still around to bet on your future hormone balance.

@vlad smdh

Ok, I realize that I kept procrastinating on this and thought I just resolve it with the current state of things:
- Dance has been the biggest impact thing on the list - it's something that I discovered that I derive a lot of joy from and do extensively (I dance https://vlad.roam.garden/west-coast-swing/ ). You should come dance with me if you are based in the bay area!
- it was somewhat helpful in the sense of meeting and interacting with people of opposite sex sense
- Having more platonic relationships with people of the opposite gender has been good
- Improv is something that I've enjoyed doing and learned things from, but don't do much of (mostly dance instead :p )
- Didn't do the whole digital minimalism thing, but incremental changes are incrementally useful

The current status is that I've tried maybe ~7 things out of the list, but many top traded ones remain unexplored and so I feel bad about resolving the market.
I want to try to get to at least 1-2 more top traded options before resolving I hope to do it in another 1.5 month, but clearly I'm bad at estimating this based on prev thread

Any news?

@vlad Status update?

@MartinRandall the dating doc is in the process of evaluation (see below), I've been doing dance (West Coast Swing) for 3 month now and it's been good.

Stopped doing improv for logistical reasons, likely will resume when back from travel

Planned to do digital minimalism when back home, but on reflection it seems that it should probably be possible to do it alongside the travel. Will make a plan next week - feel free to ping me on it.

hrt: I'm leaning towards on that one, though still plan to do more research.

I hope to be able to resolve this by end of Jan

Dating doc: http://date.vlad.sitalo.org/ and related market:

@vlad Nice profile! I read some, looking for inspiration for my own profile, but (if I were a woman) I'd also check all the boxes for "Why you may not want to date me" . Guess we shouldn't go on a date, then! ;P

Oh, but yeah, I think Americans tend to underestimate the value of public affection, especially physical. People need to feel loved!

answered
take hrt
@TedSuzman > There are other reasons too— like extending a market means locking up traders’ capital for unexpectedly longer fwiw I think opening market gives trades more flexibility (ability to liquidate their positions, vs having them locked until market is resolved)
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take hrt
@dreev also, since we now know that @vlad is writing a dating profile and signing up for an improv class, there would be free mana for whoever first notices that the market has reopened. Because this is DPM, the reward is at the expense of the people who identified these prior to market close. That's bad because that identification work is the main thing the market was paying for.
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take hrt
(There are other reasons too— like extending a market means locking up traders’ capital for unexpectedly longer.)
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take hrt
@dreev nope and nope: - Staying on top of the market involves looking at all the new options and seeing if you still believe your options deserve the same % as before — this can’t be automated with limit orders - To the extent that there are end-of-market dynamics in a “I’ll take the top 3” type market, no amount of extension/temporary quiescence will remove last second trading.
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take hrt
@dreev There are no limit orders on free response markets at this time. I think it's fine to make a market that extends the close date in she circumstance, but that should be declared in advance.
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take hrt
@TedSuzman Do limit orders solve that? And isn't extending the date the best defense against sniping in general, if you keep extending till trading quiesces?
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take hrt
Due to the type of market, there are possible for last-minute hijinks (e.g. someone betting a particular option up right ahead of the close time). Defeating those hijinks takes a bunch of time/attention, so each time the market is extended at/near close it's a bunch of work. From my perspective as a participant it would be annoying if I had to do that work a third time (already did it twice for this mkt since it was extended earlier)
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take hrt
@JoyVoid I think I see where you're coming from. Often markets are of the form "will X happen?" and there's an implicit "by date D" and so extending the date changes what people are predicting. But I think we can make a clean distinction between markets where changing the date changes what's being predicted and those where it doesn't. Since this feels like the latter, it feels ok to extend the date. I can imagine being wrong about this, but I think it would require an example of harm, even if hypothetical, to make that case.
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take hrt
@dreev I think violating expectations about how it would resolve is costly, even if there is no apparent reason it would be a problem
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take hrt
@TedSuzman Do you mean you're worried you'd lose money if trading reopens? My philosophy is the more trading and the more information the better, including trading while @vlad is trying things and including updates from him on how things are going. To further clarify, you traded with the expectation of a clear cutoff but what's the harm exactly if that expectation were violated? I think @MartinRandall is suggesting one way it's arguably unfair: due to a quirk of this old style of market, previous traders' gains can be eroded by later traders agreeing with them. My feeling is that that's less important than the market providing as much information as possible.
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take hrt
@vlad It's not ideal to reopen a DPM market like this one because bettor returns aren't fixed.

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