[HN Gopher] Ok, so you can't decide
___________________________________________________________________
Ok, so you can't decide
Author : jbredeche
Score : 141 points
Date : 2021-09-08 13:52 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (randsinrepose.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (randsinrepose.com)
| legrande wrote:
| Personal anecdote: I refuse to blog anymore because I can't find
| the right CMS to use. I have weighed the pros and cons so heavily
| over a whole decade and just can't decide what to use (And I've
| used them all). Posthaven, Wordpress, Ghost, WriteFreely &
| Write.as, Blogger, Tumblr and a few others.
|
| Now I am aware of the phrase: 'If you wait until you are ready,
| you will never get it done'. But I've actually blogged
| professionally for about 3 years and saw what that meant. You had
| journalists cold-calling you in the middle of the night because
| your blogpost was going viral, traffic going through the roof.
|
| Though the blog didn't go down because of the traffic, I was
| still paying for the CDN monthly which at the time because of AD
| revenue didn't hurt my pocket as much. Today I simply can't
| afford it, and out of respect for my users, I won't serve ADS. So
| the workaround for many in that situation, is to go with a free
| service like wordpress.com or Tumblr or Blogger etc. But they're
| all weaponized with ADs and tracking cookies, and I don't want to
| make my users suffer loss of privacy because of what I've
| written.
|
| I used to self host, but then even that comes with caveats: can
| you harden the VPS enough to stop bots and bad actors getting in
| and ruining your blog? How does the CMS bounce back after the VPS
| has been rebooted? All these stupid edge cases can make you go
| insane. Then the CMS itself has to be configured the right way.
| Have you got HSTS turned on? Have you got your caching right? Are
| all your images optimized?
|
| It's too much. I prefer to just lurk on various Internet forums
| since I can still reach a large audience that way, albeit even
| forums come with caveats. So far certain communities haven't had
| their Eternal September yet, and places like Tildes.net look
| promising. In the end, it was a good run, but it can't last.
| Maybe I'll take up blogging again, when I'm 'not ready' for it
| and DGAF anymore, who knows?
| slig wrote:
| You can use a static site generator (such as Hugo), and host it
| for free on GitHub with your domain. Zero costs, zero
| maintenance and zero headaches.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| When I am in a stalemate between a couple of options I find it
| easiest to use a decision maker app [1]
|
| If I feel bad about the decision I try again until I feel good
| about it. Letting go of the choice and leaving it to fate to
| decide kinda sets you free.
|
| [1] https://easydecisionmaker.com/
| kekebo wrote:
| Which isn't necessarily relying on fate as much as rerouting
| the decision function through an external api to figure out
| what your internal choice state was in the first place
| datameta wrote:
| Never underestimate the efficacy of light to moderate physical
| activity in synthesizing information without necessarily directly
| thinking about the topic at hand.
|
| We enter a different thinking mode, termed "diffuse", where the
| release of focus allows us to subconsciously zoom out and stitch
| together the newly acquired information and partial revelations
| into a clearer more advanced picture.
| edoceo wrote:
| Need to have a big think? Leave phone in office, 30min walk
| outside. Amazing.
| zeku wrote:
| I 100% agree. Background processing is the way to go!
| jes wrote:
| Eli Goldratt used to sometimes say "If you're looking at a
| problem and see no solution, it means one thing: You're looking
| at the problem too narrowly."
| mlang23 wrote:
| Talking a bathroom break was most effective to cure a blank
| mind during a long test at school. At least if they would let
| you go.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I like randomness for these kinds of things. A special coin if
| the options are balanced, an enormous metal icosahedron (the D20
| of Decision) if I feel like shading things out in five percentage
| point probabilities, or a Tarot deck if I am looking for
| reflection on my own thoughts.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| An old poker trick: A watch works well for this. You can assign
| probabilities to actions based on where the second hand is. So
| for example, Suppose you think it should be 80% action A, 10%
| action B, 10% action C. If, when you glance at your watch, the
| second hand lies between:
|
| 0 and 6 seconds --> Action C
|
| 6 and 12 seconds --> Action B
|
| 12-60 seconds --> Action A
|
| Another useful trick I use is to take the sequential digits of
| pi mod (n) for n possible actions. I happen to remember 40
| digits or so of pi, so I can produce 40 very random-looking
| actions that way.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I do those, too!
