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Earlier this year we completed a lovely Beeminder book club to read behavioral scientist Katy Milkman’s new book, »
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Loss Aversion Aversion
Saturday, October 30th, 2021
This is part 2 of our two-part series on loss aversion. Previously we explained loss aversion and how it’s distinct from the endowment effect. Here we (as Beeminder) disavow loss aversion as a tool for behavior change. This isn’t like “ »
Loss Aversion vs The Endowment Effect
Tuesday, October 12th, 2021
This is part 1 of a two-part series. First we explain loss aversion and how it’s distinct from the endowment effect. (Spoiler: loss aversion is a generalization of the endowment effect.) Asking Google how those things are different currently yields a fog of opaque logorrhea, so we hope this is... »
Bayesian Willpower
Thursday, April 8th, 2021
A couple weeks ago, Scott Alexander wrote “Toward a Bayesian Theory of Willpower”. This is my recap of the theory, my tentative verdict, and what I think it means for Beeminder and motivation hacking more generally. Let’s start with defining terms! Akrasia means failing to do something you rationally want to... »
The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment: A Retrospective
Saturday, October 3rd, 2020
X-Treme Nerd Interlude: Computing and Visualizing Level Curves of the Days-To-Derailment Function for the Upcoming Yellow Brick Half-Plane New World Order
Thursday, May 14th, 2020
For background on the Yellow Brick Half-Plane that a normal human could conceivably care about, see our previous post on how we’re killing the custom lane widths feature. This post is strictly for abnormal humans, and/or, more realistically, for ourselves, because math... »
Social Reality And The Canard About Keeping Your Goals To Yourself
Thursday, November 21st, 2019
It’s now been ten years since the publication of Gollwitzer et al’s paper about, as the internet interpreted it, keeping your goals to yourself. I think I’ve heard variants of “did you hear that science shows that you’re... »
Does Practice Make Perfect?
Saturday, April 7th, 2018
Ivana Kurecic is a PhD student in quantum information theory who beeminds dozens of things. One of her hobbies is translating incomprehensible scientific papers into stuff you should care about, at Happy Turtle Things, and today we’re lucky to get a taste of that (with... »
Negative Reinforcement ≠ Punishment
Friday, January 12th, 2018
Prof Michele Gregoire Gill is back! In her previous post she mentioned that Beeminder, in large part, motivates her via negative reinforcement. If you think that makes her sound... »
Psychoanalyzing Beeminder
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017
We’re excited to have Prof Michele Gregoire Gill guest blogging for us! She’s a bonafide expert in what Beeminder is trying to do. Also she personally is a dedicated Beeminder user for the last 3 years. She’s here to tell us about how... »