This comment1 on why theres no LW mobile app reminded me that sometimes what seems like obvious issues or holes are actually exactly the incentives you want.
For example: I’m currently doing an online exercise class which is self-paced but you can only do one class per week. Obviously this is terrible bc what if I want to do a second session in a week? Or just want to do it one or two days early bc the rest of the week is kinda busy? Outta luck, you can’t.
But I think this good, especially in combination with public health insurance covering the course cost if you’ve completed it in the prescribed amount of weeks. This creates pressure to actually do the course every week, even if it’s inconvenient at times, rather than falling off.
Another example is after having read Do One New Thing A Day To Solve Your Problems — LessWrong I found an easy solution to a problem I’ve had for a while:
- I have neck issues which force me to work from my bed
- since my bed is just mattress on floor, it’s not anchored
- bc of that it slides over time as I rest my back against the wall
- this requires frequent adjustment
I could just go and buy an anti-slip mat for carpets and put them under my mattress, this would likely reduce the slippage quite massively for only a couple of euros.
But I decided against it bc solving this problem creates a new one:
- it’s bad to sit for too long and not change posture
- the mattress slightly moving changes my posture slightly over time, which is maybe slightly good
- but it also forces me to get up every now and then and move it back in place, which is probably very good (it’s also always an opportunity to drink and get some more water if my glass or even water bottle have gotten empty)
Ofc I could also just set an alarm, but those are much worse
- the sliding thing is mildly annoying and gets more annoying over time, so I will eventually get up, whenever the annoyance is larger than the urgency or flow of whatever I’m doing in that moment
- if the alarm goes off I have to act ~now bc it is sudden and extremely annoying; maybe there are alarm sounds that are better
But I think that overall, this “problem” of a sliding mattress is actually, coincidentally, a good solution for a more important problem.
And since I really could just solve this problem for less than 10€, I’m pretty sure this isn’t just sweet lemons2.
Footnotes
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Why does LW not have a phone app?
“There is also one additional consideration […] I think by their nature phones are much worse for longform content, both reading and creating it, and I think a LessWrong that was predominantly used by people on their phones would be forced to have much shorter content, and correspondingly be a lot more like the rest of the internet in it’s pressure to be short and snappy and as a result of that fail to be able to grapple with problems in any real depth. I would never write a full LessWrong post on my phone, and even notice that the comments that I write on my phone or Ipad tend to be lower quality, with fewer links to external resources, and less thought put into the formatting or content.” ↩ -
“[Sweet lemons] refers to overvaluing something that one has but did not initially want. Like sour graping, this is a cognitive strategy to manage disappointment and make the best out of less favorable situations.” Medium ↩