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Making difficult decisions became so much easier when I realized:
|
| a) that the fact that the decision was difficult meant that
| either choice had a close likelihood of turning out well. b) that
| the biggest mistakes I have made tended to lead to my biggest
| successes.
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| Choosing is the same as not knowing.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Not choosing is a choice as well, the truth is that there are
| so many possible timelines but we will only ever experience
| one. So I would get comfortable with not knowing :)
| baldeagle wrote:
| Once, I was trying to decided between moving to North Carolina or
| Southern California for work (there is a song in that somewhere).
| Both sides had pros and cons, and I couldn't decide.... So I
| flipped a coin. It came up Carolina, so I flipped it agin and
| moved to California. It was amazing how having 'decided' I could
| then evaluate the other oppertunity.
|
| (And I think the Carolina business suffered greatly during the 07
| recession, but I bought a house in Cali before the market fell...
| so either way was a path with struggle.)
| perchard wrote:
| Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and
| you're hampered by not having any, best way to solve
| the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a
| penny. No--not so that chance shall decide the affair
| while you're passively standing there moping; but the
| moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know
| what you're hoping.
|
| https://statweb.stanford.edu/~cgates/PERSI/papers/thinking.p...
| icelandicmoss wrote:
| Came across this column/essay a while back on the theme of
| making life decisions based on what your future self would
| regret not doing, and it's stuck with me:
| https://therumpus.net/2011/04/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-
| advice-c...
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I sometimes use a variation of this with others who are stuck:
| I just choose one for them. Half the time they accept it, and
| the other half of the time they go the other way. :)
| kofejnik wrote:
| yeah, I think it was in some movie - if you can't decide, flip
| a coin, and you will already know which side you want it to
| land while it's still in the air
|
| also, if you can't decide it often (but not always) means
| choices are about equally good (unless you're missed something
| big), so you probably won't be terribly wrong either way
| andi999 wrote:
| Something similiar happened in 'the last king of scottland'.
| The protagonist is spinning the globe and says he will go
| anywhere he will point to. Then it came up too boring so he
| spun again.
| elwell wrote:
| Such was Niles' technique to help Frasier decide:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPYiCw9HHXo
| Zircom wrote:
| >Once, I was trying to decided between moving to North Carolina
| or Southern California for work (there is a song in that
| somewhere). Both sides had pros and cons, and I couldn't
| decide.... So I flipped a coin. It came up Carolina, so I
| flipped it agin and moved to California
|
| There is indeed a song there.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvLjJE7Bt88.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm hoping people who didn't grow up with 1990s country music
| at least look at the link and realize that the original
| comment is clearly a joking reference to the premise of that
| song.
|
| (Also, for any musicians who dislike or are ambivalent toward
| country music, maybe even give it a listen. Those Nashville
| studio musicians are ridiculous.)
| torstenvl wrote:
| Also known as the Marine Corps PCS (permanent change of
| station) song.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The defining characteristic of the great relief is the sense of
| immediate progress. After days or weeks of careful analysis, you
| are suddenly moving forward again and... it's a delightful
| relief. You are no longer stuck endlessly second-guessing
| yourself.
|
| I truly wish this were my experience. If I'm facing a decision
| that it really hard for me to make, then once I've made it, I
| experience no such relief.
| davidw wrote:
| "Long bike ride" - this is the way! Something about relatively
| steady low-intensity exercise does wonders for the brain.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I think this guy is spot on. I've learned, reluctantly, that if I
| leave the house feeling like I've forgotten something, I usually
| have. Maybe it didn't matter, but better to know that _before_
| leaving.
|
| Of course he wouldn't advise dithering _forever_ , but if your
| subconscious is making you anxious about the decision, it might
| be for a good reason.
| torstenvl wrote:
| In hunting and shooting sports we have a term, _overscoped_ ,
| that means your rifle scope is either too much for your rifle or
| you're at greater magnification than you should be.
|
| This is the result of, yes, marketing, but also the kind of naive
| belief that more magnification - better.
|
| The idea of always just throwing more brain-racking at a problem
| strikes me as similarly naive. Yes, getting down to work and
| doing the analysis is important, and sometimes there isn't enough
| of that. When you don't have enough, go ahead and add more.
|
| But sometimes, the naive brute-force method isn't what's called
| for. Sometimes, instead, you need to zoom out.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Literally tunnel vision.
|
| To explain overscoped to a non shooter...
