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sniffnoySo here I am, back in Ann Arbor. A day late and $150 short. Except, I'm just a day later than intended, I haven't missed the start of classes or anything; and I'm not $150 short of anything in particular, I haven't actually failed to do anything in particular, so in fact that phrase doesn't fit at all. Hm. Oh well.
See, I was supposed to return on the 4th. When originally discussing with my mom when to return, there was a whole discussion about, do I want to return on the 4th or the 5th; 4th would be better, it was decided, it might be a bit rushed to return the day just before classes started.
But the ticket was bought many weeks ago, and I no longer remembered. When someone asked when I was going back, I fished in my memory... and came up with the 5th. I needed to check that, of course. I didn't actually remember, and noted this. So people asked and I said, I return on the 5th, IIRC.
But I never actually checked, and somewhere along the line I repeated this enough that the "IIRC" got dropped. As [looks it up] Norbert Wiener pointed out, "the human brain evidently operates on some variation of the famous principle enunciated in 'The Hunting of the Snark': 'What I tell you three times is true.'" I had repeated this enough that I had forgotten it was something I needed to check; the conclusion had become ungrounded from reality.
And so when on the night of the 3rd the airline sent me their usual "you should check in, your flight is tomorrow" email, something seemed a bit off, but I didn't think to check the date - I already knew it was the 5th, right? - and just figured they now sent them two days in advance, or it was a fluke, or something. It wasn't till the night of the 4th, when I actually attempted to check in 12 hours after the plane had left, that I noticed that something was definitely wrong.
So I had to pay $150 (more than the original cost of the ticket!) to change flights, and my parents and I had to wake up rather earlier than intended in order to get to the airport - many thanks to them for that.
Anyway what I guess I wanted to note here was I feel pretty dumb about having walked into such an obvious and easily avertible failure of rationality. Some time ago I started reading Less Wrong, because I found it interesting... but as is noted in one of the posts on there I can't find right now, there's a big difference between being a "rationalist" - someone who, you know, considers rationalism a good thing and reads about it - and actually being a rationalist, someone who actually makes a real effort to practice rationality. The latter is hard, and not something I really intended to practice, because, well, I'm lazy, and I don't really have "something to protect". (Though I suppose in this case I did, unknowingly. :-/ ) But even so, I feel like I should have been able to avoid this. Obviously this won't happen again, if only because I come up with ad-hoc techniques for this sort of situation; but shrugging off the email as "oh well, I guess they changed it" - well, not doing that sort of thing is exactly what Eliezer Yudkowsky calls "your strength as a rationalist". I guess I supposed something as fundamental as that might have had some effect on me without actually practicing it, but, well, no. Hopefully this should help me avoid such in the future, if I'm mindful, anyway...
(Also, I find it interesting to note that I never ignore such feelings where math is concerned - but that's because math really can't be strained; to ignore the problem in that way would be impossible without seriously screwing something up.)
-Harry
See, I was supposed to return on the 4th. When originally discussing with my mom when to return, there was a whole discussion about, do I want to return on the 4th or the 5th; 4th would be better, it was decided, it might be a bit rushed to return the day just before classes started.
But the ticket was bought many weeks ago, and I no longer remembered. When someone asked when I was going back, I fished in my memory... and came up with the 5th. I needed to check that, of course. I didn't actually remember, and noted this. So people asked and I said, I return on the 5th, IIRC.
But I never actually checked, and somewhere along the line I repeated this enough that the "IIRC" got dropped. As [looks it up] Norbert Wiener pointed out, "the human brain evidently operates on some variation of the famous principle enunciated in 'The Hunting of the Snark': 'What I tell you three times is true.'" I had repeated this enough that I had forgotten it was something I needed to check; the conclusion had become ungrounded from reality.
And so when on the night of the 3rd the airline sent me their usual "you should check in, your flight is tomorrow" email, something seemed a bit off, but I didn't think to check the date - I already knew it was the 5th, right? - and just figured they now sent them two days in advance, or it was a fluke, or something. It wasn't till the night of the 4th, when I actually attempted to check in 12 hours after the plane had left, that I noticed that something was definitely wrong.
So I had to pay $150 (more than the original cost of the ticket!) to change flights, and my parents and I had to wake up rather earlier than intended in order to get to the airport - many thanks to them for that.
Anyway what I guess I wanted to note here was I feel pretty dumb about having walked into such an obvious and easily avertible failure of rationality. Some time ago I started reading Less Wrong, because I found it interesting... but as is noted in one of the posts on there I can't find right now, there's a big difference between being a "rationalist" - someone who, you know, considers rationalism a good thing and reads about it - and actually being a rationalist, someone who actually makes a real effort to practice rationality. The latter is hard, and not something I really intended to practice, because, well, I'm lazy, and I don't really have "something to protect". (Though I suppose in this case I did, unknowingly. :-/ ) But even so, I feel like I should have been able to avoid this. Obviously this won't happen again, if only because I come up with ad-hoc techniques for this sort of situation; but shrugging off the email as "oh well, I guess they changed it" - well, not doing that sort of thing is exactly what Eliezer Yudkowsky calls "your strength as a rationalist". I guess I supposed something as fundamental as that might have had some effect on me without actually practicing it, but, well, no. Hopefully this should help me avoid such in the future, if I'm mindful, anyway...
(Also, I find it interesting to note that I never ignore such feelings where math is concerned - but that's because math really can't be strained; to ignore the problem in that way would be impossible without seriously screwing something up.)
-Harry
