This is a reply to http://blog.beeminder.com/chelsea/ (It might be useful if blog posts automatically got official discussion threads created?)
The footnote about whether you can intend to catch-up reminded me of Kavka’s toxin puzzle. In the metaphor, entering the Beeminder data point early is “intending to drink the poison”. The question is whether you can ever honestly have that intention, given the knowledge that after entering the data point you don’t need to do the thing anymore. Are you always fooling yourself?
I don’t know the answer but I’m interested in what other folks think.
Excellent plan. Now semi-automated! Time will tell whether the discussers discuss things in the discussion threads.
I’ve created a category for these, and a task-reminder to myself to trickle-add blog posts.
Intention: add new blog posts here, periodically add one of the bee-all blog posts or best-of Beeminder blog posts. Should probably round that off with a blog comment or footnote so that blog readers find the forum…
I occasionally enter data just before I do the task. My little bedtime ritual is that I brush and floss, and enter data for the manually tracked Beeminder tasks. Sometimes those happen in the reverse order. Once or twice something shiny on the internet distracts be for an extended period between the two. It’s obviously a slippery slope, but I’m not too worried about it.
I’m not sure it would occur to me to think of things in terms such that once I entered something I don’t need to do it. If anything the reverse, since I probably would like to have the data correct than be a day closer to derailing or even derail. In that case interacting with Beeminder is a cue to remind me at the appropriate time that I consider flossing important, and on thinking that I have never said “forget that” and ignored it.
If I were to weasel it would be to avoid what I considered a non legit derailment.
PS. I also think I can honestly intend to drink to toxin.
The difference in this case is that “drinking the poison” is something that you DO want to do[1], and do still need to do after entering the data point.So whether you do it or not I think you can still rightly intend to do do it.