|
| You're lined up on a target at 30x. Fighting your breathing,
| heart beat, movement from the rest / bipod / barricade. It's
| never going to be perfectly steady, and that 30x magnification
| is showing every bit of sway and deviation of the target and
| your reticle.
|
| On 10x, a guy can come in, line it up, and not see all of that
| deviation. He sees the target, the aiming point (which is
| rarely your exact cross hairs, a different topic) and just
| focus on a good trigger pull. The target is a lot smaller to
| him, but that's ok because it's not a complicated shot, just a
| small target.
|
| There is also getting lined up for your next shot, the recoil
| on 30x means your field of view has jumped and left the target
| somewhere out in the ether. If you have multiple shots to make,
| the guy on 10x will be able to see his next, or at least track
| where he is now and needs to be next.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| A day or two ago, someone pointed to a great article on
| Melatonin[0]. I'm pretty sure it was a repeat, from a couple of
| years ago.
|
| In any case, the thing that struck me, was the recommended
| dose, of 300 micrograms (0.3mg). Since the lowest OTC dosage is
| 3mg, and it goes up to at least 10mg, this was a shock. I have
| been taking 6-9 mg per night.
|
| I immediately lowered the dosage to about 1mg (I have 300
| microgram pills on order).
|
| Slept like a baby.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28416035
| lfowles wrote:
| Surprised the heck out of me too, I would have intensely
| weird and disturbing dreams if I took a whole melatonin
| tablet (around 3-5mg). Slept a lot better once I started
| dividing them into quarters.
| 4ec0755f5522 wrote:
| I use one or two drops out of a 3mg/1ml dropper. That's all
| it takes. I don't know why the OTC doses are so high. Maybe
| it's helpful for other purposes e.g. jet lag. But for sleep
| it's much too high a dosage.
|
| It's not a total cure for delayed circadian rhythm (your
| hormone levels, body temp etc. are still out of sync) but as
| far as fitting into more typical "business hours" sleep
| schedule usually expected of us, it does the job.
| jrockway wrote:
| I like liquid melatonin; it's 1mg / mL and you can just take
| .3mL to get a 300ug dose.
|
| But yeah, if you go to like CVS or something they only sell
| 10mg doses. Would not recommend.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Can recommend Flux: https://justgetflux.com/.
| coding123 wrote:
| I don't have any great articles on this but it's a super
| sleep secret. Turn off your lights at night. Seriously people
| leave the lights on every second until they go to bed, but
| what you really need is for the lights to be off an hour
| before your planned bed time. You can still use screens, but
| at a distance (like a far away TV). If you need to see to get
| to bed, aim the phone at your feet on a low brightness
| setting.
| WalterSear wrote:
| I've done everything I could, including this and more
| drastic measures. Unfortunately, it's just not the 'super
| sleep secret' people keep promising it to be.
|
| After years of terrible sleep, I gave in and started using
| melatonin daily. Every part of my life has improved.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| Did you find yourself upping the dose after a week or 2?
| I tried melatonin for a while (dissolvable in the mouth)
| but once I reached 3mg without falling asleep I just
| decided that I'm not gonna become dependent on it and
| stopped cold turkey.
| WalterSear wrote:
| I did not. I have been taking 3mg for months now, though
| I recently started to suspect it's too much, and dropped
| down to 1.5mg. If you are taking it at bedtime, rather
| than a couple of hours before, that can cause it to fail
| to be effective.
|
| I haven't seen anything to suggest dependency is an
| issue, and, if I miss a dose (forget to take it until too
| late), I have reverted to my old sleeping pattern, rather
| than anything worse. No increased onset insomnia or
| anything like that.
| david422 wrote:
| Ever lost electricity? Or been to a cabin without electric
| lights? At about 6pm it's like - well, guess I'll turn in
| for the night.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Camping too! To me its a mixture of just not having that
| much to do in the pitch darkness, and the natural sense
| of sleepytime.
| nfoz wrote:
| Here's a simple silly way to make some of those electronics
| LEDs not so piercing at night:
| https://www.lightdims.com/index.php
|
| Just sticky bits of cellophane that let you still see the
| lights when you need them but not so intense at night. You
| can get them on amazon or w/e
| afarrell wrote:
| I bought a lantern which emits a much redder frequency of
| light and started turning off my lights at night. I am
| indeed much happier.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| I've been suffering from insomnia since last year. To
| clarify, I'm talking about nights when my mind is either
| jumping from one place to another, imagining conversations
| with future doctors (I have an undiagnosed health condition
| which, after visiting many doctors in my country, a
| conclusive diagnosis is elusive) or interviews (I've been
| learning web development since last year but I'm still
| unemployed).
