Response post #2

It's been a while, so I wanted to reply to at least one comment:

Post: Observer selection effects from scratch
Comment: here

I’m not sure it makes sense to assume that nothing about your observation X favors any of these observers over any other (out of the 101 possible observers distributed among W1 and W2)...

For instance, let’s say... observation B is externally focused (i.e. that apples appear to fall downward). For observation B, it seems that some relevant factors would be how available you think the information is to make that observation (i.e. are there apple trees near others), how likely it is that other people are paying attention, etc. If it seems reasonable that others could be observers too, it seems like that should tilt you more towards believing that you are in W2. I’m not sure, but it seems plausible to me that you should think it’s more than 100 times more likely that you’re in W2 than W1.

Thanks for this! I'm not sure that I understand it, though. As far as I can tell, you're saying that some facts about observation B and world W2 could tell us about how likely each observer in W2 is to observe B, right? Like if almost all of the observers in W2 are near apple trees and B is that apples fall downward, it's likely that many observers in W2 will observe B, but if all of W2's observers are in the middle of the ocean, probably few of them will observe B. Is that right?

If so, I totally agree, and I think it's saying the same thing as my post. In my post, I'm not talking about all observers in W1 and W2, but only about those that do actually observe X. In your example, that'd mean there is 1 observer in W1 who sees an apple fall, and 100 in W2 who see the apple fall. That would be in part because of how many observers total there are in each world, but also largely because of where those observers are placed, whether they're paying attention, etc, and it'd be consistent with W1 having millions of observers far from apple trees, asleep, etc -- W2 would still be favored, even with millions of sleeping observers.

Let me know if I've made a mistake, but I think we're on the same page?

Liveblog: attempting to break a work block

"Work blocks" are, as far as I can tell, my biggest current work problem right now. The basic scenario is:

1. There's a project that's the right thing for me to do now. (Important, time-sensitive, etc.)
2. I don't actually work on it.
3. I don't work on anything else either.

I have a work block today. My time log looks like this:

Task	Start	End	Duration
Email	7:30	8:10	40 min
[other]	8:11	8:12	1 min
[other]	8:12	8:25	13 min
[other]	8:25	8:28	3 min
Important Task	8:55	9:04	33 min lost, 9 min worked
[other]	9:29	9:47	25 min lost, 18 min worked
Block-breaking	11:58		2 hours 11 minutes lost

The warning signs are pretty clear; I spent a little time on a few things (email is fine, but the others look not-great to me), stalled a half hour before really starting on the Important Task, worked a little on it, switched to something else after incurring a long delay, then stalled for another 2 hours (!). When I look at my past work logs, this is pretty typical, and adds up to a day where I only get a few hours of real work done despite a lot of time in my office.

I can't quickly tell whether I usually get the important task done on the day that I attempt it (i.e. whether those few hours actually accomplish what I wanted to do), or whether it usually has to wait until later in the week. I am pretty confident that I get these tasks done in the week that I attempt them, though.

An obvious option is to work on other things. I don't like this option much; Important Tasks tend to hang over me, and they usually are really time-sensitive.

My experience of these things is that I don't feel like doing them. Lately, they've been pretty complicated pieces of work. They're not something I can do without really paying attention; typically it feels like there's not an easy entry point. In this case, I have a list of parts of the project, and it doesn't feel easy to start on any one of them without loading the whole thing into my brain. I don't feel like loading it into my brain, so I can't start.

[Goes to look at list of parts] A lot of these are also kind of vague, like "figure out x".

[Looks at list again] What if I just had to do one of these? That seems like it wouldn't be hard. I think they feel like they interfere with one another. Maybe I'll just pretend like they don't. That seems like a thing to try.

...after I take a shower.

[Later] Now I'm giving this a shot. Starting on the first subtask...
[Later] Actually trying now.
[Later] Augh, actually doing it now.

Oh gosh, this is not fun, but it is happening. Each of these is a little puzzle, and would be easier to deal with if I had some information that I don't have. First subtask finished, moving to the next.

This seems to have worked, though I'm still slower than I'd like. I'll keep using this when I encounter projects like this that have subtasks; maybe I'll get better at it.

Update: this process seems to have worked well this time, though it worked a lot better when I started fresh on it this morning. I do tend to be better at getting going on tough tasks from a standstill than when I've already worked some, so I'll probably try to identify similar tasks in the future and wait to try them until I can start first thing in the morning.

Also, live-blogging has been much more successful than my previous attempts to solve this problem. +1 for thinking out loud, I guess!