|
| The combination of turning the lights off in my room, watch
| something relaxing/calming (that doesn't make me laugh hard
| or scared) for 1 hour before bed helped me, BUT I also had
| to use night light for my monitor (flux). I can get at best
| around 6 hours of sleep and has become my norm as my
| neighbors can get loud early morning.
|
| Also, I always use relaxing apps to sleep. Rain sounds,
| white noise, music, I just install and uninstall them 3
| times a week trying stuff out.
| joconde wrote:
| > I can get at best around 6 hours of sleep and has
| become my norm as my neighbors can get loud early
| morning.
|
| Have you tried earplugs? They changed my life on days
| where people decide to be noisy, which is every other day
| here. I don't here the car honks, loud neighbors, and
| thunder anymore.
|
| The best part is I still get woken up by my phone's alarm
| at full volume, even with earplugs on.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| Unfortunately I sleep on the side, plus wearing earplugs
| would mean that I'd listen to my tinnitus more than the
| raining/white noise app.
| jventura wrote:
| I also sleep on the side and I can use earplugs.. It took
| me a few days to get used to it though!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have heard similar. I think that Apple's Night Mode is
| based on that.
| daggersandscars wrote:
| General note: if your iPhone won't go dark enough at
| night even with night mode, look under Accessibility -
| Display & Text Size -> Reduce White Point. Set the
| sliding value to what's comfortable for you.
|
| Then scroll down the Accessibility settings page to
| Accessibility Shortcut. This sets what happens when you
| triple-click the power button. If you set this to Reduce
| White Point (RWP), it will turn on/off RWP while
| remembering the slider setting you selected.
|
| I find this invaluable when I wake up in the middle of
| the night and want to read for a bit without filling my
| eyes with light / risking waking anyone.
|
| (Edited for spelling)
| dharmab wrote:
| When I moved house I made the bedroom electronics-free and
| put up blackout curtains. Also programmed the house to turn
| off most lights and din the remaining before bedtime. Night
| and day sleep quality change.
| 5faulker wrote:
| From experience, I've found that spending most time planning
| and the rest of the time executing tend to work well, so both
| have their merits.
| jes wrote:
| In threads like this one, I sometimes mention the parable of the
| Chinese Farmer as told by Alan Watts.[1] It's easily found on
| YouTube.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX0OARBqBp0
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Nice parable. To anyone that hears it and gets convinced that
| you can never tell what's good or bad in the world, please note
| that this only applies to single events within a large
| complicated system. Not large emergent systemic effects.
| seph-reed wrote:
| For the sake of not being an over-confident, fledgeling
| sentience ape; the complexity involved in the question of "is
| this good or bad" are absolutely, overwhelmingly complex.
|
| ----------
|
| If you wanted to truly answer such a question you have to:
|
| 1. Be able to perceive multiple timelines in their entirety
| and
|
| 2. be able to convert those entire timelines into some
| comparable values
|
| From where we stand, both of those are impossible, and
| whatever cascading effects may come from any action are
| completely invisible. We simply do not know the long term
| outcomes of our actions, and rarely can prove even short-term
| causation in the first place.
|
| There's an ocean between:
|
| - "I did x because I thought it was the right thing" and
|
| - "I can tell what's good or bad in the world"
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I agree. What I mean by large systemic effects is for
| example climate change.
|
| I can not know whether me personally, as a specific
| individual, buying an electric car to go to work is better
| or worse for the ecosystem than buying a used fuel
| efficient ICE.
|
| I can know that all the carbon we dump in the air and the
| general carelessness with which we treat the planet on a
| large scale are extremely detrimental to our civilisational
| wellbeing.
|
| I btw highly recommended Breaking Boundaries on Netflix.
| jes wrote:
| I would also appreciate some examples of large emergent
| system effects, if you are willing to provide some.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The most important one now is Climate change, see my other
| comment.
| linuxstoney wrote:
| ohh
| Jabbles wrote:
| I think the crucial point is that although "you can never
| tell" with certainty, you can be pretty sure of many things.
| mekal wrote:
| Can you give a few examples of "large emergent systemic
| effects"? Just curious.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Climate change.
|
| The Coddling of the American Mind.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| there's a related effect that feeds into this, that is the
| subject of Robert Frost's poem "the road not taken": if we make a
| decision and things go well, we typically put the outcome down to
| our decision, regardless of whether it made a difference. So we
| get to thinking that our decisions really matter, even if they
| hardly do at all.
| ketzo wrote:
| If you're with a group of people who are trying to decide where
| to go to dinner, but no one's putting out suggestions or willing
| to make any hard calls:
|
| Suggest you all go to McDonald's.
|
| There's nothing that gets people to immediately shoot down an
| idea and suggest something else quite like the prospect of a Big
| Mac.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Except I lost on that one because some of my coworkers were all
| over the buy one get one free Big Mac on Tuesdays a few years
| ago.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| A 2-big-mac lunch sounds like a terrible idea
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| I can't any more in my 50's, but up through college that
| would have been no problem at all.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Steve Jobs told to his associates: "If by the end of the night
| you don't find a name, I'll send the paperwork with 'Apple'."
|
| So he had 8hrs sleep and a name.
|
| That strategy didn't work well for Jeff Bezos, who went with
| "Cadabra" for a few months, which he admits is a terrible name
| (cadavra).
| jamespwilliams wrote:
| Cunningham's Law IRL
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Be fine for me; a Big Mac is kind of my 2-3x/year guilty
| pleasure.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I can find _something_ anywhere, so I use your trick to
| determine the pickiest eater in the group, and then make them
| choose.
| tshaddox wrote:
| In most groups I find myself in, the likelier collective
| response would be closer to "oh my gosh, I haven't been there
| forever because I try to be healthy, but that sure does sound
| good."
| munificent wrote:
| My "group decision on where to eat" rule is pretty simply but
| works well:
|
| * Anyone can veto a suggestion, but they must suggest an
| alternate restaurant (that has not already been vetoed)
| instead.
|
| This rule is gameable. A bad faith participant could veto a
| restaurant and suggest a patently horrible one and then rely on
| someone else to veto that and do the work to come up with a
| good suggestion. But there is a meta-rule here which is:
|
| * Don't be friends with people who would do that.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| We permit a restaurant to be suggested a second time, but
| only by the person that vetoed it. Suppose someone vetoed the
| Cuban place, but no other idea was agreeable to the group. If
| they just didn't want to go there but could do it, they can
| suggest it again and that's usually where the group goes
| (when this happens). Otherwise we use the same process, it's
| very effective.
| munificent wrote:
| This works OK, too.
|
| I prefer the "no revisiting" rule because it places
| backpressure on participants to not veto unless they really
| meann it. If they really would be OK with the restaurant
| such that they would allow revisiting it, then they
| probably shouldn't veto in the first place.
|
| This tends to make the game go faster, which is an
| important goal.
| [deleted]
| ketzo wrote:
| > But there is a meta-rule here which is:
|
| > * Don't be friends with people who would do that.
|
| Lol, I think this is actually very generalizable for.. many
| rules. Pretty good call.
| elwell wrote:
| I love a Big Mac.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| You might luck out and find people agree to go there.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah, I read that and asked myself "Am I a garbage person?".
| ketzo wrote:
| Trust me, so do I. But when you're picking between "trendy
| Thai place" and "trendy bar down the street," the suggestion
| of McDonald's really sharpens people's metaphorical knives.
| Zababa wrote:
| McDonald's food is nice from time to time, at least in France.
| xxxtentachyon wrote:
| McDonald's in France is kind of a cut above McDonald's
| elsewhere, even neighboring countries and very similar
| markets. I've been to McDonald's all over Western and
| Northern Europe, and the McDonald's on the right bank in Lyon
| will forever hold a special place in my heart
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| The McDonalds I was at in Moscow was not only clean and
| well maintained, they were hosting a kids birthday party,
| and the parents felt comfortable enough to drop off the
| kids and leave.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| McDonald's in the Levant and Middle East is similarly of
| much higher quality than many other locales around the
| world.
| Zababa wrote:
| Which one do you mean if you remember? There are McDonald's
| everywhere in Lyon.
| mym1990 wrote:
| McDonald's in Milan serves macarons, and that is why it
| holds a special place in my heart!
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(page generated 2021-09-08 23:01 UTC)